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If you go onto any app store, autism support group or anywhere to be honest and search for games or items designed to help autistic people, then you will find some type of serious game. Since the gamification of autism is becoming more and more popular and even more apps, games and toys are being developed to help autistic people. There are tons of apps and other examples of serious games designed to teach autistic people social skills, life skills and other important skills that they sometimes lack due to their condition. Yet the gamification of autism raises a critical question that needs to be answered. How effective actually are these games? That’s the focus of today’s psychology podcast episode and if you enjoy learning about mental health, autism and neurodivergence. Then you’re in for a treat! Today’s clinical psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Gamification Of Autism: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Cyberpsychology 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 Introduction To The Gamification Of Autism (Extract From Gamification of Autism. COPYRIGHT 2023 CONNOR WHITELEY) Moving onto the first chapter of the book, we need to understand the topic at a general level, because if you’re anything like me before I really started investigating this topic, then you might not know a few things. Since I have always loved autism research, finding out more about it and trying to help people, but that seriously does not mean I knew anything about gamification. And what I tend to find when I talk to someone about what I did on my placement year and that I did a literature review on the topic, I found some people knew what gamification meant as a definition. But beyond that, they were clueless to how this was used in autism effectively. As a result, in this chapter, we’re going to talk about what are interventions, gamification and autism to make sure everyone is on the exact same page for the rest of the book. That’s what we’re going to look at now. Therefore, using technology and combining it with psychological interventions is not new, because it is only increasing given how technology can be used to motivate and engage users (Gaudi et al., 2019). And I feel that we are definitely at the point where our technology is good enough that it can definitely be used on a whole range of conditions thankfully. Some examples of technology that can be used in interventions include, serious games (more on that later on), structured-oriented videogames designed for learning as well as therapy in a fun environment (Alvarez Reyes et al., 2019), and game-based interventions. Again, we will talk a lot on how these different pieces of technology and games are used in clinical interventions of autism but the most important thing about all of them is that by using technology to encourage motivation and learning (Mairena et al., 2019), we are able to overcome some massive limitations of more “traditional” psychotherapy. For example, we are aware that an autistic person cannot sit down for very long and they lose interest very quickly. This makes it very, very difficult to get them to engage with an hour-long therapy session, so technology can be helpful in this task. Nonetheless, I certainly think one of the most interesting and possibly exciting things to note here is that this combination of technology and intervention is basically a brand-new frontier that still needs to be explored in great detail. For example, we need the technologically aided interventions to be created in the first place so that would definitely be exciting for developers, but we also need to test it on autistic children (again that’s another exciting area). Yet we need to empirically test these technologically aided interventions too and that’s the point of this book. I want to show you the current research and state of this area and hopefully inspire some of you to help improve it for the future generations. What Are Interventions? In the rest of the book, we’re going to see the term interventions an awful lot, and normally in my books, this refers to different types and forms of psychotherapy. Yet in this book, the term interventions is going to be used as a sort of umbrella term to talk about all the different examples of serious games and gamification. As well as all the serious games and examples of gamification mentioned in the book have been widely used to emotionally and socially train children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs; Boucenna et al., 2014; Grossard et al., 2017; Malinverni et al., 2017). Additionally, before I start giving you a definition and talk more about autism. I want to outright say that I don’t like the term Disorder for any psychological condition, even more so for autism, and this is very much biomedical model thinking. Since this model sees autism as a pathology that needs to be “cured” but that’s rubbish. But I’ve already written that argument in different places so I will be leaving it out of this book. What Is Autism? Furthermore, Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) refers to a wide range of neurodevelopmental conditions that can be characterised by repetitive behaviours, impaired social skills, and intense interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Moreover, the main reason why autism is of interest to the gamification literature is because with the autism population increasing (Fang et al., 2019), mental health services are of course looking for cheaper alternatives to the traditional Early Years Interventions. Some of these common interventions include Dance/ Movement therapy (Scharoun et al., 2014), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (Perihan et al., 2021) and psychopharmacological interventions (Accordino et al., 2016). But the autistic community is increasingly becoming interested in interventions that use games and technology. For instance, games are increasingly being used in school environments within recent years (Whyte et al., 2015). One of the reasons for this is because autistic children have been deemed to view virtual environments as more predictable than non-virtual environments, so they are more likely to last in virtual environments for longer (Mitchell et al., 2007). Personally, I’m not exactly sure I like the phase children have been deemed because I think it sounds a little cold and uncaring towards children, but that’s what academia is like at times. As well as these virtual environment examples is a good one to show how using technology can help autistic people cope better when they might not be able to do as well in physical or real-world environments. This is something else we’ll explore later. As a result of this increased interest, a lot more ASC interventions are starting to adopt and become comprised of digital interventions. Allowing people with autism to improve their symbolic play, communication as well as social skills. In addition, what I think is very good about all of this is that having digital components of interventions isn’t hard to achieve, and this can be very seamless considering that high video game use is often reported in ASCs (Coutelle et al., 2021). The Problem We’ll Learn About However, I will be the first to admit, as great as all this understanding is about what serious games are, gamification is and what autism is, there is a major, major problem with this area of research. This problem is actually so problematic that it is actually one of the first things that interested me in the topic when my supervisor suggested it. And this is the problem that the evidence base for the effectiveness of serious games and similar interventions is very limited, as well as there are even some studies and researchers that question the very need for specific games in the first place (Alkhayat & Ibrahim, 2020). Although, I will note upfront here that even though I am mentioning these studies. Of course, I am the very, very last person who would ever deny that autistic people do face challenges and difficulties in the world. Hell, if I was denying that I wouldn’t be writing this book or done podcast episodes on autism. Yet I am highlighting that there is evidence serious games aren’t needed considering the effectiveness of non-specialised games, but that’s something we might explore later on. Anyway, the major problem with the gamification literature is that many of these studies are mere proof of concept tests that are comprised of small, inadequate samples and believe me, they seriously lack ecological validity. This is rather alarming in my opinion because when we consider the increased interest in the development of gamification of the ASC community, it’s important that we examine the area to see how empirical it is by looking to understand the field’s current weaknesses and areas of potential improvement. And oh yes, there are some serious areas for improvement and that is why this is such a great topic to explore. 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 Gamification Of Autism: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Cyberpsychology 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 Accordino, R. E., Kidd, C., Politte, L. C., Henry, C. A., & McDougle, C. J. (2016). Psychopharmacological interventions in autism spectrum disorder. Expert opinion on pharmacotherapy, 17(7), 937-952. Alkhayat, L. S., & Ibrahim, M. (2020). Assessing the effect of playing games on the behavior of ASD and TD children. Advances in Autism. Alvarez Reyes, G., Espinoza Tixi, V., Avila-Pesantez, D., Vaca-Cardenas, L., & Miriam Avila, L. (2019, March). Towards an Improvement of Interpersonal Relationships in Children with Autism Using a Serious Game. In The International Conference on Advances in Emerging Trends and Technologies (pp. 315-325). Springer, Cham. American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th edition). American Psychiatric Publishing: Arlington. Boucenna, S., Narzisi, A., Tilmont, E., Muratori, F., Pioggia, G., Cohen, D., & Chetouani, M. (2014). Interactive technologies for autistic children: A review. Cognitive Computation, 6(4), 722-740. Coutelle, R., Weiner, L., Paasche, C., Pottelette, J., Bertschy, G., Schröder, C. M., & Lalanne, L. (2021). Autism Spectrum Disorder and Video Games: Restricted Interests or Addiction?. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 1-22. Fang, Q., Aiken, C. A., Fang, C., & Pan, Z. (2019). Effects of exergaming on physical and cognitive functions in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review. Games for health journal, 8(2), 74-84. Gaudi, G., Kapralos, B., Uribe-Quevedo, A., Hall, G., & Parvinchi, D. (2019, October). Autism Serious Game Framework (ASGF) for Developing Games for Children with Autism. In Interactive Mobile Communication, Technologies and Learning (pp. 3-12). Springer, Cham. Grossard, C., Grynspan, O., Serret, S., Jouen, A. L., Bailly, K., & Cohen, D. (2017). Serious games to teach social interactions and emotions to individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Computers & Education, 113, 195-211. Mairena, M. Á., Mora-Guiard, J., Malinverni, L., Padillo, V., Valero, L., Hervás, A., & Pares, N. (2019). A full-body interactive videogame used as a tool to foster social initiation conducts in children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 67, 101438. Malinverni, L., Mora-Guiard, J., Padillo, V., Valero, L., Hervás, A., & Pares, N. (2017). An inclusive design approach for developing video games for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 535-549. Mitchell, P., Parsons, S., & Leonard, A. (2007). Using virtual environments for teaching social understanding to 6 adolescents with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 37(3), 589-600. Perihan, C., Burke, M. D., Bowman-Perrott, L., & Gallup, J. (2021). Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and ASD. Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders, 1028-1032. Scharoun, S. M., Reinders, N. J., Bryden, P. J., & Fletcher, P. C. (2014). Dance/movement therapy as an intervention for children with autism spectrum disorders. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 36(2), 209-228. Whyte, E. M., Smyth, J. M., & Scherf, K. S. (2015). Designing serious game interventions for individuals with autism. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 45(12), 3820-3831. 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.

On all of our journeys to become qualified psychologists regardless of the area we want to work in, life will happen and life will get in the way. Be it the death of a loved one, our own mental or physical health or another factor that is outside our control. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, we’ll be looking at the way different life events can impact our psychology journey and how we can better deal with these events. If you enjoy learning about mental health, careers in psychology and real-world experiences, then you’ll enjoy today’s episode. This podcast episode has been sponsored by Careers In Psychology: A Guide To Careers in Careers In 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 Why Am I Doing This Podcast Episode And What Will Be The Structure Be? Originally, I wanted to write this podcast episode last week because USA Today Bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch who I have a fairly good working relationship with, and Dr Marianna Trent of The Aspiring Psychology Podcast, put out two very good resources. I’ll quote a little bit from Kris because what she said really hit home, and then Dr Marianna Trent gave me a lot of ideas about how to frame this for other psychology people. However, I’ve been wanting to do this sort of podcast episode since my last meltdown (at the time of recording anyway) in Newcastle in late October 2023. Due to this meltdown taught me a lot, it framed a lot for me and the different things I want to talk about in today’s episode really helped frame my recovery better. And for newer listeners of the podcast episode, if you want to learn more about my mental health difficulties that were amplified in August 2023, please check What is Person-Centred Therapy? And What Is Emotional Dependency and Locus of Evaluation? Anyway, for the rest of this psychology podcast episode, I’ll be exploring some general life rolls and life events that might affect you on your psychology journey. Then I’ll talk about them and reflect on them and then I’ll narrow in on my own experiences using a brilliant quote from Kris’s blog post. Afterwards, I’ll explain why Kris’s blog post has a lot of powerful lessons for all of us. The life events I’ll be covering are death and grief, the ending of a major relationship and mental health. How Can Death And Grief Impact Your Psychology Journey? When someone major in our family or social network dies then this is extremely impactful on us. Maybe a parent, a close family member or a very close friend dies and you have to deal with all the grief, funeral arrangements and everything else that is forced on you when someone important dies. If this happens to a psychology student then this might mean you cannot focus on your studies, you might not be able to focus on exams and you might miss deadlines because you’re dealing with a lot. Equally, if you’re more advanced in your psychology journey then you might have the same problems as professionals, even more so if you’re on professional placements during your Doctorate of Clinical Psychology. Furthermore, if you’re a psychology professional, like a clinical psychologist, working in a service that involves a lot of grief and trauma. As well as if you know that a lot of clients with mental health difficulties associated with cancer deaths come in, then that can be very upsetting and triggering for you. Then this might have a knock-on effect on your work, your ability to focus and your ability to deliver high-quality care that our clients serve and come to us for. None of these effects or impacts makes you a bad person. It makes you human, relatable and it certainly doesn’t make you weak or anything. Therefore, when there is a death in the family or your social network, you need to grieve, you need to process your emotions and you need to make sure you’re going to be okay. If you’re a psychology student then talk to your university. I know at my university there’s a lot of different things in place for students that need a small break whilst they focus on things outside their control. So make sure you contact your university, see what your School or department offers and even if they cannot help you, they can still signpost you to other services. I was talking to one mature Masters student the other week and it turned out that her father had died of dementia last year so she needed an intermission. And I’m telling you this because I want you to know that asking the university for an intermission is okay, you can do that and it won’t end your life as you know. It will not make you a failure or a lesser student. You have to do what is right for you. Something I am learning more and more as time goes on. In addition, if you’re a psychology professional, then definitely consider taking some time off and focusing on processing your feelings, do what you need to do and then return to work. And even when you return to work, I’ve heard you can talk to your Line Manager and see if you can be given caseloads that are away from your death experience and you can slowly get back to work. Which actually might be quite nice because you’ll be dealing with fewer clients so you can get the paperwork done without being snowed under between seeing tons of clients and a mountain of paperwork that grows more and more with each passing day. How The End of A Major Relationship Impacts Your Psychology Journey? Whilst I am hardly qualified to talk about this point because I have never been in a relationship, I still know stuff but this will be a briefer section. So you might be a psychology student or psychologist and your relationship of five years and you thought they were the One, is over. The relationship broke up and you would be feeling a lot of pain. That is perfectly normal and you have every right to feel in pain, upset and confused. As well as you might even feel a little depressed and you might not be able to get out of bed or you won’t feel like moving or doing much for a few days. When this does happen then life can also feel a little hopeless, joyless and like you’ll never be able to find happiness again. And there is a minor problem with our professional, especially in clinical psychology, because you’re thinking like then we go into work and hear about a client’s negative mental health experiences. This is hardly going to make us feel great. Therefore, it might be an idea, when we’re experiencing the end of a major, major relationship to take one or two days off. So we can process our emotions, get ourselves together and go back to work or university feeling a little better. Because we will still feel bad, a little joyless and a little empty. However, the best cure for this sort of breakup loss is living, socialising and just being around other people that we like. And everyone else says that you will find love again and whilst I have never been in a relationship, my former emotional dependency still made me feel like this whenever I lost great friends. And I always did manage to friends, so you really can find love and friends and everything again but you have to keep living. How Mental Health Impacts Your Psychology Journey? I’ve already spoken a lot on the podcast about my own mental health breakdowns, my child abuse and trauma so I won’t go into too much depth because you can look at past episodes for that. Yet something I have noticed is, and is NOT a rule of thumb or a generalisation, that some people attracted to psychology do have their own mental health difficulties or past. For example, I have my trauma, self-harming and suicide. A woman in my cohort has anxiety and another woman had domestic violence against her in the past. And at some point if you have had a traumatic past, you will break and you will shatter and this can put your entire psychology journey up in the air because you have to focus on your recovery. Especially, as I was out for dinner with a friend last night and They were saying how They’re 25 now and it is only now they are comfortable admitting that they have recovered from their trauma. And their trauma happened when they were 12 or 13 and was a single incident that had 5 years’ worth of consequences for them. Then it is about them recovering from the aftermath.  