The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What is cancel culture in psychology with Dr Deborah Kingston

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. Coming up in today's episode, we are looking at something called cancel culture. That

Starting point is 00:01:07 is the fear of speaking out, speaking truly in whatever situation you find yourself in for fear of what the repercussions would be. This is such an important episode and it crops up personally, professionally, and in all kinds of dynamics. I am joined by a return guest, Dr. Deborah Kingston, and she is as compassionate and thoughtful and wonderfully inspiring as ever. Hope you find it so useful. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. With this podcast at your side, you'll 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 am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Now this episode is going to be available from Christmas Day 2023 and so there will be the occasional reference to the word Christmas, but this is an episode which is good for all year round. So it won't be advertised as a Christmas episode, but it's such an important episode and it runs through the veins of so much of what we do in our roles in mental health but also as we might be trying to you know be the voice of reason in situations or having perhaps very different viewpoints on a variety of topics though actually sometimes it can feel like it's our duty to kind of balance or address. But that can lead to, you know, potential conflict, fallouts.

Starting point is 00:03:14 And that's why I wanted to invite our guest back today, who we met previously on the podcast talking about trauma and ADHD and dyslexia. And it's Dr. Deborah Kingston. So I hope you'll find this episode really useful I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side just want to welcome back to the podcast Dr Deborah Kingston who we first saw in July 2022 where has the time gone welcome back Deborah I said I hadn't realized how long 18 months where's it gone yeah I blinked and missed it but I think it's because you are in my world constantly because you're just so so kind to me Deborah on socials you're always so supportive and you just I don't know you get what I do and why I do it and yeah your your support is so so

Starting point is 00:04:06 valued and so appreciated so thank you you're welcome I think I think as far as in the aspiring the next load of psychologists is so important that we have we try and get the right type of people into our profession though so the more you can get out there and the wider the reach I think that's only a good thing for for what we do in clinical psychology yeah thank you well it means a great deal so thank you so one of the things we were speaking about recently was kind of when as a psychologist or as aspiring psychologist or as anyone really that you kind of give your opinion or you kind of share your truth. And then it leads to negative reactions from people.

Starting point is 00:04:49 And it can feel a bit like what they call cancel culture, really. And it can lead to a really complex array of emotions for us, can't it? Yeah, it really can. And if you think about some of the work that we might even think about doing in schools, that when we go in and we're trying to explain how there's a child with neurodiversity and, you know, and it's been 40 years since I was really in the midst of school and being told I was too thick to learn. But actually going back in and thinking there should be way more change, way more issues. And when you start to put these things on the floor and explain what neurodiversity is and try and give a child's

Starting point is 00:05:30 perspective to get men with a defense sometimes that cancels out what we want to say and be passionate about what we're saying because it's just taken so wrongly because there's a multitude of professionals out there that are kind of not wanting or willing to listen so you know that's that's a huge one across our profession whether it's be whether it's in cams whether it's in private practice whether it's just even sometimes what we say on social media platforms around um neurodivergence and neurodiversity so even just from a personal point of view hearing some of the comments that come out about people like you know even myself when i was out recently at a dinner you know and i thought was saying something quite important and for the person involved and then she's like oh wow you talk way too much though don't you

Starting point is 00:06:22 and i immediately froze and kind of thought I need to shut up I need to stop talking and then I think she saw my reaction so I didn't mean it bad didn't mean it bad but you know but you do talk too much though gosh that's strong that's strong isn't it yeah and it was I don't think she meant it bad but and then I'm thinking well you know I've heard all these different things you've said, so I couldn't have been talking that much that I've not heard. And I just get passionate about delivering good advice, whether I'm on duty or off duty, because I don't think you can really separate the psychologist in this. I absolutely agree. You're kind of one room party.

