The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What happens if you quit psychology? With Fiona Maguire

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 60: So what ifyou do actually quit psychology? With Fiona MaguireThank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Professional psychology is not an easy career to pursue and sometimes people decide that it’s not for them. This can happen for a variety of reasons and this is just one story but it’s important to understand that NOT being a professional psychologist can also make you very happy too. This is a guest episode with Fiona Maguire. We hope you find it useful. I’d of course love any feedback you might have! The Highlights:00:29: Welcome and intro 02:13: Meeting on LinkedIn!01:55: Fiona’s background and using intuition.04:23: The inside out perspective and perception 05:21: Meta cognition and thought fusion 06:42: Being present 08:00: How to listen better 10:14: Fiona’s psychology background and assistant psychologist work11:55: The path to burnout 15:01: The impact of the work we do 16:31: fighting the systems our clients are in 21:04: Stepping away from psychology and finding a new path23:38: What if you’re starting to think maybe this psychology career isn’t for you? 25:34: Being fulfilled and happy outside of psychology27:54: Connecting with Fiona29:06: Summary, connecting with Marianne and closeLinks: Connecting with Fiona: www.FionaMaguire.com  Connect with Fiona on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionamaguire/  Get $40 off a remarkable tablet here: remarkable.com/referral/4LJU-DJD8  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/drmariannetrent To 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...

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 and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Now, as you might well be aware, the road to becoming a qualified psychologist does not always run smoothly. And of course, with the vast number of people who are wanting to join the profession and become qualified and the small amount of jobs available, it must mean that it doesn't work out for everybody. And whilst that might be a painful consideration or a realisation to make, I thought it was a useful angle that we needed to cover within the podcast. So that is exactly what today's episode is going to be about. It's a guest interview episode with someone who started out on the route to professional psychology qualification, but then later had a different course and has had a different outcome. Now, this episode covers different bits and pieces that you might not use in your clinical practice,

or that you might not have heard of as well. So listen with an open mind, and I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side. Hi, I would like to welcome Fiona Maguire to the podcast. Fiona is a coach, a speaker and an author. Hi Fiona. Hi Maureen, how are you? I'm really well, thank you, really well. Enjoying a little of sunshine today, which is nice after all of the rain. How are you? Yeah, the same thing. The sun has come out and it just lifts things up, doesn't it, really? It's fantastic. Yeah. So I know I'm like becoming an old hand here talking about LinkedIn, but we did meet on LinkedIn, didn't we? We did.

I love it. Do you love LinkedIn? Yeah yeah I'm getting to it. I ignored it for years but but now yeah I'm really getting into it. I love engaging with new people and finding out what they're doing and you know how we can work together collaborate or help each other in any way. It's fantastic. Yeah, and actually, I think it's a really good place to be if you are an aspiring psychologist, I think anyway, because you can connect with loads of people that are doing the job that you want to do. But you're not an aspiring psychologist anymore.

You are a coach, a speaker and an author. Could you tell us a little bit about what you do currently, Fiona? Yeah, so I'm an intuitive transformational coach so I use all my psychological training but I work on all levels of people so my main superpower if you like is my intuition and I've really honed my intuition so I can access people's unconscious mind I can access what's going on inside of them and I ask them questions because if they own it then you know that's when we can really do the work wherever I say oh this is what I see they don't particularly own it and it doesn't

have as much awe-inspiring you know it's not a deep insight that they get inside of themselves. So I work with their intuition. I work with their unconscious mind, their energy, their conscious mind, their emotions, their thinking, all of them. And my aim is to obviously solve the problem they come to me for, but also for them to get a deeper understanding of who they really are. Great. Thank you. for but also for them to get a deeper understanding of who they really are great thank you and obviously a lot of our listeners might have spiritual or kind of holistic views and beliefs themselves but when we try to put that into practice sort of in an nhs setting that's difficult

because because of the evidence base is there an evidence base for for the way that you work yeah so I'm not I'm not people don't have to do anything spiritual with me they don't have to go there if if they don't want to but what what I actually do now is I talk about something that's called the three principles and it was also coined the inside out perspective perspective, which Michael Neal called it that. And there's a lot of evidence for that. And that's basically the psychological theory of perception, how perception really works and therefore how the mind really works. And then when you realise that you don't live in reality,