That was a hard pill for me to swallow because my mind is still very much, I want to recover now or within a few months. But no Connor, recovery takes a long, long time from mental wounds and trauma. That’s why focusing on recovery is critical. This is basically what I have been doing since August 2023. I have been trying to recover, get myself “solid” again (whatever that means) and I want to be a position in my life where I am okay. And do I know what okay looks like, no, not really. Since I have never been okay, I am a survivor and it is all I know. I don’t know how to live, I don’t know how to not be on high alert and because a lot of old trauma responses like my emotional dependency, have been dealt with. I have no idea how to experience certain things. For example, before my template of a close friendship was intense, all-consuming, very toxic and it wasn’t healthy at all. But now I have a few close friendships but they feel weird to me because they aren’t intense, they aren’t all-consuming and they are healthy relationships for the first time. Anyway, linking this back to your psychology journey, I am honestly scared at the moment because I still have smaller meltdowns. I had my breakdown on the 13th August 2023 then I had my first meltdown in early September then I had another meltdown 6 weeks later. Also, I am beginning to realise that I used to be perfectly okay with so many psychology topics. I was happy to learn about self-harm, suicide, trauma and real-world experiences of the amazing clients that we get to help. But now, I am finding that I am not as resilient to certain things as I once was and certain psychology topics are triggering or upsetting to hear about. Not when I read about them or learn about them in a lecture per se, but in the real world when people actually have to deal with these things. I am not always okay with that. And it scares me. You all know I love psychology, I love this podcast and I love clinical psychology tons. It is my world, my domain and it is where I want to work so badly in the future because I love this profession. Therefore, with me still having meltdowns on occasion, with me still being scared, fragile and not always okay with my own past and mental health, I am scared that I will never be okay enough to do the work I want to do so badly. That scares me and I know I am not the only person that feels like this. In addition, these feelings aren’t always helped by the way that my life is stupidly busy. For example, my Masters degree takes up a lot of my time (as you would expect), my Mondays and Fridays are busy helping out a friend run his control group for his PhD and even my Thursdays which look free on paper are busy because my counselling (which ends today as I write this post) is at a weird time. Yet this week I’m working all day Thursday anyway. I raise this because normally in therapy and other mental health work, we always try to say to clients, you need to find activities that make you happy as well as you need structure and routine. At least I do because of my autism. However, this is difficult because I have a good structure and routine, but I am not able to focus on writing, publishing and my business as much as I want to. And I know this isn’t very relatable but you can substitute it for any hobby or any other activity that keeps you grounded and really helps. I used to be very stressed about this lack of writing time, but unfortunately Kris’s husband, Dean Wesley Smith who is a sensational writer and I have a good working relationship with him, had a shattered shoulder after a charity run one weekend. Kris wrote a blog post with something I want to quote and then I’ll explain why this is useful for all of us in terms of mental health recovery. “I know that my mind will be very busy with the changes to our lives. We have to make adjustments for the next several months as Dean heals. As I’ve written many times before, shit happens. We all have to deal with those things and take the time to work through them. Sometimes, writing isn’t possible. Sometimes, writing what you were writing before the event isn’t possible either—at least, not for a while. Maybe not at all. Events change you. The person I was before Dean fell is not the person I am now. Dean is not the same person either. We don’t know how much will change, but some things will. Other things won’t change. We’re both writers, after all.” As a result, there are three things I want to reflect on here. The first paragraph stresses how when something happens, our minds are very busy and we have to change and adapt to a new reality. For Kris, this meant adapting into a new routine to help Dean heal and recover from his shattered shoulder. For me, this means I need to allow myself to change and adapt because my mind is filled with recovering, being okay and adapting to a very new and exciting reality. A reality where I am loved, where there is no risk of me being beaten and a reality where I can be me without threat of death. After a decade of that reality that is extremely hard to get used to. Secondly, I want to reflect on the next three paragraphs because Kris points out how in life, life events and life rolls will always happen and you cannot control them. These will happen, that is just how life works. Yet it is our job and our responsibility to work through them so we can keep living and enjoying life, and having fun. As well as, you can change writing for another activity that brings you joy, so if you were doing an activity then maybe you will need to stop for a little bit, or slow down or change it entirely. I’ve written a lot since my breakdown. I’ve written a lot of science fiction, some fantasy and some mystery, but I have a lot of critical voice about romance. Since a good romance is positive, happy and there is chemistry between the two love interests. I do not know if I am able to get in that headspace for now where I can be so positive, so focused on the romance and I have hit all the traditional romance expectations that readers love. That doesn’t make me a failure, it just means I don’t want to go there at the moment, but I will in the future. Because I am a writer, but I have to focus on adapting to this new reality and recovering first. Finally, Kris talks about events changing you, and that is extremely true. Since like Kris, ever since my life-changing, I have not been the same person. I can feel emotions for starters, I am no longer a survivor and I am a shard of the person I used to be in a good way. And that is extremely hard but I loved when I read that quote because it was meaningful. I am changed and that’s okay because there is always a lot of stuff that doesn’t change. I am still a podcaster, a writer, a business owner, a psychology student. I still have amazing listeners, readers and a family that loves me. As well as I have a group of friends that is growing and I am happy with. So whenever you feel like your life is changing and it shattering, just know that things will change and you will have to focus on your recovery and adapting. Yet there are always things that don’t change and they will always stay the same too. Clinical Psychology Conclusion and A Footnote On Spoon Theory At the end of this podcast episode that focused on Careers In Psychology and your psychology journey, I want to remind you that life rolls will happen. You will be upset, blindsided and you will feel like you’re drowning. Just make sure that you process your feelings, seek professional help if you need to and just make sure that you’re okay. You will have to adapt and change because of your life roll. I won’t pretend that you won’t and chances are, you might be a different person afterwards and that’s okay too. As long as you know when to get professional help, if needed, and you focus on the things that are the same too. Personally, I am having to really prioritise these days because I am still not 100% and I am still learning and trying to train the New Me about certain aspects of life. For example, early today I wanted to get up at 7 am and be on my laptop doing some work by 8 am. I couldn’t get up, I was too scared about some stuff and I was struggling a little so I woke up at 8 am and I got to my laptop about 9:18 am. It wasn’t ideal but I was compassionate because that is still better than some past Tuesdays. Since Tuesdays are my only free days to be honest. Therefore, I have to really focus and really prioritise what I absolutely have to get done that day. If you’re on my email list, you might know I haven’t been emailing very much lately, this is why. I have to focus on the podcast, writing and the various online courses I’ve paid for. Then university work takes up a lot of my time too, but that’s okay and remembering Spoon Theory helps too. When life events happen, the old saying of “life is what you make it” still holds true, you can allow life events to harm and control you, or you can start walking the very long and hard but joyous journey towards recovering and getting past your life events too. But this is a choice, a hard one, but the end result is all within your power. 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 Careers In 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. Clinical Psychology References The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast by Dr Marianna Trent- Unknown Episode Kristine Kathryn Rusch- Business Musings: Spoons (A Process Blog) Available at kriswrites.com Kristine Kathryn Rusch- Business Musings: Focus And Escape. Available at kriswrites.com 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 day this developmental psychology and cognitive psychology podcast episode comes out, is the start of Transgender Awareness Week 2023. Therefore, I wanted to cover the really fun topic of using “They/ Them” pronouns to describe non-binary people and most importantly, the psychological reasons why some people find using “Them/ They” really hard to describe people. Then we’ll look at ways to overcome these difficulties. If you enjoy learning about transgender topics, developmental and cognitive psychology with a hint of mental health, then you’ll love today’s episode. This 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 Busting A Transgender Myth Immediately Before we dive into today’s episode, I just want to bust a myth upfront because there is a very right-wing myth in society that if you get a person’s pronouns wrong then they are going to shout, scream and berate you. I’ve heard that myth tons of times and it is funny because it just isn’t true. In my experience, if you get them wrong then the person will simply correct you and then you try and remember them. Then if you make a mistake again then apologise and as long as you’re trying to put the effort in and you aren’t purposefully misgendering them then they’ll be okay. The amount of times I’ve misgendered my non-binary friends by accident is bad on my part, but I apologise, I try and I am a lot better than I used to be. It’s very rare now I misgender one of them but my other non-binary is newer so I’m still learning. But they don’t get annoyed with me because that annoyance is a myth unless you’re being horrible on purpose. Why Am I Talking About “They/ Them” Pronouns On A Psychology Podcast? Quickly before I dive into the main topic of today’s episode, I want to stress here that this is the perfect topic for a psychology podcast. Since “They/ Them” pronouns are a part of human language and language development, so this pulls on a lot of concepts from developmental psychology. Also, in today’s episode, we talk about the brain and other concepts from biological psychology and neuropsychology, as well as we discuss gender identity which is another topic from developmental psychology. Therefore, this is a great and really interesting podcast episode that draws on a lot of psychological knowledge. Then lastly for this quick section, there is a chance that as a current or future clinical psychologist, you will meet a transgender person in your therapy room at some point. So knowing about the importance of pronouns and the different challenges other people have could be important for the therapeutic work and making sure that your therapy room is an affirming space for the client. Why Using “They/ Them” Pronouns Are Challenging For Some People According To Neuroscience? In a moment, I’ll explain the importance of pronouns because that often gets missed when these topics are covered, but let’s just be upfront about this, some people will never use “They/ Them” because these people want to use the incorrect pronouns as a sign of disrespect and hostility. For the sake of this podcast episode, I am not talking about those people because considering all the problems in the world, if you want to put your energy is fighting and hating and berating transgender people by refusing to simply change what you refer to them as. Then I’m not that interested, I would rather humanity put their effort and hate towards more productive and useful things that are actually problems. For example, solving climate change and holding governments to account for their lack of action. Anyway, there are other reasons why people might find using “They/ Them” pronouns difficult that has nothing to do with hate or disrespect. Since there are reasons related to cultural neuroscience because the human brain across the world has been socially categorised to put people into one of two groups, male or female. For a lot of people, these two categories have become an engrained thought pattern and in cognitive psychology, we know these are called “schemas.” The problem with schemas is that Schemas are difficult to change the longer they’re engrained in our cognitive patterns. This is one reason why it is difficult for some people to use “They/ Them” pronouns because it goes against their schemas. Although, Schemas can definitely be overcome. Why Are Pronouns Important? Just because I feel like this is a topic that gets missed a lot whenever pronouns are discussed, I want to explain why pronouns are important. One thing that has surprised since I’ve started talking about my non-binary friend a lot more when I’m not with them is how much you actually use Pronouns in everyday language. Since I’m surprised the amount of times I used to slow down talking just so I could change the pronoun in the sentence from “he” to “They” out of respect and acceptance for my friend. As a result, it shouldn’t be a surprise that pronouns are a critical part of our communication as well as human language. Due to in our culture, pronouns facilitate communication, they reflect everyone’s gender identity and affirm everyone’s sense of Self. Also, from a sociocultural lens, we have learnt and we always should respect and support for other people’s identities. And I’ll finish this small section, by mentioning that using a transgender person’s correct pronouns is about affirming them, and research shows that when a transgender person lives in an affirming environment then the chance of them committing suicide is a lot, lot less. What Are The Cultural Neuroscience Challenges Of Some People Using “They/ Them” Pronouns? I mentioned earlier that there are some biological and social reasons that can help to explain why some people find “They/ Them” pronouns difficult to use, but these can be overcome. One such explanation is that humans learn traditional grammar rules at a very early age and these grammar rules lead people to associate “They/ Them” pronouns with plurals. This is something that my family strongly associates them with to the point where they get confused when I talk about my non-binary friend, but they’re learning. As a result, our brains might not be accustomed or used to using “They/ Them” pronouns to refer to a single person. Then this socialisation has an impact on our neural processing as this “referring to a single person” is unfamiliar to us so some people get confused, hesitant or get anxious when attempting to use this unfamiliar language in communication. Personally, I can definitely see this in my own family because me and my mum were talking to the other night about this, and she lacks the confidence to use “They/ Them” pronouns because she doesn’t understand the language, she gets confused and I think she might be anxious. But she is definitely learning and she is actually really good because a few weeks ago we were talking about my friend and she was saying “They” a lot. So given a little practice, you can learn this relatively easily. Furthermore, the older a person is, the harder this learning of this new language becomes because our neuroplasticity (the ability of our brains to change in response to new stimuli) decreases with age. So this makes it harder for our brains to learn new language (Mateos-Aparicio et al., 2019). If we connect this to “They/ Them” pronouns then an older person shifting from gendered pronouns to gender-neutral ones does require a mental shift and a change in our language habits. Overall, it does take time and practice to change these language patterns but this difficulty can be overcome with practice and openness. And that’s what I mean about the myth surrounding using the wrong pronouns, if you are willing and friendly to try and use the right pronouns. Then no one will moan at you and if you make an honest mistake (which 99% of mistakes are) then no one will care you made a mistake as long as you don’t do it every single time. How To Overcome Socio-Cultural Stigma and Resistance To Using “They/ Them” Pronouns? Even within psychology, not a lot of people (myself included before recently) think about how our social norms and our social expectations reinforce our use of gender binary in communications. So it is perfectly reasonable that some people might feel uncomfortable or be rather resistant to using “They/ Them” pronouns because they don’t want to experience backlash from other cisgender people or judgement. As a result, to overcome this resistance and stigma, this requires effort and approaching this with an open mind. Now I’m going to share three tips with you to help. Firstly, one of the compromises me and my parents have come up with because both of them get confused when I refer to my friend as “They”, is I try to use their name instead of the pronoun. This is useful because it means I’m able to still respect my friend whilst slowly exposing my parents to “They/ Them” pronouns so they can learn over time. Secondly, be open to making mistakes because that will reduce some of the anxiety you might have about making a mistake. Thirdly, there are plenty of great online resources to help familiarise yourself with gender-neutral language, and practice is a great way to reinforce new habits and this will help the words feel more natural in your brain over time. I can promise you that practice does make perfect. Developmental Psychology Conclusion On the whole, I won’t lie referring to a single non-binary person using “They/ Them” pronouns might be difficult at first. Due to it is unfamiliar to us, there is societal resistance, our neuroplasticity decreases with age and our language habits play a role too. Yet none of these are excuses not to use “They/ Them” pronouns when you meet a non-binary person because if you educate yourself (which you have been doing by listening to this podcast episode), you practice and you approach this with openness, then it is very, very possible to overcome these difficulties that ultimately stem from concerns as well as anxieties about making a mistake. A mistake that no transgender person will judge you for if it is our honest mistake. Which come on, if you’ve listened to the end of this podcast episode then I’m 99% sure that is what your mistake will be. 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. Cognitive Psychology References Budge, S. L. (2020). Suicide and the transgender experience: A public health crisis. American Psychologist, 75(3), 380. Haas, A. P., Eliason, M., Mays, V. M., Mathy, R. M., Cochran, S. D., D'Augelli, A. R., ... & Clayton, P. J. (2010). Suicide and suicide risk in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations: Review and recommendations. Journal of homosexuality, 58(1), 10-51. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/cultural-neuroscience/202309/anxious-about-mis-gendering-a-non-binary-person Kempermann, G., Gast, D., & Gage, F. H. (2002). Neuroplasticity in old age: sustained fivefold induction of hippocampal neurogenesis by long‐term environmental enrichment. Annals of neurology, 52(2), 135-143. Mateos-Aparicio, P., & Rodríguez-Moreno, A. (2019). The impact of studying brain plasticity. Frontiers in cellular neuroscience, 13, 66. Toomey, R. B., Syvertsen, A. K., & Shramko, M. (2018). Transgender adolescent suicide behavior. Pediatrics, 142(4). Vance, D. E., & Wright, M. A. (2009). Positive and negative neuroplasticity: Implications for age-related cognitive declines. Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 35(6), 11-17. Virupaksha, H. G., Muralidhar, D., & Ramakrishna, J. (2016). Suicide and suicidal behavior among transgender persons. Indian journal of psychological medicine, 38(6), 505-509. 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.

