The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Self Compassion as an Aspiring Psychologist

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 4The importance of Self-Compassion as an Aspiring Psychologist  Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Today I will be talking about how discovering and utilising the practice of self-compassion will lead to an all-round nicer experience as an aspiring psychologist.  The Highlights: Welcome: 00:30 My history with compassion & Prof Paul Gilbert:  01:00 Recommended books: 05:00 Demand for Places: 09:00 Mutual Exclusivity: 11:30 Terms you’ll recognise from undergrad! 16:00Learning to Salsa – Badly! 17:00Compassion in Neuropsych 19:00Feed & Water yourself: 20:00                             Links: The Compassionate Mind book by Professor Paul Gilbert: https://amzn.to/3mxN5qhThe Compassionate Mind Approach to Difficult Feelings by Dr Chris Irons: https://amzn.to/3muzZKr To check out The Our Tricky Brain Kit: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/tricky-brainTo check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0To check out The Grief collective Book: https://amzn.to/3pmbz5tConnect on Socials:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marianne-trent-psychology Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodThinkingPsychologicalServicesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmariannetrent/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodThinkingPs1

Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field, the principles can work for you.

There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode.

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. episode. With Dr. Marianne Trent Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. And today we're going to be thinking about compassion. Now compassion is something that I think would have made my journey to being a clinical psychologist a whole heck more enjoyable had I discovered the practice of compassion before I actually did. So first off, I will tell you when I first kind of connected with compassion and also the close call I had. So let's start with the close call to begin with. is by Professor Paul Gilbert, who I have had the absolute joy of meeting for a two-day course. And I got there first. There was just him and I think just him and me in the room. And he came up to me and greeted me so warmly, including a handshake. This is pre-COVID times.

And I had just walked from a train station in winter and I was absolutely freezing. And I felt so self-conscious of how cold my hands were. And also just completely like a rabbit in the headlights for the fact that Paul Gilbert was in front of me, you know, greeting me, welcoming me along to his course. And I also was thinking this course was going to be, you know, pretty massive. There was going to be loads of people in the room. And I was just hoping to blend in, really, and to just sit in the background and soak up his Professor Paul Gilbert brilliance. But it didn't turn out that way. There was probably only about 10 of us on there. And so it was a really intense day. It was a real privilege, you know, a real privilege. I loved it. And I learned so much but my first brush with Professor Paul

Gilbert was when I was um training um it might even been shortly after I was training but I was at a house party for um for someone on my cohort and these house parties I don't know how old you are listening to this um listening to this podcast episode but this is not like a house party like it was when I was at undergrad uni you know where you don't really know the person who's hosting it you know you stay up all night um you know you have the time of your life, you drink some drink that's kind of orange that's come out of a punch bowl, but you don't really know what's in it. And you know, right now that might trigger you as well, because I know there's all sorts of drink spiking things around. But, you know, growing up, this is the late 90s and early 2000s is when I was doing my undergrad um you know I have very fond memories

and thankfully I came through it unscathed apart from you know drinking too much vodka and coke and things like that at some times I don't even know why I did that because I don't like um coke really so anyway so um yes I was at this house party, which definitely didn't involve bowls of punch, but probably did involve, you know, stuffed vine leaves. It was that kind of party, but lovely. And on the sideboard in my friend's house, there was a copy of the very weighty tome, you know, Compassionate Mind by the said Professor Paul Gilbert. And it had been returned by someone who had read it. And they said, Marianne, would you like to read it? And I took one look at it, saw how thick it was. And I was like no thanks I wasn't really into reading like um you know workbooks for pleasure I thought it would be really really worky and actually when I came to read it this would have been probably 2010 2011 but I didn't come on to get to grips with compassionate theory until 2017, 2018, I'm going to say.

