The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - The struggle of feeling poorly when you're a mental health professional

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 48: When you’re feeling poorly as a mental health professional Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. The very nature of being human means that sometimes we will get unwell. When we are working with clients this can induce layers of complications including guilt and a bit of ploughing on regardless! I hope you find this episode helpful and if you’re feeling under the weather hoping it soon passes for you! Do come along to our free Facebook group the Aspiring psychologist Community to Discuss. The Highlights: • 00:29: Welcome • 00:51: Sounding a bit different!• 01:39: Catchy podcast titles! • 02:31: The first time it mattered when I was ill• 04:04: Being a disabled student • 06:15: Am I ill enough? • 07:55: Modern learning with technology! • 10:18: the process of phoning in sick • 10:47: I’ve been unwell this week • 12:02: Not the best role model when it comes to working when unwell! • 14:15: Asking people to do stuff for us! • 15:23: Googling: Can I die from this? • 17:33: Adjusting to different household roles when you’re ill • 18:38: Giving yourself time to rest and recharge • 21:00: Avalon • 22:26: Come and leave me a testimonial• 23:26: Transient Vs Non-transient conditions • 24:45: Self-care / being cared for when unwell • 25:50: Longer term ill-health and occupational health • 27:26: Desk assessments and work aids to support you• 27:53: Giving our best selves to our clients • you.• Mental health or pregnancy sickness• Pregnancy sickness is not sickness per se! • 32:13: Professional advice to clients about when they’re unwell • 33:09: Grief and bereavement • 33:58: Come and join the free Facebook group• 34:17: Normal service will resume • 35: Summary and closeLinks: Grab your copy of the new book: The Aspiring Psychologist Collective: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97  Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the upcoming Aspiring Psychologist Book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrentTo check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunityLike, Comment, Subscribe & get involved:If you enjoy the podcast, please do subscribe and rate and review episodes. If you'd like to learn how to record and submit your own audio testimonial to be included in future shows head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/podcast and click the blue request info button at the top of the page. Hashtags: #aspiringpsychologist #dclinpsy #psychology #assistantpsychologist #psychologycareers #clinicalpsychology #mentalhealth #BPS #traineeclinicalpsychologist #clinicalpsychology...

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.

I am Dr. Marianne Trent, a qualified clinical psychologist. Thank you so much for being part of my world and for listening to this episode, episode number 48, which is just wonderful. We are fast approaching a whole year together, which is ace. I sound a bit different today in my head, in my ears, in my throat, because I haven't been very well. I've got tonsillitis, my tongue feels too thick. I don't feel I can get my words out quite right but people assure me I sound the same but for me all feels different, it all feels different and this has inspired the topic of today's episode of the podcast which will have some possible catchier title of working when we're poorly

as aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals something along those lines yeah I could do is help coming up with catchy podcast titles and with that in mind if you've got any ideas for things you'd like me to talk about on the podcast please let me know honestly please don't be shy otherwise you just get the random stuff that's going on in my life and maybe you enjoy that but I would also like some bottom-up guidance as they say in the research world as well as top down um oh now i'm like oh they think i'm saying i'm the top of the tree i'm not it's just that's you know i'm creating it so that would be top down um so yes please don't be shy head along to my website um www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash podcast and let me know what podcast episodes would really

light your fire. Okay, so I recall the first time that it cropped up for me as an issue when I was unwell because it directly impacted on the care of my clients and that's when I was working for a university at undergraduate level. I was doing a job in my second and third year supporting disabled students to optimally engage in their studies so it you it went usually meant going along to to lectures and or exams with them if they had some kind of disability and it could be a kind of long-standing disability or it could have been a temporary disability as well so somebody once broke their right arm and they were right-handed and so I really have awful handwriting I was a very bad person for that job but it was my job to scribe for them so yeah if you're at university and you are experiencing some kind of