Whether you’re a parent or a therapist of a teenager and they make a gender disclosure to you, this can be a potentially uncertain and scary time for both of you. For therapists, you might be uncertain about how to support a transgender person specifically. For parents, you might not know how to support your transgender teenager as well as clients might want to disclose their affirmed gender in a therapy session with the parent so they have the support of a therapist during the disclosure. Since as you’ll see later in the episode, self-harm, suicide and depression are unfortunately common effects of transgender people not being in a supportive environment. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll see why supporting a transgender teenager is critical and how therapists and parents can support transgender teenagers. If you enjoy learning about mental health, psychotherapy and transgender topics, you’ll love today’s episode. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Suicide 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 Structure Of This Psychology Podcast Episode I want the majority of this podcast episode to be aimed at parents because I want them to understand and learn why it is important to support their teenager after a gender disclosure. As well as I want to offer them a lot of practical (unofficial) tips and ways to affirm their teenager’s identity so we can hopefully prevent the large majority of negative mental health outcomes. Like suicide, depression and self-harm. However, the reason why I am talking about this topic on my psychology podcast where most of my audience members are psychology students, young people and clinical psychologists, is because this is critical for current or future therapists to understand. Since both parents and teenagers will probably need psychological support during this time, and it is always useful to read this parent information. As this helps us to understand and empathise with what the parent has experienced before they come to us. Additionally, if someone in your psychology workplace comes out as trans or even if you make a transgender friend, it’s always useful to be aware of how to support and affirm their gender identity. Why Is Supporting Transgender Teenagers Important? A lot of research has been done over the years on transgender mental health and the awful consequences of trans people not living in a supportive environment. For example, Eisenberg et al. (2017) found roughly 66% of transgender teenagers have had suicidal thoughts as well as this is further supported by Veale et al. (2016) who found 65% of 14 to 18-year-olds have seriously thought about ending their own lives, and this is extremely concerning because only 13% of cisgender teenagers considering ending their own lives during this same age period. Therefore, therapists and other physical and mental health professionals who work with transgender teenagers can testify that having supportive parents is an extremely positive game changer for teenagers, and there is research supporting this argument too. For instance, Trans Pulse (2012) conducted research that found the following. · Transgender teenagers with supportive parents had 72% life satisfaction compared to only 33% for teens with unsupportive parents. · 64% of teens with supportive parents had high self-esteem compared to only 13% for those without parental support. · 70% of supported transgender teens had excellent mental health compared to only 15% of unsupported teens. · 100% of teens with supportive parents had good housing compared to 45% of those lacking parental support. When it comes to negative outcomes, only 23% of teenagers with supportive parents experienced depressive symptoms compared to 75% of teens without supportive parents. Also, only 4% of transgender teenagers with supportive parents attempted suicide in the past year compared to 57% of teens without support. Therefore, there is a lot of personal and research evidence that highlights how important parental support is for transgender teenagers. This leads us to our next section and question. How Can Parents Show Support For Their Non-Binary Or Transgender Teenager? Since it is only a tiny, tiny minority of people that have to ever “come out” about their gender, no one really understands what it’s like. Therefore, whenever a teenager comes out about their gender identity, it is important to know that they are revealing an extremely important and very vulnerable part of themselves. And they are putting themselves in a very courageous and scary place because this important part of them could be rejected. Personally, I’ll admit this was very scary for me to because I came out as trans non-binary to my parents a few weeks ago actually. And even though the relationship between my parents and myself is a lot better, healthier and great as far as LGBT+ topics are concerned, this was still an extremely scary topic for me to reveal and I had no idea what was going to happen. Thankfully, they accepted it and they love and support me. As a result, it is important to know how to affirm a transgender or non-binary person gender identity to hopefully prevent some of those worrying mental health outcomes mentioned above. Therefore, here are some ways to affirm a teenager’s gender identity · Affirm their gender by using their affirmed-gender’s pronouns and name. This is important because your transgender teenager would have spent a lot of time and emotional energy choosing their new name, so it might feel upsetting and it might feel strange to use a new name, but it will become easier over time. · Help to prevent bullying and when it happens, address it. · Prevent and address any cruelty and harm aimed at your client or child · Allow your child to show you who they are and love your child fully. · Help them access gender-affirming therapy and medical services. · Work with your teenager’s school to make sure they can use the affirming bathroom and there are affirming classroom practices in place. For example, using their affirmed or “chosen” name on school materials and the register. · Help your teenager explore and progress in their social transition when they’re ready for it. Other Ways To Affirm Your Teenager’s Gender Identity Another way to affirm your teenager’s gender identity is to educate yourself so listen to podcast episodes (like you are now), read books, watch videos and more to help educate yourself about the topic. And even before I realised I was watching these videos and learning about the topic because I was trans myself, I have to admit it was a lot of fun and this is a really interesting area. Furthermore, you need to accept your own feelings because it is perfectly okay to feel a sense of loss when your child makes a gender disclosure. Since parents do plan for their child to do X, Y and Z as their Gender Assigned at Birth, so when this changes, your hopes, dreams and your expectations change too. You might feel angry, overwhelmed and confused about why this is happening, and I get that. These are normal reactions so please make sure that you process and deal with your own feelings, but make sure you support your child. That is the most important thing during this whole process. Building upon this further, make sure you listen to your family member in a nonjudgemental way. Since transitioning is difficult and it is a journey that takes a hell of a lot of courage, so please allow your teenager to be hopeful and guide you so you know what they need from you. In addition, it’s important to know there is no one right way to be trans, because not everyone’s journey is the same. Yes, it is true that some people know their trans ever since they were a small child, other people don’t realise it until puberty and others still don’t realise it until much later. Personally, I only realised I was trans non-binary because I haven’t “felt” like a man for years and then over the summer during my therapy work, it dawned on me that I don’t “feel” like a man not because of my abuse and trauma. But because I just don’t connect to a male identity and I am just me. Not a man, certainly not a woman, just me. Also, some trans people might be militantly active about their gender identity, some people might not. I know some people that are very active about their gender identity, but I am seriously not. I’m extremely passive about me being non-binary, so it’s up to the teenager to decide how they want to be trans and what being trans being to them. Finally, be happy for yourself and for your teenager because yes, the transgender journey is hard. I will not lie about that for a moment. Yet transitioning from a birth gender to who you really are is a hopeful, positive and affirming thing that is amazing. So if you allow yourself to be happy for your teenager because they’re finally being who they always wanted to be, then you’ll find a lot of joy in the process too as you see your child become happier, more authentic and enjoy living their best life. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Whether you’re a parent or a therapist or both and you have a transgender teenager, the most important thing you can do is support them during this difficult time for them. The fact that they are transgender doesn’t make life difficult, it is the world we live in that is going through a massive hating period towards transgender people, and it is that negative trans world that makes life difficult for trans people. Yet the family home and the parental environment is the perfect place to offer a trans person the love, support and protection that they have the right to feel. The same goes for the therapy room. Just like cisgender clients, whenever a trans person walks into a therapy room whether they are for mental health difficulties related to being trans or not, they deserve to feel and experience the same security, safety and sense of welcome that all our other clients feel. And that sense of security and safety and openness to be their authentic self all starts with their gender identity being affirmed and after this podcast episode, you now have a great starting point in knowing how to do just 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 Suicide 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 Eisenberg, M. E., Gower, A. L., McMorris, B. J., Rider, G. N., Shea, G., & Coleman, E. (2017). Risk and protective factors in the lives of transgender/gender nonconforming adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 61(4), 521-526. Eisenberg, M. E., Gower, A. L., McMorris, B. J., Rider, G. N., Shea, G., & Coleman, E. (2017). Risk and protective factors in the lives of transgender/gender nonconforming adolescents. Journal of adolescent health, 61(4), 521-526. http://transpulseproject.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Impacts-of-Strong-Parental-Support-for-Trans-Youth-vFINAL.pdf Iverson, Jo. (2020). Once A Girl, Always A Boy. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press Perez-Brumer, A., Day, J. K., Russell, S. T., & Hatzenbuehler, M. L. (2017). Prevalence and correlates of suicidal ideation among transgender youth in California: findings from a representative, population-based sample of high school students. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(9), 739-746. SANSFAÇON, A. P., GELLY, M. A., FADDOUL, M., & LEE, E. O. J. (2020). Parental support and non-support of trans youth: towards a nuanced understanding of forms of support and trans youth's expectations. Enfances, Familles, Generations, (36). Seibel, B. L., de Brito Silva, B., Fontanari, A. M., Catelan, R. F., Bercht, A. M., Stucky, J. L., ... & Costa, A. B. (2018). The impact of the parental support on risk factors in the process of gender affirmation of transgender and gender diverse people. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 399. Veale, J. F., Watson, R. J., Peter, T., & Saewyc, E. M. (2017). Mental Health Disparities Among Canadian Transgender Youth. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 60(1), 44–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.09.014 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.

