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Rape and other forms of sexual violence is beyond awful. It is one of the worse, most traumatic and devastating things that can happen to a person. During sexual violence, someone takes everything away from you, your control, your consent, your ability to do anything at all. You just go into survival mode and the consequences of sexual violence are immense. There isn’t a single area of your life that sexual violence isn’t impacted by. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, to mark the one-year anniversary of my rape, I want to explain the highs, lows and lessons from the past year as I survived my rape and everything I had to deal with afterwards. There were a lot of awful, horrific things that I had to deal with as a rape survivor in the past year, but there have been some highs too. By the end of this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll know some of the negative mental health consequences of sexual violence, how sexual violence can destroy lives and how people can deal with sexual trauma. This is a great, deeply personal episode that you’re going to learn a lot from. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology and More To The Real World. 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. Note: whilst this psychology podcast episode will talk about rape and other forms of sexual violence, I will not include any graphic details about what happened to me during my attack. One-Year Anniversary Of My Rape On the 13th April 2024, I was raped and as much as I know some people will call me a liar because of the societal myth that people Assigned Male at Birth never get raped and they are always the rapists. That is a lie and I have done a lot of research over the past year about the truth behind sexual violence, and how and why men and women can be both the sexual predator and the survivor. Hence, I am just going to be honest and tell you about my experience and if people call me a liar or a fake just seeking attention then so be it. I’ve been called it all over the past year so it won’t be anything new to me. Therefore, on the 13th April 2024, I was raped in a hookup that went very wrong. After a lifetime of being abused, hated and never being accepted for being gay, and with my friends all in happy relationships where they could do whatever they wanted without the fear of death and being beaten. I just wanted a single night of being gay, a single night where I could experience something that was perfectly natural and normal for other people, and a single night where I could be free. It really didn’t work out like that at all so I was raped. Contrast to all the myths and lies about sexual violence, I didn’t scream, fight back or try to stop him. I simply went into survival mode and I fawned because I didn’t want to make him angry, I didn’t want him to hurt me anymore than he was already and I wanted to escape as soon as possible. I survived.   I was in denial for two days about what had happened to me because I thought that was simply how sex worked. Then as more and more trauma responses manifested themselves, I realised I was raped and then everything happened. I developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder along with intense social anxiety so I couldn’t really go out by myself because I was so anxious and terrified of being raped again. And I have discussed a lot of what happened to me over the next seven-months in different episodes of The Psychology World Podcast. Now I want to focus on the lows and the lessons learnt before wrapping up with the highs of the past year along with a few final lessons. The Lows of The Past Year After Being Raped The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder There have been a lot of different factors and mental health consequences that have not been fun in the past year. I think the worse because it encompasses so many different facets of my mental health was the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That was seriously horrible to experience because the majority of people think it is just soldiers who can experience PTSD. Yet I did because whenever a rape memory was triggered or I was reminded of my rape whether this was through something I saw, something I hear or an intrusive thought or flashback. I had severe trauma reactions. I would literally run away at times. I would get so fearful and scared that I was going to die, be raped or get beaten. Or I would go into survival mode and once I was safe, I would have a full-on breakdown because it was simply too much for me. One of my triggers was seeing fat men, and I don’t say that to be fatphobic but because my rapist was a fat man. I couldn’t actually stand to be in the same room as a fat man because it would cause me to have a breakdown and enter fight-or-flight mode. The same went for hearing or thinking about the name of my rapist or experiencing any sort of sexual or romantic attraction. Which was really tragic because when I thought a guy was cute or attractive after my rape, I would have an extreme trauma reaction. That was really horrible, because I was raped in April and then it was summer, and I won’t deny that I like summer because men can look very hot in shorts and t-shirts. Sleep was another major issue because of rape dreams. There wasn’t a single night for the first six months or more when I didn’t have a rape-related dream. It wasn’t even related to what actually happened, it was just how my mind twisted everything. I had dreams about my rapist killing me, my friends raping me, people I had only seen briefly at social events raping and beating and killing me. The First Lessons: Rape Has No End of Impacts, Need for Processing Trauma and Self-Compassion On the whole, there were other aspects of the PTSD that I flat out hated, like the intense social anxiety and the depression that I’ve spoken about before on the podcast. Yet the stark impact that sexual violence has on a person was unreal and I couldn’t believe how many different ways it impacts you. From my work to my friendships to my ability to go outside and everything else, my rape and my mental health impacted so much of it. As a result, this massive negative aspect of 2024 where the entire year was basically taken up me healing from my rape and recovering from sexual trauma. This aspect taught me the importance of having good friends and a good social support network, as well as never underestimating the power of trauma. In one of my books coming out in the next few years, I include the line “if you don’t deal with your trauma, your trauma will deal with you,” and that is so true. You need to keep healing and processing what happened to you otherwise your trauma will make you process what happened to you in the worse ways possible. As well as this low taught me the important of self-compassion too, which has become an important part of my life now. I used to beat myself up so often for my mental health, for feeling so depressed and anxious and having such severe trauma responses that I couldn’t do anything for days or months at a time. I essentially didn’t have a life in 2024. And that made me feel even worse about myself, my life and my mental health. Thankfully learning self-compassion helped me deal with those negative self-critical thoughts. I still use all of these important lessons in my life nowadays to help my mental health whenever it dips. Self- Blame and People Who Know Less Judging Me A second major low of the past year was that at first I didn’t blame myself for my rape because it wasn’t my fault. Rape and other forms of sexual violence is never the survivor’s fault because there was nothing they could have done to prevent it. That is the simple truth of it. However, when I started reading things online, seeing how certain people who were very dear to me started blaming me, judging me and making me feel awful for what some rapist had done to me. That only made my mental health worse. For example, two people very close to me who were meant to love me no matter what couldn’t handle the fact that I was raped. So they blamed me, they wouldn’t allow me to call it rape, they wouldn’t allow me to talk about it and they were very firm that it was my fault. I shouldn’t have done it and I shouldn’t have been gay. And as whilst researching rape and sexual trauma more and more was very healing for me because it allowed me to see everything I was going through was normal. It reminded me of the world I actually lived in and how society saw people like me. It reminded me that sexual violence is extremely common, society always blames the survivor and the world is always against the survivor because of lies, myths and misconceptions. And the extreme rare cases of false allegations of rape don’t help matters. Therefore, as I was exposed to those societal judgements and certain people in my life judging me and blaming me for being raped, my mental health only declined. And what really annoyed me about these people was that I am unfortunately an expert by experience when it comes to rape. I was raped. These people were not, and yet because of their egos, and what they’ve seen on the news. They believe it is their God-given right to tell me, the rape survivor, how I am meant to be feeling, how I am meant to be behaving and how I am not meant to be getting raped. It is outrageous and disgusting that people think they know better than rape survivors. Second Lesson: You Learn Who Your Friends Are After Rape The second major lesson I’ve learnt in the past year is that after being raped, you really learn who your friends are. You learn who you can rely on, who you can’t and how people can deal with certain news. My best friend could certainly handle the news about my rape and they were great to me for the longest of times and I will always be extremely grateful for everything they did for me. Yet honestly, because of my disorganised attachment and their avoidant attachment styles and other traits about my best friend, we both turned the friendship very toxic and our friendship has never really recovered from my rape trauma and everything we accidentally did to each other during that time. There have been friends who I’ve told and they act like it never happened and they let me talk about it whereas others let me talk about it but they don’t know what to say at all. I don’t blame them at all because rape is awful and it is hard to know what to say. As a result, in the past year, I really have learnt the different levels of friendship that you can have with people, what you can and what you cannot say to others and I have just learnt a lot about attachment and friendships in the last year. At the time of writing actually, I’m doing a lot of work on my own disorganised attachment style because even though I am making great progress, I want to deal with it as much as I can so it doesn’t harm any more of my friendships and relationships. Self-Harm and Suicidality This is probably the lowest part of the past 365 days because I self-harmed a lot in the past year. I haven’t self-harmed since the 30th December because I can deal with a lot more things than I could previously and I really have worked hard to deal with whatever happens. Including learning that certain people who I’m close to where having sex. Again, even thinking or learning about sex was a major trigger for me up until recently. Even though a year later, sexual contact is still to much of a trigger at the moment for me. I think I self-harmed because I wanted to punish myself for being raped. A lot of important people in my life were telling me that it was my fault, that I should have done things differently and I interpreted certain things that being my fault. For example, I remember last June I was driving to the university in the evening for a social event and I parked my car, it was a beautiful evening and I was listening to the radio. And I listened to a news report about a cop congratulating a rape survivor for coming forward because they were able to arrest the rapist because of it. I cried so hard, and self-harmed in the end of it. For me, because other people had already told me that I was a failure for not reporting it, for not going to the police and a whole bunch of other factors. I felt that I needed to be punished and control was another factor too. I self-harmed because I wanted to be in control and feel something instead of depression, anxiety and other trauma responses. And as my mental health continued to decline, I went to kill myself three times. I won’t explain how but I tried to kill myself three times and this was how I learnt how strained my relationship with my best friend became. They were so badly hurt, in so much pain and I later learnt that this is the point where they started having panic attacks over me because they really didn’t want me to die. I really did destroy our friendship with these suicidal attempts. However, contrast to popular myths and lies, I didn’t want to do suicide because I wanted to. I tried to kill myself because I didn’t think there was another way out. My quality of life was so low and I couldn’t go outside, I couldn’t do anything with my life and my mental health was so bad that I couldn’t do anything I enjoyed. I doubted I could ever form a good relationship, I doubted I could ever have sex and so many other factors. I just couldn’t see another way out and I suppose I knew that it would hurt my friends and my housemates. Yet I just didn’t want to be in pain anymore. I wanted it all to end. Third Lesson: Life Actually Does Get Better There have been other lows in the past year, like my anorexia, but I’ll talk about them in one of the books that are coming out in the next few years. As a result, in the past year, I have learnt that life really does get better in the end. It will take a while, believe me, it seriously will take so much longer than you want. Nonetheless, your life will get better overtime. It will be small changes at first and you will be able to do more and more over time, and it will never seem enough. You will be angry, upset and depressed that you cannot just magically bounce back from your sexual trauma, but you will get there. If you keep putting in the therapy work, if you keep healing and if you intend to survive this, then you will in the end. And now as I transition onto the highs, I am really looking forward to sharing with you the positives of the past year since I was raped. The Highs Of One-Year On From Being Raped Becoming An Expert By Experience I fully understand that this is a very, very weird benefit of the past year but as an aspiring clinical psychologist, honestly I am glad to have the mental health and counselling experiences that I have. Now I understand what it’s like to have PTSD, to have intense social anxiety and to have major depression. Of course, everyone’s experience is slightly different but I can now understand and empathise with future clients because I vaguely know what hell they are going through because I have lived through it too. I am grateful to know how to survive these awful mental health experiences and I am really happy that I went through specialist rape counselling, and my anorexia counselling. I have learnt so much about myself, self-soothing and trauma recovery because of my two excellent counsellors. I have had such lovely and powerful conversations with both of them and I have learnt tips and tricks and techniques that I can now use with future clients once I’m qualified. Without my rape, I never would have learnt those things. Of course, I am not saying I am grateful to be raped. I will never be grateful to having gone through that but I could look back on the past 365 days with hatred, bitterness and I could not focus on any positives. Yet that isn’t actually healthy. Still, grieve for everything that you have lost, been through and allow yourself to feel all the painful emotions that you’re experiencing. Yet as part of positive psychology and compassion for ourselves and others, we should try to focus on the positives. It is actually a great way in my personal experiences to push away suicidal thoughts. Even on the really, really bad days if you can name three or five positive things that happened then you really do start to feel better. It’s a simple but very powerful technique. So the past year has taught me a lot of valuable techniques, life experiences and mental health experiences that will serve me in the future. It means I can relate to clients more, come to clinical work with a unique insight and it gives me more experiences to draw on when I’m writing these podcast episodes. I am a survivor, not a victim. Healing, Healing and More Healing The penultimate high is a great benefit of the past year because I am finally healed from all sorts of different traumas that have happened to me in my life. I explain more about this in my upcoming book Healing As A Survivor  but the vast majority of my rape trauma responses were actually just heightened trauma responses that I got from my childhood because of my child abuse. I was able to deal with all of that and I was able to learn from healthy boundaries and how to be empowered for the first person in my life. I flat out loved resetting my boundaries and resetting my relationships so many people, because I am not perfect at it. Yet I want to stop the harmful, toxic relationships that have ruled my life for so many years and I am already reaping the benefits. Furthermore, I’m healing in terms of my anorexia too. My rape really did refuel my anorexia to new levels and I was losing a kilogram a week for months, I was making myself really ill and fatigued all the time. My health wasn’t the best because of the condition, but in the past year, I’ve healed more because I’ve targeted my anorexia. Sure I still have anorexia because you can’t eliminated mental health conditions, but I know how to cope with my sense of control, strong emotions and my anorexic thoughts. I’ll continue to have flare-ups in the future, but I seriously doubt my anorexia will ever get bad again. I know how to manage it and because I know who I am, what my values are and everything that anorexia threatens. I really don’t want my anorexia to return. At the end of this psychology podcast episode, I’ll share one of my favourite quotes of all time with you because it hits this topic right on the head. New Friendships and I Had A Partner In the past year, some of the highs have definitely included the new friendships I’ve made along the way. A good few of them haven’t lasted because of my mental health, my disorganised attachment and a few factors related to the people themselves. Yet I’ve still really enjoyed making those friendships because they were all great people and I honestly wish them all the best with the future. Equally, now I have my friends who I spent almost every Saturday with playing board games and/ or Dungeons and Dragons or another RPG system with. It was only yesterday I met up with three of them and we played board games outside in the sun for a few hours before moving inside to play for another four-ish hours before we went to dinner at Wetherspoons in Canterbury. I really enjoy hanging out with my friends on Saturdays because I never would have met or become friends with them otherwise. I have a lot of fun with them, we always have great conversations and it’s how I met my partner. Which is certainly something I never expected. After I was raped, given all my mental health struggles, how bad I was at social relationships and my low self-esteem, I never expected to have a relationship for 6-weeks. 