Changing Courses, Trauma, EMDR and non-executive roles in Psychology with Dr Rachel Lee

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Coming up on today's episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, I am joined by a qualified clinical psychologist, Dr. Rachel Lee. And we are discussing changing degrees. We are talking about trauma and E M D R treatment for trauma, and we are also thinking about what the heck executive and non-executive roles are, which you might well hear banded about either in business or in psychology. Hope you find it so useful. Do stay tuned right to the end to hear Dr. Rachel's top tips for reducing burnout.

Jingle Guy (: 00:41

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this, this on way. Psychologist Drent.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 01:10

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent. I'm a qualified clinical psychologist, so we are now underway with the application season for clinical psychology via the clearinghouse. I also know that by the time you listen to this episode that the applications for training as an educational psychologist will have opened. So they're due to open on Wednesday, the 13th of September at midday deadline for references to be submitted. Needs to be Tuesday the 14th of November at 5:00 PM and the application season closes for educational psychology trainee wannabes on Wednesday the 15th of November 5:00 PM So it's a slightly shorter application season than for clinical psychology, but I am aware that's fast coming up. So yeah, do get those dates in your diary if that's something that seems like it's going to be important to you in the near future. And that has just made me realise that I might well see if we can get somebody from the a e P to come and talk to us on the podcast.

(: 02:24

So I might well slip a little message into their inbox shortly so that we can learn a bit more about training as an educational psychologist. So today I'm joined by a guest and we are talking about so many brilliant things. It's a qualified clinical psychologist and I so enjoyed our chat. It's going to be a slightly longer episode. It's about 50 minutes long. Don't forget if you'd welcome any more advice or support during this time of your career, come and check out the Aspiring Psychologist community. And don't forget this, the Aspiring Psychologist membership available too. I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side. I hope you find this episode so useful, energising, and helpful. I want to welcome our guest along today, Dr. Rachel Lee, who's a clinical psychologist, associate non-executive director. We'll hear a bit more about what that is later. And also is the owner of North Star Psychology, which is a specialist trauma provision. Is that right, Rachel? I've got that right.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 03:32

Thank you Marianne. It's great to be here.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 03:34

Brilliant, thank you Rachel. So one of the reasons I wanted to invite you on the podcast is because you'd actually started one particular course at your undergraduate degree and then after a year you'd then change to psychology. And I think that's such an interesting conversation to have because sometimes people can feel you can get that kind of sunk cost fallacy that you think, oh, I better keep on doing what I'm doing because what will people say or what will it look like? Could you tell us a little bit about what you were doing and how you reached those decisions, if that's okay, Rachel?

Dr Rachel Lee (: 04:08

Absolutely. So I started at university doing engineering. It was a general engineering course and I was planning to specialise in chemical engineering in the fourth year. And this had been a goal of mine for probably at that point, about eight to nine years. I'd always wanted to be an engineer. I'm somebody who's really loves being outside and I liked doing things and I like being active. And from quite an early age, I decided that I wanted to go into engineering. I've always really liked the sciences, so I had to speak to the head mistress to choose the right, because I wanted to choose certain subjects and drop other subjects in order to pursue this career in engineering. And then I got to university and I did enjoy doing the engineering, but I found that it wasn't quite what I was looking for I think at that time.

(: 05:02

And I think what happens in those late years of adolescence is obviously our brains still changing, isn't it? And we are changing and we meet new people and I had a few friends who were doing psychology and it just sounded really interesting, became quite fascinated by why people do what they do, why people behave in certain ways. And at the same time, I think it was finding that engineering was just a bit too rigid for me. I was looking for something that was maybe a bit more flexible where I could have an opinion on things rather than just solving really very difficult equations. So yes, I completed the first year and then moved across to experimental psychology. I never looked back really. It's something that I'm really passionate about. I just find psychology fascinating. So perhaps I'm a bit of a nerd in that way that even if I go for a run, I'll tend to listen A psychology podcast, having ideas. And yeah, it's just been a really fascinating and interesting career.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 06:05

Lovely, thank you. And you made it sound quite effortlessly there. You made it sound that you just went from engineering to psychology. And I guess some people might be listening to this thinking, oh yeah, I am doing a degree that I just don't feel like it's for me, what is the best way to go about if you want to change courses, Rachel?

