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After looking at male suicide as a whole in episode 122, Where we learnt how suicide rates, the general psychology behind suicide and why it’s increasing. We now need to investigate a new approach to treating and preventing male suicide. And this will be very eye-opening for all of us! This episode has been sponsored by Formulation In 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. How Socials Factors Impact Male Suicide? Like all mental health conditions, male suicide is caused by a number of different interacting factors, but social factors will be the focus of this episode. Simply because these are the factors that can be changed to create more user friendly services for men, building upon the last episode. Furthermore, the following groups are most likely to be affected by male suicide: · Unemployed Men · Divorced Men · Military Veterans · Aboriginal Men · Men with mental health conditions In addition, the reason why we’re looking at these groups of men is simple. For a lesser or greater extent, all these groups share the themes of social isolation, suspicion from wider society, financial strains amongst others. Not only does all this put an additional strain on their mental health, but all these factors can sadly result in wider society giving them a lack of empathy for one reason or another. All meaning these groups of men are less likely to get the empathy and support they need. Social Alienation: This is a particularly awful social factor for everyone, but even more so for these groups of men. Due to when people experience a perceived or real rejection from society then this can lead to a strong sense of social alienation. Leading to the person feeling like they don’t have a purpose or meaning in their life anymore. Both of those are primary reasons for staying alive. If we use a practical example, in most western countries (the US, UK, France, etc) men tend to get meaning from their lives from two sources. (And yes I know I’m being generic here but it shows the point perfectly) They tend to get meaning and purpose from being in the workforce and being the centre (or head) of a family. Therefore, when a man loses his family in a divorce or losses his job and becomes unemployed, this can put massive strains on their mental health. As the men could believe they don’t have meaning or purpose in their life anymore. Stereotypes and Male Suicide Additionally, stereotypes that stigmatise individuals. Like aboriginal men, men with mental health conditions and veterans. These can have even more damaging consequences because these stereotypes lead to people not having as many opportunities for work or dating in the first place, so this leads them to not socially integrating and becoming marginalised. Leading to social alienation again. And this is why I hate with a passion with stereotypes because most of them are so completely wrong, so they only do more damage for no flaunt of the sufferer. For example, the stupid myth about everyone with a mental health condition is dangerous or depressed people are just lazy. No! But hopefully over time these myths, lies and stereotypes will get less and less powerful. What Does This Mean For Prevention Programmes? Now we know the information, how do we apply it to the real world and hopefully try to save lives? If we’re going to talk about a new or renewed approach to help prevent male suicide. Then the programme would have to do at least three things. Firstly, just like the principles of Formulation, we would have to tailor-make the therapy or support to the male in particle. Therefore, the man would get tailored support to their needs to make sure the transition they’re undergoing is as easy as possible. Like in a divorce or them becoming unemployed. Secondly, like I talk about in Abnormal Psychology Third Edition, the psychotherapy or support would have to be adapted to become cultural appropriate since that works best (check out the book for studies). For example, you would have to adapt the therapy given to Aboriginal men in a different way to military veterans to make sure the therapy is as effective as possible. Finally, the overall mental health service (which is somewhat broken as it due to budget cuts, the focus on the biomedical focus and other factors) definitely has a role to play. Since research shows that men prefer grassroots services and local programmes for their mental health, so support through be developed through local services. Some of these grassroot places include spiritual or religious organisations, local peer-to-peer support groups and other non-profits. As well as these organisations are actually well placed to help with mental health, the feelings of social alienation and loss of meaning and purpose in life. Wrap Up After covering the basics of male suicide, I know that there is a lot that needs to change in the world before the silent crisis of male suicide can start to slow down, and hopefully stop one day. But I really hope by talking about the psychology of suicide on the podcast, I can start to educate people about it. (And educate myself too) In the following suicide-based podcast episodes, we’ll start to look at the really interesting aspects of suicide and cover aspects I had no idea were related to suicide. So fascinating episode ahead! But please, if you, your friends or anyone you know ever thinks about suicide, please seek professional help. There are some links at the bottom of the post to help if needed. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Formulation In 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-men/202109/the-silent-crisis-male-suicide I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7 contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

Police psychology is a fascinating area of forensic psychology that examines police behaviour and why the police act as they do. It can be used to explain lots of behaviours that have featured a lot in the news recently. For example, some police officer’s extremely damning attitudes towards women, homosexuals and minority groups. As well as most of these attitudes are from their police culture. Hence the focus of it in today’s episode. If you want to learn about police behaviour, you need to read on! This episode has been sponsored by Police Psychology: The Forensic Psychology Guide To Police Behaviour. 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. Extract From Police Psychology- COPYRIGHT 2022 CONNOR WHITELEY Moving onto our first ‘proper’ topic of the book, we need to look at the idea of police culture because it has dramatic effects on the police and how they operate as you’ll see in upcoming chapters. However, to get us started, the idea of there being a personality or set of traits that makes a good police officer is dubious. Because if this personality exists at all, this is most likely down to the requirements of police work rather than a set of already existing traits. (Ball, 1984) Personally, I’m not even sure I know what these traits would be. Maybe some are hardworking, caring, relatable, good problem solving amongst others. But if you’re interested in this personality idea, you should read Personality Psychology and Individual Differences because it shows what personality traits actually are. As I think in this case personality traits are being used as a buzzword and not what they actually mean. Moreover, Ainsworth (1995) suggested two days in police work are never the same. Because the officers will have new suspects, new cases, reports, evidence and more to file each day. Different crimes will be committed and so on. Leading to the training of police officers are a compromise between what is practical in training and what would be ideal. With the earlier generations of police officers only getting on the job training. Which let’s face it, isn’t ideal because these young officers could easily learn bad habits from senior officers. As well as Ainsworth (1995) discussed that past training focused on available powers for police and encouraged route training of legislation. Now there’s a growing emphasis on extensive training. Hence police academies, at least in the USA. Also training is increasingly concerned with how to deal with the wide variety of incidents the police may encounter. This is a good idea I think because when something happens to an officer they need to know how to react. Be it a bank robbery, chasing a suspect, being assaulted, etc. Officers need to know how to react. How Does Training Affect Officers? One of the reasons why I do psychology and explore it as much as I can is because every so often you find a very strange fact or something that surprises you about behaviour. And I believe this is one such thing. Since the process of becoming a police officer leads to changes without the officers knowing. Which I smile at because I find it amazing how we can change as people and not know how we’ve