And, you know, had I had it in my life for that many years in the middle bit and for the bit before I actually got on to the clinical training course I think it would have been super useful for me and I'd have had a much gentler ride because something I know that will resonate with many aspiring psychologists is that we can be our own harshest critic and I think this fits in with some of the you know the pop psychology around us being wounded healers you know we're partly healing ourselves by entering into this profession. And I certainly think that it's really, you know, the best job in the world. I feel so grateful, so lucky to do this that I really love, you know. So it doesn't feel like work a lot of the time, which is just, you know, I'm very lucky in that regard I think and I know that um many of you might feel the same as well um but we can it can definitely ebb and flow you know sometimes it

feels a lot more worky than others and you know we get those real golden nuggets of just incredible connection and knowing where you've made such a difference to the lives of people you've worked with which is just you know incredibly wonderful so yeah part of our wounded healer mentality can be that actually you know we're quite mean to ourselves at times so discovering self-compassion for me earlier in the process if I had picked up that weighty weighty book off that sideboard along with you know some posh dip and yeah stuffed vine leaf then it might have been really useful for me and I think it would have been really useful for me as a new parent as well to have already welcomed self-compassion into my life so if you don't know you're not familiar with books on self-compassion then I'd absolutely recommend the one by Professor Paul Gilbert, but also Dr. Chris Irons, the Compassionate Mind Approach to Difficult Feelings.

That's the one that I really think is really accessible and really useful. So do check out those as a first port of call if you get if this piques your interest I would say so yeah they're really useful books and had I discovered this when I was a parent you know I would have absolutely cut myself more slack you know it's hard to do any job well let alone be a new parent who you know at one point I was waking up like 37 times a night with a screaming baby. You know, it's kind of tricky. It's kind of tricky if you've got high expectations upon yourself. So, you know, the reality is certainly if you have clinical psychology in your sights, that there aren't, you know, limitless places available. So I'm just taking a quick look at

the book, The Clinical Psychologist Collective here. And, you know, the success rates and the number of places, it's, you know, it's pretty sobering reading. So across the UK, funded places in 2021 were 979 with the applicants being 4544 so the success rate that year was 22 percent and of course it is a little skewed because people will be applying who maybe have only just graduated and so it would be less likely that they would be successful. So actually, if you do have a number of years experience, and you might perhaps have a master's and done some published research, then actually your chance of success might be higher than 22%. Does that make sense? But yeah, the number of places was 979. And it was always, you know, on my radar how many places there were on the course that I wanted to apply for. And because I was doing my assistant psychologist roles in the Midlands.

So, you know, the course that I ended up getting on, happily loving, had 15 places, one, five five the year that I was successful and so it was always in my mind you know if I help someone too much or if I you know am too graceful and useful here, I could be talking myself out of a place and giving it to, you know, to them, which, oh, it's a really difficult, difficult position, because, you know, I adore my friends, I'm still in contact with many of them now. And yet, you know, it's difficult, isn't it being a human, but also, you know, we've got this survival instinct, you know, at that point, if I'd had to choose who I prefer to get on a course, then I would have had to put in my secret ballot box, rather than raising my hand, me, I'd rather I got on to training, you know, and that's difficult because we want to have a really collaborative ethos, you know, and I think this is more commonly spoken about now, about how to,

you know, how to remain compassionate to yourself and to others and actually, you know know there is room for everybody um to do well and to you know to try and be their optimal best and that um you know this is something that my children struggle with as well so my children are eight and five um you know if i say to one of them oh gosh you know you've done that beautifully what a wonderful picture what a lovely little artist you are or um you know I might say oh god you're so funny oh that's really made me laugh the other one will say I suppose I'm not funny or I suppose I'm a terrible artist and it's like no that's not true you, I try to introduce them to the concept of mutual exclusivity, which is a hard sell. We're just going to pause for this quick ad break here. And hopefully by the time we get back, we will find that you are less of a hard sell than the eight year old andyear-old are in terms of mutual exclusivity. Ooh, our Tricky Brain Kit.

