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This week I have an online job interview for the role of an education mental health practitioner, and as part of my interview preparation I want to make sure that I have a good understanding of what the job is, what an education mental health practitioner is expected to do and more. Also, it helps that because of my neurodivergence, creating a podcast episode on the topic is a very helpful way to make me focus. Therefore, by the end of this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand what is an education mental health practitioner, what skills and experiences the role requires and so much more, including how to phrase this information in a job interview. Since I’m sure that I’ll be tested on my understanding of the role in my interview. This is somewhere that I normally fail on so I want to change that. If you enjoy learning about careers in psychology, working in education and applying psychology to improve lives, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What are Education Mental Health Practitioners? Education mental health practitioners are mental health professionals who provide mental health support to children and young people in colleges and schools. This means that they are trained to help children and young people to manage common mental health difficulties, especially mild to moderate symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as behavioural problems. In addition, becoming an education mental health practitioner is a great idea for people who want to make a difference, work flexible and part-time hours and I think it can be a great stepping stone towards becoming an educational or clinical psychologist. Since this position will help you to develop your clinical experience working with children and young people with mental health difficulties, and you’ll have experience offering psychological treatments and interventions. Something that a lot of people, myself included, find incredibly difficult to gain experience in despite my qualifications. Moreover, education mental health practitioners use cognitive therapy-based interventions to address emerging mental health difficulties, and if you become an education mental health practitioner then you would be trained to support schools and colleges with whole-organisation approaches to wellbeing and mental health. This means that you might advise people on the importance and how to have good sleep hygiene, how to problem solve and advise on panic attacks. You might educate young people how to manage depression as well as anxiety, and promote approaches that improve student emotional wellbeing and health. Also, you would advise education staff and signpost them towards services so they can get further information to help staff give the right support to students. Something that I particularly enjoy about the idea of becoming an education mental health practitioner is that if you work in a primary school or an educational setting for students with special educational needs then you might also need to work with parents and carers. I really enjoy the idea of this because I’m familiar with this from when I was a SEN teaching assistant in charge of the medical care of a type 1 diabetic student. This required me to coordinate care with teachers, other support staff, the school’s medical team and the child’s parents. As well as this means that I can apply my favourite psychological theory, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, into practice. This theory proposes that the different social systems that a child directly and indirectly interacts with has an impact on their education. This includes macro-systems like local government and school management that the child never directly interacts with. Something that I will mention is there are points that I can already see that I would need to highlight in a job interview. I would recommend that I talk about my knowledge and experience of whole-school approaches to mental health and wellbeing, I would list some of the expectations of what an education mental health practitioner is expected to do to show I’m familiar with the role and I would talk about my experience of liaising as well. When it comes to being familiar with whole-school approaches, I would probably draw on my understanding of restorative cultures in schools. Restorative approaches offer schools a flexible and innovative alternative to the punitive systems and sanctions that are typically used in schools, like detentions, exclusions and isolations, to manage behaviour in schools. These approaches aren’t a soft solution but they’re an additional tool that schools can use to create positive outcomes from negative behaviour and actively reinforce the view that inappropriate behaviour isn’t acceptable and it needs to be addressed. As well as restorative approaches are used in schools to help deal with bullying, truancy, classroom disruptions, friendship disputes, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown between staff and pupil as well as building a stronger sense of community and belonging. I do talk more about restorative approaches in schools and how to develop them in another podcast episode called How to Develop a Restorative Culture in Schools. As a result, if I was asked in an interview “what’s your understanding of the role of an education mental health practitioner” I would probably answer something along the lines of: “An education mental health practitioner is a trained professional who works in schools and colleges to support children and young people with mental health difficulties, including mild to moderate depression, anxiety and behavioural problems. In their work, they draw on cognitive therapy-based interventions and they might be expected to advise students on how to manage their mental health difficulties, how to improve their emotional health and wellbeing and advise on sleep hygiene. Also, education mental health practitioners are expected to