Connecting with Your Values as an Aspiring Psychologist

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. If you are watching on YouTube, you will have noticed that I am actually talking to the camera today. If you're not listening on YouTube, you could come along and see me talk through what we're going to be talking about today. But there is no pressure.

So if you are in the UK at the moment, you will have noticed there's lots of stuff in the media still about grief and people talking about a grief hangover. And that's something that people have been telling me about kind of personally and professionally, the effect of the media and the kind of more doer presentation and the songs and the music and the kind of reflective things that we've been subjected to really as part of living in the UK.

And yeah, that can feel tricky because what we know is that it doesn't always feel safe to be sad. But for me, I very much try to live by my values and my values as a psychologist. And I think that being able to tap into all of our range of emotions, including sadness, which is key, is very important to me, both personally and professionally. And so I'm always intrigued to know what your values are.

Today, we're going to be doing a values exercise for me, based on me using some Acceptance and Commitment Therapy values cards. So why don't you see how you get on with this exercise? In fact, if you'd like to come on and do an Aspiring Psychologist set of values episode, let me know, and I'll have you on as a guest. Let me know if you'd be up for that.

So, what we're going to do is we're firstly going to pick the goal I want to work on. And then I'm going to identify my core values out of a big set of values. So let's get on with that. So picking from the life domains. Can I show you that so that you can see it on camera?

We've got family, parenting, intimate partner, friends and social life, work and career, health, education and learning, environment, community, spirituality, personal growth and leisure. And I am going to, because you're talking about psychology, I'm going to talk about work and career in this.

So there's a massive, massive stack of values to work through. And what I've done is I've picked a section of them, a selection of them, and then I've whittled down the ones that are most important to me. So in no particular order, we have cooperation.

So to be cooperative and collaborative with others. We have contribution, to contribute, give, help, assist, share, or be generous. Creativity, to be creative or innovative at work or at play. We have trust, to be trustworthy, loyal, faithful, sincere, and reliable, and or be trusting of others. We have friendliness, to be warm, friendly, open, accepting agreeable, and helpful towards others.

We have industry, to be industrious, hardworking, committed, proactive, or dedicated. We have honesty, to be honest, truthful, and sincere with myself and others. Safety, to secure, protect, or ensure my own safety or that of others. Compassion, to act kindly towards myself and or others when in pain.

Courage, to be courageous or brave, to persist in the face of fear, uncertainty and threatening circumstances. Connection, to engage fully in whatever I'm doing, to give the activity or the person I'm with my full attention. And last but not least curiosity, to be curious, open-minded and interested, eager to explore, discover, and learn.

And out of those, I picked some top ones. So I whittled it down to curiosity, connection, courage, compassion, and friendliness, but that is too many, so... Oh, and trust. That's too many so I'm going to go for compassion, connection.

I'm going to have four. Technically, we're only supposed to have three, curiosity and courage. And the rest of them I'm going to say, "Thank you. You're very important to me, but my core values as a professional are those of curiosity, courage, connection and compassion." Now already, I'm thinking, "Oh no, I'm missing.

I missed those other bits." But I think these are my core values, I think. Okay. So the next part of this activity is living your values. So when I'm living by these values of compassion, connection, courage, and curiosity, how do I treat myself? How do I treat others? How do I treat my body? How do I treat my work and education? How do I treat my interests or hobbies and how do I treat the world around me? Okay. So when I treat myself, I very much practice being compassionate these days. And that was something that I didn't really have along my journey to being an aspiring psychologist.

And so very much in the upcoming Aspiring Psychologist book, I encourage you and the other people within that book encourage you to be self-compassionate. And I think that is absolutely key. And we have a forward by Dr. Chris Irons in the book as well, who is one of the very leading voices in self-compassion and compassion focused therapy right now.

So it's a real privilege to have him in the book. I'm very grateful for him saying yes. And I guess, that's one of my values as well is courage. I asked him if he would do it and he said, yes. And I guess, I have similar courage with my clients. So I have the courage to have difficult conversations. I have the curiosity to explore that in a way that doesn't feel intrusive, a way that still feels respectful. We have that connection. I have this almost palpable visceral sense of connection with my clients and with people I work with. And that's really, really important to me. So I treat others with compassion. I demonstrate my courage to myself and to them.

