As we reach episode 300 of The Psychology World Podcast, I cannot deny I am so excited to reach this brilliant milestone because we reached episode 200 around April 2023, and typically most podcasts fail before episode 30. That means we have reached ten times the number of episodes before podcasts typically end and that is brilliant. I am still excited for the podcast’s future, I have a lot of ideas for future episodes and I flat out love the learning opportunities that this podcast provides me with. Yet ultimately, I love this psychology podcast because of all of you wonderful listeners, especially when you share and review the podcast and buy me books. I am really grateful for every single one of you so in this psychology podcast episode, I wanted to reflect on the lessons I’ve learnt in the course of doing this podcast. If you enjoy learning about clinical psychology, a psychology student’s life and why psychology is flat out amazing then this is going to be a great episode for you.
Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology Worlds Magazine. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
5 Lessons Learnt In 300 Episodes
Key To Knowledge is Always Be Learning
Something that has popped up a lot more for me recently is just how much I learn through this podcast and this includes all the blog posts I have stacked up that I need to turn into episodes in the future. This realisation might be because I was talking with a lot of clinical psychology students that had had the exact same degree as me but I was able to have a lot more insight, perspectives and knowledge about different aspects of clinical psychology as well as our other subdisciplines. Yet these students could only talk in-depth about the topics covered in our lectures. They had no idea how clinical psychology worked behind the scenes, different aspects of mental health conditions amongst other things.
This was highlighted even more last night at a university social I attended with my old supervisor and all his current students that he’s supervising. A lot of the students were making some comments about psychology, and especially psychology careers, that were slightly wrong but because I learnt about those areas through the podcast and my interactions with the staff, I was able to carefully help them. I didn’t want to be a know-it-all but still.
Ultimately, I know I say this a lot but the main reason why I keep coming back to my audio booth every week thankfully without fail at the moment is for the learning. I want to be a knowledgeable aspiring psychologist so in the future I can become a qualified psychologist and the key to knowledge is learning.
If I wasn’t learning about the things that I was interested in and if I didn’t flat out love learning new things about psychology then I wouldn’t be doing this podcast. There would simply be no point whatsoever.
Some of my favourite episodes that highlight this extra learning that the majority of other students don’t know includes:
Therefore, like me, by listening to this psychology podcast every week, you are learning so much more than you realise. As well as this knowledge could be really useful to you in the future. Be it with conversations with friends or family, in a future job interview or even in your current psychology or non-psychology job.
Knowledge is power and the key to knowledge is never stop learning.
The Mental Health System Is Broken
One useful podcast episode that ties into this section is Why Is The Police Refusing Mental Health Calls A Bad Idea?
I admit this might be a slightly odd change of tone but this is a personal thing I have learnt a lot over the course of my psychology journey, past 100 episodes and in 2024. Oddly enough, I’m not actually disheartened, rageful or scared about this issue in the sense that I’ve lost hope. In fact, I am very excited about the future because I have met, listened to and read so many amazing people and future and qualified psychologists who are fighting like hell to transform mental health services for the better.
My favourite has to be Lucy Johnstone with her work on formulation and how that is revolutionising the way we work with clients and create interventions and treatments with them. Yet there are other smaller names too that are just as important, when I did my work experience in the learning disability team and the Gender Identity Clinic, I met so many amazing people that were working their socks off to serve their clients. They weren’t all psychology people but every single one of them was amazing.
Therefore, as much as I have written in my books and spoken on the podcast about the immense issues in mental health services, I am hopeful for the future. There are a lot of great mental health professionals and students rising through the psychology ranks that have a burning passion to help make the world a better place and to make mental health as important as physical health.
Yes, I know in the UK in the past year or two, legally mental health is just as important as physical health treatment but come on, just go into any NHS service and you can see the lingering impact of the biomedical model. Actually, try to access a psychological service within the NHS I dare you. You will be met with a lot of medical doctors, offering you medical solutions and psychological referrals made by experts in physical conditions that put you on waiting lists for at least 5 years or more.
Whereas as my housemates proved if you go to see medical doctors about a psychological condition, like depression, they will give you a medical solution within 5 minutes without a diagnosis or any psychological support. That is exactly what has happened to a dear friend of mine.
Psychological treatment needs to be a major part of psychological conditions.
Sorry, I do get carried away on that soapbox at times.
In addition, there are major issues with managerialism, understaffing, top-heavy organisation and underfunding within the NHS that greatly restricts mental health services from doing what they need to be able to do to improve lives, decrease psychological distress and give clients more adaptive coping mechanisms for their mental health difficulties. The system is broken because of these issues that plague it, and so many people who desperately need mental health support are being denied it because they aren’t going to kill themselves.
Yes, most of the time your mental health has to be that severe for you to access psychological support.
