Search Results

Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that I’ve always been interested in, because it isn’t talked about too much at university or in clinical psychology books. Therefore, I feel that art therapy is shrouded in myth and mystery, so psychology students and professionals aren’t exactly sure what art therapy is. Let alone how art therapy works to improve someone’s mental health. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, we’ll explore what is art therapy, how does art therapy work and so much more. If you’re interested in mental health, clinical psychology and psychotherapy then you’ll love today’s episode. This episode has been sponsored by Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For Depression, Anxiety 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 Art Therapy? Art therapy is a type of psychotherapy that uses creative techniques to help people express themselves and examine the emotional and psychological undertones of their art. Some of the artistic techniques include painting, colouring, sculpturing and collaging. Then the trained art therapist helps the client to interpret the metaphor, symbols and nonverbal messages in their artwork. As a result, this helps the client to get a better understanding of their feelings and behaviour so they can move on to resolving deeper mental health difficulties and their causes. Personally, I definitely have to admit that I am a little sceptical of this already because this sounds very subjective, and I think this might be great for some people. For example, people who struggle verbally or really, really like art. Yet for other people, this won’t be fun or very good for them, in terms of using art as a medium of communication. For instance, I like art to some extent but not enough to want to use it as a therapy medium. In that case, I personally prefer talking therapies, which this involves to some extent. And my opinion is supported by the literature because research into art therapy is mixed at best. Since some studies have found that art therapy can be effective for different people, but other studies have found little benefit to the mental health of clients (Maujean et al., 2014; Patterson et al., 2011; Schouten et al., 2015; Slayton et al., 2010; Van Lith, 2016). So this is not the most empirically supported type of therapy to say the least. When Is Art Therapy Used? Interestingly, art therapy can be applied to a very wide range of settings and it can be useful for a range of mental health conditions. Such as, art therapy is useful for a therapist working with couples, groups and individuals as well as it doesn’t matter if this happens in a wellness centre, private counselling, hospitals, senior centres or other community settings. Art therapy can be used in all of these settings. Which is brilliant and helps to make this therapy an accessible option for a lot of people. In addition, because I am terrible at art (and I have no desire to get better), it’s good to know that a client doesn’t need any artistic talent for the therapy to be successful. Since art therapy isn’t about the end result of the artwork, it’s all about finding the associations between the client’s inner life and the creative choices they make during the creation process. That’s why art therapy can effectively be a springboard for clients to remember old memories, tell stories that could reveal more about their past and even their beliefs in their unconscious mind. Moreover, when it comes to the list of mental health conditions, art therapy is useful for you’ll see it covers almost all the main types. For example, depression, anxiety, stress, trauma and grief. Yet it also covers emotional exploration, self-esteem problems, personality disorders as well as physical disabilities and illnesses a client might have. What To Expect In Art Therapy? I know you’re all mainly psychology students and professionals so you might find it strange that I’m including a section on what to expect in art therapy from a client’s perspective. Yet I’m doing this because if we understand what our clients go through then this can help us with empathy towards our clients. As well as there is a chance you might listen to this episode today and remember it in the future if you’re working with a client and your current therapy isn’t really working. And you believe they might benefit from art therapy instead, it’s a possibility. And learning never hurts. Therefore, the first session of art therapy will be very similar to basically every other form of psychotherapy. A client will be meeting with the therapist and talking about why you want psychological help and they will learn what this therapist has to offer them. Then the client and the art therapist will work together to create a treatment plan that involves creating some artwork. Afterwards, the client will start creating and during this process, there will be times when the therapist observes how you work without judging or interfering. Next, when the client has finished their artwork, or at times when the client is still working on it, the therapist will ask questions about how they felt about the artistic process, what was easy or difficult about the artwork and any thoughts or memories the client has about the artwork during the creation process. Also, it is very common for therapists to ask clients about their experiences and feelings before they provide any observations. Finally, using this information, the art therapist will use a wide range of creative and innovative interventions that are tailored to each client to help them. For example, an art therapist might guide clients to build clay structures of a family member, engage in free association about different pieces of artwork, or just tell a story through a photo collage. I suppose that is the nice thing about art therapy is that it gives the therapist a lot of freedom to help their client. Since Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and the vast majority of therapies I’ve come across are a lot more manualised than art therapy. And most of the time that is brilliant but it does restrict therapists to what they can do with their clients, to some extent at least. How Does Art Therapy Work? To wrap up this clinical psychology episode, let’s look at how art therapy works to improve people’s mental health. Therefore, art therapy is based on the idea that therapeutic value can be found in artistic self-expression for people who want to heal or understand themselves or their behaviours at a deeper level. In addition, according to the American Art Therapy Association, art therapists are trained to understand the roles that various art media, texture and colour can play in the therapy process as well as how these tools can help clients reveal their feelings, thoughts and psychological dispositions. As a result, art therapy combines psychological therapy and some kind of visual art media into a specific, standalone therapy but it is used at times in other psychotherapies too. In other words, art therapy is another example of a therapy module that can picked up and combined with other modules depending on what the therapist needs. Similar to how some therapists combine systemic and cognitive-behavioural approaches depending on what’s best for their clients. Moreover, research shows there are five benefits to art therapy and these further help to explain how the therapy works. Firstly, it helps to improve a client’s insight and comprehension as it allows them to verbalise their experiences and emotions. Secondly, art therapy improves emotion and impulse regulation because it improves a client’s ability to regulate and control emotions. Thirdly, art therapy is useful for behaviour change because clients learn to change their behavioural responses towards other people and themselves. This could be a result of the self-directed nature of the creative process. Penultimately, art therapy benefits a client’s personal integration because art helps to improve their self-image and their identity. Finally, art helps to improve a client’s perception as well as self-perception because it helps people to focus on the present moment, identify and connect with their emotions and their body awareness. And personally, I know I’ve mentioned this point a few times before on the podcast but when you really start thinking about psychotherapies as a whole. You really do start to see the commonalities between them. For example, art therapy helps behaviour change, well isn’t any form of behaviour change basically behavioural activation which comes from the behavioural approach? Also, art therapy helps clients to focus on the present moment, could that have come from mindfulness-based approaches which is in turn sort of connected to CBT? As well as art therapy helping emotion and impulse regulation, isn’t that basically the premise of most psychotherapies? And I don’t know say this to discredit any psychotherapy because if it is evidence-based and if it works to improve people’s lives, then I have no issue at all with it. I just think it’s funny to think about how connected all these different forms are. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Whilst I would never want to be trained in art therapy because I am just not sold on its effectiveness and art has no interest for me, I think it is interesting. As well as the entire point of these therapy-based podcast episodes is to help us learn about other forms and concepts from different therapies. Therefore, if you ever hear of a concept or idea from a “new” (to you at least) form of therapy then you can research, get trained in it and maybe use it in your current or future clinical psychology work. It is all about expanding our psychology knowledge. So as a reminder art therapy uses creative techniques to help people express themselves and examine the emotional and psychological undertones of their art. Then the client interprets the metaphor, symbols and nonverbal messages in their artwork. To get a better understanding of their feelings and behaviour so they can move on to resolving deeper mental health difficulties and their causes. And art therapy gives us some more tools and ideas to use in our current or future clinical work and that’s great. Art therapy is interesting, a little quirky and I think it could be useful in the right situation. And as long as it improves lives, decreases psychological distress and helps people, then art therapy is hardly a bad idea. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments For Depression, Anxiety 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. Clinical Psychology References American Art Association website. American Art Therapy Association Masters Education Standards June 30, 2007. Mathew Chiang, William Bernard Reid-Varley, Xiaoduo Fan. Creative art therapy for mental illness: Psychiatry Research. May 2019; 275:129-136. Maujean, A., Pepping, C. A., & Kendall, E. (2014). A systematic review of randomized controlled studies of art therapy. Art therapy, 31(1), 37-44. Moon, B. L., & Nolan, E. G. (2019). Ethical issues in art therapy. Charles C Thomas Publisher. Patterson, S., Crawford, M. J., Ainsworth, E., & Waller, D. (2011). Art therapy for people diagnosed with schizophrenia: Therapists’ views about what changes, how and for whom. International Journal of Art Therapy, 16(2), 70-80. Schouten, K. A., de Niet, G. J., Knipscheer, J. W., Kleber, R. J., & Hutschemaekers, G. J. (2015). The effectiveness of art therapy in the treatment of traumatized adults: A systematic review on art therapy and trauma. Trauma, violence, & abuse, 16(2), 220-228. Slayton SC, D’Archer J, Kaplan F. Outcome studies on the efficacy of art therapy: a review of findings. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. 22 April 2011; 27(3): 108-118. Slayton, S. C., D'Archer, J., & Kaplan, F. (2010). Outcome studies on the efficacy of art therapy: A review of findings. Art therapy, 27(3), 108-118. Suzanne Haeyen, Susan van Hooren, William van der Veld, Giel Hutschemaekers. Efficacy of Art Therapy in Individuals With Personality Disorders Cluster B/C: A Randomized Controlled Trial: Journal of Personality Disorders. August 2018; 32(4):527-542. Van Lith, T. (2016). Art therapy in mental health: A systematic review of approaches and practices. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 47, 9-22. 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.

