Episode 120

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Published on:

25th Mar 2024

Working creatively as a psychologist with The Creative Clinical Psychologist - Dr Juliet Young

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 120: Working creatively in psychology with Dr Juliet Young

Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast.

In this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast, we speak with an already well-known creative figure, Dr Juliet Young, more widely known as creative clinical psychologist on Instagram. We speak about the beautiful illustrations of clinical psychology, her journey through navigating the pandemic and the hurdles to clinical psychology, and her work with clients in Foster Care and those seeking asylum. Juliet also speaks about her upcoming illustrated guide for aspiring psychologists to support with their journey in becoming fully qualified – all in her brilliantly creative way.

We hope you find it so useful.

I’d love any feedback you might have, and I’d love to know what your offers are and to be connected with you on socials so I can help you to celebrate your wins!

The Highlights:

  • (00:00): Introduction
  • (00:34): Welcoming Dr Juliet Young
  • (01:42): Juliet’s start in her psychology journey
  • (03:26): Unconventional routes
  • (06:09): Commuting from Bristol to London?
  • (07:47): Learning what Clinical Psychology is a little later on
  • (09:39): Perseverance – the keystone to being successful?
  • (11:04): It is okay to take a break from psychology
  • (11:56): There is freedom in being an unqualified psychologist
  • (14:11): Your life comes first
  • (15:07): The troubles during training
  • (18:35): the importance of instilling confidence
  • (20:47): There is always time
  • (21:44): Juliet’s current step in her journey
  • (23:51): Systems, swirling and Validation
  • (26:28): There is magic in what you do
  • (29:42): The first strokes of illustrating
  • (33:50): From Instagram to a book: An Illustrated Guide
  • (38:46): Keep in touch with Dr Juliet Young
  • (39:48): Summary and close

Links:

📲 Follow Dr Juliet on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/creative.clinical.psychologist/

🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses

🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support

📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0

📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97

💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested

✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision

📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent

💬 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunity

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Transcript
Dr Marianne Trent (:

Coming up on today's episode of the podcast, I am talking to Dr. Juliet Young about ways that we can be more creative in the work that we do with our clients and service users. We are also talking about how she got into psychology and what her experiences were like of doing her training during the pandemic. She also offers us her top tips for reducing burnout as an aspiring psychologist. Hope you find this episode so useful.

(:

Welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent, and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. I love being able to introduce you to the backstories of people you may already have heard of or you may already follow on social media. And today's guest might well be one of those people because she does wonderful illustrations all about mental health and working as a psychologist. We are talking to Dr. Juliet Young, also known as Creative Clinical Psychologist. You will get to learn the backstory of how she ended up in psychology and also one of the other professional psychology disciplines that she considered before becoming a clinical psychologist. Let's dive in and hear all about it and I'll catch you on the other side. Hi. Just want to welcome along Dr. Juliet Young to the podcast who is a qualified clinical psychologist and also a really creative clinical psychologist too. Hi Juliet.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Hi. Yeah,

Dr Marianne Trent (:

So we first crossed paths because somebody had said they'd love to see us talk to one another, and that was over on Twitter slash x, whatever it is these days. Before we get into you and your fantastically creative illustration ways, can we have a little bit of a think about you and psychology?

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

So

Dr Juliet Young (:

What would you like to know?

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Everything and did you first take an interest in psychology and how did that unfold for you?

Dr Juliet Young (:

When I was back in secondary school, actually, I wasn't very well behaved in secondary school and I would often be sent to the head teacher's office or the deputy head's office, and I had been watching Tanya Byron's Little Angels. I dunno whether people will remember that or whether aspiring psychologists are old enough to remember that. But it was a TV show that a psychologist went in and helped parents to think about their children's behaviour through a kind of needs-based lens. So I was really fascinated by that and interested. And then in school, when I would be sent to the teacher's office, I would kind of bring in this, well, they need to be doing this better. They need to be thinking about this. And the deputy head teacher at the time said to me, Juliet, you should be an educational psychologist. And of course I didn't know what that meant, but that sort of stuck with me. So I guess that's kind of where it began.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

I love that they didn't just see you as being precocious and put you back in their box. They thought, she's kind of good at this. We should probably help her cultivate this.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah,

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Nice. So then presumably you went off to university to study psychology?