I know from personal experience, I’ve been denied anorexia support because I am not severe enough so I need to go private so I don’t get hospitalised. Yet there aren’t that many eating disorder specialists in my area, let alone ones that I can afford, so I’ve found one woman who I need to contact. Yet in this country and all over the world, everyone should be entitled to mental health support if they need it for free.
Nonetheless, let me repeat myself here because I have said this before and I will always say this, I never ever want the NHS or other mental health services to be disbanded or gotten rid of. There are immense issues with the NHS and other mental health services all over the world but things can change, things are changing for the better. This just means as aspiring and qualified psychologists, we must always be fighting for change. It won’t be easy and it will feel impossible 99% of the time because we need such dramatic structural changes to our mental health services, but as long as there are amazing people like you who speak up and fight the good fight then there is hope.
There is always hope that we can and we will fix the broken mental health system.
Learning Empowers You
This is another very personal lesson that I am extremely glad that I’ve learnt in the past 100 episodes. Since the knowledge I have learnt through this podcast has been immensely useful to me as a student, an aspiring psychologist as well as a survivor with my own mental health challenges. Knowledge and my constant learning on this podcast has empowered me with an understanding and a way to explore topics I need to explore for my own future and healing.
For example, as a psychology student and aspiring clinical psychologist, I have flat out loved exploring various mental health conditions, types of therapies and techniques. All of this learning has empowered me to have a drive towards wanting to become a qualified psychologist. I have a good idea about what a clinical psychologist does, how they can change lives for the better and I have a foundational understanding of all the things I want to develop during or after my doctorate through Continued Professional Development. I am not an expert but because of the learning I’ve done through this podcast I have a good idea about what and why I want a career in clinical psychology.
Without this podcast, I wouldn’t know a fraction of the information I do about clinical psychology and the wider areas of psychology that we cover from time to time.
Actually, come to think of it, this reminds me of how I describe The Psychology World Podcast whenever I meet someone new and they ask me what do I cover. I always tell them that the podcast is mainly about clinical psychology and it allows me to explore beyond my lectures and textbooks. And that is completely true because the podcast empowers me to go out and find this information that I wouldn’t be looking at and researching otherwise.
All of you wonderful listeners are another reason why I’m empowered to keep learning. Each kind comment, each thank you and each time you reach out makes me want to do this even more. So thank you dear listener.
Finally, in the past 100 episodes (to be honest all 300 episodes have proved this to me time and time again), I’ve learnt how this podcast is critical to my own mental health. Not only in terms of the great interactions that I have with you listeners, which can really make me smile on a bad day, but for my own mental health struggles.
When I was dealing with my childhood trauma after my breakdown in August 2023, this podcast was a great way for me to research what I was learning in counselling about myself, how my past had impacted me and how it was impacting my relationships right now. I’m grateful that I had this podcast to help me learn and really understand what on earth I was experiencing.
In addition, this year after my rape, this podcast has been a lifeline. Sure, me putting out that podcast episode on male rape on 6th May 2024 killed this podcast for months. The audience numbers have only recently started to recover, but I am grateful that I had this psychology podcast. I’ve written a lot of future blog posts that explore different aspects of sexual trauma, how the body responds to trauma and Window of Tolerance is a big concept.
I wouldn’t have researched a single one of these topics in any great depth without this podcast and that would have been very damaging to my mental health. I wouldn’t have been able to explore and understand why I was experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, flashbacks, anxiety and all the other negative mental health outcomes associated with sexual violence. There were a lot of healing moments in amongst all the darkness of my mental health because I was able to write podcast episodes.
It made me feel a little less insane during the most intense and darkest moments this year.
This psychology podcast truly has been a lifeline to me over the past few months, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening.
Some past podcast episodes that highlight this empowerment through learning includes:
The Body Is Critical In Psychological Trauma Work
Previously, I’ve mentioned that I wasn’t a massive fan or I didn’t think that much about how our physical body fed into our mental health. Of course, I know that psychoeducation is flat out critical in clinical work with clients. For instance, when working with someone with an anxiety disorder, it’s important to explain to them how the physical sensations of a panic attack and the physical feelings of being anxious is a physical manifestation of psychological states as well as you can help clients to look out for these signs so they know when to use therapeutic techniques amongst other uses of psychoeducation.
In addition, I understood that our physical and social environment are critical factors in our mental health. It’s why I really like the systemic approach to mental health because it proposes that if something happens in our social system then it creates a ricochet effect that impacts the rest of the system. This was proved even more important to me last night because of a social factor in my shared university house, it is that factor that is impacting my mental health and my eating disorder. It’s starting to get to the point where I am nervous to use the kitchen or make a mistake because someone has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in the house so they can have a lot of breakdowns. This makes eating and cooking even more stressful for me.
