The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What is health psychology? How do you train as a health psychologist?

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 on today's episode, we are looking at health psychology. What is it? What

Starting point is 00:01:07 does it involve? How do you do it? Do you get paid? And what are the differences across the UK for how the courses are set up? I am interviewing an end stage health trainee psychologist and the conversation is lively, wholesome and nourishing. We talk about grief, we talk about death, we talk about strength, we talk about wellness and of course health psychology. It is a wonderful listen and I hope you find it so useful. Welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Thank you so much for listening, for watching. It's one of my key responsibilities, I feel, for this podcast to illuminate different areas of professional psychology qualifications. And

Starting point is 00:01:58 one that we haven't covered as yet, but I have been very keen to do so is health psychology. Let's dive in. I hope you find this episode as beautiful as I found it to record. I will catch you on the other side. Just want to welcome along Nicola O'Donnell to the podcast. Hi, Nicola. Hello, thank you for having me. Well, thank you so much for saying yes. I really wanted to talk to you um primarily because you're a trainee health psychologist but I know you've got so much more going on that's going to be really interesting for me to listen to and speak with you about but also of course our audience as well so before we crash into some of that could you tell us a little bit about you and kind of how you got into psychology?

Starting point is 00:02:53 Yes it's always such I feel like such a long journey for so many people to get into psychology and to qualify or nearly qualify as is the case for me so thinking back in preparation for today I first started sort of studying psychology in 2010 when I took it for my A-level and just fell in love with the subject and felt like for the first time in my life it was something that I was good at I was always sort of pretty average at school but when I started doing psychology thought oh actually this is something that I want to do so um I decided to go to university to study it further so in 2012 I did my undergraduate at the University of Kent um in applied psychology with clinical psychology um and I think the the sort of crunch point for me within that was I did a placement year so I did a four-year undergraduate and for the third year spent a whole year working in the NHS kind of as an assistant psychologist um within pediatrics and just absolutely loved it and solidified that this is what I want to do

Starting point is 00:04:07 as a job um so I mean I think I can go into more if I'm not talking too much but um I was really lucky and completely credit my placement year to the fact that I was successful in getting an assistant psychologist job immediately after my undergraduate course so I started a assistant role in CAMS so Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and they very kindly encouraged me to do a further qualification in low intensity CBT so I was quickly in you know getting experience working with children and young people one-to-one their families offering low intensity cognitive behavior therapy particularly for things like low mood and anxiety but also working within a wider eating disorder service as well so I was really lucky to get quite a lot of hands-on experience quite quickly so for a long time I didn't know what health I didn't know that health psychology was a thing I didn't know that it

Starting point is 00:05:19 existed I always knew that I was interested in working psychologically in health settings. But I thought that clinical psychology would be the only way to do that. And I actually applied for clinical psychology doctorate on three occasions and was offered interviews and twice a reserve place that never came through to joining a course, which I found really, really hard at the time. But I'm very grateful now that it kind of led me in a different direction in discovering what health psychology is and how to go about becoming a health psychologist, which I'm sure we'll talk about today. So I enrolled on my master's in 2020 so COVID did my whole master's at UCL but from home which was challenging but also gave me something to do I suppose during lockdown and then later enrolled

Starting point is 00:06:27 on my final stage of training stage two in 2022 which I will qualify from hopefully next month so all all coming to an end very soon haven't even mentioned the PhD in that but we'll come back to the PhD in a moment so um thank you so much that's really really interesting and like as you talk I'm like you have traveled quite a lot for your career haven't you because I know just before we hit record you're like I've just moved from Suffolk and now I'm actually up north and you know there's been some other um you know you said you're I think you said your undergrad was Kent so there's been there's been a lot of movement and that is not uncommon in the psychology field as well but just to follow