difficulty with accessing the level platform to engage in your studies please remember that there are student support services there and there will be likely some service to support you to you know to more to more optimally engage that it's that it's fairer for you and that might be like I said a long-standing difficulty that you've got such as what we discussed with with Dr Deborah Kingston when we're speaking about ADHD and we're thinking about the centre for academic writing but also you know if you've got any kind of additional needs or mobility issues, then you can contact your student support centre and see in what way they might be able to help you. And then you might get someone, hopefully someone with slightly neater writing than me, runs in the family. My brother has got such awful writing that the university had to pay to have his work

transcribed so that they could score it and he was doing pure maths that's not easy stuff to transcribe when I used to look at his work I couldn't even read it so we've got very different brains I'm into language and emotions not at all arty I don't think either of us are actually he was used to be quite good at art he used to be quite good at painting pictures of my rabbits um and the cats and things he often used to do that for his art homework so I think he is artier than me um so yeah he got the arty brain um and the maths logic brain um and yeah I got got the other stuff. I got the other stuff. I don't know who's doing better, but we're both doing all right. So there we go. Another aside into my life, which I know some of you enjoy. So as I was saying, the first time this cropped up for me

as an issue was when I was in undergraduate study. And when I was then ill, I thought, oh, no, but it means so and so will have some sort of disruption to their lecture. You know, they'll be unsettled. So I was working with some people that had autism as well. And sometimes I just like to know that there was someone nearby in case anything went wrong that they could get to help to problem solve um so yeah you if you are in this role yourself or looking to to apply to this role you'll be working with a variety of different presentations so there's that sense that you know am i am i ill enough to warrant wrecking two people's days you know so um i don't know about you, and I'm not advocating this, but certainly when it came to studying for final exams for myself, my lecture notes were

usually in an assortment of mine and three of my closest friends writing, so usually one of us of the four of us would have been to the lecture um and yeah I'm going to name check them here because they're so lovely Claire Gemma and Katie um usually between us I'm sure they were dreading the day that it was my notes they had to read but between us when we'd attended lectures or seminars um and the other person hadn't we'd pass on our notes um so yeah I did did my bit as well I would say on balance I went to most lectures and probably all seminars because I think the seminars were compulsory and the lectures at that time were not um but yeah um not all of my not all of my original notes were in my own handwriting um so yeah it was quite interesting to see how just how many of those

there were um that I then had to kind of read and understand and um get into some ship shape order for my own exams and coursework so yeah if it's probably all different now you probably will take laptops or um you know iPads and stuff but at at the time, that was incredibly rare. So I started university in 1999. It was incredibly rare to have anybody tip tapping away. It might have been sort of one person at the front. And that was it. But I'm sure it's very different now. And even when I went to to do some teaching at a declensi course, they were all sat there with their laptops tip-tapping what I said and it was a very different experience whereas when I did teaching we'd all sit in um a sort of a ring shape um you know with the presenter standing at the open end of the ring um the open

end of the circle um and it was very collaborative. And, you know, you could get instant sort of eye connection with people to get a sense that you were being understood. Whereas talking to the back of sort of 15 laptops isn't quite the same, you know, and it, it puts that distance between you and the, you know, the people that you're speaking to um which I didn't necessarily enjoy actually um I really thought there was something very special about being in the room with 15 people you know with nothing on their laps just bringing themselves um with nothing getting in the way that was something quite unique so um yeah if you are going on to training i would suggest sometimes that you just maybe suggest just being you know

how about we take pen and paper notes um or one of us takes pen and paper notes, we take turns to scribe, so that the rest of you can take turns in really immersing yourself in the process. This is a total aside, this is nothing to do with being poorly. But, you know, just talking about technology, and how that, how that crops up at universities. But, yes, so what I was saying was that it was if I was going to be sick I had to kind of work out whether I was sick enough to not go and obviously if you had a vomit bug or something then you really can't go you know the basic infection control principles are usually that you're not welcome back between 48 and 72 hours after you've last been sick um and so you know your hands are tied in that regard um and so you know you can't go um certainly in the NHS it's it's 48 hours