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yes. So I did a BTech at college. I didn't do the normal route of A levels and within that was a kind of a module on psychology and that's where I fell in love with it. And then after a year out decided that actually I did want to go to university and then applied and got on, studied at Youi to do my undergraduate.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Great. And did you then fall in love with clinical psychology during your undergrad degree or did that come later?

Dr Juliet Young (:

No, so I had no idea what clinical psychology was probably until, I dunno, six or seven years ago actually. So that would've been, yeah, I started that 16 years ago. So it was a big chunk where I didn't know what clinical psychology was. And it wasn't until I knew what educational psychology was because my teacher had mentioned it. And I got a job after my undergrads working in an eating disorder, a home for people with eating disorders really. And decided through that that I really did want to pursue a career in educational psychology. So I went and got a job in a school and then worked there for six months, went and got a job in another school, worked there for five years and within that time applied educational psychology. And I didn't get on and actually within that process, so yes, it was around about the same time as I read a book called, again by Dr.

(:

Tanya Byron, a Skeleton Cupboard, or what that book does is it gives, I think it's four case studies and talks about these people and their difficulties and really it sort of formulates and that really captured me and really made me think, actually maybe I really like this idea of formulation and thinking about people's needs. And yes, so I then decided that I needed to get a job within the NHS and get some experience in mental health services. So I got a job working on crisis teams. They're known as in Bristol and intensive teams. They're also called in the broader trust that I work in and just doing bank shifts. So yeah, so adult mental health services and then also decided I to do a master to just try and get my head into. So I ended up, there's probably, there's a bit of a long story behind this, but I ended up going to the University of East London to study clinical and community psychology.

(:

Now, when I applied for this, I kind of went on it because I was really captured by community psychology and what the course outline was without really realising that how far east the University of East London is from Bristol. And I would get up at four, five in the morning, get on a coach, get to central London, go for a day of lectures, and then do the same return journey. So I did that for a year, well, not quite a year, I think it was eight months once a week. And then alongside that and while doing the crisis work, also got a job as my first job as an assistant psychologist.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Lovely. Gosh. Yeah, that is quite the commute, isn't it? And then you only need one decent train strike or delay and it just sends your whole day into chaos.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, I think there was a time when, I think it was the beast from the east, I dunno whether you remember that when there was that huge few days of snow and I ended up getting on a coach and going to London for all the lectures to be cancelled and then being stuck in London, having to stay at a friend's house.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Oh gosh. But I think what we're

Dr Juliet Young (:

Really nicely

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Portraying is that actually as an aspiring psychologist, we can really spread ourselves very thinly, expecting ourselves to be in several places at the same time and trying to learn whilst also probably being quite stressed and pressured and holding many different thoughts in our head and responsibilities. It's not easy stuff, is it?

Dr Juliet Young (:

No, I think you've got to want it. And I think you've got to, I guess it's about, there's a lot of hard work that goes into building that portfolio, is it, I guess of experiences. But I also think there's something about values. And for me, going and doing the masters in UEL I was so inspired by the lectures, especially the ones around community psychology. And we had a term of doing critical psychology as well, that it didn't feel exhausting or hard. I felt very energised by it. I felt very inspired and I felt very, I guess it really confirmed to me that I wanted to work in clinical psychology because I could do those things that I saw as educational psychology, working with a wider system, thinking in a more systemic way, but also meeting those needs, wanting to be able to do therapy. And I guess it's working across those systems like Brom and Brenna's Ecological System.

(:

Siri, I'm going off on a tangent, but yes, it's really hard. It's really hard I think. And yeah, I think I was very fortunate to have had quite a lot of experience behind me at the point I decided I wanted to go into that. So that kind of acted as a bit of a platform to get my job as an assistant psychologist and to get onto the master's course and to be able to be working in a flexible job doing crisis work to enable me to fund my masters and to be able to buy rent and stuff like that as well. So yeah, it's tough. Yeah,

Dr Marianne Trent (:

One of the themes in the clinical psychologist collective book was this perseverance and that you really need it because otherwise at any point you could be like, oh, I'm just going to not bother. I'm going to go and do something else. Whereas the more and more you persevere, the more and more likely you are to actually get to where you need to be to get on the doctorate to get qualified. It's a lot. It is a lot. And I remember as I was listening to you speak, it was reminding me of when I was doing my master's and I was working full-time whilst studying a master's part-time, whilst I'd also had a car accident, I had back problems. I'd just broken up with a partner as well. There could not have been any more going on in my life. And yet it was that year that I did my successful form to get onto the doctorate.