Starting point is 00:07:10 up on what you said about your um ucl distance learning so that's for your health psychology professional qualifications it starts as a master's and then it sounds like there's an additional bit could you tell us about that and how how that extra bit works do some people not choose to do that I presume that's so you can go on and be registered as a practitioner psychologist with the HCPC that's why you do the extra bit is it? Yeah so in order to practice as a health psychologist you have to do both what's known as stage one and stage two and I'm really passionate about explaining this in hopefully an accessible way because I think compared to lots of other psychology training routes health psychology is really confusing you have to do a lot of digging around to find out

Starting point is 00:07:58 how you actually enroll to become a health psychologist and um it's something that I'm asked on a weekly basis how does it all work and how do I go about doing it so from the beginning you obviously have to do an undergraduate in psychology which you would do for all routes of um further psychology training um and helpful to have some experience working clinically as well um in order to make sure firstly that you enjoy the subject but also to give you some real life real real world experience of what a psychologist does and imply applying some of those theoretical concepts that you spend so long learning about into sort of real life and working with real people and then the masters that I mentioned is the stage one of doctoral training so this is

Starting point is 00:08:53 usually a year full-time and it's really important that everyone who wants to become a health psychologist does this because it gives you that broad grounding of major health psychology theories and concepts and that is accredited by the bps the british psychological society just like an undergraduate usually would have been and some people stop there some people go on and do lots of varied and interesting things from that master's but if you want to practice as a qualified health psychologist you need to do what's known as stage two and this is where it gets a bit complicated because there's lots of different ways that you can do that and I'll obviously speak more about the way that I've done it but I'll give a brief overview of the different ways you can do it because I think this is the thing that people find most confusing so the first option is doing a doctorate in health

Starting point is 00:09:53 psychology at a university I think quite like clinical psychology you have a structured training program you have a cohort of peers and you access your training in this way I did not do that the second option is the what's known as the independent route and that takes a minimum of two years and instead of being attached to a course and a university you're attached to a supervisor under the BPS and you have two years at least of structured and supervised practice in order to meet the health psychology competencies which are professional practice, consultancy, psychological interventions, research and teaching and training and many people like me do this alongside an academic PhD so that you get a dual qualification and can utilize your PhD to fulfill the stage two research

Starting point is 00:10:55 competency but equally you can do just just the stage two on its own without the PhD but you I suppose it's worth knowing that you can't use the title of doctor if you haven't done the PhD with that independent route I see that's what I did that is yeah is quite confusing and that's not even all the options there's another two so go for it tell me the other two I'm sorry go for it so Health Education England as of two years ago have a funded program which I suppose is the draw because the others are self-funded which is aiming to apply health behavior change to NHS workforce redesign so I think there's seven funded places in England for that so that's the relatively new route and then there's seven funded places in England for that. So that's the relatively new route.

Starting point is 00:11:46 And then there's an NHS. Do you mean seven funded courses or literally seven funded places for the whole of England? Seven people. Yeah. Oh, my days. That's not a lot, is it? Yeah. Not a lot.

Starting point is 00:11:59 So I think. Are they remote? Are they in person? Or are they attached to one particular university? So they're attached to an individual area within or region within England. So again, I won't speak too much to it, because I'm not doing this route. But my understanding is that each trainee is allocated to an area like the east of England and then they do their work within that particular area focusing on workforce redesign within the NHS so not many people are funded to do that but I think it is a growing and a growing way to become a health psychologist and one that hopefully will

Starting point is 00:12:42 gain more and more funding as well. But they're flying solo then so they haven't got someone else living locally because there's seven across England so they might they're probably living in very different areas of the country yeah although I do think from knowing people that are on that training route that they have a really strong and supportive network between them but yeah geographically very spread apart um and then the last route's NHS Scotland which their Scotland seem to be so far ahead in health psychology they've been offering funded training for years and that is very similar to clinical psychology in the way that you're employed under the nhs offering um sort of health psychology services as a trainee so lots of different ways that you can go about