And I'm curious about myself as well. I'm quite reflective generally. So I speak to you today whilst I've been to a funeral. Part of the grief continues. I'm hoping that's going to be it for us for now, for the next foreseeable. But I'm always curious about that. I'm curious to hear about others' lives and to learn about other people.

I was just doing a live just before I started this podcast and I saw that my postman was back after a very long period of what I was assuming was sickness absence, but I actually went and stopped. Well, he rang the doorbell and my husband was out, but I went to go and answer the door and I stopped the live and then came back to it.

I was curious about him because I have a connection with him and I felt compassionate to him and I'm courageous as well. So I was like, "Oh, how are you? How have you been?" And he tells me a story. And I ended up singing in the song that my children had made up about him, about where he might be. It was basically his name, which I won't tell you, because it's not appropriate for me to do that.

And in all the verses a different country names where he might be. They're trying to make sense of where the postman had gone. And he very much enjoyed that. And he said he was going to try and add a few more verses before he next saw me about the countries that he could have been in but wasn't. So yeah, I just try to be curious with everybody really. And I'm curious at work.

Treating my interests or hobbies, I don't feel like I've got many at the moment. It's mainly writing books and that's kind of taking a lot of time, but I'm going to the theatre tomorrow and I'm also going the next week, which is entirely accidental scheduling. And I guess, am I going to be curious about that? I'm kind of curious because I'm going to be seeing something I don't really remember wanting to see.

And yet apparently I did agree to go and see it and that's Mamma Mia. I'm not hugely looking forward to it, it's also my wedding anniversary that it's on. And so I didn't even know I was, I didn't even remember I was going because I would've thought originally I'd said no to going out on my wedding anniversary day. So I'm curious about that, how's that going to be.

I think sometimes as my sister-in-law just said to me, "You've got low expectations and you're easily pleased." And I think that's going to be the case for this musical I'm going to. So that's living by my values. So how would I set goals in the next 24 hours, in the next week, in the next two weeks, month, year and decade?

Decade's a big one, isn't it? So I would want to continue to be connected with others. So even though I do lots of passive stuff, I will always do one-to-one client work because it's really important to me to have that sense of connection and to be able to help demonstrate my skills in compassion, curiosity, and courage.

So in the next decade, I would hope to still be seeing clients and holding onto those values that will very much keep me grounded and keep me focused. And I really liked that when I was working in the NHS, some of the people in more senior management had still kept a very small caseload because I guess, that sense of connection and sense of doing something, an industry was really important to them to be doing their core profession.

And I absolutely think that I would've been the same as well. So I probably would've been, if I'd progressed and progressed, I'd been the chief exec that still had a clinic and saw three clients a week because it was really important to me to do that. So yeah, I think I'm very much, I've got an idea of where my work is going.

I perhaps would like to do some more training in Compassion Focused Therapy and to continue with my supervisory relationships as well for connection and curiosity. So I'm going to whip through these because we haven't got a super amount of time.

So I'm not going to do action planning, which is where we look at the actions we take to achieve the goals. We're going to look at encouraging values and we're going to look at that after this short break, which I hope you enjoy. Enjoy the jingle, won't you?

*Jingles*

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*Jingles*

Welcome back. Let's think some more about my personal values as a qualified Clinical Psychologist. And this might well be a really useful exercise that you could do. And like I said in the first half, if you might be interested in coming on as a guest on the podcast to explore your values as an aspiring psychologist, then do let me know and let's see what we can sort out.

So if you didn't catch the first half, my values I've identified are compassion, connection, courage, and curiosity. So those are the ones that I have picked out from a large selection of values. So how will I encourage those values and who else would I like to encourage these values in?

Well, I'd very much like to encourage the values of compassion and courage and curiosity within my children. I think that's really important. I blobbed a river full of tears when I went to my eldest child's first merit assembly, which I think was in reception year. So he would've been four. And he was given his merit and within the merit award, they mentioned his kindness a number of times.

And then teachers came up to me afterwards to tell me what a kind little boy he was and how thoughtful he was to his peers in the class and to the staff as well. And that just really moved me actually. It was really, really wonderful. I really, really think that kindness is the most wonderful thing. But kindness isn't the same as letting people walk all over you.

