The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Why I Turned Down a DClinPsy Offer: Choosing Myself Over the Dream

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

What would make someone turn down a place on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) after years of hard work and applications? In this episode of The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, Dr Marianne Trent speaks with Assistant Psychologist Will about his bold and values-led decision to decline a DClinPsy offer from Liverpool.We explore what it feels like to get the long-awaited offer only to realise it doesn’t align with your personal wellbeing, relationships, or long-term goals. Will shares the emotional impact of saying no, how location and stability shaped his choice, and what it means to prioritise authenticity over external expectations.This honest conversation will resonate with aspiring psychologists facing the pressures of applications, rejections, interviews, and offers. If you’re wondering what really matters when making career decisions in psychology, this episode offers clarity, courage, and hope.This is a powerful listen for aspiring psychologists navigating applications, rejections, offers, and the difficult decisions that come with building a career in psychology.#dlinpsy #dclin #clearinghouse ⏱️ Highlights & Timestamps:00:00 – Introduction: Why would anyone turn down a DClinPsy place?01:05 – Meet Will: Assistant Psychologist and DClinPsy offer holder01:52 – Saying no to Liverpool: how the decision unfolded03:48 – Visceral reactions: why dread outweighed joy06:26 – The importance of stability, relationships, and location08:11 – Pros and cons lists, health factors, and neurodivergence considerations09:55 – Long-distance relationships and self-care realities12:28 – “If it was local, I’d have said yes”: information in itself14:19 – Loss, growth, and embracing future opportunities16:27 – Working on self-understanding and mental health alongside career goals20:02 – Regional challenges and placements: why location matters23:15 – The importance of early, honest conversations with partners28:24 – Three years isn’t “just three years”: weighing the life impact30:51 – Loving the job you’re in and choosing timing that feels right33:06 – The need for more open conversations in psychology about difficult decisions36:59 – Final reflections: your authentic self matters more than the pedestalLinks:🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97 💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses✍️ 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 Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring...

Before we dive in, a quick heads up. If you're a qualified psychologist in private practice, then Dr Claire Plumley and I would love to invite you to our next in-person event. It's the psychologist Christmas Social, happening in Kingscross London on Saturday, the 6th of December 2025. It's your chance to connect with other brilliant minds, enjoy some festive food and feel part of a real community, especially if you're missing that work Christmas due feeling. Faces are limited and feeling fast, so if you or a colleague might be interested, you can find the link to grab your ticket in the show notes or in my bio on social media or just send me a DM. Dr. Claire and I will look forward to seeing you there.

To many people, turning down a place on the doctorate in clinical psychology might seem unthinkable, especially after four rounds of applying, countless hours of prep and finally hearing the word yes. From the outside, it looks like the ultimate goal, the finish line, the thing you've been working towards for years. But what if that yes arrives at the wrong time? What if actually saying no is the most compassionate, values-led decision you could make? In this episode, I'm talking with Will about what it really means to walk away from a dream offer. And how doing so can shake up your identity, challenge expectations and invite some surprising growth. I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, and if you're interested in honest conversations

about psychology, mental health, and the realities behind the profession, make sure you like, subscribe and follow along for more. Hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the aspiring psychologist podcast. I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, and I'm joined here today with our guest, Will. Will is an assistant psychologist. Welcome along Will. I are welcome, yeah. Thank you for having me. You are so welcome to be here. So thank you for agreeing to speak with us

because actually you give us a really interesting and important narrative because, you know, you were offered a place which might for many of people and for you in a past version of your life I felt like a dream, a dream offer on a declines side course that was probably familiar to you

because you'd done your undergrad uni at that university. But for a variety of reasons, mainly prioritising yourself and your own real life experiences, you said no to an outright doctorate clinical psychology place in 2025, didn't you, Will? I did, yes. I said no to Liverpool, to, I had two interviews. I had one for Exeter, one for Liverpool. I got an offer of an interview, sorry, offer of a place at Liverpool and I turned it down. It was an incredibly difficult decision, which I'm sure we'll plough into in the rest of this recording. But it was a really, really difficult decision. As you said, past life me, like three years ago, four years ago, like this would have been an absolute dream.