Dr Rachel Lee (: 06:26

Yeah, so it's interesting to think back on it Marianne, because obviously it's quite a while ago. But I think what it was was it was a slow recognition that this wasn't really making me happy anymore. Maybe I suppose now I think a lot about people's values when I see my clients and really focused on their values, what sort of person they want to be, what sort of life they want to have. And I suppose that wasn't really fitting with my values and perhaps my values had changed while I was at university. So I think it was a process of finding out about the course that I did want to do, thinking about the different options. So first of all, it was just this engineering isn't really what I want to do anymore. And then looking at those different options, speaking to people who were doing the course, speaking to the tutors, finding out what was possible, was it even possible to change?

(: 07:21

I was quite lucky because the engineering course was four years and the psychology course was three years. So in terms of, I mean back in our time we were funded, weren't we to do our university courses. It was different to now where you pay tuition fees. So those fees had already been agreed for the four years. So it was quite simple in terms of the sort of finances of it and just sort of had some conversations. I think if I remember perhaps I had to, do I have to write an essay? I think there was a little bit of an assessment process to check that I could move across to that course, but I'm going back quite a few years now.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 08:04

Lovely. I think I was actually the second or third cohort of having to pay tuition fees, but it was I think 3000 a year rather than the current sort of up to 9,000 a year. But I actually changed courses as well, but I changed courses within the first couple of weeks. So I was doing forensic science, but they'd sort of let me on with the proviso that I might find the chemistry tricky. I hadn't done chemistry a level and then I started and for what I thought was going to be all forensic science was actually one hour a week forensic science and the rest was chemistry. And I just was completely swamped and was used to finding things relatively easy and then suddenly found myself at the bottom of the stack. And I just thought, I can't do this. This is completely overwhelming. It's not for me.

(: 08:54

I don't even know why I've picked this course and then went back to psychology. But my experiences of changing was that the university, because they see you as a human hopefully, but they also see you as money. And once you are already there as a student, they want to retain you as a student. And so they will want to try and work with you to keep you as a student and so that they can, one, they have you as an alumni as well. And so I guess to anyone listening to this thinking, what will people say or will the university be awful to me and tell me off and say you should have picked better. And it's not like that. And actually I found that I then had two sets of friends throughout my cohort because I also had my forensic science friends that I'd met for a couple of weeks. And then it was really nice, it enriched and added to my experience rather rather than detracted from it.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 09:52

It was a little bit similar for me because if you like in moving to psychology, I went into the year below the year that I'd started off in. So I'd got friends who were in my original year and then new friends in the year below that year. And also Marianne also found the university to be really supportive because I think they want their students to be happy, they want them to do courses that they will succeed in. So were very supportive in terms of that move.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 10:27

And actually as I reflect upon that now, one of my very closest friends on my cohort, there was four of us that were studying psychology that were thick as thieves. She had originally done sociology the year before and had decided to change. So she had exactly what you had. She had her older peers who were her own age, and then she had actually everyone, all of my friends were a year older than me. They'd all taken either a gap year or changed courses. But so she had that experience of still doing some of the year two stuff whilst we were doing year one stuff. And it worked really well. And then we had more friends to play with. It was quite good. It was quite good. So what happened next? So once you graduated, let's skip a little bit of your education. Did you already know you wanted to be a clinical psychologist at that stage?

Dr Rachel Lee (: 11:18

I think I was certainly really interested in mental health. That was sort of my favourite module that we'd done on the course at university. But I actually left and I moved back to Leeds and I had a job as a research assistant in a rheumatology and rehabilitation research unit. So it's doing quite mathematical research, looking at outcome measures and how we analyse data and things, which perhaps sounds quite dull, but it was a fantastic job because it had so much travel involved. So I was part of a European study and we went to Australia and I went to Chicago when I went to Copenhagen and different places like that. So that was really interesting. And then I think it was in doing that, I started to think actually I really do want to be a clinical psychologist. And I applied for a research job down at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College in London that was working in the eating disorders research unit. So I moved down there and that was really with a view to then sort of apply in for clinical psychology courses.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 12:32

And then you ended up getting on in London, is that right?

Dr Rachel Lee (: 12:36

Yeah, yeah. So the first year I wasn't successful and had a bit of a dilemma as to whether to continue or not. And then I was successful in the second year and I was really pleased to get on the course.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 12:50

Brilliant. And I think sometimes it's not uncommon for people to have that sort of soul searching. Is this for me? I've been told no, perhaps they know something about me that I don't know, perhaps this isn't the career for me. And I think in the days that you were applying, certainly even when I was applying, you'd get a little paper form of feedback about why you were not being shortlisted for interview. And I kind of wish they'd do that more now because it just being told no when you've spent months on a form, that's really hard because actually in terms of knowing where to start next year, I was told I needed to have more varied clinical experience. So initially more varied clinical experience, more relevant experience and another box. And the next year I applied, I think it just said more varied clinical experience. So then I thought, right, well I'm going to get a job in a different clinical population then. And so I did, I ended up working in a charred and adolescent secure unit, but these days it just can feel like I don't know why I've been turned down. And so I don't know what to do that's different. And that's really hard. You need constructive feedback, don't we? And

