Is resilience as an aspiring psychologist always a good thing?

Marianne (: 00:28

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Today, we are going to be thinking about resilience. Now, resilience is a buzzword in psychology and it is certainly something that crops up really regularly in the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. And yeah, when I was reading that, I was thinking, well, that's a good thing, isn't it, how resilient we are? But actually, as I reflect upon that now, when a profession is difficult to get into, then it's always going to feel like it's the most resilient people that get through, because if you were willing to give it one shot and you didn't get on and then you didn't apply again, then actually what we know is that typically it takes more than one application to get on. So in terms of your resilience and your ability to deal with rejection or things not out, then if you went into that with your eyes open expecting that realistically you may not get on at your first attempt, then it's that resilience that's going to make it more likely that you'll get your end goal in the end.

Marianne (: 01:37

So, of course it makes sense that more of us are going to cross the finish line if we feel like we have more skills in resilience. I like to jog/run. I don't think what I do could be classed as running, really, but I've got my trainers on and I go for a run/shuffle. I'm never going to be Mo Farah. I'm never going to be a marathon-length Runner. Although when I was in my early 20s, I did see a runner go past me when I was in the car and I thought, "Oh, looks fun. I could probably run the New York Marathon. That'd be fun. That'd be a good thing to do." And so I told my partner at the time and he was really excited, really on board at that, like really thought that was a cool thing to want to do.

Marianne (: 02:26

Then I was all excited, looking at running gear, and like, "Oh, it's going to be amazing when I'm in New York running the marathon." And I thought, "Well, I better just go for like a little test run to start me off with my running career before I start applying for the New York Marathon." I hated it. I was rubbish at it, hated it, cursed every step. And then didn't run again probably for another 10 years. So yeah. You know? That said, everything about my enthusiasm for ideas, but nothing about my resilience as a runner, but of course my resilience as a psychologist is a little different. Yeah. Let's pick our goals wisely and mindfully. It's absolutely okay to want to be an aspiring psychologist, but it probably is going to be more likely that you get there if you have followed the route that makes it more likely.

Marianne (: 03:24

It's likely that you're going to need to do a psychology degree or a conversion to gain new access to whatever next step you need. So, yeah. I guess the equivalent of me running is don't shoot for the New York Marathon if you are yet to shuffle around the block. You know? I was listening to will Smith's book the other day and he talks about focusing on each brick, brick by brick, rather than the whole wall that needs to be built, and I thought that was a really powerful idea.

Marianne (: 04:03

I think what we need to be careful about as a profession is that we are not using the term resilience to be able to treat people badly as they are becoming aspiring psychologists. We are not expecting to people to take and take and take and take and take because they have this end goal in mind. To further the marathon analogy, we shouldn't just be having our feet coated in blisters and just expected to carry on. You know? When we get blisters is a sign of friction and it's a sign of something not fitting well, so if you are finding that your body is covered in blisters from your experience within the psychology field, then there's a sign there that's not really a good fit. I don't want to push you until you break. You know? So, resilience is having some movement and some ability to be flexible and adaptive, but it's not about making you concrete. Because when we are concrete, we will bend too far and we will snap and we will break, and that's not what I want for you as an aspiring psychologist.

Marianne (: 05:20

I don't want you to be suffering on your journey to being an aspiring psychologist. I want you to feel like you are operating from the comfortable area of your window of tolerance, that you're not being completely burned out from this process. And so, if you feel like this is quite painful for you to listen to, then it might be a sign that there's some tweaks that ought to be made, some difficult conversations to think about having, because you ought not to be covered in blisters.

Marianne (: 05:52

What we know is that working with our population, as we do, can be difficult and can be challenging. You know, there can be transference and counter transference. What we know from working with people in from the police service, for example, maybe in non kind of beat roles, is that they are being regularly exposed to trauma and they're not able to do anything that transforms that within them.

Marianne (: 06:26

We sometimes see this in people who are just doing screening of referrals is that they are soaking up all this kind of misery, but not getting the child wants to make a difference to that client. I largely used to do the assessments in my previous NHS service, but didn't often do loads of the referral screening. So whenever I read a referral it's because I was about to see them, and it was useful then for me to be able to discharge that distress in some way, because I then had the opportunity to actually see the client to help them through that distress. But when we're able to transform that, it transforms it for us as well, so that it doesn't sit with us and we don't take it home. That can be really useful thinking about how much client staff might be around for you in your world and how you can use that or transform that.

Marianne (: 07:29

It might be that it's useful to have discussions around this in supervision or to have some sort of theory and practice groups where you talk about the impact of your work on yourselves in a safe place with no judgment. So that we make sure that it is true resilience that we are building into you rather than just expecting you to put up with terrible treatment. What we don't want on is for you to feel burned out, because what we know is that burnout leads to periods of sick leave and it's not good for you, and it's not good for the services we work in, and it's not good for the clients that we serve. And so, making sure that we, where possible, treating ourselves as humans with compassion and dignity and respect, and that the people we are working for do the same, is really key.

Marianne (: 08:31

Sometimes it takes a change of job to realize how much you weren't being treated with kindness and dignity and respect and how much that was burning you out, and then you get a fresh perspective in a new job or in a new relationship or whatever new setting it is. You realize, "Oh, I just hadn't realized how hot the water was there, and now actually it's much more comfortable." Or, "I'm not in the glaring sunlight all the time and that feels so much better." Yeah, it might just be worth having a little audit of everything around you to just check. Check the temperature. Check it's not too hot and you haven't just got used to wilting.