Starting point is 00:07:03 Yeah. agree you kind of want to party yeah and you know it's not being you know a dinner party psychologist to people that haven't consented but I just often find myself in very deep conversations with people whether that's in work or whether that's in pleasure whether that's by the football sidelines watching my children it's just it's just the frequency I operate on you know I can do a little bit of light banter and you know chit chat but that's not really the frequency that I resonate at best. And normally and it's the same and I think recently as well if you think about what's going on in Palestine and Israel there's a lot of heated divide going on even in our country and between us as professions where i think the media bias

Starting point is 00:07:45 and the lens that's coming out sometimes means that people just can't give an honest fear or feeling about what they're feeling and we have got clients that are coming into clinic saying this thing that's going on in the middle east i'm really worried about it you know and not feeling like you can say anything you know when things when things are bigger going on, or like, it's almost like, especially on LinkedIn at the minute, you know, somebody was on there the other week saying about that, if we're pro-Palestine, we must be anti-Jew. And I was thinking, actually, where is the humanity in that? You know, we've had colleagues in the EMDR world, from Palestine and Israel, that were once upon a time on shared training you know

Starting point is 00:08:25 and these people were coming together to make a better trauma world in that region who've now again been segregated and I don't feel like we as clinicians should be able to come down on one side or the other without having a real view of humanity and what it must be like for both sides and understand that and formulate that from a perspective when we put emotion in because we want to take a one-sided approach i think that's where we get shut down in this cancel culture like so one of the responses i said you know was it's really a shame that women children are being killed on both sides and the person came back really blunt with me and just said you've got it all

Starting point is 00:09:05 wrong you know and I can't remember the word the word vacates my mind what it's called when you're anti-jew because there was a word for it but I am so not you know anti-semitic anti-semitic that's it you want to do that little bit again you know my brain was no I'm happy my brain was just totally dyslexic I couldn't I had a brain fart it just wouldn't come out but you know and I think it's the same in anything you know I grew up in a in a world where there was a lot of poverty and a lot of oppression in working-class Scotland and people take a generational view of what oppression is from the English, powering down the Scots.

Starting point is 00:09:48 You know, that's a very different world we're in now, but some people still hold that view and it's really personal to them. You know, so we don't just see this in the Middle East or in, you know, fractious parts of the world. You sometimes still see some of these conflicts and divides from generational histories and really kind of bearing down and who are we to kind of close down somebody's narrative without fully listening to it you know yeah really good points really good points with christmas coming up i think it's a really important point about

Starting point is 00:10:22 how do we come together even look at families at christmas you know sometimes there's been some divide you know you might have grandparents and parents and children totally different generational stances and opinions how do all those voices get heard christmas can be one of the most stressful times for families you know or thanksgiving that they've just had in the states where you want to come together to put what this perfect view on where everybody gets on and sings from the same song sheet and a lot of time a lot of opinions get closed down in families and it can feel really invalidating those experiences and those differences and how do people manage that if we as psychologists

Starting point is 00:11:04 aren't mirroring it even in sometimes in some of the work that we're doing out on social media yeah yeah really important and it's so easy to forget that not everybody exists in a in an ecosystem in their family or you know even in their wider family system that feels that they are seen as important, valid, special, you know, that they have a voice that's worth hearing. You know, even I know I was listening to something this morning on the radio of someone who is a gay man and had spoken about in the past, you know, it had been really, you know, taboo to be outwardly and openly gay, but he is supported in his family. But that's not always the case. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:52 with these festive celebrations, and not just Christmas, but whatever it is for whatever faith people follow, of course, when people do get together, sometimes we're asking people to to keep themselves in a box aren't we to make themselves smaller and I used to see this a lot with when I was working with people who were kind of second generation been raised probably by Bangladeshi parents and very different people to their friends than they were able to show to their wider family and sometimes even their immediate family and it was feeling like they were not living their authentic truths because of this fear of the council culture you know being told you're not a good enough daughter you're not a good enough person you're not good enough in your religion you're bringing