(:

It's like someone might've said to me at any point, oh, why don't you just not apply this year? There would never have been a question that I wasn't going to apply that year. Anytime I wasn't osteo or physio or crying about my father, I was working on my form. There was never a chance I wasn't going to do it. And actually I did get on that year and the back's fine now. The back was fine by the time I started training. But it's that continual motion, isn't it? You have to want it. And I guess the support systems around you have to be good enough that you don't burn out.

Dr Juliet Young (:

And I think you have to want it. And I think it's also okay to take a break from it. I, I was very driven, but I had also had taken a break from it in that I'd had several years where I just enjoyed working and enjoyed my job working in a school. And really, I had it in my head that I wanted to be an educational psychologist, but I also really focused on just enjoying my job and growing myself within that. So I guess it's about maintaining that drive, but also there's not a time pressure. I think a lot of aspiring psychologists I've spoken to feel like there's this real urgency to get on. And I completely understand it because if you want something, you want it to be happening. And if there's a risk, it might not happen. It's that uncertainty in sitting with that uncertainty.

(:

But what I always say is that actually that time before training was probably some of the best part of my career so far in that I had a lot more freedom before. Once you're qualified, there's a lot more responsibilities and a lot more things that you have to do that actually when you're an assistant or when I was working in the job in the school, that you have this sort of freedom. And yeah, I would always say to people, training is just one part of your journey and you've got your entire working life. And to really think about that, actually it's okay just to enjoy what you're doing. And obviously there's financial implications. It's really difficult to be, and it's probably even more so at the moment with the cost of living crisis, but it's really difficult to be on a very low paid job. And I was when I worked in the school and assistant psychologists don't get paid amazingly. So I'm saying that, but I also, I guess recognising that there is a financial pressure on people to be able to qualify. And I think I, that's really difficult, isn't it? And other people will have more difficult financial situations and other factors which put pressure on that having children. Yeah,

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Absolutely. And thank you for that really nice compassionate reframe because you're right, there is no, sometimes people say to me, oh, I really need to be qualified by time I'm 30. And it's like, well, why? You can still live your life whilst you're training if you want to. You can have a family whilst you're on the course if you want to. You can flex it to look how you want it to look. And when I graduated from my undergrad, I went around the world travelling for six months. And had I not had those experiences and the experiences of saving up to go travelling and then the experiences of having an absolute ball with my friends and assistant psychologist, I love it when the Facebook memories come up of that time, that all helped with my resilience and with my not burning out and with just having fun along the way so that it wasn't just about psychology. You absolutely need more in the background, don't you?

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, yeah. Your life comes first. Psychology doesn't come first. And yes, we do. We live in a society, which means that our communities don't tend to hold us. So we do have to get a job and we do have to be able to fund our lifestyle most of the time, or most people tend to need that. But your life, you've got to prioritise that because yeah, it's really important. It is. Who you are is what gives you your nourishment. Yeah, I think that that is, or one part of what gives you your nourishment.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Yeah, I totally agree. So what year did you start training as a clinical then?

Dr Juliet Young (:

So I started 2019, so started four years ago. I've been qualified a year.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Amazing. And how has that journey been for you transitioning from trainee to qualified?

Dr Juliet Young (:

I think it's been, I think it's been generally a good one. I think that training was very challenging because we trained, the pandemic hit six months into training, and there were lots of challenges that came with that in terms of placements. I mean, it gave us more time to be at home because we didn't have to travel to lectures because lectures were online. But I wonder the impact of that on how much information I retained from lectures just sat staring at a screen. And my placements were tricky because a lot of them were remote. I don't work very well remotely. I like being somewhere, I like being among people. That's kind of how I work best. So I would say that I probably haven't got a comparative experience other than the people who trained at the similar time or through the pandemic. But I really enjoyed qualifying and being able to just being in the office more and to go into a job that I loved.