Since it’s the beginning of February and Valentine’s Day is coming up in a few weeks, I thought it would be fun to investigate social psychology a little for a change. Due to over the years there has been a lot of good, high-quality social psychology research into romantic relationships and we can apply these lessons to our own lives. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, you’ll get to see six powerful lessons that can help a relationship to flourish according to a 2023 study. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, human relationships and research then you’ll love today’s episode. This podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology Of Relationships: The Social Psychology Of Friendships, Romantic Relationships 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. Note: nothing on this podcast is ever relationship, medical or any other form of official advice. Why Is It Important To Learn About Relationship Flourishing? I’ll fully admit that whilst I have never been in a relationship or dated, I want to look at this topic because I’m writing the blog post for this episode during the day, and then tonight I’m going to a fun social event where I might make some new friends or even meet someone. And this is always fun to look at anyway. Therefore, it’s important that we all understand the reasons how and why relationships can flourish so we can bring new life into our romantic relationships, if they’re starting to feel like a bit of a grind. As well as if we start to feel that our relationships aren’t exciting anymore and we’re continuing the same sense of sameness without anything new or exciting. In addition, learning about relationships gives us a chance for self-growth and connecting with our partners at a deeper level. Halford et al. (2023)’s Addressing The Problem Of Relationship Flourishing The study we’ll be focusing on in this podcast episode is Halford et al. (2023) because the researchers pointed out that over time there have been large changes in what’s considered a good, happy long-term relationship. Due to in the past, couples have been happy to simply be loved by the other and meeting each other’s psychological needs. Whereas in these modern times with social media and globalisation happening, couples are starting to realise that self-actualisation is important too in relationships. Here's a quote from the study that highlights this point even more: “Increasing aspirations for relationship quality are evident in changing reasons for divorce,” this comes from page 156 and what makes this quote increasing is that it is the feeling of growing apart that is the main cause of divorce. Instead of severe marital problems. Personally, I think this finding is rather interesting because it is both what you would and wouldn’t expect to be the main cause of divorce. Since whenever I think about relationship breakdown, I always think about severe problems in a relationship but I don’t always think about growing apart as a reason. Therefore, this does remind us how important it is to make sure we don’t grow apart from our partners. As a result, the researchers wanted to tackle these feelings of growing part in couples by allowing a couple to flourish by targeting feelings of personal happiness and growth enhancement. This would allow the couple to experience growth, resilience as well as intimacy. In addition, Halford et al. (2023) wanted to validate the method that they’ve developed over the years to revive these flatlining relationships. What Are The 6 Elements Of Relationship Education? Interestingly, Halford et al. propose that couples don’t need to spend years in therapy to develop a high-quality relationship. Instead they need to follow a very specific curriculum for about 12 to 18 hours in the comfort of their own home. Thankfully, this means couples can do this regardless of their location even if they are no local couples therapists. The six components of their relationship education programme are as follows: ·       Relationship self-change. This is where the couple learn about the value of goal-setting, why self-change is important to relationship growth and their commitment to relationship enhancement. ·       Communication. Here the couple learns about how to effectively communicate in relationships and they evaluate their own communication skills. ·       Caring and intimacy. In the third component, they learn about the importance of expressing social support, affection and positive shared activities. Then they review their current affection, their engagement in shared activities and their support for their partner. ·       Managing differences. Next the couple reviews the positive effect of differences on the relationship and effective conflict management. ·       Sexuality. Penultimately, they learn about common myths about sexual expression as well as assess their current sexual behaviour in the relationship. ·       Management Of Life Changes. Finally, the couple learn about the impact of life events on the relationship, and they assess what likely life changes they’ll experience and their effects before reviewing how to maintain focus on the relationship in a busy life. Overall, I think on paper they sound a little dry but in reality, they are very important areas. For example, we know that communication is beyond critical in relationships because I know from personal experience that effectively communicating in any relationship is important. And if good communication isn’t developed then bad things can and will happen including the breakup of friendships and whatnot. In addition, I think as great as learning concepts and about relationships are, it is critical that couples actually focus on their own relationship through the reviewing and self-assessment. This is important because it allows couples to apply what they’ve learnt and how to improve their relationship in the future. Of course, this is probably really hard and not ideal but it is important. And there will probably be some uncomfortable situations from time to time but again, that is why good communication is critical. Furthermore, the paper talks a lot about how the authors used statistical models to support their conclusions, the sample was good and I don’t see any glaringly bad problems and because that is proper methodology content I am actually going to skip over that stuff. I will mention (because this is a small soap box of mine) that I think 26 couples might have been a slightly small sample size and I would have preferred over 30 and the mean age was 34. Meaning we can’t really say with empirical evidence that this method works for younger couples or couples over 50. But that isn’t really the point of this particular study and the method does work for these couples. How Can We Use Relationship Education in Our Own Lives? If we take a step back from the paper and focus on the lessons it can teach us then there is a lot the study can teach us for our own relationships. Firstly, I have mentioned there are six areas of relationship education and I think even the brief summary of each section can give you a lot of useful prompts to give about in your relationship. For example, maybe tonight, you and your partner should think about your current levels of affection towards each other, engagement in shared activities and the like. Could you do more together? Secondly, Halford et al. (2023) focused a lot on the importance of self-change and how you are responsible for your relationship flourishing. You can’t leave it to your partner to do all the work and vice versa, it is only by you wanting a change that something good will happen. Finally, the study mentioned that couples benefit from the focusing on the relationship itself and not doing anything else. Therefore, if you and your partner think about the relationship for the 12 hours and try to improve it then there will be benefits. Which I think is really interesting, and you could try to half that time to see some benefits. Like spending 6 hours total working on each of the 6 areas mentioned earlier. Social psychology Conclusion: At the end of this social psychology podcast episode, I think we can all admit that a relationship can flourish for a lot of different reasons. And I know a good chunk of this episode has been common sense, like we know good communication is important, but just because we know something this doesn’t mean we always follow it. Therefore, whenever you get into a relationship and after a while you get concerned that it is filled with a sense of sameness and dullness. Then use these six areas to kickstart your relationship again and make it exciting. Or better yet actively think about these six areas before your relationship even gets to that stage. Personally, I always find relationship content fun to think about because even though I have no experience whatsoever to draw on here. It gives me knowledge I can use in the future and I always like how this area of social psychology we can apply to our own lives, to improve our relationships so we can be happy, healthy and experience more joy in the future. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology Of Relationships: The Social Psychology Of Friendships, Romantic Relationships 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. Social Psychology References Ayub, N., Iqbal, S., Halford, W. K., & van de Vijver, F. (2023). Couples relationship standards and satisfaction in Pakistani couples. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 49(1), 111-128. Halford, W. K., & Snyder, D. K. (2012). Universal processes and common factors in couple therapy and relationship education: Guest editors: W. Kim Halford and Douglas K. Snyder. Behavior Therapy, 43(1), 1-12. Halford, W. K., Young, K., & Sanri, C. (2023). Effects of relationship education on couple flourishing. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 12(3), 155–167. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000203 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 CBT For Anxiety being released recently, I wanted to investigate the brilliant topic of cognitive behavioural therapy because this is a highly effective psychological therapy that can be used for a wide range of mental health conditions. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll be reading or listening to an extract from the book introduction you to cognitive behavioural therapy. Including its theoretical approach, how it treats mental health conditions and how it came to be in the first place. If you enjoy learning about mental health, psychotherapies and clinical psychology then you’ll love today’s episode. This episode has been sponsored by CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety Disorders. 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. Introduction To CBT (Extract From CBT For Anxiety. COPYRIGHT 2024 CONNOR WHITELEY) Now that we’re getting onto the part of the book we’ve all been waiting for, let’s start learning about the amazing topic of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. As a result, we first need to know both the cognitive and behavioural theories that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is built on before we can ever hope to understand how CBT works for anxiety disorders. Therefore, as you can probably imagine Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is based (at least in part) on the cognitive approach to behaviour. As well as Westbrook, Kennerley & Kirk (2007) noted that there is evidence that a lot of mental health conditions are associated with a wide range of cognitive factors. For example, many conditions cause people to have information processing biases, faulty belief schemas as well as dysfunctional ways of thinking. Then if we apply this logic to anxiety disorders then we’ve already discussed in the book how anxiety causes a person to have faulty belief systems about how dangerous the stimuli is, the dysfunctional ways they develop to “cope” with the anxiety and their bias information processing because how they perceive the stimuli. Also, the cognitive approaches to treatment were first pioneered by Albert Ellis (1962) and Aaron Beck (1967) with their aim being to incorporate cognitive processes into psychology, all whilst still maintaining an empirical approach to this because they wanted to avoid ungrounded speculation. In other words, they wanted to make sure their findings withstood empirical scrutiny and it is a brilliant thing that they set out with this in mind. In addition, when it comes to cognitive approaches, this view focuses on the idea that a mental health condition is caused by a person developing irrational beliefs, dysfunctional ways of thinking and biased information processing like we saw earlier. And this leads to the person’s mental processes being impacted heavily. For instance, the way a person behaves and emotionally reacts to a stimuli is strongly influenced by their cognition. Like their beliefs, thoughts and interpretation. As well as this impacts how a person reacts to an event too. For example, because I personally don’t find spiders anxiety-provoking, if I see a spider then I don’t interpret this as dangerous, life-threatening and I’m not overwhelmed by the emotion of fear. Yet if an anxious person saw a spider then their cognitive processes would tell them this is a life-threatening situation and they will react completely differently to me because the anxious person has biased cognitive processes. Furthermore, the cognitive approach believes mental health conditions develop and the mental health difficulties onset because of cognitive factors (obviously) but both functional and dysfunctional beliefs develop earlier on, and these beliefs may not cause difficulties for a long period of time. And this is something that I personally find very interesting about mental health. A person could have depression, ADHD, autism or another condition and function absolutely perfectly. They can hold down a job, have tons of friends (if they want) and live a perfectly happy life, but it is only when they start to struggle and need help is when clinical psychology is really needed. And something that I personally love to remind people is that a mental health condition isn’t a death sentence like some people sadly believe it is. Sure a person with a mental health condition might need a little more support, guidance and treatment but given all of those things there is a good chance they could live a very happy and relatively clinically “normal” life. Nonetheless, if the person does experience a critical incident event, also known as encounters the anxiety-provoking stimuli, then this would be a disturbing event to them, this could activate their negative beliefs and then lead to a distressing emotional response. What’s The Cognitive-Behavioural Approach? Building on both the cognitive approaches, to form Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, this approach has to be combined with behavioural approaches. Therefore, whilst the cognitive approach focuses on a person’s cognitions and beliefs and how these might lead to particular behaviours. It is these behaviours that are actually a core factor in maintaining or changing beliefs and emotions. Meaning this can become a very vicious cycle. In other words, a person’s negative cognition and beliefs cause negative behaviours. Then these behaviours reinforce the cognitions and beliefs and so on. Since it’s the behaviour in a person’s response to a negative experience or cognition that could have a significant effect on whether the emotion persists. For example, if a person reacts badly to a spider then of course the person will want to avoid spiders to avoid this feeling again. Hence, they develop avoidance behaviours. Like, avoiding the situation and event completely, escaping it or engaging in safety behaviours. Now personally, I love safety behaviours and I think they are truly fascinating because to be honest they have to be some of the biggest cons in psychology. Due to safety behaviours are fully intended to protect us from threat or prevent harm coming to us. As a result, these safety behaviours might reduce our anxiety in the short term, but they always have the unintended consequence of maintaining anxiety in the longer term. That’s why I think safety behaviours are very interesting cons that we pull on ourselves because we convince ourselves that we’re helping ourselves to be less anxious, and if we don’t do these behaviours we’re going to basically die. But in reality, they’re making us “worse”, not “better. Core Treatment Components When it comes to what CBT actually involves, there are a few flat out critical elements that make up this amazingly effective and fascinating therapy. Firstly, there is a lot of cognitive restructuring involved. This component involves challenging and modifying a person’s negative thoughts as well as their dysfunctional beliefs. This is typically done by examining the evidence for a person’s beliefs. For example, we’ll talk a lot more about cognitive intervention in two chapters’ time but an anxious person will believe their safety behaviours save them and without their safety behaviours they will basically die. That is how powerful these behaviours are, so as you’ll see in two chapters a therapist can challenge these beliefs by using experiments and testing whether or not there is evidence to support these beliefs. Another core feature of CBT is it involves a therapist helping to modify a person’s tendency to indulge in unhelpful thinking processes, this relates to the cognitive biases we spoke about earlier, so the therapist works with the client to modify and reduce these unhelpful mental processes. Like, how a person pays excessive attention to the threat, how they ruminate on the anxiety provoking stimuli and they engage in mental checking. As well as when it comes to helping a person reduce their unhelpful behaviours, this includes things like reducing their avoidance, safety and checking behaviours. Also CBT involves behavioural experiments (definitely more on that later) and exposure and response prevention (again more on that in a later chapter). Levels Of Cognition Of course, we could never ever hope to learn about cognitive approaches and CBT without looking at levels of cognition, and this is absolutely critical when it comes to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Since a person’s levels of cognition are as follows: ·       Their automatic thoughts ·       Their intermediate beliefs, attitudes and rules which are assumptions about the world and the self. ·       Their core beliefs. Their basic beliefs about their self, others and the world. And this idea about levels of cognition is flat out critical in CBT because a therapist has to be very careful when they do cognitive restructuring because you cannot hope to change someone’s core beliefs automatically. That just isn’t how things work but you can start off with challenging and modifying a person’s automatic thoughts then their intermediate beliefs and then their core beliefs. You need to work “slowly” and gradually for the therapy to work. An anxiety example of how a therapist might go about finding out what a person’s core belief is, is as follows: ·       I’m terrified of spiders (automatic thought) ·       I know if a spider gets near me it could attack me (potential intermediate belief) ·       If a spider touches me then I know for a fact I’m going to get bitten and I’ll be rushed to hospital (potential core belief) Now I have to admit that it is far, far easier to come up with potential levels of cognitions with depression for teaching purposes but you get the general idea. A CBT therapist would have to effectively peel back the layers of a person’s cognition to truly understand why they have these biased mental processes. Thinking Errors/Biases If you’ve studied depression then you might be familiar with this section of the chapter because there are a lot of commonalities between all types of CBT (at least “first-wave” therapies) and the types of cognitive biases and errors a CBT therapist would encounter. Therefore, here are the following cognitive errors a therapist is likely to encounter and I have broken them up so you can clearly see the error and an example of what it is like: ·       All or nothing- if I can’t love all dogs then I’m scared of all of them. ·       Exaggerated standards/expectations- if I can’t pet a dog then I’m a failure (a potential example at least) ·       Catastrophising- my life is over because if I go outside I might see a dog and it might kill me. ·       Selective attention to the negative/threat- a person is basically always drawn to anxiety provoking stimuli. ·       Over-generalising- “I’m scared of my brother’s pet dog so I’m scared of all dogs” ·       Dismissing the positive- I might be able to stroke my sister’s dog but I feel worthless and scary around all other dogs. I’m so lame. ·       Magnifying/minimising- minimising the positive and magnifying the bad ·       Jumping to conclusions ·       Emotional reasoning- being irrational and basing your reason on emotion, not fact. ·       Personalising ·       Internalising/externalising Again, some of those examples might sound similar to depression and that is to be expected considering there is a comorbidity between depression and anxiety in some people. Role Of Avoidance And Safety Behaviours Returning to my topic and building upon what we learnt earlier, a very good definition of a safety behaviour can be found in Salkovskis (1988, 1991): “A behaviour which is performed in order to prevent or minimise a feared catastrophe” As well as we know that safety behaviours have several effects on a person’s beliefs. Like they prevent a person from getting disconfirming evidence about their beliefs (this is flat out critical for the information in two chapters’ time), this can increase the sensation a person experiences like their anxiety and fear, and safety behaviours increase their rumination and preoccupation with the anxiety provoking stimuli. Overall, all these effects on behaviour that safety behaviours cause are linked together to make the person focus on the stimuli they find threatening and this of course isn’t helpful. Hence, the need for CBT for anxiety disorders which is what we’ll look at in a moment after we understand more about the behavioural approach. 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 CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety Disorders. 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. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2024) CBT For Anxiety: A Clinical Psychology Introduction To Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety Disorders. CGD Publishing. United Kingdom. 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.