Starting point is 00:12:41 shame on yourself or even us it's a big deal isn't it it is an evening if you think some of i've got some um transgendered clients that have to dress not in the way they want to or be addressed in the way they want to at christmas because of the older generations that might be at the table and they've almost got to put a huge part of themselves in that box and turn up and be somebody they don't feel congruent with and that's such a sad position where they just don't feel that they can be good in themselves as themselves and i think that cancel culture just can really impact if we think about suicidal rates if we think about mental health rates at the minute the more we impact on that cancel culture where people just don't feel safe to say something i think what we do is we constantly put a part of them in a box and where does all the emotion go

Starting point is 00:13:38 when it's not been allowed to speak what happens when we suppress people from being their true authentic genuine selves when we say don't put your armor on stay bold what do we do to people when they're then faced with a high level of criticism and they're not wearing the armor because they're being true authentic selves it's going to hurt and penetrate into the core of them a lot bigger and a lot faster and a lot deeper so i think it's something we as psychologists we need to be thinking about in terms of cancel culture in terms of you know what's okay to be discussed or not discussed it's about what's true to the person and it's not always like it has to be said in a particular way that alienates other people but i think it has to be said in a way that is a truth that can be then explored curiously by other people yeah and I get I know you weren't

Starting point is 00:14:30 asking that question it was semi-rhetorical but I guess what I see when people have had to keep themselves in a box is there might be more anxiety because actually what I often see is that inverse relationship of when anger is not able to kind of be felt and anger anger doesn't always look like smashing stuff up does it sometimes anger just looks like asserting yourself you get more self-harm you get more anxiety and you get a dipping in self-worth and if that goes on for a long period of time it reduces your drive in every aspect of your life and you know before too long it feels like you haven't got people in your tribe that know you as you. And it feels very hard to find a way forward.

Starting point is 00:15:12 And it also exacerbates the sense of shame we feel about ourselves when we do comparisons with other people. No shame in itself can be toxic to the way the brain processes information, the way we relate to other people, even the way we interact within what should be our tribe. Because, you know, shame is meant to be one of the protective emotions that keeps us kind of regulated within the social norm, you know. Sometimes it just gets way too big. And also, if you're constantly invalidated, there's going to be a huge depth of sadness that nobody's seeing in, there's no connection, you know, and sometimes that depth of sadness is totally misunderstood, because what people see is its best buddy, anger, coming along to say, this isn't fair, hear me, and the more anger gets involved, the less people get heard, and then it becomes like a vicious

Starting point is 00:16:04 circle that we just keep going round and round. So it's about saying, how do we hear people without immediately jumping in on an emotional response? How do we understand what's going on for them? And how do we really hear the nuance of what they're saying behind the mask of anger or assertiveness, how do we get in and say, we see you for who you are and we are connecting? So I think whether, you know, you're just an aspiring psychologist or a psychologist or a mom or a sister or a brother or a friend, you know, this is like, this isn't just for us as professionals. This is for all people, because I think if we could kind of get that balance balance and I know it might be utopic of me to kind of want that but if we could get that there'd be less there'd be less discrimination in our everyday world yeah and you know sometimes I speak to clients who've got really good support systems around them who are able to have really

Starting point is 00:17:01 I don't know like I think of as Dawson's Creek style existential conversations without that fear of cancel culture. Or sometimes that's what we have together in therapy, actually. And I guess my plea to the world is there are people out there who will get you or who will help you explore yourself and your hard limits, your soft limits, you know, the things that you don't like about yourself, the things that maybe you've always felt proud about yourself, but feel like they're not things that other people think are good things. You know, there are people, there can be change. It's that, you know, adaptive belief that people can change, that suffering can reduce, that the distress can be neutralized and that people can be happy, people can thrive. I