(:

And not that I didn't enjoy some of my placements, but there were some real highlights in some of my placements. But ultimately where I'm working now is the area that I want to be in, and therefore it's very values-based and it meets that needs to be working with my values and with my interests. And I think so, yeah, so I think an easy transition, I would say I was definitely ready to qualify. I was definitely ready to get out into the world. And that's not to say that I wasn't, training wasn't really important. There's lots of gaps that I probably still need to fill. And learning is an ongoing journey, isn't it? So I don't mean it in the way that, oh yeah, I just knew everything and I needed to leave, but in that I was ready to go and start the next stage.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

And I guess as I hear you talk, I guess I'm wondering if there's a niche in a market for doing some research into whether the pandemic cohorts have actually had a more autonomous experience that it's felt, I dunno, somehow less protected or that you were kind of having to just do more self-directed stuff and having to really force yourself to concentrate and focus, as we know happens when we're trying to zoom learn, there's always other things going on, whereas like you said, if you're in the room, if you've got your cohort there, you have to show up. You have to be concentrating as much as you can.

Dr Juliet Young (:

And I think that it'd be really interesting for someone to look into that. I also think that there's room for one thing that I think clinical psychology doesn't have is a yearly refresher, like a two yearly refresher where you have to go back and do some of those things and think about those skills and gaps or I don't know. And I guess that might not work if you're in a very specialist area, but having the opportunity to be able to refresh, I think would mop up some of those gaps, which yeah, I think during the pandemic it was just really hard to learn and to stay engaged and you're not having that contact with others other than on the WhatsApp group. And I was lucky enough to have a very good friend who lives on the roads next to me, but other than that, there's not that contact time. And I think that's a really vital part of training actually, is learning from your peers. And I feel like I missed out on a lot of that.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

It really is. But I think also the training is as much about in instilling your confidence in yourself as it is teaching you the stuff. So I remember I was actually unwell for the half a day on the training for how to work with people with a bipolar presentation half a day for that. That ended up being kind of quite a key part of my qualified life is working with people within that disorder. And I still sometimes wonder, would I be better at this if I'd had that half a day training? And of course we know the answer is no. What can you possibly hope to learn about a whole way of working with people and understanding and conceptualising difficulties in half a day? You just can't.

Dr Juliet Young (:

I think that's really true. And actually what's the same jack of all trades, master of none that you come out of training with these tiny pockets of things. So yeah, it probably actually is that there is, I wouldn't have retained all of that stuff whether I was doing it online or not, but I definitely think, yeah, I identified with that as well. I missed the ACT training for our camhs or acceptance and commitment therapy for camhs and then also for the adult. And I missed both of them. I was ill for one. I had a funeral for the other and I just didn't have time to catch up on the lecture notes. I think I probably had to look at them, but it's not the same as being in a lecture and all the time now because ACT is something that I think I really identify with values and thinking in the work I'm doing around with young people with their asylum claim as we are going along, there's not much we can do about the process, which is a very long process. So it's helping them think about accepting the situation they're in and what can they do within that to I guess find pockets of happiness through meeting their values or whatever. So I have a kind of loose idea of what ACT is, but I don't feel like I fully understand it. I feel like that's a big gap that I need to go and revise and I miss during training.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

I'd say there's always time. And even now I'm experiencing and enjoying learning about new topics in new areas. I love an audio book. And so that's a really nice way for me to learn things. You are fairly newly qualified and you can just give yourself time to bed into being qualified and just turn to more learning and enhancing your learning needs as and when the time is ready, I would say. So you've told us really nicely a little bit about some of the qualified work you do there, I think. Do you work a split post? Am I right in saying

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah. Yeah. So in teams that are sort of attached to each other, but yeah, two different distinct roles, both clinical psychology roles.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Brilliant.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Can we say a bit more? Are

Dr Marianne Trent (:

You happy to say a little bit more, you don't have to identify the service you work in or anything, but you happy to say a little bit more?

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So two days a week I work in a service for children in foster care, and that is mainly working with the systems around young people though I have got a few young people that I see weekly for therapy sessions, and that's where I worked as an assistant psychologist as well. So it was sort of coming home and I really love that work. I really like the complexity. I like working with systems. I like thinking about attachment and trauma. I'm really interested in developmental trauma and the impact of that and how, I guess how that can be. Some of that can be repaired. So that's the two days a week. And then two and a half days a week, I work a nine day fortnight, two and a half days a week is in the asylum seeker and refugee clinic. And that is working with children seeking asylum families as well. And it's primarily a trauma service. So we've got quite a narrow commissioning. It is just working around post-traumatic stress, but that is prevalent in that population because most people who have had to leave their country of origin have experienced horrific trauma either when they were there or on their journey. So yeah, so lot of our children meet, a lot of our referrals meet our criteria. Anyway.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

