The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Trauma informed yoga, other career paths and being an older applicant - with Fiona Jenkins

Starting point is 00:00:00 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,

Starting point is 00:00:32 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. On today's episode, I am joined by Fiona, an assistant psychologist. We talk about starting

Starting point is 00:01:07 a career in psychology, taking a different path and then coming back to psychology. We also talk about trauma-informed yoga practices, being a parent and many, many more things. Stay tuned right to the end to get Fiona's top tip for reducing burnout in aspiring psychologists. with this podcast that feels sad to be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist podcast with Dr Marianne Trent Hi welcome along to the aspiring psychologist podcast I Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Today's episode is so action-packed and I'm so excited for you

Starting point is 00:02:13 to meet our guests and for you to learn more about them and their journey. Fiona Jenkins is in her early 40s and she reached out to me because she discovered the podcast and was finding it really useful. She's got so many interesting viewpoints and I hope you find today's episode really useful. I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side. Hi Fiona, welcome along to today's episode of the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So as I did say in the intro, you contacted me. So we first made contact via Facebook, which is a little bit different for me because I'm usually hanging out on LinkedIn and latterly Twitter as well. But you got in contact because you said you've been following the podcast for a while and you thought you had sort of interesting interestingly different narrative and I'm always

Starting point is 00:03:07 so interested in anybody's experience of psychology but can you tell me in your own words why why you reached out Fiona? Yes so I became aware of your podcast I think when I was searching for more information about the CAP role so the clinical associate in psychology role because that's something that had come come on my radar so you know how on the podcast app you can just search for anything it'll bring up podcasts about it so I did that and that's how I first became aware of your podcast. And then I went back, listened to some previous episodes. I've read the book, not the Aspiring Psychologist one, the Clinical Psychologist Collective, which was really interesting and useful

Starting point is 00:03:57 and kind of gave me that sense of possibility. Oh, okay, maybe this isn't um impossible actually so thank you gosh you're trying to make me cry you didn't you didn't tell me you didn't tell me any of that in the messages that's so lovely so you know what that tells me is that what I'm doing is shaping lives and inspiring and just making people a little bit curious and a little bit you know explorative um is that even a word explorative yeah I'm not sure yeah because you're so consistent you know putting out content every week uh it's reliable you know sometimes it's short but doesn't matter because it's it's it's reliably coming through every week so it's like you know sometimes it's short but doesn't matter because it's it's it's reliably

Starting point is 00:04:45 coming through every week so it's like this drip feed of compassionate stuff which we all need oh thank you that's really lovely so tell me a little bit about how that inspired you to go on to get the role that you've got now then Fiona? So I think I was looking around at the CAP role because I can't even remember if that was before or after I got this assistant role but basically well I'll start right from the beginning, Marianne. It's quite a long story, but I'll start from the beginning. So I did a psychology degree over 20 years ago, and I was always interested in becoming a psychologist. So after graduating, I had a support worker role, and then I had an assistant psychologist role. I had a couple, actually. The first one was not a typical

Starting point is 00:05:46 one if you think we're going back to the early 2000s so quite a long time ago and myself and three others we were employed by the NHS but we were seconded to a youth offending service and we were doing family therapy like systemic therapy and that was a really big job for a sort of 22 year old um and they've since given that role to social workers which I think shows the kind of role that it is or was um so I did that for about a year. It involved driving around the county, visiting the families of young offenders. They were often single mums with, you know, a giant teenager who was bigger than them, stronger than them. And there was me, you know, not really with any life experience trying to tell these single mums how to parent. I mean, now I am a a parent but back then I really knew

Starting point is 00:06:46 nothing and I felt that you know. I tried my best with what we were given, the model and everything but it was a very stressful time. I remember supervision, you know no disrespect to my supervisor but she was very stressed and so it was you know sometimes it felt like I was supporting her rather than the other way around so it was kind of this imperfect system so I got out of that one and did another role and then I started another one and I just I it was all just too much too soon I think and I sort of had this feeling like I'm in my early 20s, life should be about fun. It should be more fun than this. I'm not enjoying this.