changed. Sure, I know the same applies to me but I think it’s a strange quirk of behaviour. To test this, Garner (2005) conducted a study looking at pro-police position and attitudes with police trainees through training and a year later. The results found drastic pro-police position and attitudes changes on the trainees. But the officers believed strongly they hadn’t changed at all. Again, I think this is great. We know they’re changed but the person believes they haven’t changed in the slightest. Police Culture: Diving into the Police Culture part of the chapter, part of the training officers receive is on the job training with senior officers. Which as I mentioned earlier can be regarded as practical training and some senior officers may use practices that are less than ideal. Leading trainees to learn bad habits. I’m mentioning this because it’s important to consider when thinking about the occupational subculture or police culture. In addition, Skolnick (1996) was the first to suggest the culture of police officers influence the work of the police force and this culture is unique to the police. For example, the workplace culture in a hospital is going to be different to one in a school. Furthermore, the police culture refers to the characteristic patterns of thinking, beliefs, behaviour and interactions that police officers share. Essentially these are normal, accepted and prescribed standards for police personnel. But this doesn’t mean they’re fixed or unchanging patterns. Linking this to the beginning of the chapter, officers may be picked because they have the qualities that a good officer has but they learn and become indoctrinated into the police culture by interacting with other officers. And I’m not trying to make the police sound evil and like they’re brainwashing their officers because all cultures do this. On the societal level, this is known as enculturation and socialisation. On the workplace level, this is how we learn the norms and what’s accepted in our place of work. For example, the professionalism required in a major company. On an individual level, this is how we learn about our family culture and what’s accepted in the home, family and social groups. Nonetheless, this can be problematic as it can be at odds with what officers are taught at police college so it can cause some problems for the officers as they adjust to the reality of police work. This feeds strongly into the next few chapters. Also, it’s the exact same in clinical and forensic psychology because we’re taught the best way to treat offenders and reduce reoffending is rehabilitation. (And yes it does work and we need to invest more in it. Read Forensic Psychology for proof) But when we get into the real world and we learn about politics and budgets, we learn how little rehabilitation is actually focused on. At least in forensic psychology. So that does lead to some annoying readjustment and learning of what reality is like. Overall, the police force as an organisation exists in two parallels. Because the structural aspect deals with what should happen and is formal. Whereas the cultural aspects deals with what actually goes on in the organisation. We’re spoken about police culture, but what’s cop culture and how does sexuality affect police officers? I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Police Psychology: The Forensic Psychology Guide To Police Behaviour. 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Police and Criminal Psychology Reference: Whiteley, C. (2022) Police Psychology: The Forensic Psychology Guide To Police Behaviour, CGD Publishing, England I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Basics of Cult Psychology Cult psychology draws on so many great areas of psychology from clinical psychology to social psychology and more. Also cult psychology is critical to learn about because not only is it extremely interesting but it helps us to recognise and protect ourselves against cultic influence. So let’s learn more about the basics of cult psychology. This episode has been sponsored by Cult Psychology: A Guide To The Personality, Social Psychology, Cognitive and Forensic Psychology of Cults. 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. Basics of Cult Psychology: Extract From Cult Psychology (COPYRIGHT 2022 Connor Whiteley) As much as we all want to dive into ‘proper’ cult psychology, we really need to learn the basics first. And unlike a lot of psychology basics, the basics of cult psychology are very fun and worth a read. But first, why is it important to learn about cult psychology? Personally, I would love everyone to learn about cult psychology because by learning about cults, how they work and how to defend ourselves. This can help us keep ourselves, friends and family safe from cultic influence. Vulnerability and Recruitment: When it comes to cults, there is a very sad truth. No one joins a cult willingly. No one willingly chooses to give up their freedom and replace their lives with a superior leader that controls them. Instead people are recruited into cults. Now I understand if you’re a bit confused by the distinction (I know I was at first). But the difference between willingly joining and being recruited by a cult is there’s a lack of informed consent. Another way to illustrate my point would be to imagine yourself wanting to join a cooking club. You love cooking, you love making friends and this cooking club doesn’t try to influence you or control you. Then it’s likely you’ll willingly want to join it. However, if this cooking club tries to influence you, use manipulation tactics and start brainwashing you. Then you aren’t going to willingly join that. Instead you’re been manipulated and recruited to join the cooking club. As the treasurer for my university’s baking society in 2020/21 that was a very scary idea. So, how are people recruited by cults? It mainly comes down to vulnerabilities due to a cult can easily learn someone’s vulnerabilities and use them against them. As well as sadly everyone has different individual vulnerabilities. No one is perfect and this brings me back to the important point about learning cult psychology and tactics. Therefore, in case anyone tries to use these tactics and vulnerabilities against us. We can hopefully recognise and deal with the situation. Some of these vulnerabilities are situational and others are internal. For example, the death of a loved one, moving to a new country, area or city, being on the Autism Spectrum, high hypnotisability and having strong active imagination are all vulnerabilities. Interestingly, if a person makes excessive use of hypnosis, medication, drugs and other activities. Then this can actually induce an altered state of consciousness. Overall, all these vulnerabilities increase a person’s susceptibility to being recruited into a cult. And sadly chances are if someone does have a lot of these vulnerabilities then it is rather likely they will be recruited into a cult given the chance. Unless the person has strong critical thinking, media literacy and a good supportive social network around them to keep them grounded. In addition, what media literacy means is a person’s ability to critically analyse, thinking and evaluate the source of the information. Example of Media Literacy Personally, I’m not afraid of making myself sound like a snob (I’m a very normal person in real life) but this is why I only read and trust two or three media outlets in the UK. As well as I don’t read tabloids and they’re very manipulative and I don’t trust their reports. Mainly because there was one article in a British Tabloid in 2021 trying to get people shocked and horrified that a woman spent £6,000 a month on living bills. At first, I agree that seems a lot and no one should spend that much money, surely? Then I evaluated what the tabloid was saying and it mentioned the woman paid so much a month for a professional subscription. Just like psychologists, doctors and lawyers have to. Overall, my point is this tabloid wanted to make people annoyed and shocked for no reason. Because this woman was almost certainly a high flying professional on at least £50,000 a month so to her and her partner £6,000 is probably not a lot. Other Risks: In addition, to the risks above, there are a number of risks that can increase a person’s vulnerability to recruitment by a cult. For instance: · Trauma · Phobias · Alcohol or drug problems · Learning or communication disorders · Unresolved sexual issues A quick note on these other risk factors is trauma, learning or communication disorders and unresolved sexual issues can possibly all relate to a person’s want for support and community. As well as sadly if a person is isolated and doesn’t have a good social support network then a cult with all those members can seem rather tempting. Furthermore, in more recent years, there has been new risk factors that we’ll look in various ways later in the book. Thus, some 21st century risk factors