Dr Rachel Lee (: 14:09

I remember that Marianne from the year when I wasn't successful that actually at that point, I dunno if it's changed, but at that point they didn't offer any feedback whatsoever in terms of not getting on. And it was really difficult to know where you need to make some changes and adjustments. And I think for me, in terms of the soul searching about whether I wanted to do it, it wasn't necessarily that I felt that maybe I wasn't the right person for it. It was more that actually think I was about would've been, let's see, it'd been about 26 and I was living in a shared house with other people who've sort of had jobs in the city. We on this sort of clear trajectory and doing very well I suppose financially. And I was looking at going onto a three year course that was going to obviously take some time before I was going to have a full-time job.

(: 15:12

And it was more sort of starting to plan that out and to think about how does this fit with other things that I might want to do in my life. But like I said, I'm really pleased that I stuck with it and it's been the best decision I've ever made. I couldn't be happier with the career that I've chosen. So yeah, it's worth continuing, isn't it? You have to sort just dig in and keep going and hold onto your values to what's important to you so that you can keep going through those sort of ups and downs. But I do agree with you. So just coming back to that point, I do agree with you that it'd be really helpful to give people feedback. And for me it doesn't quite fit with us being psychologists because we know that for people to learn, we need some feedback, we need some feedback from our environment, from the people around us. If we want to change, then we need to have some information about what's not working, why haven't I got on the course this time you're saying, oh, perhaps I need some more clinical experience, or perhaps I need some more research experience or maybe it's the way that I'd described things in my form. Just really helpful to get a little bit of feedback.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 16:28

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And actually I realise I've just remembered that another point in the first application I did was that academic skills need strengthening. So at that point I started a master's, so you can immediately take action to make it different next year, but it feels like everybody's just having a shot in the dark. I dunno why I wasn't shortlisted, I dunno what to change. But yeah, it's whether we can think about trying to drip feed anything in systemically. So I had a conversation recently with somebody as part of the membership that's done a lot of the stuff for contextual admissions, which has come about over the last few years, which is thinking about whether someone has been in the care population at any point and whether they had preschool meals, those sort of things. So that we are really looking at the demographics.

(: 17:14

And so the way it was explained to me was that, you may know this already, Rachel, but the way it was explained to me was that if they're trying to decide between offering somebody an interview or a place and they score the same, then the person with the highest contextual admission score will then be offered that to try to make it as fair and equitable as possible. So that's my understanding of how those, that information is used. So in case people are feeling like I don't really want to fill in that information, it can be useful for you to be as honest as you feel comfortable to be. So I certainly found that very interesting.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 17:54

I think it's really interesting and incredibly valuable, isn't it? Because no, just because people with those contextual factors have had many more hurdles to overcome. And it's great to see that being taken into account. And we need to widen, don't we need to widen the types of people who are working in psychology? We need people from different backgrounds and with different life experiences and lived experiences to help us grow the profession and be able to work with people in different ways reflecting the diversity of our service users.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 18:36

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I was reflecting on what you're saying about you loving your job and loving your career and yeah, I absolutely feel the same way myself. And when you meet somebody that's even considering a psychology career, I feel like they're just lit up in a different way. And if we can get more and more people feeling that way about their profession, about their work, about the work they do, so we are speaking as I'm fresh back from Galway, I've got back from Galway doing a keynote speech for the Irish Psychological Society over the weekend. And I was standing on that stage just thinking, gosh, this is amazing. I am here talking to all these aspiring psychologists because I did a psychology degree and I couldn't be here doing this job and connecting with people as I was on the stage. But also all of the clients we work with and we work in quite similar areas, so I work in trauma as well, but it's the biggest privilege helping someone bearing witness to some of the most difficult times of their lives, real raw pain and helping them through that and then out the other side to be able to have a different experience of life.

(: 19:56

It's never lost on me, it's never not humbling. It's an incredible role that we do and it's all because we did psychology at uni.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 20:06

Yeah, absolutely. Marianne, I had the most incredible week last week and a couple of clients that I've been working with for a while came to the end of their therapy and the life changes just absolutely incredible. One of my clients in particular who I've been seeing online was really interested, I wish I'd had to compare how she presented at the start of therapy and how she presented at the end. We sort of reflected on this, just this sense of lightness, the joy that was coming out of her. So she just looked so radiant, this was the end of therapy. She looked radiant, she'd made some big decisions about her job, she'd got some big plans for the next year at the start of therapy. She was really struggling with these really very distressing experiences that she'd had in her life, some in childhood, couple in adulthood that were really significant and had really had incredible consequences for her and to do that work.