I once did a very specialist piece of work linked to a GP who specialised in supporting asylum seekers and refugees and was just, I learned so much about being human and humble and really, I guess really, like you said, boiling down those core values of what's important to me, what's important to them, and how we can try and help people find some sort of stability in a world that feels like it's just swirling and ever changing. Really tricky stuff.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, I think that's really hit the nail on the head in the kind of swirling, got an image in my mind of this, the kind of swirling stuff around them. And as an example, I did an assessment last week and I drew out Bron from Brenner's Ecological Systems Theory and kind of talked about as a way of validating, I know all of this stuff is going in your country of origin and the impact of seeing that on social media. I know that your asylum claim is really causing you lots of stress. I know that things within the system around you is really stressful. And unfortunately, I might be able to write a letter to the solicitor to give them a nudge to give you some more information. I might be able to do some drawings to try and make a shift in the wider system, even if it's a very minor shift.

(:

But ultimately we're restricted to working with you and just within the individual. And I think it's really hard for people to get, and understandably so, because actually if your mental health and wellbeing is being impacted or the main difficulty for you are these other things going on in your life and somebody is sitting down in a room with you to do therapy and you're like, well, that's not what I need. I need that other stuff to change. And so I think it's an interesting job to be in because actually a lot of the time you are working within systems which are making people more unhappy, more stressed, they're exacerbating some of their symptoms. It's a real challenge to do that. And sometimes I really question when people are like, this isn't going to be, why would doing some breathing exercises and adds muscle relaxation, that's not going to change the fact that I've got an asylum claim hanging over me, which might send me back to a country where I'm killed. And it's, you've got to be very careful, I think, to make sure that you're validating alongside what you're offering.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Validation was absolutely the word that I was thinking of, but also just extending some compassion and sometimes just being seen for where you're at right now and having a space to explore how that feels can be wonderfully transformative.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, I think relationships, and if I look through the lenses, the attachment lenses that in my other role and apply them within the role with asylum seeking children is thinking about actually safe relationships. And I think it's the trauma recovery model that actually the bottom of it's safe relationships, therapeutic relationships. And I think that, yeah, if I can offer that space, even if we don't do the trauma work that we're there to do, it's giving somebody an experience of somebody who is safe and containing and listening. And in a world that's very hostile, just the context which is very hostile, if you are a young asylum seeker, especially if you're unaccompanied arriving in the uk, then that's somebody who's giving something that is the opposite to hostile. And I guess somewhere along the line will give you a sense of safety in the world, even if it's a very small one.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Absolutely. And I find myself kind of drawing comparisons between foster care systems. So when I work with people in the asylum seeking role, people contacted me years later to say thanks. And actually that made a real difference. And just being able to hear your voice at times that felt really challenging and being able to draw upon some of the stuff we'd done actually really did make a difference. And it's knowing that you can still check back in if they want to. So we don't lead that ourselves. But I dunno, maybe years down the line, people will come back to you and say, gosh, that was really incredibly powerful. And I think that's a really nice thing that you get to be part of someone else's story, even though you may never know that you're still being held in mind. It's a real magical thing we do. I think.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, it's a real privilege, I think, isn't it, to be in that position and to be able to have that sort of impact on people's lives and to be with them and a lot of the trauma work I do, it's such an honour for people to share their story with me. It really is an amazing honour to hear and witness their story and some of the really awful things that they've never shared with anyone since they've arrived in the uk, other than maybe in a very formal way in their application, but in thinking about the emotional impact, thinking about. But I guess being alongside them in an emotional way in sharing that is a deep privilege. It really is. Yeah, I'm very lucky to have that really.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

And the ability to be able to help them, that process as well is amazing. So important. So tell us a little bit then about your wonderful illustrations and how you started to weave that into your clinical work people.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Well, I guess mean I've always drawn and illustrated my whole life, really. So it's sort of a natural thing to bring it into my work. And when I worked in the school, I would be doing sessions with young people and I would be drawing to try and help think about ideas. And it often takes the focus off that kind of dyads. It takes a different focal point and enables conversation. So I think I probably bring it into my clinical or have been bringing it into my clinical work for a long time. I guess that when it ended up getting publicly coming into you, is that what you mean? How did it kind of evolve or do you mean? Yeah, so I guess I just bought a tablet in the pandemic about, I think it's about three years ago, and thought I would share some drawings on various concepts and just gave it a go.