are: · Internet addiction · Lack of touch, social distancing and isolation · COVID-19 pandemic · Severe economic disruption · Increased time online Overall, if a person is in a vulnerable state then they can fall for one of these many techniques and be recruited into a cult. What Is a Cult? After talking about the various vulnerabilities people have and how cults recruit people into their ranks. We need to define what is a cult? I want to say up front that the word cult shouldn’t be used lightly because as we’ll see in a moment cults can have horrific consequences to the members. As well as a group shouldn’t be called a cult because of its unorthodox beliefs. For example, a new branch of a religion that believes in a more liberal approach to the religious teachings isn’t necessarily a cult. Simply because of its unorthodox beliefs. What a cult is, is it’s usually authoritarian in nature and it’s led by a person who has complete or almost complete control over its followers. And this all comes down to influence. Cult Influence and Control To be able to control a person, a cult must influence them and recruit them into the group. With the aim being the cult influence is designed to replace a person’s identity with a new one. Now, this is done in a lot of different ways and some of these tactics we will look at in the book. However, each type of cult has different ways of acting and conducting themselves. Some types of cults are: · Political · Religious · Large group awareness training · Self-help · Multilevel marketing · Commercial · Conspiracy theory · Labour/ sex trafficking · Mini-cult (family/ one-on-one) Building upon this, different cults do things differently. For example a political cult focuses on influencing people through political means and drawing on their political beliefs. Whereas a self-help cult would draw on a person’s desires for self-improvement and to better themselves. Moreover, one of the biggest problems with trying to recognise influence is we’re being influenced every single day and we’re use to it. I talk more about persuasion and social influence in my Social Psychology book. But we’re constantly being exposed to influence, and this can make it difficult to detect. Here’s some examples of sources of influences in everyday life: · Business · Psychotherapy · Politics · Religion · Educating · Media · Relationship · Parenting Nonetheless, I do need to say influence can be positive and helpful. As seen in psychotherapy, educating and parenting. But influence can be detrimental too. For instance in some parenting, relationships and religion. I really hope you enjoyed today’s psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Cult Psychology: A Guide To The Personality, Social Psychology, Cognitive and Forensic Psychology of Cults. 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Cult Psychology Reference: Whiteley, C (2022) Cult Psychology: A Guide To The Personality, Social Psychology, Cognitive and Forensic Psychology of Cults, CGD Publishing, England I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Continuing with our look at dementia, which will be a focus in 2022, I wanted to share with you some ways to reduce your risk of getting dementia and keeping your brain healthy. And whilst people tend to think about these methods later in life, it’s important to think about keeping your brain healthy in any part of life. As well as Dementia Experts say that keeping your brain healthy in your forties and fifties is critical when it comes to preventing dementia. But whenever you decide to make changes to keep your brain healthy, you would see a great overall benefit to your health! This episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuropsychology, Neuroscience 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. Ways To Keep Your Brain Healthy: Avoid Smoking: We’ve all heard the different ways that smoking damages your physical health and it links to a number of different medical conditions. But in terms of your mind and mental health, studies have shown that smoking increases your risk of developing diseases like Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia. In addition, as psychology students and professionals, we all know the psychology of addiction and why it is hard to give up smoking. But maybe thinking about it as a way to protect your brain, reduce your risk and preserve your cognitive abilities for the long term, might just give you or your loved ones the motivation to stop. As well as there are plenty of professional websites to find tips to help you stop smoking on the internet. Staying Connected This definitely links into How 100 Year Olds Keep Their Minds Sharp? but as we’re talking about dementia is it very important to stay connected with people regardless of our age. As staying connected means we still have to absorb lots of social stimuli that keeps our minds sharp, engaged and active. This all contributes to keeping our brains healthy, and this is why it’s a good idea to join clubs, go to senior centres and be active in older age as it keeps them connected to wider society. Additionally, more and more research is suggesting that enjoyable face to face interactions can slow the symptoms of dementia. For example, deteriorating memory as listening and responding to people requires quick thinking and responding. Keeping Your Blood Pressure and Cholesterol In Check Something I’m starting to notice is how many different areas of psychology dementia fits into as it touches on clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, biological psychology and more. And that’s what’s interesting about dementia. Anyway, having high blood pressure and high cholesterol can cause you to experience a lot of different health problems, so it’s important to keep them in check. As well as keeping them in check does reduce your risk of developing dementia. Consequently, if you wanted to reduce your cholesterol, you could reduce your consumption of biscuits, cheese and red meats and increase the amount of fruit, vegetables and oily fish that you eat. Eating Well and Balanced Now I’m definitely going to define what this actually means because we have all heard this so many times, but no one ever tells us what a balanced diet and eating well means. Therefore, eating well and balanced is a great way to reduce your risk of developing several health conditions in later life. And what it means is eating a balanced diet could help to reduce your risk of dementia by reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease. In addition, eating well means eating healthy. But it doesn’t mean cutting fats out altogether as some fats like those found in oily fish, nuts, seeds and avocado do have health benefits. As well as a good balance of fibre, fruits, vegetables every week can go a long way to keeping your body healthy and giving it the nourishment it needs. And in case I’m losing anyone because this is a psychology podcast and they don’t see a psychology connection. The connection is by keeping your brain healthy (the brain is covered by cognitive, biological and neuropsychology too), it reduces your risk of developing various conditions that can cause your cognitive abilities to decline, which results in your behaviour changing. As well as human behaviour is the purpose of psychology so that’s the connection in case you were a bit lost. Exercise And Keep Your Brain Active: Whilst this has been mentioned on the last Brain health episode, I want to remind you of it because keeping your brain both mentally and socially active is vital to reduce your risk of dementia. As it keeps your brain busy and processing information. This can be as simple as learning, doing puzzles, crosswords, listening to a certain psychology podcast (Ha!) or reading nonfiction books. It’s all about keeping your brain active and making sure it has new information to process. That’s the real key. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode and if you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuropsychology, Neuroscience 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. Buy Me A Coffee Clinical Psychology and Dementia Reference Alzheimer’s Research UK- https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/YourBrainMatters_Apr2021.pdf I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Lots of people plan different things for the new year and if you’re is how to boost mental health then you should find this episode very useful. As in this positive psychology episode, you get to hear about the positives and negatives of boosting mental health from the research. This episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. How To Boost Mental Health? Happiness: This is the area that people always start with as they investigate how to boost mental health. Since people who are happy do experience a lot of positive emotions and this does help to boost their well-being. However, there is a major drawback here. As I talk about in 5 Myths About Happiness, if people constantly stride for happiness then this can backfire. As noted by Gruber, Mauss and Tamir (2011) of an influential paper when they acknowledged that whilst some activities that are designed to increase happiness, do actually work. For example, taking time out of your day to reflect on what you’re grateful for. Some do not work. As well as whatever the activity is, if you expect it to work only to find out it doesn’t. Then this could leave you feeling worse than before. Another example of the slippery slope was found by Kim and Maglio where they found that if people take too much time out of their day in the purse of happiness. They’ll find the amount of time to actually get stuff done decreases. Resulting in more unhappiness because they haven’t done anything. Overall, when it comes to boosting mental health in terms of happiness, please don’t start out with high expectations that by doing these activities will be a million times happier. As if you do that you are sadly setting yourself up for disappointment and sadness. As well as please don’t feel like you need to spend tons of time searching and becoming happier. I know this isn’t what a lot of people want to here but you might want to look beyond happiness to boost mental health. Meaning: Lots of different pieces of research over the years has shown the importance of meaning in life, having a purpose and feeling like you’re reaching your potential. However, meaning isn’t everything as Steptoe and Fancourt (2019) showed that there are downsides to meaning. Since university students who were found to have perceived education and relationships as more meaningful also reported greater levels of fear of failure. Additionally, the authors of the paper suggested the meaning in life wasn’t only associated with happiness, but the fear and worry of losing the meaningful experience as well. On the whole, definitely pursue meaningful experiences. I cannot stress that enough because we all need meaning in our lives and we need to experience different things to get out of the constant grind of everyday life. But prepare yourself for the possible anxiety this new experience could cause you, yet even then that anxiety might not be a bad thing. You might want to check out Make Anxiety Your Friend for more information. What Is A Good Life? We haven’t covered positive psychology a lot on the podcast because it isn’t an area I’m particularly interested in. However, this area of psychology generally looks at what makes a good life and it focuses on the positive side of human behaviour, focusing on the role of meaning and happiness. Nevertheless, the need for psychological richness is often a major criticism of positive psychology as this subfield doesn’t focus too much on this need. With psychological richness being described as plentiful of interesting and perspective-changing experiences. Of course not all of these will be positive experiences. We all know of times when we’ve hated experiences where people have hostilely or even gently challenged our most fundamental principles. In addition, Lane and Mathes (2018) showed regardless of the culture there was always a good minority of people who preferred a psychologically rich life compared to a perfectly happy and meaningful one. Personally I really do understand this point because I want to live a happy and meaningful life. But I also want to live a rich life filled with interesting opportunities and I want to be challenged. This is why I always want to learn more about psychology and other areas of my life. I want to be proved wrong sometimes so I can change, develop and grow as a person. Therefore, if you want to boost your mental health maybe think about making your life more psychologically rich. (Listen to this podcast and read my books might be one way to start!) If This Goes Wrong This section is more of a pre-emptive section in case you don’t achieve your goals. For example, you don’t achieve the high levels of happiness, meaning or psychological richness that you desire. I want to mention first of all, just because you started and made a little progress. It probably means you have done a lot more than you realise and you still started. You still did something and that is an amazing start. In addition, I know I’ve recommended this all on the podcast before but this is a sort of failure. Therefore, here are some top ways to deal with this failure in case you need it: · Don’t worry too much that you were apparently over-confident and wrong. · Try not to take evidence of failure too personally · Resist perfectionism · Be kind to yourself And it’s that last one that is so important. Be kind to yourself and be pleased that you set yourself these goals and actually did something. That’s amazing all by itself. Overall, I know this was an eye-opening episode that probably challenged you in some ways. I know it challenged me but I hope this post helped all of our new years to start with a bit more psychological richness in our lives. Whatever you plan to do this new year, I wish you the best of luck and a very happy new year! If you want to support the podcast, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Positive Psychology and Clinical Psychology References: Lane, D. J., & Mathes, E. W. (2018). The pros and cons of having a meaningful life. Personality and Individual Differences, 120, 13-16. Kim, A., & Maglio, S. J. (2018). Vanishing time in the pursuit of happiness. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 25(4), 1337-1342. Steptoe, A., & Fancourt, D. (2019). Leading a meaningful life at older ages and its relationship with social engagement, prosperity, health, biology, and time use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(4), 1207-1212. Gruber, J., Mauss, I. B., & Tamir, M. (2011). A Dark Side of Happiness? How, When, and Why Happiness Is Not Always Good. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), 222–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611406927 I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

Psychopathy is a great topic because it captures the imagination as well as the vast majority of psychopaths are male. But of course women do have psychopathic personalities too, and whilst I talk more about psychopathic personality in my Personality Psychology and Individual Differences, I wanted to tell you about the signs of psychopathy. And all of them are extremely interesting. This episode has been sponsored by Personality Psychology and Individual Differences. 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. 5 Signs Of Psychopathy Superficially Charming This is what everything thinks of when they think of psychopaths because they are charming to get their own way. Since unlike you and me, we tend to be transactional in our relationships because that’s fair and the right thing to do. Whereas psychopaths will charm their way without self-restraint to get what they want. You might notice a person with psychopathic personality as being too slick and overly nice to work their way towards their goal. But going back to us being transactional, the psychopathic personality is not. Instead they are instrumental and only use people for what they are good for. Then without a clear reason or cause, they can turn cruel, cunning and even dangerous. Meaning you might realise a person with the psychopathic personality’s style is to belittle and seduce others to get what they want. And not the normal style of bonding with others and helping them as much as they help you. Deceitfulness As psychopaths always feel the need to be on top and their lack of ability to bond with others as well as they have distorted self-esteem. Psychopaths will lie, cheat, rationalise their actions and twist the truth to such extreme degrees that reality is unrecognised to any objective people. And this is what I want to stress. Because it is natural for people to lie, cheat and do what psychopaths do to a lesser extent. But psychopaths will always go an extra ten miles in their deceptions because they have to do it for themselves due to their distorted self-esteem, their inability to bond with others and always be on top. Boredom and A Need For Simulation: This point connects to the one below and psychopaths have shallow emotions as well as a high stimulation-seeking drive (Personality Psychology) that means they get bored quickly. Resulting in, when combined with their need to constantly seek out stimulation, psychopaths being quick to take chances and take part in risky behaviours. Again if we compare the “normal” person to psychopaths, we all engage in risky behaviours from time to time, but if we’re sensible we at least think about it first. Psychopaths don’t weigh up the risks and think about it logically. They just go for it because it’s fun and thrilling and they need the stimulation. Shallow Emotions: What makes this next characteristic so strange is how charming