Historically speaking, attachment research suggests that autism meant it was difficult, if not impossible for a person to form a secure attachment. This has generated a lot of myths and misconceptions about autistic people and their attachment styles and behaviours, something that modern research is starting to reassess. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn how can autistic people be securely attached to a caregiver and others. If you enjoy learning about autism, mental health and developmental psychology then you’ll love today’s episode. This 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley How Can Autistic People Be Securely Attached? Personally, I wanted to start off this podcast episode by saying that this is very interesting to me because for the most part, I have believed the myths and misconceptions surrounding secure attachment. As well as I have vivid memories of sitting in my developmental psychology lectures and being upset at how I didn’t have secure attachments. Of course, part of this is down to my trauma and abuse that negatively impacted how I’ve been able to form attachments, but another part of this attachment topic is what we talk about in today’s episode. Autistic people can be securely attached, it just might look different to when neurotypicals are securely attached. Reminder About Attachment As I’ve mentioned before on the podcast in lots of different episodes, humans find it flat out critical to create emotional bonds and seek close proximity to the caregiver in childhood. This is even more the case when we are in danger or there is a perceived threat. Therefore, all babies attach to their caregivers and it is the attachment we form in our early years that provides us with a blueprint for how we approach relationships in later life. As a result, as we grow during childhood and into adulthood, everyone counts on having attachment figures to support us and actually be there when we need them most. Since this helps us to explore the world (like a secure base) and we can reach out to them for help when we are hurt, threatened or in need of comfort. This is important in neurotypical children because having a secure attachment helps them to self-soothe and regulate their arousal. These behaviours are shown time and time again in research settings by pointing, showing objects to and looking at their mothers when compared to less securely attached peers with Capps et al. (1994) being a good example. As well as these neurotypical children with secure attachment get distressed when their mother leaves the room and they can play with and be comforted by her when she returns. Why Was It Believed Autistic Children Could Not Form Secure Attachment? Whereas people used to believe that autistic children couldn’t have any secure attachment in any relationships, because they didn’t always show these behaviours. Modern research demonstrates this is not the case and autistic children can very much form secure attachments. For example, a systemic review from Teague et al. (2017) showed that 47% of autistic children could be classified as having secure attachment. Yet the systemic review also highlights how there are less securely attached autistic children compared to their neurotypical peers. This could be because of conclusion flaws in how secure attachment is measured. Since a lot of studies concluded that autism impairs a person’s ability to form secure attachments, and studies conclude that the high levels of stress that is created for parents by parenting an autistic child makes parents less likely to be responsive and this causes a child not to form a secure attachment. I don’t buy these explanations for a moment because this is something me and a bunch of autistic friends spoke about back in November 2023. Autistic people can have a lot of empathy for others but it looks different, and considering that secure attachment is based on emotional bonds and empathy is a type of emotional response. This is why I firmly believe autistic people are capable of secure attachment. And I have also read this research so I do know the answer. Anyway, another reason why these two conclusion flaws are not correct is because they pathologize autism and they make autism sound like a burden. Neither of these two points are even remotely correct. Due to we need to reframe the attachment behaviour of autistic children as a unique expression and not some wiring or deficiency in their neurobiological processes. How To Reframe The Attachment Behaviour Of Autistic Children? The first part of the solution to this problem and to allow us to really understand how autistic children work in terms of their attachment behaviour. We need to realise that just like how parents are confused by their child’s behaviour, the exact same is probably true of the child. They probably don’t understand their parent’s behaviour, so this is why communication is important between both parties. In addition, if there is an autistic child and a neurotypical adult then this can create a lot of difficulty in understanding, interpreting and predicting the behaviour of the other one. This results in both the child and the adult misunderstand and get confused about the other. However, the solution to this confusion and misunderstanding is about educating parents on what attachment behaviour looks like in autistic children, so they can better understand, read and respond to their baby’s cues. Remember, attachment is about the emotional bond between a child and caregiver in response to the caregiver’s responsiveness, more or less. That’s why this is critical for parents to understand. Moreover, there is evidence suggesting the benefits of getting parents to understand the mental states that underlie behaviour. This comes from Fonagy (1991) and their parental reflective functioning, which is the definition I just gave you, because this researcher believed reflective functioning is the key to being a sensitive as well as attuned parent and then this paves the way towards secure attachment. Nonetheless, we need to find out if this parental reflective functioning works for both autistic and neurotypical children or only neurotypical children. Does Parental Reflective Functioning Work For Autistic Children? If we look at the historical research, the answer seems to be no because past research firmly blames autistic traits and symptoms for impairments in reflective functioning. The so-called theory behind this is because autism makes a person avoid eye contact, avoid close proximity to their caregiver and they position their bodies differently. Of course, this completely misses the fact that secure attachment presents itself differently in these two populations. A better way to frame this “impairment” and I really don’t like that term because autism isn’t an impairment for either the child nor the parent. Instead, these autistic symptoms or traits could be thought of as “mutual challenges” because I can promise you, you might not be able to understand the behaviours of autistic people but I cannot understand your behaviours even. Like small talk, I hate small talk with a passion. Anyway, these are mutual challenges because both parties have a hard time understanding each other. And we need to remember that reflective functioning is a two-way street and the challenges in communication between a parent and child might cause dysregulation. Leading parents of autistic children to feel like bad parents or lose their own confidence, but there is always hope. Instead parents can become educated and develop a better understanding of the communication patterns of autistic children. This allows parents to become more sensitive to their child’s needs and this results in a rather wonderful positive feedback loop. For example, if we take a rather classic example of autistic behaviour about eye contact. If we teach parents that instead of avoiding eye contact being a sign of disinterest in you and teach parents it is just a neuro-difference that doesn’t mean anything bad. Then this can help caregivers feel better, be more responsive and help caregivers not create a negative feedback loop because they believe their child has rejected them. This is also why identifying autism earlier is important so parents can be educated on attachment behaviours and this knowledge can enhance their reflective functioning in turn. All helping parents to become more sensitive to their baby’s cues. Why Maternal Insightfulness Is Needed For Secure Attachment In Autism? Towards the end of this podcast episode, I want to bring our attention to Oppenheim and Koren-Karie (2008) because they studied autistic children and found maternal insightfulness was a key factor in secure attachment. Pulling a quote from the study, they defined this as: "the capacity to think about the motives that underlie their child's behaviour, to be open to new and unexpected behaviours of the child, to show acceptance of the child's challenging behaviours, and to see the child in a multidimensional way.” And what is really interesting about this finding is that the severity of the child’s traits themselves were not important for secure attachment. Instead what was important was the caregiver’s capacity to enter the child’s point of view and empathy. Which I think just goes to show how important education is and just being willing to learn can have massively positive impacts on a child’s and parent’s life. Furthermore, this study demonstrated that secure attachment does look different to neurotypicals. Due to some autistic children showed distress when the mother left and they regulated and self-soothed when the mother returned, even though they didn’t interact or show close proximity with the caregiver. In other words just because the child didn’t have close proximity or interact too much or at all with the caregiver when they were in the same room. It flat out did not mean the autistic child didn’t care when the caregiver left. This shows the autistic child wanted and watched the caregiver in the room. And this only means one thing. Developmental Psychology Conclusion Overall, at the end of this podcast episode, we can confirm that just because an autistic child doesn’t seem excited or interested in a caregiver being in the same room as them. This doesn’t mean in any way that the autistic child doesn’t care or isn’t attached to the caregiver. The presence of a caregiver still helps the child to feel safe and secure and connected and in that sense there is barely any difference between secure attachment behaviours and its development in autistic and neurotypical children. Of course, parents need to be educated, they need to be willing to be sensitive to their child’s cues and they need to be willing to be insightful. But autistic children can form secure attachments just like neurotypical children. It might look different but it is still there and being a child that is securely attached and knows they can go to their caregivers for love, support and comfort. Now that really is the best feeling in the world. 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 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology and Developmental Psychology References Capps, L., Sigman, M., & Mundy, P. (1994). Attachment security in children with autism. Developmentand Psychopathology, 6, 249–261. Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Steele, H., Moran, G. S., & Higgitt, A. C. (1991). The capacity for understanding mental states: The reflective self in parent and child and its significance for security of attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 12(3), 201-218. Oppenheim, David & Koren-Karie, Nina & Dolev, Smadar & Yirmiya, Nurit. (2008). Secure Attachment in Children With Autistic Spectrum Disorder: The Role of Maternal Insightfulness. Zero to Three, v28 n4 p25-30 Mar 2008. Teague, S.J., Gray, K.M., Tonge, B.J., and Newman, L.K. (2017). Attachment in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A systematic review. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 35, 35-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2016.12.002 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.

As it’s January, a lot of psychology students and psychology professionals start to think about their psychology careers and career changes. Therefore, in this career-related podcast episode, we’re going to be learning what is a military psychologist and what are the pros and cons of working in the military as a psychologist. This will help you to decide should you be a military psychologist or not. Granted a lot of this information is US-focused because that is the information I could find, but a lot of the points in this podcast episode are universal. If you enjoy learning about mental health, clinical psychology and psychology careers, you’ll enjoy today’s episode. Today’s podcast episode has been 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley What Is A Military Psychologist? Before we move on to the advantages and disadvantages of being a military psychologist, we first need to know what one is and what they actually do. Therefore, simply put, a military psychologist is a psychologist who works in the military to support soldiers and other active personnel in relation to a wide range of tasks. For example, giving them psychological treatment for mental health conditions, providing counselling and other support the soldier might need. As well as performing psychological assessments on people. What Are The Advantages of Being A Military Psychologist? Now we’ll talk about the three main benefits of being a military psychologist. What Are The Training and Professional Opportunities Of Being A Military Psychologist? Whilst I have to admit that being a military psychologist is probably the last thing I would ever want to do, because this job just isn’t of interest to me in the slightest. I know being a military psychologist would be a great job for some people, and it’s always useful to know about different psychology professions. Hence, why I’m covering this topic today. Firstly, being a military psychologist might be a good job for you because they offer a lot of great benefits to their employees. For example, military psychologist trainees are paid a full salary, which certainly makes it unique because normally trainees get a lot less money than fully qualified professionals. As well as military psychologists get to have the same wages as well as other benefits than other military officers that have the same rank as them. That I think is very interesting and definitely a great benefit. In addition, once you’re a psychologist in the military, you can apply for a wide range of postdoctoral fellowships across a range of subdisciplines. Like clinical psychology, forensic psychology, health psychology, operational psychology and so on. Also, military psychologists get to take advantage of the military’s leadership development courses. All of these opportunities come with a full-time salary for the psychologist. Which is brilliant considering the often rubbish pay that psychologists can face early on in their career. And something that I think is rather brilliant about being a military psychologist is that, if you don’t work in the military, you tend to have to self-fund your Continued Professional Development, but this mostly isn’t the case in the military. And yes, I know the NHS and other organisations have a fund to help pay for CPD but as I learnt on my Learning Disability Work Experience that fund is limited and you can ONLY use the money for something directly related to your job. Anyway, in the military, Command funds your participation in conferences, training, professional organisations and board certification. Since the military recognises that their psychologists are a critical part of significant decisions so it’s important that they provide support to military psychologists so they are well-qualified. Why Being A Military Psychologist Is Rewarding Work? Another benefit of being a military psychologist is that the work is both rewarding and challenging. Since all militaries require their workers to be challenged by their resilience, professional expertise, adaptability and their physical abilities. This is important to note because psychologists are important to the military but psychologists are also leaders, team players and officers in the military. Therefore, these skills are even more important than they normally are in more civilian settings. Due to the military will require you to put together clinical presentations, lead other service members and the decisions you make will have consequences for both the service members themselves and the military’s mission whatever it is. As a result, a military psychologist’s personal and professional skills are constantly being tested and this means the military provides a near endless number of development programmes. So if you want access to that sort of training then maybe being a military psychologist is for you. What Is The Pay And Benefits For Military Psychologists? Now this is definitely the more US-centric part of the podcast episode but I still think that it helps you to understand what being a military psychologist is like as a career. As a result in the US, the salary for military psychologists have improved a lot over the past 15 years so military psychologists are now some of the highest-paid psychologists in the United States. In addition, US military psychologists get access to other benefits as well. For instance, they get free health care, flexible sick leave, housing allowance, a pension, loan forgiveness, tax benefits and generous annual leave. As well as something called the G.I bill, which is very US-centric so I’m not going to be looking it up. Finally, military psychologists in the US, specifically get an accession bonus, a retention bonus, incentive pay and board certification pay. In other words, there are a lot of great benefits and a great salary for being a military psychologist. What Are The Disadvantages Of Being A Military Psychologist? Now we need to look at the various disadvantages of being a military psychologist. Why Is Being A Military Psychologist Stressful For Families? This is definitely one of the reasons why I wouldn’t be a military psychologist. Since it is true that the military has made some gains in making military life easier for families, it is still true that there will never be an optimal situation for a family. Since the thing I really don’t like about working in the military is that parents and spouses are away from home on a regular basis. This means they miss out on their children growing up, they miss key family events and just being a part of a normal family unit. This has a lot of negative outcomes for families because this creates employment challenges for spouses because of the mobile lifestyle. As well as this creates parenting challenges, relationship challenges and other problems for families. Of course I am not saying that having a family member working in the military is all bad because there are some advantages. Like it would be nice to live in another country, there are plenty of health benefits that normal Americans just do not have access to, parents can raise informed and flexible children and so on. There are some good benefits to travelling and working with the military. But these benefits might not be enough to offset the negatives. Personally, if I was with someone who worked in the military, I would seriously need to think about if I could follow my partner round the world. Sure, I can write, podcast and learn psychology from anywhere in the world. Yet I like a routine because of my autism, I like some level of certainty and I would like to see my partner without wondering when the hell they’ll be back from a posting. Why Military Psychologists Have A Lack Of Control? This might be the biggest reason why I wouldn’t become a military psychologist, because the military isn’t for you if you want a 9 til 5 job in the geographical location that you live in. Since as I mentioned in the point above, the military moves a lot so you might be deployed and redeployed depending on what the military needs. As well as just like the rest of the military, military psychologists are not so special that they don’t have to wear a uniform, exercise a lot, meet the military’s fitness and health requirements, do drug tests and on and on and on. Military psychologists still have to do all of those things. Personally, I do not see moving constantly and not settling down in one location for a period of time to be fun. Mainly that is just my autism and honestly, I like exercise but not because I have to do it. Also, I really hate uniforms, orders and I just don’t like the work culture of the military. So no being a military psychologist really isn’t for me. Why You Can’t Be A Specialist In Military Psychology? This next disadvantage is like high treason or heresy for me and I hate this disadvantage. Since if you want to be a military psychologist then you need to be a generalist within clinical psychology and you have to have a lot of knowledge about everything (to over-simplify). You absolutely cannot be an expert in one area and that’s it because you have to be able to do whatever the mission requires. Of course, there are some military psychologists that are specialists, but after you’ve finished training as a military psychologist, you probably will not used full-time in that speciality. You will almost certainly be required to step out of that area for long periods of time if the military mission needs you in other places. For me, this disadvantage is basically heretical because I love the word and I’m studying psychology so I can work with specific groups of clinical populations in specific ways. I want to be able to use systemic approaches and cognitive-behavioural approaches. They are the ways of working that I love and there are certain clinical populations that I love working with because I think it’d be a lot of fun and I find them inspiring. So I hate the idea of having to step away from the populations and methods I love. Of course, I am not deluded, I know in an NHS job or another psychology job I will still have to step away and use different approaches from time to time. But my point still remains, the basic job is still specialist within reason unlike the military psychologist job where you are a generalist. Careers In Psychology Conclusion I think we can all tell by the end of this podcast episode that being a military psychologist isn’t for me. Yet it might be for you because a military psychologist does have a lot of benefits in terms of travel, salary and benefits that a lot of normal citizens don’t get. Especially in the US where they don’t have free healthcare. Yet there are a lot of disadvantages too like the generalist approach, the constant moving and the uncertainty about where you’ll be next. However, the entire point of these career in Psychology podcast episodes is that we are all learning what we can do with our degrees. Some of you might be thinking “that sounds like a cool job but I don’t want it” and that is perfectly okay. That’s actually my own reaction. Or you might be thinking “Oh wow, this job sounds great. Thank you Connor for telling me about it,” That’s okay too. You now have the information about being a military psychologist and you can decide what you want to do with it. And that’s why I like psychology career-related episodes because they get me thinking, me learning and asking myself what do I want with my life? And I hope these episodes inspire you too to question yourself, your career choice and where you want to be in the future. 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 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Careers In Psychology Reference https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/alpha-blog-charlie/202212/thinking-joining-the-military-psychologist 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.