after you've last been sick it might have been 72 I can't quite recall um but in those positions you're going to have to not support your service user, which means you're going to need to phone in sick. And it's never an easy thing to do, you know, having to make that phone call to your supervisor, your manager or team lead or, you know, duty receptionist and say, I'm sorry, I'm not coming in. And, you know, we can soften the blow these days by sending an early text to somebody and then saying, well, I'll call in when the lines are open at nine. But it's not easy. And so this cropped up for me this week because I've had tonsillitis. I've been really unwell. You know, I first started feeling dodgy Friday, which was the day we got back from holiday I felt dizzy just completely exhausted but like excessively exhausted um because actually you know I hadn't had late nights I hadn't had you know there was no reason I should be feeling that exhausted after a holiday you know we'd done lots of walking

but I should usually I would feel uplifted and invigorated by that rather than completely drained and the bed wasn't as comfortable as I would have wanted it to be but it was not enough to warrant being that exhausted so yeah it's been rumbling and then from Sunday I just didn't feel well at all um and yeah then my tonsils were just awful awful awful awful to the extent that the doctor took pity on me on Monday and prescribed me some antibiotics so thank you to her she was lovely um and then I started to turn a corner so I'm doing this on Wednesday afternoon and I started to turn a corner Tuesday evening I would say I started to oh oh I feel a bit more like myself but um I have been not role modeling terrifically well because

um on the Monday when I was feeling dreadful I didn't want to let my um membership down so I still did my usual lunchtime live which is if you if you're familiar with the compassionate Q&A it's like that but people ask me any questions once a week so if you like the compassionate Q&A it's like that but people ask me any questions once a week so if you like the compassionate Q&As and you would like more of them then you can get those within my membership so that's worth bearing in mind as well but then that evening I also had the second and final compassionate Q&A of this application stage and because I'd been advertising it on the podcast and on socials I didn't want to let people down and because I knew that it is application season and the applications in case you're not aware for DeclinSci certainly for for clearinghouse they're due in before 1 p.m on the 16th of

november in case that's not on your radar it's coming up very soon so my virtual assistant had said to me why don't you just you know postpone it and do it later in the week when you're when you're more well you know and i entertained that idea for a couple of seconds and I just thought no because I want to do I want to do it now and of course it is a bit different because it meant that I was having to work for an hour and a half you know in my own house it's not like I had to get a train, you know, go out in the pouring rain, stand around for a while. It was more compartmentalised. I do think with the commonality that we have of working from home these days, we are more likely to do some work on the days when we should be or indeed we are on sick leave so um yeah I probably if I was being entirely fair to myself I would have got Hannah to contact the clients and to look up their numbers

and cancel which is of course what we used to do in the good old days of the NHS before we had laptops you just you didn't have any access to you know vpn connections to be able to securely access your client's contact details to cancel and so then that would be done via the office you know from their desktops they would look at information call the patient and let them know that unfortunately the clinician isn't very well today and they will make contact when they are well again but i do think we're more likely to do some of it and whether that's partly because we don't want to inconvenience anyone else because of course it's sometimes clinicians that have to do that and then telephone sometimes already

overstretched admin staff having to make those phone calls and so if we can do something to lessen the load of our you know minimize, minimise any disappointment or inconvenience. I think we are probably, just by the very nature of our profession, we're more likely to want to do that. But do bear in mind that you don't have to. You know, if you're not well enough to work, that you just need to report that you're not well enough for duty. And with that in mind, you know, I think the most unwell I've ever felt was in 2016. And at that point, I had a three-month-old baby and a three-year-old. And we were having an extension. We had no kitchen. And I had bronchitis. And this was the weekend where the preschool had sent my little boy home with Wilf, the class bunny, to have a marvellous time at home.