Starting point is 00:13:34 becoming a health psychologist and not always amazing no but actually really really important and it sounds like this episode is so overdue, because actually, if you're getting asked that a lot, I didn't know this stuff like, you know, and I'm another professional psychologist. um it's self-funded does that mean that you are having to work does that mean that you're eligible to claim kind of um student support finance all of that just or do you just need to be you know hoping that you've got an employer who'll pay or you know generous aunt who you know how does it how does it come about how does it come together? Yeah and I think that's another thing that is really unclear for a lot of people so as I mentioned some of the routes are funded so that isn't something that those trainees have to consider for people on the doctorate courses you are able to apply for postdoctoral loans and speaking to a friend doing that yesterday she said at the moment you're able to apply for postdoctoral loans. And speaking to a friend doing that yesterday,

Starting point is 00:14:45 she said at the moment, you're able to claim I think about 28,000 pounds across the course of your doctorate to help live and work and pay for the course. And the independent route is self-funded. So that's what I've done. I think it's always a struggle advising people on this because I feel like I've got quite a unique situation when it came to funding. And it isn't a particularly cheerful situation, but essentially, very sadly, my dad died in 2020 and that enabled me to pay for my training um but I also work as a researcher and have done throughout my course

Starting point is 00:15:38 to top the top up my living expenses um alongside my PhD stipend that I have as well so I kind of have juggled a lot of different things in order to make it work over the last few years which isn't easy but it is doable. Yeah I'm so sorry to hear about your dad I lost my dad in 2017 and it's not easy you know we're young women you're even younger than me. It isn't easy, you know, and especially I think losing someone at that time of the pandemic, it's really, really tricky. I, like you, received some inheritance from my father, which meant that I was able to pay for my EMDR training.

Starting point is 00:16:17 And so I feel like every kind of trauma intervention, every time I'm on TV doing anything trauma related, you know, any client work, my dad's with me. And I really, really like that, because he'd always been so supportive of my career, you know, he always wanted to hear what I was up to, and obviously not disclosing clinical information, but he was always my fiercest, you know, supporter. And so, you know, I hope that you have that experience. And I hope that you still have that felt sense of your dad throughout your studies and you know I think when you qualify after all of this time it's going to be even more emotional you're suddenly in a position where you're able to get paid in one job to do one job

Starting point is 00:16:58 and suddenly all you know you don't have academic assignments you don't have thesis you don't have you know all these different things I just feel like you're gonna just there'll be a realization and you'll have a really good cry and you'll just be a very special messy time but you know so much to be proud of yeah no I think I don't know I think I won't know what to do with myself um and yeah I'm really sorry to hear about your dad as well because it is such a hugely difficult thing I think whatever age you are but I think particularly I was only 25 at the time and it was and it is really difficult and I think what you said is so accurate actually I feel like he would really like that his money has led me to

Starting point is 00:17:45 train in the profession that I've always wanted to so yeah it's a really nice reminder of that when things feel particularly difficult I suppose it really does it really does and I randomly just I can connect to my dad with my weird knobbly wrists like I have strangely knobbly wrists and it was when my dad was unwell in hospital I was like oh I've always looked at your knobbly wrists and mine but I've never quite realized where they've come from but he has them as well and you know just small things like that that you know I've got two children as well and one of them is really sad that he doesn't get to be didn't really get to know grumpy norm and grumpy norm didn't get to know him but i'm still so thankful i got to you know for him to

Starting point is 00:18:31 be a grandparent to three children at the time that he died because we had it we've got a niece and now we've got two others as well so we've got quite a big family so i've got two and my brother's got three in case it wasn't clear but yeah like it's really really difficult and actually it's feels like it's an appropriate time to mention a charity that I've worked with called It's Time I don't know if you've heard of them but they're on Instagram and they specialize in supporting the bereavement grief and loss needs of people who've lost parents at 25 or below so they support people that have lost you know in pet in child in their own childhood actually is uniquely destabilizing you know being being younger and losing a parent because you know what what a lot of their kind of people that they support experiences even when