psychopaths can appear. Since psychopaths can have “good” conversations with people about their lives and they can appear to be present and engaging in the emotional conversation. Then the psychopath can just change the conversation in an instant and that’s when people start to realise how shallow their emotions are and how much they don’t care. For example, you might be talking to a psychopath about a family member that you loved dearly dying last month. Then the next second the psychopath could change the conversation completely. Of course, even if we didn’t want to be in the conversation because we didn’t know this person and the person telling us is a stranger. We’ve all been in these sorts of conversations forced on us by others. We know to let the other person finish, say supportive words then maybe change the conversations. Psychopaths don’t understand that because of their inability to bond with others A History of Shady Conduct To wrap up this look at characteristics of the psychopathic personality, we need to acknowledge that with psychopaths having no moral centre and a high stimulation-seeking drive. It is hardly surprising to hear that sometimes their behaviour can catch up with them but sadly it is normally far too late for their victims by this time. For example, in the book Decoding Madness, the author describes a case where a psychopath was admired by their supervisors because of his effectiveness in sales. But then the risky behaviour of their fraud and killing got revealed. All in all, psychopaths will engage in risky behaviours and take chances to commit crimes because it’s thrilling, exciting and it feeds into their stimulation seeking needs. Conclusion: Overall, I hope you enjoyed this personality psychology episode as much as I did. Psychopathy it isn’t a good topic to experience first hand, but I do enjoy looking at it from afar so I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to support the podcast, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Personality Psychology and Individual Differences. 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. Buy Me A Coffee Personality Psychology References Lettieri, R (2021). Decoding Madness: A forensic psychologist explores the criminal mind. Prometheus Press. Chapters 6 and 11 Workman, Lance. “Interview: The memory worrior.” The psychologist; The British Psychological Society 25. (2012): 526-529. Kiehl, K (2014). Psychopath Whisperer: The science of those without conscience. Broadway Books. I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

After experiencing a personal loss to dementia in early 2021, I really want to raise awareness about Dementia and some ways to keep our brains healthy. This is extremely important considering that research shows up to 40% of Dementia cases are preventable. Also I’m mentioning this on a psychology podcast because Dementia causes severe cognitive decline in people, so it’s of interest to us from a cognitive psychology and clinical psychology viewpoint. This episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience and Neuropsychology Third Edition. 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. What Is Dementia? Dementia isn’t a single thing. Instead, it’s an umbrella term for a wide range of conditions that we’ll look at later. This is similar to the umbrella term we all know, Anxiety as anxiety can be broken down into Phobias, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder and more. Furthermore, dementia impacts a lot of functions like speech, thinking patterns and memory. As well as in terms of the neurological damage, dementia attacks the brain and eventually kills the brain cells of a person. Interestingly enough, this can leave the brain around 140g lighter than a healthy brain. Personally, as much as I want to draw on my own experience, I’m not comfortable sharing that so openly. But I do want to say how scary this condition is because you basically watch one of your loved ones slipping away until they only become a shell for someone (who isn’t your loved one) to be there. Dementia isn’t a condition that we should leave because it only affects the older people in society because it can affect people in their early 50s too. Causes and Types of Dementia: As the main audience for this podcast are psychology students and psychology professionals, I guess this should come as no surprise that dementia does not have one cause, it has many. Since it can be caused by a number of brain diseases and whilst Alzheimer’s is the most common disease, it is far from the only one. And each one has its own early warning signs to watch out for. Therefore, for the rest of the podcast episode, you’re going to hear about some of the types of dementia and what their early warning signs are. Alzheimer’s Disease With this being the most common dementia disease with 50% to 75% of dementia suffers having this condition, dementia scientists know a lot about it. Meaning we know Alzheimer’s develops due to a strange build-up of proteins in certain parts of the brain. For example, the brain areas that are responsible for memory and spatial navigation. Then over time this strange build up spreads to other areas of the brain. Leading to the sufferer developing more severe symptoms. In terms of early warning signs, here are some: · Getting lost · Getting confused by the time of day or the date · Regularly forgetting names, events and faces And it’s that regularly that is important because we all forget names, faces and events from time to time, it’s normal. But it’s when it happens regularly that we should at least be warn something could be wrong. Vascular Dementia This is another one that I hear about quite often and this occurs when blood flow is reduced to the brain, meaning the brain cells don’t are enough oxygen and nutrients. Leading to the brain cells to die. It’s this damage that is called Vascular dementia. However, one of the problems with this condition is because the reduction of blood can happen to any part of the brain, it can affect everyone in different ways. This only adds to problems for researchers because you cannot treat people with this condition as a uniform group in your samples. And as psychology people, I know we all face struggles with this problem. For example, just because you use university psychology students in your study, it doesn’t mean you can treat them all the same. Especially when you start to consider their cultural experiences, attitudes, sexualities, genders and more. Yet some warning signs are: · Changes in personality · Slower thinking · Disorientation and difficulty walking Dementia with Lewy Bodies Moving onto our penultimate type of dementia, this is where things start to get really interesting because we’re now talking about the types I’ve never heard of before. Therefore, Lewy Bodies are small chunks of protein that develop inside the nerve cells in the parts of the brain responsible for thinking, movement and memory. As a result, Lewy Bodies disrupt the nerve signals in the cells and over time they cause the nerve cells to die. The warning signs are: · Visual hallucinations and vivid dreams · Changes in alertness and confusion · Stiffness, trembling and difficulty walking Frontotemporal Dementia Personally I think this is a very scary form of dementia to think about because… well I’ll just tell you about it. Unlike other forms of dementia, this disease doesn’t attack cells pre se. Instead it makes the front part of the brain smaller, which as we know from Biological Psychology is responsible for our emotions, personality, higher-order reasoning and more. All in all this is the part of the brain that makes us, us. Meaning when this part of the brain shrinks and proteins build up in this area, it causes a person’s personality to change in a number of ways. Here are the early warning signs: · Changes in diet or overeating · Lack of personal awareness · Lack of understanding, empathy or social awareness Conclusion Overall there are a lot of different types of dementia but I hope after reading or listening to this podcast episode, you have a better understanding of dementia. It’s a horrible, awful disease but like everything if we keep researching it and becoming more aware of it. Then hopefully we can do something about dementia in the future. We’ve already come a long way in our understanding, but we are nowhere near done so I hope if anything, this podcast has given you a bit more awareness about this awful, brutal disease. On our next dementia focused episode, you’ll hear about new ways to keep your brain healthy and hopefully prevent dementia. Also you might want to check out my Cognitive Psychology because it looks at Semantic Dementia. If you want to learn more and support the podcast, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET 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. 5 Ways To Keep Your Brain Healthy Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! What Is Dementia and Types of Dementia Reference: https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/YourBrainMatters_Apr2021.pdf I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