(: 21:16

It's been so painful at times, but she really committed to it. And then to see her sort of beaming in the final couple of sessions and telling me about all these changes that she's made, it was incredible. So yes, it feels like the best job in the world, doesn't it? When you're helping somebody really heal and recover from those awful life experiences so that it can thrive and flourish and live the life that they want to live. Because I always think living with trauma symptoms, it's like you're going through life with this really heavy backpack on and a good trauma therapy. When it's successful, it's taking that backpack off, isn't it? And suddenly life feels lighter. You can see it in people in how they carry themselves in the facial expressions, but also in the decisions and choices that they make. So yeah, it's wonderful. I love the work.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 22:12

Absolutely. One client described it to me as if literally when you can have quite rapid sudden shifts sometimes with E M D R within a session and a client said to me, well, I feel like I've been carrying around some really heavy shopping bags for seven years. I've just put 'em down for the first time. And it's like, gosh, that is so powerful, so powerful. But like you say, you just see the changes in people's faces, the way they hold their facial expressions, even the way that their face might be lined or furrowed or creased and they look lighter, they look happier, just they're easier to be around. I think they attract different people to them as well because they're not giving out those takeaway messages. And I dunno whether you find this, but with all of the client work that I do, I'll be like, okay, let's drop our shoulders, let's take a breath.

(: 23:16

And when my clients start to begin to get better, they're like, do you know what happened? I was in an office with my colleague and I started to realise what they needed. So I said, alright, just drop your shoulders, just take a breath, just take a moment. And they start to teach the skills that I've taught to them because they start to notice distress in others now that they're able to notice distress in themselves. And I think it's the biggest gift. It makes you realise, well, you are going to be okay because you've internalised these changes, you're going to be alright because it's not, I think sometimes clients have come to me for treatment because they've like, well, what I've done with this type of approach before hasn't worked. I'm looking for something that almost changes me on a cellular level so that I've dealt with it, I've done and I can move forward. And I think certainly with the EMDR and the mixture of compassion focused therapy, that's what we do. I'm sort of hoping with people, I hope I never see you again in the nicest possible way because I hope that you begin to be your own therapist and obviously if you need me, I'm here. But that's my hope for people and I'm confident it's yours too, Rachel.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 24:39

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is something that's absolutely fascinating about E M D R, isn't it? Somehow it reaches the parts that I think other therapies often aren't able to reach. And I think that's how I became so interested in it. After I'd done my training in E M D R, I used, it was somebody that I'd been doing some trauma-focused C B T with and we'd addressed the trauma symptoms. She wasn't having any flashbacks or nightmares anymore, but she was still struggling to do some of the things she wanted to do. And I'd been week after week, setting up behavioural experiments with her trying to help her with this, and we just couldn't get any shift. She was feeling scared as she walked down a road. And then having learned, E M D R came back and said, do you want to try this?

(: 25:26

Should we just see if there's anything that's unresolved about that trauma memory? So we did one processing session and everything just shifted after that point. I seemed to remember that. Yeah, the next session, she came back, she'd been able to do this stuff, she'd not been able to do the stuff I've been trying to chip away at for about six sessions, I think. And yeah, changed her job looked completely different. It was just fascinating. So it was my first experience of using E M D R. So you can imagine I was really curious and just wanted to use it more and more. And now it's the majority of the work that I do. And last week I was in London, well not last week, the week before in London to do the consultancy training, training. And yeah, just love learning about it. So yeah, it's a really powerful therapy and I think it can take people a bit by surprise.

(: 26:20

So last week a client came back and I'd sort of said, oh, how did you feel across the week? We'd done some work on a different memory the week before. And she said, gosh, it's just been remarkable that memory's been bothering me for 40 years. And we'd done about 30 minutes of processing on it. And she said, it's just not bothering me anymore. And she'd actually been trying test it out, whether it did still cause a problem. So I think it's just fascinating and great to see those shifts and feel like you can really help that person's brain to do the healing. It's not been able to do. Because I think that's the other thing I really love about E M D R is the way that as therapists, we sit back and we let the person's brain go down the avenues and the routes that it needs to go to find that information that's going to help healing. I think that's really valuable.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 27:19

It really is. And I think when I've realised we've sort of fallen into a cardinal psychology sin and we've not explained what E EM D R is, so we should probably, because if people listen to this all over the world, sometimes they say English might not be their first language as well. So I'm imagining they going E M D what? So E M D R, if we just explain, is eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing very catchy name E M D R. And it was developed by a lady called Shapiro who has since passed away. Could you tell us in a brief sort of nutshell what E M D R is, Rachel?