Starting point is 00:19:19 they go to university they might be coming home but not really coming home and parent might meet a new partner and then kind of downsize or move that it means that there's not actually any room for them it's a very unique process and can feel very alienating and actually one of the things that's helped me grow up the most and helped me advance clinically probably is losing my dad but you don't know until until you know it I didn't know that I was a know, I didn't know that I was a worse clinician. I didn't know that I was a worse human. I didn't, you know, I didn't know that. But actually, I quite liked the naivety of that, you know, so yes, I've grown. Yes, I've developed it's post dramatic growth. But I probably would rather, I'd rather be a worse human and still

Starting point is 00:20:01 have my dad, you know what I mean yeah definitely and I think just agree with everything that you're saying it's so good to hear about charities that are supporting that age group because although I didn't specifically access a charity I think particularly between like 20 and 25 there's such a gap in services for things like grief um because you're not a child and you're not properly necessarily an adult either and you kind of are between services and you know it's not the norm for a parent to die when you're that age so your friends can't really thankfully relate either so I think it's really great that there's charities out there working specifically with that age range.

Starting point is 00:20:47 I think that's really great. You don't want them to be able to relate, do you? Like, it's a weird position. You know they don't really get it. And you kind of want to be supported, but you know that they can't necessarily, unless they're very, very special, they can't necessarily support you in the way that you might need.

Starting point is 00:21:08 It's a very, very strange time. But thank you so much for being so honest about that. You know, we are humans first and we're psychologists second, but it often is part of our why, isn't it? And I think that's, you know, thank you for being so raw, so vulnerable, so honest. And I know this will resonate with so many people. Can we think a little bit about what health psychology is you know what might give us a few examples of kind of ideal client avatars as we say in marketing you know what sort of work could we hope to achieve so you've mentioned kind of service redesign and stuff which isn't really something I'd considered from a from a health angle but be useful to get an overview of kind of clinical work as well yeah and I think it's worth saying that health psychologists often work in so many different settings um that I definitely won't be able to touch on them all but I suppose broadly health psychology as a discipline is relatively young compared to many many others like clinical or counselling

Starting point is 00:22:06 psychology the the roots that people are perhaps more familiar with but in simple terms health psychology is really the study of how our thoughts our emotions behaviours and our social factors like relationships cultural influences socio-economic status, interact to affect our physical health. So it's all about understanding how our mental and emotional well-being can impact our overall physical well-being and vice versa and exploring how people stay healthy, why they get ill and how they respond once they are unwell as well. So I think quite a big part of health psychology is firstly helping people to make healthier behavioral choices so whether that's stopping smoking, exercising more to manage stress, cope when they are diagnosed with illnesses like

Starting point is 00:23:01 cancer and to improve their overall physical and mental quality of life more broadly. For example in my clinical work whilst on training I've worked with people who are either undergoing cancer treatment or are in remission from cancer and thinking about what is going on for them particularly particularly in terms of their worries, their thoughts and feelings around their recovery and things particularly in cancer about recurrence. So I guess that's not too dissimilar to how a clinical psychologist might work with someone, but also thinking about motivation to change certain behaviors as well so you might have someone who has had cancer but is still engaging with smoking or is perhaps needing to lose some weight for their health

Starting point is 00:23:53 and how they how motivated they are to change and how you can support them to move beyond intending to make changes to actually going and doing them because we know that intentions you can have the best intentions in the world but it doesn't necessarily always lead to doing something different so working out why that might be is an example of something that health psychologists might do thank you that's so illuminating and it's really reminded me of my doctoral research which was actually it was clinical but it probably also would have fitted nicely within health it's probably probably more relevant to health actually it was looking at the health change behaviors that a spouse might or might not make after their long-term partner has had a serious stroke.