After wanting to do a psychology podcast episode for a while on suicide, I’ve finally felt like I’m ready to do one because this is a difficult topic for anyone, some more than others. Because no one wants to talk about suicide and I understand it because it is a “dark” topic. But that creates problems because people experiencing suicide ideation, don’t feel like they can talk to anymore about it. Therefore, the aim of this episode is to help shine some light on the psychology of suicide so we can all become more aware. This episode has been sponsored by Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments of Depression, Anxiety and More Third Edition. 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. Male Suicides: In the USA around 35,000 men commit suicide each year because of various factors and some of these we will look at today. In other words, in the USA that means 1 man kills themselves every 15 minutes. In Canada, around 3,000 men die each year by suicide, over 50 men each week. Also I know I’m only talking about men here and that’s because in the USA 75% of suicides are done by men. In addition the most concerning thing about this is that these rates are rising because the US Centers for Disease Control report found that suicide rates had increased by around 2% from 2006 to 2017. As well as this might not sound like a lot but it’s actually a 26% percent increase from 1999. Therefore, I just want to stop for a moment and… say how scary this is. Personally this scares me that so many men (and women) feel the need to commit suicide because that life has gotten so bad and they don’t feel like they have any other option. Additionally, I know a lot of people who have never experienced suicidal ideation can’t fully understand it, and some even just call these people attention seekers. (That’s outrageous) But as humans we are hard-wired to survive, live and pass on. What I’m trying to say here is no one wants to commit suicide for no reason. These people feel like they have to commit suicide. Inadequate Suicide Prevention Measures: Before I talk about the next section, I want to mention that I am not discrediting, attacking or “slating” current suicide prevention services, what I am doing is commenting on them from a book called Men’s Issues and Men’s Mental Health by Springer that the book points out are core arguments about the existing approaches. Also as I’ve mentioned on the podcast before, in psychology I love how we’re always critical thinking so we can improve services so we can help people and make their lives better. The first argument the book makes is about the narrow focus on the concept of masculinity and how it lacks any peripheral vision to look at the adverse social context experienced by many men. Personally, I have always said this and this point extends into societal factors as a whole. Since traditionally men are meant to be strong, emotionless people who get on with male jobs, and they leave the women to be the emotional wrecks that society depicts them as. This traditional view of men is useless, extremely unhelpful and it is a major factor in male mental health, because of this societal view men don’t want to come forward and get professional help. Due to getting professional help makes them look less manly, weak, pathetic and all that other rubbish that society thinks about men who want to better their lives. Therefore, this traditional view of men does need to change. Blaming, Shaming and Male Deficits: This is another great point to make about suicides and this can be taken in two parts. The first can be broadened to all suicides there is a blame and shame culture around suicide because I’ve heard of tons of comments from people from all walks of life blaming the person who committed suicide for their actions. But I want to come back to an earlier point because no one wants to kill themselves, there are factors in their life (both genetic and environmental) that make them feel like they have no other option. So the fact that instead of looking at their life and blaming those factors, people feel the need to blame the person who killed themselves because they felt they had no other option. This is just… sad, outrageous and awful that as a society we feel like it’s okay to do that. In addition, it is possible that this is one reason why people don’t speak out that they’re experiencing suicidal ideation because they don’t want to be blamed for how they’re feeling. As well as I mention this in different forms in various mental health episodes of the Podcast. This is sadly nothing new. However, on the flip side, there’s blaming male mental health on alleged male deficits. For example, males are typically stubborn. I know some men are, but that is no excuse not to help people or not take their mental health seriously. Male Friendly Services Now this is an argument I’ve adopted from the references below because the friendliness of a mental health services towards a group of people is always a problem in clinical psychology, and this is where the problem with the lack of diversity within clinical psychology really shows itself. Therefore, I want to hammer it home again because with the lack of male clinical psychologists from different backgrounds. It means that there are that many relatable people that men can have therapy with and build a therapeutic alliance. Since men might not want to talk about their difficulties in front of a woman because they may believe they shouldn’t look “weak” in front of the fairer sex. This is where a male therapist who they can relate with could be useful. Conclusion: Originally, I was going to go on to talk about more the nitty-gritty findings of suicides in men but I’ll save that for another podcast episode. Yet I do want to finish up by saying if you or someone you love is complementing suicide, please, please, please seek immediate help. In the UK, you can contact Samaritans and Mind. In the US, you can use the 24/7 contact service at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. If you’re in a different country, please find your country’s equivalent and get help. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Abnormal Psychology: The Causes and Treatments of Depression, Anxiety and More Third Edition. 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. Buy Me A Coffee Have a great day! Clinical Psychology References: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/suicide-canada-key-statistics-infographic.html https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-men/202109/the-silent-crisis-male-suicide I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

There are lots of myths about happiness that exist in the world and some of these can be damaging. These myths can damage our mental health but our social connections as well, so in this episode we’re going to be looking at happiness and the myths around it. You’ll learn something! This episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide to Social and Cultural Psychology Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Social Psychology: Myths About Happiness Also I wanted to mention the reason why I’m talking about this on a podcast that’s mainly for psychology students and psychology professions is because being a student and professional can be stressful jobs. Therefore, our happiness can be a roller coaster and when this happens I don’t want you to fall for any of these myths that can end up making you feel worse than you might already be feeling. “If I have lots of money, I’ll never be sad,” I’ve never ever understood this myth because we’ve all heard stories of millionaires being sad and feeling alone. But happiness isn’t made from tangible as well as once the basic needs of a person are taken care of, the luxuries that money can buy don’t make much of a difference. In addition, a study from Princeton in 2010 found after $75,000 a person’s happiness isn’t affected by money. So please don’t obsess about money and this myth about happiness. “When I find true love, I’ll be happy,” Whatever your beliefs about love, this is possibly the most common myth that humankind believes because love is great and it can make you feel wonderful. Equalling happiness. But it can hurt too, it can be extremely painful so just because you find love, doesn’t mean happiness is a certainty. Anyone who’s had a breakup can sympathise with this point. “If I have a fulfilled life, I can never be unhappy,” Now this myth is a bit more complicated because whilst having a fulfilled life can stave off mental health difficulties and other negative outcomes for the person. It’s when we get into the nitty-gritty of this myth that problems start to appear. Mainly because everything has a life cycle and enjoyment is no different. So