6-weeks full of laughter, fun and just enjoying being someone’s partner. I had my first kisses, I held someone’s hand in public for the first time and I was just able to do things that I had never done before, and things that I never would have dreamed of a few years ago because I would have been too terrified because of trauma. We even both stayed up until 4:15 in the morning one day just talking and hanging out and cuddling. I really enjoyed that relationship more than I wanted to admit, even though it was casual and I was able to do casual. We didn’t even break-up after 6-weeks because we weren’t into each other. We broke up because making out with my partner brought up a lot of trauma for me, and my partner had been repeatedly assaulted in their last relationship so they were struggling too at times and they weren’t in a good place themselves. My partner agreed if they were in a better place they would want something deeper, committed and longer-term with me. And ever since we got together, they kept saying how they didn’t want to hurt me. It was sweet. There’s a lot more to it than that but considering this a public podcast that is all I’m going to say. However, I still really enjoyed it and after I was raped, I never ever imagined forming new friendships, certainly not playing dungeons and dragons for hours upon hours with them, and I truly never imagined someone as beautiful as my partner would say yes to me. There really is always hope. It doesn’t matter if you were raped, it doesn’t matter how much trauma you’ve been through, it doesn’t matter how dark you think the world is. There is hope that great, wonderful things can happen to you in the end. It may take far longer than you imagine, or it might take no time at all, but it can happen in the end. Brief Guide To Actions We Can Take To End Sexual Violence In the future, I have another episode on the actions we can take to end sexual violence once and for all because it is possible. Yet I want to briefly mention three things we can do at the end of this podcast episode to work towards ending sexual violence. You Need To Learn About Sexual Violence And Share It With Others I know I’m preaching to the converted here but if we’re going to end sexual violence then you need to learn about it, what it is and the truth behind sexual violence. In other words, you need to overcome all the myths and misconceptions that we’ve created for ourselves in society, because these myths are harmful and extremely common. Therefore, it’s good to know that online resources, like this podcast, have made it easier than ever before to get accurate information about sexual violence as well as how common it is within our communities and how it devastates lives. Knowledge is power against sexual violence, so please, make sure you read about it and learn about sexual violence. The next step is sharing what you’ve learnt with other people. You Can Advocate For Youth Prevention Programs  As I’ve spoken about before on the podcast, the majority of perpetrators of sexual violence are teenagers and young adults. Therefore, if we’re going to stop sexual violence then we need to give young people the knowledge and tools for healthy relationships. This includes tools to help them understand consent and to help them have a healthy sexuality. Thankfully, over the years, there has been a lot of work done on the development of youth prevention programs to help give young people the tools to have healthy relationships without them believing they have to commit sexual violence. You Can Identify Organisations And People Working With Sexual Assault Survivors In Your Community And Connect With Them To help take action against sexual violence within your community, you can see who’s doing prevention and response work in the local area. For example, this can include a family justice centre, a rape crisis centre and local political groups in charge of legislating against sexual violence. This can be a powerful way to take action to end sexual assault because by reaching out to these organisations and people you can get involved in their networks and be an active member of them so you can use your interests, skills and abilities to support them. For instance, if you identify a gap in their resources, like there being no way for people to donate to the local cause, then you could help them fill that gap in the community’s network. Clinical Psychology Conclusion In all honesty, I probably haven’t scratched the surface of all the highs and lows from the past 365 days. For instance, I haven’t mentioned all the good things about university, my transgender mental health studies, my Outreach work, my family, my new Irish citizenship and more. Yet that’s a good thing. The past year has been hellish. I don’t wish my past year on anyone because of everything in my life that has fallen apart, been smashed and annihilated and everything I have had to go through and do just to survive. No one should ever have to go through it. No one should ever have to go through the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the rough and eye-opening experience of learning who your friends actually are in your darkest moments, and the self-harm and suicide. No one should have to go through that. However, me and so many other amazing, bright people survived our trauma. There were great benefits of the past year too and 2024 will be extremely transformative for me in some bad ways but a lot of good ways too. The past 365 days have allowed me to reset my relationships and actually learn who I am through doing a lot of healing, it has given me some great real world experience about mental health difficulties and how to cope with their maladaptive effects, and I’ve forged some great friendships. I had a beautiful partner for 6-weeks, and we might not be together anymore. Yet my partner’s still happy to kiss, hold hands and hang out, so I’m happy. I can still experience stuff for the first time in my life. Ultimately, I want to end this podcast episode by saying, if you’re an aspiring or qualified psychologist or a psychology student. There will be times when you meet a client who has experienced a type of trauma, be it sexual trauma or not. The past year has also taught me how outrageously high the number of sexual trauma incidents are, and when this happens in your clinical work. It is important that you remember it is possible to survive and you believe it yourself. My anorexia counsellor and my old private counsellor who I forgot to mention earlier, they have no training and no real awareness about sexual violence. Yet there were still great things they did to help me and just help me through my time. The best result is always to refer rape survivors to rape crisis centres because East Kent Rape Crisis Centre is flat out amazing and they helped me to save myself. However, aspiring and qualified psychologists should get some awareness in psychological trauma and stabilisation. You will come across a client with trauma one day and trauma is specialist work but you can help the client more than you possibly know. And finally, if you’re a survivor, then please keep going, keep fighting, keep working towards healing. It will be painful, it will be slow and there will be days when you want to die because it seems so much easier. Please don’t though. If I had managed to kill myself any one of those three times, I wouldn’t be here right now talking to you wonderful people. I wouldn’t be able to share my experience, I wouldn’t be able to learn all the great things that I flat out love, and I wouldn’t be able to write, read fiction and do all the other thousands of things that make me happy. And I wouldn’t have been able to meet my partner, have my first kiss and just be with someone. We’re still friends now and I’ve cried a lot over that relationship because I hate that someone raped and assaulted my partner who is such a lovely and caring person. Sexual violence has to end and it will one day. “As long as I have my unshakable self, I can dig in with both feet with all my might. As long as I know who I am, all my doubts, hesitations and frustrations will disappear. And no demon on earth can escape my descending blade," -Tokito, Demon Slayer anime Season 4 If you think about that quote from a mental health perspective then you’ll realise why that is my favourite quote of all time. Just keep going yourself and remember it gets better in the end.     I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology and More To The Real World. 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Forensic Psychology References and Further Reading What To Do When Depression Makes it Impossible to get out of bed? What is window of tolerance? What’s it like to experience a major depressive episode? What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Why An Erection Isn’t Consent? Armatta, J. (2018). Ending sexual violence through transformative justice. Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, 5(1), 4-4. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/awareness-action/202203/3-ways-take-action-end-sexual-assault Kirby, P. (2015). Ending sexual violence in conflict: the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and its critics. International Affairs, 91(3), 457-472. Tutchell, E., & Edmonds, J. (2020). Unsafe spaces: Ending sexual abuse in universities. Emerald Publishing Limited. Wessells, M. G., & Kostelny, K. (2021). Understanding and ending violence against children: A holistic approach. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 27(1), 3. Wright, H. (2015). Ending Sexual Violence and the War System–Or Militarizing Feminism?. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(3), 503-507. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

After something personal happened last night, all I can think about today is trauma and considering this psychology podcast episode is already likely to be late going out, I didn’t want to argue with myself. I just wanted to do an episode on something I was already thinking about because what we experience in our childhood can have a massive impact on our relationships. For example, what we  think a healthy relationship and boundaries look like and how we believe the social world works. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn about how childhood trauma impacts relationships, how trauma survivors can improve their relationship boundaries and a lot more useful and insightful information. If you enjoy learning about mental health, trauma outcomes and a bit of social psychology then this is a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology . 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. How Does Trauma Impact Relationships? Not a single one of us is born with an innate understanding of healthy boundaries. We learn what boundaries are healthy and what isn’t healthy in a relationship by trying out different things, learning about social relationships and unfortunately, getting hurt along the way. All of us go through life thinking we know what healthy boundaries are until one day or one moment, we realise what we thought was a healthy boundary actually isn’t. For example, you might have a fight with your best friend and it doesn’t go the way you expected and you or your friend is hurt. Equally, you might find relationships really overwhelming and other people might believe that you’re simply too “sensitive”. Finally, and this happens to me somewhat often, you find out that you aren’t actually as close to someone as you thought and you start to feel like an outsider. Personally, I’ll be the first to say that I find interpersonal relationships quite overwhelming at times because of my disorganised attachment style that I’m working on. As well as having childhood trauma and autism makes it difficult to do the entire social relationship part anyway, especially with neurotypical people who don’t exactly have the same communication style as me. I have no problem talking with anyone and I love forming those relationships, but honestly, it is hard for me to form deep and meaningful friendships and relationships. Boundaries are sometimes a major problem for me because I don’t understand them. Also, I didn’t really have great role models in my life to model these behaviours from. On the whole, we all learn in the end that boundaries are a fine balance between feeling safe and vulnerable in a relationship where we can share our authentic emotions whilst asserting our personal limits and needs with other people when we feel we need their support. However, when childhood trauma is added into the mix, this adds additional layers of complexity into trying to understand what healthy boundaries in relationships are, because of their traumatic experiences. How Does Childhood Trauma Affect Relationship Boundaries? Unlike when adults experience trauma and their perception of healthy boundaries aren’t always affected, children who experience trauma are different. Since children living in dangerous, neglectful or abusive situations nearly always have their sense of boundaries negatively impacted because they have to depend on untrustworthy adults just to survive. These children don’t have any choice and as part of this survival process, a child’s brain has to do some very intense work. Especially as, Jannia Fisher (a trauma specialist) explains in her book Healing The Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: “When attachment figures are abusive, the child’s only source of safety and protection becomes simultaneously the source of immediate danger, leaving the child caught between two conflicting sets of instincts. On the one hand, they are driven by the attachment instinct to seek proximity, comfort, and protection from attachment figures. On the other hand, they are driven by equally strong animal defense instincts to freeze, fight, flee or submit…before they get too close to the frightening parent.” (Fisher, 2017 p. 24) In other words, as much as a child knows their caregiver is abusive or being neglectful, the child still wants to form an attachment and bond with them because the child innately knows they need the adult in order to survive. Yet as the child tries to do this more and more, they experience a powerful and (I would say) almost horrific stress reaction that signals to their nervous system that a threat to their very survival is incoming so their body gets into fight-or-flight mode constantly. To the child this means they learn very quickly that relationships are helpful because they are key to survival, but relationships are dangerous too. Therefore, the child adapts their perception of boundaries to fit this really weird paradox. At the moment, I’m doing a lot of research and writing regarding attachment styles so this is really clear and tragic to read about in a trauma context. Personally, I would love to say that this is wrong but it isn’t. Based on my own experiences of having a very homophobic social environment and a lot of other things going on in other social situations. It’s hard. You don’t know what’s safe, who to trust and you are always on edge just waiting for something bad to happen. It’s horrible and over time, you can convince yourself that it is simply safer to be alone because if you don’t let anyone in then no one can hurt you anymore. Of course, your life gets really alone, isolated and awful if you continue that pattern of behaviour for too long. In addition, I know we’ve never looked at Schema Therapy on the podcast before but within this form of psychotherapy, there are “mistrust/ abuse schemas” which can leave a person with more tolerance for being mistreated and have weaker boundaries. All because the person doesn’t know any different. Making it quite the powerful revelation when the person realises that healthier boundaries are actually possible. As a result, when a child makes a connection between their abuse or neglect that causes a traumatic stress response from their brain, so they either fight, flight, freeze or attach or feign with their attachment style or sense of boundaries. This leads to five different effects on the child’s boundary style and as an aspiring or qualified psychologist it’s important to understand these boundary styles so our approach to mental health work can be more trauma informed. Ultimately, helping us to support our clients feel safer and more in control in their relationships. What Are The Five Boundary Styles? As I mentioned in the last section, our mind and body have five reactions to trauma that impact how we perceive healthy relationship patterns. For example, firstly, there is the “fight” reaction where we believe we need to push our needs onto others, impose our own version of events or even attack other people if we think that it’s necessary to preserve our urgent needs. This can lead to someone becoming self-absorbed in a relationship. Secondly, you could react with a “flight” response where your childhood trauma has caused you to have anxiety around closeness and intimacy where you always find reasons to avoid getting too close or directly expressing an emotional need. This can lead to social and emotional isolation. In my opinion, this second point definitely fits me because it’s clear I have an anxious attachment style because I get stressed in close relationships. I find them scary and I get concerned about getting close to someone because I’m always scared they’re going to abandon me like everyone else in my life. Thankfully, this is something I’m actively working on and I recently learnt I have disorganised attachment as my main form of attachment too. Thirdly, there is the “freeze” reaction where a client might passively detach themselves or zone out from a situation and find ways to avoid conflict. This leads the client to being impulsive, procrastinate and experience self-alienation. Penultimately, a client might have an “attach” reaction where they are overwhelmed with a strong, painful need to be close to others but they’re always stuck feeling lonely, sad and other people might call them emotionally needy and desperate. This is something I can partly relate too as part of my attachment style because when I do find someone I want to be close to, and this is even more true when I’m struggling myself. Yet I used to get as close as possible to someone and I didn’t want to be lonely and I did come across as emotionally needy. Finally, a client might have a “feign or submit” reaction to other people where they only think about the other person’s needs so they degrade or they become blind to their own needs. Or they feel guilty or criticise themselves for having needs of their own. I won’t say too much because as someone who regularly interacts with someone who fits this description. I understand that it’s a trauma response and it is just something that they have learnt, but it is hurtful and almost “annoying” to see someone not recognise this when they’re calling you out for your own attachment and boundary issues. Since when someone with a “feign or submit” reaction does recognise their own needs and they stop supporting the other person without warning because they didn’t realise how much they were degrading their needs. It’s hurtful and it really sucks. How To Cope With Boundary Styles Using Positive Self-Talk? As a result if we’re ever working with a client who might fall into one of these five reactions, even though they are likely to have a single main or dominant reaction but still dip into the other types of boundary styles depending on the situation. It’s important that we help clients to learn how best to cope with their boundary styles, in addition to any trauma work that needs to be done. Therefore, there are three things that clients can do to help themselves with their boundary style. Firstly, they can use journaling with a sense of curiosity and control as a way to track their relationship patterns. I’ll be the first to admit that you will be blind to your relationship patterns because they are so normal for you and you don’t know anything else. As well as you often only realise that you have unhealthy relationship patterns because someone has pointed it out to you. Yet if a client doesn’t have access to someone who will point it out to them, they can use journaling to identify their feelings around staying present with emotions in relationships. And clients could explore what not submitting or feigning would be like for them. Also, they could explore the thoughts and feelings that going against their boundary style brings up. So the client can ultimately find out what they are most afraid of when it comes to changing up their boundary style. Secondly, it’s critical that clients learn to trust their body. This was a major part of my sexual trauma counselling because your body, your senses and your nervous system are a brilliant tool to help you survive and it picks up on so much more information than you even realise. Yet your body is the first thing that will tell you when your boundary style is being triggered so you can trust your body and learn from it. For example, if you enter a certain situation and you start feeling dread, anxious and like you’re going to get shouted at or punished. Then notice these signs and figure out where you learnt them based on your trauma. Then you can identify areas to work on. For me, at times my boundary styles can be triggered when I get close to people because I’m scared they’re going to hurt me, betray me and I’m going to lose everything again like I have in the past. I never want to go through all that pain, suffering and conflict ever again. Finally, clients can use self-talk to cope with their boundary style because after a client has noticed and identified their triggers. They can start talking to themselves and instead of being your scared traumatised child self, they can show themselves compassion, love and attention as an adult that the client might never have received as a child. Internal Family System Therapy is essentially built around this idea and I have some experience with a few techniques from this therapy because of my private counselling in 2023. I found it really helpful. Clinical Psychology Conclusion On the whole, when it comes to childhood trauma, or as I found out last night all forms of trauma, it will affect you in a million different ways. It will affect you from your relationships, your attachment styles, how you relate to others, your mental health, perhaps your ability to work and so many more areas. However, just because childhood trauma causes you or your client to have a certain boundary style, doesn’t mean you’re messed up, you’re doomed or you can’t change. The traumatised part of yourself is still inside you, it will be scared of being close to others because you don’t want to risk going through your childhood again. I understand that, and that’s okay. It really is. Nonetheless, you’re an adult now. You don’t need to depend on neglectful or abusive adults anymore, and what you really need, what that child part of you really needs, is for you to compassionately care for that child part. Provide it with the love, comfort and reassurance that you probably never received as a child. Once you realise this you can and probably should work on it in therapy with a trained trauma informed mental health professional. They can help you work through your trauma and most importantly, how to safely manage your relationship boundaries so you can grow and thrive instead of just survive. Here are some questions at the end of this psychology podcast episode: ·       Have you ever experienced childhood trauma? ·       Do you or anyone you know fit into one of these boundary styles? ·       How could you identify any triggers or situations that activate your boundary styles? ·       Could you find a mental health professional to help you work through this?     I hope you enjoyed today’s developmental psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Child Psychology References and Further Reading Erozkan, A. (2016). The Link between Types of Attachment and Childhood Trauma. Universal journal of educational research, 4(5), 1071-1079. Fisher, Janina (2017) Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation. Routledge. Fuchshuber, J., Hiebler-Ragger, M., Kresse, A., Kapfhammer, H. P., & Unterrainer, H. F. (2019). The influence of attachment styles and personality organization on emotional functioning after childhood trauma. Frontiers in psychiatry, 10, 643. MacDonald, K., Sciolla, A. F., Folsom, D., Bazzo, D., Searles, C., Moutier, C., ... & Norcross, B. (2015). Individual risk factors for physician boundary violations: The role of attachment style, childhood trauma and maladaptive beliefs. General Hospital Psychiatry, 37(5), 489-496. Skinner-Osei, P., & Levenson, J. S. (2018). Trauma-informed services for children with incarcerated parents. Journal of Family Social Work, 21(4-5), 421-437. Valeras, A. B., Cobb, E., Prodger, M., Hochberg, E., Allosso, L., & VandenHazel, H. (2019). Addressing adults with adverse childhood experiences requires a team approach. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 54(4-5), 352-360. Walker, Pete (2013) Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Yilmaz, H., Arslan, C., & Arslan, E. (2022). The effect of traumatic experiences on attachment styles. Anales de Psicología/Annals of Psychology, 38(3), 489-498. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