Starting point is 00:24:48 With my kind of thinking that, you know, what we're looking at in stroke is modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors. And when something so awful happens that somebody is incapacitated, my sense was, how does that not make you go, gosh, well, I'm going to exercise more. I'm going to quit smoking. I'm going to, you know, think about my BMI, you know, all of those things. And there was some post-traumatic growth from that. People really welcomed the social support that they had as a result of that but the general findings were no they don't tend to look at their own modifiable risk factors and when we were exploring that it was all done during grounded theory and was one-to-one interviews and they were like there's

Starting point is 00:25:38 just no time for me there's not that time for me to be able to focus on myself you know there's lots of sitting around in hospitals initially and then that feels awful and then they come home and then you realize that that's the real journey um there's so much stress there's learning to be well it's the it's grief isn't it it's the loss of a spousal relationship and then trying to think about what aspects of that you can keep alive and around and then obviously being someone's carer and if there's no tricky isn't it you know I'm sure you're well aware that people who own their homes often they're in a position where they're not eligible to receive any in England certainly receive any free social care and so you might get in a position where you're having to support your husband or your wife or your long-term partner with their personal care even though you wouldn't

Starting point is 00:26:29 want that they wouldn't want that but otherwise you're going to have to sell your home and even then you'd be too wealthy to be able to afford you know to get the free social care it's it's you know it sounds like a case of my diamond shoes are too tight but it's really not like that in reality is it no I think and that's just like a perfect example of how complex situations are in reality for people um you know receiving a diagnosis of any kind of serious illness on its own it's devastating but then it's obviously impacting the people around you if you're if you have people around you that is um your finances ability to work the stigma that potentially comes up um you know changes in relationships with friends as well I mean there's just it goes on and on and on

Starting point is 00:27:19 there's so many so much of an impact isn't there when there's illness involved which is of course what health psychology is often focused on people who are physically unwell and then that understandably has an impact on their mental health as well because if you're not well and all these other things are happening it's not going to feel great so obviously very normal to feel not great emotionally but that can then become a problem in itself as well yes indeed it can i feel like i could talk to you all day like it's so easy to talk to so i'm so interested in everything you're talking about um has it made you think about your own health your own mortality you know my little boy and we were at a McDonald's party the other day and um he said can we have some nuggets to share as well as my food and I

Starting point is 00:28:12 was like no no baby we're here for we're here for a long time not just a good time like you know because I do and and my friend who I was with she was like I'm not I'm just here for a good time like and I'm like there's differences isn't there but for me generally I try to raise my boys to think about their eating like not to be really really hyper focused you know the fact that we're in McDonald's to begin with you could be clearly not that virtuous but um you know I really do I think especially since the pandemic like I've just um just before we met I'm just back from my second personal training session of the week like I've never been fitter stronger or healthier than I am at the age

Starting point is 00:28:52 of 42 and I absolutely love that I wish I'd been more interested in exercise when I was younger like it wasn't really a big part of my family growing up you know it's something that boys did really boys went to football and girls might do netball but if you know just a dabble here and there and my mum's always cooked from scratch or there's lots of lentils you know lots of kind of whole foods and you know all of that jazz but so I think I had kind of good good kind of input at an early age and I learned to cook from an early age, but I was coasting. I was never that intentional. I was never that purposeful.

Starting point is 00:29:30 And really, it's only over the last four years that I have become so. And I'm so proud that I am strong. So almost a year ago, I broke my arm falling off my bike and I'm just rubbish. My first break at the age of 41, I was then. But I really used this last year to think about getting stronger getting healthier again and getting back to where I am and I'm absolutely there and very long warbled question but how has this impacted on your own health journey if that's not too personal a question to ask I think it's not something that I immediately thought of, particularly my sort of interests and where I've ended up in health psychology have been quite focused on specific areas like cancer, on pediatrics as well.

Starting point is 00:30:17 So things that aren't directly linked to me, thankfully. So it's not something that's in my mind on a day to day basis. But I suppose definitely within the masters that was, as I mentioned, during COVID, when health and health behavior was, for the first time ever, probably in the mainstream, something that everyone was thinking about, it definitely made me think about myself as a person and people around me in terms of our fitness and health and um as I'm saying this I think I hadn't linked it before but during Covid I for the first time ever having not been someone that was ever good at running or sport or anything decided to train for triathlon so I guess inadvertently it did influence me and think about my motivations and um I think for lots of young women and this is probably a whole topic in itself