So I did my undergrad. I actually did it at Liverpool Hope University and then was off to the Eaklin place as a Liverpool, UniOv. And yeah, I just, I love that city. I love that place. I have friends there. But yeah, as we know, life has its own ways of encouraging us to make different decisions. And yeah, I won't say that it was an easy decision because that is far from the case. It was a really, really difficult decision to make.

Yeah, but actually, you know, when we get what feels like might be life-changing news, I invite clients to do this as well, actually. We really need to think about where we notice that in our body. you know, what visceral experiences we have to that. And, you know, getting a declin side place, you know, I've had the extreme privilege of often being the first person someone's ever told. They leave me a voice note and they're, oh my God, Mary Ann, like, I've got, oh my God, I've been off in a place. And like, to hear what that means to them in their voice and, you know, to have known them and watched them grow and supported them through that process. and then them to get in everything they are striving for, have been striving for, that they believe they want, is incredible.

And they have that moment of like meltiness and overwhelm and joy. But the fact that you didn't have that is really, really important. How was this news conveyed to you? How did you find out you'd been offered this place, well? Yeah, so I was at work, obviously got the email, and I'm just being sat at my desk and got the email through and it was just like my first response was like disbelief as I'm sure for many people is

saying like said it's the wrong person this isn't right this can't be what this can't be possible and was like oh my god there's a lot of feelings that I'm feeling and I'm not sure exactly what I'm feeling so as you went to toilet and read it over again and was like oh wow this is this is a genuine offer and you talk about that kind of visceral response there was there was energy there was emotion

there was a lot of things that I was feeling and then the thing that kind of settled that seemed to kind of come through the most of me was this feeling of kind of just like dread of just like oh goodness like I've actually got to make this decision and I've got to talk to my partner about the fact that I might be moving four hours away and that I'm going to be leaving my family behind and I'm going to have to think about a place to live and all these kinds of things that you know really factor into these conversations you know like as I said like I'm talking through the intro you know for some people the idea of something new

the idea of something, you know, far away of this kind of promised land and new friends and this kind of stuff is really valuable and they're happy to just go off and drop and try new things. And I think three, four years ago again, that might have been me. But today I stand in a stable relationship and, you know, I have, I'm a bit older and I've got another things that I'm happy to have and proud to have and want to hold on to. And yes, that's why I made that decision but yeah the initial kind of visceral reaction was definitely kind of their sense of of dread of of anxiety and it wasn't one of pure just joy elation yeah at all so yeah sounds like it was different for it has been for other people well yeah but you are a different person and you're

allowed to have a different a different experience but also when we're making our choices you know what to put on that electronic form for a course choice we're not really doing that with with informed consent. You know, we're thinking, oh, it'll be doable, it'll be all right. It's different than someone saying, here's the keys to the castle, but you've got to move here. And actually, because I think your interview was in person, I guess you'd had recent experience of making that trip and what that would be like. And actually, then you, then you do have an informed, you have more of an informed consent. And, you know, it would bring back the real life reality of, you having studied in Liverpool already for three years. But I guess also, you know, the networks

we make when we're on training, you know, you'd have those all up in the north-west. Is that that's right, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. And then when you're qualified, most of your qualified connections would probably stay in the northwest. And actually, you would always be planning to probably move back down to the southwest. And so I do think you've made a very wise, brave decision to honour yourself and to take control back again, you know, could you have made it work? Yes, you could. Have I spoken to people in the past that have made a very big move away from their partners, away from their stabilising factors that have found it incredibly difficult, incredibly destabilising, it's made them think whether they want to quit the course,

which also has lots of layers of shame and blame and guilt and, you know, what if and shouldn't I be grateful but actually you were able to kind of really think this through in advance and you were like no I think this is a stretch too much and I I salute you for it I really appreciate that yeah like not all of the feedback has been has been positive as you as you might expect everyone's going to have their own opinion and totally entitled to that and some of it was was hard to hear and some of it was was important to hear like it was really important to hear some of that stuff but absolutely I think thinking you mentioned there about like stabilising factors and things like that and that was just that was really what helped to ground me I think in this decision that I feel particularly