With depression being one of the most common mental health conditions in the world, a lot of a clinical psychologist’s workload will be supporting people with depression. A common depression symptom is what’s known as “Leaden Paralysis” and one of the effects of the symptoms is that everyday tasks take a million times more energy to complete. This can make the “simple” task of getting out of bed feel impossible for people with depression. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is leaden paralysis, why leaden paralysis impacts people’s mental health and what to do when depression makes it impossible to get out of bed. If you enjoy learning about mental health, Major Depressive Disorder and psychotherapy then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode is sponsored by CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Depression . 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. Note: nothing on this podcast is ever any sort of official medical, mental health, relationship or any other form of advice. What is The Weight of Depression? If you’ve ever experienced depression then you might be aware that there are some days where your depression will weigh you down so much that it feels like your body is made of lead and concrete. This makes the very notion of doing anything, much less leave your bed feel flat out impossible. As well as the sheer weight of depression might make you cancel plans, spend more time at home and/ or you might miss or be late for work. This weight of depression and a struggle to get out of bed can take a massive toll on your work, relationships and your quality of life. Personally, during August until October 2024 when I had quite severe depression, it always took me about two hours to get out of bed in the morning. Getting out of bed just felt hard because I had fun things to do, I could see my friends and everything but it wasn’t good enough motivation to actually want to get out of bed. I just wanted the day to be over so I could sleep and I didn’t have to deal with all the trauma responses that I was having every single hour of every single day. What Is Leaden Paralysis? As a result, there is a symptom of depression called “leaden paralysis” that causes people with depression to experience a severe drop in energy and as Qi et al. (2020) highlights this makes everyday tasks a million times harder for the individual. This is important to bear in mind because a lot of people who have never experienced depression or severe depression before might argue that people should just get up. Yet it isn’t that easy. And this is one of the reasons why depression is a leading cause of disability round the world (Friedrich, 2017). One of the clearest examples for me of leaden paralysis was on the very first day of my severe depression when it took me 5 hours just to have a shower. After struggling to get up for two or three hours, I managed to eventually make breakfast and at midday I decided to try to have a shower. Yet everything felt so heavy, I was so drained, I had no energy and my body might as well have had 20kg kettlebells tied to it. It took so long to go through the living room, up the stairs, grab my towel and clothes, go across the landing, go into the bathroom, undressed, etc, etc. Every one of those steps felt so impossible and each one took so long. That is what leaden paralysis is like and that’s why supporting people with depression is so important. You can probably imagine but having leaden paralysis doesn’t make you feel great and it can make you feel even worse about yourself as your quality of life starts to crumble, so this is why mental health support is critical. What To Do When Depression Makes It Impossible To Get Out Of Bed? Here are three strategies to help people with depression overcome leaden paralysis and get out of bed in the mornings. Firstly, you can break the day down into “hoops”. This strategy involves breaking down your day into sections then you visualise these tasks as hoops. For example, getting up or brushing your teeth can be seen as two hoops that need to be conquered. After completing each task, you could imagine yourself jumping through each hoop and this can be an encouraging visual so you get a sense of achievement, and it helps to make the day less overwhelming. As well as on the really difficult days, seeing tasks as hoops can help you determine what tasks or hoops can be done on other days. Secondly, you need to try to be kind to yourself because one of the ways how depression impacts us is makes us criticise ourselves more often. Therefore, to define your depression and how it criticizes you every chance it gets, you might want to practise self-kindness by using compassionate words when you realise your self-dialogue is getting more negative and harsher. For example, today is actually a good example for me because my mental health definitely dipped today, and I was tired, overwhelmed and I was anxious about seeing my partner tomorrow because of trauma responses. My partner has done nothing wrong by the way. This meant I didn’t get up for over an hour this morning and when I had a nap in the late afternoon in an effort to make myself feel better, I napped for 40 minutes but I didn’t get out of bed for another two hours. At first I was judging myself harshly because that was such a waste of time, I had so much to do and on and on and on. But I realised that it’s okay I couldn’t get out of bed earlier because this is what happens when my mental health dips. I need to listen to myself, figure out what’s causing my mental health to dip and just keep going. Things will get better later on or tomorrow and as long as I focus on just going forward then that’s okay. As well as I am hardly alone because this happens to everyone at different times in their life, even more so when you have depression and other mental health difficulties. This is what works for me, you might need other self-compassionate and self-kindness thoughts. The key is to not feed into your depression by criticising and hating yourself because you can’t get out of bed. This will only make it feel even harder to do everyday tasks. Finally, reach out for mental health support, because if you’re experiencing depression that is so severe you find it really difficult to get out of bed. It is important that you seek mental health support as soon as possible because if you don’t get support then your symptoms might get worse and your risk of suicide and self-harm increase. I really don’t want that for you. As well as your depression might make you want to be alone and isolate yourself, but when you’re struggling, it is a really good idea to be surrounded by other people. These people can include friends and family, but make sure you reach out to mental health professionals like a therapist or a mental health helpline too. Since if you isolate yourself then you might quickly find yourself in an echo chamber surrounded by your negative thoughts and inactivity and this will only maintain your depression. And make you feel worse and worse until you don’t see another way out. Whenever I go through depression and mental health difficulties, reaching out to mental health support is always the best thing I could have done. It is always nerve-racking, I try to put it off as long as possible and I try to deal with things on my own at first. Yet ultimately seeing a counsellor, therapist or another form of mental health support is always best and I grow and develop so much and I flat out love the process too. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Whether you’re a aspiring or qualified psychologist or person with depression, we’ve learnt a lot during today’s psychology podcast episode. For psychologists, a lot of our future work will be with people with depression and we will encounter leaden paralysis the majority of the time because it is a common symptom. I know as someone who has experienced the inability to get out of bed frequently in the past, this is very distressing, it makes you feel awful about yourself and it can play into suicidal thoughts. Especially, when every single other everyday task seems to require so much effort that your quality of life just crumbles and is reduced to nothing. This is why learning about strategies to support clients with leaden paralysis is so important. For people with depression, I hope you now have some strategies to help you get out of bed in the morning and I hope you realise that you aren’t alone. What you’re experiencing is normal for depression and it is a normal response for whatever is causing your difficulties and that’s why talking to a mental health professional is critical. Here are some questions at the end of this podcast episode: ·       Have you ever encountered leaden paralysis before? Either through personal or clinical experience. ·       How have you dealt with these experiences of leaden paralysis? ·       Do you know how to practise self-kindness? ·       How could you learn more about self-kindness? ·       What would you say to a loved one and/ or client who struggles to get out of bed in the morning because of their depression?   If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Depression . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Alshehri, T., Mook-Kanamori, D. O., de Mutsert, R., Penninx, B. W., Rosendaal, F. R., le Cessie, S., & Milaneschi, Y. (2023). The association between adiposity and atypical energy-related symptoms of depression: a role for metabolic dysregulations. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 108, 197-203. Chae, W. R., Baumert, J., Nübel, J., Brasanac, J., Gold, S. M., Hapke, U., & Otte, C. (2023). Associations between individual depressive symptoms and immunometabolic characteristics in major depression. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 71, 25-40. Collins, K. A., Eng, G. K., Tural, Ü., Irvin, M. K., Iosifescu, D. V., & Stern, E. R. (2022). Affective and somatic symptom clusters in depression and their relationship to treatment outcomes in the STAR* D sample. Journal of Affective Disorders, 300, 469-473. Friedrich, M. J. (2017). Depression is the leading cause of disability around the world. Jama, 317(15), 1517-1517. Guo, Z. P., Chen, L., Tang, L. R., Gao, Y., Qu, M., Wang, L., & Liu, C. H. (2025). The differential orbitofrontal activity and connectivity between atypical and typical major depressive disorder. NeuroImage: Clinical, 45, 103717. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-mental-health/202407/when-it-feels-impossible-to-get-out-of-bed Qi, B., MacDonald, K., Berlim, M. T., Fielding, A., Lis, E., Low, N., ... & Trakadis, Y. (2020). Balance problems, paralysis, and angina as clinical markers for severity in major depression. Frontiers in psychiatry, 11, 567394. Vreijling, S. R., Fatt, C. R. C., Williams, L. M., Schatzberg, A. F., Usherwood, T., Nemeroff, C. B., ... & Lamers, F. (2024). Features of immunometabolic depression as predictors of antidepressant treatment outcomes: pooled analysis of four clinical trials.  The British Journal of Psychiatry ,  224 (3), 89-97. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

Whilst statistics might be a psychological topic that lots of aspiring and qualified psychologists dread, learning about psychometrics and psychological measurements is a lot of fun and it is really interesting. We need to understand how to create good psychometric measurements so we can measure the behaviour we intend to and not any other variables. This is even more important for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists where the quality and accuracy of our psychometric measurements could be the difference between people receiving or being denied mental health support. This statistics topic is critical to understand and appreciate. Therefore, in this psychological statistics podcast episode, you’ll learn what are psychometrics, what are psychological measurements and a lot more insightful facts that will deepen your understanding of statistics. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by 401 Statistics Questions For Psychology Students: A Guide To Psychology Statistics, Research Methods and More . 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. Psychometrics and Psychological Measurements COPYRIGHT 2025 Connor Whiteley. Extract from 401 Statistics Questions For Psychology Students: A Guide To Psychology Statistics, Research Methods and More . I think this is a great chapter to kick-off the deep-dive sections of the book because psychometrics and psychological measurements, are essentially the lifeblood of psychology as a science. Due to if we didn’t use psychometrics and if we didn’t have valid, reliable measures then psychology wouldn’t be a science and that would be awful. Then again, this is an issue that no one normally thinks about, because I never think about psychometrics and measurements. And that’s slightly concerning because in clinical psychology we want to measure and track someone’s mental health condition with accuracy and reliability. I’m hardly alone. I don’t think I know too many applied or even theoretical psychologists who focus on psychometrics and psychological measurements. Leading us to use the same tools and scales over and over again without anyone truly focusing on how good they actually are. This is the focus and aim of the various topics that we’re going to be looking at in this book. What Is A Measurement In Psychology? In statistics, a measurement is the assignment of numbers to a quantifiable attribute according to a rule. Also, this rule can be arbitrary so this allows for multiple assignments. For example, temperature can be measured in Fahrenheit or Celsius, which are two different scales/ assignments. As well as these two scales can be turned into each other because they have a linear transformation. Equally, this assignment can be non-linear because the Richter scale is a way to measure earthquakes. Each number means the earthquake is 10 times more powerful than the previous number. Therefore, if an earthquake has a value of 10 on the Richter scale then it is 10 times more powerful than an earthquake that has a value of 9. What Is Scaling In Psychology? In statistics, scaling is the process of setting up the rule of correspondence between observations and numbers assigned. As well as McDonald (1999) added that data and observations are very different, because data are scaled observations. What Are Noisy Measurements? According to Henk Kelderman noisy measurements are outcomes that are considered indicators of a given attribute but these indicators cannot be directly observed. What Are Some Examples of Noisy Observations? Noisy observations can include non-response, recall, subjectivity, response styles and self-deception as well as motivated misresponse. What Are Psychometrics? In psychology statistics, psychometrics focuses on the development of formal methods and theories that help us to study the fidelity and appropriateness of different psychological measurements. In addition, Dr Henk Kelderman writes at http://www.psychometrika.org/society/index.html ): “Measurement and quantification is ubiquitous in modern society. In early modernity, the scientific revolution provided a firm scientific basis for physical measures like temperature, pressure, and so on. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a similar revolution took place in psychology with the measurement of intelligence and personality. A crucial role was played by Psychometrics, initially defined as "The art of imposing measurement and number upon operations of the mind.” Since 1936 the Psychometric Society has been at the forefront of the development of formal theories and methods to study the appropriateness and fidelity of psychological measurements. Because measurement in psychology is often done with tests and questionnaires, it is rather imprecise and subject to error. Consequently, statistics plays a major role in psychometrics. For example, members of the society have devoted much attention to the development of statistical methods for the appraisal of noisy measurements whose outcomes are considered indicators of attributes of interest that cannot be directly observed. Today, psychometrics covers virtually all statistical methods that are useful for the behavioral and social sciences including the handling of missing data, the combination of prior information with measured data, measurement obtained from special experiments, visualization of statistical outcomes, measurement that guarantees personal privacy, and so on. Psychometric models and methods now have a wide range of applicability in various disciplines such as education, industrial and organizational psychology, behavioral genetics, neuropsychology, clinical psychology, medicine, and even chemistry.” What Are Some Ways To Collect Observations In Psychology? To gather observations you could collect reaction times, self-reports, peer ratings, time to relapse, time in remission, basal level of skin conductance and many, many more. What Is Theory of Data? According to Coombs (1960), his Theory of Data classifies the essential focus of every psychological measurement we use in the discipline is to associate each construct of interest, stimulus or individual to a point in a psychological space. Also, he mentioned in his 1960 paper that “basically, all a person can do is to compare stimuli with each other, or against some absolute standard or personal reference point.” How Many Categories Are Optimal For Likert Scaling? Whilst it is technically true that more categories mean more data points, in reality, 5 categories are optimal in Likert Scaling. Since research shows participants cannot meaningfully differentiate between more than 7 categories. What Is Another Name For Optimal Scaling? Correspondence analysis is another name for optimal scaling. What Is Optimal Scaling? This type of scaling derives its values for response options that are statistically optimal. For example, Optimal Scaling seeks to maximise the internal consistency of a scale (also known as the correlations between the stimuli measuring the same thing). How Are Test Scores Assigned? A test score in statistics is assigned using one of the scaling methods. As well as test score is the weighted sum of the item scores or it is the sum of the items scores. The weight of each item score is determined before scoring as well as optimal scaling and judgemental scaling assign their weights to basic responses. What Is A Criterion-Referenced Measurement? This is a measurement that is referenced by a pre-defined standard of behaviour (this is the criterion). Since the criterion is the area of a subject that the test is designed to measure. For example, a criterion for a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder might be a client must endorse 80% of items on a questionnaire. This is a criterion-referenced measurement because you don’t need to compare this client to anyone else, you only been to reference their scores to criterion. What Is A Norm-Referenced Measurement? This is when a measurement is based on the distribution of scores obtained from the population that the researchers interested in. This is basically the “norm” that everyone is compared against. What Is Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgement? His Law of Comparative Judgement from 1927 proposes that each stimulus must elicit a psychological value from a participant. As well as the respondents should choose the stimulus with the highest psychological value at the moment of comparison with these values being distributed normally in the population. What Is An Example of Measurement By Fiat? Likert scaling is an example of measurement by Fiat because researchers have arbitrarily decided how to assign numbers to a response so this assignment lacks any empirical justification. What Are Some Examples of Measurement of Modelling? Since measurement by modelling involves scores that are based on models for stimulus respondent behaviour, Guttman and Thurstonian scaling are good examples. What Is Type 1 Data In Psychology Statistics? Type 1 data or Type 1 Observations are preferential choices where the participant is asked which of the two stimuli they prefer. What is Type 2 Data? Type 2 data is Single Stimulus where participants are asked where they stand in relation to the stimulus. What is Type 3 Data? Type 3 Data is stimulus comparison where participants are asked which of the two stimuli have more of some attributes. What Is Type 4 Data? Type 4 Data is Similarities where participants are asked which of the two pairs of stimuli are more alike. What Type of Data Is Used In Multidimensional Scaling? Similarities (Type 4 Data) is used in Multidimensional scaling. What Type Of Data Does Thurstonian Scaling Use? Thurstonian Scaling works for both Type 1 Data (preferential choice) and stimulus comparison (Type 3 Data). What Is Thurstonian Scaling? In 1927, Thurstone proposed a way to estimate population means of stimuli from their rank orderings in a sample drawn from the population of interest. Therefore, all means can be estimated in relation to the mean of some “referent” stimulus if we follow some basic rules of comparative judgements which he called Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgements.   If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET 401 Statistics Questions For Psychology Students: A Guide To Psychology Statistics, Research Methods and More.  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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Statistical Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2025) 401 Statistics Questions For Psychology Students: A Guide To Psychology Statistics, Research Methods and More. CGD Publishing. England. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