you live in your own thought-created reality, which is your own perception of everything and psychology agrees with that you know wouldn't you agree that psychology agrees with that it's like a social construction isn't it and metacognitions and thoughts about thoughts about thoughts and all of that jazz so I absolutely agree with that angle yeah so as soon as people really this has been my experience my own personal experience and the experience of working with clients, as soon as people realize that they're not there thinking and they don't have to be identified with their thinking,

they then paradoxically start wondering and thinking, well, who am I and what am I? And if I'm not experiencing the reality then how how do I experience the reality and when they really open up to that question if I'm not experiencing the reality does that explain why um you know I sometimes have an argument with my spouse and it's like we're living in completely different worlds I don't understand why he she is upset about something and you know they're they're thinking the same thing and it's almost like we're talking from different universes it's like that saying isn't it there's three versions

of of an eventuality there's your version their version and the truth and it's yeah it's what perception what angle you're looking at that from and also you know what comes before and what what trauma might have been around for one or both parties as to what might be a truly mindful reaction to what's going on now and what might have happened or be a ripple from things that have happened years ago. Yeah, absolutely. And also, you know, for me, when I first really got that, you know, actually I'm just creating lots of stories in my head. That's the language I put on it. These are just stories.

And, yes, some of them to my brain seem valid because this happened in my past of course I'm going to act like this or of course I'm going to act like that well and then I was like hold on but am I really present am I here am I really present inside of myself knowing what's going on inside of me and am I really present with with the other person and if you're in your head too busy with your own story then you can't be present you can't really listen you can't really hear and a lot of people are just too busy thinking about what they're going to say next to actually hear what the person said to them. I hear you and that's a really important consideration for many of our audience as well who might be developing or striving for a career as a therapist

have you got any tips for ways that we can improve that ability to stay present and not be focused on you know is it the listening to hear rather than the listening to speak? Yeah, one of the things that was said to me, and I've got one of my own, but one of the things that was said to me once, and it was part of a bigger course that I was on, and Michael Neal said it, he said, listen as if you're listening to music. And there was something in that that just dropped for me. So maybe that doesn't drop for other people. So my advice would be to center yourself, to ground, to become into yourself and to know what's going on for you,

but to be centered in that, to not lost in your thinking or your emotions or your feelings, but to be centered. And to ground is one of the things I give away for free on my website like how to ground great and I guess I was thinking about what about the bits of music that really resonate with you and you want to join in or you want to sing and you want to stand up and dance are those the bits where you get the natural interaction that's kind of spontaneous rather than pre-thought that's really interesting isn't that amazing you've seen it differently I love the way you've seen it but you've seen it differently for me it was like when I'm listening to music

I'm there I'm an open vessel I'm just with it and I'm letting it flow through me. And then whatever may happen, you know, maybe a response to that. So I love what you said, maybe a response to that. Is that I want to dance or is that I want to join in or I just want to be with it or be closer to it. So if you think of the music as a person, and I really love what you just said, then that's it, that's true connection, isn't it? That you want to be more with them. You want to dance with them. You want to hear more of what they've got to say

or you just want to be in the flow of their company. That's beautiful connections. Oh, lovely. Although my husband, who is a musician, would say, just listen to the music. Like, they've done a good job, you know. There are many ways to look at the same consideration and I understand that you um originally were on a path to um to psychology is that right

yeah after my degree I I done the first single honours degree um at the University of Luton it was called now it's now called the University of Bedfordshire and looks a lot different. I wanted to be a psychologist and my second job as an assistant psychologist, stroke group worker, was in what was called a psychiatric unit for adolescents, so that now called young people. And that was great. But my first thing that i noticed was

okay so i know all these theories i know what schizophrenia is and i want bulimia is and anorexia is uh multiple personality disorder as they called it then you know i i know all of these things now bipolar but these kids like those three kids over there they're all schizophrenic but they're all completely different so how does the theory psychology go with that so I had questions right from the beginning and it was fascinating um but you know for me and I don't even remember how long it was. I need to look at my CV that I worked there full time. And then I had a car crash leaving the hospital one day.