Starting point is 00:17:52 passionately believe that. And I've got kind of quite a lot of systemic leanings. And it can be really hard to do that in systems that are so stuck or so archaic or so old. One of the reasons I sort of stepped away from the NHS, it was all too slow. It was all too slow and a bit too archaic. But I know there are probably really forward-thinking NHS trusts and teams as well. Well, in a way, that was one of the reasons why I stepped away from the NHS

Starting point is 00:18:18 was this massive idea of cancel culture and not being able to kind of point out some of the negatives that were going on and how we could enhance patient care patient satisfaction therapeutic goals you know and when i tried to challenge this data as well i was met with huge resistance of pen pushers and adminis that were kind of like no no no and and i'm saying we're not delivering if we if we strip some some laborious bureaucratic processes out of clinical work we do more clinical work and therefore we see more people and we do better therapy or better nursing or better occupational therapy or whatever the profession was if we strip away a huge facet that's not actually clinical

Starting point is 00:19:07 and process we'd get better work done and if also we strip out the millions of layers of management that want to suppress you we'd also have got more done so you know especially having managers that weren't psychologists felt like your role should be because of your pay banding, wasn't because of your intellect or your clinical skill, like they would do a medical doctor. All of a sudden, we were pigeoned as very different to medical doctors in the fact that we weren't seen as good enough as them. We weren't seen as bringing the big offerings of a medical doctor.

Starting point is 00:19:43 But yet, we could transform somebody's life just as well, if not big offerings of a medical doctor but yet we could transform somebody's life just as well if not better than a medical doctor because we see the whole person now we can't treat a broken leg but we can treat the trauma that goes with the broken leg that might stop the leg from healing under the orthopedic consultant you know so there's stuff we can do and we should know our place and i think sometimes cancel culture comes in when people feel threatened you might know a little bit more you might be trying to change a system that the equilibrium is set as broke and you just may want to say do you know what let's change that equilibrium to

Starting point is 00:20:15 something that might be working and the pushback on it both in the nhs and sometimes in the private sector not as much in the private sector because they have to fix it because private sector are a profit-led organisation and the NHS don't seem to have that same ethos yet. With the more foundation trusts there are, they're becoming their own mini businesses. So again, does the business drive the clinical work or does the clinical work drive the business?

Starting point is 00:20:41 But again, we're not allowed those discussions. Yeah, I think this is probably particularly resonant for the people listening to this podcast that might well be aspiring psychologists so i know we do have qualified we do have people who are not yet even doing their psychology degree or might be thinking about doing a conversion masters you know we've got such a wide range but what we are likely to have is people that are highly driven that are highly motivated that are probably reading listening to these podcast episodes getting these current themes and so they are energized and certainly when I was an aspiring psychologist I had all this abundant energy and drive for change and this is why my

Starting point is 00:21:23 superiors are saying god we, God, we love having assistants. We love having trainees because you've got all this energy. You've got all these ideas, but it can lead to burnout if you're not able to actually put that in place. So I guess this is my little shout out to our audience who are thinking, yes, this describes me, but I'm not able to make those changes and it you do risk burning out you risk just not voicing your ideas because you think well what's the point what's no difference will happen and that's the thing I think when people are looking at why psychologists leave in the NHS nobody really wants to hear the answer you want it to you know and even in private practice if you think about cancel culture and private practice is huge especially

Starting point is 00:22:11 where i am we go to meetings as private psychologists it might be a safeguarding meeting it might be a meeting in the school and we are treated with suspicion and skepticism because we're not wearing an nh lanyard. We are treated as if we are not as good as our NHS counterparts. Yet we know that the level of CPD I do is phenomenal. I've got three supervisors, have no supervision in the NHS, I have to pay for it privately. You know, I have all this stuff. But when we go to these meetings our opinion our clinical opinion is cancelled because we don't wear an nhs lanyard and again that's something that's rippling through the private sector that i'm hoping the acp pick up on and try and get some marketing out there to