grounded when I made the decision absolutely not no but like the things that help me you know around the decision in in making that you know I spent a good few days really just really only thinking about this I didn't really feel like I had any other space for anything else and those stabilising factors are a really important part of that kind of decision and how I made that decision like shout out to my supervisor, Nicola, for being just absolutely amazing and super supportive. And she suggested I do the classic pros, cons list. Why not? And also then value rating those as well out of 10. So you've evaluated all of those and then you add them together and you minus. So you add all the pros and then you minus the cons. And it's like, what's that waiting? What's that? That was,

that was great. That was really helpful. Because not only did it help me do like kind of make the decision, it informed that, but it also just kind of helped me think about all the things that I would, you know, really listing that down everything. Like what are the things I'm actually going to have to be thinking about. And for me as someone who, you know, I had a lot of other factors, I had other factors think about, which were the fact that I also have type 1 diabetes and I had to think about like what management and changing GPs and making trouble access to medication. Those kind of decisions were also really important. Also thinking about potential like neurodivergence within myself and what that might look like and how I might adapt and how I might, you know, be able

to cope with some of those things. And just generally in terms of those stabilising factors in particular, like I said like my partner, I'm very touchy really. Like I like cardals. I can't lie and that's very stabilising for me and I enjoy that kind of sense of soothing and comfort and not having access to that regularly I just knew that it was going to be that would be something I would really, really miss. Not only would I be missing it whilst I was trying to do this course and trying to do all this other stressful things. I'd also not have access to it as well to help me cope with that thing too. So I think it was the kind of combined of those two of like of missing the person and that creating distress and whatever might come with that

along with the combination of stress from the course because let's be real, it's difficult, it's going to be hard and also not having access to some of things that would have helped me cope better or cope in a way that would have liked. So yeah, not having access to those things was really important for me in factoring that decision. Yeah, and sometimes in our work,

speaking from the perspective of someone who's been in a long-term relationship whilst I was training, sometimes we're so talked out that sometimes what we're, need from our partner is just quite companionship, but with them like right here, or that we're sitting on the sofa and we're fussing each other's hair or whatever as we watch something. And that's our moment of connection, whereas sometimes having to be on the phone or FaceTime

for an hour or so feels like actually not necessarily what you want to do to honour your self-care at that time. So, yeah, it is a big deal to be in a... in a long-distance relationship. And it's something that we should really spend time considering the impact on ourselves and the other person as well, you know? I said to you before the cameras started rolling today that I'd met my husband, my now husband,

in the second week of the second year of my doctorate course. And I told you there was no way I was quitting it. Because, you know, I was really enjoying the course and I was enjoying my life. And so when our relationship very quickly looked like it was going to be viable, so to speak, it was like we didn't want to be apart from each other, but there was no chance I was going to move to Brighton. It just wasn't happening.

So it almost becomes like a, you know, I wouldn't have given that as an ultimatum, but it almost becomes like if we're going to be together and we want to be together now, you're going to have to move my friend. And so that's what happened. But, you know, if he had had, you know, depending. already or a job that he really, really was enjoying, he was a musician, he was enjoying that, but he chose to put all the eggs in the Midlands basket and move up. But, you know, we're not the kings of the world. We shouldn't think that we can be the ruler, you know, that decides all

the decisions just because we have this career. And so, you know, it sounds like you're very mindful and yeah you've made a considered choice but also I'm aware that if you'd been offered a place on a course closer to home I guess it would have you there wouldn't necessarily have been the pros and cons list it would have just been hands down I'm accepting accepting the one that's closer to home which I think is information in itself really yeah yeah really is you're absolutely right if if I'd have been offered a place with Exeter it would have been yeah or Plymouth, which is where I also applied, you know, it would have been absolutely, yeah, complete yes, no questions asked. I think that would, oh, that's not true. There would have been