Lucky enough, on the driveway of the hospital, I hit snow and went into a tree. And on the impact of, you know, hitting the tree, my inner wisdom just said, you have to leave. And I just intuitively knew that I had to leave that job because I was burning out. And I know why I was burning out. Could you guide us through that a little bit, what that felt like at the time and how that was showing up for you in your work and personal life, if that's okay? Yeah, so, like, of course we had protocols. We had ways we were meant to work and everything else. And it was definitely around, I think it was around Christmas time

this realisation hit. It was definitely snowing you know and uh i just noticed that what we just talked about you know i i was a i was a buddhist and um at the time and i really believed in being present with the young people and that meant to me just really listening, really being with them. And that had the benefit of them just really calming down. Like these were psychoactively ill children. They were not in a hospital, in a unit for nothing. They had, you know, severe mental illnesses, you know, psychoactively mental illnesses.

And people acknowledge that I worked differently, and in the whole they were happy with that because I was definitely getting results. And it was great that I was able to be with the kids at all different times of day. Sometimes when the psychologist wasn't there, so I seen them at all different times. But what I knew at the time is that I

felt what the children were feeling and I had real empathy with them but to a degree that it didn't seem like my peers had and um I I could I either had a really good idea of what they were feeling or I literally felt it physically in my body, what they were feeling. And I was 23 or something like that. I was young. And it was just too much. You know, knowing their trauma and knowing their circumstances and knowing that they've been abused in all different types of ways and then feeling what they feel and feeling their response to their parents

and their parents' response to them. And it was just too much. And I'd been somebody that had felt other people's emotions all of my life and I was kind of okay with that. But in that intense environment, it was hard. And I didn't have the self-given acknowledgement that I'm a highly sensitive person back then. It was just the way I'd always been and the way I always was. And I wouldn't change that.

But what I have done, what I have learned is that I'm not always picking up on energy. I'm not always picking up on the way somebody feels and what's going on for them internally, you know, and externally. And that has made a huge difference to my life. And that's what I bring to a lot of my clients because I work with a lot of sensitive people and empaths. Yeah, it's a big job we do, isn't it? And I think we're more likely to be able to hopefully tune in to others' resonance and their frequency and their emotions and more likely to get it and get why it matters and to be able to kind of piece together some of their story and almost go with it.

But that's not without its negatives as well if you're doing that with all of the people that you're working with because you know it's knowing how and when to to disconnect from that that it's not your stuff that it's that it's someone else's and the way I do it I guess is to think about doing the best possible job I can do at that moment. And the bits I've struggled with is when systems or finances mean that I can't do what I deem to be the best for that person. So it might be that there's a really long waiting list. And I found that personally really, really difficult. So actually, I thought that, yeah, this would be the ideal pathway, you know, gold standard in terms of waiting and in terms of what that person needs and what is going to work for

them or have a best chance of working for them. But when I can't do that because of my hands being tied that's when I find that it leads me further to disillusionment and burnout. Yeah I agree with you there about the system I'd like to to pick up on it it's not that I was overthinking it or it's not that I was you know taking it home in the way way that other people take their work home. You know, I'm not saying I didn't do that. There was one occasion where I did. This child is in such a ridiculous situation, in my opinion,

and the way that he was being treated and, you know, and the way the system was built up up and that's the morning i crashed my car they they decided that they couldn't help this child he was going to be put in um a locked psychiatric unit that's what happened back then and i was honestly i was just fumingly angry i was just i was like you cannot do this. I'm his key worker. I know more about this child than anyone else. And for you to go behind my back and do this is like, and they were like, but we're not going behind your back.