Dr Rachel Lee (: 27:59

Yeah, sure. So E M D R is a therapy that was developed for people with post-traumatic stress disorder and then since has been expanded to help people with lots of different difficulties. So we can use it to help people with pain, we can use it to help people with addictions or urges to engage in certain behaviours. We can use it with low self-esteem. So when people have got negative self beliefs, things like I'm not good enough or we can use it with all sorts of different difficulties, anxiety as well. So there's a particular flash forward protocol that can be really helpful when people have got a lot of anticipatory anxiety. So it's a therapy that is, it's a very structured therapy, although of course we want to use it in a flexible and creative way with our clients. And it has a number of phases, I guess broadly it works on the past, the present and the future.

(: 28:59

So we're helping people with their past memories, with their current triggers and we're helping people to plan and prepare and cope with future challenging situations. And it's based on the adaptive information processing model, which in a nutshell says that we all have a capacity to heal. So just as much as our physical in terms of physical health, we can make a physical recovery. The body knows how to heal a physical wound. So if you cut your arm, unless there's some dirt or some sort of something else in there, your body will heal naturally. So if there is some grit, if you've fallen off your bike, I know you had a fall on your bike, Marianne, and I'm sure we've all sort of had that experience and you get some grit in a cut, then you need to clean it, you need to remove the grit to clean it, and then the body heals itself.

(: 29:54

And E M D R is based on an idea that much as with physical difficulties, the body will heal itself. We can also heal from psychological difficulties or from disturbing events that have happened in our life and that are continuing to impact on us in the present. And the way that we do that is by creating the conditions to help that person access the memories of these difficult times whilst also being very mindful that they're in the present and then to help the brain to do this processing that it's not been able to do before. So I always think that with E M D R, it's, I always think the brain's a little bit like a factory and it turns an experience into a stable long-term memory. But when we have very disturbing things happen to us, I think particularly things, experiences where we feel helpless or powerless or in sort of really intense threat, then that factory shuts down and instead of the experience being turned into a memory, it's stored in its sort of raw form.

(: 30:58

And what's fascinating is that when you look at neuroimaging studies, we can actually see that before and after E M D R, the memory is in a different place. So the neuroimaging studies tell us that the memories in the limbic system, which is the part of the brain that's responsible for processing threat and emotions, and afterwards the memory is in the neocortex, which is the part of the brain where we do all our complex thinking, our reasoning, our decision-making. So essentially I think what happens is in those disturbing experiences, we switch into survival mode and that's exactly what we want our brains to tell us to do. The survival mode is there for a reason to help us to survive, to exist, to get through this difficult situation. So I think it's because we're in that survival mode that processing isn't happening. Now of course, sometimes the processing happens after the experience, but sometimes it doesn't or it doesn't happen fully.

(: 31:58

So what E M D R does is it provides an opportunity for the brain to do the healing that it's not being able to do at the time, and we can use it with very disturbing memories. So what you might think of as sort of classic trauma, let's say an accident or an assault, something like that. And we can also use it with experiences that are maybe a bit lower on that sort of disturbance scale, but have still had a significant impact on us. So I'm thinking about experiences maybe being humiliated or bullied or just having a difficult time at times in our lives that might have led us to form some unhelpful conclusions about ourselves that continue to bother us or that might still mean that when we're in certain situations, our emotions get triggered in a way that they, sorry, and we feel the feelings that we felt back at the time.

(: 32:56

So sometimes, whereas in I think in P T S D, it's very obvious that situation's triggering that sort of trauma response. Sometimes what can happen is that people just feel the feelings that they've had earlier in their life. And I think that can be really confusing because sometimes it might be hard to make that link. But when we look into it, when we're doing our sort of history taking and we're talking to people about their experiences, we can often make that link. And I think that can be one of the really powerful things in therapy is to be able to link current experiences to past experiences and what's happened in that person's life. It's a way of making sense of it, isn't it? And often I think, no wonder you feel that way in this situation because actually that's very similar to this thing that happened to you in the past.