Starting point is 00:07:34 So I decided to get out. I'd heard from one of my colleagues at the Youth Offending Service about the JET program, which is a program for graduates to go to Japan and teach in government schools. So I applied for that, but I had a kind of a year to fill before I went there. So I went to Russia for a year. And then I went to Japan, and I ended up spending five years there, ended up meeting my husband, getting married, having a baby. So it was totally life changing experience. Then we decided to move back to the UK.

Starting point is 00:08:17 So he's American, not from here. But we decided to try living here. And I, well, I tried various different things, including using my Japanese, including trying teacher training. But I don't know, none of it felt really right. Then I had a daughter and while I was on maternity leave I started volunteering and training to be a mum's mental health peer support worker for you know maternal mental health with NCT the National Child Birth Trust. So I was a peer support worker and a breastfeeding peer support worker while I was on maternity leave and for a bit of time after but I sort of realized that I couldn't really work for free sadly and my manager in that the NCT role had noticed some peer support worker roles in the NHS and she sent them to us and I applied for one of those so I started working as a peer support worker

Starting point is 00:09:31 in my trust and then I'd been doing that for about I guess two years when this email came through saying do you have a psychology degree and would you like experience as an assistant on a secondment and I thought would I maybe I would maybe I should get back into this which you know something that it felt like that door had closed for me but this was an opening again and it you had to be working already in the trust so the idea was sort of taking from the the pool of talent who are were already working in the trust and kind of giving them a helping hand in a way because as we know these AP roles are so competitive so yeah I applied and we had quite an intense group interview and then we had a one-to-one interview or three-to-one three of them one of me and I was placed in an older adults service and I've been there since December so that is the very long story of how I got here. Gosh amazing what a story and I had heard of JET

Starting point is 00:10:57 because one of my friends actually was on the JET program probably a similarish time to you and now does have a Japanese wife she's lovely um and they live in the UK as well so I had heard of that but I don't think I've is it still going I haven't heard of it since it is yeah it's it's still going strong and I've told my son who was born there you know you you could apply to this when you're a bit older you're a jet baby and you can explain that you know this is where you originated I love that so you actually did spend quite a period of time then if you had your baby um your first child um there then yeah yeah and it was really perspective changing in many ways I mean um it gave me this experience of being different

Starting point is 00:11:49 it was largely positive because I have the privilege of being white blonde hair blue eyes you know in Japanese eyes seen as this sort of western ideal almost so it was largely positive attention but i mean it did give me that experience of feeling like people are talking about me a lot behind my back you know i felt a bit of paranoia because it was true we were being talked about behind our backs or just in front of us yeah so it was a really different experience and you know the culture is very different to ours very kind of collective rather than individual and yeah lots of really great experiences thought-provoking experiences. Yeah yeah I think you know you described so powerfully the the brilliance and the what we can learn what we can value about going out and seeing in person

Starting point is 00:12:55 different cultures for ourselves so as you were speaking it reminded me of being in Thailand and I was quite a lot younger and quite a lot blonder then um and people follow chasing me down the street calling me Cameron Diaz and I was like Cameron Diaz like Cameron Cameron I was like I'm really not Cameron Diaz like um and then when I was in um India just before I started my clinical training we were quite a remote um area and we were at the cinema and my friends and I were in the atrium waiting to go in and see a Bollywood movie and we were just surrounded with a ring of local people eating their popcorn watching us and sort of pointing and laughing like oh like we were zoo like zoo creatures like what are they gonna do next what are they gonna do next but it was really really interesting to be part of that experience and to just allow it to happen as well you know