Starting point is 00:22:57 actually say actually these clinical psychologists are bringing skills and and we're working in an ethically sustainable manner to ensure our cpd knowledge is is there because if we consider my i'm trauma specialist all i do is trauma every day long i'm an emdr consultant i'm really passionate about trauma you know and yet i went in to meet in an inpatient facility with a consultant clinical psychologist who hadn't done any training on the ICD-11's complex trauma diagnosis. Now, bearing in mind, I went in 2018 to the BPS in January for that training of what was coming, how it was going to inform practice. I go to this meeting in 2022 and they still are talking about the ICD-10 and trying to label the client that

Starting point is 00:23:47 was clearly complex trauma from adult no childhood as potentially personality disordered because the person was challenging in the interpersonal dynamic when I laid out the formulation I was just closed down as private so again even when we bring the skills and knowledge that we get from the bps or the acp and the skills and training we've done from cpd currently in the uk there is a real big divide between private work and and nhs but again it probably doesn't help that our titles aren't um protected anybody can call themselves a psychologist so and i think that also comes in because how do you guard against that in this idea of council culture? You know, somebody's a trained counsellor. Celebrate you're a trained counsellor.

Starting point is 00:24:31 Don't call yourself something you're not. You know, if you're a trained psychotherapist, call yourself a trained psychotherapist. You know, go with what you're training, your competencies say we're keen to do. But I think that also has an impact especially for you as aspiring psychologists you know how many we've seen some people who've done a degree get BPS status and then go and call themselves a psychologist as an undergraduate level and actually engage in some quite dangerous work so this should also be a shout out please it's about public protection so we're all shouting out not because we don't want to give

Starting point is 00:25:06 you an opportunity and say don't do the work we're saying do it in an appropriately supervised manner so I know there's a bit of an extra rant but it does tie into that idea of cancel culture where you know it's almost like we shouldn't even be saying that because do we fear upsetting somebody I think it's all related though isn't it so sometimes I don't say stuff as a qualified psychologist that people are saying very very loud as unqualified psychologists and getting great traction and it's like I just don't know if it's safe for you to be saying that stuff or making those claims but I and I wouldn't say them even though I'm a qualified psychologist and maybe it is that professional regulatory body so when someone is for example

Starting point is 00:25:51 using one of the protected is it nine different titles including practitioner psychologist but using derivatives of that you know forensic psychologist health psychologist etc etc one of those titles the protected titles which are by the hcpc we perhaps fear the cancel culture because we have that professional professional regulatory body whereas people that are not professionally qualified and regulated don't have that i remember once a renowned counselor calling herself a TV psychologist on this morning saying that OCD came about because of an infection and they just needed to take antibiotics. What? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:33 And I'm like, hang on a minute. I think that got a wealth of complaints into this morning, you know, because again, and I think the media needs to play a role in this idea of putting the right professionals in the right place to get the right advice. And kind of really opening the door to what is going to safeguard and protect the public within mental health. Because it is such a lucrative industry for some people. We're seeing businesses pop up all over the place, trying to recruit psychologists to do some work, to make some money off the back of somebody else, but wanting them to do half a job.

Starting point is 00:27:14 And again, people are doing it because it's driven by money or a fear that they won't get clients. And then they're penned into something that's actually quite dangerous for them. You know, these companies are editing their reports without letting them know. And lots of really spurious things going on in the market. So again, for us as professionals and being regulated, I think we've also got to watch who we're signing up with. Who are we working for? What are we doing? Who's protecting us?