Recently through my university, I received a job advert for an Assistant Educational Psychologist position starting in September with the only experience requirement being that you have worked at least one year full-time with children. This was perfect for me because I’ve been working with children and young people part-time for six years, so I will definitely be applying to this position next week. However, my understanding of educational psychology is very surface level, so in case I become an educational psychologist, it would be very useful to have a greater understanding of educational psychology. Therefore, in this careers in psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is educational psychology, what do educational psychologists do, what are the potential careers within educational psychology and more. If you enjoy learning about psychology careers, applied psychology and the psychology of learning then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Retrieval-Based Learning . 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. What Is Educational Psychology? Educational psychology is the empirical study of how we learn and retain information. This area of psychology mainly focuses on the learning processes in early childhood as well as adolescence, but as learning is lifelong, it can focus on adults too. Also, it’s important to bear in mind that even though educational psychology sounds like it only focuses on education settings, learning takes place through life experiences like the home, family, friends, work, culture and through social media. Therefore, educational psychology investigates how learning can occur in all these different situations. Furthermore, when it comes to educational psychologists, these psychologists study the biological, cognitive, social and emotional factors that underpin learning as well as deepen our understanding of individual learning styles, the importance of learning environments and instructional strategies. The entire point of educational psychology is to help people learn in the best way possible. Educational psychologists can specialise in children with specific learning difficulties or neurodevelopmental conditions. As well as educational psychologists can develop teaching methods to help students reach their full potential in schools. I know the Assistant Educational Psychologist position that I’m going to apply for focuses on working with children with autism and specific learning difficulties. Whereas, a woman I used to know she did work experience in an educational psychology role helping to do assessments for children with special educational needs and she loved it. What Topics Can Educational Psychologists Study? If you want to become an educational psychologist, there are a lot of different topics and areas you could work in and study. For example, you could work in organisational learning where you study how people learn in organisational settings like the workplace. I think this sounds great to some extent because if you have a burning passion for business psychology but you’re interested in learning too then this is a great way to combine both topics. Also, this just goes to show how psychology can constantly be combined and applied in so many unexpected ways. I never would have thought to combine learning and the workplace. Another topic you could study as an educational psychologist is educational technology by looking at how different types of technology can help students learn. I would add that you could see what types of technology improves people’s ability to learn the best. I imagine that for some people artificial intelligence could be useful but other learners might find virtual reality more useful. It is a random idea but those are the sort of fun experiments and research questions you could investigate in educational psychology. In addition, educational psychologists can work in instructional design so they research how to effectively design learning materials for different students based on their learning style, their age, their cognitive development and whether or not they have any special educational needs. Personally, a small part of me would not mind working in this area. It definitely wouldn’t be my “forever” job, but I think it would be interesting to see how this works in more depth. Also, I do have experience in this area because as part of being a Postgraduate Ambassador for my university, I’ve already developed age-appropriate materials for students at different ages and that is a lot of fun. The final three options, that we’ll look at in this podcast episode (but there are more available in the real world) are educational psychologists could be involved in curriculum development by creating coursework that maximises a person’s ability to learn. As well as they can work with gifted learners so educational psychologists can support learners who are identified as gifted. Lastly, psychologists can work with children and young people with special educational needs by providing them with specialised instructions. This is something I’ve seen a few times in the real world. Especially, during my work experience with an NHS learning disability team because I went to a college that had a centre for people with special educational needs. And it was useful to see how staff spoke, broke down tasks and interacted with each student. It’s hard to explain briefly in a paragraph but it was useful to see how instructions needed to be adapted so the student could effectively understand what was being asked of them. What Psychological Perspectives Does Educational Psychology Draw On? Like most of psychology, educational psychology draws on a lot of psychological theories, research and practices from other areas of psychology. For example, educational psychology draws on theories and research from behavioural psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology and more. At the time of writing, within educational psychology, there are five main schools of thought, which we’ll look at in more depth in a moment. These are cognitivism, behaviourism, constructivism, social contextual learning theories and experientialism. It's important to be aware of each of these main perspectives because each one has their own focus on specific factors that influence a person’s learning ability. Whether this is through influences on experiences, behaviours, emotions, thoughts and more. What Is The Cognitive Perspective In Educational Psychology? The cognitive perspective has become one of the most widespread theories in educational psychology because it accounts for a wide range of different factors that impact learning. For example, the cognitive perspective accounts for the effects of thinking, memory formation, information processing and more unlike the other perspectives. Therefore, in learning and cognitive psychology, this perspective focuses on how constructs, like emotions, motivations, individual perspectives and beliefs impact the learning process. Then this cognitive theory is supported by the idea that a person learns because of their own intrinsic motivation that has nothing to do with external rewards as a behaviourist would see learning. More on that in a moment. As a result, educational psychologists use the cognitive perspective to understand what motivates children and young people to learn, how they problem solve, how children remember what they’ve learnt amongst other topics. What is The Behaviourist Perspective In Educational Psychology? Our second perspective proposes that all of our behaviours are learnt through conditioning, like negative reinforcement. Behavioural psychologists who believe in the behaviourist perspective firmly rely on the principles of operant conditioning to explain how learning happens. In essence, behaviourism suggests that teachers reward students with tokens or another desirable outcome or stimulus and this motivates the students to learn. Also, if the teacher punishes a student for doing bad behaviour then the student learns not to do that in the future. Within educational psychology, behaviourism is understood to be somewhat useful with the idea of rewarding students teaches them good behaviour. Yet behaviourism has thankfully been heavily criticised for not acknowledging or taking into account for the internal psychological motivations of a child or young person. Like, intrinsic motivation, emotions as well as attitudes. Personally, I’m a good example of why the behaviourist approach isn’t completely right, because I love learning about psychology, I love podcasting and learning everything I possibly can. Not because a teacher is rewarding me for learning about psychology, but because this brings me joy, it is my passion and I would hate not to learn about psychology and other topics. What is The Developmental Perspective In Educational Psychology? Just like Developmental Psychology , the developmental perspective investigates how our biology, cognitive, social and emotional development impacts our learning throughout the lifespan. Therefore, in an educational psychology context, this helps us to understand how children and young people learn new knowledge and skills as they grow up and develop. Personally, as much as I flat out hate the “nature versus nurture” debate because research clearly shows most behaviours are a mixture of the two with one type of factor being the dominant influence and the other being a smaller factor but still influencing the behaviour. When it comes to educational psychology, there is still a focus on the impact of nature versus nurture on the learning process. For instance, as the brain develops so does a child’s capacity to learn, remember and problem solve. These are the biological factors. Yet at the same time, there are nurture and environmental factors impacting the child’s ability to learn too from their life experiences with peers, teachers, parents, family and other important people in their life. A good theory to look at here is Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development model that explains how children grow intellectually throughout childhood. You can read more about this theory and more in Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology.   On the whole, educational psychologists use the developmental perspective to understand how children think at different stages of their development so they can better understand what children are capable of learning at each developmental stage. In turn, this helps educators to create instructional materials and methods that are appropriate for each age group. What Is The Experiential Perspective In Educational Psychology? The experiential perspective focuses on how a person’s life experiences impact how they learn and understand new information. In addition, this perspective considers emotions, feelings and experiences similar to the cognitive and constructivist perspectives too. Then this perspective helps educational psychologists to understand how learners find personal meaning in their education instead of feeling that the information doesn’t apply to them. In case you don’t think this is important to understand because you believe children and young people think everything that they learn is important to them. Just think about your maths lessons as a child, how many times did you sit in algebra wondering when you were going to use it? It was only last night I was having a conversation with a friend about how useless algebra was, and she disagreed with me. And I don’t really remember much about algebra because I didn’t think it applied to me. As educators, this reaction from students is the last thing that we want. This was something I learnt during my pedagogical training through my university for my postgraduate ambassador job. Due to one of the 4 pedagogical outcomes is “value of learning” so it’s important to show students that what they're learning is relevant and important to them as well as they can use it in the real world. This helps to improve engagement and it shows them they should focus and remember what they learnt today. In my psychology content for my university, I’ve included short sections at the end and throughout my content that remind students why this is important and why they should value what they’re learning today. What is The Constructivist Perspective In Educational Psychology? The constructivist approach is definitely an area of psychology I need to learn more about because I flat out love how this approach accounts for the role of social and cultural influences on our behaviour. In this case, our learning behaviour. As a result, someone who believes in the constructivist approach proposes that what a person already knows significantly influences how they will learn new information. In other words, new knowledge can only be added to and understood in terms of existing knowledge with this perspective relying heavily on the work of Lev Vygotsky with his ideas on the zone of proximal development as well as instructional scaffolding. In my opinion, I largely agree with this theory because last week is a good example of this. Since I live and breathe clinical psychology through my lectures, my books and my podcast, I can largely walk into any psychology lecture and understand and learn a lot of information. I make links between what I currently know and the new information that I am learning in the lecture. Whereas last week, I went to my housemates’ second year atomic physics lecture and I did not understand any of it whatsoever. It was talking about the periodic table but that was all I understood because I didn’t have any past information besides what I learnt at GCSE (when I was 16 years old). I couldn’t learn or remember any of this atomic physics information because I had no preexisting knowledge. What Are Educational Psychology Careers? If you like the sound of educational psychology then there are a lot of potential career options for you. For example, the majority of educational psychologists work directly in schools because some psychologists are teachers but other educational psychologists help teachers try new learning methods as well as develop new course content. Another career option as an educational psychologist is to work in academic research where you conduct research on different topics within learning. Or you could work in administration where you can influence education methods and help students learn in the best possible way for them. A final career option within education psychology is to become a counsellor where you directly help students cope with any barriers to the learning that they face. Lastly, for this section, to be able to become an educational psychologist you need to have a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree as well as if you want to work in school administration or at a university then you might need a doctorate. If you’re a UK listener then at the time of writing, the Doctorate of Educational Psychology is fully funded. Careers In Psychology Conclusion Personally, because I do a lot of work in schools through my university’s Outreach department as a student ambassador, I often think about working in school directly as a psychologist. This is one of the reasons why I’m interested in applying for the Assistant Educational Psychologist position because it’s interesting, it will allow me to work in education (a place where I feel really comfortable) and it means I can continue to work with children. Which is interesting because when I was younger and even a few years ago, I never would have said I wanted to work with children and young people. Yet now, I almost couldn’t imagine not working with children, because students have been a big and very positive part of my life for the past six years. Ultimately, I would love to work directly in schools as an educational psychologist with a clinical focus. Since before this podcast episode, the only real information I had about educational psychology was that there were two types. A clinical educational psychologist and a research educational psychologist. To wrap up today’s episode, educational psychology offers us a lot of exciting opportunities to understand how people learn and the different factors that play an important role in informing teaching methods as well as educational strategies. Due to educational psychology explores the learning processing through examining different areas of learning behaviour like how developmental, cognitive, social, emotional amongst other factors impact learning. Then this can all be applied to different areas of education like educational technology, special education, curriculum design and more. If you want to work with children and young people, make a difference and contribute to education as a whole then becoming an educational psychologist could be perfect for you. Therefore, here are some questions to think at the end of this episode: ·       Does educational psychology interest you? ·       Would you want to work in education and make a difference? ·       What area of educational psychology excites you? ·       Is there anything holding you back from exploring educational psychology in more depth?   If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Retrieval-Based Learning . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Careers In Psychology Psychology References and Further Reading Borich, G. D., & Tombari, M. L. (2021). Educational psychology: A contemporary approach. Černý, M. (2023). Educational psychology aspects of learning with chatbots without artificial intelligence: Suggestions for designers. European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education, 13(2), 284-305. Gillham, B. (Ed.). (2022). Reconstructing educational psychology. Routledge. Hornstra, L., Mathijssen, A. S., Denissen, J. J., & Bakx, A. (2023). Academic motivation of intellectually gifted students and their classmates in regular primary school classes: A multidimensional, longitudinal, person-and variable-centered approach. Learning and Individual Differences, 107, 102345. https://www.apa.org/education-career/guide/careers Locke, J., & John, J. A. S. (2024). Some thoughts on education. BoD–Books on Demand. MacLeod, A., Burm, S., & Mann, K. (2022). Constructivism: learning theories and approaches to research. Researching medical education, 25-40. Molina Roldán, S., Marauri, J., Aubert, A., & Flecha, R. (2021). How inclusive interactive learning environments benefit students without special needs. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 661427. Roediger, H. L. (2013). Applying Cognitive Psychology to Education: Translational Educational Science. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612454415 (Original work published 2013) Sepp, S., Wong, M., Hoogerheide, V., & Castro‐Alonso, J. C. (2022). Shifting online: 12 tips for online teaching derived from contemporary educational psychology research. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 38(5), 1304-1320. Siann, G., & Ugwuegbu, D. C. (2024). Educational psychology in a changing world. Taylor & Francis. Woolfolk, A. (2016). Educational psychology. Pearson. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