Anyway, I suppose I did understand that our physical body and environment has a lot of impacts on our mental health. It’s why I really like the biopsychosocial model that works holistically to address all these different types of factors.
However, it was only after my sexual trauma with my Post-Traumatic Stress, panic attacks and more that I realised just how flat out critical our bodies are to our mental health. It was the physical sense of safety that I had lost, the constant physical tension and the constant tension in my body that really damaged my mental health as well as the psychological processes.
Therefore, one of the most important lessons I have learnt in the past 100 episodes is that if I get involved with trauma work in the future, I will focus a lot more on the physical body and how it impacts clients. In fact, I will do this with all my clinical work in the future because the mind-body link has several impacts on our mental health.
Some episodes that highlight this mind-body link includes:
On the whole, to make this lesson useful and applicable to you, as much as I hate the biomedical model with all my heart, I want to highlight that we must always remember the biopsychosocial model. We must always strive to work holistically with clients so we address the biological, psychological and social factors that made their mental health condition to develop and be maintained. Just because we mainly focus on the world of psychology and social factors, there will be times when biological factors and our physiological responses play an important role too.
That is what this podcast allowed me to learn and understand at a much deeper level than my textbooks, lectures and degree.
Psychology Is Amazing
The final lesson brings together all of the lessons so it will be shorter than some of the other sections. This podcast teaches me how psychology is amazing because it truly has the power to improve lives and save lives and transform lives for the better. Let’s take depression for example, I went through so many depressive episodes earlier in the year and it is awful. You don’t have any energy, motivation and one day it took me 5 hours just to have a 15-minute shower. Also, it makes you feel like everything is bad about the world, it biases your views about the world and it impacts the majority of your social relationships.
However, it is psychology that shows us how to effectively treat depression through cognitive behavioural therapy, different techniques and positive psychology can be immensely useful too. The reason why my depression stopped or I haven’t experienced a depressive episode in months is because of my specialist rape counselling helped me to heal, and I’ve learnt a lot of self-soothing, positive psychology and other techniques that help me to maintain my mental health.
Medicine hasn’t helped me. No medical doctor would have given me anything and the root of my depression and trauma responses was a physical event not a medical condition.
It is psychology that has allowed me to heal and move on.
In addition, as an autistic person, certain parts of the medical community tend to see autism and other neurodivergent conditions as something that needs to be cured or fixed. Yet this thinking that there is something deeply and profoundly wrong with me isn’t useful or helpful and it only makes me feel awful. Yet modern clinical psychology has helped to foster a sense of acceptance, support and they want to help neurodivergent people to thrive.
It is this positivity that does stretch through a lot of mental health settings, society and different professions, including certain parts of the medical community, that makes me feel great. It is these techniques that have helped me to decrease my psychological distress, improve my life and given me more adaptive coping mechanisms so I can thrive and deal with stressors that come along.
Ultimately, without psychology and without this psychology podcast giving me a way and platform to learn about mental health, how to improve my life and others and us having the knowledge I need to debunk a lot of the myths about everything I’m experiencing. I do not believe I would be here. I think I would probably be dead a long time ago but knowing everything I do about mental health, clinical psychology and more helps me to know that it’s okay to reach out for support. It’s okay to have therapy and therapy is far from the scary mystical process that mainstream society treats it as such.
Psychology has taught me a lot about what actually happens in therapy and why therapy is effective, so I know this isn’t a random shot in the dark like a lot of my non-psychology friends imply way, way too often.
Some podcast episodes that highlight this lesson includes:
Conclusion
I think it’s clear at the end of this episode that I have learnt a hell of a lot of things over the past 300 episodes, let alone the past 100. This podcast and all of you great listeners help me learn, support my mental health and you all make me happy. It is our interactions, our conversations about episodes and your thoughts and feelings that really delight me because it shows to me that this podcast is something people enjoy and it is making a positive impact on the world.
That is something that really makes me happy. All I want is to have a positive, meaningful impact on the world, and I don’t know where I heard it from, maybe it was a film or something, but someone said something along the lines of when we leave this world, we need to leave it slightly better than we found it.
I want to make sure that happens so my books, my podcast and me aspiring to be a clinical psychologist are a part of that goal.
In terms of the future, I can already assure you that I have no intention of stopping this podcast. I already about around another 30 blog posts written up that need to be made into podcast episodes at some point and I have even more ideas for more episodes in the future. Each of these episodes allows me to explore something in more depth or something brand-new entirely and that excites me.
I look forward to sharing new content with you, I look forward to continuing my YouTube shorts experiments where I release a daily one for the foreseeable future, and I am excited about the future of psychology.
That really is something I am passionate about exploring and I hope that you want to come along with me for the journey.
I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Psychology Worlds Magazine. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
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