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing and this is a type of psychotherapy that I’ve become more aware of in recent months. Since a close friend of mine mentioned they had EMDR and a good podcast I listened to mentioned that she went for EMDR too. And before this podcast episode, I knew it was an effective psychotherapy but I had no idea what it actually involved and I knew there was a sort of stigma around it within the psychology community. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is EMDR, how does EMDR work and much more. If you enjoy learning about mental health, clinical psychology and psychotherapy then you will love today’s episode. This 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley What Is EMDR? EMDR isn’t really a psychotherapy in and of itself, it is more of a psychotherapy technique that is designed to relieve the psychological distress associated with a client’s disturbing memories. As well as it involves a client recalling a specific negative experience while following a side-to-side visual stimulus delivered by the therapist. A client needs to do this in EMDR because the lateral eye movements that following this stimulus causes that are thought to help reduce the emotional impact of this memory. This helps the negative experience to become easier to discuss with the therapist as the memory is effectively stripped of its power to trigger avoidance behaviours and anxiety within a client. In addition, there have been a lot of empirical studies that show that EMDR works for some clients, but it is very, very controversial. There are a lot of reasons for this but one of the main reasons is that we just don’t know how it works. There are a lot of theories that try to explain how EMDR works but there isn’t a universally accepted theory. Another reason why EMDR is controversial is because there isn’t much clear evidence that EMDR is better than other forms of exposure therapy. Since EMDR and other exposure therapies are basically the same in terms of you have a client recalling a traumatic memory in the safe environment provided by a therapist. As well as the client repeatedly talks about the event in this safe context and this leads to a decrease in avoidance and fear responses. Personally, when I first learnt those two reasons I wasn’t very surprised, because I completely understand that EMDR is basically the same as other exposure therapies. They all follow the same principles and whilst it is good that we know EMDR works for some clients. Clinical psychology is a science after all, and we need to understand how and why EMDR works. Not just as a whole but why does it work for some clients and not others, and once we understand what are the important elements or components of EMDR then we might be able to distil EMDR and combine it with other treatment models. There is a lot of work to do in EMDR research as you’ll see later on. How Does EMDR Work? Whilst as I mentioned a moment ago, there are no widely accepted theories that explain EMDR, but I’m going to tell you about some of the theories. None of these are conclusive and these are all just theories, but I think having at least a basic understanding of how EMDR might work is more important here. Therefore, EMDR is meant to be based on the so-called Adaptive Information Model and this is meant to target the way a distressing memory is stored in the brain. The idea behind this is that the experience is distressing because of how it’s stored in the brain so if you can change how the memory is stored then you can change how distressing it is to a client. As well as when these memories are triggered in the present they contain all the same emotions, physical feelings and thoughts as the experience did in the past. All because the experience wasn’t processed properly in the first place. I’m just going to say upright that I find this theory very suspect already, but let’s continue. Interestingly, there have been studies that have called into question whether the eye movement part of EMDR is even needed. Due to these studies suggest that EMDR actually works because the desensitisation involves recalling, confronting as well as reprocessing the aversive memories under the careful supervision of a therapist. And you know what that’s called. It’s called exposure therapy. On the other hand, there have been some new theories suggested in recent years to explain how EMDR works. For example, Andrew Huberman of Standford University supports the eye movements as an important part of EMDR because he proposes that the movements seen in EMDR copy optic flow and this decreases a person’s fear system as well as temporarily decreases the sense of threat that the traumatic memory holds. Additionally, the eyes are a part of the central nervous system and research Huberman conducted shows when the eyes are relaxed, a client adjusts their inner state to match. This is supported by additional research, including a study done by Dutch researchers and published in the Journal Of Neuroscience. Also, I want to add in this quote from Huberman that further supports his theory: “It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. We’ve always been confronted with threats—animal threats, interpersonal threats. Forward movement is the way you suppress the fear response.” Then when it comes to the visual system, he says, “is a steering wheel and brake of the nervous system. The brain will follow the visual system in many ways.” Overall, I think this theory makes a lot of sense because it helps to explain how EMDR works, the biological mechanisms behind it and how this has a knock-on effect for our mental processes. However, there are still other questions that have yet to be answered about EMDR’s workings. For example, the interpatient factors that explain the variance in why it works for some and not others, and this almost sounds a little reductionist in a sense. Since this theory only focuses on the biological aspects of the eye movements. It fails to explain how the social factors, like being in a safe environment of the therapist’s office, helps to explain how works. When Is EMDR Used? Whilst originally this therapy technique was developed to treat PTSD, it’s now used for a wide range of conditions. For instance, anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, some personality disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders and a few others. However, it’s important to note that for a client to be a good fit for EMDR, they need to be comfortable with some emotional discomfort. Also, they shouldn’t be too easily overwhelmed by their feelings and not shut down emotionally when they face discomfort. As well as clients should be able to use their emotional and cognitive resources to help them reprocess their memories. I will just add there that I don’t think a single one of those points is actually unique to EMDR. I think they are basic assumptions of all clients going in psychotherapy because you can’t do therapy successfully if you aren’t willing to confront and process the past and you need to have a capacity for change too. What Should Someone Expect In EMDR? Whilst some clients might need fewer sessions, a typical course of EMDR lasts between 6 and 12 sessions that are delivered once or twice a week. With some studies showing that reprocessing a single distressing memory can be processed within three sessions. Then after the client and therapist talk about the client’s history and the therapist explains the procedure, the two work together to decide on which past experiences will be the subject of the treatment. Afterwards, the therapist activates the distressing memory by asking the patient to visualise and/ or experience their thoughts. I find that term “activate” quite funny because it makes it sound like the therapist has a switch into a client’s head. Anyway, once the memory is activated, the therapist assesses the level of negative thoughts and feelings within the client about the event, and the positive beliefs the client wants to increase about themselves. Next, the therapist administers the bilateral visual stimulation. In addition, the client can almost always expect to experience some physical and emotional discomfort here because they’ll be recalling the distressing memories. Then as the procedure continues, new thoughts and feelings will emerge and these are discussed. Also, the therapist samples the nature and level of the client’s emotional and cognitive distress as well as any physical distress. Finally, the session ends when the client feels manageably calm and the therapist gives them instructions about how to handle any disturbing thoughts and feelings in-between their sessions. As well as in the following sessions, these begin with an assessment of the memories that might have emerged since the last treatment. Clinical Psychology Conclusion I have to admit that this has been a rather fun podcast episode for me because we’ve looked at how EMDR works, what EMDR is, what to expect in EMDR and more. And whilst I have made fun of EMDR in at least two sections of this episode, I think this therapy does have a place in clinical psychology. Of course, more research has to be done so we can actually understand how it works because psychology is a science and we have to use empirical tools in therapy. Also, there needs to be more research into how EMDR is different to other forms of exposure therapy because I am personally not convinced it’s as different as it claims to be. However, at the end of the day, there will be clients that need EMDR to improve their lives, decrease their psychological distress and function clinically normally. My friend’s proof of that and so is the podcast host that I listen to from time to time. I think as long as we admit the limitations, we try to fix the limitations and we don’t overstate how effective or great EMDR is compared to other therapies. Then this is a good compromise because EMDR is good for some people, but it isn’t for others. And even for the people who it works for, we just don’t know why. And that little bit of controversy is why psychotherapy can be important, fascinating and seriously fun to think about. 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References Balban, Melis, Erin Cafaro, Lauren Fletcher, Marlon Washington, Maryam Bijanzadeh, A. Lee, Edward Chang, and Andrew Huberman. “Human Responses to Visually Evoked Threat.” Current Biology, 31, no. 3 (November 25, 2020): 601-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.11.035 Davidson, P. R., & Parker, K. C. (2001). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): a meta-analysis. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 69(2), 305. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy, Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, American Psychological Association, https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/eye-movement-reprocessing Ironson, G., Freund, B., Strauss, J. L., & Williams, J. (2002). Comparison of two treatments for traumatic stress: A community‐based study of EMDR and prolonged exposure. Journal of clinical psychology, 58(1), 113-128. Lycia D. de Voogd, Jonathan W. Kanen, David A. Neville, Karin Roelofs, Guillén Fernández and Erno J. Hermans. “Eye-Movement Intervention Enhances Extinction via Amygdala Deactivation.” Journal of Neuroscience 3 October 2018, 38 (40) 8694-8706. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/38/40/8694 Oren, E. M. D. R., & Solomon, R. (2012). EMDR therapy: An overview of its development and mechanisms of action. European Review of Applied Psychology, 62(4), 197-203. Rodenburg, R., Benjamin, A., de Roos, C., Meijer, A. M., & Stams, G. J. (2009). Efficacy of EMDR in children: A meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 29(7), 599-606. Seidler, G. H., & Wagner, F. E. (2006). Comparing the efficacy of EMDR and trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of PTSD: a meta-analytic study. Psychological medicine, 36(11), 1515-1522. 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 kick off 2024 with a big, let’s kick off the year with this great topic from clinical psychology about family therapy for children and parents. In this podcast episode, you’ll learn about 5 different ways how family therapy can be useful for adult children and parents so they can have healthy, loving relationships. If you enjoy learning about psychotherapy, family relationships and clinical psychology then you’re going to love today’s episode. This episode has been sponsored by Psychology Worlds Magazine. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley How Can Family Therapy Help Adult Children And Parents? A lot of psychology students and some psychology professionals might not believe that family therapy could be useful for adult children and parents. This is mainly because whenever we think about family therapy, we all imagine parents trying and struggling to raise young children, control their behaviour and they want some sort of normalcy in their family relationships. Whilst this be true to some extent, family therapy still has a lot to offer parents and children in adulthood because family therapy works within the family system. Something that still exists in adulthood, as well as the longest period of parenthood is actually parenting an adult child that wants a close, loving relationship with their parents so family therapy can make perfect sense for adult children. Family Therapy Can Break Old Cycles One of the major benefits of family therapy for adult children and parents is that both of them can hit the same pain points and have the exact same arguments time and time again. For example, if an adult child and their parents used to fight about their fashion sense as a teenager and they’re still having the same arguments now. Also, if a parent knows that their child gets hurt by talk of a passed away pet and they always use that to shut them down and vice versa about a parent’s pain point. If this happens then the adult child and parent offer feel like they have to try to solve everything on their own, but this is next to impossible because most of the time the adult child and parent won’t see their own faulty communication patterns. As well as any other maladaptive patterns of behaviour. Therefore, family therapy can be really useful for identifying these old cycles of behaviour and find new ways to respond. This helps the adult child and parent to resolve any issues and the therapy gives clients new tools for addressing any future arguments that will inevitably pop up. Family Therapy Helps To Manage Stressors Some families that go to family therapy are the sort of families that work together well together until something new happens. For example, a loss of a loved one, a loss of a job or an injury or something else that’s brand new. This can even include a new romantic partner entering the adult child’s life or a parent dating for that matter. As a result, when these changes happen some families struggle to adapt to these changes and this is where conflict occurs. Therefore, family therapy can be very useful in helping both the parents and the adult child to manage their pitfalls and these new dynamics so the chance of conflict is greatly reduced. And if we connect to the last point, then family therapy is useful here because the clients will still have new tools to address these issues. Family Therapy Helps Recreate Outdated Family Roles This is something I think all families have to do because we’re aware that a parent’s role changes throughout the lifespan of their child. For example, when they’re really young the parent has to control all aspects of the baby or toddler’s life for their own safety (a simplified example but I think it’s largely true). Then in adolescence, the parents start worrying even more because their child is more independent as they go to secondary school and start dating and start exploring what being a young person means to them. And then the parent’s role shifts yet again in