Starting point is 00:31:15 for another another day but um a lot of young women and certainly amongst my friends we have conversations about societal expectations on women around weight and body image and growing up in a certain era and sort of diet culture and having to look a certain way being quite ingrained in a lot of us it was interesting to think about my motivations and training for an event like a triathlon, moving away from things like weight and how you look to ability, being strong and being generally fit and well rather than so exercising for health rather than for image. So I think that's definitely something that came up and is something that is more on my radar, definitely through health psychology. Absolutely. And the word for me, that is conjured up when you're speaking is, is vibrant, like, I want to be vibrantly healthy, I want to be strong. And that might not mean that I'm the skinniest I could ever be like it's not about that it's about knowing that my body is capable and you know is I'm able to do all the things I want

Starting point is 00:32:31 to do like pick up my children even though one of them's 10 but insist on being carried sometimes like you know I want to be like I said I want to be here for for a long time not just a good time and once you know absolutely you've been speaking about locus of control you know often a lot of the work that you're doing sounds like it's with people who haven't had locus control for their illness but actually I would love the idea that if I face an untimely end that my body's in such a great condition that I'm able to be a really brilliant organ donor you know so I'm not just looking after myself now I'm looking after hopefully you know future people if I have an untimely end I don't want that to happen you know let's not let's not let that come to fruition but you know I am here

Starting point is 00:33:16 to enrich my own world other people to be here for my family but you know I'm looking after myself yeah and I think so much is about that prevention work as well so you're hopefully reducing your likelihood of developing preventable illnesses and if you are in a situation of being diagnosed with something um that your body is fit and well enough to cope with that illness in itself but also the treatment as well so I think it definitely puts you into a different perspective thinking about health and things that you can do behaviorally to try and improve your health outcomes as well yeah absolutely even you know when I broke my arms it was this it was this one my left arm it's all back because I can't see what you're watching here but I could only get it to like

Starting point is 00:34:11 here to begin with because what what we often don't really realize is even within two days of not using our bodies as we usually would do our tendons all shrink and contract don't they and our muscles start to waste around way because we're conserving that energy the body and so my physio told me at the time the body goes oh we're not using that let's not waste that let's save that let's kind of almost reabsorb that so the body is trying to be really helpful and smart but actually means that it takes so much more to stretch those tendons to stretch that body again once you have lost that fitness so to begin with I'm not wearing the best dress for it I probably can't demonstrate it very

Starting point is 00:34:48 well um and this is terrible if you're listening to it but if you're watching on YouTube it's great um you know I couldn't get it beyond there but now I can fully touch my shoulder again which actually when I first started the physio she didn't think I would necessarily get to based on where I was but I wasn't prepared so I didn't get NHS physio I wasn't prepared to settle for an arm that didn't bend so thankfully I was in a position where I was able to pay for some private physio but it's really empowering people to know that even though you might not you know have the best outcomes you can do something you can take action to to make it different hopefully yeah and you mentioned locus of control and I'm well aware this is very like geeky thing to say but locus of control and health locus of control definitely

Starting point is 00:35:39 two of the models that I like a lot and draw on a lot and I think often when it comes to health people feel quite powerless people feel like they haven't got much say in what their what's happening to them what their treatment is and I suppose in the past there was much more of a sort of a medical model of I'm a doctor I'm a professional and I'm going to do to you what I think is best and you will just do it whereas now there's much more of a dialogue of what do you think what would be best for you taking into account a person as a whole and giving them some of that control which ultimately is going to make you feel psychologically more able to cope and hopefully lead to better outcomes as well so I think control is such a huge thing in so many aspects of life and health as well it really is and as as you spoke I was

Starting point is 00:36:34 thinking about when I first heard of the term locus of control and it was during my a-level psychology and I also heard about loftus and you know the bystander effect and all of that jazz which brings us nicely into the fact that you also do psychology tutoring as well don't you tell our audience so we do actually have A-level students listening we have undergraduate students listening we sometimes have GCSE psychology students listening I know it's not super common but we really have got a wide range of people. We also have qualified psychologists who listen too. But something that's cropped up with me working with young people is that they believe that accessing a tutor is cheating. And I've sort of