And my youngest, the baby, didn't sleep um he'd wake me several times a night um he um he was breastfed and so you know when you're unwell and breastfeeding it's not the easiest um although at least you can lay flat in bed you know hopefully the child might go to sleep and then you can put them back in their cot but basically you know I do recall at one stage googling at that time can you die of bronchitis because I felt so awful so awful and then having to somehow entertain this class bunny and pretend we're having a nice time when mummy's too ill to leave the house and the house is in utter chaos because we had no kitchen, the living room had everything in it, my youngest didn't have a bedroom so all his clothes were there, laundry was everywhere, it was an awful awful time and yeah

I thankfully you know I came through it but I was really so unwell um I definitely couldn't have gone to work and yet still here I was having to look after two children um but yeah my husband I do recall rallying around he gets a very he gets an awful pained expression on his face when I'm ill he's so used to me just getting on with and doing things and you know sorting the kids breakfasts and because I'm an early bird so I'll often be up anyway so from sorting my own breakfast and drinks and things you know I just do it for the kids as part of the things that I do um and I think when I'm not well enough to do them suddenly it's like oh I don't really like you doing I'm well are you okay do you

need anything um whereas I'm yeah I'm a provider I'm a nurturer I'm used to being one do you want a cup of tea do you want anything you know and I usually probably four or five times a week with cooked tea and then suddenly like I can't do any of that you know I'm laying flat and so it's um yeah it's tricky when we've got different roles and then you're not well enough to do any of them um but yes um so my point with where I was going with that is you know we try and we do like this you know adjusting don't we um where we think well you know I'm I could be more unwell maybe I'm not unwell enough but you know we've got to be compassionate here we've got to

think well how much more unwell would you need to be to not go you know or should you be going and you know well if this got worse and you were admitted to hospital then there'd be no question about it you couldn't work from hospital and so you know what we also know is if we give ourselves time to properly rest and recharge. So I spent all of Monday in bed, apart from the one and a half hours I mentioned. And I spent all of Tuesday, every second of Tuesday in bed until about 4 p.m. when I thought I'd try and cook tea to see if I could manage it because I'd started to feel a bit better. So other than that that I was laying flat

I've watched some Netflix I've read some book I did check my emails and try to do a bit of my accounting software but that's like non-work doesn't count as work for me because you're just literally locating receipts and attaching them and stuff so yeah you know and also we've got to think when we're employed which i'm not self-employed a sick day when you're self-employed is a painful thing because you're not getting paid um but yeah you've got to think about sometimes when you are employed about your sickness absence and how that's looked upon and that can pressure you into work or pressure you to consider saying can I work from home today because I'm not feeling that well or you know I don't want anybody else to get sick but actually you're probably not really well enough to be there at all you know if you're not well enough to be in a building are you well enough to work full stop um so yeah i'd love your thoughts on this

um come along and discuss with me but for now we've got a little break and i'll be back along very soon so many tips and lessons to learn from so many things that you can try the aspiring psychologist collective the aspiring psychologist collective hello my name is avalon and i'm an undergraduate psychology student. I really enjoyed reading the Aspiring Psychologist Collective and I really honestly just couldn't put it down. I found it really helpful because as I'm in my final year I'm starting to think about what I'd like to do after uni and up until this point I've been very set on the idea of pursuing an AP role and the Aspiring Psychologist Collective helped me to see that there are so many more options out there that may appeal to me and I'm looking forward to exploring some of these and broadening out my options. And I also really appreciated that

people were open about their lived experience and how they navigated this over their psychology journey. I had lived experience of an eating disorder, so it was really inspiring to hear about how people have brought that into their reflections and how it shaped the clinicians that they are today. Thank you so much for that testimonial. I would love your testimonials of the podcast, of the books, the Aspiring Psychologist Collective, the Grief Collective, the Clinical Psychologist Collective. So please do come along to my website, www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash podcast. And then you can click for how you can very simply leave me an audio testimonial it really is just a couple of clicks so please do look into that and whilst you're there