adulthood when the child becomes their own person living their own life. In addition, some families struggle to deal with this change in roles during these transitions, and this leaves everyone acting out in unhelpful, outdated family roles. And an easy example of this is in situations when adult children have struggled to launch into their adult life or they’re struggling to fly the nest because they still have the family role as the young child that needs to be protected and smothered. Also, there are times when the parent won’t let go of their child so they can’t fly off into adulthood. As a result, family therapy is useful here because it helps families to change and shift into these family roles that reflect what the family actually needs and the norms of their culture. For example, a child moving out and being an adult as well as a parent letting their child do that. Family Therapy Helps Adult Children And Parents Work Through Past Hurt I’m no stranger to families causing each other emotional pain because this is where family therapy can be useful. Due to family therapy allows families to work through the pain they’ve caused each other. Also, adult children tend to find it difficult to talk about negative childhood experiences with their parents, which is extremely true from my personal experience. And even when children do talk with their parents about past hurt the parents tend to invalidate it all, by shutting it down, insisting they did their best, asking the child to be more grateful and on and on and on. That is extremely true and I hate it when parents do that but I understand it because everyone has to maintain a positive self-image. Anyway, the problem is if adult children and parents don’t resolve these issues then children can get angry, resentful and hurt by their parents even more. Therefore, family therapy allows adult children and parents to have these conversations in a controlled environment where the adult children is allowed to be heard and understood. All whilst the family therapist gives both the adult child and parents tools and skills to address any issues that come up in the future. Family Therapy Allows Families To Navigate Estrangement Whenever one family member chooses estrangement, it is often after months or years of that person attempting to resolve these family issues. Most people describe estrangement as a last resort and it is something that they only do when there is no other choice and I can understand this. Therefore, family therapy can be really useful for adult children and their parents to process estrangement as well as form goals for the ideal outcome that they both want and family therapy means they can navigate this messy and very emotional process. And when I talk about ideal outcomes, this can include them talking a little more and their communication increasing over time, it can be working towards having Christmas together or them working towards having a relationship where they get on and the parent can see their grandchildren, for example. Social Psychology Conclusion As we’ve seen in this podcast episode, family therapy isn’t just for families with young children because family therapy can help parents and adult children overcome a lot. For instance, it can help them overcome estrangement, manage new stressors, break old cycles, deal with past hurt and it can help to recreate outdated family roles. And if 2023 has taught me anything, it is how important and amazing families can be when adult children and parents work together and support each other. So everyone can live a better life with less psychological distress, less emotional pain and a lot more joy. 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 Psychology Worlds Magazine. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/between-the-generations/202301/6-ways-family-therapy-can-help-adult-children-and-parents Dallos, R., & Draper, R. (2015). Ebook: An introduction to family therapy: Systemic theory and practice. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). Qualls, S. H. (1999). Family therapy with older adult clients. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(8), 977-990. Gower, M., & Dowling, E. (2008). Parenting adult children–invisible ties that bind?. Journal of Family Therapy, 30(4), 425-437. Goglia, L. R., Jurkovic, G. J., Burt, A. M., & Burge-Callaway, K. G. (1992). Generational boundary distortions by adult children of alcoholics: Child-as-parent and child-as-mate. American Journal of Family Therapy, 20(4), 291-299. 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.

2023 might have been my best year ever in terms of my future career in clinical psychology, my mental health and my overall quality of life. And as we start to think about 2024 and what we can do to make that year the best year ever, I want to share my lessons learnt from 2023. There'll be a lot of lessons about degrees, aspiring psychologist tips and more. I have 6 areas of 2023 to share with you and I'll do 5 tips that apply to you and your new year for each section. If you're interested in psychology careers, mental health and wanting tips to have a great 2024 then you'll love this podcast episode. This podcast episode has been 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Overview Of 2023 As I write this podcast episode on 20th December 2023, I have to admit that I have flat out loved this year because it has been incredible and I have loved it. In terms of my personal life, it’s wonderful for a bunch of reasons that I’ll talk about later in the episode, and even as a psychology student I have achieved so much that I never thought would have been possible. Again, I talk more about that later on to. Also, I have had one of my most productive years ever in terms of writing, podcasting and doing what I love. In fact, I got the Spotify Wrapped report for this podcast earlier in the month and I was very impressed to know we’ve experienced 10% growth in listenership in a single year and there was an extra 500 minutes of content this year compared to 2022. I am really happy with that. Therefore, in this little overview, I want to take a few minutes to thank all of you wonderful listeners. Because sure, there are times when I think I should just give up the podcast, that thought happens every few months and I do flat out researching and writing up these blog posts. But in all honesty, if you wonderful people didn’t keep listening, didn’t keep sharing the podcast and if you didn’t keep buying my books and support me. Then I would end this podcast because it wouldn’t be a useful way for me to spend my time. So thank you so much for supporting and listening to the podcast. In addition, we’ve actually hit a few podcasting miles this year with some landmark episodes. We reached episode 200 of the podcast called Hope. Passion. Wonder. My Psychology Journey So Far. That was a brilliant episode that I loved doing because it was a real landmark one for the podcast considering most podcasts don’t reach 30 episodes. And there were a lot of other landmark podcast episodes that I loved doing but I’m talking about most of them at different things in the episode. As a result, one thing I will say as a little tip for all of you as we start thinking about 2024, is do what you love. If there is an activity that you would love to do and you haven’t done it, then do it and try it out in 2024. Just make sure what you’re doing with your life is what you want to do and if you’re unhappy about something, then change it in 2024. As always a massive thank you to you wonderful listeners. I finished My Undergraduate Psychology Degree Wow. Me finishing my undergraduate degree was definitely a highlight of 2023 because it is so nice to get everything done, to graduate and just enjoy being a postgraduate student now. I loved my time at university because it was fun, I met some of the most incredible people in my life and it taught me a lot about myself and the type of person I want to be. If you want to hear more about my graduation and my university journey then you check out episode 200 again or my graduation-focused podcast episode. It’s called Graduation. A Psychology Ending. A Psychology Beginning. I’ll admit that I have written in a lot of places about my third year in books that are coming out next year. Yet I will share that I did find submitting my dissertation a little surprising because I was left with a sense of emptiness, because this massive project that I’ve been working on was now done. That was a surprising but great feeling too. And I think the main reason why my undergraduate was such a highlight of 2023 was because it meant that I had a degree. It meant all the years of hard work and tears meant something and I successfully got a degree. As well as it’s the people I met, the people I forged friendships with and all the different little things these people taught me. It is those things that I love about my degree. It wasn’t really the education side that I loved, it was the people and how amazing they were. Therefore, the tips for this section and you’re planning for 2024 includes ·       Make the most of your time at university ·       Be as social and try to make as many friends as possible at university ·       Use the university’s resources because they’re free. This includes learning support services, mental health services, whatever. ·       Don’t be scared of academics. Talk to them and forge professional relationships with them. ·       Take all the opportunities going to university presents you with. Be them research opportunities or social opportunities. Started My Masters Another amazing highlight of 2023 was I started my Masters in clinical psychology at the same university where I did my undergraduate at. This was exactly what I needed because of mental health stuff and I have loved it. Sure, we have had a nightmare with our stats lecturers but the university has been brilliant in sorting him out so we actually get good teaching nowadays. The reason why my Masters has been a highlight is because it reminds me how much I love clinical psychology. I love the theories, I love interacting with other students and I love the university environment. Be it going into a lecture theatre and taking advantage of university Wi-Fi for certain tasks that my home Wi-Fi is too slow for. Or helping out a PhD friend of mine with his research and catching up with him afterwards. Or just enjoying the societies that UK universities offer. I really, really love university because it is incredible and I know my 2023 wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good if I wasn’t at university. As well as I have made some great friends during my Masters too which I am really grateful for, of course none of them are Masters students themselves or even psychology students but I was only really able to be friends with them because I was at university. Therefore, my tips in terms of university again for planning your 2024 includes: ·       Enjoy your degree whatever it is as much as you can. ·       Get stuck into discussions as much as you can. ·       Talk and socialise with your fellow Masters’ students. ·       Get work experience on the side (more on that later) ·       Listen to your fellow Masters students because most of them will be filled with interesting stories. And the discussion tip is actually rather funny because I’m fairly sure I have a reputation in my Masters cohort as the person that is always on their laptop and looking like they aren’t paying attention whatsoever. Then the lecturer will ask a question and I give out a perfect answer that everyone is rather impressed with. I did enjoy those moments. And actually, I will miss the social psychology Masters lot because I did have some good discussions with them personally and they are just such nice people. So I will miss them a lot. Psychology Work Experience Some more psychology podcast episodes that proved to be landmark episodes were career-focused because 2023 was definitely a year where I wanted to improve my career in psychology prospects. Since just as a very quick recap, we know you can have all the degrees you want in psychology but without any work experience your ability to get a job is basically 0. As a result, I did the following podcast episodes and I’ll explain why made 2023 a great year for me: ·       Why Are Careers In Psychology Important To Investigate? ·       How To Find Work Experience For Psychology Students? ·       Lessons Learnt From Working In A Learning Disability Team So getting work experience was a major highlight of 2023 because I got to work with a learning disability team in September and then in October I got to work in a Gender Identity Clinic. You can see my thoughts and feelings and everything I learnt about learning disabilities in the above podcast episode. As well as I do have a lessons learnt post from my Gender Identity Clinic work experience written up but I haven’t produced it. However, both of these work experiences gave me a lot of wonderful and really useful skills that should definitely help with job applications in the future. For example, these experiences show that I am familiar with the NHS works, that I have experience working with people with a range of mental health conditions and I have multi-disciplinary team Meeting experience. Which I talk a lot more about in my Gender Identity Clinic experience post but I love MDT meetings and experiences. You hear so much about them, you know they’re critical to have experience in because of job descriptions and they are really interesting when you actually participate in one. You get to hear about cases, hear different professionals talk about each case and it is a great learning opportunity. Therefore, these pieces of work experience will definitely be useful in my future clinical psychology career. And I am really grateful to all the services that allowed me to do this work experience opportunities and it’s great to know that 2023 was the year that I took practical steps to help improve my career prospectus within psychology. As a result, when it comes to planning for 2024, if you’re interested in work experience then I recommend you: ·       Investigate the job descriptions in your country for the role you want so you can understand what you need to have experience in. This will help you plot your work experience path. ·       Create a list of companies or placements you would like to gain work experience from. ·       Network in case you can get future opportunities from them. ·       Listen or read the podcast episodes above so you can see how work experience opportunities work and how you can get them. ·       Enjoy the work experience and use them as taster sessions for your future psychology career. If you don’t like them, it is better to know now than when you have a job with bills to pay. Made A Life-Changing Friendship, My Mental Breakdown and Recovery So far in this podcast episode, we’re focused on the celebration and joy parts of the episode title and to be honest, we are continuing with this theme slightly. Yet we are focusing on the hurt aspect too. And I cannot help but smile at the fact that I am including my mental breakdown, my trauma and abuse recovery and a life-changing friendship I made this year as reasons why 2023 was possibly the best year of my life. In addition, to save me rehashing a lot of stuff that I’ve already spoken about on the podcast, if you aren’t entirely clear what my mental breakdown and mental health stuff was about. Then please check out these podcast episodes: ·       What Is Person-Centred Therapy? ·       What Is Emotional Dependency And Locus Of Evaluation? ·       How Life Rolls Impact Your Psychology Journey? ·       How Activity Scheduling Improves Depressed Mood? Anyway, I’m including my mental breakdown and the long mental health road to recovery from a decade of abuse and trauma as reasons why 2023 was amazing, was because of what it led to. Which I focus more on in the next section. Yet when I made that friendship in