(:

And it just became really popular and it still sort of surprises me now that everyone likes my drawings so much. And I think I put one yesterday that was about compassionate leadership and it's a thousand people have liked it and there's lots of shares and lots of comments in it. And I think that the feedback I've had is that people find it really useful to use in their clinical work to distil ideas down into a visual concept. And that can be really useful because there's lots of really complex concepts in psychology aren't there. And we live in an increasingly visual world. So yeah, that's kind of what I hope to do ended up happening. And it's ended up, I do various other, the various offshoots from it now, which I really enjoy.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

I did see the one you mentioned, I think it was, was it almost like a waterfall? Was that a rainbowy waterfall? It was really, really nice. Really nice. And I'm just in awe of you because I'm just not very good at art. I have these wonderful ideas in my head and then that doesn't come out of my pen, it doesn't translate. But you do yours on a tablet. Are you like an apple pen kind of girl? How does it work practically?

Dr Juliet Young (:

I don't have an iPad. I've got a Samsung. I always get messages saying, what do you do these on? And people often think that it's on an app actually, and there's like a clip art image and I'm just bringing 'em together, but it's all hand drawn. So yeah, so I've got an app called Ibis, which is, I don't think it's like a well-known one at all, but it's just what I started using and now I'm most familiar with. And yeah, I'll just draw them and sometimes they can be very quick. Sometimes it can take me hours and hours and hours and I really enjoy doing it. It's very therapeutic for me to sit down and draw and just have the creativity or the time to be able to be creative, actually the freedom to be able to create. And I think in pictures, so I often think in, I see concepts and I amm visualising all the time things. So it's just putting that then gets translated into drawing it. And sometimes they're not that good either. People say, oh, I quite like your scruffy little drawings. I just think that sometimes there's a wonky arm and it doesn't all come together. And there's some that I've done which I sort of look at and just think that's awful. But yeah, that's just sort of how it comes together really.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

I like that. I think life is imperfect, isn't it? And sometimes it doesn't need to be pristine and polished, and I'm sure it's still, even your scruffy ones that you don't like are still far above what I could achieve. How did you start to think about putting your ideas down into a book? How did that come about?

Dr Juliet Young (:

So I was contacted actually by an editor from Jessica Kings, the publishers, and she just contacted me saying, I really like your drawings. I like how you distil concepts down and your explanations as well. Would you be interested in doing a book in maybe kind of, I think she suggested maybe a clinical psychology one or CBT or sort of an area. And I was honoured when she emailed me that because I just thought that's what a privilege for somebody to be thinking about offering you that opportunity. And then that formed into, I actually contacted two of my lecturers. I thought if I'm going to do an illustrated guide to clinical psychology lecturers who teach on courses about clinical psychology are the best place to go. And I contacted one who's very, not very, actually that's probably unfair, but bt, she's qualified ccbt therapist and I guess gives that more CBT lens. And then I also contacted my research supervisor at the time who I guess took more of a critical lens towards clinical psychology and some of those more community psychology values. And then we all got together and then created the proposal and then that got accepted. And then April this year it was like a second thesis trying to finish it off and trying to finish off the illustrations and stuff.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Amazing. So we are recording this at the tail end of 2023, but we are very much planning that this episode's going to come out when your book is available. So tell us what it's called. Tell us where you're imagining it might be available for purchase. Tell us all of those good things.

Dr Juliet Young (:

So it's called an Illustrated Guide to Clinical Psychology, and yeah, it's by myself, Juliet Young, and then Dr. Catherine Butler, Dr. Rachel Pascal, and it's going to be available on Amazon. I think it's already available for pre-sale and major bookshops. We're also doing a book launch, which I think may be on, I think it's the 27th, 28th in bath, so if you are in bath, but there'll be information about that on my Instagram page and on my Twitter page closer to the time around that.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Brilliant. How exciting. Your very own book launch, what an exciting book baby to be launching on the world. Yeah, so your ideal client for that is an aspiring psychologist is that's the ICA? Yeah.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah. So aspiring psychologists, we also talked about it just being useful for newly qualified psychologists and also those who might be working along psychologists and wanting to understand what it is as a profession to having a staff firm where there's a multidisciplinary team and just, I guess it could be a reference book for, I might find it useful to reference for another section someone else has written on, I dunno, cognitive analytic therapy. And just to remind myself what the key principles, it's very much an intro and summary. So there's a page or two per idea per therapy modality per approach. There's stuff around the first chapters on the history and some context, and there's stuff around key skills. So it's a pickup flick and put down, or you might want to read it back to front, but it's sort of for anybody that it might be useful to really.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

It sounds brilliant. Have you designed your cover as well? I'm imagining it's brilliantly illustrated.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yes. Yeah, the cover is, the cover was, I gave the illustrations. It's been put together by a graphic designer actually, because that's not one of my strengths, or at least something I've not tried before, is the kind of the composing things in a graphic design way. And

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Have you seen it yet? Have you held it in your hands as yet?