Whether therapists encounter clients with an autism diagnosis or whether they suspect a client might be autistic, it is important for clinical psychologists to understand how autism could impact communication during therapy. Of course, when the 10 different ways, we’ll look at in today’s podcast episode alone individually or in smaller groups, they aren’t always exclusive to autism, so it is critical that a therapist doesn’t jump to the conclusion that a client is autistic. Yet when these 10 different impacts could negatively impact communication between the therapist and autistic client in therapy, so it’s important to be aware of them and how to overcome them in therapy. Therefore, if you enjoy learning about autism, clinical psychology and therapy then you’ll this clinical psychology podcast episode. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also, you can buy the eBook directly from me at https://www.payhip.com/connorwhiteley Note: and as always the references for this podcast episode can be found near the bottom of the episode. How Can Autism Affect Communication Therapy? Autistic Clients Might Avoid Eye Contact In Therapy Whenever we think about autism, the idea of eye contact always comes up first in people’s minds and this is because autistic people tend to have problems with eye contact. For example, I cannot remember the last time I made eye contact with either of my therapists and to be honest, anyone in my life. I simply don’t like it and I have no intention of making eye contact with someone. Equally, some autistic people don’t look sidewards or away from therapists for long periods of time, because some autistic people stare intensely at someone to the point where the therapist might be uncomfortable. These are common in autistic people. Although, some autistic people have learnt to “mask” their symptoms by making eye contact in a natural way in an effort to hide their autism. This does have negative consequences but it is a survival technique to help autistic people “blend” into this neurotypical world. Overall, if a client is avoiding eye contact with you or staring at you intensely, they could be autistic. Autistic People Provide A Lot of Detail And Talk Excessively In addition, autistic people could talk to you for long, excessive periods of time as well as include a lot of detail that takes the conversation off on a lot of tangents. This could happen because the autistic client wants to share information about one of their special interest or they might want to share something they’re recently become passionate about. Also, this “infodumping” could happen because the client hasn’t picked up on communication cues from the therapist about them wanting to talk or talk about something else. Personally, I think whether or not this is a “problem” really depends on the therapeutic model being used. For example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is extremely structured and rather rigid so these tangents wouldn’t be good, but for counselling or humanistic approaches, I don’t think this would be a problem at all. In fact, I know in some of my own therapy sessions, these tangents can be rather golden for learning more about my mental health difficulties. Apparently Being “Rude”, Direct or Blunt Of course, I use the word “apparently” more for myself than anything else because I was a so-called rude child at times because of my undiagnosed autism. But anyway, one of the biggest communication challenges that autistic people face is coming across as rude to other people when in their mind, what they have just said is the truth and it sounds okay to them. That was basically the story of my childhood. Therefore, the vast, vast majority of autistic clients prefer to communicate in a simple, direct and effective way but this can sadly come across as rude to other people. As well as autistic people might struggle to understand metaphorical or vague language, so they communicate directly because it matches how they prefer to be communicated with. However, I will admit that this flat out doesn’t matter autistic people cannot understand metaphors and imagery in therapy settings. Since my current counsellor uses a lot of metaphor and imagery and he mentions how autistic clients are actually really good at it, so I just wanted to clear that myth up. Overall, autistic clients might prefer to communicate directly and effectively with you as their therapist. So just bear in mind if they’re being direct, they are just talking and not trying to be rude or blunt with you. Autistic People Might Talk Over or Interrupt You Similar to what I mentioned earlier, because autistic people tend to struggle with how much detail to add, picking up on social cues amongst other communication cues, they might interrupt or talk over you. As well as because autistic people can find it difficult to know when to join a conversation, they might say nothing, wait a while for a chance to speak or interrupt you. My point is if the client interrupts you, again they are not being rude. They are just being their authentic autistic self. Which is actually one of the entire points of therapy, we want to help our current or future clients be themselves and help them deal with whatever mental health difficulty they’re facing. Slower Verbal Processing Times Interestingly, Haigh et al. (2018) found that autistic people might take longer to process verbal information. This is important for therapists to beware of because if you tend to ask your clients a lot of multi-part questions then this might work for neurotypical clients. Yet you might be disadvantaging your autistic clients by accident, so asking single part questions might be better. Lack Of Facial Expression Now I will be the first to admit that most forms of emotional processing are a massive difficulty for autistic people, to the point that it can be funny talking about it with other autistic people. For example, I asked a friend out on a date the other week and they rejected me. And we were talking about it the next day and I said I thought I was fine after the rejection emotionally but my body was shaking (probably in upset) and I just couldn’t sleep that night. It was a nightmare, and my friend basically said “yes I’d had that before and I can’t understand my own emotions so I have to listen to my body to tell me how I’m feeling”. Also, I find it rather funny how me, my friend and all the other autistic people I know, we can all show “limited” expressions of emotion in-person. But if we text each other and so on, we are a lot more expressive because it’s just easier to be emotional with word choice, emojis and more in text. Anyway, I think we can all understand that many autistic adults don’t use their faces to express emotions the same way neurotypical adults do and some autistic people might look extremely serious regardless of the situation and informality of the situation they are in. Loudly or Quietly Talking or a Strange Pitch, Rhythm or Tone This was something I was very surprised to learn about a few years ago but I think there tends to be two types of “voice categories” autistic people fall into. There is the “monotone” camp or there is the type of camp where the autistic person speaks in a certain rhythm. I think I’m in the latter category because my voice does change but there are certain sounds, words and ways I talk without fail. Granted, that can make editing the podcast a nightmare at times. Anyway, Bonneh et al. (2011) suggests that autistic people might struggle to control their voices so this could make a client talk loudly, quietly, have an intonation in a strange place or have little to no intonation. Not Being Able To Talk During Sessions On the other hand, there might be some autistic people who aren’t non-verbal but they find it very hard to talk about themselves. This could be because they find it difficult to articulate their feelings and thoughts or they might spend less time than a lot of other people talking and this make them struggle to answer questions. Resulting in the client giving short, sharp answers or being very uncomfortable in the session. Internal Lack Of Confidence In Communication I’m definitely not surprised to learn this but a lot of autistic people during therapy sessions actually “check in” with the therapist to see if they’re answering the question correctly. Now I do get this sense a lot because I am somewhat mildly autistic and when I am in these therapy sessions I do get concerned about my answers. Like “am I giving him enough information”, “am I understanding the question” and so on. Therefore, I’m not surprised to learn that in autistic people this all stems from an internal lack of confidence about our ability to communicate. I think this is even more important when we acknowledge that most autistic people have probably been moaned at for being rude or blunt or not understanding a question before. This doesn’t help an autistic person feel like they have a good sense of communication. I think this is why my friend prefers to only deal with and become friends with other neurodivergent people. Which I can understand but I like neurotypicals too much to not at least try a little. Using Gestures We have all probably heard of the rough fact that something like 90% of communication is non-verbal. I am not sure if that is the “true” statistic and I don’t care enough to actually double-check but the point is gestures are important in human communication. Yet autistic people might use gestures a lot more or a lot less than expected and they might use gestures in unusual ways. I know I love talking with my hands even when I seriously shouldn’t. Whereas there are other autistic people that never use a single gesture and others still don’t use gestures but instead use repetitive behaviours that other people think are gestures. Therefore, this can create a lot of communication problems for autistic clients, so I suppose that part of a therapist’s job is to understand how the client is using gestures (if at all) to understand if they have any importance to what the client is trying to tell them about their life, mental health and so on. Clinical Psychology Conclusion We’re all aware that autism results in someone having communication difficulties and most of the time, this is the end of how we think about them. Unless we come into contact with autistic people regularly this isn’t something a lot of us concern ourselves with, but as current or future clinical psychologists, it is always useful to be aware of how autism could impact therapy. As well as I mentioned earlier, I don’t think there is a single one of these symptoms that is unique to autism when looked at individually. For example, some of these could be applied to trauma, anxiety or depression. Therefore, being aware of how these symptoms impact therapy helps us to be prepared for helping an autistic person whenever they come into our therapy room. Autism shouldn’t be a barrier to therapy and if you’re more aware and informed then you can help change an autistic person’s life for the better just like a neurotypical person. They might need a little more support or a slightly different way of working, but autistic people are just as bright, brilliant and wonderful as everyone else. So let’s help them decrease their distress, come up with better coping mechanisms and improve their lives. 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 References Bonneh, Y. S., Levanon, Y., Dean-Pardo, O., Lossos, L., & Adini, Y. (2011). Abnormal speech spectrum and increased pitch variability in young autistic children. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 4, 237. Conlon, O., Volden, J., Smith, I. M., Duku, E., Zwaigenbaum, L., Waddell, C., ... & Pathways in ASD Study Team. (2019). Gender differences in pragmatic communication in school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49, 1937-1948. Cummins, C., Pellicano, E., & Crane, L. (2020). Autistic adults’ views of their communication skills and needs. International journal of language & communication disorders, 55(5), 678-689. De Marchena, A., Kim, E. S., Bagdasarov, A., Parish-Morris, J., Maddox, B. B., Brodkin, E. S., & Schultz, R. T. (2019). Atypicalities of gesture form and function in autistic adults. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 49, 1438-1454. Grossard, C., Dapogny, A., Cohen, D., Bernheim, S., Juillet, E., Hamel, F., Hun, S., Bourgeois, J., Pellerin, H., Serret, S., Bailly, K., & Chaby, L. (2020). Children with autism spectrum disorder produce more ambiguous and less socially meaningful facial expressions: an experimental study using random forest classifiers. Molecular autism, 11(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-020-0312-2 Haigh, S. M., Walsh, J. A., Mazefsky, C. A., Minshew, N. J., & Eack, S. M. (2018). Processing speed is impaired in adults with autism spectrum disorder, and relates to social communication abilities. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 48, 2653-2662. Morrison, K. E., DeBrabander, K. M., Jones, D. R., Faso, D. J., Ackerman, R. A., & Sasson, N. J. (2020). Outcomes of real-world social interaction for autistic adults paired with autistic compared to typically developing partners. Autism, 24(5), 1067-1080. Ritvo, R. A., Ritvo, E. R., Guthrie, D., Ritvo, M. J., Hufnagel, D. H., McMahon, W., ... & Eloff, J. (2011). The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R): a scale to assist the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in adults: an international validation study. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 41, 1076-1089. Rundblad, G., & Annaz, D. (2010). The atypical development of metaphor and metonymy comprehension in children with autism. Autism, 14(1), 29-46. Senju, A., & Johnson, M. H. (2009). Atypical eye contact in autism: models, mechanisms and development. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 33(8), 1204-1214. Sturrock, A., Adams, C., & Freed, J. (2021). A subtle profile with a significant impact: Language and communication difficulties for autistic females without intellectual disability. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 621742. Sturrock, A., Chilton, H., Foy, K., Freed, J., & Adams, C. (2022). In their own words: The impact of subtle language and communication difficulties as described by autistic girls and boys without intellectual disability. Autism, 26(2), 332-345. Sturrock, A., Foy, K., Freed, J., Adams, C., & Leadbitter, K. (2023). The impact of subtle language and communication difficulties on the daily lives of autistic children without intellectual disability: Parent perspectives. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders. Sturrock, A., Marsden, A., Adams, C., & Freed, J. (2020). Observational and reported measures of language and pragmatics in young people with autism: a comparison of respondent data and gender profiles. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 50, 812-830. Sturrock, A., Yau, N., Freed, J., & Adams, C. (2020). Speaking the same language? A preliminary investigation, comparing the language and communication skills of females and males with high-functioning autism. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 50, 1639-1656. 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.

A lot of jobs within the psychology job market regardless of your preferred subdiscipline, require you to have experience working with different clients and showing different skill sets. The problem with this “need for experience” is you cannot get experience without a job but you cannot get a job without experience. This is why unpaid work experience is unfortunately, extremely important if you want to get a job in psychology. Therefore, in this careers in psychology podcast episode, I’m going to explain three different ways to find work experience. If you’re interested in working in psychology, developing a psychology career and creating the best CV you possibly can, then you’ll love today’s episode. This episode has been sponsored by Careers In Psychology: A Student’s Guide To Working 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 Note: as always nothing on this podcast is any sort of professional, legal or official advice. This is just based on my own experience of trying to find psychology work experience. A Quick Note On Why Work Experience Is Important For Psychology Students Whilst I’ve already mentioned a lot of benefits of work experience in the introduction, I just do want to share this small extract from A Student’s Guide To University and Learning because it explains another important aspect of work experience: “Increased Employability Our final point we’ve preluded to throughout this blog post but I want to say it explicitly- work experience can equip you with skills and experiences that lots of people don’t have. For example, my placement year in research will help me develop my skills in researching a real-world setting. Other students in my year they’ll have research experience from their degree but not necessarily in a real-life setting. If you studied medicine and you got work experience at a Doctor’s Surgery, you would have real-world experience and skills that I don’t think many other students would have. Overall, work experience can be great for increasing your employability because you will have some great skills and experiences that you can draw on in your future work.” How To Find Work Experience For Psychology Students? Search Online and Check The Websites of Where You Want Experience Moving onto the different ways you can find work experience, the easiest way is by searching the internet and checking the different websites of places that you want to work in or gain experience. I managed to find my learning disability experience by searching for it on the internet and then finding that the Kent Community Health Trust had an entire webpage on work experience in a very wide range of different departments. Another great find I had was in the South London and Maudsley Trust because they had a lot of different schemes for people interested in psychology. There were a lot of volunteering schemes and a lot of interesting information. I wouldn’t know any of this and I wouldn’t have developed and learnt the skills and knowledge from my learning disability placement if I hadn’t researched it online. It sounds so simple but still a lot of students miss out on options they would like and benefit from because they don’t look things up online. Then what normally happens is you download a work experience application form off their website, you fill it out and send it back to them so they can make a decision. Also, you typically need a reference from anyone who can voucher for you and that you would benefit from the experience. I remember on my application form I wrote out why I would benefit from it and then my supervisor for my dissertation last year basically reworded what I had written, because he is so not a clinical guy. So he wasn’t sure what new things he could add, but I got the experience thankfully. Write To Places You Want To Work This is definitely an interesting approach to work experience that I am both really nervous about and really, really excited about. Since I have work experience with people with learning disabilities, but over the summer I wanted to gain some work experience with working-aged adults. So originally I contacted some local NHS trusts about some volunteering work I had seen on their website with group therapy (that would have been ideal for me) but they never got back to me. In addition, I developed a real interest in transgender people over the summer and I realised it was my ideal clinical population because it is a great group of people. Therefore, I knew I wanted to work in a Gender Identity Clinic and gain work experience in these settings although there were problems, none of them offered work experience and there are extremely few of them about. That made me want to branch out into looking for private psychologists that do the assessments too. As a result, I didn’t want to let this stop me because I really, really wanted to work with this clinical population. And I had already saved a template or list of points to make in a professional application letter to the Clinical Psychology Doctorate after I had seen it on LinkedIn. So I grabbed that template, I adapted it for a work experience setting and I wrote to tons of different places all over the UK regardless of how much travelling I would have to do. I wanted this work experience, and at the end of the blog post there is an example of one of the letters I wrote. I wrote to 23 different places total. The results of my letters were mostly two-fold. Firstly, the vast majority of places came back to me saying they don’t have the infrastructure for work experience but they were really impressed with my letter anyway. Secondly, I did get a fair amount of offers for meetings in-person or over Teams about career advice. Even though I rejected the offers for a meeting because at the time I was certain I didn’t want to work with Transgender people as a career. I sort of wish I had now because that is the clinical population I want to work with, period. Thankfully, one place did come back to me with an offer of work experience that I’m doing towards the end of October 2023 up North and I was really excited about it. And I only got the work experience because I took a chance, I wrote a letter and I sent it off. It was scary and I was nervous but I am glad that I did it and now I get to work in a psychology mental health setting that I will hopefully love. The Letter Structure I am actually going to share a brief description of the letter structure I used and this was adapted from a post by Trainee Counselling Psychologist Melisa Eyuboglu who I do recommend you follow on LinkedIn too. She’s always posting useful psychology job-related things. Therefore, these are the things I put in the