Starting point is 00:13:53 yes and I feel it served me well in ways like you have to be really tolerant of uncertainty you have to sit with being really uncomfortable quite regularly because maybe you know when I first got there I knew no Japanese I really didn't know what was going on a lot of the time it was very awkward a lot of the time and I think that's really served me well actually going forwards in now I'm much I find it much easier to sit with uncertainty and just, you know, just deal with it and deal with those uncomfortable feelings. OK, so you obviously you've learned a lot in the in the kind of it's not a sidestep, is it? But just in a different trajectory from doing the kind of Japanese chapter of your life but do you think what might have made the difference or what might have yeah given you a slightly shorter journey to where

Starting point is 00:14:56 you are now what did you need so I've been you know it is a heavy role working in youth justice with teenagers that are really really cool cool, really, really street smart. I absolutely felt that pressure. I wasn't going to people's homes. I was in the prison. So that kind of probably helped with some of that balance. But I definitely didn't feel cool enough to do that. Definitely didn't. Was there anything that might have made a difference in terms of your roles in the UK that might have been the difference that made the difference for you? I mean I think to a certain extent for my own personal journey I probably needed to get out of the UK and get out of those roles and kind of come back now full circle back to psychology but okay I mean great supervision would would have probably made a big difference because I know this because I'm now lucky enough to be getting that great

Starting point is 00:15:53 supervision that I didn't have back then and that has made a big difference so I'd say it's two things it's me personally developing and growing up but also that support yeah yeah absolutely and I think when we become parents it for me anyway I can't speak for you I can't speak for other parents it just changes everything about everything it changes how I relate to people it changes how human I am I feel like before becoming a parent it definitely felt like there was a work persona and a sort of home persona like a genuine personality I think it's reminding me of some of the personality development theories around crystallized intelligence and crystallized personality so some random rumbling

Starting point is 00:16:46 that's going on in my brain about that and I felt like before they were quite separate whereas I think becoming a parent and then probably the pandemic has meant that it's all just for me I am the intervention and it's I'm more the same person across all of the settings now have you experienced anything like that in your parenting journey that's really interesting you say that because for me it's almost the opposite I feel so boundaried I feel so lucky that I have my family life and I have no choice but to really just switch modes from work to home and especially with time boundaries you know because I can't stay late because I have to leave at that time to go and pick up my daughter from after school care so for me it's very separate. But yeah, in terms of bringing yourself to the work,

Starting point is 00:17:46 of course, it changes you on some fundamental level. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing like knowing that you're going to get charged a late fee to make sure that you leave work on time. And I find that's quite useful, actually, in terms of, because sometimes we can, you know, I was listening to that song People Pleaser earlier. I don't know if you've heard that. She was the lady that capped someone or other was singing it at Glastonbury yesterday.

Starting point is 00:18:14 And I was listening to it. It's a good song. And I think many of us as psychologists can be people pleasers. What I like about about children is they give you a really nice way of saying no and being assertive and being bounded without it making it like you're being difficult you know no I do actually want to finish work at five so I'm gonna because I'm really sorry you know I've got to because I've got to pick my kid up but I also think for people who aren't parents we as a society should allow people to leave at five because their job finishes at five and we shouldn't have to use an excuse and I feel quite strongly about you know caring for the carers this is one of my real interests is like who is looking after these people who are looking after some of the most traumatized or damaged members of society this is going to have a knock

Starting point is 00:19:07 on effect if we're not looking after staff and that's one thing I'm really really interested in is bringing more care to the people doing the work I think it's so needed. Yeah so I'm absolutely aware of the impact of vicarious trauma and how we need to think about supporting our staff. But this also reminds me of a conversation I was having on Twitter in May. The British Psychological Society had really been trying to build people's awareness of the fact that the NHS wellbeing hubs that were set up to support staff during the pandemic are actually no longer going to be funded, or that was the plan at that stage. And Stephen Fry had got on board with a video, which was sort of rallying the troops to really think about trying to encourage the government to continue to fund those. So, you know, one of the