questions asked of, I think, my ability to do the course, as I'm sure most people would question themselves as they go through their process. But yeah, it would have been a much easier decision. And, you know, that's, like you said, that is, that's information in itself. And it was really hard to explain this, I think, to the people closest to me, that this process, although I said no, like it really affirmed that like this is really what I want to do like this honestly the the interview experience the reflections that came with it was hard it was a long process but like just generally this AP role that I'm currently in has been so informative in terms of like formative sorry in terms of my self-esteem and my belief in my ability to do this stuff but also just

then obviously getting offered the offer the place like was also formative and be like you know yeah I can do this like I'm I'm I'm good enough, the classic question. And that was just, I can't explain other than just, it was such a good experience. And this is what I want to do. This is what I want to do. And I know that. And that was a really difficult thing to communicate in a way that I could get people to kind of understand that like, although this is what I want, I'm still saying no, because it just didn't feel like the right place, the right time and, you know, of the other things that we've talked about. So yeah, that part was really challenging. And I wrestle with that in myself to be

like, how could you, you know, how could you possibly know that this is what you want, you know, even though you're saying no, but having sat with that and had the space, had the time, reflected on it. Yeah, like, this is absolutely what I want to do. It just, it wasn't the right time. Yeah, well, not necessarily the right time, but not the right place, you know. Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, that makes sense. Because I'm sure you still could have been a really great trainee, but I guess even, even the experiences you will have over the next 12 years, not 12 years, 12 months and beyond. hopefully it won't take 12 years will just make you a better clinician and a better human as well

and it's always not it's always good to be a better clinician and a better human when you're going to be a trainee and yeah you'll just be more compassionate to yourself the world and others and i think that's that's a really good thing well absolutely i'm i'm really excited like there was after the kind of the decision was made like there was a big kind of emotional outpouring you know there was crying there was oh god i don't what i'm going to do with my life is this the right decision that I've made, there was a lot of things that I was feeling, as I'm sure most people would be feeling, either way, on that decision. But like, once that kind of dust settled on the same day, you know, my partner and I have been talking about moving together, what that meant, that's

what I am now, we were talking about all these things that we'd kind of put on the back burner. For Declan, like really, that was one of the main reasons that we didn't do some stuff. You know, we hadn't really been planning too many holidays and we hadn't been thinking about, you know, how we would manage, you know, doing certain things together and activities and hobbies, because the past few months I've been spending a lot of evenings either worrying about doing it or doing it. I think worrying probably the more of those two. But, you know, a lot of that time is just consumed feeling and doing stuff. And that was just really liberating. You know, you planned a couple of holidays. You plan like things that we're going to go away and do, you know,

small getaway is just general kind of day-to-day stuff that we want to do more of. And that's just been, that was really, really lovely. You know, I really, I was so glad in that decision at that point, I think in terms of time as well, you know, I think there was a few weeks of that kind of that bubble and then that bubble did kind of burst and it was like, particularly talking through this, you know, my own counselling and reflecting and stuff. And once I started to give it space, it was like, oh, actually, this does feel like, it does feel like a big loss. It, like, it feels like a loss of, you know, we think about uncertainty and what the future means, you know, I'm not necessarily guaranteed to get through screening, to get an interview, to get off of a place.

You know, none of those things are guaranteed. And I'm under no impression of thinking that just because I've been offered one, that I will absolutely be offered another one straight away. Or even in two, three, four years, we don't know. I'm under no illusion that that is the case. But that just really felt like the best decision for me as a person at that time. Those things that I really valued absolutely love my job. I absolutely love my partner and I want to be here and I want to spend time here. I want to go out and do positive things.

I want to continue working on myself. And there was also a part of me, I think, you know, these main parts of this conversation was really working on myself. You know, I'm someone who's, you know, struggle with mental health myself and found things quite difficult and only really recently connecting with this potential idea of neurodivergence and, you know, connecting with that and understanding what that means for me. and also working in a diabetes service and having diabetes myself has been like just amazing. Honestly, this role has been incredible.

