Boundaries and seeking support in your psychology career - DClinpsy - Assistant Psychologist - PWP

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Coming up in today's episode of Marianne's Summer Soundbites, we are looking at two more brilliant strategies to help you to nourish yourself, to nurture yourself, to look after yourself, treat yourself as number one so you can reduce the chance of burnout and be there for your clients, your families, for everybody else too. Hope you find it so useful.

Jingle Guy (: 00:26

If you're looking to become a psychologist,

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:55

Hi, welcome along to another episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent, and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. This is another of our super useful, super punchy, shorter than usual summer soundbite episodes, so that you can keep psychology in your day-to-day life when you might be a little bit busier. So another series, which has been really popular in the past is the free Compassionate Q&A series, and they're hosted all by me and they're all, as I said, absolutely for free across my socials. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. But a great place to catch up with it is either via YouTube, which is Dr. Marianne Trent, or via my free Facebook group, which is the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. Right, Let me tell you and talk you through the dates where you can grab these really useful sessions if you are applying for psychology doctorate programmes in the autumn.

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So I know that is the case for DClinPsy, and that is the case for educational psychology too. So the first of those sessions is running on Monday the 4th of September, 2023 at 6:00 PM The second is Tuesday the 3rd of October, 2023 at 6:00 PM and the last, but certainly not the least, is Tuesday the 7th of November, 2023 at 6:00 PM and like I said, runs across all of my social platforms. So put a note in your diary and join me then. But if you are not free that day, you can catch any replays on Dr. Marianne Trent on YouTube. And whilst you're there, why not, like and subscribe, share a bit of useful content and drop me some comments. So let's plough on with the first of my strategies today for how to keep you tip top and therefore to help your clients really benefit and those around you too. So the first is, for me, it's setting boundaries and knowing that that's okay to do and it's really important that you do.

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Setting boundaries might look different for different people, but certainly when I was an aspiring psychologist, it meant sometimes that I was having to work a little bit later in order to get reports ready for the next day's ward round or the next day's care planning meetings. But I was on a system where flexitime was possible as well. So I could still choose to come in at the same time the next day, but I could then log any extra time, spent 15 minutes and over doing additional duties. I could then take that back either just straight away the next day or I could save it up and take it as a bit of a longer chunk to have a bit of a morning off or to finish early one afternoon, too. Clearly you are going to need to discuss that with your line manager and with your supervisor.

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And if that's not the policy in your department, then you might just need to be really boundaried about your time, about your start and your finished times and make sure that you are not adding too much to your plate to do in any particular day. And sometimes that can feel really tricky When you want to look keen, you want to look enthusiastic, you want to be helpful, but sometimes you might need to just remind people of what you've already got on. So you might need to check the priority of what's being asked for you. So when someone gives you a piece of work, you say, can I ask when you might need that back by? what your deadline is for that? And if they say, oh, today, as soon as possible, then you might say, okay, I've already got this that we've agreed needs to be done by today, and I'm working on that currently.

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So could you let me know which has the highest priority because I need to finish at five today. And then you are levelling with them that there's only one of you. And that is honestly okay to do. It might take a little bit of a practise, it might take talking this through in the mirror, but that's okay. You aren't anybody's slave. You certainly, I certainly we certainly don't get paid well enough to work 24/7 around the clock. And actually when we try to do that, we recognise that we start to feel pretty jaded. We start to feel pretty tired, and we are no use to ourselves and we're certainly no use to the service. And before you know it, you're looking for new jobs because you're working too hard and it's not working for you and it's likely not working for them. You might find that you are dropping all sorts of balls all over the place.