letter based on her advice. It isn’t foolproof but I found it helpful. · Clinic Experience As you can imagine, even though you’re trying to get experience in clinical psychology, you’ll still have to explain how you already have experience that will help you in the role you hope to gain experience in. This is why non-psychology experience is useful and any volunteering you’ve done. Just make sure that you explain how your experience will help you in this work experience. · Using the structure of a letter helps the readability of it. · Express your interest in the service and/ or the clinical population the service helps out and outline your psychology-related career goals. This helps the reader know you’re interest and benefit from the experience. · The body of the letter needs to focus on how you’re the right person for the experience. I’ll admit this is a hard one because normally you have a job description to work with and you should address every “Essential Person Specification” on the job application. Yet when it comes to work experience, I found NHS Trust’s websites detail out a lot of good information about how they work, the sort of people they employ and so on. I would say try to get creative and if you can find job vacancies, obviously you cannot apply for them but they can help you structure your letter a bit better. · Make sure your letter flows properly and is easy to read. It needs to be comprehensive but it has to be readable. Thankfully, some of the person specification points tend to work together so you can write about them in a single sentence. For example, your ability to communicate sensitive information and having good communication can be tied together quickly and easily. · Don’t repeat information unless you really can’t help it. · Refer To the Trust’s values. I cannot stress that point enough. That is insanely important and it isn’t hard to find out what they are. · Take advantage of non-psychology experience if they’re helpful in responding to the person specification points. · Make your letter personal by sharing something personal about you. Be it lived experience, how your personal values align with the role or your unique perspective. · Write a conclusion that expresses gratitude for their time, repeat your interest in working with the client group and/ or the service. · Never copy and paste these letters. Instead tailor them to each service. · Limit this letter to about 700-800 words. I’ll repeat that there’s an example of my letter at the bottom of the blog post but these are not guaranteed tips for writing a successful letter. I got a lot of praise for my letters but rejections from the work experience (granted I was writing to the wrong places) so just bare them in mind. It’s Who You Know The final way to get work experience as a psychology student is to make connections, network and find work experience opportunities that way. For example, through my mother’s work she knows the husband of a Lead clinical psychologist for Essex in the UK and the psychologist has said to my mother that she’s willing to gain me some experience whenever I want it. Granted, I’ll be the first to admit that because of the bad summer I had, I haven’t given it much thought nor interest. However, I have been checking out the Essential Criteria for some psychologist jobs lately and there seems to be a minor focus on working with families and carers. I don’t have experience in this area at all and I’m not particularly sure how I would get experience in this area. Therefore, at the time of writing, when my parents get back from holiday, I’ll ask my mother to put me in contact with her friend so I can hopefully get some experience working with families and carers. Personally, I would rather enjoy getting some experience in the systemic and family approaches to psychotherapy. That would be a lot of fun and it would be a nice break from the cognitive-behavioural approach that I tend to focus on a lot. Of course, I know I am very privileged to have a family member who knows a contact for me, but all of us can network, talk to and build relationships with clinical psychologists and other professionals that in the future might be able to help us with work experience. They might offer us work experience working directly with them or they might know people they are willing to talk to on our behalf. Until we start building relationships and networking, you will never know where they can take us. That’s another reason why I’m looking forward to my Gender Identity Clinic at the end of October 2023, because in an ideal world, I’ll be able to build contact there that might help me in the future after my Masters. Maybe even a job, I seriously doubt it but I can only hope. Careers In Psychology Conclusion Overall, we know that psychology students need work experience because it is impossible to get a job in the psychology job market without experience. Also, work experience helps us to develop skills, interest and it teaches us the different jobs we like and don’t like in psychology. However, work experience is still difficult to get if you don’t know where to look. That’s why we learnt you can find work experience online by searching the internet and the websites of the different places you want to gain experience in in case they offer work experience or volunteering. Secondly, you can write a letter to the places you want to gain experience in using the letter structure I shared in case they do offer work experience and just don’t share it on their website. Or they might like your letter so much they are willing to make an exception to their no work experience rule. It could happen, I don’t know. Finally, you might be able to get work experience through your connections and network. Overall, I am really excited for my future work experience coming up in the last quarter of the year because it will be fun, insightful and it means I have more things to report on the podcast from a real-world setting. And ultimately, all this experience will help me grow, develop and be one step closer to becoming a clinical psychologist in the future. Something that will be challenging and maybe even depressing at times, but it will certainly be rewarding for sure. I really hope you enjoyed today’s careers in psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Careers In Psychology: A Student’s Guide To Working 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. The Psychology Work Experience Letter That Got Me A Placement Word count is 729. Dear INSERT SERVICE’S NAME HERE, I am writing to you to request possible work shadowing in your Clinic please for a working week in September 2023. I would like to deepen my knowledge and support working with transgender people. This experience will help me gain relevant clinical expertise for my future career as an assistant clinical psychologist upon the completion of my Clinical Psychology Masters's in September 2024. Also, this would allow me to start gaining experience in an NHS Working-Aged Adults setting in addition to my work experience in an NHS Learning Disability setting in September 2023. I have attached my CV to this email and I have read your website and I am greatly interested in the assessment services you offer clients. Especially learning how gender dysphoria impacts a wide range of areas of functioning and mental health outcomes. For example, mental health, their journey and their interpersonal relationships. Since assessments would allow me to further develop my understanding of how this vital and life-changing part of a service works in a real-world setting. Furthermore, I wholeheartedly support Trust’s values because all care must be delivered with care, respect and compassion because all clients are equal and it is only by being honest and transparent with clients that they will be able to make informed about how to improve their lives. This is even more important when it comes to the distressing natural of gender dysphoria and how it can negatively impact service user’s lives to the point they feel hopeless. Moreover, whilst I currently lack direct clinical experience, I have excellent communication skills as supported in my Outreach and Research work. Since whenever a new participant was coming into the lab for the first time, they would be nervous. Therefore, it was my job to help them relax, open up and realise nothing bad was going to happen to them, and by the end of the experiment, the participant was laughing, smiling and glad to have taken part in the research. Another example of why I would be suitable to work with clients is during my Outreach work as a Student Ambassador, you need to be confident, calm and competent about supporting students you have never met before. This includes encouraging them to share their ideas and experiences, inspire them to realise they can achieve things they never thought possible, like going to university because of their postcode, and it requires teamwork. Outreach events only happen because Ambassadors and members of university staff work together seamlessly to manage the day. Hence, I have good teamwork and listening skills as well. Additionally, I have a high work ethic allowing me to work independently and finish a given task to a high standard. For example, I am the Host of The Psychology World Podcast, requiring me to research a topic, write a blog post, record, edit and upload an episode each week. This requires dedication and passion from me to make sure I deliver for my audience. Another example was during my academic placement year in 2021/22, my supervisor left me to conduct two literature reviews because he knew I would get them done with minimal supervision. Personally, I am greatly interested and passionate in this area because I have a trans male friend and whilst I can only support him so much in the face of transphobia, since he started transitioning years before I met him. I would greatly appreciate the chance to develop my knowledge of transgender people in general so I can understand some of the things and difficulties my friend went through and is still going through. Also, I would ultimately like to help support transgender people in this negative political and social climate that tries to villainise trans people when they are nothing of the sort. This is another reason why during June 2023, my podcast conducted several podcast episodes in support of Trans people to educate the wider public. Overall, thank you for taking the time to read this email, because I would like to gain work experience in the clinic working and supporting transgender people to help educate me further on trans people. In addition, to gaining invaluable clinical experience for my future clinical psychology career. I look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Have a good week, Connor.

With the university academic year starting up again, a lot of Postgraduate and even undergraduate students are starting to think about research projects for their dissertations. Therefore, at some point, they will need to think about ethics and ethics applications. But why are ethics needed in psychology research? Taking a chapter out of my brand-new Ethics In Psychology book, we explore why ethics are needed in psychology research and what happens without ethical guidelines. The findings will scare you for sure. If you love psychology, research and doing the right thing, you’ll enjoy this podcast episode for sure. Today’s podcast episode has been sponsored by Ethics In Psychology: A Psychology Student’s And Professional’s Guide To Ethical Research. 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 Examples Of Unethical Research In Psychology. Extract From Ethics In Psychology COPYRIGHT 2023 Connor Whiteley To truly understand the dire need for research ethics, we need to look at some of the worst research in recent history so we understand what the ethical codes help to make impossible. And to be honest, even though I say these studies are some of the worst in history, back in the day and when these studies were done they were perfectly normal and this was perfectly okay to do. And it is that normality about risking people’s lives, mental health and other important aspects that we now take for granted as participants that is the most heart-breaking about this entire topic. The Tuskegee experiment Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic and the vaccine programme, I was watching the news and they were covering the resistance or slight lack of uptake of the vaccine from ethnic minority groups and the main reason the people on the news said, it was because of the historical abuse of black and other communities by the medical industry so there’s a long standing concern and mistrust between the medical and black communities. However, there was a study mentioned during this news report that helped to explain the distrust very effectively and that was the Tuskegee Experiment. This was an experiment that happened between 1932 and 1972, a 40-year-long experiment, by the U.S. Public Health Service and during the study they wanted to watch the natural progression of untreated syphilis on poor rural African American men. In the study, these men were told that they were going to be receiving free health care, and none of them were told that they had syphilis (a deadly condition). Then when treatment for the condition became available in the 1940s, these men were prevented from getting the treatment and they weren’t allowed to get treatment anywhere else in the world for the condition. All of these men were never ever treated for the condition. So let me jump in here quickly and just mention that the US Government was perfectly happy for innocent people with a deadly condition to die just to see what would happen. Just let that sink in for a moment. The results of the study showed that out of the 399 participants who had the condition before the study began, 28 of them died because of the condition directly. Then another 100 people died because of the related complications. In addition, 40 of the wives of the participants had become infected as well as 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis. As a result of this study, at least 128 died, 40 wives were infected (and I don’t have data at the moment on how many of them died) and 19 children (CHILDREN!) were infected. And to be honest, who knows how many of them died or infected other people. Also, let me be very clear here, all of these people could have been treated. No one could have died, no wife could have been infected and no children could have been born with congenital syphilis. But the researchers running the study chose not to do that. In the end, it took a whistle-blower and 6 very long years before the study was finally terminated, with the ethical issue being here that harm was caused by the researchers denying the participants medical treatment. And if you’re really interested in the study it should be very easy to find out more information on it. Personally, I don’t want to read any more on it because I think this is an utter disgrace, and even with me understanding the sheer levels of racism back then, I still think it’s appalling that this was ever allowed to occur. And that’s why the ethical guidelines had to be introduced. As well as it is still rather difficult to get a clear picture of what happened in any great detail, but this is probably because of long cover-ups at the highest level. That is honestly just a guess though. Other Examples of Unethical Research Come on, you seriously couldn’t have an Ethics In Psychology book without mentioning Milgram, and I partly think that Milgram was one of the most influential figures in the development of the guidelines, simply because his studies were so horrific. If you want to find out more about Milgram, please check out Social Psychology (including the differences between what was actually found and was reported), but just as a little recap he basically got participants to believe they were electrocuting people and killing them in the end. And yes, there is a lot of research evidence in Social Psychology that shows there was a lot of psychological damage done to these participants. Therefore, the ethical issue in this study, and I know this really oversimplifies what he did to people, is he deceived participants to extremely unacceptable levels, and later in the book we’ll talk about what is okay and not when it comes to deception. However, a little well-known and definitely less clear study actually comes from Elizabeth Loftus, you might remember her as the researcher who does a lot on false memory and other memory research. Now I will admit I have a lot of respect for Loftus, because she has really helped us to understand how memory works, is flawed and she is a very impressive woman. Yet this study slightly damages her reputation. This is the “false memories of Jane Doe” case, and if you read my False Allegation book coming out in 2024, this study was meant to pop up but I decided against it. Anyway, what happened was was that there was a Jane Doe in the USA that claimed that she had remembered in therapy her parents abusing her. Leading to her pressing charges and an academic paper by another researcher was written, with Jane Doe’s name never being revealed. However, Loftus and another researcher were clever enough to find out her identity. Now I do not support what they did that I’m about to tell you, but I do appreciate the intelligence that would have taken. Or maybe it was easier than I imagine because the ethical guidelines at the moment or only earlier ones were, so the concept of anonymity might have been weaker. Yet Loftus and another researcher called Guyer believed that these were false memories so they deceived Jane Doe and interviewed her about her “recovered memories” by talking to her and other people under the premise of something else. Then the two researchers went away, wrote a paper about Jane Doe that basically said she was a liar and even though Jane Doe’s name was never revealed during this entire process, the victim herself did this when she sued them because of the academic article. And in the end, it turned out that Jane Doe had actually been abused. Leading to the question of is it actually ethical for researchers to use information about participants without their consent in an effort to challenge their version of events? And this is even more important because this version of events actually had legal implications. In addition, this case does raise a lot of interesting questions and ethical issues. For example, does advancing our knowledge about a topic justify using a lack of informed consent on a person for research purposes? Especially as Jane Doe never gave her permission for this article? As well as was it even okay that Loftus and Guyer sought out her personal information when her name had purposefully been used as Jane Doe? Personally, I don’t think it was, but as you’ll see later on in the book, there are times when it’s perfectly okay to use participant data without consent. This is why ethics is rather interesting because there are so many grey areas. Finally, you have the example of the outright fabrication of research data. Like the examples of dodgy researchers from the Replication Crisis which was were researchers found that a lot of the most famous and amazing psychology studies couldn’t be replicated, and the results weren’t real. They were mere flukes, so you can imagine the amount of damage this did to psychology’s reputation and the issues it caused us. It even caused so much upheaval that Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman (you know from cognitive psychology and thinking biases) sent the following email to John Bargh (who was a key researcher on social priming that a lot of research has basically disproven at this point) in September 2012: “As all of you know, of course, questions have been raised about the robustness of priming results…. your field is now the poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research… people have now attached a question mark to the field, and it is your responsibility to remove it… all I have personally at stake is that I recently wrote a book that emphasizes priming research as a new approach to the study of associative memory…Count me as a general believer… My reason for writing this letter is that I see a train wreck looming.” Source: https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/ Another example of the outright fabrication of data is the massive fraud case at a Dutch University (actually it happened in a number of them) in 2011 because two PhD students of prominent Tilburg University researcher Diederik Stapel realised that their supervisor’s results were amazing and all, but they had never ever seen any data for this and they had never seen their supervisor collect data. And we have to recognise here that these two people were mere students and they had the balls to go over their supervisor’s head to upper university-level management to reveal their suspicions. They could have been silenced, kicked off their PhD programme and blackballed from even working in psychology research again. They had a lot of guts so I completely respect them. After an investigation by the university, it turned out that Diederik Stapel had made up data for at least 30 of his studies, and these were the papers that made him famous. And that we understand why ethics are needed so badly, let’s look at how we actually regulate ethics, because come on, they are seriously needed after these horrific studies. I really hope you enjoyed today’s psychological research podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Ethics In Psychology: A Psychology Student’s And Professional’s Guide To Ethical Research. 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. Psychological Research Reference Whiteley, C. (2023) Ethics In Psychology. 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.