Starting point is 00:37:15 always tried to say, what about the Olympic athletes who have coaches? Is that cheating too? And they're like, no. But how can people give themselves permission to optimize their performance by you know and access appropriate tutoring and why is that important yeah and I think it's really important to think about because a lot of people as you say either don't know that it is an option to have a tutor alongside wherever it is that you're learning your course, whether it's school or college or somewhere else. But also have lots of different ideas about whether it's allowed, whether it's giving you more of an advantage than it should, etc, etc. So I think firstly to say, loads of people have tutoring. And I think it's important to say it's not always accessible to everyone

Starting point is 00:38:06 because it's not free but there is free resources out there that are you know accessible to everyone but one-to-one tutoring like I offer through a platform called First Tutors what happens is people usually get in touch with me I say most often they're A-level students, but sometimes it's undergraduate or even master students as well. And sometimes that's because people are struggling with a very specific aspect of their course, whether that's statistics, that's a common one, or whether they're just struggling with the subject as a whole and want to give themselves some more time to improve their understanding have the chance to ask questions that there may be no time for at school or maybe you feel you know quite shy about asking questions in front of all

Starting point is 00:38:57 your peers lots of different reasons so tutoring and the chance to spend an hour one-to-one with someone who hopefully knows a bit about the subject can be really helpful for people. And I was just tutoring someone this morning who I've worked with throughout the entirety of her A-level. And that's not to say that she was struggling at all. I think quite the opposite. She's actually very able and is looking to do the best she possibly can so uses the sessions to work on not so much understanding the concepts but developing her critical evaluation of psychological concepts whereas I've had people I tutor in the past who really sometimes regret choosing

Starting point is 00:39:47 psychology as a subject and feel like they don't have the understanding of just sort of key concepts and having that time and space to work through those at their own pace can just help them to sometimes have a real light bulb moment and think oh actually I do get it and I will be able to sit my exam so I think lots of people have it and it's totally okay to do so yeah I wish I'd had it and actually the more and more I learn about myself as an adult and the more and more I learn about neurodiversity I think I probably do fulfill the diagnostic criteria for ADHD. And when it got to the A levels, I actually really missed that accountability of the teachers making you do the work. Once it was up to me to put that accountability in place, I wasn't very good at it.

Starting point is 00:40:41 The unstructured time I found really difficult to manage manage and I would often be just lounging around or having a nap in the common room like that's not that useful but also because I was working on a Saturday and a Sunday and sometimes a Tuesday after work at Boots the Chemist and also I had a boyfriend and I wanted to see my friends I think I had just too much on my plate and so I was probably very tired but I could have done with the time that I was studying to be more accountable more focused and more productive I only got a C at A level I believe I was capable of a much higher grade but I just feel like I wasn't quite getting to the levels that you need to be able to get to and I got a low 2.1 at university for very much the same reasons I feel like I was capable of much more but I needed some help and some support to be more

Starting point is 00:41:31 structured yeah and I think that is such a valid point as well because it's not just about the subject itself let alone the fact that most people are studying more than one a level so it's not just the psychology that they need to think about it's what's going on the rest of the time in your life you know when you're 16 17 18 other things are usually going on um both externally but both but also in terms of your inner thoughts and how you feel about yourself and the world and what you've got to do so it's really hard to balance that and I wanted to just touch on what you said about sort of get what grades you got at both A level and undergraduate I think people tend to think well I'm not getting an A star so I can't do psychology and I definitely can't be a psychologist and that's definitely not the case whilst I got an A at psychology I didn't get an A in any other A level I missed my university offers was absolutely devastated thought it was the end of the world and I still I'm still in

Starting point is 00:42:40 touch with my A level psychology teacher today and every year on results day, she texts me and says, I've never, never seen anyone so devastated as you were. I was in clearing. I went to university through clearing and then got a first class degree. So it doesn't matter if things don't always go to plan. You obviously need to work hard throughout but you don't always need to be getting the top grades everywhere to be a good psychologist in the end yeah I hear you and you know I think I'm a reasonable psychologist and I still didn't