Starting point is 00:20:03 roles of this podcast is to talk about um you know current themes and debates in psychology so if you are listening to this and you're interested in that do check out um that uh that movement um on twitter and i'll make sure i put a link um in the show notes for anybody that wants to easily catch up on that too so yeah really really interesting and really useful stuff so thanks for bringing that to our awareness Fiona and it also made me think about when I was in services I didn't have children when it came to sort of divvying up leave at Christmas there was a definite kind of suggestion that probably I ought to to do it and so I probably just did do it because I definitely felt like oh it'd be nice for them to have time with their children but what we learn when we become parents or even before and

Starting point is 00:20:50 we give ourselves permission to take a nice long break of sort of two weeks it's how good that feels doesn't it uh completely switch off from work yeah so it's yeah thinking about treating people as humans and regardless of their parenting status isn't it yeah so we are a similar age I think as I went to university in 1999 I just turned 42 very recently so yeah it's interesting that we had largely similar experiences but we've you know come to a similar-ish place but different trajectories so is your plan clinical are you sort of heading in that direction? I think I'm going to give it a go I think one of the benefits of being older is feeling like if it doesn't work out there are many many more options open to me and I don't feel like it's the be-all and end-all which I think is a really

Starting point is 00:21:54 internally powerful position to be in because really I think yeah I can see so many different options as I mentioned to you I'm a yoga teacher as well so I'm lucky enough to be doing this role part-time this assistant role part-time and on my other days I teach yoga I've got a class going or a group going for community mental health service users, which is paid for by the NHS. So I feel there's a, you know, another path I could take if the clinical route doesn't work out. But ideally, I'd like to be sort of using both in my work, you know using the body as well as the mind um so yes I'll give it go I'll make an application and see how I get on but with quite low expectations as it's been it's been a long time since I've done academic work I'm I'm possibly getting involved in some research

Starting point is 00:23:02 on one of my days um I'm exploring that because that's my kind of weak point. Not weak, but rusty point because it's been such a long time. So we'll see. I'll give myself a few tries, maybe two tries. But I can't, you know, keep on trying and trying for many years. I don't think that would be good for me although I admire people who can do that who have the stamina yeah you get to decide don't you and I really love the book I'm not sure if you read it um the body holds the score and that talks about trauma-informed yoga which is really powerful. I think they give an example of childbirth. If somebody's had a traumatic birth, then sometimes getting themselves back in that birth position

Starting point is 00:23:51 can suddenly make them feel really scared and really vulnerable and really out of control. And it's because the body has held the score. It's remembered that that's a stress position and that's something, you know, no good's going to come from that. So it's really, really interesting work. Yes, it is. So I've done a bit of trauma-informed yoga teacher training in order to lead this class in the community um and yeah the sort of things we learned it's so fascinating another really great book is um trauma and recovery by Judith Herman, which I recommend to all of your listeners, as a psychologist as well as a yoga teacher. And what was I going to say?

Starting point is 00:24:37 Oh, yes. So a lot of this thinking about trauma is that it's kind of pre verbal so actually working with the body can be more helpful to someone than working with words so I believe in both I really believe in the power of talking therapies but for some people maybe that won't work and for them doing some work in the body will be more healing or they'll make more of a breakthrough. Yeah, so I'm very keen to explore all this more.