If you’ve done cognitive psychology before then you’ll be familiar with a wide range of biases that impact our thinking, emotions and behaviours that make them less effective and lead to less desirable outcomes. In this podcast episode, we focus on Expectation Bias, how this impacts us and how to overcome expectation bias. If you enjoy learning about cognitive psychology, metacognition and the psychology behind thinking then you’ll enjoy today’s episode. 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 What Is Expectation Bias? None of us are strangers to the idea of expectation because these are goals or dreams placed on us by ourselves, our friends or our families. As well as the vast majority of them are artificial in the form of “should” statements. For instance, you should become a doctor, you should achieve 100% on the test and you should get married. These very high expectations have the power to make us feel bad, worthless and undeserving of good things if we fail to live up to them. This feeling isn’t helped when those around us are disappointed and they take out their anger on us too. On the other hand, whilst the natural solution would be to lower our goals so it’s impossible to be disappointed. You run the risk of having no goals or expectations about yourself that anything good will happen, so this means you have nothing to look forward to life. And that is really sad and might make you feel a little hopeless or lost as well. That’s why having expectations are important but they need to be dealt with. The reason for this is because whenever us, humans, try to make decisions we always pretend to be perfectly logical, perfectly rational and we believe we make decisions based on facts. At least that is how laypeople describe decision-making to me in the past. No, it seriously doesn’t work like that. Especially, because these things called “emotions” and our behaviour shortcut any logical thinking processes we try to have and setup for this decision. This isn’t always bad but sometimes it is. That’s why when it comes to us managing the difference between the actual outcomes of something and the expected outcomes is really hard, and some argue it requires real emotional intelligence. For example, I know I have an awful RStudio statistics test coming up in January and I have some R work to do over the weekend. My expectations is relatively low to be honest, I will pass it but I don’t expect a Merit or a Distinction. That’s the expected outcome and I think I’m having low expectations on purpose to my detriment to be honest. Yet if I do get a Merit in the test then I will be amazed and really happy, but if I fail then I will seriously be annoyed and outraged with myself. As well as I’ll experience cognitive dissonance. Then it will be a question of how good is my ability to manage this difference between a failure and my expected outcome of a pass. That’s a little made up example but the difference between those two outcomes can result in cognitive dissonance. A very unpleasant feeling indeed. How Cognitive Dissonance Relates To Expectation Bias? If we cast our minds back to social psychology for a moment, cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable and awful feeling that we experience when our attitudes and beliefs don’t match our behaviours. This links to expectation bias because our expected outcome is our attitude towards whatever the outcome was of, like my statistics result, and the actual outcome is our real performance, which is a behaviour. Therefore, because this cognitive dissonance comes from our expectations, psychologists have named this, the expectation bias because this is a specific form of cognitive dissonance. Since this is where our initial perceptions and thoughts impact our behaviour in the future. For instance, if there was a promotion going on at work and you were certain you would get it during a very busy week where did an “amazing job” according to your boss and you didn’t get it. Then you would be extremely disappointed but if you didn’t have that expectation then it would have been a normal work week. Another example is that if you’re doing a university group presentation (because I did mine two weeks ago) and you thought you did brilliantly and it was distinction grade. Yet you only got a Pass then believe me, you would be disappointed and seriously annoyed at your group, yourself and your marker. I know I would be, but my group was honestly amazing. Again though, if you didn’t have the really high expectations then you wouldn’t have experienced this dissonance. On the whole, it is perfectly natural for all of us to get disappointed when we have really high expectations, desires, hopes and beliefs that certain things will happen to us. Yet the solution to this cognitive dissonance isn’t to have lower expectations, it actually comes in the form of a few different tips and tricks. How To Overcome Expectation Bias? We’ll look at five different ways how you could overcome the expectation bias. Expect Differences When it comes to having expectations, it can be useful to go into these different areas of our lives expecting things to be different to what we expect. As well as it’s a good idea to believe that these differences will actually make us better off and not poorer. For example, I know from personal experience that our deviations from our plans make life a lot richer, more interesting and it does benefit us. Especially because I used to believe in my first and second year of my undergraduate that I would never ever like cognitive psychology research and I was extremely adamant about that, but I did some cognitive psychology research for my undergraduate and it was the best thing I’d ever done. I also had the same expectation about never ever wanting to do my own psychology research because I hated academic research with a passion. Even though I love the project management side, so I think I hated the idea of designing a study from scratch. Now I’m running my own research project on transgender people and I’m loving it. Overall, expect differences and see them for the amazingly fun things that they can be. They’re interesting and the differences can sometimes be better than the original plan. Have An Open Mind This connects to the last tip because you need to have an open mind that these differences will be weird at times. Yet they can be as good as what you hoped for or even better. That’s what happened to me in the examples above. Express Yourself And Carry On Building upon this, whenever these differences pop up, tell other people how you feel because this allows you to reflect on what happened and other people can help you confront the effects this is having on you. Yet the critical thing here is to make sure you move on and that you’re open to forgetting about what happened. For example, this happened a lot during the first two years of my undergraduate because I was useless at academic writing according to my markers. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I was flat out useless. So I moaned and complained to my friends and my family but in the end I had to move on and I honestly did keep trying to learn academic writing. I kept barely passing but I kept trying and that kept me going until my placement when I actually learnt how to write academically. Don’t Be Rigid I know I have a terrible habit of whenever I focus on a goal, I always hyper-focus and that means that some of the time I do fall short and “fail”. Therefore, what I should do is I should expect what a likely outcome might look like but I shouldn’t attach a judgment to these goals and I should be more flexible in accepting them. A good example is I have a clinical psychology essay due next year and let’s say want to complete it in a week and it’s 2,500 words. Then by the end of the week, I “only” have 1,800 words done so by the standards of my goal I have failed because I haven’t finished it, formatted it, proofed it, etc. However, I should look at it as a win because I have still gathered all the literature and done 1,800 words. So in this example, I would have to focus more on what I have done and remove the negative judgement of the expectation. Embrace Change I know this is a very autistic thing to say but this is a scary one for me. As a result, to overcome expectation bias we should seek to create an internal environment for ourselves where our beliefs, attitudes and mental processes embrace change. This happens normally with our physical body through homeostasis but our emotions don’t do this naturally. There is no such mechanisms for our mental processes. Therefore, we need to create this for ourselves by focusing on the fact that these differences between expected and actual outcomes are normal. To be honest, I think it’s strange and weird if you always achieve your goals no matter what they are or how big they are. Are you a witch or something? Cognitive Psychology Conclusion Overall, I hate it as much as you do when we don’t achieve our goals. I love to have high, very ambitious goals and it is annoying when I fail them or I don’t do as much as I want to. That is something I am definitely realising as I continue my Masters, I simply don’t have the hours I used to have in my day. Yet if we don’t have some strategies or ideas to overcome the expectation bias then I know from experience it can make us feel rubbish, down and like we are nothing but failures. That isn’t healthy. So please remember those tips about overcoming the expectation bias and hopefully you’ll bounce back quickly and be back to doing whatever you want and enjoying life along the way. There’s nothing wrong with having high expectations, and actually, I think ambitious expectations help to make life more fun, joyous and it certainly gives you a few more stories to tell when you need them. A so-called failure has the power to make people laugh, appreciate you and maybe even bond over a shared experience. I really hope you enjoyed today’s cognitive 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. Cognitive Psychology References De Lange, F. P., Heilbron, M., & Kok, P. (2018). How do expectations shape perception?. Trends in cognitive sciences, 22(9), 764-779. Harmon-Jones, E., & Mills, J. (2019). An introduction to cognitive dissonance theory and an overview of current perspectives on the theory. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/how-to-make-better-choices/202307/how-to-deal-with-expectation-bias Rozsypal, F., & Schlafmann, K. (2023). Overpersistence bias in individual income expectations and its aggregate implications. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 15(4), 331-371. 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.

Back in early September 2023, I did a week’s work experience with the NHS Kent Community Health Trust’s learning disability week and I learnt a lot. Also, whilst I didn’t work with the psychology team during the week, I still worked with a lot of other teams and I learnt a lot about people with learning disabilities. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, I’ll explain my lessons learnt from a week in a learning disability team so you can benefit from my work experience too. If you enjoy learning about learning disabilities, psychology in the real world and clinical psychology, you’ll enjoy 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 Why Did I Want To Work With Learning Disabilities For A Week? There were quite a few different reasons why I wanted to do work experience with people with learning disabilities. The first reason was because as we all know, you cannot get a job these days without work experience and you cannot get work experience without a job. Therefore, I wanted to try finding some work experience so I could add it to my CV over time. Another reason why I wanted to work with learning disabilities was because I want to one day do the Clinical Psychology Doctorate and for that you need years of experience with your four main clinical populations. These clinical populations are children and adolescents, working-aged adults, elderly adults and people with learning disabilities (these are people of any age). As well as personally, my bread and butter so to speak isn’t people with learning disabilities, so to some extent I did want to get this clinical population out of the way. Those were the two main reasons why I wanted this work experience. In addition, I have since learnt that this worked out perfectly for me in a sense because it doesn’t matter I didn’t work with the psychology team. Since I’ve been looking at several job descriptions this week and I’ve found that working with a Multi-disciplinary team is highly important, I did that a lot during my work experience, and experience working in the NHS is always needed. Even though I will subtly mention that I learnt a lot about the health and social care sector too. I am amazed some places are still legally allowed to operate and there are some real horror stories about that I can’t repeat here. But you certainly learn a lot if you’re willing to listen. Overall, this work experience helped to start ticking a lot of boxes that I might need for my future career. Something that will only be added to at the end of the month when I do some more specialised and psychology-based work experience up North. What Did I Do During Learning Disability Work Experience? Now I’ll take you through what I generally did each week. Learning Disability Nursing Team On the Monday, I was with the Nursing Team and this is a team of nurses that deal with all sorts of things related to learning disabilities. They can get blood for blood tests, they can sort out anything medical and they are just nurses in general. I sat in with them for their Monday meeting and this was good to see them share horror stories, share what their workload is and them to plan their week. This allowed me to see how teams within the NHS function and how caseload is shared out. Then I got to hear how they travel together if needed depending on the location and they come up with plans about how to deal with certain clients and certain staff members at different locations. Then in the afternoon, I went out with one woman that was the only nurse in Kent trained to get blood from people with learning disabilities. Since blood tests can be extremely scary and distressing for people with learning disabilities. They can have an immense fear of needles, a fear of the rubber band-type thing called Tourniquets that they need to wear to control the blood flow. As well as there can be a fear around the numbing gel that is used on the injection site. Therefore, the nurse and myself travelled to this assisted-living farm, which was another subtle theme of the week that I’ll mention later on. Then we met with a young woman who needed to have a blood test done and we continued her desensitisation towards blood tests. This involved helping her to get used to the numbing agent because she was concerned what that would feel like, so we put a bit on her arm early on so an hour later that small patch of skin started to go numb. This helped her to understand that the numbing gel wasn’t scary and that her arm wasn’t going to fall off. In the meantime, the woman practised having the Tourniquets on her arm and the nurse and the young woman practised breathing exercises, so she could relax when her blood was being taken. One interesting thing about working with people with learning disabilities, and I think this does separate it from a lot of NHS work including psychologists, is that none of this is timed. For example, if anyone in the UK is familiar with IAPT (Improving Access To Psychological Therapies) then a psychologist is basically meant to do 8 one-hour sessions of therapy a day, no excuses and no extra time for paperwork. This is a very strict way of working. However, when it comes to working with people with learning disabilities because you never really know what the client is going to be like that day, you cannot have a time limit on the work. Which is good I think because it was good to work with the client at their own rate of working and making progress. Finally, after about an hour of working on the breathing exercises and talking next steps for the client about what they wanted to achieve in the future, there was a conversation I thought was really useful. One of the client’s main concerns was about if they were testing her blood for cancer because she was deadly afraid of having cancer. The nurse didn’t know exactly what was being tested for but as the nurse said, if she can help relax the client by finding out a little piece of information then she would do it. It’s just another helpful reminder that everyone in health and social care wants to do everything they can to support