(: 33:48

So where E M D R comes in is we can then go into the past and process any parts of that experience that are sort of carrying that emotional charge and so that can then make things feel really different. And I think what's fascinating about E M D R is when you've processed the memory, people will say, it just feels so different now. It's like, so normally before E M D R people are bringing that memory to mind. They can feel it in their bodies, there's an emotional charge and afterwards it's like all their other memories. Of course, if it's an upsetting experience, it will still feel like a sad memory, but the person's not feeling it sort of in their body and that paves the way for them to be able to respond differently in the present. Sorry, I didn't give you the sort of nutshell answer. It is quite hard to bring it down.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 34:40

It was beautiful. Thank you so much. And actually you've raised a really important point there that actually we don't need to be hierarchical about the trauma. It doesn't need to feel like it's bad enough. And it was making me think that actually I had E M D R for something, which to lots of people might have felt like nothing. So when my little boy, my second child, so anyone with two children will relate to this, I wanted to make sure that I was still taking loads of photos and loads of videos of the second child. And I am the second child myself, so there's probably about two photos of me for about the first three years of my life. So I thought I'm not going to have that happen. So I made sure that I bought a new phone. So my little boy was born just after my birthday a few days after my birthday.

(: 35:23

So for my birthday I asked for a brand new iPhone so I could make sure there was plenty of room on there for taking loads of photos and loads of videos of the two of them together, of me, of just of his earliest moments. Because it was a brand new phone, I thought it's going to be absolutely fine. So I remember sitting on my bed probably a couple of months into his birth and it flashed up that my iCloud memory was full, did I want to buy some additional storage? And I looked at it and it said it was going to be 79 p a month. And I thought, you know what? It's a brand new phone, it's going to be fine. And really because on maternity leave, I probably could do with saving some money. So I remember putting it down on my bed and thinking, no, I'm not going to do that.

(: 36:07

What I couldn't have known was that my phone would then corrupt a short time after that and I lost basically everything on my phone. And so I'd lost all of those early memories and I found it really, really hard to forgive myself and it was really distressing me, but it sounds silly, but it made me feel like I was a terrible mother. And so I had to work through that. And even now as I talk about that, it makes me feel a bit sad, but I can do it in a way that I've been able to just get on with my life and just think, you know what? You didn't know. The technology let you down. It should have worked. It should have been fine. It wasn't your fault. You don't love your child any less. You tried you, it is what it is. And I was able to then get photos from other people that had taken photos of him as well. So it just makes it lay flat and it helps me assimilate that into your life.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 37:01

And I think that's a really great point, Marianne, and really connected with that experience there as a mom. Just so awful. Yeah, so it's a great example of the whole variety of different experiences that we could use the E M D R for. And also you highlighted that it helps you to assimilate the information. And that's how I think about E M D R as well, that if you think about all your different experiences in life as dots on a page and also all your knowledge, different perspectives and ideas and learnings that you've had in life as dots on a page. And I think what happens with these kind of disturbing memories is that they're not connected to all to as many dots as would be helpful. And E M D R helps to create some new connections. So I guess you would've had that knowledge that you are a good mom and some knowledge that phones sometimes corrupt and phones that we can't predict everything that's going and some knowledge that we can't predict everything. And then you've got this memory, haven't you, of like, oh my gosh, I've lost all my photographs and those things weren't connecting. So I imagine your E M D R helped those connections to be created.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 38:17

Yeah, absolutely. Exactly that. Exactly that. And it's fine. It's all right. It's not ideal. If I could go back and choose to either not have the phone corrupt or to have just to pay 79p a month, I would've done that. But hindsight is 20:20 vision as they say. So let's just have a little bit of a think before we finish about what a non-executive director is and why they're important.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 38:47

Oh, great. So this is a really new role for me, Marianne. And it kind of came a little bit out of the blue if I'm honest about it. It's not something that I really had thought about doing before or really even I guess sort of understood too much about. But I was approached about this role and the more that I looked into it, the more that I thought it sounded really interesting. And also it came at just the right time for me. So I left the N H S sort of October November time last year, and then I've been very focused on developing my psychology service, my trauma service. But I was also very, I found it really hard to leave the N H s. I've always sort of held the N H S close in my heart. I think I've worked there for over 20 years and always saw myself as somebody who worked in the N H S.

(: 39:46

I've never intended to leave, but it was the right decision to make. And I've been really happy since I left. But I think I still felt that I wanted to do something to contribute maybe to the N H SS or to another organisation in some way. So whilst over the last few months, I'd been sorry. So maybe after leaving the N H S I did some work with a couple of charities because I felt like still wanted to give back, if you like. So a non-executive director sits on the board of an organisation. So I'm an associate non-executive director with a large N H S trust. And so we sit on the board, so you've got the executive directors, these are the people who are paid by the organisation. So for example, you've got obviously chief executive, but also director of, well they're called people offices now, but essentially what was the director of human resources and you have a strategy director and so on.