Marianne (: 09:10

What we notice when we are working with clients is that if we can't be with them, we might notice there's thwarted actions. And even when we are with them, sometimes we might hear something so awful that it makes you want to cry out, or you imagine yourself wanting to punch the person. Not the person you are with, please don't punch people you are with, but the person that they're talking about in order to defend the person that you're spending time with, and these thwarted actions, as we call them, need somewhere to go. It can be useful even after a session to allow yourself to do a slow motion, whatever you wanted to do to thwart that action so it doesn't stay within you so it transforms.

Marianne (: 10:00

Sometimes it can be a really powerful thing to discuss is reactions to people's stories and the things they say. Let me just take a quick break and I'll be back after this to think with you about some tangible ways of deepening that connection with you and your clients when you are listening to their stories.

Marianne (: 12:22

Okay. Welcome back. So, we need to make sure that we are being flexible and plastic and not at risk of being brittle and burned out. And when we are feeling brittle and burned out, our compassion might feel like it's a low ebb for clients, and it might feel like we're all just doing everything on autopilot. Absolutely, if you are unwell, then you need to look after yourself and you need to take the time that you need to take to get yourself well. But this is about prevention, this episode, rather than cure, so I want to really thicken the dialogue of helping you think about how you deserve to be treated, and how you deserve to treat yourselves, and to help you hopefully have confidence to raise issues if you feel like you are being treated unfairly or the pressures upon you as an aspiring psychologist are too great.

Marianne (: 13:23

You know, sometimes I hear about the workloads of aspiring psychologists and I'm thinking, "I wouldn't even want to do that." You know, and I'm qualified. I wouldn't want to see that many clients in a day or a week. You know? It's a lot that we're asking of you guys as aspiring psychologists, and no wonder we're getting high turnover of jobs and staff burnout and staff sickness. You know? That's not about resilience. That's not about your lack of resilience. That's about the sickness of an organization, really. It's not about the sickness of the individuals within it. Sometimes if we ask someone to do too much, then it's too much, and that will instantly fall apart. But when pressure is applied over time, we become more used to that and we don't necessarily realize it's there.

Marianne (: 14:17

And then suddenly it can feel like we've snapped, but what we hadn't realized is we've been carrying all the extra weight on our shoulders and on our neck and in our stress and in our brittle interactions with our children and our family and our loved ones, and then suddenly it feels like it's come out of the blue, where as an actual fact, it's been quite cranked up incrementally over time. Just want you to be on the lookout for that, really, and to try as much as possible to not take your staff home with. You know?

Marianne (: 14:48

When I was supervising assistant psychologists or trainees, I tried to make sure that we'd have a supervision session on the last day of their placement of the week so that they were able to leave that with me. You know, leave that here rather than worrying about that all weekend because supervision was for example on Tuesday or whatever. It might be worth thinking if there's any flexibility about when you have your supervision sessions so that you are able to tie up any loose ends rather than take them home with you.

Marianne (: 15:21

Okay. A really nice way of helping you connect with your clients and helping advance your clinical work is when you hear them say something that does move or you notice anything visceral in your own body as you hear the story, it can be really useful if it feels appropriate to share that with them. You know, "When I heard you say that, I really felt a deep sensation in the pit of my stomach," or, "I felt my throat started to close up as you spoke about that," or, "I really felt my eyes starting to water as I really connected to what you were saying." Because it can help them, especially when they're traumatized, it can help them with that mind-body disconnect.

Marianne (: 16:03

It can help them realize, actually, "Oh, I have thoughts and feelings in my own body, too. Where did I notice that?" Or you can mirror that back to them. "So, I noticed that within myself. Where did you notice that when you were speaking?" And they might have that disconnect that they haven't done that, but it can be useful to open up that dialogue and thinking about that. And that might be one of the single most important things you do with that client, because it might be that they haven't had that experience with someone else before, and that in you doing that with them, that they're able to do that with others and they're able to have a different experience of life. It might just be transformational.

Marianne (: 16:46

So, in summary, resilience is not all what we think it might be, what it might look like on paper. We are wanting to recruit humans, and compassionate ones at that. We do not want computers. Because it's human connection that helps make the difference, especially when people have been affected by mental health difficulties and trauma and grief and all of that jazz.

Marianne (: 17:13

You know, please, I hope you've found this episode useful. And if you do, I'd love any feedback that you've got. Please help share it widely. Like and connect, subscribe, rate, review. Do all of the things and you'll be my new best friend. Come and connect with me over on socials. I'm on LinkedIn at Dr. Maria Trent, twitter, I'm GoodThinkingPs1one, Good Thinking Psychological Services on Facebook, and I am on Instagram as well as Dr. Marianne Trent, so please come and connect. Help me to help you. And yeah, let's get word out there about this wonderfully useful podcast.

Marianne (: 17:53

I hope this has been useful, and it's okay to think that it's not you that's the problem, it's the service that you are working for. It's okay that actually the service has unnecessary demands upon you and that it's says nothing about your resilience that is not feeling achievable. Hope you find this helpful and I look forward to catching up with you next time. Take care

Marianne (: 18:17

Being well supported during any interview season is so important. I have therefore planned some compassionate in an answer support sessions for you. You are absolutely welcome to come along to all of them, some of them, none of them. No need to book. And here are the dates for you: Monday, the 28th of February from 7:30 PM, Monday the 21st of March 7:30 PM, Monday the 4th of April 7:30 PM, and Monday the 9th of May 7:30 PM. They will all be live streaming via my socials, which includes Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook, so you can absolutely pick your favourite platform, and they'll all be available on replay as well. Hope you find it so useful and I will look forward to catching up with some of you then. Take care.