I first became aware of media psychology in 2024 when I kept seeing media psychology training courses being advertised in The Psychologist magazine by the British Psychology Society. I had never heard of media psychology before but I checked out the courses and £100 wasn’t a bad price. In the future, I might take one of the courses so I can deepen my understanding of what is media psychology, what do media psychologists do and the various roles that media psychologists play on production sets. However, until that time, in this cyberpsychology podcast episode, you’ll explore what is media psychology, what topics do media psychologists study and more. If you’re interested in the intersection between applied psychology, careers in psychology and technology then this will be a brilliant podcast episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode is sponsored by Careers In Psychology: A Guide To Careers In Clinical Psychology, Forensic Psychology, Business Psychology and More . 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. What is Media Psychology? As you might be aware because media psychology isn’t well-known, it is certainly a newer branch of psychology compared to others, like cognitive psychology and behaviourism. Media psychology focuses on investigating how people are impacted by technology as well as the media. In addition, media psychology is important because we are constantly surrounded by media. Even now surround me as I write this episode, I have my wireless earphones in my ears blasting some Demonslayer music as I struggle to keep some my anxiety out of my head about telling my partner tomorrow that I am a rape survivor. I have my laptop to one side with my monitor with this Word Document and my research on another screen. As well as I have my phone next to my mouse, so even though I am working right now. I am still surrounded by technology. And even beforehand I picked today’s topic, I was reading some short stories on my tablet. We are surrounded by technology. As a result, it’s important that psychology understands the impact that technology has on. Also, media psychology is very interdisciplinary because the constant changes in how people interact with technology which makes this particular area of study difficult to define. In my opinion, this is even more relevant because we are seeing how people change their search and digital consumption patterns with the rise of artificial intelligence. As well as how the artificial intelligence is revolutionising and changing companies and the workplace. Building upon this, media psychology is heavily influenced by obviously psychology, but academia focusing on communication too. Like, sociology, anthropology, fan studies and media studies. Because of this, a lot of media psychology researchers don’t consider psychology to be their main area of research because they believe their main research area is media’s influence on individuals rather than a subtopic within a larger subject of expertise. Interestingly, last month I went to a postgraduate talk on Taylor Swift and feminism, and looking back, I suppose this is largely about how individuals interact with her music, her messages and her as a fan culture. The lecturer giving the talk was a Doctor of English Literature and she gave a brilliant talk. Yet it is interesting to think about how English Literature in this situation could fall under the umbrella of psychology because she was studying texts and lyrics to see why Taylor Swift has the impact she does on individuals. Ultimately, according to The Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology, the discipline is defined as “Media psychology is the scientific study of human behaviour, thoughts and feelings experienced in the context of media use and creation,” What Does Media Psychology Study? We already know media psychology focuses on investigating the interaction between people and technology, but here are some specific topics that media psychologists can study. Online learning is a topic of interest because it helps media psychologists to understand the impact of online teaching, for example, and how in-person lessons can be enhanced by technology or adapted for online teaching. As well as how media messages can be constructed to encourage someone to give to a charity or do another prosocial behaviour. Media influence is another topic that media psychologists get excited by. They could investigate the impact of how exposure to media depictions of violence might or might not increase aggression, how depictions of gender roles impact sexist attitudes or perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes and so on. In addition, media psychologists investigate audience involvement. Such as, why do we cry or laugh at certain moments in a TV programme or film? How do stories impact our sense of self, our identity and our social norms? As well as why do popular culture fans come together to form supportive or sometimes toxic communities? Personally, given how I live with three people who flat out love Minecraft and I constantly hear about different things they’re doing in Minecraft, and streamers are popular in legal trouble and so on. I would be interested in knowing how Minecraft developed such a cult following. One final topic of interest is the impact of social media. Media psychologists investigate how social media platforms could create more comprehensive view of the world instead of an echo-chamber that amplifies hate and toxic body image ideals. As well as researchers could investigate how different types of social media use can impact mental health conditions, like depression and anxiety. If you want to learn more about social media use definitely check out my book Social Media Psychology. How Did Media Psychology Develop? Interestingly, media psychology isn’t as new as everyone thinks it is because Hugo Munsterberg was the first person to look empirically at how an audience responded to film in his 1916 book The Photoplay: A Psychological Study . Then it came into the mainstream a little more in the 1950s when psychologists started to look more into how media impacted children. Nonetheless, media psychology itself wasn’t brought into the mainstream until 1986 when the American Psychological Association established the Media Psychology division as the organisation’s 46th division. When it first started, it was focused on psychologists who appeared in the media as expert witnesses and sources of information. This is still somewhat the function of the division today but it has changed its name to the Society for Media Psychology and Technology in the United States. Its current modern focus is researching the effects and influence of media. Finally, whilst in recent years the field has expanded to include various journals focusing on media psychology and there is an increase in universities dedicated modules, courses and research into media psychology. In 2003, the only APA-accredited (and this was still true as of 2023) media psychology PhD programme was at the Fielding Graduate University. What Are Some Careers in Media Psychology? It is certainly true that other areas of psychology have better defined career routes but media psychology has a few options for people. Media psychologists becoming an academic researcher is very normal and it is the standard career route. One reason why media psychology doesn’t have a lot of defined career routes at the moment is because it is still so new and the discipline is still defining its scope as well as purview. However, the context I always see media psychologists being employed is on TV and Film production crews. This is important because in an ever-expanding world of technology, this represents a chance for a lot of opportunities to apply media psychology in a wide range of industries from TV to film to education as well as politics. Everyone wants to know about how technology impacts us so they can create better health and safety rules, laws and regulations that better protect people. I’ll be surprised if people aren’t familiar with Love Island (and no before you ask, I do not watch it but it is impossible not to be aware of it in the UK). Yet I know reality TV programmes like Love Island are starting to employ media psychologists to better help them protect the mental health of their contestants. Moreover, media psychologists are important for teaching children lessons in media as well as cyberliteracy from a young age. In these situations, media psychologists are very useful because they can be the experts in designing and implementing these programmes. Conclusion: What Is The Future Of Media Psychology? In this cyberpsychology podcast episode, we’ve learnt that media psychology investigates how people are impacted by technology as well as the media. Also, whilst early media psychology research focused on the negative impacts of media, it is important to recognise that modern media psychology recognises that media and technology isn’t all good nor all bad. What matters is how we use technology and with the constantly changing nature of technology and media, all of us as individuals and as a society, we must learn how to maximise the positives of technology whilst minimising the negatives. Thankfully, this is where media psychologists come in because they play a critical role in helping our understanding of how to navigate these developments. Which in the current world because artificial intelligence, let alone other forms of technology and media, changes and advances weekly. The job of media psychologists is more important than ever. Therefore, when it comes to the future of media psychology, I think the discipline will only grow in popularity and importance as we look to examine the positives and negatives of new forms of media and technology and how they impact individuals. Then as we race to catch up with technology in terms of laws, regulations and Acts of Parliament, we need to use media psychologists to advise us, production companies and governments about how best to protect people. Because for me, that is the entire point of psychology, psychology is a force for good and I strongly believe media psychology is flat out critical for the future. So if you’re interested in understanding how the media impacts people then maybe check out courses and careers in media psychology. You never know what weird, wonderful and fascinating places it might lead you.     If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Careers In Psychology: A Guide To Careers In Clinical Psychology, Forensic Psychology, Business Psychology and More . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Cyberpsychology Psychology References and Further Reading Brown Rutledge P. Arguing for Media Psychology as a Distinct Field. In: Dill KE, ed. The Oxford Handbook Of Media Psychology. 1st ed. Oxford University Press; 2012. Cummings, J. J., & Bailenson, J. N. (2016). How immersive is enough? A meta-analysis of the effect of immersive technology on user presence. Media psychology, 19(2), 272-309. Dill, KE. Introduction. In: Dill KE, ed. The Oxford Handbook Of Media Psychology. 1st ed. Oxford University Press; 2012. Fischoff S. Media Psychology: A Personal Essay in Definition and Purview. J Media Psychol. 2005;10(1):1-21. Kleemans, M., Daalmans, S., Carbaat, I., & Anschütz, D. (2018). Picture perfect: The direct effect of manipulated Instagram photos on body image in adolescent girls. Media Psychology, 21(1), 93-110. Skowronski, M., Busching, R., & Krahé, B. (2021). Links between exposure to sexualized Instagram images and body image concerns in girls and boys. Journal of Media Psychology. Stever GS. Media and Media Psychology. In: Stever GS, Giles DC, Cohen JD, Myers ME. Understanding Media Psychology. 1st ed. New York: Routledge; 2021:1-13. Sundar, S. S., Jia, H., Waddell, T. F., & Huang, Y. (2015). Toward a theory of interactive media effects (TIME) four models for explaining how interface features affect user psychology. The handbook of the psychology of communication technology, 47-86. Tuma RM. Media Psychology and Its History. In: Dill KE, ed. The Oxford Handbook Of Media Psychology. 1st ed. Oxford University Press; 2012. Valkenburg, P. M., Peter, J., & Walther, J. B. (2016). Media effects: Theory and research. Annual review of psychology, 67(1), 315-338. Wallace, P. (2015). The psychology of the Internet. Cambridge University Press. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, I want to focus on the myth in society that feminists are men-hating individuals. I flat out hate it whenever this myth pops up because feminists do not hate men in the slightest and it is often misogynistic men using the idea of misandry as a just cause to threaten and insult women that pelt this myth. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is feminism, why feminists do not hate men and why sexist men push this awful and anti-feminist myth. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, social activism and more then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social And Cultural Psychology . 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. What is Feminism? Feminism is the strongly held belief that the patriarchy harms everyone, including men, and this is why I have always supported feminism. Feminism just means the equality between genders, so no one is better than the other regardless of your gender. As well as certain genders do not have a higher status than other genders. Also, feminists believe that everyone will benefit from the liberation from the patriarchy and the sexist oppression that it supports. Unfortunately, by some people, feminists are simply seen as little more than men-hating misandrists as well as extremists. What is Misandry? In case you’re brand-new to what misandry is, like I was up until last year, misandry refers to the discrimination, prejudice and hatred aimed at men that is rooted exclusively in their gender. Therefore, people who don’t like feminism and this includes men and women, believe that feminists are simply misandrists who only want to divide the world and create “gender wars” so they can further their agenda. Unfortunately, Hamel et al. (2016) and Barraso (2020) shows that almost 50% of men and women in the United States see feminism as an ideology that unfairly punishes men for women’s issues. Moreover, there is some debate about the existence of misandry, and even if it does, whether this is a positive or negative. Some feminists believe that anger as well as outrage towards men is useful because it helps keep pressure on the throat of the oppressive systems that stops women from being free of the patriarchy as supported by Morgan (2014) and Agostini and van Zomeren (2021). Whereas other feminists believe that misandry is a mechanism that is against the ethics of the feminism movement, because misandry makes it more difficult to invite and include allies in their work fighting the injustice that women face (Hooks, 2000). Personally, I am firmly in the second camp, I do not support misandry because no one should face discrimination, prejudice or hate because of their gender. For me and so many others, the entire point of feminism is that all genders are equal and no one faces discrimination and hate. Using misandry and men’s gender against them as a weapon is flat out wrong. Why Does The Myth of Feminists As Misandrists Matter? The recent why public perceptions about feminists as misandrists matter is because it has very stark real-world implications. For example, so-called Men’s Rights Activists are increasing in number because they name feminists as their oppressors (Pry and Valiente, 2013). As well as in the final year of my undergraduate degree, I had a lecture on incels and extremist misogyny and one of the reasons why these men want to kill, beat and rape women is because they believe women are a threat to male rights. Therefore, this has led many so-called Men’s Rights Activists to only increase their hate towards feminists in recent years. These men use digital and physical forms of violence to hurt, threaten and attack feminists. These men see it as a natural consequence of feminists’ men-hating behaviour (Beale et al., 2019; Diaz and Valji, 2019). Let’s see if there’s any truth behind this myth after all. Why Is Feminism As Misandry A Myth? My supervisor is actually part of the main study for this podcast episode, which is exciting. As a result, a study by Hopkins et al. (2024) found that misandry as a trait of feminism is a myth because they conducted 6 studies and recruited over 10,000 participants to study the traits of feminists and misandrists. Their first finding was that feminist women generally speaking did not hold any harsher opinions against men than non-feminist women or other men. As well as feminists tend to perceive men as fundamentally similar to women and the differences we see between men and women are actually a result of the patriarchy than the core difference in our nature. Therefore, men are not the issue in themselves, the issue is with the patriarchy and the sexist oppression that it supports. Moreover, feminists actually hold men in positive regard but this regard is moderated by how threatening or safe a man is perceived to be. Also, when it comes to what men think of misandry, feminist women in the study weren’t significantly more hostile towards men than non-feminist women, but feminist women were less benevolent towards men. This suggests that although feminists don’t hold hostile beliefs and attitudes towards men, feminists are less likely than non-feminists to coddle to men, to practice humility when correcting them or give them a pass for their intentional harms. Overall, this study shows that the reasons so-called Men's Rights Activists believe feminists to be misandrists is because of their refusal to capitulate to men and men see this refusal as a sign of misandry and hostility towards them. This is not an accurate interpretation of this refusal. Why Do Some Men View Feminists As Misandrists? The last section covered why feminists being misandrists is a myth. As a result of whilst it is true that some feminist women do identify as misandrists, it is important to note that these are a tiny minority and are not the norm amongst feminists. If there are anti-feminists who cannot understand that difference then it is the same as men who apply the “not all men” argument to every single discussion without fail about men’s harm towards women. Moreover, Downing and Rousch (1985) is part of a small evidence base suggesting that women become more likely to identify as misandrists after realising their own oppression. Then over time as the woman becomes more aware of the systems that underpin sexist oppression and sexism in the patriarchy, they start to disengage from hatred towards men and engaging with hating and wanting to challenge the system itself. This has led people to argue that if misandry exists at all then it appears to be a belief system that is short-lived in only a small number of feminists. On the other hand, when it comes to men who view feminists as misandrists then they might never ever be convinced otherwise. Due to these men see misandry as a “good” excuse or reason to threaten and abuse women. Yet it is critical that even though it is hard to convince these men otherwise, that we keep trying because this is about keeping women safe. It is critical all of us continue and realise that we need to fight the system because feminists have realised that it is better to fight the system than individual men, and feminists should always engage compassionately with people who haven’t gotten to the point of realising their patriarchal oppression yet. If these women who aren’t feminists yet then feminists should gently urge women to turn their anger and frustration towards dismantling the patriarchal systems in place instead of hating individual men. It is only by fighting the system that women will be free of oppression. Social Psychology Conclusion On the whole, when it comes to feminism, there will always be a place for anger because anger can drive us, motivate us and inspire us to take steps toward change. Yet anger must be reserved for dealing with the systems of power that oppress women, and part of dealing with these unjust systems will include engaging with individual men who do not support women’s liberation. When this happens, anger might be needed but only when absolutely necessary. As a result, when it comes to the future of feminism, we all need to make sure that our anger and outrage are applied to where they will have the most impact and be most useful in fighting the systems of power that oppress women instead of being applied to individuals. This will help keep feminists safe and it will help us avoid those ugly and ill-informed stereotypes that depict feminists as misandrists. Personally, I want to wrap up this psychology podcast episode by mentioning that I tried to remove gendered language as much as possible from this episode for two main reasons. Firstly, because both men and women can be anti-feminist so I wanted to avoid continuing the idea that it is men versus women, and I wanted to highlight that not all women are feminists and not all men are misogynists. Secondly, I wanted to highlight that all of human history, including the ancient Egyptians, the Byzantine empire and figures from the neolithic period have always had a third gender category. Therefore, I wanted to highlight that true feminism is about gender equality for all genders. Here are some questions to think about at the end of this podcast episode: ·       Do you identify as a feminist? How do you view feminism? ·       Is your opinion based on facts or what someone has told you? ·       If your opinion isn’t based on facts, could you do some research in support of feminism? ·       Finally, what could you do to help protect women today and going forward?   