Like I have no bad words to say about this role whatsoever. It's incredible and all these kind of things. But really the bigger picture here is this idea of understanding myself better, connecting more with what my needs are. And right now there's a part of me, like I'm working part of time as well, three days a week and other bits and pieces that I do around the house and things like that as well. That's just a part of me that just like this stuff is really important. and actually that's as important, if not more important, based on the decision I've made, I would say probably more important than just the career itself.

I don't think I was ready to give up all of my spare time. I'm sure trainees will tell you it's not all their time. I'm sure there might be some people who maybe argue that it is all their time, but how much time that that takes from you and the stuff that it takes from you as well as obviously gives you too, but I think that was something I just wasn't quite ready to give up on right now in terms of the space for myself. for my partner, for my family, and just, yeah, that wasn't something I was ready to give up. I think it's commendable and it also shows us that you want this, but you want this on your terms and that you matter and that your well-being matters. You know, it would have been your well-being which took the hit if you'd gone for that option this year. You know, and I think if there were more universities offering these places, you know, it would ease the pressure, but we know that you know life is not perfect you know and you know we were just trying to kind of look regionally at where where else there was um the office courses and you know and at one stage

there was Bristol but there's no longer Bristol course like you know depending on where you are in the country can very much mean that you're having to to almost overstretch yourself for where you're going to where you're going to commute and it's it's not easy it isn't easy and you know I moved to Coventry for what I thought would maybe be three years and then I I would move back to Milkkeen's area. Sometimes that doesn't happen, you know? Sometimes where you move for your doctorate is where you end up having your family.

It's where my children are. My children are Coventrians now. It becomes your life. And so whilst we might enter into it with I can do this for three years, I guess ultimately we need to think I would want to potentially make this my life, you know? Not always, not always, but we've got to be curious and there's got to be some capacity

for that because we don't know what life will bring. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think that was something that I think I was struggling also to even allow myself to connect to this idea of like, because I know that I absolutely love that city. I have really good friends there, you know, I was best fan at one of my friends' weddings up there like I love it up there um I said I'm a Liverpool fan as well I like the music I'm also a musician so being in Liverpool's great for that too like there's a lot of positives about being there I think this just really showed like how important it is for

for me and my partner like how important that relationship is and like I said all this connecting and soothing things that come with that which is just great like I wouldn't I wouldn't want to be be without and my typical neurodivergent brain has now gone off topic and I can't remember what the question was so Here we are. It's okay. I don't think there really was one. I think it was just that, you know, when we accept,

it was probably more of a statement, as my husband would say, when we accept a place offer, we have to be open to the potential that this might then be where we spend the majority of our lives. And, you know, that has to be okay. I guess I was thinking as well about my experience of making big decisions. So when I was kind of towing and throwing between should I go all in self-employed? Should I leave the NHS? I found that any time I had a

spare moment that I would be trying to weigh things up. So every time I went to boil that kettle and obviously during the pandemic, that was a lot, right? Because we're all working from home. I found myself doing those pros and cons list, like thinking, should I stay, should I go? Should I day should I go? It's exhausting. It's exhausting. It is. So when I handed in my resignation, which would have been January 2021, similarly to you, I've had this moment of, I don't need to do this anymore. I don't need to deliberate. I've made my decision and I had this moment of euphoria where I then felt free of that decision and looking forward to the reality that I'd chosen, knowing that I'd done that for the reasons that I'd decided were the most important

to me. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It makes sense. And I can totally resonate with the idea of like euphoria, I think once everything had settled, once I'd made decision and being like those, like I said, those two or three weeks of planning, of positivity, of feeling more connected. Because like there was, it creates this kind of disconnection of like, I could be leaving. I could be four hours away in a few months. time and they're permanently like it could be really difficult and it always just kind of lingers and it just stays and you know and that was even before i'd been off at the place you know because you know at the end of the day we submit applications in november you know and you don't know what's