the amazing clients we work with. Occupational Therapy Team I’ll talk about Tuesday in a moment but Tuesday and Wednesday were on Teams all day, and on Wednesday I was attending a lot of Teams meetings with the Occupational Therapy Team. I did like Wednesday because in clinical psychology, we constantly hear about Occupational Therapy and we know that they work within mental health settings. Yet we never hear how they relate to mental health and what they actually are. Before this work experience, I thought they were to do with job therapy because that’s what the word Occupational means to me. Instead to simplify the explanation, Occupational Therapy is all about working with a client to break down a task enough so they can do more of it themselves. For example, even though on Thursday I was with the Speech and Language Team, there was a lot of overlap here as we were watching a woman who understood a lot of words but couldn’t always follow instructions. In this situation, it would be Occupational Therapy’s job to come in and assess the woman to see if there was a way to make the task, of cooking sausage rolls in this case, any easy for the woman. It might be breaking down the instructions even more, it could be using a different way of communicating (even though that’s Speech and Language’s job too) and just helping the client to be as independent as possible. Independence is the real purpose and drive of Occupational Therapy. Speech and Language Team There wasn’t a great of amount of things that happened on the Tuesday, or nothing that memorable but I know I learnt a lot about the Speech and Language Team. Which I was always going to be interested in considering I had to go through extensive Speech and language therapy as a child because I was effectively mute. In addition, it was really good to learn about how the Speech and Language Team didn’t only deal with talking and communication issues for people with learning disabilities. They did feeding and drinking difficulties too. That was something I had heard mention a few times but I couldn’t understand why this was Speech and Language’s job, because it was eating, not communication. A while later during one of my conversations with one of the Clinical Leads for the team, they explained to me the Speech and Language Team is perfectly suited for these difficulties because they all use the same muscles and mechanisms. If someone is having eating and swallowing difficulties above the lungs then it is Speech and Language’s job to help the client. If it is a bit of food that falls into the lungs or something similar, it is a medical job because that food could start rotting inside the lungs. That would cause a ton of problems if it happened. Furthermore, a non-learning disability Speech and Language Team might have 80% of their caseload focusing on communication and 20% eating difficulties. Yet when it comes to learning disabilities, it is reversed. Due to people with learning disabilities might have bad posture, developmental difficulties and other factors caused by their learning disabilities that prevents them from swallowing and drinking normally. One solution might be for the Speech and Language Team to remind the staff to sit the client upwards more when eating and drinking. Especially if their posture makes them leant to one side. Then on the Thursday, I already explained the afternoon visit when me and one of the Speech and Language therapists went out to an assisted-living farm (a different one this time) to assess a woman for her communication needs whilst she was making sausage rolls. However, in the morning, we went to an assisted-living “house” or apartment complex might be a better term to talk to a man that had had some communication aids designed for him. And this was really fascinating to see how the assessments worked with the therapist’s booklet and there was one test I really liked. What happens is you read the client a very short story and for podcasting ease I will really cut it down. So you might say “Harry was watching a video with his grandson and Harry jumped at a scary moment,” Then to the client you would ask a simple question like “Was Harry alone?” And this time the client said “yes,”. I found this really interesting because I had just watched the man point to tons of objects and say what they were, but he couldn’t follow a “simple” story. It was an interesting and useful test. That’s a brief summary of the Speech and Language Team, even though I will admit I probably learnt the most from these people. Then again, Speech and Language therapy has a large overlap with psychology in my opinion, I’ve listened to enough about it during my Developmental Psychology and Applied Psychology lectures over the years. Learning Disability Physiotherapy Team This was another useful day of learning even though I will probably never use this information directly in my career. For a bit of background information, physiotherapy in learning disabilities is a critical area because people with severe (and to a lesser extent the other forms of learning disabilities) need a lot of physio work because they can be immobile, they don’t walk upright so this can weak the bone density in their ankles and they can develop bad posture which has knock-on effects for muscles and bones. I am not a physiotherapist so that is the end of my explanation on the background. There were two visits involved in the day because the guy I was with had clinical supervision for an hour in-between. Anyway, the first visit was to a local college which I had been meaning to visit for ages as part of my university Outreach work. It’s a nice college and we went there to continue some walking work with someone who had recently gotten a new walking frame. For this visit, we helped the client get into the walking frame, helped them test it out so they could walk on their own and then I watched a whole bunch of interactions. All I’ll say about this was something I really understood about people who work with people with learning disabilities is how extremely, extremely patient and compassionate they are. I do not have the patience or the compassion needed for this clinical population, but I do for other ones. I don’t think this makes me a bad person because we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and it only makes me admire people who want to work with learning disabilities even more. They’re incredible because I couldn’t do it. Afterwards, in the afternoon, we went to a Hydrotherapy session which was a lot of fun because I learnt a lot there about the human body and different members of Physio team. There are a lot of benefits to hydrotherapy for learning disabilities including: · Improved range of motion in joints · Increased aerobic capacity · Decreased muscle spasticity and tone · Reduced residual lung capacity · Improved circulation · Improved mental and physical health and wellbeing · Reduced pain when exercising · Reduced restricted movement Also, it allows them to build up their gross and fine motor skills. For instance, their balance, strength, coordination and grip. Sources are provided at the end of the blog post. As a result, it was useful to get into the hydrotherapy pool (a big heated swimming pool to be honest) and listen and learn and even get to hold and do an exercise with one of the clients. The exercise I did with the woman was a type of swinging to help open up the side of her body that was constantly bent because of her posture. Also, it helped to loosen up the spine too. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Overall, whilst I didn’t get to work with the psychology team at all that week, I still had a brilliant and fascinating week where I did manage to learn a lot about the NHS, different teams and people with learning disabilities. I know this information and this experience will help me in the future and it actually helps me to appreciate the other teams even more because I know, like psychology, they are just trying to do their best to help and improve the lives of people with learning disabilities, in a healthcare system that can be tricky to work in for sure. And I look forward to gaining more experience over time but this one was a great placement to get started with. 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 References Benefits of hydrotherapy for children with complex needs - Which School? for Special Needs (specialneedsguide.co.uk) https://www.disabilitysupportguide.com.au/information/article/benefits-of-hydrotherapy-for-people-with-disability https://ndis.property/benefits-of-hydrotherapy-for-people-with-disability/ 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 University Mental Health and Mindset being released recently, I wanted to talk about mental health for university students. The academic year is starting up again and I know for a lot of new and old students, there will be challenging times ahead. Therefore, in this University Student Life and Clinical Psychology podcast episode, we’ll look at how to maintain your mental health over the academic year. If you’re a psychology student then this is going to be a very useful podcast episode for sure. Today’s episode has been sponsored by University Mental Health and Mindset. 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 Extract From University Mental Health and Mindset COPYRIGHT Connor Whiteley 2023 How To Maintain Mental Health For University Students: As I write this in mid-May 2022, it is mental health awareness month and because I normally write so much about mental health on my podcast and in my books. It can be very difficult to remember what I have and have not mentioned for this blog, so I wanted to create a post where all the information was in one place. If you’re a university student wanting to protect and maintain your mental health then this is a great post for you. Note: as always this blog is not professional or any sort of official advice, and if you are struggling with your mental health then please seek professional help. Why Is Mental Health Important For University Students? To put it simply when students come to university and are studying throughout their degree, they will be placed in a very different environment. For example, you might have moved away from home for the first time, you might not have any friends at your new university, you might struggle to keep up with what your degree demands and so on. Including you might be struggling with imposter syndrome. All these factors might be liberating and interesting for some. Personally moving away from home was not a big deal for me because I’ve always been highly independent, but it was still great to go home and see the family throughout the year. However, some people these might be factors that you struggle with. For instance, moving away from home for the first time can be a very scary thing to do, and you might feel lonely. That’s why mental health is important to look at so whatever you face you can be somewhat prepared on how to deal with it. But most mental health-related topics like the ones in this post, focus on a different angle. They focus on preventative measures. How To Protect Your Mental Health? Whilst different facets of the next few sections would have been mentioned in other posts, this will focus on these topics from the mental health viewpoint. As well as the last section is a must-read, it’s very interesting. Work-Life Balance This almost goes without saying these days but considering May is not only Mental Health Awareness Month, but the start of the exam season. This is even more important, because you need to remember to study, revise but socialise too. As a result, if you don’t socialise or take a break. You will burn out, hate your studying and you will harm yourself for the long term. As well as you will hardly do your mental health any favours but creating all this psychological distress for yourself. Therefore, please remember to study but make sure you have breaks too. Make sure you go out with friends, watch a film or just do something else that is not university-related. There is a bit more information in How To Be Kind To Yourself During Exam Season. However, when it comes to mental health, making sure you prevent a meltdown, unneeded stress and more. You do need to take your work-life balance seriously, and please know that doing all-nighters does not make you a good student. Sure it might make you feel like one, but it won’t do you any good. Just bear that in mind. Socialising and Combating Loneliness I’m pretty sure there is a loneliness blog post coming in the next few weeks but university can be a very lonely time for people. Especially people who don’t want to go out to clubs, bars and do the whole drinking side of university. As well as making friends can be difficult for people to as there isn’t a very set way of meeting people and actually engaging with them. Due to we’re all university students here and we can all remember times when we all just went to the lecture theatre, barely anyone spoke to each other and then we all left. For people who struggle to make friends as it is, that is hardly helpful. Resulting in an increased risk of loneliness and all the mental health difficulties that that creates for people. Thankfully, because of how universities are set up (at least UK universities), there is a wide-ranging set of ways to help fix this problem. The most obvious being that people should try to engage and talk more with their fellow students on their courses. I know that is hard but you’ll be surprised by where some conversations can lead you. Also it’s a good thing that UK universities have societies (social clubs) formed around a particular activity so you can almost always find like-minded people who are into the same things as you. I’ve met plenty of great people throughout societies. The only slightly negative thing I will say is you do need to be aware that some universities do not update their society listing to get rid of the ones that are closed. I was a little disappointed when I first started my university because there were plenty of amazing sounding societies, but they were closed. Equally, there are some great ones that are open, filled with great people and you definitely fill less lonely after going to a society event. Reading With my podcast being psychology focused, mental health does pop up rather often (because it’s what me and my listeners enjoy) so I wanted to share two posts with you from the early days of the podcast. As a result of whilst I’m surprised I haven’t covered stress since 2020 (a very stressful year indeed!) there was one episode that discussed a brand new study at the time that found the most effective stress relief was reading. Then you might find New Ways To Deal With Stress useful too. As a frequent reader (who always has a scarily big reading pile) I can testify to the powerful relaxing nature of reading. Because the problem with modern English teaching in school is it kills a lot of people’s enjoyment for reading, because people think they have to analyse everything they read. No! And there is nothing better than enjoying a great book by some great authors. A book that can transport you to another gripping world with loveable characters and endings that are just perfect, and leave you wanting more. As we’re on the topic of mental health, reading makes perfect sense why it would be relaxing and protect mental health. Due to the entire point of commercial and genre fiction is to be escapist, and given how your real life can be what is causing you the stress. Reading is the perfect way to escape your real life and relax for a few hours. Therefore, I cannot recommend reading enough to help mental health. And with it being the summer soon, if your friends and family are busy (and you have a garden), then read in the garden for a bit. That’s very relaxing. Finally, if you want some book recommendations, please check out: Facebook for weekly recommendations from top authors Instagram for weekly recommendations My own range of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and sweet romance books. Conclusion: As mentioned before, mental health is something to take seriously, but you can really improve it if you simply take a few steps and adopt them into your lifestyle. Make sure you maintain a good work-life balance, you socialise and combat loneliness and it never hurts to read. If you start adopting some of these tips now, you might be able to avoid a lot of distress down the road. And isn’t that what we want? 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 University Mental Health and Mindset. 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) University Mental Health and Mindset. 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.