It isn't. It's just that you know how nice it is to be connected with other people. And we can show people kindness without being a doormat, absolutely. And he's certainly nobody's doormat now that he's nine, but he's still very much reported as being a really nice member of the class that gets along with people and is a pleasure to teach.

Let's see what they say about his little brother. He's a little bit more of a handful. But how can I model these values? Well, it's really tricky actually. As a mommy, sometimes I try always to be compassionate, but I'm not always super patient. And maybe that's something for me to reflect upon.

y pre-grief levels? So before: 2017

And then I prompt again a couple of minutes later because we're trying to hustle out the door and I still get, "One sec." And it's like, mommy can ask you kind of calmly and quite nicely about three times, but after that, I'm not going to be quite so calm.

So I absolutely used to be really into gentle parenting, but I just found it wasn't really, I still would, I guess, get on board with the philosophies of gentle parenting, but it's all very, I found it very easy when I just had one child and it got trickier when I had two children. And as they both start to grow and want different things, I just found it a bit trickier.

So on a great day, I still say I'm a gentle parent. I would tend to hope to say that I was compassionate and connected most of the time. But when my youngest is trying to climb me whilst I'm trying to make breakfast, literally he climbs me like I'm a tree and he's a monkey. Shins up me in all sorts, cute to begin with, but when you're trying to butter toast and stuff, it's a bit annoying.

"Get down. We'll do this later. It's nice that you want to climb me. It's nice that you love me. Nice." He's trying to climb up to kiss me as well. He's very cute. Very cute. But yeah, I think I would like to think that I don't want the children to think I'm not connected to them or not compassionate towards them because I've got other things to do and I'm not as patient as I used to be.

And I think maybe curiosity is something I could do with a bit more for the kids. So they often will try and tell me things that I don't know about Roblox or about football. And it's not my specialist subject. It's not something I'm super, super interested in.

But that's certainly something I perhaps, now I've identified my values, will try to gently increase, try to broaden that dialogue a little bit more. How can I initiate or teach or instruct these values? Well, I think I do that really well in my one-to-one work, absolutely modelling that compassion and the connection and exploring the fact that it's safe to try courageous things in our sessions that you may not have done before.

And to be curious and see whether we can take that outside of the therapeutic space to try that. And I absolutely encourage these values in you as aspiring psychologists as well. And that's absolutely the case within the Aspiring Psychologist membership and the Clinical Psychologist Collective and the Aspiring Psychologist Collective, which is coming out very soon you'll be pleased to know.

We should be on track from the 3rd of October. So yeah, exciting times. There is much to do still, lots of editing to be done. But hopefully by the time you are listening to this podcast episode, the majority of it will be finished.

So yes, I may be laying flat in a dark room exhausted. But even then, I am being courageous in putting this book out there. Been curious what you guys will think to it. Connected because this is stuff you want, stuff that you're interested in. You've told me this is something you want to read.

So I'm listening to my audience and I'm being compassionate because it's absolutely very tricky to be the provider of mental health services in a mental health emergency, which it feels like we are currently in the UK as a result of many factors, but including the pandemic and the effects of that.

So yeah, I try to make sure that I am initiating and teaching those well. How can I create situations or environments or relationships where these values thrive? So I guess, yeah, I can continue to offer sessions to new clients, I can continue to offer supervision, coaching sessions and one-to-one therapy. Did I say that already?

I think I did. And I can continue to help my members in the membership to be really curious, to be really courageous, to connect with myself and with others and with the clients they're working for in a compassionate way. How can we reward these values when you see them in others?

So absolutely when I see people reaching out to their network and being connected, that's something really to celebrate. When I see they're doing things courageously, like being sad when they don't usually feel like it's safe to be sad, that takes real courage, but also compassion. We're absolutely checking into and tapping into sadness as being a really important part of human emotion and knowing that's safe for us to do okay.

So the final one we are going to do in this exercise is twisting values. And that's the idea that our minds can easily twist our values into rigid or unhelpful rules. So can we notice any of these classic twists, I should do this, I have to do that, I must do the other, this is the right thing to do, that is the wrong thing to do. If I don't do this, I'm bad.

And if I manage to do that, I'm good. Remember, there are no good or bad, right or wrong, should or musts in a value. And I think that's, yeah, for me, that probably comes up more with my parenting than it does with my professional life. I am compassionate.