Starting point is 00:43:20 get the best grades I did all right at GCSEs but I think it was that accountability um I think I was so excited by secondary school I worked really hard for year seven year eight and year nine and then I was a bit bored of it ready for a new challenge so I probably still didn't work as hard in my GCSEs as actually I would have done if I'd sat them in year seven I'm better then um but yeah thank you so much for your time today. I felt like this has been a really nourishing, beautiful, wholesome exploration of health psychology and existential matters too. Have you got any advice for people if they need to avoid burnout on the way to on the way to psychology or even within psychology tough question and I think something that

Starting point is 00:44:05 personally I've definitely struggled with at times I think I don't know what you think but people who are aspiring to be or are psychologists tend to be quite hard-working quite keen to be supportive of other people giving and think if you don't look after yourself within that that can lead you into all sorts of issues particularly if part of your job involves supporting people through really challenging emotional difficulties it can be hard to remember to look after yourself within that so I suppose the first thing is being aware of that and if you're you do have tendency to push yourself quite hard um whatever stage you're at whether it's a level or or post qualified um I'd always say again accessibility is a problem but having

Starting point is 00:45:00 your own therapy has been really or is really important for me in understanding myself why I might react in certain ways and how to look after myself but also just making time for yourself as well and that sounds like a really cliche piece of advice but I think I'm always tempted to do everything now and get everything done now. And unless something is imminently urgent or risky, I think it can wait for five minutes, an hour or until tomorrow, and it's not going to go anywhere. So I suppose being aware of yourself, knowing what helps you and just taking a bit of time to stop and think before you keep rushing to do things which I definitely still have to remind myself of absolutely such beautiful advice and if people want to connect with you or follow you where's the best place for them to do that

Starting point is 00:45:58 you mentioned the place where you do tutoring through feel free to mention more about how people can find you if they're like I want Nicola to be my tutor give yourself a little advert that's absolutely fine so tutoring wise first first tutors if you just give that a google and put Nicola O'Donnell in you'll find me so in six weeks time I will all being well qualify as a health psychologist had my viva invitation yesterday um so you can find me on linkedin uh just nicola o'donnell I also do a lot on twitter and on instagram I post a lot about being a health psychologist the training routes um and all sorts of what a health psychologist actually does. Thank you so much. I've absolutely adored speaking with you today.

Starting point is 00:46:48 And I feel like there's so many shared interests that it's felt, yeah, really, I don't know, this just really resonated with me. And it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Wishing you the very best of luck for your viva. There is an episode on the podcast series about how to prepare optimally for your viva. I'm sure you probably know it all already. I listened it was very helpful oh good thank you and obviously anyone

Starting point is 00:47:09 listening or watching please do um take a listen um thank you so much for your time nicola thank you for having me it's been really nice to speak to you honestly i just love that like i feel i feel warm i feel connected you know I know that Nicola and I had a lot in common some similar overlaps but I just I hope that you feel that way about this episode as well if you do please take a moment to rate the podcast to review the podcast and to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you are listening to or watching it on because it helps us to reach a wider audience and it's the single most valuable thing that you can do for any podcast that you enjoy. If you like the way that I think, the way that I talk

Starting point is 00:47:58 and you think that I might be able to help you meet some of your future or current career goals, please do check out the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book, the Clinical Psychologist Collective book, the Aspiring Psychologist membership. And of course, remember all of those wonderful back issues of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. Thank you so much for being part of my world come and let me know what you think to this episode by connecting on socials i am dr marianne trent absolutely everywhere and come and let me know what you think to this episode in my free facebook group the aspiring psychologist community you can listen to the next episode from 10 a.m on saturdays on youtube and from 6am on Mondays as an MP3. Thank you so much,

Starting point is 00:48:47 stay kind to yourself and I will see you very soon. With this podcast, I feel sad to 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 of 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

Starting point is 00:50:06 at ease and everything will be okay but trust me you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What is health psychology? How do you train as a health psychologist?

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