This is, this has been scheduled and it's not personal. And I get that it wasn't personal, but I had such a relationship with his child and I believe that we could really change him. But they had decided amongst the doctors that they were going to go down a different route. But being a highly sensitive person, the emotions and the empathy are much stronger you feel things much deeper so and the difference a highly sensitive person doesn't feel it in their body they they just know what that person's feeling and then they they may then feel what they feel about that in their they will definitely feel what they feel about that in their body. And it's just a level of sensitivity that works beautifully in these environments. But it also makes it really difficult unless you can turn it off. And as also as an

empath, you know, someone would, one of the kids would come in and kick off and and I would feel what they was feeling I'd feel the rage or the upset or whatever it was and they'd also be part of me and and this was I'd be like I get that I get that you're doing that right now and in fact I think that's good for you just just let him carry on. Let him do it. There's nothing here that he can harm himself with. Just let him blow it out. And they'll be like, no, no, no, no, let's sedate him. And I'll be like, well, no, you know. And when I had the authority and I could stop that sedation, I did.

And, you know, and most of the time it worked really beautifully the kid blew off steam did what they did you know of course if they was going to hurt themselves or hurt someone else I would step in I'd literally physically step in and I'm quite a small person and most of the adolescents are much bigger than me but they they trusted me and I had a rapport with them that I would get them to look in my eyes and they would just instantly calm down. So that was all beautiful, but I wasn't allowed to work the way that I saw and I wanted. So like you, I agree with you. And that was difficult.

And, yeah, I was a little arrogant. I had all these ideas. I just finished uni and and everything else but I was very passionate and caring about the kids and and that's what made me burn out yeah I think you know absolutely if we're not helping people to experience their full range of emotions which includes the hypo aroused bits as well as the hypo aroused bits. We're not necessarily equipping people with the skills to be able to handle it next time. If you, you know, if you're being sedated, then you go from hyper aroused to then,

you know, waking up and wondering what's going on, but you've missed that middle bit of, of where you calm down um and that I think that is potentially difficult and I think there's an interesting you know interesting food for thought there in letting people safely you know process and manage their thoughts feelings and emotions could you tell us a little bit about how you stepped away from your psychology career? Yeah, hitting the tree was really a wake-up call. So ironically, I had, you know, six weeks ago, because of the high emotion and high energy of the job, you know, it was a brilliant hospital that I worked in and they were running a new system.

That's why I chose this hospital to work in. And there was a lot of things that worked really well in it, I'd like to say that, and it was a massive education for me, being there, working there. But just before I hit the tree six weeks ago, I had taken an active holiday because I knew that I needed to do something. I needed time out of work. I needed to do something.

So I went on what I thought was a beginner's course in sports massage. But the lady had put me on an intermediate course because of my qualifications, anatomy and physiology. And she just said, look, if you don't like it, you can go home and you can do the other course because it was a residential course. I said, okay. So there I was, 10 days. And I was a natural and I passed with flying colours.

So I was now an unexpectedly qualified sports massage therapist. And when I hit the tree and I had various injuries um my I used my own knowledge and got got most of me better you know I had whiplash um so that's what I treated what I didn't know is it also um really really hurt my left hip but that didn't that didn't show up physically until a month later um and so you know I started getting treatment for for my hip a month later and the guy was technically excellent but his best high manner was dreadful and that was private it wasn't through the NHS and I just thought I could do this. So I started doing it part-time with just people around me. And within a year, I had enough client base to stop my job

and to do that full-time. And that's what I did. So I just dropped being a psychologist. But ironically, at least 50% of the people that came to me wanted to come to me for mental problems and I had to keep saying but I'm no longer a psychologist you know let's you know is there anything school you want and so eventually I just gave in and I started treating both and that's how I created my own therapy. Lovely thank you for sharing that with us.

Have you got any tips or advice for if people are listening to this and they're starting to notice that itch that might need scratching, that a mental health career in professional psychology might not be for them anymore? Yeah, I think for me what I needed to do was just look at well what what do I love what do I spend my time thinking about you know when I'm not at work what what thoughts go through my head what is it that I really love about my work what is it I love about the studies that I've done what books am I reading what films am I watching? What conversations am I having? And out of all of that, I was like, yeah, I really like sports.