(: 40:50

So different directors and then the non-exec directors are people from outside of the organisation. So these are people who are on the board to offer, I suppose, an objective point of view and to come with some curiosity and to ask some questions in the board meetings to check that things have maybe been looked at from different angles to be curious about what's happening in the organisation. So as I see it as non-executive directors, we are there to really support the board to help the organisation to deliver the best service that it can to do that in the safest way possible. And I suppose that's by sometimes being a bit of a critical friend. My role as an associate non-executive director, so this is a new role within the trust. They've not had an associate non-executive director before and is there's been a big recruitment drive across the N H Ss to recruit associate non-executive directors.

(: 41:56

So these are new roles. And might be interesting to some of your listeners because the trust that I'm doing this in, they were really keen to have a clinician on their board recognising that this is a mental health trust and that it would be helpful to have a perspective, a clinician's perspective. So I found this very interesting because having worked in the trust for 15 years, having LED services and supervised colleagues, and obviously seeing a lot of service users as well, I felt that I was in a good position to perhaps be an advocate for staff members as well as for service users. And I suppose as well, since I've left the N H S, then growing my own business gives me that other perspective as well on strategy and what's important in terms of growing a business and being more aware of how things work in the corporate world, I suppose is what I'm thinking there.

(: 42:58

So the associate non-executive director role I see as a little bit like an apprenticeship to becoming a non-executive director. So the N H S has created these roles so that people who've not had experience of being a non-executive director can move into those positions. So this is a two year post, it is a paid post. We were talking earlier, weren't we, about how it's a bit similar to being a school governor, but the benefit here is that you are being paid. It's a role that I do sort of two to three days a month. So we have a board meeting once a month, that's a full day. And it's really very interesting to go back into an organisation at such a different level to understand all the different sort of challenges and opportunities within the organisation. To see the sort of decisions that have been made to work with a whole different array of people as well is really fascinating.

(: 43:56

And so we have the board meeting and then we have the non-executive directors meetings. And then I'm just in the process of joining a couple of committees as well. So I'm going to be on the collaborative committee, but I'm also spending some time going to each of the different committees in the trust so that I can really understand how everything works. So yes, so far I've found it very interesting and the team's been very welcoming. So it feels very different to doing the clinical work. And I think that's something for me is thinking about you need to be in quite a different mindset when you go into the board meeting or rather to recognise that you're not going in as a psychologist, you're going in as a associate non-executive director. Although of course I'm there to be a psychologist as well. So it's sort of, yeah, I think I'm finding my way really to think about how those two things come together.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 45:00

And I think it sounds like such fascinating work, but also it's further demonstrating the real flexibility and diversity of our career and where it can take us. And that you never know when something really energising and really exciting might crop up for you that you can get involved with and that you continue to grow, you continue to learn, you continue to change. And I think it's just wonderful. I think if anyone's listening to this feeling like they're stagnating in their career, there's opportunities everywhere. Like you said, I did do school governance for a couple of years and I learned so much there about strategy, about being strategic, about how to use constructive feedback and criticism. There's so many ways that we can liven up our skills and help us to just feel differently, but also be useful and beneficial to services. So thank you. That's really interesting. I think even when I was working as an assistant and when I was working as qualified, I didn't really get what directors did. So I think that's really useful to have a little bit of a fly on the wall insight into that. So thank you. Just before we finish, Rachel, could you give our listeners any advice for trying to reduce burnout on their journey in aspiring psychology world?

Dr Rachel Lee (: 46:26

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's natural to feel some feelings of burnout at different times in our careers. And one of the things that I've found really helpful and that would encourage 'em to do is to really develop that other part of themselves that's not the psychologist, if you like. So it takes me back to a time when I was working in an HSS service and I think struggling a bit. And I got really into rock climbing into going to, there's a great climbing indoor climbing world in Leeds, and I was living in central Leeds at the time, and I would go to this climbing wall most nights after work. I loved it. I loved sort of solving the problems and the adrenaline of it, and that really created a brilliant way for me to switch off. If you think about mindfulness, it's really about being present, isn't it?