going to happen until you know march so it's a long time of thinking and you know kind of deliberating and one thing i think that i kind of wish i guess i had done was to think about having that outright conversation with my partner and to think about like what like this actually is potential like this could happen i think that's something i avoided because i think for me it was self-defense it was like oh no i'll never get a place let's put that down it doesn't matter yeah no i i'll never get a place protect myself it'll be okay we'd have to worry about that and then as soon as you go off the place like oh wow i really should have just had that conversation i should just talk through what those practicalities are going to look like and how we're going to manage this which i think it would

would have made that decision easier. It would have made it some of this stuff would have already been thought about and probably in a less emotional environment for myself as well, I'm sure. Yeah, so that's definitely something I think I would do differently if that situation were ever to present itself again. And I guess had you not already had the experience of Liverpool, you might have been unlikely to put that as a wild card. And so it's maybe, younger will was sort of helping you fill that form in, but actually it was older will that had to, okay, there, we're going to take back the, the, the reins there, because actually that's not practical. And so, yeah, like, you know, three localish courses and then one

wildcard. It's like, well, what are the motivations for that? Unless, unless the course is doing something very unique, you know, so people do, people do choose courses in very different areas of the country because they're like, I think these courses are a bit of me, but I'm not necessarily sure that's what was happening here. Obviously, it was a course that you'd be excited to do, but the location was maybe, yeah, based on younger will and your connections to the area. Yeah, yeah, absolutely it was. And like I said, three, four years ago, you know, when I was still in my 20s, I think that still would have been a, you know, a decision would have jumped at and would have been an opportunity I would have jumped at.

Like I said, when I think about the decision about making my application again in November, you know, we've got to do that process again. And I think there's part of me that's still sort of like, there's this kind of dream part of me of like, yeah, no, it'll be okay. You can, you can apply to live for it, it'll be all right. It's definitely still like, I absolutely acknowledge that part because there's so much positive experience I've had there, it's really difficult to ignore, like, the emotions and the experiences that I've had and the friends that are still there, you know, all those things

that come with that decision as well as just you know I couldn't see a bad word about the interview process Liverpool are amazing like if anyone's thinking about it like would highly recommend it was very inclusive it was it was great and you know all of that stuff is really important but yeah I'm honestly if I'm really brutally honest like I don't know what decision I'm going to make in November I might still buy for Liverpool I might not I think that's going to have to be communication, being open, seeing about where my kind of self progression can continues and where I'm at and what we're feeling and having an open conversation before I put that down with my partner would be a really good

starting point I think. Yeah and maybe you know starting to have those conversations early as well so that you you can be excited about your choices as well you know so that you can kind of put those eggs in that basket but I guess thinking about placements you know we apply for a university, and certainly in my mind, you know, I was moving to Coventry and so I thought, well, I'm going to live in Coventry, my university's in Coventry and my placements will obviously be in Coventry. That is not the way universities work. In my case, I was assigned a base, an employment base, which was not in Coventry. And so that affected my mileage. I was actually

given Warwick, which meant that whenever I had placements, I couldn't claim any mileage until I'd already gone more than eight miles or whatever it was. And so, you know, that's 16 miles round trip. And so that I was, I was financing my placement mileage because I wasn't able to make those claims. But your placement might be kind of within an hour, maybe in some rural areas, within an hour or a half of university, if you're already commuting, you know, they try to match you up fairly, but sometimes you might be an hour and a half the other side from where you're living. And we really, really need to be able to think about, is this going to be sustainable for myself, for my well-being? You know, maybe if you have problems sitting for long periods of

time in your car. Is this going to be sustainable for my physical health? You know, can I afford to bankroll all this fuel? Like, we really must begin to slow down our reasoning process and not just get swept away with how exciting and how lovely it is to get this course over. We've really got to think about this being three years of our lives, you know, and I know some courses do part-time options. It can be, you know, up to four years and three months of our lives. Like, this isn't a short period of time and we must not gaslight ourselves or honeymoon ourselves into thinking that it's only three years because that's a significant period of time I think well yeah absolutely um scarcely to think about that would be 10% of my lifetime right now um thinking about spending away