liaise with parents and carers if they work in a primary school or SEN setting, I have experience in coordinating care and liaising with other professionals and parents from when I was a SEN teaching assistant managing the care of a type 1 diabetic child. Every day I liaised with parents, teachers and support staff. Finally, an educational mental health practitioner supports whole-school approaches to improving emotional and mental health. I have knowledge of whole-school approaches from my education around restorative approaches and using shared language, peer support programmes and restorative everyday classroom practices, like restorative conversations.” I am going to try and commit that mock interview answer to memory for my interview to show I understand the range of roles and duties of an education mental health practitioner. How Do You Become an Education Mental Health Practitioner? To become an education mental health practitioner you need to complete a year-long training course to qualify with around 60 days at university spread throughout the year. The rest of your time will be spent on work-based placements and you’ll need to do some self-study too. Also, this can be a postgraduate or graduate diploma depending on whether you already have a degree or not. Also, whilst you don’t need a degree to apply for this training programme, you will need to demonstrate your ability to work at degree level and have experience working with children and young people to support their mental health. In addition, the course is paid for by the National Health Service and you’re guaranteed a job as part of a mental health support team in a school or college once you’ve qualified. And something that I am very happy about is educational mental health practitioners can now register with the British Psychological Society or the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies. I won’t lie. I have no idea why that makes me happy but I think it just adds another layer of professionalism to the role, and yes, I understand I’m weird at times and I’m proud of it. Furthermore, as part of your training as an education mental health practitioner, you would be employed by a healthcare organisation but you would only work in or around education settings, like SEN schools, colleges, mainstream schools or pupil referral units as part of a mental health support team. These teams are designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people between the ages of 5 and 18 years old. What Skills Do You Need as an Education Mental Health Practitioner? Our final section will look at the skills you need to become an educational mental health practitioner, and this is an important section to focus on because this can help you to prepare your interview answers. Since it might be a good idea to tailor your interview answers to highlight these skills. As a result, to be an education mental health practitioner you need to have excellent interpersonal skills, a good understanding of the education system and the ability to build close, trusting and productive relationships with children and young people. This is a reason why in my interview I need to remember to talk about a time in my former SEN school when I was able to have a very productive working relationship with a SEN student who was in isolation, because the wider example will demonstrate my ability to effectively form good, close and productive working relationships with children. For you, you might want to think about what examples from your working life could be used to demonstrate your ability to form professional relationships with children and young people. Some other skills include the ability to work well within a multidisciplinary team, a good understanding of mental health issues and the ability to work independently and use your initiative to think quickly on the spot in often challenging situations. For me, like I normally do, I would either draw on my experience of working in a multidisciplinary team in the Gender Identity Clinic or my learning disability placement, or discuss how I worked with other professionals to manage the healthcare of a type 1 diabetic child and I often had to make quick clinical judgements to manage his care throughout the day. This example would tap into another useful skill for this role and that is to have creativity to solve problems and tackle obstacles. A final set of must-have skills for education mental health practitioners are strong written and verbal communication tailored to a range of audiences and effective time management for tight deadlines and managing competing demands. The example that I would draw on in an interview is again probably the diabetic care one because it shows how I had to manage my time to manage the healthcare whilst still being a teaching assistant to the rest of the education setting. Yet I would also comment on my experience of my mental health campaign to create psychology licensing degrees as I’ve had to have strong verbal and written communication skills where I’ve had to write for my podcast audience, other psychology students, heads of schools of psychology at universities as well as Members of Parliament. For yourself, you might want to think about examples of documents, statements of any kind when you’ve had to adapt the way you’ve communicated information for different audiences. If you’ve ever worked in a mental health service then this might be explaining the same mental health information but in different ways to a client, their partner or parents or another mental health professional. Finally, it can be useful for educational mental health practitioners to have good presentation skills and additional languages. These other languages are useful because if you work in an area with a high number of individuals and children with English as their second language then it might be useful for you to communicate with them in their native or first language. I’ve spoken before on The Psychology World Podcast during on psychology