I try to make sure that I am not over cramming my diary. There's only certain slots I have in my diary each week for one-to-one. And once they're full, they're full. And I've always worked that way since being in my first qualified role as well, which was a choice and partnership approach, a sort of CAPA service.

And so there was job plan so everything was very predictable. And that really set me up well for being boundaried with my time and being compassionate to myself and being clear about what was coming and what was next. And so I really, really like that way of working. And that's the way that I continue to do that.

And I might well record a podcast episode on job planning and how I use that because I absolutely still do that now. But also, sometimes the compassionate thing to do is to say no to things. So if you get invited to things and you don't want to do them, case in point, there must have been a good reason why I said yes to the musical.

... It might have been: 2018

It's just that she really, really loved the musical and really wanted to see it and nobody else fancied it with her. So it was really expensive, but because it was important to her and I didn't want her not to be able to see it I agreed to go. And we had a lovely time. And in the end we went for dinner as well beforehand. We had a really nice evening.

So I'm really pleased we did that. And it was, I was pleasantly surprised I really enjoyed it. It was really, really great performance. So sometimes we can so long as it's not harmful to us, we can do things that we're not super thrilled with and it might lead to a great outcome for us too. And of course, that's important with connection.

So I respect my sister-in-law, I love her. If you're listening, which you're not because you're not a psychologist, but maybe I'll make you listen to this one. We can be connected and we can respect others. And I can be courageous into going to things, see things I don't think I'm going to enjoy.

And my father-in-law really loves Mamma Mia and so maybe part of my reason for being courageous was to see him really enjoying himself. So that might well be part of my reason for saying yes to something that I wasn't actually that thrilled for now I think about it.

So yeah, I guess, with compassion being one of the values, there's less likely to be the shoulds and the have tos and the rights and the wrongs, and I'm bad if I don't, and I should and I must, and if I don't, then I'm an awful human. But also with that natural flex reflexivity and reflection that we get with curiosity, I try not to be too harsh on myself.

And one of my friends has got about three or four full-time jobs and I'm always trying to encourage her to maybe to do a little less, which is ironic for a lady who does as much as I do as well. But how have you found that? So there is more to the exercise. But yeah, I'm conscious of the time. But how have you found that? Did any of my values map onto yours or are there some missing for you?

Why don't you jot down your thoughts and why don't you come on over to the Aspiring Psychologist community on Facebook. Join us there and let's discuss this episode and what it might have evoked for you. During the DClinPsy application season, the membership is open with no need to wait on the waiting list. So if you do want to join us, please do so. It'll be a pleasure to have you there.

We have got our mindfulness course, which is running in September, October and November. It's an eight week programme. And if you dive in now, you can absolutely come and watch the first one on replay, but then you can come along to all other seven sessions live. And it's just going to be so wonderful.

People in the membership are really looking forward to it. And we can help make this your most compassionate, mindful application season yet. Please do like and subscribe both on the YouTube channel and on your favourite podcast outlet of choice. I am going to get myself a nice cup of tea. I don't often allow myself to drink green tea with lemon anymore.

Clipper is my favourite because caffeine doesn't always love me, but I'm feeling that after a day of sadness and reflection that what I'm going to do next is before going to get the children, I'm going to make myself a nice cup of green tea with lemon in my favourite mug.

I'm going to sit on the sofa and I'm going to mindfully enjoy that. So yeah, sometimes we can take small moments of self-care. Self-care is not always face packs and manicures, just to rather than squeeze an extra 30, 40 minutes into my day, like I've done with doing this podcast, just to allow ourselves just a little bit of decompression time to tell ourselves that we really are very special.

We're doing a good job. We deserve to be looked after. So how might there be some flex in your day to look after yourself. Hope as ever this has been useful for you. You'd be very pleased to know that with the birth of the new book, the Aspiring Psychologist Collective, that there might well be another jingle in the pipeline, which is always very exciting. I haven't even heard it yet.

So yeah, very much looking forward to sharing that with you too. But until then, look forward to this one. Enjoy this one and I'll see you very soon. You can catch our next episode from 6:00 AM on Monday. Thank you so much for being part of my world. This is episode 42. And if you've been here all throughout, thank you so much. It means the absolute world. Take care, guys. Bye.

*Jingles*