If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social And Cultural Psychology . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Social Psychology References and Further Reading Agostini M., van Zomeren M. (2021). Toward a comprehensive and potentially cross-cultural model of why people engage in collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of four motivations and structural constraints. Psychological Bulletin, 147(7), 667–700. Hedges, T. (2024). Reclaiming misandry from misogynistic rhetoric. Feminist Review, 136(1), 84-99. Védie, L. (2021). Hating men will free you? Valerie Solanas in Paris or the discursive politics of misandry. European Journal of Women's Studies, 28(3), 305-319. Baele S, Brace L, Coan T (2019) From ‘Incel’ to ‘saint’: analyzing the violent worldview behind the 2018 Toronto attack. Terrorism and Political Violence. Díaz PC, Valji N (2019) Symbiosis of misogyny and violent extremism: new understandings and policy implications. Journal of International Affairs 72(2): 37–56. Downing N. E., Roush K. L. (1985). From passive acceptance to active commitment: A model of feminist identity development for women. The Counseling Psychologist, 13(4), 695–709. hooks B. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Taylor & Francis Group. Hopkins-Doyle, A., Petterson, A. L., Leach, S., et al. (2024). The Misandry Myth: An Inaccurate Stereotype About Feminists’ Attitudes Toward Men. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 48(1), 8-37. Morgan R. (2014). Going too far: The personal chronicle of a feminist. Open Road Media. Pry A, Valiente A (2013) Women battle online anti-women hate from the ‘manosphere’. ABC News, 16 October. Hamel L., Firth J., Clement S., Brodie M. (2016, January 28). Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation Feminism Survey. Kaiser Family Foundation. Barroso A. (2020, July 7). 61% of U.S. women say ‘feminist’ describes them well; many see feminism as empowering, polarizing. Pew Research Center. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

If you’ve been listening to The Psychology World Podcast for a while then you might have noticed that from time to time I report on research concerning the morality of infants. I’ve always found it is interesting and I like how research is starting to recognise that infants can be naturally moral. And yet this challenges a lot of traditional theories that have a lot of research support. Resulting in a rather large paradox for researchers. In this developmental psychology episode, you’ll learn are infants moral by learning about a range of social and developmental factors that help to make infants moral (and immoral too). If you like learning about morality, prosocial behaviour and child psychology then you’ll enjoy today’s episode. This podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology . 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. Are Infants Moral? When it comes to the topic of morality in children and more specifically infants, there are generally two schools of thought. Firstly, you have the more traditional school of thought that has a lot of research support and this is the idea that children learn their morality through their parents. There are a lot of references in the Reference section at the bottom of the podcast episode, but one piece of evidence for this theory is how morality varies from culture to culture. This supports the social explanation of morality, because if morality was innate then morality wouldn’t vary as much from culture to culture because our sense of morality would have evolved as part of our species. Then another school of thought that has a growing body of evidence comes from researchers like Yale Professor Karen Wyn. These researchers propose morality begins in infancy and this runs against the idea that morality is taught through parents. How can there be so much evidence for our theories? Could it be because they are both right? There are a few different reasons about why Wyn and her critics are both right about morality and how it develops. Firstly, they’re both right because the definition of morality varies slightly from study to study as does the level or measures of behaviour each study looks at. Since Wyn’s research refers to an infant’s innate propensity to be prosocial, whilst her critics focus on social conventions that differ from place to place. I know this little example is silly in the grand scheme of things, but it is very apt here. In the UK, it isn’t considered moral or immoral to put salt and pepper on your food, but in Portugal, it is considered rude and by extension, immoral to put extra salt and pepper on your food. Since you are implying the chef hasn’t seasoned their food right. As a result, it is possible that morality is an innate human trait that is universal in the human species but it is implemented and expressed differently between cultures and even from person to person. We only need to think about the different behaviours people think are moral within a single country or town, let alone an entire species. What Did Wyn’s Research Show? In addition, Wyn found through her series of experiments that infants look longer at helping puppets than puppets that stopped another puppet from opening a box. As well as different variations of the experiment found the exact same thing, so this suggests infants prefer people who help others compared to people who made things more difficult for other people. Of course, this research is only suggestive at this point in time, but what makes it interesting is that Wyn’s study is part of a growing body of research making the same point. Infants do offer help, they do comfort people in distress and they prefer people who do the same. Personally, I think this is actually a rather lovely and even heartwarming finding. Especially, because people like me who focus so much on clinical psychology, we read and focus on mental health conditions, mental health difficulties and the “darker” side of human behaviour from time to time. Therefore, this study is a pleasant reminder about the lighter side of human behaviour and how great psychology research can be. Can These Prosocial Tendencies Be Overwritten? Unfortunately, as you can probably guess, the innate sense of morality in an infant doesn’t stay with an infant unless a parent builds on these propensities. Yet this isn’t always just down to the parent, because these prosocial propensities can be overridden by peers and the larger culture as a whole if they convey very different values. What Did Wyn Find Out About Prejudice? An interesting finding of Wyn’s study is that she found another trait that impacted the infant’s judgements and this certainly isn’t positive if you really think about it. So Wyn found that infants preferred the puppets who liked the same food as the infant. On the surface, this is a very normal finding that I wouldn’t have cared less about, but Wyn makes a very interesting point that I can definitely understand. She implied that this could be the root adult of prejudice because infants show we might prefer people who are like us and dislike people who are not like us. Remember, the babies also liked the puppets that were like them in terms of they shared similar interests in food, and at first, I thought this sounded like a silly example. But how many conversations as adults have all of us started and bonded over because of food? A lot, so I think this food preference does hold ecological validity because it continues into adulthood. It was only a few days ago that me and a friend were having a conversation about nachos, and neither one of us are children. Wyn talks about this finding more with the following quote: "Babies and infants were far more likely to approve of the similar puppets being helped, while having the same positive reaction when the puppets that chose different foods were hindered," Wynn said. "This reaction seems to suggest the roots of the adult impulses toward xenophobia, prejudice and war." I think this is a very interesting point that will hopefully be researched more in the future. Developmental Psychology Conclusion Overall, at the end of this podcast episode, we know that infants have an innate sense of morality and what is morally right and wrong. Yet infants have a sense of “us and them” as well and this is important to realise when it comes to morality, because morality does account for in-group cohesion and this is something I’ll talk more about in the future. And yet, morality and “us and them” thinking accounts for the violence that is found in religion as well according to the Philosopher John Teehan. Therefore, I think the biggest takeaway from today’s episode is to foster that sense of love, compassion and morality in our infants. We need to raise them to be moral, be kind and to be compassionate to other people, because that will help to make the world a better and safer place for everyone. And isn’t that the world we want to live in?     If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Moral Psychology: An Introduction To The Social Psychology, Biological Psychology and Applied Psychology of Morality . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Social Psychology References Bloom, P. (2010). The moral life of babies. New York Times Magazine, 3, MM44. Bloom, P., & Wynn, K. (2016). What develops in moral development. Core knowledge and conceptual change, 347-364. Dahl, A. (2014). Definitions and Developmental Processes in Research on Infant MoralityCommentary on Tafreshi, Thompson, and Racine. Human Development, 57(4), 241-249. Hamlin, J. K. (2015). Does the infant possess a moral concept?. Hamlin, J. K., & Wynn, K. (2011). Young infants prefer prosocial to antisocial others. Cognitive development, 26(1), 30-39. Hamlin, J. K., Mahajan, N., Liberman, Z., & Wynn, K. (2013). Not like me= bad: Infants prefer those who harm dissimilar others. Psychological science, 24(4), 589-594. Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., Bloom, P., & Mahajan, N. (2011). How infants and toddlers react to antisocial others. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 108(50), 19931-19936. Marshall, J., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2020). Do children and adults take social relationship into account when evaluating people’s actions?. Child Development, 91(5), e1082-e1100. Sheskin, M., Bloom, P., & Wynn, K. (2014). Anti-equality: Social comparison in young children. Cognition, 130(2), 152-156. Whiteley, C. (2022) Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Friendships, Romantic Relationships and More.  CGD Publishing. England. Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2014). The moral baby. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (2nd ed., pp. 435–453). Psychology Press. Wynn, K., Bloom, P., Jordan, A., Marshall, J., & Sheskin, M. (2018). Not noble savages after all: Limits to early altruism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(1), 3-8. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

Last week at the time of writing, I was seriously ill for two main reasons. Firstly, I was really exhausted and ill because of malnourishment caused by my anorexia. Thankfully, I’m managing to get a handle on it and I’m finally starting to eat a little more. Secondly, I was really sick because I was my sleep schedule was so awful and inconsistent that my lack of eating and lack of sleep was causing me to get very ill. So much so that for the first time in my life I was actually needing to take naps because I was so fatigued and my headache was so bad. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll going to learn how does a consistent sleep schedule improves our mental health, why does this happen and how can we improve our sleep schedule so we can improve our mental health. If you’re interested in clinical psychology, biological psychology and the importance of consistent sleep then this will be a brilliant episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology . 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. Why Is A Consistent Sleep Schedule Important? Having a consistent sleep schedule is flat out critical to our physical and mental health because when a person has regular bedtimes and wake times then this allows us to develop a consistent sleep routine. Of course, this is unique to each of us because we all need the right amount of high-quality sleep. Therefore, sleeping consistently helps us to avoid what is known as a “sleep debt” and this can help protect us against negative health outcomes. For instance, high blood sugar, high blood pressure as well as high cholesterol. Also, the reason why I’m talking about this on a psychology podcast besides the mental health impacts of not getting enough good quality sleep, is because sleep is a behaviour. As is our decision about when we go to sleep. These are all decisions we make and ultimately these decisions impact our health. You could argue that this podcast episode stretches across clinical psychology, biological, cognitive and health psychology amongst others. This is a critical topic for a lot of our subdisciplines. Moreover, consistent sleep helps us to protect our mental health too, especially our emotional well-being. Since if we don’t get consistent sleep then this has negative impacts on our emotional and mood regulation, as well as something I know from personal experience that a lot of therapists and medical doctors suggest having a good sleep routine is the cornerstone of improving your mental health. Personally, I completely agree with this but the relationship between sleep and poor mental health can be a vicious cycle. Such as I know someone who is basically nocturnal now because their sleep routine is so consistent but in the wrong direction, but they cannot get up because of their depression. Originally, their depression caused their sleep schedule to become chronically bad, but now their sleep schedule is maintaining their depression amongst other factors. Ultimately, by having a consistent sleep schedule you can stabilise your mood in the short term as well as in the long term protect yourself against mood disorders, like anxiety and depression. How Does Irregular Sleep Schedules Disrupt The Circadian Rhythms? Our circadian rhythms impact our mood and mental health in a number of different ways. For instance, the genes behind the circadian rhythms regulate our mood as well as our mood-related behaviours, like symptoms of anxiety, depression and bi-polar disorder. This allows our bodies to regulate our emotions around a daily, 24-hour internal “body clock”. And a lot of different neurochemicals and hormones that influence our mood and our stress responses have their own circadian rhythm. Such as, melatonin, serotonin, cortisol, dopamine as well as norepinephrine (McClung, 2013). As a result, when we disrupt our own circadian rhythms by giving ourselves inconsistent sleep then this messes with our mood and stress-regulating processes so their circadian rhythms are thrown out of order. Research suggests that the timings of our circadian rhythms are strongly linked to depression (Wirz-Justice, 2006), seasonal affective disorder, anxiety (Montange et al., 1981) and other mood disorders (McClung, 2007). Furthermore, the impact of disrupted circadian rhythms isn’t limited to our mental health either. Since having a disrupted circadian rhythm increases our risk of inflammation too, and there is research suggesting inflammation increases the risk of developing mood disorders. Also, inflammation itself can negatively impact our sleep too, so it becomes even more of a vicious cycle. Ultimately, having a consistent sleep schedule helps our bodies to effectively regulate our circadian rhythms, so our biological processes that impact the neurochemicals and hormones related to our stress responses and mood can occur in a healthy way. Yet when we disrupt our circadian rhythms by getting inconsistent sleep then we mess up these circadian rhythms and this has negative impacts on our mental health. Why Does Inconsistent Sleep Patterns Increase Risk Of Depression? Now I want to focus on some research that shows a person’s inconsistent sleep schedule can increase their risk of developing depression. Our first study comes from Fang et al. (2021) who looked at the impact of sleep routines on over 1,000 medical students’ day-to-day mood. Their results showed that irregular sleep routines were a big risk factor for developing depressive symptoms. Interestingly, this is even worse for medical students because they often experience an inconsistent work schedule so they can’t have a consistent sleep pattern, so the effects were easier to see in this population. In my experience, this is the problem I had and this is why my sleep routine just died. I have to wake up at 6 am on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays because I need to drive to work. I don’t need to wake up on Fridays that early anymore but still, I did for 5 weeks. Then on the other days I would wake up between 8 am and 8:30 am. That’s a 2-hour variation in when I wake up, as well as my bedtime would vary too from 10:30 pm to midnight because I would be very bad and go on my phone. That meant I could never get a good sleep schedule and combined that with lack of eating, I was very sick for two weeks. Overall, my example shows how inconsistent sleep patterns really can impact physical and mental health. On the whole, I’ll include more studies in the reference section near the bottom of the blog post but a lot of studies demonstrate how having an inconsistent sleep schedule can be just as damaging as not getting enough sleep to your physical and emotional health. Clinical Psychology Conclusion At the end of this psychology podcast episode, now we know that we need a consistent sleep schedule to help us regulate our circadian rhythms so the hormonal and neurochemical processes that regulate our stress and emotions can work at peak performance. Otherwise, if we disrupt these biological processes then there is an increased risk of developing depression, anxiety amongst other mood disorders. As well as we need a consistent sleep schedule because it is just as damaging to our physical and mental health as not getting enough sleep. Personally, after being sick for the past two weeks I am really happy that I am getting back to a good sleep schedule and I am eating more too. I feel better in myself and granted I have a cold as I write this, but I am no longer exhausted and suffering from constant fatigue. I’m looking for continuing this new sleep schedule and reaping the mental health benefits that I have started to notice too. Therefore, the takeaway message or question at the end of this episode is: Take a look at your sleep schedule. Is it consistent and if not, how can you make it more consistent so your mental health can benefit ?     I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Biological Psychology . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Chaput, J. P., Dutil, C., Featherstone, R., Ross, R., Giangregorio, L., Saunders, T. J., ... & Carrier, J. (2020). Sleep timing, sleep consistency, and health in adults: a systematic review. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 45(10), S232-S247. Fang, Y., Forger, D. B., Frank, E., Sen, S., & Goldstein, C. (2021). Day-to-day variability in sleep parameters and depression risk: a prospective cohort study of training physicians. NPJ digital medicine, 4(1), 28. Irwin, M. R., Olmstead, R., & Carroll, J. E. (2016). Sleep disturbance, sleep duration, and inflammation: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies and experimental sleep deprivation. Biological psychiatry, 80(1), 40-52. Liu, Y. Z., Wang, Y. X., & Jiang, C. L. (2017). Inflammation: The Common Pathway of Stress-Related Diseases. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 11, 316. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00316 McClung C. A. (2007). Circadian genes, rhythms and the biology of mood disorders. Pharmacology & therapeutics, 114(2), 222–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pharmthera.2007.02.003 McClung C. A. (2013). How might circadian rhythms control mood? Let me count the ways... Biological psychiatry, 74(4), 242–249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.02.019 Milojevich, H. M., & Lukowski, A. F. (2016). Sleep and mental health in undergraduate students with generally healthy sleep habits. PloS one, 11(6), e0156372. MONTANGE, M. F., CAUTER, E. V., Refetoff, S., Désir, D., Tourniaire, J., & Copinschi, G. (1981). Effects of “jet lag” on hormonal patterns. II. Adaptation of melatonin circadian periodicity. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 52(4), 642-649. Wirz-Justice A. (2006). Biological rhythm disturbances in mood disorders. International clinical psychopharmacology, 21 Suppl 1, S11–S15. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.yic.0000195660.37267.cf truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and getting lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