July/ August 2023 and this former friend convinced (more like begged) me to get professional help for my mental health and my past, I didn’t listen. I just kept using the same strategies as before and when that friendship exploded because of my emotional dependency, it was a brilliant wake-up call. Of course, I hated my life at the time, I was in so much emotional pain and I was in an extremely dark place. But I will always have a lot of “love” for that friend because even though that friendship ended spectacularly. I know if I hadn’t had made that friendship and enjoyed a brilliant month when we both had a lot of fun and we laughed tons. My life would be just as bad, painful and controlled by my trauma and abuse as it had been for the past decade. And that friendship meant I needed to effectively take responsibility for my past and I needed to conquer it or change it. Since nowadays I sort of say that you can allow your past to control you, or you can control your past. Like nothing can take away the pain, the trauma and the sheer abuse that I have received for the past decade, but it doesn’t have to control me or define me anymore. I no longer have to feel unsafe in my life and I no longer have to live in fear for my life. I don’t have to do any of those things anymore. That is why my mental breakdown, that amazing friendship that ended so badly, and my horrific journey of mental health recovery has made 2023 a brilliant year that I wouldn’t change for the world. Then to keep in theme with the rest of the podcast episode, my tips or lessons learnt from all this mental health stuff is: ·       Make sure you appreciate people with lived experience because they learn a lot of stuff during their difficulties that apply to clinical psychology. ·       Give yourself time to recover because it always takes longer than you imagine. ·       Do activities that you love and this goes back to activity scheduling. ·       Realise that some friendships and maybe even romantic relationships are “transitional” friendships to get you from one point to another. ·       Be kind to yourself regardless of what happens to you. Coming Out And Living Authentically A final group of reasons why 2023 was so amazing and it is worth celebrating was because of the consequences of my mental breakdown. Since the biggest factor was that it made my entire family rally around me, I told them everything about what they had done to me by accident with their homophobia and now everything is a lot, lot better. We can have conversations that we never would have been able to have before August, we can laugh and joke about things that we never would have laughed at before. And I have never felt so much love, support and acceptance in my life and that is an amazing feeling to have. Of course, there are still family members that don’t accept me but that’s okay because the important family members do. When I came out as gay on Facebook just so the whole family and my friends knew, I got a lot of love and support. It was great to feel that after the past decade and it meant that I could start to live more authentically and actually find out who I am. In addition, this year my university’s Outreach department started an LGBT+ Mythbusters programme that involves busting myths about the LGBT+ community and that work I have loved. It gave me a brilliant space to be me, tell other people about my experience in humorous and funny ways that were useful to them and I know a lot of people found hearing about my experiences and how I coped helpful. In addition, I actually asked out someone for the first time ever and this goes back to the podcast episode I did back in June called How Can LGBT+ Youth Learn To Heal and Thrive? Because in this episode I talk about the second adolescence which is basically when queer adults get a chance to recapture and redo their adolescence. And this was a very important moment for me personally because I am 22 years old and I have never asked someone out, a girl did ask me out in secondary school but I said no for obvious reasons. So the very fact that I felt safe, loved and supported enough in my own life to feel like I could invite someone else into that was absolutely massive. The friend I asked out said no because I wasn’t their type, which is fine. As we’re still great friends and we’re both accepted that me liking them a lot will just be part of our friendship and it isn’t a problem. But I am still really happy that I was able to ask out someone. Also, as a quick little side note, someone actually flirted with me for the first year in 2023. That was a major moment for me and I actually do want to find that guy again just in case I was a bit judgemental in not thinking about him. Overall, this is the main reason why I have loved 2023 because it has been the year where after everything I have been through I have finally been able to me, discover who I actually am and just enjoy life a million times more than before. Therefore, some tips for your 2024 might be: ·       Are you living authentically? ·       If there are any personal goals you want to achieve then try to do them. ·       If there are any personal things you’re been scared about exploring because of the judgement of your family, then explore it yourself. ·       Just live your life in a way that will make you happy. ·       Find social groups and other like-minded people that will accept you without question. And that last point I do like because that has definitely been a highlight too. I have a good number of social groups filled with other people like me that reflect different aspects of myself and my interests and those people are amazing. I wouldn’t be as great as I am now without the support and social contact that these groups provide. Conclusion: What Are My Future Plans In 2024? I’ve given you a lot to think about in 2024 and I know I have a lot of business, writing and podcasting plans for 2024. Yet this is a personal podcast episode, so I suppose I would talk about my personal plans for 2024 including my psychology-related intentions. In terms of psychology, I really want to get more psychology work experience. I want to work with children and adolescent and I might try to work with Older Adults, but I’m not sure about that. Also, I want to get a part-time psychology-related job or volunteering position in July/ August of 2024 so I can start to build up my clinical experience for the long term. In addition, because I’m shifting to a part-time Masters degree, which I will talk more about in the future, I want to do more psychology research. I already have a few exciting ideas that I am very passionate about so I am looking forward to them. As well as I know it’s a pipedream but I would love to get an academic publication very late next year. In terms of my personal life, well I am still going to keep exploring who I really am, I’m going to be building more friendships, continue to be more social and going to more queer events at my university and my other social groups. I’m going to continue to build my social network with a wide range of people and I am just going to be enjoying life. And I will admit I do want to start dating next year. I want to have a boyfriend or partner by the end of next year because I am in a position in my life where I am safe enough to do that and I think it would be a lot of fun. So that will be interesting. However, whatever happens I will still be here writing and podcasting and having a lot of fun along the way. Because 2023 really was a defining year in my life. It truly was the year of celebrations, hurt and joy and I love it. It’s given me 99% of the stuff I have wanted ever since I was a little kid and I am looking forward to continuing the great work I’ve started in this year. So 2023 was brilliant, my life is brilliant and I cannot wait to see what fun things 2024 brings and I hope all you wonderful listeners join me for the ride. 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 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. 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.

Given how this podcast episode comes out on Christmas Day, I wanted to do a really fun podcast episode that covered social psychology and relationships for a chance. As Christmas is meant to be about happiness, laughter and even seasonal romances, I thought looking at first dates would always be a fun topic to investigate. Therefore, if you plan on doing much dating in 2024 then you want to bear these in mind so you can have a more successful first date. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, dating and psychology research then you’ll love today’s episode. Note: as always nothing on this podcast is ever any sort of official advice. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology Of Relationships: The Social Psychology Of Friendships, Romantic Relationships 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley 3 Red Flags To Avoid On A First Date I know in society there is a lot of pressure put on the first date and I originally saved a whole bunch of this research because I was going to ask out a friend of mine, and me being the upbeat person I am thought they were going to say yes. They didn’t but we’re still great friends. But as it’s the holiday season I wanted to use this research because the first date is very important. Since the first date allows you to explore any attraction you both feel, what sort of romantic connection you have and you get to see if you like each other as much as you think you do. Therefore, it’s important to look at these red flags that you should avoid on a first date because the first date is important. And you don’t want to put up any obstacles in your way to finding that connection and romantic spark so to speak. Also, if a romantic partner does do these things then these behaviours can create anxiety, discomfort and insecurity. Which let’s face it, is a great way to kill a perfectly romantic date. Beware A Project Developer I really didn’t understand this type of person when I first came across it but after looking into it more, I seriously understand why you don’t want to date these people. A project developer is when someone sees you as a project and they want to help you develop yourself to your full potential. For example, your partner might make a compliment about your potential that makes you feel great. This could be about your appearance and your date then starts talking about how you can modify and upgrade and update your appearance so you look even younger and more professional. The problem with these compliments is that they can old because people want to feel like an equal and something that is liked and valued for being themselves. And even if a person was a project, no one wants to feel like a fixer-upper because that just makes people feel awful about themselves. In addition, if you’re with a date that has a “build your own partner” mentality then this is a waste of time because you should be appreciated for you. Of course no one is perfect and I am seriously not myself, but even I wouldn’t want to be seen as a project that needs fixing. I want someone to value me for me, help me work on the stuff I want to work on and I just want to have fun with them. To me, a relationship is about love, being an equal and just having fun. Not about fixing problems. Don’t Live In The Past Now this is a very interesting one I think because I do think a lot of people live in the past and up until recently I was the same. Anyway, Cohen (2016) got 390 mainly heterosexual participants to fill out a survey to shed some light on people’s perceptions of first dates. Cohen found that when women saw their date talking about a past relationship then this was a sign of disinterest and this reinforces another finding of Cohen’s research. That women prefer date conversations to be focused on themselves. Additionally, this finding wasn’t just exclusive for women because men didn’t like their dates talking about past dates either. This is important to realise because we all need to remember that first dates are not rebound counselling sessions. As well as if you wear or model your appearance after what an ex gave you, why would you point this out to your date? That is hardly going to signal to them that you’re over them, you’re ready to move on and you’re hardly interested in your current date. I just don’t think you should mention this whatsoever because if you talk about your exes then two things happen. It tells your date that you aren’t interested in them but it also implies that you might still be involved with them to some extent. And even worse, you’re just insensitive to their feelings and that could make you a horrible person in their eyes. No one wants that for you. Don’t Cross Boundaries Nor Invade Their Space I admit that even I have never been on a date this question of boundaries is always a fun topic for me because there are times when I can be seriously bad at them. As well as I think for certain people that boundaries can be massive learning curves, but saying that, everyone needs to learn each other’s boundaries after a while. Anyway, one of the aims of first dates are to create and foster a sense of chemistry between the two dates and this is partly done through selecting the right setting. Therefore, if a date chooses a wrong setting that is more formal and business-like will definitely send the wrong signals. As a formal setting implies a professional meeting, not a fun romantic date. Also, the setting of a first date is meant to allow the date to feel comfortable and you two to have an easy conversation without being too overfamiliar. Personally, this is why I flat out hate pubs with a passion and clubs I hate too, because they are so loud and they aren’t the sort of place where you can have easy conversations. This is why I prefer restaurants and other quitter places. On the whole, when it comes to choosing a place for a first date, make sure you choose somewhere that has a lot of personal space. Since you don’t want to choose somewhere that will invade the personal space between you and your date because they won’t appreciate that at all. You don’t want to be crammed next to each other or in a booth that is way too small because you’re both just exploring your new relationship and if you actually have a connection. If this does happen then invading each other’s space will create a lot of anxiety and discomfort for both of you which definitely won’t help you create a sense of connectedness. Social Psychology Conclusion At the end of this podcast episode, first dates are always portrayed as fun, magical and really exciting things that can open the doors to love, magic and having a lot of fun and they can be. Yet there are plenty of errors and mistakes you can make on the first date that could affect your chances of getting a sense of connectedness. Sometimes you will go on dates that end awfully because you and the date just weren’t right for each other, but other times you will go on dates with great people. Just avoid these red flags to prevent your first date going wrong for no reason, because 2024 might be your year for dating and exploring and having romantic fun. So I hope this podcast episode helped you learn a little more about the wonderfully fun, chaotic and even harsh world of dating. 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 Psychology Of Relationships: The Social Psychology Of Friendships, Romantic Relationships 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Social Psychology References https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/why-bad-looks-good/201708/danger-zones-3-red-flags-avoid-first-date Cohen, M. T. (2016). An exploratory study of individuals in non-traditional, alternative relationships: How “open” are we?. Sexuality & Culture, 20, 295-315. Cohen, M. T. (2016). The perceived satisfaction derived from various relationship configurations. Journal of Relationships Research, 7, e10. 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.