Dr Juliet Young (:

Not a physical copy. We had the final proof just PDF sent through the other day, which is bizarre to see ISBN numbers. And we've had some endorsers who have read it and given some comments on it, and it feels, it's just really exciting. I remember sitting down with one of the other trainees a year into training and talking about wanting to take it a bit easy on training and saying, it's not like we're going to write a book or anything. And then here I'm four years later with my book coming out in a few months. It just, yeah,

Dr Marianne Trent (:

I love that. And if people want to learn more about you or follow you on socials, where should they head Juliet?

Dr Juliet Young (:

So Instagram's probably the best place. So I'm creative.clinical psychologist I've recently set up an Instagram for my Dr. Juliette Young.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Brilliant, thank you. I'll make sure there's details in the show notes for how people can follow you. There will also be details in the show notes of how you can buy Juliet's book as well, which is available now as we are looking at future March, 2024. So thank you so much for your time. Wishing you the absolute best of luck with your first book, baby. I hope it flies really well for you and really makes a difference and helps people understand what it is that we do and perhaps feel a bit more contained and understood by us as well.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Yeah, yeah, I hope so.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

And you've given us lots of lovely advice to reduce burnout along the way in clinical psychology as well. So thank you for sharing that with us, and thank you for sharing your time with us too.

Dr Juliet Young (:

Well, thank you for having me on. I've really enjoyed talking to you today, Marianne.

Dr Marianne Trent (:

Oh, thank you. Likewise. How incredible. Please do go and follow Juliet over on Instagram Creative Clinical Psychologist, and her book is available now, so check out the details in the show notes, or if you look on my social, she'd be able to see links to the book as well. Hope you found that interesting. I love the way that psychology allows us to blend our skills, our interests, and our passions into our clinical work. I'd love to know what you think to this episode. Come and let me know over in the free Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. Please do also subscribe and if you are watching on YouTube and why not consider checking out the Aspiring Psychologist membership as well as my own books, the Aspiring Psychologist Collective and the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. Thank you so much for being part of my world, and I'll look forward to catching up with you for the next episode of the podcast, which will be available from 6:00 AM on Monday. Take

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About the Podcast

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast
Tips and Techniques to help you get on track for your career in psychology
Welcome to The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast with me, Dr Marianne Trent.

What you'll get by subscribing to this podcast is access to free tips and tricks to get yourself feeling more confident about building the right skills and experiences to help you in your career as an a Aspiring Psychologist.

Hosted by me... Dr Marianne Trent, a qualified Clinical Psychologist in private practice and lead author of The Clinical Psychologist Collective & The Aspiring psychologist Collective and Creator of The Aspiring Psychologist Membership. Within this podcast it is my aim to provide you with the kind of show I would have wanted to listen to when I was in your position! I was striving for ‘relevant’ experience, wanting to get the most out of my paid work and developing the right skills to help me to keep on track for my goals of becoming a qualified psychologist! Regardless of what flavour of Psychology you aspire to: Clinical, Counselling, Health, Forensic, Occupational or Educational there will be plenty of key points to pique your interest and get you thinking. There's also super relevant content for anyone who is already a qualified psychologist too!

The podcast is a mixture of solo chats from me to you and also brilliant interview episodes with people about themes which really matter to you and to the profession too.

I can't wait to demystify the process and help to break things down into simple steps which you can then take action on. I really want to help fire up your passions all the more so do tune in and subscribe. I love your comments too so don’t be a stranger!

You are also welcomed and encouraged to connect with me on socials, check out the books, the membership and other ways of working with here: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent
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About your host

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Marianne Trent

Dr Marianne Trent is a qualified clinical psychologist and trauma and grief specialist. She also specialises in supporting aspiring psychologists and in writing compassionately for the media.