In last week’s psychology podcast episode, we looked at What is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder  because I live with someone with OCD and I wanted to understand the condition more. In this week’s podcast episode, I wanted to take a step closer towards understanding how to help someone with OCD outside of the therapy room, because I know first-hand how distressing OCD can be on the person themselves and the people around them. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn how obsessive-compulsive disorder impacts relationships, the people who live with the person with OCD and how can you support someone with OCD without reinforcing their maladaptive beliefs and coping mechanisms. If you enjoy learning about mental health, obsessive-compulsive disorder and more then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Introduction To Psychotherapies: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Types of Psychotherapy . 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. Note: as always absolutely nothing on this podcast is ever any sort of official advice. How Can Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Impact Relationships? Before we can hope to understand how do we support our loved ones with OCD, we need to first understand why is this important. As well as we need to understand how does obsessive-compulsive disorder impacts the relationships around the person with the condition. Psychology students and professionals need to understand this so we can add these factors into our clinical formulations and treatment plans because this will add additional psychological distress to the individual, and people who love and/ or with a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder need to understand this aspect of the condition too. As a result, obsessive-compulsive disorder impacts relationships in a number of different ways. For example, friends and family might have a hard time whenever they see their loved one struggling and they simply don’t know how to help. Then this makes the friends and family members feel helpless as well as depressed, and compulsions are very time-consuming as I mentioned in last week’s episode. Therefore, compulsions can be very disruptive so family and friends could get frustrated when their loved ones ask for help in carrying out their compulsions, they need to wait for their loved one to finish a compulsion and/ or when they are asked repeatedly to reassure their loved one about an obsessive fear. Personally, I really understand this because it is frustrating. It is frustrating when you need to stop everything you are doing because the person with obsessive-compulsive disorder has to carry about their compulsions, or they get so anxious and distressed that I’d made a mistake that doesn’t align with their obsessive fears, and it’s frustrating when we are delayed and arrive late to fun things by an hour because of their distress. And it is even more annoying when everyone else in the house supports their obsessive fears and reassures them so much that it only reinforces their compulsions. I say this because I want you to also understand that yes, as an aspiring psychologist, I talk a lot about unconditional positive regard, active listening, being empathetic and non-judgemental. Yet I am human too. I am not perfect and it is okay to be frustrated and annoyed at mental health difficulties in your own personal life. As long as you learn and adapt your responses so they are more supportive in the future then that’s okay. Just because you study psychology doesn’t mean you have to be superhuman and emotionless. It's why I researched this week’s and last week’s podcast episode. I want to learn, I want to become more understanding and I want to be more supportive. In addition, obsessive-compulsive disorder can be very challenging for romantic partners because Kasalova et al. (2020) found that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder often struggle to communicate in relationships. This could be a result of the person needing to feel in control and them having a tendency to avoid uncomfortable emotions so their OCD symptoms can put stress on a romantic relationship. I do have personal stories about that finding but out of respect for my housemates I will not comment, but I do agree with those research findings. What Is Relationships Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Building upon the last section, a person can have relationship obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is a type of OCD where their obsessions focus on the doubts about their relationships. For example, a person with relationship OCD repeatedly questions whether their partner is a good fit or actually loves them. These obsessions, like all obsessions, take up a lot of time and cause a lot of distress to the person, so this leads to compulsive behaviours like constantly seeking reassurance from their partner that they love them. Or the person with relationship OCD compares their partner constantly to other people. If a person has relationship OCD then they should see a couples therapist because a couples therapist can help a person set boundaries about what you will and what you won’t discuss about your relationship. This is useful because it helps you to avoid your partner’s OCD symptoms whilst taking care of your own mental health. Personally, I think this sounds a lot like Emotional Dependency, which I’ve spoken a lot about on the podcast before and something I used to struggle with tons. Then I still struggle with it from time to time but I am a lot better than I used to. How To Support Your Loved One with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Support Your Partner By Learning About OCD I know I always say this but I strongly believe because of my own abusive experiences that you cannot claim to fully love, support or appreciate someone with a mental health condition if you are not willing to research their condition. If my family had researched rape and how to support a rape survivor then my mental health would have been so much better. If my family had researched autism and how to support an autistic teenager then my adolescence would have been better and so on. As well as my friend’s parents researched a lot about depression, anxiety and so on to support them and it really did help them. Therefore, my point is please research obsessive-compulsive disorder, so you can better understand and empathise with your loved one about what they’re experiencing and how to help them. In the end your loved one will seriously appreciate it. Give Support Without Reinforcing OCD Behaviours The next two suggestions are actually what birthed the idea about the past two podcast episodes, because in my house, everyone was just accommodating my housemate’s OCD behaviours and me and another housemate could see how the OCD was getting worse as a result. Therefore, whilst it’s true that you cannot stop a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder from experiencing their obsessions, it’s a good idea to put boundaries in place so you do not assist them in their compulsions. This will be difficult, because your loved one is likely to experience more distress, but if you give in and help them carry out their compulsions, in the long term you are not helping them. You are only reinforcing their OCD. In addition, your loved one will probably be upset that you’re changing your behaviour and they likely be more anxious in the short term. Since it’s harder for them to carry out their compulsions, a behaviour that is meant to help temporarily relieve some of their anxiety caused by their obsession. However, it’s important that you put in those boundaries and you explain that setting boundaries is because you care and you want your loved one to get better. Then working with a therapist might be another good idea because a therapist might be able to help you stop accommodating the OCD. Resist Accommodating Your Loved One’s OCD Symptoms Personally, the best example from my own experience is cleaning. In my house, this housemate’s OCD made it very important that things had to be cleaned in a very, very specific way and if I cleaned anything it would make them extremely distressed. So I was banned from cleaning anyone else’s stuff in the house because it would cause so much distress to this particular housemate. I didn’t mind it that much because it meant I could just focus on my own things because it created a massive knock-on effect. It meant only two housemates could clean the person with OCD’s things, in addition to their own, but it put a lot of stress on the house. There was always a stupidly big pile of washing up to do, because washing up became a chore that needed to be done so carefully and so precisely. This is why you should not accommodate your loved one’s OCD. Anyway, accommodation happens when someone enables a person’s compulsions because accommodations can temporarily relieve your loved one’s anxiety. Yet in the long term it only reinforces their cycle of compulsive and obsessive behaviours. For instance, accommodations can include changing your routines to accommodate them, helping them avoid situations that trigger their anxiety, performing rituals that the person with OCD asks and habitually reassuring a loved one that their fears are unfounded. Moreover, whilst accommodations are very common, even more so in families with children with OCD, it is important that you recognise that you are doing it. Then after you realise it, you need to realise it is time to stop accommodating your loved one’s OCD. It will be hard on both of you, but it is best if you stop accommodating them. In the long run, it will be very good for the relationship and everyone else around you. Since my housemates decreased accommodating someone’s OCD behaviours, the house is a lot happier, calmer and there isn’t as much stress or tension in the house. And dinner time is more relaxing than it was too. Support Your Loved One by Being Flexible with Your Expectations Everyone, regardless of their mental health condition, improves at different rates. For example, some survivors of sexual trauma take years to heal enough to be able to function, I took 7 months. Therefore, it’s important that you remember that different people with OCD improve at different rates and symptoms can come back or intensify during periods of stress. With this in mind, you can support your loved one by celebrating their progress along the way and remind your loved one that it’s important to keep moving forward when they experience setbacks. And just remind yourself and your loved one that change takes time and setbacks are normal. This is something my best friend reminded me lots as I healed from my sexual trauma, and even now with my anorexia, it is something we need to keep reminding each other. Offer To Help Your Loved One Find Treatment For Their OCD I mentioned in last week’s podcast episode, What Is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, that there are a range of psychological treatments available for OCD. For instance, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy. Yet some people with OCD might not want to get help and there are a lot of reasons for this, like they are scared of being judged. However, as a loved one, you can express your concerns about their mental health and you can offer to help them find a therapist or another form of mental health support. I know from my experience that it is a lot easier and digestible to do something mental health related with someone by your side. Like I need to actually create a meal plan for my anorexia again, because the last one just failed so this time my friend is going to look over it with me so I might stick to it and create one I enjoy and care about. Additionally, if you’re loved one resists to the idea of treatment then you can ask them why, and try to explain the benefits of getting help and offer to what you can to help make treatment more accessible to them. Like I’m driving a friend to their specialist counselling sessions in a few weeks to help make it more accessible for them. Finally, if your loved one still refuses to get treatment then tell them that you respect their decision and remind them that your offer still stands if they change their mind in the future. From my experience, the worst thing you can do is keep “harassing” or refusing to accept the person’s decision. For example, when I wasn’t bothering to get treatment for my anorexia, my friend out of love and care, kept arguing with me and it made me even more distressed, even less likely to eat and it strained our relationship. Now they are a lot better because they are respectful, they focus on supporting me and yes, we will “debate and negotiate” eating at times, but it doesn’t distress me as much as it did a few months ago. Clinical Psychology Conclusion As we come to the end of these psychology podcast episodes focusing on obsessive-compulsive disorder, I have to admit that these have been a lot of fun. We’ve learnt that OCD is a very distressing condition and I’ve found it useful to understand the differences between obsessions and compulsions and why people with OCD carry out their compulsions, and it has been good to understand that OCD is so much more than washing and cleaning. Also, I’ve found it useful to understand how I can be a good housemate to my friend and how I can gently suggest to the others how to support our loved one with OCD, so we can help them in the longer term. Just as a reminder, you can support a loved one with OCD by: ·       Learning about OCD ·       Give your loved one support without reinforcing their OCD behaviours ·       Resist accommodating their OCD symptoms ·       Be flexible with your expectations ·       Offer to help your loved one find OCD treatment Supporting a loved one with any mental health condition will be a challenge, but it is worth it, rewarding and it shows your loved one just how much you love them. And as someone who has received support from friends before, in the end, I am extremely grateful and it makes me love my friends even more. It can make friendships closer and stronger too. So please, support your loved one, look after yourself and just know that in the end, things get better. This too shall pass.   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Introduction To Psychotherapies: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Types of Psychotherapy . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Doron, G., et al. (2016). Relationship obsessive-compulsive disorder: Interference, symptoms, and maladaptive beliefs. Frontiers in Psychiatry. International OCD Foundation. (2016). Distinguishing information-seeking and reassurance seeking. Kasalova, P., et al. (2020). Marriage under control: Obsessive compulsive disorder and partnership. Neuroendocrinology Letters. National Institute of Mental Health. (n.d.). Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Pollard, H. J., et al. (n.d.). Someone I care about is not dealing with their OCD, what can I do about it? International OCD Foundation. Van Noppen, B., et al. (n.d.). Families: “What can I do to help?” International OCD Foundation. Van Noppen, B., et al. (n.d.). Living with someone who has OCD. Guidelines for family members. International OCD Foundation. https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/how-to-help-someone-with-ocd I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is unfortunately the type of mental health condition that laypeople abuse to some extent, as OCD is often used in a loose, cut-off-the-cuff way that decreases the severity of the condition in people’s minds. Yet OCD can be immensely distressing to the person with the condition as those around them. At the moment, I live with someone with OCD and before we started an intervention, their OCD was negatively impacting our lives in a number of ways. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’re going to be learning what is OCD, what are the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, how is OCD treated and more. If you enjoy learning about mental health conditions, clinical psychology and more then this is going to be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Introduction To Psychotherapies: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Types of Psychotherapy . 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. What Is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a mental health condition where someone experiences repeated, unwanted thoughts, images, feelings and/ or sensations (obsessions) and they engage in mental acts or behaviours (compulsions) in response. It is typical for someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to carry out their compulsions to temporarily eliminate or reduce the impact of their obsessions, as well as if a person does not perform these compulsions then this causes them additional distress. In addition, similar to other mental health conditions, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder varies in its severity but if a person doesn’t receive treatment for the condition then it can limit their ability to function at home, school or work. Some examples of compulsions and obsessions can distressing thoughts round the idea of food going back so the person seals the food in a very particular way and if there is a mistake then they believe they are going to die. Or if a person holds distressing beliefs round their family going to get hurt by someone breaking into their house then they might check that their doors are locked over and over. Leading them to be late to work. I didn’t use typical examples because I want you to understand that OCD is way more than handwashing and obsessions about being clean. Moreover, in the United States, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is estimated to impact around 2% of the population and it is often co-occurring with other mental health conditions. For instance, depression, anxiety disorders as well as eating disorders. With the condition typically manifesting for the first time in childhood, adolescence or early adulthood. As well as up to 30% of people with OCD have a tic disorder according to the DSM-5. Personally, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I am always interested when mental health conditions tend to occur together because it raises important therapeutic questions. For example, is the OCD maintaining the eating disorder or could the anxiety disorders be causing the OCD or vice versa. These are important factors to think about when treating someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and another mental health condition. What Are The Symptoms Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? As much as I passionately dislike the DSM-5 for a whole host of reasons that I have explained in other places, when it comes to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the diagnostic criteria says that compulsions and/ or obsessions have to be present. Firstly, the DSM-5 defines Obsessions as recurring urges, thoughts or images that are experienced as unwanted and intrusive, and for most people, they are distressing or induce anxiety. Then the person tries to suppress, ignore or neutralise them with a different action or thought. Secondly, the DSM-5 defines compulsions as repetitive mental acts or behaviours that a person feels compelled to do because of their obsession or strict rules around something. The idea behind these compulsions is to counter anxiety, distress or to prevent a feared situation or event. Even though the reality is these compulsions are not realistically connected to the outcome, or the compulsions are excessive. For example, it is reasonable to assume that milk that is two or three days past the Best Before date might  be off, so you need to check it. It is excessive to throw away milk the night before the Best Before day because you truly believe that you are going to die if you drink the milk tomorrow. In addition, the DSM-5 includes other information in the diagnostic criteria. For example, the obsessions or compulsions take up more than one hour a day, cause impairment for the person and/ or they cause clinically significant levels of distress. Then there is the typical DSM-5 caveat that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder needs to be the best explanation for what the client is experiencing and their symptoms cannot