(: 47:19

So when you're on the climbing wall, you have to be present or you're probably going to fall off, or you're not going to manage to make the next move or to solve the problem. But also it's about finding something that really fits with your values, I think. So thinking so that work doesn't become everything that you're doing. And I think it can be easy for that to happen when we're really committed. And of course most healthcare professionals are aren't, we really want to do a good job and we'll be willing often to put in those extra hours and making some time to do some stuff that is important to you. And I would say it also gives you that mental break from psychology. So I think doing something that feels really different fits with your value. Maybe you're stretching yourself a little bit. So something where you can really get absorbed in that activity, get engaged in it, be taking yourself down another path. So that's one thing. And then the other thing that I do now, it's not so easy to go climbing with two children and all their activities, spend a lot of time driving around in cars and sitting in car parks. But the other thing that I do now is I just try and get into nature as much as I can, and I find that that's really soothing. So getting out for a run or a walk, going to beautiful places and just really enjoying that time. So yeah, they'd be my two go-to self-care strategies I

Dr Marianne Trent (: 48:55

Suppose. Such brilliant advice, and thank you so much. And thank you for spending your time talking to us about such important areas. So I've really taken so much from our conversation and I know our listeners will as well. So how can our listeners learn more about you and connect with you and learn more about your work if they want to? Rachel, where's the best place to find you?

Dr Rachel Lee (: 49:17

So I'm on all the usual social media platforms. I've got a Twitter feed, which is Dr. Rachel Lee on Instagram. I'm North star psychology on LinkedIn, I'll be Dr. Rachel Lee, and I have a website, northstar psychology.co.uk. I love connecting with other psychologists. It's just great to share psychological ideas and knowledge and hear other people's perspectives. A recent paper that we've published, which is all about using photographs in therapy, and I think this might be interesting to your listeners because this is an area that I got really I excited about when I sat on a steering committee for a photo voice research project. And the participants who taken part in this, sorry, people who've taken part in this research, sorry. So the Photovoice research uses photographs to help people discuss things that are important to them. This research was looking at barriers to improving physical health for people with severe mental illness and what the participants had done each week they would be given a theme and they'd go and take some photographs and they'd bring them back and talk about this in the focus group.

(: 50:29

The purpose of that research was to pull out the themes, but what we found out was that the participants actually really loved taking the photographs and they really loved sharing photographs. And that really struck a chord with me as someone who also likes to share photographs as a means of communication, if you like. And so yeah, we've just published this paper, which was Dr. Jamie Barrow's doctoral thesis research. I was a co-supervisor together with Dr. Kira Masterson, who's the director of the Leeds Clinical Psychology course. And so yeah, we were looking at people's experience of using and sharing photographs in a dialectical behaviour therapy informed group. So the link to that is on my Twitter feed if anybody's interested, but just trying to share these ideas that we can use photographs in therapy, in mental health interventions. People are taking photographs anyway, aren't there? People are sharing photographs with people all the time on WhatsApp. So let's see if we can bring this into therapy. And there's lots of different ways to do that. So within our paper, we looked at the themes, the pros and cons of doing that.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 51:40

That sounds so interesting. And it's just part of being a modern human. When I'm doing personal training sessions with my personal trainer or I'm with a friend or something, you often reach for your phone, don't you, to demonstrate and show people something. And I think it's time that was in therapy. It's not something that I've ever really thought about, but really, really important stuff. So if you share the link with me, I'll put that in the show notes as well. And obviously I'll link to all your socials in show notes as well. But I love that you are also demonstrating that you can still become involved in research even when you are qualified, even when you're in private practise as well. So thank you for highlighting that to us. It's such a pleasure to speak with you and yeah, wishing you well with the rest of your day and the rest of the roles that you are engaged in at the moment.

Dr Rachel Lee (: 52:34

Thank you, Marianne. It's been a pleasure to speak

Dr Marianne Trent (: 52:37

To you. Oh, what an absolute pleasure to speak with Dr. Rachel. I hope you found that as helpful as I did when I was chatting with her live off camera. I did ask, so do they give you get a buffet? Do you get some lunch when you do your executive and non-executive meetings? No. No is the answer. And you do know that I do love a buffet. So yes. When I was in Galway recently for my keynote speech for the Irish Psychological Society, I was just dashing off after the meeting and the people that had booked me who were lovely as I was leaving, they were eating some fruit and they were like, can we get you anything? Can we get you anything? Do you want a banana? We've got lots of bananas. And I was like, no, I'm okay. Thank you. I'm not a banana fan.

(: 53:29

One of the few fruits I don't really eat. I can manage it with some ice cream or some custard, but yeah, I couldn't eat a whole banana by itself. So yeah, you learn random bits of information about me in this podcast. That's one. Anyway, hope you found it so useful. If you've got any ideas for future podcast episodes, don't be a stranger. Do let me know. Come and hang out. Come and connect with me on socials. I am Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. If you are watching this on YouTube, please do like, subscribe and comment. Do all those things, share your favourite episode with your friends on socials, and I'll look forward to catching up with you for our next episode of the podcast, which will be along from 6:00 AM on Monday. And yeah, be kind to yourselves. Take care.

Jingle Guy (: 54:29

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this podcast, you'll.