It's a kit and a course that helps you work with those that have depression or trauma. Ooh, our Tricky Brain Kit really helps me as a clinician to bring the compassion-focused therapy to life in a way that my clients can really engage with and remember. So, yeah, I'd recommend it. A Tricky Brain Kit A Tricky Brain Kit It's a kit and a course that helps you work with those that have depression or trauma. Oh, our tricky brain kit. So, as you might know, mutual exclusivity is the concept that things, you know, can only operate a bit like a train track. So they can only operate as a parallel, you know. So if I was a good artist, then it would mean someone else couldn't

be a good artist. But of course, we know that those are not mutually exclusive concepts. We know that actually, it's quite possible for people to be for lots of people to be very good at art and and for our you know our artistic style to apply and appeal to different people as well so some may say that I was the better artist they'd be wrong because I'm dreadful and others you know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all of that others might think that um, someone else is a better artist and they would likely be right because my art is abysmal. So, yes, I picked a bad example, but my kids like drawing. So that's a really nice thing. skills and you know experiences to offer and useful you know useful techniques and things about me that makes me a good psychologist but you can also have the same techniques skills and

experiences or different techniques skills and experiences and you can also be you know good psychologist too because we have to be able to you know hold space for for others also doing good things and know that that doesn't detract from from our own experience and our own validity and our own worth gosh these are all terms that we learn about in psychology undergrad aren't they validity and you know ecological validity and normality and on all of that and actually here I am using them to talk to you so you know the stuff we learn undergrad and the stuff we learn at a level if you did it it's super useful you know, the stuff we learn undergrad and the stuff we learn at A-level, if you did it, it's super useful, you know, and actually. I still use many of the techniques in the theory that I learned at A-level now, you know, so, you know, bystander effect and cognitive dissonance and things like that, you know, they're really integral, integral concepts. So anyway, that's a bit of an aside, isn't it? But in terms of compassion, you know, we can allow ourselves to, to be good enough and to know that we,

you know, we can't expect ourselves to be a genius at psychology, if we are indeed, you know, starting out, if we've not done it before we have to be able to give ourselves you know the the breathing space and the capacity and the um you know the permission but also the the kindness really to not get things right first time every time and that cropped up recently for me on my second ever salsa lesson um because I was just not very good um but realistically I was comparing myself to people who'd been doing it for years and were asking me to dance and spinning me around like you you know, like I was on Strictly. And so, you know, I was never going to come up very well, you know, and it actually did take me sort of an hour or so

until I was home to think, hold on, Marianne, come on. It's all right. You can't expect yourself to be an expert on your second lesson. It's okay if your feet were a bit of a mess. It's okay if you were, you know, feeling a bit overwhelmed a mess it's okay if you were you know feeling a bit overwhelmed at times that's all right because actually the people teaching you stuff we're teaching you quite complicated moves um and when even the basic steps are kind of taking some some headspace and some thinking it's okay to find the you know the complicated ones um a little bit perplexing as well so I am going back for um for lesson three um next week and you know I may still be rubbish I likely will be and my dancing is about as good as my artistry um but I'm all right with that you know because I'm never going

to be a professional dancer believe me I am never going to be that you know so I can both be a good psychologist and a terrible dancer you know because the two are not mutually exclusive like I you know I wouldn't have to be one or the other so yeah I would just allow yourself to appreciate where you are right now and to not be able to you know for example be expecting yourself to be a complete neuropsych wizard if you've never done neuropsych before um you know i remember when i was an assistant psychologist um i'd done um some neuropsych with a client and we were concerned about some of his functioning. And it involved sort of drawing a clock face.

And my supervisor just really briefly came into the office afterwards and said, oh, look, you can see that he might have some visual impairment because he's only done it on one side or he's got some sort of planning problems or ran out of space. And I just thought, oh, yeah, I didn't really see that. I didn't really get that when I saw that. And I felt like, oh, she's so good. And she is, you know, but I've never done it before, you know. And so actually, I wasn't used to making, you know, interpretations and trying to formulate about this particular, you know, piece of neuropsych or particular piece of, you know, theory. And so just allowing yourself some breathing space to allow yourself to grow, water yourself and allow yourself to just, you know, do what you need to do and to know that you're, you know, you are supposed to be learning. You know, even when we are fortunate enough to get places on declenside courses or whatever course it is that you're aspiring to, we are not expected to know it all because we're not

supposed to be the finished article. I feel like this is a massive topic and we might well need to do another episode on this. And if you think that'd be useful, give me a shout. Please do, you know, subscribe and review and yeah, keep listening and let me know any feedback you've got and i will look forward to catching up with you on our next episode take care if you're looking to become a psychologist then let this be your guide with this podcast that you'll say you'll be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist with dr marianne

my name's yana and i'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me, you will not put the book down once you start.