be better explained by another mental health or medical condition or a substance. When it comes to the obsessions themselves, the specific details of them can vary wildly between different people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. They can include thoughts round contamination, a desire for order or they can be taboo thoughts around harm to themselves or others, sex and/ or religion. Again, OCD in the real world is so much more than washing hands. Furthermore, it is worth noting that compulsions aren’t always observable to other people. Like people with OCD might not always rearrange or count objects, check their concerns or wash things. In fact, some compulsions cannot be seen by others because the whole point of compulsions is they ideally offer someone temporary relief from their intense feelings caused by their obsession. People with the condition could avoid certain places, things or people that trigger their obsessions and compulsions. As well as they can often have dysfunctional beliefs that can include an intolerance of uncertainty, a heightened sense of responsibility, perfectionism or an exaggerated view of the importance of troubling thoughts. Personally, one of the many ways how OCD has impacted my life as someone with lives with a person with the condition is round cleaning, food preparation and whatnot. Since I am not allowed to do the cleaning in our kitchen, I am only allowed to clean my things because I do not clean in the very specific way that my housemate’s obsessions and compulsions allow. Even though after their OCD, relationship and other things came to a head last week, after I write this blog post, I’m going to help clean other people’s things. Also, it’s a very tragic thing to say but my housemate’s OCD was a core factor in why my anorexia has gotten this bad. Due to my housemate needing their food prepared in a very, very specific way, them getting extremely distressed round eating to the point where I was scared to go into the kitchen in case I made a mistake and the evening became so unpleasant for me. Granted, I was still dealing with rape trauma, PTSD and my own mental health at the time but I didn’t need the added stress of the OCD and getting scared to cause my friend so much intense distress. This is why OCD can definitely impact other people and if I take a systemic approach for a moment then I can see how the OCD has caused disruptions and negatively impacted our household unit. Going back to the content, people with OCD vary in their insight into their own condition. Some people with OCD have good insight because they recognise their OCD-related beliefs are not actually true. For instance, these people can understand that wrapping up opened ham in tin foil in a very specific way will not help them not die from contamination. Whereas other people with OCD do not have such good insight so they believe their compulsions and obsessions are true. Finally, like other mental health conditions, the severity of OCD symptoms can vary over time, but the condition can persist for years or decades if it is not treated. What Causes Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Briefly, whilst the causes of OCD are not fully understood, we know there are both genetic and environmental factors. For example, people that have family members with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are more likely to have it themselves, and twin studies show there is a genetic influence in the development of OCD. As well as sexual or physical violence and other forms of trauma are associated with greater risk. How Is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Treated? In the next week’s podcast episode, I’m going to be focusing more on how a person’s support system can support the individual with OCD but professionally Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can be treated in several ways. It can be treated using psychological or medical interventions, and sometimes these approaches are combined. For example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can be used in a very specific way in a programme called Exposure and Response Prevention. In Exposure and Response Prevention, a person with OCD is guided by a therapist and exposed to things, situations or thoughts that produce anxiety or lead to obsessions as well as compulsions. Then over time the person learns not to engage in these habitual compulsions. Ultimately, Exposure and Response Prevention aims to over time reduce the anxiety that these obsessions produce once triggered by certain people and situations. Then this allows the person to better manage their OCD symptoms. Medically, OCD can be treated using Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. Like clomipramine and more recently developed drugs like fluoxetine, sertraline as well as fluvoxamine. This is believed to help treat OCD because it increases the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain and it is commonly used to treat depression and anxiety disorders. It typically takes 12 weeks to produce an improvement in symptoms when used to treat OCD. Yet I always recommend reading Read and Moncrieff (2022) because they show how useless anti-depressants are at treating depression and how there is no science behind them by modern standards. Personally, I think the idea of using SSRIs to treat OCD is ridiculous because compulsions and obsessions are psychological elements. There are no biological basis here. Obsessions and compulsions are not cancer cells that you can target, they are not a virus, they are inside a person’s head. Therefore, you need to target the person’s mind through psychological interventions. Also, if SSRIs work so well, why do they actually need 12 weeks to cause an improvement. Of course, psychological therapy can take 12 weeks but it can be done by that time and by the end of the 12 weeks, you can actually arm a client to have enough adaptive coping mechanisms that they are set for life. SSRIs you need to keep taking for life. Finally, one of my friends with OCD (not the one I live with), he’s going through CBT for OCD at the moment and he’s almost done. We were talking and I started to see improvements in him after 4 weeks. That is a lot shorter than 12 weeks. Just saying. Clinical Psychology Conclusion I know what it is like to live with someone with OCD. I hate seeing my friend so distressed, having so much anxiety and struggling with their functioning. Also, I was surprised how much OCD can impact the lives of other people, including friends, housemates and loved ones. Therefore, I am glad that I now have a deeper understanding of OCD because it helps me be more understanding and it helps me to learn and put myself in their shoes. I am far from perfect but I want to try and understand my friend. As a result, at the end of this psychology podcast episode, we understand that OCD is a mental health condition where someone experiences repeated, unwanted thoughts, images, feelings and/ or sensations (obsessions) and they engage in mental acts or behaviours (compulsions) in response. It is typical for someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to carry out their compulsions to temporarily eliminate or reduce the impact of their obsessions, as well as if a person does not perform these compulsions then this causes them additional distress. Finally, if you are guilty of this then it is okay because you are human and we can all change. Yet please stop saying “you’re a little OCD” unless you actually have the condition. By saying these things, you are minimising the intense distress and anxiety that people with real OCD experience on a daily basis and if we continue to minimise it then people don’t treat OCD as the serious condition that it is and a condition that we need to treat. All so people with OCD can decrease their anxiety and psychological distress, improve their lives and develop more adaptive coping mechanisms. This is the lifeblood of clinical psychology and that is why we must stop minimising a terrifying condition that causes so much distress to people every day of their life.     I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Introduction To Psychotherapies: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Types of Psychotherapy . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Chakraborty, A., & Karmakar, S. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 on obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Iranian journal of psychiatry, 15(3), 256. Del Casale, A., Sorice, S., Padovano, A., Simmaco, M., Ferracuti, S., Lamis, D. A., ... & Pompili, M. (2019). Psychopharmacological treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Current neuropharmacology, 17(8), 710-736. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder Mahjani, B., Bey, K., Boberg, J., & Burton, C. (2021). Genetics of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychological Medicine, 51(13), 2247-2259. Robbins, T. W., Vaghi, M. M., & Banca, P. (2019). Obsessive-compulsive disorder: puzzles and prospects. Neuron, 102(1), 27-47. Spencer, S. D., Stiede, J. T., Wiese, A. D., Goodman, W. K., Guzick, A. G., & Storch, E. A. (2022). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Psychiatric clinics of North America, 46(1), 167. Stein, D. J., Costa, D. L., Lochner, C., Miguel, E. C., Reddy, Y. J., Shavitt, R. G., ... & Simpson, H. B. (2019). Obsessive–compulsive disorder. Nature reviews Disease primers, 5(1), 52. Uhre, C. F., Uhre, V. F., Lønfeldt, N. N., Pretzmann, L., Vangkilde, S., Plessen, K. J., ... & Pagsberg, A. K. (2020). Systematic review and meta-analysis: cognitive-behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder in children and adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(1), 64-77. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.

If you’ve read my Clinical Psychology Reflections , then you might be aware that The Psychologist Magazine by the British Psychological Society is a major source of inspiration from time to time. Yet The Psychologist never normally inspires podcast episodes, but in December 2024, they mentioned financial psychotherapy. I had never heard of this type of psychotherapy before but it focuses on improving people’s relationship with money amongst other important behavioural and psychological processes. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll deep dive into what is financial psychotherapy, what does a financial psychotherapist do and much more. If you enjoy learning about mental health, the psychology of money and more then you’ll greatly benefit from this episode. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Introduction To Psychotherapies: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Types of Psychotherapy . 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. Note: as always absolutely nothing on this podcast is ever any sort of official relationship, financial or other form of advice. What Is Financial Psychotherapy? This form of psychological therapy combines financial coaching and behavioural therapy to help clients improve their feelings, thoughts and behaviours around money. Also, this therapy helps to address the very real gap between a person’s financial health and money and their emotional health, and this is a very new discipline which is why a lot of people haven’t heard of it. The Financial Therapy Association was only established in 2010 so it is very new. To help clients with their attitudes towards money, financial therapists help people to understand their fears and worries around money, so this guides the client towards a lightbulb moment. As well as the difference between a financial therapist and a financial advisor is that a therapist explores the beliefs and feelings that a client has behind their financial habits whereas a financial advisor focuses on helping a person reach their financial goals. In addition, to become a certified financial therapist, both financial and mental health professionals can become one by meeting specific requirements in financial planning, financial counselling, financial therapy as well as you need to have therapeutic competencies. Also, in the United States, this certification comes from the Financial Therapy Association. However, I must note here that a financial therapist is NOT a protected title so anyone can call themselves a financial therapist regardless of the amount of training that they have done. This is good because it means there are financial professionals who aren’t credentialled therapists but they can still help clients with their money. Therefore, whilst this is not always a problem because there are a few behavioural therapists that focus on finance and do not have financial qualifications, it can be a problem because people without behavioural therapy or financial qualifications can and do call themselves financial therapists. You need to be careful of that. How Does Financial Psychotherapy Help People? Typically, a client who wants financial therapy has limiting beliefs about money and this can stop them from reaching their financial goals. Yet there are other impacts too. For example, sometimes these limiting beliefs stop people from enjoying the fruits of their labour too because they have fears round spending money or buying non-essential items. As a result, a financial therapist can help a client to identify their limiting beliefs and their emotions. For instance, some people, especially individuals who grew up in marginalised communities, have certain money stories that they tell themselves that developed in their childhood. These stories can hold them back or push them towards their goals. Personally, because of my childhood trauma and my social environment telling me that if certain people found out I was gay then I would be beaten, killed or made homeless. I was always very careful with money because in my mind, I needed to save it as much as possible so I could survive once I was homeless. That summed up my childhood, and even now, I don’t really want to dip into my savings at all, just in case I need it to survive once more. Equally, I come from a very poor and deprived area and have a lot of friends at university, so our attitude towards money is we need to be careful. Money has always been something that must be used wisely, but money is a tool to get us closer to things and activities that we enjoy too. Money is a balance. As a result, financial therapy can help clients to focus on their money story to identify their limiting beliefs, emotions and whether or not these emotions and beliefs are pushing them towards or away from their financial goals and improved emotional health. Financial Therapy Helps Start Small and Considers Passive Investing A smaller aim of financial therapy is to help clients take small steps towards changing their financial habits. For example, within financial therapy, a client could do research into whatever is making them uncomfortable. Like, in the United States, if a client wanted to get information about a 401K or a Roth IRA then they could investigate those options and then decide what their goals are based on that information. This would allow the client to move forward in a way that feels right for them, their life and their financial goals. Additionally, financial therapy can help clients understand passive inventing, a long-term strategy for building wealth by buying securities that mirror stock market indexes for the long term. For clients, passive investing might be a great way to take the pressure off themselves, even more so if they’re struggling to understand the complexities of the finance world. Since it’s a hands-off form of investing that means clients do not have to learn complex processes or take high risks that naturally come from investing. Forms of passive investing can include index funds, mutual funds or ETFs. In other words, passive investing allows compound interest to do the work for clients, because if they put a small amount of money into a mutual fund then it can be very energising to see their money start to grow. This can enable the client to take another step forward in their financial plan. Financial Therapy Helps Clients To Envision Retirement Finally, other clients can be very stressed about retirement and other clients still might not be thinking about retirement, because it is decades away. In these sorts of situations, recurring expenses take priority and other clients prefer to use their money to help them live in the moment. Again, if we bring this back to helping clients focus on their financial goals, if they struggle to take steps towards their goals, it might be because they struggle to focus on the future. This is where financial therapy can help them. Typically, financial therapy stresses the importance of compound interest because this helps clients to grow their money, and whilst inflation reduces the spending power of their investment over time. The longer a client saves for retirement, the better. One strategy that financial therapists might use to help clients in this regard is getting a client to imagine a person who is at retirement age and how they’re currently living. This can help a client to connect to the future so the client can envision what they want for themselves as well as put a plan together so they can achieve that retirement goal. Equally, it can be helpful for clients to think about future generations too. For example, getting them to think about steps they could take now to help their children and grandchildren be set up for success in the future. Clinical Psychology Conclusion In the Further Reading section of the blog post at the bottom of the page, there’ll be references for you to read more about this, but there is a relationship between poverty and mental health. Of course, financial therapy is not about poverty, it is about helping people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours round money to become more adaptive so the clients can reach their financial goals. Yet I am mentioning this poverty fact to stress that money does have a major impact on our mental health and emotional health. If a parent cannot feed their children, if they cannot afford to heat their homes, if they cannot afford to do fun things for their children when all the children’s friends can, that will negatively impact their mental health. That is only one example. I know from how bad Postgraduate Loans are in the United Kingdom that I am stressed and I am concerned about my ability to pay rent, food and my university’s tuition fees. Yet there is a reason I cannot mention publicly why I am stressed about the university. This is why I work a lot of Outreach work opportunities so I can get money to live on, because even though the business is going well thanks to you wonderful readers and listeners. I am still building the business so I really do not want to take money out of it for living at the moment. Money has a massive impact on our mental health. Therefore, at the end of this psychology podcast episode, I want to mention that financial psychotherapy, whilst it is something I would never focus on or want to be trained up in. I am glad there is a psychological intervention for people who are struggling with their cognitions and behaviours around money. As well as they can get help learning about passive investing, envisioning retirement, identifying their limiting beliefs and their emotions, and taking small steps towards their financial goals. I think the question I want to leave you with is, What are your thoughts about money? Are they pushing you towards or away from your financial goals?   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Introduction To Psychotherapies: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Types of Psychotherapy . 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Archuleta, K. L., Mielitz, K. S., Jayne, D., & Le, V. (2020). Financial goal setting, financial anxiety, and solution-focused financial therapy (SFFT): A quasi-experimental outcome study. Contemporary Family Therapy, 42(1), 68-76. Blea, J., Wang, D. C., Kim, C. L., Lowe, G., Austad, J., Amponsah, M., & Johnston, N. (2021). The experience of financial well-being, shame, and mental health outcomes in seminary students. Pastoral psychology, 70(4), 299-314. Burns, J. K. (2015). Poverty, inequality and a political economy of mental health. Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 24(2), 107-113. Frankham, C., Richardson, T., & Maguire, N. (2020). Psychological factors associated with financial hardship and mental health: A systematic review. Clinical psychology review, 77, 101832. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-financial-therapist-shift-your-money-mindset Marbin, D., Gutwinski, S., Schreiter, S., & Heinz, A. (2022). Perspectives in poverty and mental health. Frontiers in Public Health, 10, 975482. Simonse, O., Van Dijk, W. W., Van Dillen, L. F., & Van Dijk, E. (2022). The role of financial stress in mental health changes during COVID-19. npj Mental Health Research, 1(1), 1-10. Smith, M. V., & Mazure, C. M. (2021). Mental health and wealth: depression, gender, poverty, and parenting. Annual review of clinical psychology, 17(1), 181-205. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon  page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley  for a one-time bit of support.