it’s normal for what made your life fulfilled to not bring you as much enjoy as before. That’s why doing new interesting things is important in life and keeping things varied. Again, that’s another relationship point, I’ve heard of lots of relationships that died because nothing new and exciting was happening in them. Drawing on a personal example, there have been lots of activities over the years that I started to find boring after a while (and other activities involved painful memories). Which is why I now make sure I do different things from time to time. For example, in my personal life, I cook new things, I go to different places with friends and family and I make sure I learn about new things. In my psychology life, I make sure I learn about new areas of psychology, I read things by different psychologists and so on. Overall, yes definitely try and have a fulfilled life to be happy and to keep your mental health. But be prepared to find new things to love if the old activities aren’t as fun as they use to. Dealing With Two Myths In One: There are two myths I want to combine and these are myths about “I have to be more than okay to be happy,” and “If you’re not happy, I’m sad,”. These are two interesting myths because on the surface we always think of them as being true but they aren’t. At least not at first, because you might not be happy when you’re just okay but you might be content with life and that’s fine. There is nothing wrong than being okay with your life and enjoying it. Since when your content, you aren’t feeling sad, depressed and your mental health is okay. So what’s wrong with that? The problem with this myth is when people feel they need to always be happy and I understand why, feeling happy is amazing and we all want it. But when you’re always seeking to be happy this can be taxing and probably leading you to feel sad and like a failure for not being happy. Overall, happy is very strange concept that you won’t always feel but being content is enough. Think of it as a “happy” middle ground between sadness that affects your mental health and happiness where you feel amazing. Therefore, I want to end this psychology episode by saying: being sad that you aren’t happy won’t make you feel any better. However, if you enjoy your life, be content, make the lives of other people better as well as being kind. Then that will definitely help you feel better. I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Social Psychology: A Guide to Social and Cultural Psychology Third Edition. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Social Psychology Reference https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-fitness/202108/7-myths-about-happiness

With Christmas Day and other holidays fast approaching, we need to acknowledge that these can be stressful times. And as psychology students and psychology professionals, we know the downsides that stress can have on mental health and no one wants to experience a decrease in mental health at this time of year especially. Therefore, in today’s clinical psychology episode, I’ll give you five ways to reduce holiday stress so you can stop stressing and go back to the enjoyment of the season. This episode has been sponsored by Forensic Psychology (I wanted to change up the sponsor). 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. 5 Ways To Reduce Holiday Stress Be Mindful of Worsening Mental Health Difficulties The reason why this is a clinical psychology episode is because of this point entirely. As I’ve mentioned on the podcast before mental health conditions and difficulties are maladaptive coping mechanisms and stress tends to make them worse. Meaning the holiday season can be extremely difficult for some people so we need to be mindful of this. Whether this is our own mental health or if one of our friends or family members suffers from a mental health difficulty, we need to help them get through the season. Then you’ll probably find because we showed kindness to them, they will probably help us too. In addition, it isn’t helpful to mental health sufferers that in the holiday season we are constantly said to be happy and cheery. This isn’t helpful to these people especially if they aren’t doing well always. Therefore, we all need to support each other and if you, your friends or family members aren’t doing well. Then support them of course, but don’t feel bad for calling a doctor or helpline. Plan Fun Things We all know the craziness of the holiday season. There’s so much shopping to do, presents and food to buy. There’s lots of food to eat, you need to check who’s coming on the big day and on and on and on. This is why I always try to help my mum as much as I can in the Holiday season because I don’t want her to get stressed as she planned Christmas. And I don’t want you to even. The entire holiday season is meant to be joyous and filled with love, laughter and enjoyment. Not stress. This is why planning fun things that are just fun is so important. You need time to create new fun memories and do things that take you away from the stress of planning, shopping and cooking. You could walk around your neighbourhood to look at the Christmas lights, bake something fun and interesting or simply have some quality family time without the stress. Finding Alternatives With all the amazing people who listen (or reads) this podcast coming from all over the world with different life circumstances and situations, this point is critical and it applies to all of us at different points in time. Sometimes people will be in financial difficulty and I have heard this from other people about the stress this causes them at Christmas. Since Christmas is thought of as a time of overeating, indulgence and spending a lot of money. For some people this isn’t possible, making them feel bad and causing them a lot of stress. Since they may believe they are failing their family. As a result, finding alternatives can be a great idea this holiday season because instead of stressing out about buying lots of presents. You could get your family together and get them to pick one person to buy one present for them. I know this sounds awful to some people because this means they’re going to get less presents but if money is tight and Christmas is unaffordable. Then this still gives people a chance to celebrate Christmas and maybe the family can put money towards another aspect of Christmas. Like the Christmas day feast. If Times Are Tough, Don’t Hide It Building upon the last point, the economy is constantly changing I don’t know when you’re going to be reading or listening to this episode. You could be listening when it’s released or in three years time, so I don’t know what the economy will be like. However, Christmas is always a reminder for some families how little they can afford and for other families it’s a reminder of what they can no longer afford. Yet a major problem with this is children tend to notice what is missing and they too can get stressed and anxious as their imaginations wonder what’s happening. As well as this doesn’t only happen to young children as it was only a few months ago, I was starting to get concerned that my parents were in a financial problem, but we spoke about it they reassured me that nothing was wrong in the slightest. So if times are tough, do talk about it. Not only will it help to relax your children or family who could be imagining something a lot worse, talking about it might make you feel better too. The Holiday Season Is For Pacing Yourself Finally, I cannot recommend enough that you pace yourself in the holiday season. Due to the entire idea of last minute planning, shopping and cooking is silly and it will surely lead to burnout and stress. You do not want to be panicking at any point during the holiday season and you don’t want anything to bottleneck. For example, you don’t want to start your hours of cooking whilst you have children to keep entertained and talk to family members. Therefore, I recommend that you figure out how to pace yourself so the holiday season is calm, relaxed and near perfect. As this is another thing that I will conclude today’s episode with, the holiday season will never be perfect. That is a fantasy that will guarantee stress as things will go wrong, but whilst the holiday season can be trying, the reward of the big day and the love, food and presents with friends and family can all make it worthwhile. I wish you a happy Christmas, happy holidays and whatever else you celebrate! I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology episode. If you want to support the podcast and give it a bit of festive love, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Forensic 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. Buy Me A Coffee Clinical Psychology Reference https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/inside-out-outside-in/202112/10-ways-cope-holiday-stress I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.