Starting point is 00:27:42 And I think there's a big debate about assistant psychologists not getting support in certain organizations or not being supervised in certain organizations and I think organizations forget the role of as an assistant psychologist is to be an assistant to a psychologist you know it's in the definition of the title. So you can't employ an assistant psychologist without having a psychologist for them to assist. So these private organisations that want to put on their, like, registration for commission, you know, we've got an assistant psychologist,

Starting point is 00:28:13 we're doing all these psych conventions, we're doing X, Y and Z, but they can't. That assistant psychologist has no safeguarding. They're not protected because they don't have a psychologist to which to to monitor mentor and supervise them in the role so i think it's huge for what we're looking at the industry is what we're looking at not only for those professionals but for organizations kind of need to kind of be educated in what an assistant psychologist is or why we've got the layers in our training system and somebody coming out from a graduate degree psychology is the best

Starting point is 00:28:53 field in the world for me to go study because i'm so passionate about it so but we want to be celebrating the roles a lot more and not putting people in jeopardy and under risk totally yeah i agree no it's it's it's it's all it's all relevant is that what's all related and i think even in you know nhs jobs now it's not just it's not just private industry you know assistant psychologist posts or what's called senior assistant psychologist posts going out at band five. They're really looking for someone to be able to run a service often. And that's just not, as you say, it's just not the function of an assistant psychologist. It's not safe. It's not ethical.

Starting point is 00:29:39 And I think that's important. Once upon a time, all assistant psychologists were paid at band five. We were valued for the work coming off the back of a degree that was really, really hard. And, you know, like a nursing degree is the same length of time as a psychology degree. They can go straight into paid work, you know, and build up their layers in the NHS. We have to only sit at assistant psychologists, you know. And I think you should be paid your worth for what knowledge you're bringing. You have to be paid and monitored by a supervisor, because if you don't have that, what skills and experience are you actually teaching the assistant psychologist?

Starting point is 00:30:15 But again, this is management in the NHS, and we're almost cancelled out of our opinion because they think we're trying to safeguard a particular job when they're trying to deal with the dynamics of cost funding. So I understand where the dynamic comes from, but at the same point, you've got to do things clinically viable. I would say that a band five assistant feels like a hen's tooth, like it feels like a rare thing to see and to find

Starting point is 00:30:46 they tend to be four yeah yeah even in this area when I was an assistant it was band five and both my posts were band five um and then as years have gone on it's band four and then you have to do several assistant posts to get a band five but like you say they want them to be more autonomous have less supervision but there's a whole criteria of what keeps an assistant safe maybe that's another episode let's let's chat about that some more i'll bring you back on in a few months because i think that sounds like a really really interesting conversation but um if someone is spending spending time perhaps even over this Christmas holiday feeling like they fear being genuine to themselves or what they see as true or right what what can they do I think for me to protect themselves I guess in clinic one of the things I do with some of my young people that can't go be

Starting point is 00:31:42 their true authentic genuine selves at christmas and they notice the upset about it we kind of do like a resourcing strategy where we kind of get them to know what their values are in that what are your values and who you are what your values that you're bringing what element can you bring to that christmas day meal how long are you going to spend there what other things are you going to do that day that say that you can tap into those values and that way you might not be able to and it's not fair that you're not able to but what we don't want to do is create too much conflict with other people so it is very challenging in a way if this is still being recorded as it is that frozen expression

Starting point is 00:32:22 that you see with Dr Marianne Trent if we could have done that and role played that that's a lot of the faces that people get when they sit around the table and they can't be their authentic self that they freeze out they bone out they can't connect they don't know what to do and sometimes that's when they're faced with that it's really really difficult because if you were sat around the christmas table we had a problem with i don't i wasn't there my internet when you read it when you hear it back i did a lovely little thing about your frozen face is sometimes what we get when people freeze you out around the table when you can't be your authentic self and could you imagine how that would feel if you were talking in that dialogue with somebody that's not actually there so I did a little thing just in case just because I could see the timer going and I thought I'm

Starting point is 00:33:13 going to do something I'm delighted you were still there because I thought that the whole platform would gone down and I thought it had lost all our recording so far and I was like but it's been really good so I'm back everybody so I'm back I didn't pause but then I thought oh I can I could use this to what I was saying about how people deal with that idea of going and not being able to be your true authentic self because really what you're looking at is that idea that somebody's not fully with you you know and actually just being a part of yourself in that session in that in that from that christmas dinner table or around the festive meal where you know people can't hear you in the way you need them to so you're listening she's not a beginner at this is she folks she's i just she's a pro