from you know my partner from my life you know like like um as we were saying an intro you know I've born a bread in in Devon and Somerset so you know I had three wonderful years coincidentally you know in Liverpool and that being amazing but there is much more to life this is this really needs to be a holistic decision there's so much that goes into decisions around Declan and it's not just about your career it's about your relationships it's about your well-being. Also reflecting on that I think as a part of me that thinks I imagine there are some people who feel like it is just about the career and maybe they haven't been able to think they haven't been forced into making a decision or they haven't, you know, they don't want to think about it because they can just think about it

being a career and, you know, this, I feel like in my situation, for me, this really has made me think, like, this has to be a holistic, like, conversation because there is so much to do with, you know, adaptations and moving and living and paying rent and they say fuel and your placements and your friends and your family and all these kind of bits that fit together is you and your life and what that means for you. And, you know, at the end of the day, this is roughly speaking, a mental health course and it would be nice to think that we can also prioritise our own mental health in the making of these decisions and how we contribute then, I think also to the course itself. You know, I want to be able to give my best self to a course

and I'm not sure at this time going to Liverpool would have been my best, the best version of me that I could have put on that course. And then that has its own ramifications, you know, itself may not have performed as well. You know, maybe I, you know, fail a couple of assessments or something. you get kicked off like you don't know or just maybe not as you've as spoken before like but maybe I don't enjoy it as much maybe you fall out of love with the work that you were doing and I don't want to do that I don't believe that it would happen but to say that it could never happen would be silly you know and I want to love that I want to enjoy it I want to be passionate and I can feel that like you know in my current role although my you know typical NHS

fashion my contract's up for renewal so that's obviously that's up in the air as well but the idea of like being here and myself I feel very much that this is me as a clinician and I'm able to bring that to my job and I love it and I like being here and I'm you know working on myself and those are all the things that I'm really happy to still have access to right now. Good good and you know you may you may choose not to apply to Liverpool and that's okay you may choose to apply to Liverpool whatever happens Liverpool can still be somewhere that you you know regard as an important place so my husband and I still like visiting Brighton and that will be always a special place because he lived there. And, you know, we can have mini breaks there

and love that. And yeah, like, you can still have that in your life, but it might not necessarily be that you live there full time again. I'm excited to see where your story goes and how it unfolds well. Thank you. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah, I've already signed up for the Liverpool Football Club tickets and stuff. So I'm looking to get tickets for this year. So yeah, I'm sure there'll be plenty of journeys up, if I can. So you want to be a season ticket holder? Not season ticket, just but like, you've got the ballot systems now? Oh my goodness.

That was his whole own conversation, but I put in ballots for tickets. So, yeah, for the first half of the season. So hopefully we'll see that come through. My boys are Spurs fans and they're always like, can we get tickets? Can we get tickets? But it's so inaccessible because like you get the season ticket holders get first priority. And then, you know, it's just, it's really, it's not an easy thing to do. You know, it's a whole other episode, but it's not an easy thing to do.

It is very expensive. as well. It's not easy and it's also expensive. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything we haven't said so far that you think would be useful for us to talk about before we finish well? One of the prompts I was thinking about was this idea of having space for these kind of conversations in the profession. I think that is a really important part of this conversation where I feel super lucky, super blessed to have had like supervisors who are like amazing. Like I've loved by advice. It's like I've been incredibly lucky. I'm also very aware that not everybody has that experience. But in terms of space for these conversations, I'm not sure that there is some of that

space for these kind of conversations. I've had people reach out to me via LinkedIn saying like, oh, like congratulations. Like I made something sort of similar and, you know, and saying that, you know, their feedback hadn't been very positive. And I think that has been quite reflective also in my own personal life where I've had people being like, oh, like that doesn't seem like the right decision. That doesn't seem like a good thing. the space for those conversations when i as i was reflecting on that i feel like that needs to be both bottom up and top down i think that needs to come both from ourselves as you know mental health practitioners whether it's be assistant psychologists psychological will-being practitioners whatever