I really thought I'd always done sport. And I thought, you know, I really like sports. So, yeah, I would be interested in doing that. And I'm still really helping the person. Because what I noticed in the psychiatric unit was all of the children also had physical problems. All of them had. You know, they might have been small, they might have been bigger. And then, yeah, I pretty quickly realised

that the majority of people that came to see me for massage, they also had, like, maybe it was stress, maybe it was depression, or maybe it was something much bigger like trauma and things like that um so i became more and more interested in the link between the physical body and the physical problems and the mental problems and psychological problems and that led me to studying craniosacral therapy because that brings the two of them together so yeah so to answer your question in case it's been lost is to really look at what it is you love and what excites and interests you and in where does that lead you to great and would you say that you are fulfilled and happy and pleased in your in your sphere of work currently oh absolutely um you know when I start every session with a name and at the end of the session you know I I ask them about that

and I might even poke it a little bit to make sure that it's cleared and it just amazes me the journey the session goes on and then to to see the person's face when they realize something and particularly when they let go of it and I help them let go of even more of it it's just wonderful I just I just love it so professional psychology is not the only way to make you happy. And that might be a really interesting and useful point for people if they are starting to feel that this is not for me. It's not making me happy. I feel like I'm burning out. There must be another way.

There might well be. This isn't for everybody. Have you got a take-home message for people who might be listening today Fiona? To be who they really are to ground inside of themselves to connect to who who they really are and to explore that and dare to lift that dare to be who they really are and show that and be inspired by or they're inspired by to go with their intuition because I don't believe that anybody can work as a psychologist and not intuitively feel something about their clients, their patients, whatever they call them and that might not add up when they think about the theory or might not add up to what they are expected to

do but if they feel it inside of themselves and they know it dare to go with that dare to go their own insights and see where that gets their time yeah i absolutely agree you know you should feel like you're being yourself like you're being authentic and that you're vibrant in your work you know i think absolutely that's the case and and I believe that about myself and my work currently for sure where's the best place for people to connect with you or learn more about you if they want to Fiona on LinkedIn and my name's Fiona McGuire Fiona is f-i-o-n-a and McGuire's m-a-g-u-i-r-e and also my website is the same www.fionamcguire.com without any spaces and i i give away there's free resources the grounding that I've mentioned how to work with your energy which is a book and yeah people get a lot of benefit out of them and I'm always happy to chat with somebody on LinkedIn

brilliant thank you so much I'll pop all your details in the show notes as well but not everyone accesses the show notes so it's always useful to have said that out loud as well thank you so much for your time today, Fiona, and for helping us answer the question, what happens if you decide psychology is not for you? I know that you still work in the psychology sphere, but professional psychology, because that's a lot of our audience. So thank you so much for your time and so generously sharing your rich insights with us.

Thank you very much. Really good to speak with you. Thank you so much for my guest, Fiona Maguire, for coming along and talking with us. I hope you found that to be a useful listen. Like I said, if you want to connect with Fiona, do check the details in my show notes and that will help put you in touch. If you are still wanting to pursue professional psychology and you're ready for the next step, then do please check out the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book, the Clinical Psychologist Collective book, and do consider joining the Aspiring Psychologist membership. We're a really lovely group that is supportive, that helps you towards your goals. And I help you with anything that you think,

oh, I'm a bit worried about that. Then I will find an expert to talk to us about it, to help you, guide you through that process. And that's certainly the case with something we've got happening in the membership. Today, as I record this, we are covering selection tests, logical and deductive reasoning tests. So if on replay you're listening to this, you're thinking, oh, I'd like to learn more about that, then you might well find the membership useful for that too. I would love your reviews, your audio testimonials of the podcast and of the books too. It's really simple to do that. If you head to my website www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk forward slash podcast, then just click on the audio testimonial option. And with a few clicks and a couple of minutes, you will have done that. Thank you so much for your time. Do come and

connect with me on socials. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent in all places that you might hope to find me. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to connecting with you and helping you in your journey as an aspiring psychologist. Thank you so much for being part of my world. Take care. Reflective accounts of mental health professionals on their way to getting qualified. So many tips and lessons to learn from. So many things that you can try. The Aspiring Psychologist Collective. The Aspiring Psychologist Collective With this podcast that you'll see, you'll be on your way to being qualified. It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast.

With Dr. Marianne Trent. 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.