Starting point is 00:25:15 There's so many things I'm interested in, Marianne. It's difficult to find the time to pursue all these interests, but I have got the rest of my life you know the second half of my life so I will just crack on with it all. Well done it sounds really brilliant and you know even being able to kind of pitch your services to an NHS organisation and having them go for it that's not that's no mean feat you know you've done really well there as well how is the class going how are the participants finding it so this is i think about the third or fourth i think it's the fourth round that we've run so it's me and an occupational therapist take the group and um yeah we've had some really positive feedback in the previous rounds um I think the people vote with their feet, don't they? So the

Starting point is 00:26:07 people who stay and come to the whole 10 sessions, that is the best kind of compliment because we know that they must be finding it helpful. And for some people, we're keen to emphasise that for some people, it might be might be really actually they won't feel better after they might feel worse they might feel terrible after this one hour session um but that is normal and to know that you know it might not be for them or they might want to try it for the 10 weeks and see if anything changes for them or they might want to carry on for 10 years and see if anything changes for them um but yeah we're having people coming back and staying so that is a compliment so we think it's it's useful to at least some of our group members good and i've got

Starting point is 00:27:02 so many questions for you i'm so interested in everything you're saying. So one part of me thinks, are you outcome measuring it? Are you measuring your change? Are you demonstrating it? So very good question and very pertinent because I have just started this introduction to evaluation course which is also offered for free which I found about through work and it asks us to choose a project to evaluate or to start to think about evaluating I've only just started the course and this is the one I'm thinking of so I'm lucky because my occupational therapist colleague suggested we do a measure at the start of this this one we've just uh well we're nearly at the end of it we're kind of doing it termly so at the

Starting point is 00:27:53 end of this term before the summer holidays it will end and then we'll do the the assessment again so it was the core 10 don't know if you know that one but that was her suggestion i'm very grateful to her so hopefully we'll have a little bit of data we've also got the qualitative data um where we ask people to write some comments about whether they found it helpful or you know what was their experience amazing yeah always for anyone listening and for you in future if you're doing any sort of group or any sort of intervention or even just an assessment do outcome measures just get them done and then do them in the middle do them at the end and just just see if there's any change and you know if you even if you think I don't know that we've necessarily got time to do anything

Starting point is 00:28:45 with those having the data is really important and if you ever get like a master's student or a summer placement student sometimes looking at that data can be a really nice short-term project for people as well so yes outcome measures are so important I don't use the core 10 but I do regularly use the full version um and i really like and so it's 34 questions for anyone that's not familiar with it i really like that it breaks down people's areas of um need into functioning risk problems and well-being and people actually really like that because you can say well actually you're doing really well here but we can see that for example, you're working really hard

Starting point is 00:29:25 so that your functioning is actually intact. But, you know, with that amount of problems pressing on you, that must be really exhausting. They're like, yes. So, yeah, I love outcome measures. And in terms of you being a yoga teacher, did you pitch to the organization or did you see an advert and think, oh, be good for that I'll apply for that which way around did it work? So it was me it was me suggesting it was when I was still working as a peer support worker in the community and I just thought oh this is something extra I can offer so I suggested it to my team and they took me up on it. Yeah. And it's been a bit of a headache.

Starting point is 00:30:09 Tell you what the most headachy part of it is the organizing the venue, paying the invoice, all that sort of behind the scenes stuff that you don't appreciate takes a lot of time and a lot of work. Well, I'm sure you appreciate, but, you know, people in general don't see that behind the scenes side. And also kind of taking referrals, contacting the participants, reminding them, sending letters, all of that, it's a lot of admin. So actually now this programme, it's part of a bigger group program. It has an administrator now. So that makes things a lot easier.

Starting point is 00:30:52 But yeah. Absolutely. I remember when I was working in the NHS and the first time someone asked me for a purchase order number, I was like, I don't even know what that is. It sounds like it's going to be quite a lengthy process. Okay. So, yeah, I've definitely learned more about that in private practice but yes things in the NHS often don't hold in any large organization don't happen overnight do they and there's many many people involved in the process that in order for things to be rubber stamped okay so we've covered so much um such an interesting useful episode okay so work-life

Starting point is 00:31:28 balance is so key and you've obviously indicated you've got a real passion for reducing um potential for vicarious trauma even applying for the declincide can be a pretty tricky process and some people do burn out and that's not ideal what advice would you offer for anybody um to you know to reduce burnout yeah that's such a great question because um thinking back to my early experiences I think probably what I was experiencing was burnout actually and I always felt like I had to be doing more reading more you know using my spare time to study more and I just got really sick of it so now I do not do that at all I try to keep my work to the most part into my work hours and the rest of time, I pursue the things that I'm really interested in.