to push for those conversations to be had i know we've got the infamous you know facebook um groups and everything which for me is too much i find that overwhelming not for me there's a lot of there's a lot of difficulty on that for me personally in that way but you know in terms of something in that space that can be helpful for some people but also thinking about bringing it into the workplace too because this is you know I remember being in an office in my first role in forensics and in forensic hospital and it was six APs in that office at that time that week of feedback where nobody got any interviews was just was just grim it was grim it's not a nice experience and reflecting back on it you know now like yeah we probably weren't ready

and that's okay but ultimately thinking like it's not that experience is really difficult to have space for that it's a sense of loss it's difficult comes to a lot of different emotions for different people might tug on you know there's core values of not being good enough of overthinking of whatever it might be that it might be might be tugging on and then that was the case for me and to try and push to have those conversations whether it be in supervision whether it be peer to peer whether it be whatever, create that environment where we can have these kind of safe conversations about what that actually looks like and how that might impact, I don't know, our workload. It might be called talking about, I don't know, having some annual leave planned if you haven't got some planned

already, or thinking about what we can do to, you know, create a space where we're working towards being able to get that offer, you know, the things that I need to work on and have that safe space to discuss that. And I know that's, that was all really helped me when I was in those conversations. That would have, that would have really helped, I think, at that time. And then thinking about top down as well is that I think supervisors, I think it would be really helpful as supervisors aware that I think of of the impact. I don't think there's many people that I've come across that aren't aware of how difficult this is and, you know, bringing that into their conversations. But I think that is an important factor of like just being aware of like those,

those dates and the when people might be getting feedback and what might be happening and just being aware of some of those things, I think we're a really good starting point, but also just recognising that at the end of the day we are human beings and experience a cyclical experience of loss and of failure in parentheses, like it's not actually failure guys, don't worry, it's okay, there is another opportunity. But that experience, it brings up a lot of those emotions. And I think making space for that is really, really important. I know for me, in making decision, after the decision, before decision, talking it through with people, supervisors, friends, family, whatever, was such a good way just to get stuff out on paper, just to talk, just to make

sure you've processed, given a space and processed some of that stuff is really, really important. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for helping us to make space for that here. And actually, what I know is that this podcast changes lives. Well, people, because people get in contact and tell me that it has. Not always when they watch it for the first time, but that it starts to percolate ideas through for them. And actually, when it comes to key, decision-making moments, it's stayed with them and actually they think back as that as being a really pivotal moment. And maybe even when people begin to fill in their forms in future, they will hold this in mind and really think about the impact of, you know, which, which X's or

which numbers they put in which boxes. And so thank you from me and from my audience for for helping us have this conversation because I think it's really important. It's really powerful than it matters. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We do experience, like I said, other people and myself, that kind of idea of this pedestal for the Declan. And although it's something that I think we're all aspiring to, maybe not everyone who's in the audience, but I know a lot of people are aspiring to that. And is it great? Absolutely. Is it everything in the world? No, it's not. And your holistic self, your authentic self is really important. And like, I would encourage anybody to try and explore that as much as you can to bring that to your work, but also just

your life. Just like be you, keep doing you. Like that's what's important. Make sure that you're happy and keep working on that. Because that's what we can do. Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your story with us, Will. Wishing you the very best of luck. And please do stay in touch. Keep us posted. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much to our guest today, Will. Thank you for watching. Thank you for tuning in. If you would like to offer Will some support, please let's get busy in the comments and let him know that we really value him spending his time speaking with us. If you love being a fly on the wall of people's real life stories in psychology, I think you will love the Clinical Psychologist Collective Book. and the aspiring psychologist collective book too.

They get wonderful reviews and they really do help people to make sense of their own careers whilst reading and learning about people's reflective growth and journeys in their careers. They are uplifting, energising at times deeply emotional reads and I think that you'll really enjoy them too. If you've already read them and not yet left a review on Amazon or Goodreads, please do take a moment to do that

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then let this be your guide. With this podcast, that's your side. You'll be on your way to being qualified. It's the aspiring psychologist podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent. My name's Yana 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 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'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.

Thank you.