just pick up your phone scroll to the apple podcasts app and then rate us and review us if you have a couple more moments that That would be so gratefully received. So we're thinking about ill health today. And of course, there can be a number of causes of ill health. So, so far, we've spoken about transient conditions such as bronchitis and colds and tonsillitis. And if you're battling any of those currently, I feel for you. I used to have tonsillitis all the time when I was an aspiring psychologist and I'd forgotten just how awful it is. So if you have that right now, if you've got a really horrid cold and you just want your bed um you just want a cuddle um please know that I'm sending you my solidarity came to 1am um the other morning and I felt so wretched

wretched is the word and my husband was asleep and I wanted to wake him up and say I don't feel I just feel so awful um but I thought I probably wouldn't be fair so I didn't and then when he eventually woke up he said oh you were awful last night you were just awful awful to share a bed I was like I know I felt so unwell but yeah to my mind he was asleep all of the time but clearly he wasn't he was probably awake when I was asleep and making a lot of noise and being just very unwell. So if you're not feeling well, yeah, feel better soon. Try and look after yourself. Try to eat if you can stomach it. Try to keep your hydration up. See if you can ask other people to help you. Something we're not that good at all the time you know can

you ask someone to look after you or to look after the people you would usually look after they might be small people they might be grown-up people they might be your siblings can you ask for more help so that you can focus on just some ah and ah and maybe even a nap you know I had a nap the other day Monday afternoon I thought oh because I'm yeah I'm working I can work from bed I really couldn't I just wasn't well enough so I had a nap and then thankfully felt a little bit better to be able to do my compassionate Q&A but the next day my friend contacted me and she's like Marianne you look so unwell you look so unwell when you were doing that you sure you should have been doing that I was like I didn't want to let people down

um so yes um if you are going through a sticky patch right now please look after yourselves um and I hope it passes soon but of course transient ill health is not always the reason for sickness absence you know perhaps you live with chronic pain or you've got a physical health condition you know maybe even you've got asthma or allergies that mean that you can't always get into work and that obviously is impacted upon by any sickness absent policies as well you know because HR can get a bit twitchy in occupational health when you start having more days over a certain allocation in a time period it's not easy stuff and you know it does affect our decision of thinking about whether we are well enough to be at work or whether we're unwell enough to be at home and not working so this is not easy stuff but you can always talk to your

supervisor you can always talk to occupational health if you want to to think about um any changes to your working practices that might make it easier for you to work um you know and certainly occupational health are responsible for things like display equipment and the comfort of your chair. So if you've got any back problems, it's really important that you have a properly fitted, you know, desk, chair, workplace assessment. And sometimes they will leave that with your sticker on the back of the chair, making sure that no one else touches it because it's set up for you. adjustment and sometimes they will leave that with your sticker on the back of the chair making

sure that no one else touches it because it's set up for you so yeah don't struggle on in physical pain make sure that work are looking after you getting you any wrist guards or anything that you might need to you know to protect your wrists and things like that so yeah contact your occupational health if you think there are adjustments that could be made to make your life self to give your full attention to what your clients are saying and to be sitting with their distress if you're feeling you know in pain or really unwell the answer is usually no and so in doing yourself a service of staying home and not working you're also likely doing your clients a service because then when they do see you again you're firing on all cylinders and you know therapy might then move more quickly as well and whatever you're doing feel less of a struggle

because you actually want to be there which is very different than when you're feeling like you're turning up because you have to be there. And of course, there's other types of sickness as well. This could be mental ill health or it could be complications and just normal run of the mill pregnancy can make you quite unwell as well. But also if people are trying to conceive with assisted fertilization that can be quite disruptive to your health and to the way that you feel. I was once doing a session with a young person in CAMHS when I was pregnant and I think it's probably before I told certainly my clients I was pregnant and I remember being sick in my mouth during a session, and having to swallow it down was not nice. So I wasn't sick sick, and I wasn't contagious sick,