Starting point is 00:32:27 And that just makes me a more well-rounded, happier person, for sure. And with the yoga, when I was doing my yoga teacher training, as part of our course, we were basically to pass the course, we were told you should be practicing six days a week. That doesn't mean you have to do an hour's class six days a week, but you should be doing a little bit of something yoga related every day. Maybe it's five minutes of breathing. Maybe it's reading a chapter of a yoga book but something just keep doing something six days a week um so since since doing this I really notice a difference on the days when I haven't done any yoga I noticed that the gap in between something happening and me reacting what you I think would refer to as our window of tolerance I noticed that gap is much smaller I will snap much faster if I haven't done that kind of self-awareness you know

Starting point is 00:33:36 coming back to just noticing what's going on for me in my body in my life so I'd say just like I said about you and you just consistently putting out something every week it's little and often rather than one long class once a week whatever it is you decide is for you just doing it little and often you don't have it doesn't take a massive commitment but a little bit every day it's interesting you say about my consistency because um I like a streak I find it easier to go for streaks um so um if I was to miss a week I may miss a month you know so I'm just I just keep going keep going consistently but um I realized on Friday I've been trying to work sort of quite hard to get an article finished that I was writing and I realized that I hadn't actually edited the podcast episode for this week and I suddenly

Starting point is 00:34:36 thought right I'll just record a really quick one just so that I've done it and so it's consistent and so it's done and it's out there and then I realized that I had already recorded one that I needed to edit so I just edited that quite quickly and got it done but I almost just you know do you remember that episode you might not you might not be around in those days um there was an episode called I can't be bothered something something like that so honest I think that's really important to be honest as well yeah but it crops up you know so I'm going to make this into a topic because some days you'll be like yes I'm really lucky to have this assistant job or to be a trainee but I can't be bothered I'd rather be in bed reading you know

Starting point is 00:35:17 and yes there's just some something about that is about being authentic and you know whilst we do love our career we also love time in a hammock you know should so we can bring our energy back to the role right yeah you can't give from an empty cup is that the same yeah it is and it's absolutely true um i could speak to you for hours and hours fiona but um yeah the audience might like quite quite like our episodes punchy um and pithy so um thank you so much for reaching out it's been an incredibly useful episode and um yeah do stay in my world let me know of any other future topic or episodes that you think you might find helpful um and yeah it's just been a real privilege thank you so much thank you mariam thanks a lot oh what an incredible guest what an incredible episode i hope you found

Starting point is 00:36:18 so much value in it we realized in our post-recording chat that we didn't get around to talking about the dynamics of being supervised by people who ordinarily you might well be younger than but you might well be older than them there might be different dynamics and so if that's something you like to explore please do reach out and we can get you on an episode that said if you've got ideas for future podcast episodes that you might find helpful, or if you think you might make a good guest for the podcast, then do get in contact with me. The easiest place to do that is probably on LinkedIn. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent. I'm also Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere else too. Do come along to the free Facebook group, which is the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent.

Starting point is 00:37:08 And do please rate and review this podcast if you are listening to it on either Spotify or Apple. And if you're watching on YouTube, go on, do your thing. Subscribe, like and comment. It would make my day. Do please be kind to yourselves be kind to others too i will look forward to catching up with you for the next episode of the aspiring psychologist podcast which will be along like clockwork from 6 a.m on monday take care day. Take care. With this podcast at your side, you'll be on your way to being qualified. It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast.

Starting point is 00:38:13 With Dr. Marianne Durant. My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological 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 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.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Trauma informed yoga, other career paths and being an older applicant - with Fiona Jenkins

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