Clinical psychologists work with a lot of clinical populations from retired people to working aged adults all the way down to children and adolescents. The last clinical population presents a lot of fascinating challenges for clinical psychologists because of their development, the school environment and so many facets of life that are unique to children and young people. That’s why it’s critical to know and understand how to work with this population, and most importantly what work do clinical psychologists actually do with children and young people? That’s one of the questions we’ll start answering in today’s podcast episode. If you enjoy learning about mental health, child psychology and clinical psychology, then you’ll love today’s episode. Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley What Are CAMHS? (Extract From Working With Children and Young People. COPYRIGHT 2023 CONNOR WHITELEY) We already know from the last chapter that Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are a UK service and they are the service that children and young people will go to for psychological treatment. Building upon this further, CAMHS are mainly run by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and local government services with the NHS services in England being commissioned by Clinical Commission Groups (CCGs) and if you wanted some more information about the CCGs then you can go to this website page but I do explain a lot more in a moment: https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/who-commissions-nhs-services/ccgs/ Therefore, these CCGs are in charge of deciding what services are needed and then they commission them, with some of the services they’re in charge of commissioning including mental health services, elective hospital services, urgent and emergency care as well as community care. This is basically an internal market inside the NHS and there is always, always tension between these commissioning groups and the healthcare providers because these CCGs can need to use third-part healthcare providers (like private hospitals) for waiting list initiatives. Personally, and from what I understand from listening to other clinical psychologists, this situation isn’t ideal but it’s needed, it’s the world we live in and it flat out will not change. Since it would be nice if the NHS could be self-reliant and use all its money on itself and the clients, but because of staffing shortages (including their rubbish pay), the inherent problems with the NHS’s structure and everything else that is chaotic about the public sector. It's a shame the NHS has to shell out large sums of money to these third-party providers to make sure their clients get seen. Anyway, CCGS are membership bodies with local doctors being their members. Also these groups are led by an elected governing body made up of medical doctors, other clinicians, like nurses and secondary care consultants as well as lay members. In addition, these CCGs are responsible for about two-thirds of NHS England’s total budget that was £79.9 billion in 2019/20  (as supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement funding and resource 2019/20: supporting ‘The NHS Long Term Plan’). Whilst these CCGs are technically independent of the government, they are accountable to the UK’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care through NHS England. Which is important when we consider they’re responsible for the health of populations ranging from under 100,000 to over a million people but the average population is about a quarter of a million people. Going Back To CAMHS We needed to take that little detour so you know how CAMHS are set up in the first place, but anybody who has professional contact with children can be considered to be a part of CAMHS services (this is potentially in addition to the list of workers I give you in the next chapter). However, more often than not these days, CAMH services are being provided by other agencies that aren’t the NHS, like local councils. I think whether this is a good or bad thing really depends on the local council and the individual provider. Since I can easily imagine how local authorities with big budgets and access to great professionals will be great at this, but others that have small budgets and don’t have access to the best professionals, they will certainly struggle to provide the best care possible. Furthermore, when it comes to these extra providers that are outside the NHS, these have to be qualified providers of course, and there’s a contractual system within the NHS internal market made up of the English NHS. This internal market was introduced by the Labour government in 2009/10 when it was called "Any Willing Provider". This policy has never been repealed and the policy has continued and was accelerated under the newly formed coalition Government that rose to power in 2011. Then that government changed its name to "Any Qualified Provider." The implementation of the policy was achieved through the NHS operating framework as well as by having a strong central team based in the Department of Health that oversaw and supported its implementation at a local level. Yet it was bad that it didn’t require any statutory instrument to achieve its aims and even worse, this policy was often wrongly considered to be part of the reforms associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2012. An Example Of A Provider And Wrap Up It truly seems the Virgin Group is involved in everything from planes to space to technology, but it’s also involved in healthcare settings. And I want to say upfront that I have no problem with massive companies and in this case, Virgin is very good news for a lot of people. As a result of Virgin Care has a total of 400 services in total across England from way down in the South West in Wiltshire right up to Teeside in the North East and Virgin Care has a lot of children and young people mental health services as well. To start wrapping up the chapter, the entire point of Any Qualified Provider was to improve the number of choices that patients have in England, because there used to only be the NHS and I suppose some people wanted other choices. Also, CAMHS provisions are varied and it’s rare that two are ever exactly the same, and this can be seen in independent for-profit counselling services and Virgin Care when compared to each other let alone the NHS. CAMHS are services for children and young people from birth up to the age of 18 or up to 25 for young people and children as part of a wider network of support for Looked After Children (for example children leaving the foster system) or Special Education Needs. With these services being based anywhere that children are. Such as, medical practices, child development centres (a lot more on that later in the book), clinics, hospitals and children’s centres. And the aim of these services are to provide assessment and treatment for young people and children who have behavioural, emotional and developmental difficulties. But now we know what CAMHS are, but what evidence is there they’re actually needed? 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 Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference Whiteley, C. (2023) Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. 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.

For people with mental health difficulties, the Holiday season and the month of December can be an extremely difficult and distressing time of year for a wide range of reasons. For example, it can be difficult to feel great and enjoy the holiday season when you're depressed and you feel judged for not enjoying the season. Also, maybe the holidays are difficult for people who have lost a loved one, and maybe people with mood disorders don't have the schedule and routine they need for their mood stability. Those are only a mere fraction of the reasons why the holidays can be difficult for people with mental health difficulties. Therefore, in this clinical podcast episode, we'll investigate how people with mental health difficulties can cope this December and how you can support people at this time of year. If you enjoy learning about mental health, clinical psychology and psychotherapy then you'll love today's episode. Today's podcast episode has been sponsored by Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Note: NOTHING on this podcast is any sort of official information or advice. 3 Reasons Why People With Mental Health Difficulties Struggle During December Before I talk about my own fears and anxieties surrounding this December, I wanted to approach the topic more broadly and then I'll talk about the different ways to support people. Firstly, there are a lot of social pressures at this time of year and this affects people in different ways. For instance, there are always Christmas and family parties to go to, university socials to attend and everyone basically implies you need to be happy and joyous or just stay away from Christmas. Since in my experience, no one is interested in dealing with a depressed or non-joyous person during the holiday season. As a result, this could place a lot of stress and only amplifies an anxious or depressed person's negative automatic thoughts and only make them "worse". Since they might believe they will be judged even more than usual during this time of year. Meaning that it is the social pressure of the holiday season that can negatively impact the mental health of depressed and anxious people. A second reason why the holidays might be difficult for people is because someone isn’t with them this year. I mean this in terms of a passed away loved one, but actually, this could be the first Christmas after a divorce, a bad breakup with a long-term partner or something else happening in someone’s life. When this happens then Christmas could be a painful reminder of that loss and it could trigger a lot of unwanted memories or it could be an awful reminder of the world they lived in. For example, a world without a parent or a partner. This is even more painful for the person if they don’t have any or many ways to help deal with their feelings. For instance, I know the year my paternal grandmother died, there weren’t a lot of options for me or most of our family to grieve or know how to react at Christmas time. Since we didn’t want to bring down anyone else in the family and friends that don’t know the person only go so far. Thankfully, in the end we did all talk about it and it was okay, but even three years later, Christmas is a reminder of her loss. A final reason that I’ll mention in this podcast episode is domestic violence, abuse and neglect. There are a hundred other reasons but these reasons aren’t the focus of the podcast episode. Since with children and family members being off school and work during the Holidays and most of December, this can be a nightmare for people in abusive relationships and families because they are home more often. They cannot escape off to work or school to get away from it, and because of the stresses of creating the “perfect” Christmas that everyone tries to do, this could lead to abusers snapping and lashing out. Overall, there are a lot of reasons why Christmas is triggering for a lot of people and the entire month of December can cause people to feel extremely anxious and concerned. Thankfully, there are a lot of things people can do to support each other during this month. Why Was I Scared and Anxious About December? Before I talk about the 5 ways how you can support people with mental health difficulties during the holiday season, I want to briefly explain why I was (past tense) flat out terrified for December and the holiday season. As well as this podcast episode was mainly inspired by my own struggles with this upcoming time of year. So I won’t repeat the whole history of mental health again because at this point, it is very well-documented on the podcast, but I noticed a very scary pattern for when I had my meltdowns and awful mental health. My meltdowns tended to happen when I was out of my routine and structure that kept me grounded. For example, I had a meltdown in Newcastle because I was away from university, my friends, my family and my therapy stuff and that pattern has largely stuck ever since. As a result, when I started to think about December and how all my friends were going away back to their homes, the university was closing for the Winter Break and there would be a lot of other changes because of the social side of Christmas. I was flat out terrified of having another meltdown and experiencing a lot of bad mental health, and this time I didn’t think it was avoidable simply because these changes were happening no matter what I did. The month of December was completely out of my control and that scared me. This led me to get very anxious, a little depressed and I was constantly walking around with this lump of fear in the back of my mind, sort of like a countdown clock until the next meltdown. Yet thankfully, I spoke to my university counsellor about this and he gave me a lot of ideas that I’ve expanded upon and I find them really helpful. I hope you find them useful too. Make Sure You Know Where To Get Help One of the most useful things my university counsellor helped with me during my final session was making sure that I knew where to get support if I needed it. I think this is flat out critical for someone with mental health difficulties because as we all know, us and our clients get mental health “flare-ups” outside of the therapy office and we might not have anyone around us who can help us when we need it. Therefore, it is really useful to know who to turn to when we need some help, support and guidance. So I’m going to share an extract from a random therapy reflection that will appear in a future book because it explains how my university counsellor helped me. “As my therapist could see that I was genuinely concerned about December, his main focus was making sure that I had the information I needed to reach out to other mental health support services in case I was having a very intense moment where I needed support. As well as he gave me a lot of other pieces of support that would be useful to me. For example, because I’m awaiting an autism diagnosis, my therapist told me how the university recently changed its policy so people with suspected mental health conditions and people awaiting diagnosis could get support. So he advised me to go to reception and book an appointment with a Disability Advisor. Personally, I flat out hate the term “disability” because I refuse to see my autism as a disability as it has helped me so much in my life except to make friends. But I took the advice anyway. In addition, he told me how there is urgent mental health support available at the university Monday to Friday in the afternoon. Therefore, if there is a crisis then I can email or just come in to get access to this urgent support. That is very useful to know because you never know what the future will bring. Something else my university offers is in the evenings (but I forget which evenings) there are out-of-hours mental health practitioners available. This isn’t too helpful because I’m not on campus in the evenings because I live so far away, but it was still good to know and be aware of just in case. In addition, in the UK, we have something called Samaritans, this is a mental health support charity that my therapist told me how to use. Since these people aren’t trained professionals, they aren’t counsellors and they aren’t therapists. Instead the Samaritans are people to call and basically “sit with” whilst you have your mental health difficulty so they can make sure you’re okay and don’t do anything to yourself or others. And they allow you to talk and they guide you through this difficult time. Also, I still have access to my old private therapist from August so I do have her as an option too. Finally, he advised me to sign up for Canterbury Community Counselling Service. This is meant to be a great service that provides free or low-cost ongoing counselling options for people, and because of this, they have long waiting lists as no one really tends to come off them. Now I haven’t signed up for this yet because I just haven’t, but this is a great resource that my counsellor highly recommends. Overall, when it comes to fear and anxiety, knowing what support you can get is critical and having these sort of conversations was really useful in understanding how there was a lot more support available to me than I thought.” As a result, if you’re a person who experiences negative mental health, then make sure that you know how to get support over the holiday season, because most mental health services like the NHS are closed over Christmas. As well as if you’re a current or future clinical psychologist, then it might be an idea to double-check that your clients know what support is available for them during the month of December. Sometimes you won’t be able to support them but there are plenty of services that might be able to over the festive period. Make Sure You Have A Plan For Bad Mental Health Something I really liked that my private therapist suggested when I popped in to see her the other week was that she stressed the importance of having a plan that was written down. Of course, I refused to do this at first because I “Know” what makes me feel good, I know how to feel better but I knew the problem with this. She mentioned that when we get depressed or have bad mental health we forget these things that make us feel good. She was right of course because I can know everything I want about mental health, but it’s only useful if I can use it when I’m feeling bad. As a result, my point here is if you believe this would be helpful (and I don’t think it hurts to try this) then make sure you or your client writes down a list of things they enjoy. This means when they have negative mental health they can look at the list, remember that they enjoy it and try to motivate themselves to do it so they can get pleasure from the activity and start to feel good again. That is flat out critical. For example, these are the activities listed on my list: ·       Fiction writing ·       Podcasting ·       Writing blog posts ·       Learning