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And I know in May of last year when we spoke to Rose Dunston for the podcast, which was way back in episode 25, she introduced us to the idea of glass and rubber balls with the idea that we could afford to drop some rubber balls, but we probably couldn't and shouldn't be planning on dropping the glass ones because they're too important. And that's been a really helpful idea to myself, but also to a number of clients I've worked with as well. So if you're listening to this, thank you so much Rose, and hope that it's all going well with you. So yeah, it might be helpful for you in your work capacity or in your study capacity for that matter, and maybe even in your personal capacity to think about which of your priorities and which of the concerns in your life are rubber balls, those you can afford to place down or to leave unattended or to just let drop and which are glass balls, those which you can't. So yeah, let me know what you think. Do come along to the Aspiring Psychologist community or any of my social media posts and discuss this with me. What are your glass balls? What are your rubber balls, so to speak? Right? Let's pause here for a quick break and I'll be back along to talk through our next of our top tips for reducing burnout and keeping you vibrant.

Jingle Guy (: 07:30

Let this lessons and experience that will help you get come. It's right here in this psych.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 08:06

Welcome back along. Hope that jingle is firmly in your head and you are enjoying having it there. So in the first half, we were looking at how to set boundaries to help keep you well and to help keep your service and everything in your life ticking along nicely. Now we're going to look at the second of our Marianne Summer soundbite topics for the day. Next, we are looking at the importance of seeking support and supervision. Please, at this point, don't let your eyes glaze over because it really is important, the quality of the relationship between you and your supervisor, you and those in your team, maybe even those you are sharing an office with, if that's something that you have. I know when I was an aspiring psychologist, sometimes I didn't even my own chair, heck, when I was qualified, sometimes I didn't even have my own chair.

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But where you are, where you're spending your time day-to-day can be so important in the way that you are able to bring yourself to work, the way you're able to bring yourself to your client work, and how much good stuff is left over at the end of the day. So it can be useful looking at when in the week you are having supervision, because of course, if you know that you are having it, I dunno, first thing on a Monday morning or first thing on a Tuesday morning, but then you are going right through the week and you've got lots of tricky things stacking up, then it might not be super useful for you going home on a Friday all full up to the Brimm. It might be better if you're able to sit and have that chat with your supervisor about what you are experiencing when you clock off for the week and how much of that you might be taking home.

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Because I speak collectively as supervisors past and present, don't want you being so full up that you can't engage with your day-to-day life. I really would like for you to be able to do your job, do your job well whilst you are there, but then leave it there. Leave it in the phone, leave it in the spreadsheet, leave it in your laptop. Don't bring that home with you because it's going to really affect your window of tolerance. It's going to make it terribly thin, terribly little, not much jam in the sandwich. And before you know it, you are going to be struggling with lots and lots of things. So making sure that you are contained, and that is something that I got much better at doing as I got, as my career advanced. I found myself being able to think about clients as and when I wanted to, either in a mindful way or because something I was doing or listening to or thinking of reminded me of them.

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But it felt pleasant to have them there. It wasn't like it was pressing down on me and feeling really heavy or that they were unwelcome in some way. So yeah, it can be really useful to think about the timing of your supervision, but also something I've really benefited from is the wisdom and the knowledge and the expertise of others in the team who might not even be psychologists. Not to make it sound like psychologists are the be all and end all, but of course this is an Aspiring Psychologist podcast. So you've got to give me a little bit of leeway there. If you have time in your diary, especially at the beginning of a job, it can be wonderfully enriching and rewarding to shadow other members of the team or even to ask if you could, after you've shadowed a few, run a session together, run an assessment together, or go and help out at a therapy group because you'll learn so much, but also you'll be able to bring and offer your unique skills and talents.

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And do bear in mind the Supervision Shaping tool, which is available from my website and people have said they've been finding really useful. You can download that for yourself by going to the link in the show notes or the post description. But in case you're listening, you don't have a pen. It's www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision. So that is it for Marianne's Summer soundbites for today. Hope you found it useful. Thank you so much for being part of my world. Please do subscribe, like, share, comment, tell your friends about us, share us on your socials. Thank you so much for being part of my world, and I'll be back along with the next episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast from Monday at 6:00 AM Take care.

Jingle Guy (: 12:47

If you're looking to become a psychologist,