With this being a podcast for mainly psychology students and psychology professionals, I want to do this topic because it’s useful to know when our clients, our friends or family or even us might want to start therapy. This is very important for psychology students professionals because we all experience levels of stress and experience things that might cause us to develop a mental health condition. Hence why we need to look at these signs (there are more than 5 but there are some of the most important). This episode has been sponsored by Formulation In 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. Note: as always none of this is any sort of professional or official advice. Clinical Psychology: The 5 Signs Considered It Multiple Times: It is perfectly natural for all of us to think about something multiple times and each time we dismiss it. I have done this a lot recently with a learning opportunity, but I gave in in the end. Now this is important to mention because if you’ve thought about it multiple times then it means you want to do it but something is holding you back. For me and this learning opportunity, I wanted to do it because it would be great fun, but I wasn’t sure if it was worth the money. In terms of psychotherapy, if you want to try you, give it a go. At least if you do try it, you will finally know if it will help instead of forever wondering if it will work or not. You Want Support After A Stressful Life Event: Some people experience a stressful life event that they want support for, but they can’t or don’t feel like they want to talk about it with their social network. There are a lot of different reasons for this, but in this case, those reasons aren’t important, or maybe they are. Therefore, going to therapy could be a great option as it allows these people to find professional support for their stressful life event whilst the therapist teaches them ways to deal, cope and move on with the event. Some examples of these stressful life signs could use: · Death of a loved one. · Fertility struggles. · Experiencing a traumatic event Stress Is Interfering With Sleep As I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, depression, rumination and anxiety can all affect a person’s sleep. Then this can have a knock-on effect with the rest of the life, possibly leading to decreased life satisfaction. As well as all of these potential explanations for why theirs or your sleep is bad is a reason to explore therapy. As the therapy could allow you to find out the cause of your sleeplessness, treat it and your sleep could return to healthy levels. Basic Life Tasks Are Hard: As we know from previous episodes on depression and other clinical psychology topics, a wide range of mental health conditions can make basic life tasks seem impossible. These tasks include things showering, getting out of bed and getting dressed. Therefore, if you’re struggling to do these “simple” tasks then a therapist might be able to help you figure out what’s going on. Wondering If You’re “Messed”? Finally, as much as I hate the term “messed” because it is wrong as no one is messed up. People have mental health difficulties that are maladaptive coping mechanisms. The term “messed” up is what lay people think and even some psychology students and professionals, so the term is sadly appropriate here. So some people might start thinking about their own behaviour and start to think something is “wrong” with them or they’re simply “messed” up. This could be behaviours normally associated with autism, ADHD and depression or it could be habits that the person is starting to question. For example, they could be concerned about their level of exercise, smoking or alcohol use. As a result, therapy is one option because the therapist could do one of two things for you. 1) The therapist could allow you to understand there is nothing to be concerned about and they could help you to accept yourself for you are. 2) They could do the same as above but show you better, less damaging and more effective coping mechanisms because they discovered that you do have a mental health condition. Just something to think about. Conclusion: I suppose the real point of this podcast episode was to remind you that as psychology students and psychology professionals, we need to take care of ourselves too. This includes looking out for signs that we need therapy as well. Since as I always like to say (and this is more aimed towards psychology professionals), we can’t help anyone if we can’t help ourselves. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Formulation In 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. Buy Me A Coffee I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal. Clinical Psychology Reference https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/202111/20-signs-it-might-be-time-try-therapy

Whenever people ask me who’s the main focus of this podcast, I always say psychology students and psychology professionals because there are so many different types of students and professionals. From clinical to cognitive to social psychology, there are lots of different areas of students and professionals to work in. Today’s episode proves my point perfectly because lots of psychology students don’t know about all the amazing paths to become a therapist and work in mental health. This episode has been sponsored by Clinical 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. Misconceptions About Paths To Become A Therapists: Whenever people think they want to become a psychologist, they always think a psychologist is (to my utter horror) profiling. I’m not even going to dignify that thought with a response. Or they think a psychologist is only a therapist, this I understand but what’s amazing about psychology is you can be a psychologist in all areas of psychology. That’s one misconception. In addition, the focus of today’s episode is on the mental health field because regardless of what others think the mental health is almost exclusively in clinical psychology’s realm. As well as the amazing thing about this is due to the pandemic and the growing acceptance of mental health, this field is growing rapidly. Therefore, people who want to go into the mental health field are probably very well set up for the future job market. Another misconception is everyone (including myself) thinks there’s only one way to become a therapist and that’s to become a clinical psychologist. But there are other ways which is what we’ll look at today. Paths To Become A Therapist: There are more but here are some of the most common ways, as well as I should note that some of these paths are very American focused but I have seen some equivalents in other countries. For example, the UK does have Mental Health Counsellors but I’ve never heard of a Clinical Social Worker which I should have given my old best friend was in the foster system and I liked talking to him about it. Yet I do remember there being a rough equivalent of this role in the UK. Overall, I would recommend you listen or read today’s episode and if a future role sounds interesting to you. Then research the equivalent in your own country. Mental Health Counsellor This requires a Master’s degree but this is offered at a lot of universities with the degree taking about two to three years to complete. Typically, this degree leads to the person becoming a licensed Mental Health Counsellor. Leading to plenty of possible job opportunities because you can work for a lot of private and public organisations. Schools and universities are options that spring to mind. Clinical Social Worker This is very similar to the path above because this role requires a Master’s degree that is offered at a lot of US universities as part of a Social Work Program and it takes around 2 to 3 years to complete. Leading to a licence and the job market tends to be strong here. with licensed clinical social workers normally having a background in sociology or psychology and they work in a range of public and private settings. Clinical Psychologists I couldn’t really talk about therapists and not mention clinical psychologists. This requires a PhD which takes at least 3 to 4 years to complete and at least in the UK, the degree is made up of you doing a very research heavy dissertation as well as working with the four clinical populations clinical psychologists work in. In addition, if you do become a clinical psychologist then not only do you get access to high paid jobs but you can have a career in academia or helping people in the real world. Clinical Psychology Conclusion: Despite this being mainly an awareness podcast episode, I hope you found it useless and you never know this (unofficial) advice might be useful in the years to come. The most important thing or things, you need to remember is you need to have fun and love what you do. So don’t become a clinical psychologist if you’re only doing it for the money and you hate what a clinical psychologist does. As well as just do what you want to do with your life. I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE AND EXCLUSIVE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Clinical Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback, large print and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Buy Me A Coffee Clinical Psychology Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/202103/5-paths-becoming-therapist I truly hope that you’re 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-bit of support. Click www.paypal.me/connorwhiteley1 to go to PayPal.