copyright ·       Talking to friends Of course, I think only the last one is relatable to any of you, but the point still remains. If I’m feeling bad then I can look at the list and make myself do an activity because it gives me pleasure. And as I mentioned in last week’s podcast episode, activities help you to improve your mood. A Self-Passionate Advent Calendar And Activity Scheduling Speaking of last week’s podcast episode, I want to remind you that Activity Scheduling is flat out critical at all times of the year for mental health. So definitely make sure that yourself, your clients and anyone you love has a lot of fun activities planned for the month of December. This means they’ll be doing behavioural activation and this benefits their mood as they’ll be doing pleasurable activities. In addition, you can do the normal activity scheduling idea I mentioned last week by scheduling these activities in a normal online or paper calendar. Or you can do something a lot more fun because it is the holiday season, and I flat out love this idea. My university counsellor mentioned that I should do myself a self-compassionate advent calendar and I decided to take this idea one step further. I wrote down all the days in December and I made sure I had at least one thing to look forward to each day this month. My thinking behind this is if I feel down or depressed I can look at the date on this advent calendar and I make sure I’ve done that activity for the day, and I can look at the rest of the week’s activities and get excited about that. Here is an extract from my advent calendar for the week this episode goes out: ·       Monday 11th December- writing ·       12th December- Outreach work ·       13th December- Christmas meal at my social group and meeting with supervisor ·       14th December- writing ·       15th December- catch up with best friend ·       16th December- family Christmas meal ·       17th December- Moonpig cards As you can see this week contains a wide range of different types of activities to get excited about and I admit doing Moonpig cards might not sound very pleasurable. But in my family I am very famous for writing cards that make my parents cry so that’s always fun. I hope that gave you some ideas. Another reason why I wrote down all the dates in December is because I can highlight each day before I go to bed and I can visually see how many days left in the month I have. And this I found really useful because it was good to see that it was the 6th of December so 20% through the month and I haven’t had bad mental health yet. It was useful to see that I’m probably going to be perfectly okay. Even today’s date which is the 9th is basically 32% of the month and I’ve been fine for ages. This month will probably be a brilliant month after all. As a result, I would say it might be useful to work with clients, yourself or your loved one to create a list of fun planned activities that you’re going to find enjoyable and get a lot of pleasure from. That way this gives you another way to help manage this scary month. Do Something New Moving onto our penultimate idea for how to support people this December, in early December, I was really scared about this month because I was just waiting for a meltdown. So I wanted to try and be as busy as possible and I wanted to try something new and I wanted to have fun whilst doing it. As well as this thing that I chose has actually been a lot of fun and I think it has helped my mental health a lot. I’ve been learning French on Duolingo. They don’t sponsor today’s episode but Duolingo is actually brilliant. It’s really easy to use, it’s a lot of fun and it doesn’t take long. As well as it’s reminded me how much I enjoy French and other languages. As a result, it might be an idea to do something new and learn something this holiday season. You might download Duolingo and learn that language that you’ve always wanted to. You might take up an art form you’re always been interested or you might want to buy a few books on an aspect of history that you’ve always wanted to learn more about. I think learning is a very powerful tool if it’s something you enjoy. Since it takes your mind off your concerns and your mental health, these language apps are designed to be games so they are fun and it’s nice to feel accomplished. I always like it when I get 100% on a lesson and I get a little well done and whatnot. It’s just a thought but you might enjoy it. I know I have. Be With Friends and Family The final thing I wanted to wrap up this episode with was going back to the basics because yet again I have forgotten the basics. Because I’ve been talking with the three girls I used to do my final year project with and I’ve contacted one of my oldest school friends because she sent me a Christmas card, I’ve realised how nice it is just reconnecting with people. It’s nice knowing what other people are up to and it’s good to reconnect and forge new friendships. I’ve actually liked it so much that next week I think I’m going to contact my two oldest school friends because I haven’t spoken to them in years. I occasionally like and comment on one of their photos on Facebook and wish them a happy birthday. Yet that really is the extent of our communication. I don’t expect it to go anyway but if I reconnect with a friend then that would be great. Therefore, my point is, and this goes for everyone, remember to text your friends and family this December. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation but as long as you contact them then it’s something. It is some social contact that you weren’t getting before and that’s important. You might need to schedule you contacting other people and that doesn’t make you weird or anything. It just means that you want to do it and you might need a little more help to actually get round to doing it. I can promise you if contacting all my friends wasn’t on my advent calendar, I would only be contacting one of them this month. That’s how bad I can be about social contact. Clinical Psychology Conclusion In this mental health-focused podcast episode, we’re covered a lot of different things but all of this is important. It’s important to recognise that December isn’t a magical, perfect month for every single person on the planet, and as future or current clinical psychologists, this is something we have to acknowledge. In addition, it’s critical that us and our clients know how to get mental health support over the holiday period, have an action plan in case of bad mental health, they do activity scheduling, maybe try a new activity and they maintain or make new contact with friends and family members. A lot of these tips are basic mental health stuff, but as I’ve learnt it is always the basics we forget when we have mental health difficulties. And now we’ve spoken about these five tips, I really hope that you’re useful in making yours or your client’s holiday season a little more joyous, merry and filled with good cheer. 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 Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References How Activity Scheduling Improves Depressed Mood? 5 Ways To Reduce Holiday Stress 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.

The entire idea of Activity Scheduling to help people with depression is something I’ve heard a lot about lately. Yet it wasn’t entirely I was feeling intensely down and experiencing a mild depressive episode myself, I learnt just how powerful Activity Scheduling and other behavioural activation techniques can be. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what is Activity Scheduling, how Activity Scheduling improves depressed mood and how to use Activity Scheduling in your own life. If you enjoy learning about depression, cognitive-behavioural techniques and clinical psychology, then you’ll enjoy today’s episode. Note: as always everything on this podcast is NEVER any sort of official medical, psychology or any other type of advice. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Why Is Activity Scheduling Needed? When people experience a depressive episode, the vast majority of people can’t take part in activities they used to find fun, relaxing and enjoyable. Since depressed mood, feeling tired and a lot of other depressive symptoms can make people withdraw from the world. And whilst we all know this is true from our lectures and our interactions with service users, I’ve definitely found this recently because there are times when all I want to do is just lay on my bed and not talk, interact or see anyone. I actually just want to sleep but my evil body says no. As a result, these depressive symptoms can make people experience periods of inactivity, which aren’t exactly helpful. Due to these periods of inactivity can help maintain depression. And whilst I don’t have Major Depression Disorder (but most of us can relate because feeling depressed is a part of life. It only becomes a mental health condition when it happens for a long period of time and causes clinically significant levels of psychological distress and impaired functioning), last week at the time of writing I found that my inactivity would only make me ruminate more and more. Whereas today when I finished an activity that brought me a lot of joy (finishing a short story) my depression was burnt away for a few hours. The reason why inactivity can maintain depression is because it causes rumination and makes people focus on their negative emotions and thoughts. Hence, this makes it even harder for people to have the motivation to start positive activities that might decrease their depressed mood. As well as inactivity means a person is likely to miss out on opportunities that could improve their mood. Also, one of my problems for the past few weeks has actually been starting stuff. For example, I know writing a psychology blog post and writing fiction brings me a lot of joy but the motivation is hard to find. I actually meant to start this particular blog post an hour ago, and yet it’s taken me an hour (maybe two hours) to find the motivation to start it. What Is Activity Scheduling? Now that we understand why Activity Scheduling is needed, we need to know what it is and how it works. To put it simply, Activity Scheduling is where a depressed person schedules in activities they enjoy and these activities are likely to increase their mood. Activity Scheduling works by behavioural activation, which is a cognitive-behavioural treatment for depression that focuses on finding and doing activities that the person enjoys. As well as research consistently shows that scheduling and doing these activities increases mood and decrease depressive symptoms. How To Use Activity Scheduling? Firstly, a client would need to monitor their activities for one week so they can note down everything they do. This includes any activities they do and any period of time when they don’t do anything. Clients should do this because it helps them to see when to add in activities and when they start to do activities, monitoring their week allows them to keep track of their mood in relation to these activities. Personally, because I started this blog post last night and I’m finishing it this morning, I’m sort of glad I only keep track of my activities in the morning. Since I have just wasted two hours doing busy work and just laying on my bedroom floor feeling depressed and down because of something in particular. Yet I would want to record both of these things. Secondly, clients should use a calendar to schedule in daily activities because for people with depression, bipolar disorder and other mood disorders, it’s important to keep a regular schedule. Not only because a regular schedule helps with mood stability but scheduling in activities is a way to make sure a client actually does activities at a fixed, appropriate time of day. In addition, it’s important that a client’s schedule stays manageable because a client shouldn’t fill up their schedule with too many activities because that might be too intense for them. As well as it might be helpful for them to choose a mixture of activities. Like some activities that are active and others that allow the client to decompress and unwind. Thirdly, clients should do a mixture of important and enjoyable activities. Since clients need to do fun and enjoyable activities to increase pleasure and decrease their depressed mood. Yet it might take clients a lot of repetition of doing these pleasurable activities to get the same sort of pleasure out of them as they did before their depressed mood. However, important activities are still, well, important as well. Due to these are activities that need to get done but they’re harder to complete when depressed. For example, paying bills, doing a chore, doing coursework or finishing anything at your job. These important activities are important to do because they can help a client increase their sense of mastery and achievement and this has positive knock-on effects as well. Which is even more important when we consider how depressed people are more self-critical so it’s important to balance this out with positive feelings of achievement. Penultimately, it is critical that clients keep their activities small and manageable. This is something I completely understand because this is one of the reasons why me going to Newcastle not long after a mental breakdown wasn’t the best idea. It was way too big and it did a lot more harm than good. Therefore, when it comes to completing a whole task, this can make a client feel very overwhelmed when they’re experiencing depression. So it’s important to break down the activity into small chunks. I did this the other night actually because I wanted to go on my laptop and do some business work but I was feeling way too down to actually do it. So I was just sitting on my desk chair by the door for a bit then I broke down the task of going to my laptop, turning it on and then doing something into smaller chunks. And it helped a lot. Other people might need to do 50% of a task today and then finish it tomorrow, like I’m doing with this particular blog post. As well as sometimes old hobbies feel overwhelming, so it’s useful to start small and gradually spend more and more time doing it. Therefore, one day a client might be able to spend as long as they used to on their hobby and get as much pleasure from it as they used to. Finally, clients should use mood tracking to note changes in their mood. This is a critical step in activity scheduling because mood tracking is a great way to recognise the relationship between doing activities you enjoy and find important and how it benefits your mood. As a result, clients should record their mood before and after an activity and see how they feel. Since seeing a positive difference, even a small one, can help with motivation and continuing to do what you enjoy so the benefits can only grow over time. All whilst your mood remains balanced. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Personally, I do love behavioural activation and activity scheduling because I know firsthand how powerful it is. I was shocked yesterday at how great I felt after finishing that short story because I love writing, it is an activity that seriously love and it was so nice to not feel depressed for a few hours after finishing it. It’s actually fun because it was a Matilda Plum short story, she's a superhero psychologist) and the story’s called “Face of Anxiety” in case you want to check it out in the future. I definitely think that activity scheduling is something not all of us think about in our own lives enough. And if this podcast episode has taught you anything today, please let it be that we all have to do and make time for the activities we love whether you have depression or not. Activities are important so always make sure you have time to have fun, do what you love and smile. Sometimes improving your mental health really is as simple as that. 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 Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive 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, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference Chartier, I. S., & Provencher, M. D. (2013). Behavioural activation for depression: Efficacy, effectiveness and dissemination. Journal of affective disorders, 145(3), 292-299. Cuijpers, P., van Straten, A., & Warmerdam, L. Behavioral activation treatments of depression: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review 2007;27(3):318-326. Ekers, D., Webster, L., Van Straten, A., Cuijpers, P., Richards, D., & Gilbody, S. (2014). Behavioural activation for depression; an update of meta-analysis of effectiveness and sub group analysis. PloS one, 9(6), e100100. Greenberger, D. & Padesky, C.A. (2016). Mind over mood, second edition: Change how you feel by changing the way you think. Guilford Press. Kellett, S., Simmonds-Buckley, M., Bliss, P., & Waller, G. (2017). Effectiveness of group behavioural activation for depression: A pilot study. Behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy, 45(4), 401-418. Lejuez, C. W., Hopko, D. R., Acierno, R., Daughters, S. B., & Pagoto, S. L. (2011). Ten year revision of the brief behavioral activation treatment for depression: revised treatment manual. Behavior modification, 35(2), 111-161. Masterson, C., Ekers, D., Gilbody, S., Richards, D., Toner-Clewes, B., & McMillan, D. (2014). Sudden gains in behavioural activation for depression. Behaviour research and therapy, 60, 34-38. Orgeta, V., Brede, J., & Livingston, G. (2017). Behavioural activation for depression in older people: systematic review and meta-analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 211(5), 274-279. Otto, M., Reilly-Harrington, N. Kogan, J.N. Henin, A., Knauz, R.O., & Sachs, G.S. (2008). Managing bipolar disorder: a cognitive behavior treatment program. Oxford University Press. Veale, D. (2008). Behavioural activation for depression. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 14(1), 29-36. Weinstock, L.M., Melvin, C., Monroe, M.K., & Miller, I.W. (2016). Adjunctive behavioral activation for the treatment of bipolar depression: A proof of concept trial. Journal of Psychiatric Practice 22(2):149-158. 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.