Starting point is 00:33:57 i love that thank you was i doing something really unattractive in my mid-pause game? No, you just looked slightly sad. So I thought it just captured you. That's perfect. And I actually said if we'd set that up, that you could have done that. Then that's what people are faced with. OK. Oh, absolutely beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I hope that you are going to be surrounded this Christmas and this new year with people that make you feel really good Debra oh I am and I've got my my grandson who's coming here who is just turned one and my daughter and it's just our little family

Starting point is 00:34:37 for Christmas um because then anybody can say anything and be anything um and then I'm off to Scotland for new year it's my spiritual home and I'm going to the north of Scotland to be with friends and who make me really really happy and then I get to celebrate with my own family for my nephew's 21st straight after the new year and then it's back into a busy clinic oh well it sounds marvelous and thank you so much for sharing your your wonderful view on all of this and compassionate and balanced and just a really safe space as ever wishing you and your family and all of our listeners of course a really peaceful december into january whatever that looks like for them whether that looks like christmas or whether it just looks like a bit

Starting point is 00:35:24 of time off from the hustle to to kind of decompress and you know be the hopefully be the best you can be I think it just should be a time forget that it's Christmas we have multi-faiths in our profession it should just be a time we connect with loved ones where possible and where not possible we connect with other people that are like family that may not be blood that allow us to feel that we're connected because being alone at any time of the year except in the depth of the winter is much much harder so I think it's just about being connected and looking after yourself. Thank you so much what lovely lovely advice to end on thank you for your time and yeah we'll get you back on to just to really kind of take a look at what, I guess, what an optimum gold standard assistant psychologist role should and could look like. So

Starting point is 00:36:12 you and I can both perhaps have a little bit of a play in the background. And perhaps this is an example for people to even anonymously share stuff about stuff that doesn't feel that safe. Or, you know, the other way around, if you've got stuff that you't feel that safe or you know the other way around if you've got stuff that you feel is really going well for you as an assistant do send that in to me um and deborah and i can take a look at that and kind of weave that into the episode as well so wishing you a wonderful um christmas and new year um and thank you very much for your time deborah you're welcome welcome back along gosh how absolutely wonderful to speak about all of these things with deborah you're welcome welcome back along gosh how absolutely wonderful to speak about all of these things with deborah um i'm recording this straight after i saw her um and so i'm hoping

Starting point is 00:36:55 that the slight internet glitch i had meant that all of the content was um yeah was recorded and and is going to work but we're going to leave that little bit of glitch in for you so that you can see that, you know, we're all right with not being perfectionistic. If you are listening to this on Christmas Day, then wishing you a wonderful Christmas Day and Christmas period. But of course, you might be listening to it on Christmas Day and not celebrate Christmas. And that is OK, too. But wherever you are in the world I hope that you are feeling safe I hope that you are warm and I hope that you are being kind to yourself thank you so much for being part of my world if you'd like to come and follow me on socials

Starting point is 00:37:41 please do I'm Dr Marianne Trent everywhere if you are watching ons please do i'm dr marianne trent everywhere um if you are watching on youtube please do like and subscribe and share this content with people that you think might find it helpful come along to the aspiring psychologist community group on facebook um yeah thank you for being such an important part of my world, giving me a reason to record podcast episodes all year long. I look forward to bringing you more brilliant, fresh content. Please do feel free to pitch your podcast episodes to me. Thank you for being such loyal listeners and watchers. And I will see you very soon. The next episode will be along 6am on Monday.

Starting point is 00:38:26 Take care. then let this be your guide with this podcast that you'll side to be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist with dr marianne my name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner I read the clinical psychologist collective book I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a

Starting point is 00:39:46 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.

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