This psychology podcast focuses a lot on different areas of clinical psychology, psychotherapy and various mental health conditions. I do this because I truly hope to inspire some psychology students to go into clinical psychology and become psychotherapists. It can be extremely useful, interesting and be extremely rewarding work. Yet we do need to ask ourselves from time to time, what actually makes a good therapist because it seriously isn’t down to what degree they have. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, we’ll be looking at five different factors that help to make a good psychotherapist that can bond with clients, improve lives and decrease psychological distress. If you enjoy mental health, psychotherapy and careers in psychology then you’ll love today’s episode. This psychology 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 Makes An Effective Therapist? Now we’ll look at five research findings that help to make an effective therapist. You Can Make Mental Health Difficulties And Still Be A Great Therapist One of my favourite research findings about psychotherapists comes from Orlinsky et al. (2011) that found that after graduation, the vast majority of therapists have actually been in therapy themselves. This happens for a very, very wide range of reasons and this brings us to an important topic within psychology. Everyone thinks that to be a therapist you shouldn’t have any mental health difficulties and you shouldn’t have anything “wrong” with you and if you do then you will simply fail as a therapist. This has no basis in reality and this isn’t reflected in the literature. Mainly because everyone experiences personal growth and this growth can take a lifetime. Of course, unresolved trauma and other mental health difficulties can leave us vulnerable to being psychologically triggered by the experiences of our clients. This becomes a problem when it leads us, as current or future therapists, to experience empathic failure, advice-giving instead of therapy, emotional distancing and even disassociating in the therapy sessions. Thankfully (I think?), one way to test if there is an area of psychology or therapy you get triggered by is whenever you’re being taught a certain topic and you get triggered by it. Then this is a warning sign that you might have issues to deal with. Personally, I definitely agree with this point. Since I was talking to a friend a while ago about how my ideal clinical population is transgender people but my friend pointed out how the topic of suicide and self-harm will certainly come up. That was before I went to therapy and even during my trauma lectures last year at university, I was uncomfortable. So it would be interesting to see how my journey of healing has helped with me dealing with these topics from future clients. I think I could deal and help clients with these topics but until I get experience with them again, I simply will not know for sure. Overall, if you have mental health difficulties, it doesn’t automatically mean you’ll fail as a therapist. Personal Qualities Are Important For Therapy Outcomes One finding that should come as no surprise to you wonderful podcast listeners is that a therapist should have certain personal qualities that are strongly linked to improved therapy outcomes. For instance, a good therapist is comfortable with emotional intimacy, can tolerate strong emotions in themselves as well as other people, they’re empathic, have healthy personal boundaries and they can hear and take criticism without being defensive about it. There are other additional qualities that would be great in a therapist but they’re some of the most important factors shared by good therapists. As a result, if you’ve just listened to that short list then rate yourself on these traits. See how good you think you are and see what traits you could work on to improve. I know I’m working on my healthy personal boundaries and empathy, because I am not perfect and that’s okay. Most Therapeutic Models Are Equally Effective At Treating Most Mental Health Conditions Thirdly, the “Dodo Bird Effect” proposes and it is supported by research that most models of therapy are equally effective for most types of mental health conditions. Although, this isn’t saying that therapeutic models don’t matter because they seriously do and I think they can be extremely useful in guiding clinical practice, but this is why you need to pick models you feel comfortable with. It doesn’t really matter what models you pick as long as you like them and this liking will help you be more confident, happier with your work and this confidence with come through your work with your clients. For example, I really like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, systemic therapy and the person-centred approach because they really resonate with me and how I like to work. Therefore, I would never ever choose a graduate programme with psychodynamic work because I hate it and that hate would show in my therapy work with a client. That would only harm the client and my job satisfaction. However, I would say as a counterpoint, know when you can’t help someone because there are better people to help them. For example, going back to my own point, as much as I love CBT, systemic and person-centred approaches and I hope to be qualified in them in the future. If anyone came to me and I thought Acceptance Commitment Therapy or Internal Family Therapy would be better for them, I would have to send the client to those specialists because I couldn’t help them. I think all the therapeutic models have their place to some extent, so as future or current psychologists we need to understand when other specialists are better able to help our clients. Different Graduate Degrees Don’t Make A Therapist More Effective Personally, I don’t know if this is a US-centric point because I didn’t know there were so many different types of psychology graduate degrees, but it turns out that the longer you study doesn’t make you a better therapist. For example, it doesn’t matter if you of a Masters of Science, Arts, Education, a PhD, PsycD, MD or an MSW. Whilst it will certainly impact your career opportunities and the sort of career you end up doing, when it comes to therapy it doesn’t make you more effective. And as much as you might be doubting me, it is a very strong research finding that has been replicated in a ton of studies according to Christensen and Jacobson (1994). Of course, this isn’t to say that all graduate programmes give you the same learning experience. Since if you want a PhD then this is great if you want to conduct research and go into academia. If you want to do a PsyD then this is great if you a lot of supervision and classroom learning. Then if you want a Masters of Social Work then this might offer a wider community way of looking at mental health. However, the point remains. According to the research, the extra years of training offered by a doctoral programme don’t make someone a more effective therapist compared to a shorter degree programme. Experience Alone Doesn’t Make A Therapist More Effective Lastly, in the UK, there is a large focus on the Reflective-practitioner model, that focuses on clinical psychologists reflecting on their practice and finding new ways to improve. This is exactly what we need to do if therapists ever want to improve. Since feedback is important in clinical practice and it allows us to learn and adjust the way we work based on it. There’s a great article called “The Secrets of Supershrinks” that I’ll link to in the reference section below where some psychology researchers discuss how the best psychotherapists routinely get feedback from their clients and they actually listen to it by adapting their practices in the process. Personally, I totally understand this because our clients are the people we are trying to help, so why wouldn’t we go to them to get better? It is useless for us to talk only to our peers and supervisors about our working practices, because they aren’t the people we’re trying to help. It is our clients that are our reason for going into the office every day, so it only makes sense that we get their feedback and take it onboard. Of course, this is flat out scary at times and I couldn’t imagine asking a client for feedback because, what if they’re mean? What if my ego gets hurt? And all those other very human fears. However, a larger part of therapy is being vulnerable and letting go of our egos. We aren’t perfect, our work will never be perfect and sometimes we just need someone to tell us something and then we realise that we were doing something wrong and now we can fix it. Um, doesn’t that sound like what we do for our clients? So why don’t we allow our clients to do the same for us in terms of feedback? Maybe you were too pushy, rude or insensitive about asking a certain topic. Maybe the client found your polite laughter hurtful or something. I actually had a counselling assessment this week and it really did annoy me how smiley and how much the woman interrupted me. It was annoying. I’m glad she won’t be seeing me because I really didn’t like her. And yet because she didn’t want feedback, I couldn’t tell her and she might annoy another client that really, really needs her help. Just thought. Clinical Psychology Conclusion When it comes down to it, our graduate programmes give us the knowledge, tools and techniques to improve lives and become therapists. Yet ultimately, it is down to us as human beings to become good therapists. Mainly because therapy really is about relationships and two humans together in a room talking, bonding and wanting to help the person in distress. No graduate programme can teach us how to be a better human and a better listener. That all comes from within a person but this isn’t fixed. We can become better therapists and people over time, and if you remember those 5 features of what makes an effective therapist then you might be well on the way to improving. And helping so many amazing people that walk into your therapy room hoping that you can help them decrease their distress, improve their life and hopefully change their life for the better. 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. Clinical Psychology References Christensen, A., & Jacobson, N. S. (1994). Who (or what) can do psychotherapy: The status and challenge of nonprofessional therapies. Psychological science, 5(1), 8-14. Duncan, B. L., Miller, S. D., Wampold, B. E., & Hubble, M. A. (2010). The heart and soul of change: Delivering what works in therapy (pp. xxix-455). American Psychological Association. Grenyer, B. F. S. (2010). The heart and soul of change: delivering what works in therapy, (Book Review). Miller, S. D., Hubble, M. A., Duncan, B. L., & Wampold, B. E. (2010). Delivering what works. Nemec, P. (2012). Review of The heart and soul of change: Delivering what works in therapy. Orlinsky, D. E., Schofield, M. J., Schroder, T., & Kazantzis, N. (2011). Utilization of personal therapy by psychotherapists: a practice-friendly review and a new study. Journal of clinical psychology, 67(8), 828–842. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20821 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.

When I was researching emotional dependency, because that is a very common relationship issue between partners, one of the therapies I discovered for the problem was Emotionally Focused Therapy. Therefore, this piqued my psychological interest and we’re going to explore this fascinating therapy in today’s episodes. By the end of this clinical psychology episode, you’ll understand what is emotionally focused therapy, how does it work, why is it used and much more. Today’s 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 What Is Emotionally Focused Therapy? Emotionally Focused Therapy is a short-term psychological therapy that aims to give a couple a way to rekindle their emotional and physical bond that tends to get lost to disappointment and alienation from a partner. This is a common dynamic in distressed couples. As a result, Emotionally Focused Therapy draws on attachment theory and similar research so the therapy believes the best lever or vehicle of therapeutic change is the security of the partner connection. As well as this connection is a great source for individual and couple growth too. Therefore, the love in the relationship is transformative and the reforming of this emotional and physical bonds allow the couple to be open and responsive with each other. This allows them to create a mutually satisfying and supportive relationship, one that will last in the present and for the future. In addition, Emotionally Focused Therapy works on the research showing that our emotions are the organising principles of our lives. As well as when a partner shows the emotions of longing and sadness compared to isolation then this is a powerful tool for reestablishing that lost contact and responsiveness of a partner. Then once this contact has been restored, it can become a source of mutual comfort. In other words, a buffer against the many stressors life might throw at our clients. Moreover, Emotionally Focused Therapists allow couples to discover any unmet needs for closeness in the relationship are normally underlined by alienation or anger. Then the therapists help them realise that sharing this vulnerability opens new ways to communicate and create instant opportunities for the couple to be tender with each other. This was phrased by one of the developers of Emotionally Focused Therapy, Sue Johnson as “Emotional Responsiveness- tuning into and supporting the other- is the key defining element of love,” How Does Emotionally Focused Therapy Work? We know that Emotionally Focused Therapy focuses on a couple’s emotional experiences and reactions first and foremost, and it’s based on attachment theory and the importance we place on connections with others as a source of comfort and safety. As well as a vehicle for our own growth but the growth of the relationship too. However, if we dive into this therapy a little more then we learn that these connections to others can be physical. Like our blood and flesh romantic partner. Yet they can be a mental representation of an important figure inside us that we form our relationships around. or these others can be the different parts of ourselves. The human need for others is hardwired into us and it is only our connections that help us feel safe enough to grow, take risks, explore the world and develop into the person we want to be. When this doesn’t happen then our nervous system takes over by experiencing arousal and people are prepared for avoidance of risk, vigilance because of perceived danger and they have a sense of hopelessness. According to Emotionally Focused Therapy, all these are risk factors for mental health difficulties. Personally, going off my own experience here, this is definitely true I think because my mental health was at its worst when I didn’t feel safe in my own life and I felt utterly hopeless about my future. Therefore, if there is a psychotherapy that focuses on improving that sense of safety and security then this is only a good thing for the people that need it. Additionally, regardless of whether Emotionally Focused Therapists are working with real partners, mental representations of relationships or in couples therapy, the therapy still explores the nature of our connections and the wide range of emotions they create. The therapy helps people to actively restructure these relationships too so the client can help pave the way for new, more rewarding experiences. In other words, by restructuring these relationships, it will hopefully help the client not to keep having the same negative emotions and making the same “mistakes” in future relationships. Overall, I’ve already spoken about the attachment theory bits but Emotionally Focused Therapy helps a client to understand how their negative ways of interacting in a relationship are normally related to fears of loss. Then a therapist can help the client to learn how to openly talk about their fears, identify any attachment needs that their fear masks and then instead of the client using their fear to distance themselves from the partner, they can use their vulnerabilities to seek closeness too. Allowing the couple to solve any problems they come across together. When Is Emotionally Focused Therapy Used? This form of psychotherapy is really useful when a couple comes to a therapist feeling distressed and alienated to the extent that they believe their relationship cannot be repaired. The couple might be showing signs of extreme grief, loss of trust, anger, fear or even a sense of betrayal. Also, these negative emotions are normally so strong that it’s believed they’re actually protests or despair over the loss of the connection and the lack of physical and emotional closeness that the couple once had. As well as linking to the section above, in Emotionally Focused Therapy these feelings are thought to be hiding unlovability, helplessness and fear that pop up when these bonds of closeness are damaged. As a result, Emotionally Focused Therapy is useful for people and couples who have difficulties showing their emotions or they unfortunately believe that showing emotions are a sign of weakness. This is honestly one of my biggest, biggest pet hates in the entire world because emotions don’t make you weak. That is such an outdated, such a silly notion that I hated more than anything else on this entire planet. I flat out hate it. Anyway, Emotionally Focused Therapy can also be useful for people who have problems with emotional regulation as their intense reactivity is believed to be a result of emotional alarm bells being set off by fears of abandonment. Then in individual therapy using Emotionally Focused Therapy, the therapist helps to form a secure alliance with the client that becomes a safe space for any emotional expression and exploration. That’s the reason why this therapy can be used for people with emotional dependency because Emotionally Focused Therapy helps to deal with fears of abandonment, intense reactions and their unhealthy attachment styles. That is really good to know about for future reference. It is worth noting that Emotionally Focused Therapy can be used in a lot of other places too because it does directly target emotional isolation. This is important because emotional isolation is believed to be the core aspect of a range of mental health difficulties like depression and anxiety and my personal favourite trauma. Also, this therapy can be used to repair family bonds where parent-child relationships have become negative, for instance. Personally, I mentioned this earlier, because I can understand how Emotionally Focused Therapy is useful in trauma victims. Since my own trauma, it does make you feel very alone, very shameful and very guilty so you cannot talk to or express your emotions to other people very easily and this causes tons of mental distress. Therefore, by creating a safe space for this emotional expression is flat out critical. I know a lot of therapeutic orientations do this space safe work because it is basically the therapeutic alliance, but Emotionally Focused Therapy seems to focus on it more. What Should You Expect From Emotionally Focused Therapy? When it comes to the therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy is typically delivered once a week for 8 to 20 sessions. Then after the therapist understands the history of the couple, they will start to watch their interaction patterns with the couple being asked to identify their most pressing issues. After questioning, listening and watching the couple, the therapist can start to understand the unspoken insecurities and fears that underline their negative interaction patterns. Normally, the first few sessions of the therapy focus on de-escalating the emotional reactivity and distress that the couple experiences, even more so in their life outside the therapy session. They do this by getting the couple to expand their emotional response patterns so they can respond and recognise their partner’s needs. In the second stage of the therapy, the focus changes to restore the deep emotional bond between the partners. This allows the couple to create a sense of security that allows partners to share their insecurities and vulnerabilities so they can comfort each other and this serves as a secure base for the individual’s and couple’s growth and their exploration of the world. Remember everything in this therapy comes back to attachment theory. Furthermore, it has to be mentioned that an Emotionally Focused Therapist isn’t a passive person in the therapy process, they’re very active in the therapy. Since the therapist has to reframe the distancing behaviour as withdrawal or fear and highlight that this isn’t a pathology, this is actually a misguided attempt at a connection. This allows a partner to express their deep feelings for each other and what they need from their partner in a more adaptive way. Finally, the final sessions focus on consolidating the gains made by the couple in the other sessions. Such as, the couple have managed to improve their mutual support system and then they’re asked to talk about an ongoing or an old problem so they can develop new solutions to it. This helps to get the clients to practice connecting and being comfortable instead of disconnecting whenever the relationship gets difficult. This can only happen because the couple now understand the true emotional needs that used to drive their negative interaction patterns. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Personally, I always enjoy looking at different forms of psychological therapies because we only really get to learn about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. And as much as I love that therapy, it is certainly nice to change things up at times and broaden our therapeutic horizons. Therefore, Emotionally Focused Therapy is based on attachment theory and a couple’s emotional experiences and reactions as well as the importance humans place on connections with others as a source of comfort and safety. As well as a vehicle for our own growth but the growth of the relationship too. Then by restoring this connection in a relationship, the therapy helps a couple to recognise and deal with the emotional needs of the other person. And something I am recognising more and more as I deepen my own knowledge about clinical psychology, it is there is seriously no one way to help a client. Also, no single therapy has all the answers for a client so I truly believe the most important thing we can do as current or future psychologists is to try and learn about as many therapies as possible so we can pull different levers and use different techniques depending on the client. Adaptability really is the name of the game when it comes to clinical psychology and Emotionally Focused Therapy certainly helps us adapt for our clients. 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. Clinical Psychology References Greenberg, L. S. (2010). Emotion-focused therapy: An overview. Turkish Psychological Counseling and Guidance Journal, 4(33), 1-12. Greenberg, L. S., & Goldman, R. N. (2019). Clinical handbook of emotion-focused therapy (pp. xiv-534). American Psychological Association. Greenberg, L. S., & Johnson, S. M. (1988). Emotionally focused therapy for couples. Guilford Press. Greenberg, L. S., Ford, C. L., Alden, L. S., & Johnson, S. M. (1993). In-session change in emotionally focused therapy. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 61(1), 78. Johnson, S. M. (2009). Attachment theory and emotionally focused therapy for individuals and couples. Attachment theory and research in clinical work with adults, 410-433. Johnson, S. M. (2019). Attachment theory in practice: Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) with individuals, couples, and families. Guilford Publications. Rathgeber, M., Bürkner, P. C., Schiller, E. M., & Holling, H. (2019). The efficacy of emotionally focused couples therapy and behavioral couples therapy: A meta‐analysis. Journal of marital and family therapy, 45(3), 447-463. Wiebe, S. A., & Johnson, S. M. (2016). A review of the research in emotionally focused therapy for couples. Family Process, 55(3), 390-407. 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.