but I wasn't living my best life then. I remember sitting in my office. I did have an office in that service, which was marvellous. It was a shared office, but it was still a lovely office, shared between me and one other person um but yeah I remember sitting with my head on my desk I was feeling so nauseous so um I see if I wasn't being sick I was feeling nauseous and it's very tricky to carry on so again if you're in that position congratulations if you are feeling excited about it. But yeah, awful, awful pregnancy nausea, dreadful. Yeah, I preferred the days I was actually sick, I felt better because, you know, then it's done. But if it's just that awful nausea that seemed to go on all day,

there's nothing you can do. Nothing, nothing takes the edge off so um yeah i've been there it passes you know once you have the baby um but yeah luckily both of my nauseous periods seem to stop um yeah into the into the middle trimester the second trimester um so um you know but of course when you are pregnant if you're expecting you know one or multiple babies there can be complications to your health that means that you need to take some sickness absence as well um so i during my first pregnancy um had to take probably about three ish weeks off i'd say and quite significant blood loss I was experiencing and so I was made to stay home until they were confident that that was stopped and that wasn't

a risk to to me or to baby. Now of course pregnancy sickness is doesn't count as sickness in the same way so if you are pregnant and you've told your occupational health which people do encourage you to do to tell your manager so that any you know accommodations can be made as well to make sure that you're not at risk and baby's not at risk in the settings that we work so it is your choice but it might be something that you would choose to do before your 12 week scan. You know, it is not sharing on socials. It is not sharing with the wider team. But this is sharing with somebody who has a managerial and a responsibility to keep you safe at work. So your choice, of course, but it might be something that you want to consider so yeah pregnancy

sickness doesn't count um towards your usual sickness record because pregnancy is what's called a protected characteristic so um yes i hope this has been useful um because what i know is that we will have days where we feel physically unwell or when we feel mentally not well enough to be at work. And these are important considerations. And they're conversations you might well have with your clients as well. If they're working, they'll be talking to you about, you know, working and how well they feel. And sometimes I'll say to a client, it's my professional advice here, I don't think you're well enough to be at work. And sometimes people can find that really

validating, you know, because it gives you permission, then to, to not work and to not, you know, to take the take the pressure off that guilt pedal, you know, or, you know, Dr. Marianne also thinks I'm not well enough to work. So now I can relax, you know, into being unwell and really focus on getting better. And I certainly had that when my dad died. So I was on some sick leave after he died. And the GP said, I don't think you are well enough to be at work at the moment. You know, the job you do with the level of trauma work you do and the level of grief that you're regularly rubbing up against in your day-to-day work life I don't think you're well enough to be there and that was really

like I said really validating to have someone else give you permission to have time off work and of course that came in the form of a sick note didn't it but um yeah if if you feel like you can't give yourself permission to be off work then talk to someone else as well who can help you give permission to yourself to even you know get signed off work um all right so i hope you found that useful. Come along to the Aspiring Psychologist community free group to discuss how you're feeling. And if you're not feeling well, come and tell me about it and I will. Oh, I'm sorry to hear. Look after yourself. So, yeah, I'm going to go to bed and I'm going to do the clinical notes from the client I saw this morning and I'm going to edit this podcast episode so I can manage that my mother-in-law has been amazing has been taking the children to and from school whilst I haven't been feeling very well and she's picking them up

for me today and I'm hoping I will be feeling stronger and more able to resume normal service tomorrow that's the plan anyway so so yeah, I hope you found this helpful, hope you can forgive me looking, you probably actually look any different, but I feel like I don't look quite my usual self, um, and why are we so self-deprecating, I don't know, that's a, that's a whole another episode, um, but yeah, thank you for listening, hope you found it useful, and I'm looking forward to catching up with you very soon take care if you're looking to become a psychologist then let this be your guide with this podcast that's your side to be on your way to being qualified

it's the aspiring psychologist podcast with Dr. Marianne Durant. My name's Yana and I'm a trainee psychological well- wellbeing 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.