news section about how when you speak in a second or third language, it decreases your creativity. And come to think of it, it is critical that you can increase your creative problem-solving skills when considering how best to manage your own mental health and how to draw on your internal resources. This is why speaking a second language can be useful for mental health practitioners. As this isn’t an essential criteria, I am not going to mention it during my interview because my French reading ability is really good, but I cannot speak French to save my life. Also, good presentation skills are useful as an educational mental health practitioner because you’ll be presenting information to children and young people about sleep hygiene, managing panic attacks and their mental health and you’ll likely deliver Continued Professional Development sessions to staff. Therefore, in my interview, I’ll try to remember to mention my past experience of designing and delivering a wide range of presentations for the University of Kent’s Outreach and Widening Participation Department. For yourself, you might want to draw on your presentation experience at university to show you have these additional skills. Clinical Psychology Conclusion This version of interview preparation reminds me of one of the many reasons why I flat out love this podcast, because this podcast gives me the excuse and motivation to really focus on a topic, apply knowledge and consider how to use this information to benefit me. I’ve had past podcast episodes as part of my interview preparation but I prefer how I’ve done this episode in terms of applying the information. Since you can know information like the back of your hands but if you don’t know how to either present the information in an interview or apply the information to your own life, then it’s next to useless. I’m excited for my job interview to become a trainee educational mental health practitioner because this job sounds great, fun and really interesting. And if you like the sound of this role then set up job alerts, apply for these roles and try. You never know if you’ll be able to become an education mental health practitioner unless you try. To wrap up today’s episode, an education mental health practitioner is a trained professional who works in schools and colleges to support children and young people with mental health difficulties, including mild to moderate depression, anxiety and behavioural problems. In their work, they draw on cognitive therapy-based interventions and they might be expected to advise students on how to manage their mental health difficulties, how to improve their emotional health and wellbeing and advise on sleep hygiene. Also, education mental health practitioners are expected to liaise with parents and carers if they work in a primary school or SEN setting. Finally, an educational mental health practitioner supports whole-school approaches to improving emotional and mental health. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology Reference https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/psychological-therapies/roles-psychological-therapies/education-mental-health-practitioner 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.

There are some nights when I’m lying on my soft, warm bedsheets and my bedroom is perfectly dark and silent, but I cannot sleep. I worry how a lack of sleep will impact me the next day, and there are always other things weighing on my mind. I’m hardly the only person who experiences these challenges. We often get ourselves in anxious cycles of being stressed and worried about things outside of our sleep that negatively impact it, then because we’re worrying and anxious and can’t sleep, we start to worry about our sleep. This becomes a vicious cycle that causes further problems to our sleep patterns. This is even truer for students who tend to be stressed and anxious about assignments, readings and other university work. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn why does anxiety and rumination disrupt sleep, what is the cognitive model of insomnia and more great information on the psychology of insomnia. If you enjoy learning about anxiety, sleeping problems and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why is Sleep Important for Our Mental Health? To kick off this episode, I want to share some extracts from my podcast episode “How Does A Consistent Sleep Schedule Improve Mental Health?” to help us have a good foundational understanding of how sleep impacts our mental health before we move onto the rest of the episode. “Ultimately, by having a consistent sleep schedule you can stabilise your mood in the short term as well as in the long term protect yourself against mood disorders, like anxiety and depression.” As well as “having a consistent sleep schedule helps our bodies to effectively regulate our circadian rhythms, so our biological processes that impact the neurochemicals and hormones related to our stress responses and mood can occur in a healthy way. Yet when we disrupt our circadian rhythms by getting inconsistent sleep then we mess up these circadian rhythms and this has negative impacts on our mental health.” The last extract is “I want to focus on some research that shows a person’s inconsistent sleep schedule can increase their risk of developing depression. Our first study comes from Fang et al. (2021) who looked at the impact of sleep routines on over 1,000 medical students’ day-to-day mood. Their results showed that irregular sleep routines were a big risk factor for developing depressive symptoms. Interestingly, this is even worse for medical students because they often experience an inconsistent work schedule so they can’t have a consistent sleep pattern, so the effects were easier to see in this population.” Building upon these extracts, and I want to stress here that there are a lot of references available at the bottom of the blog post over on my website, stress and sleep disturbances are some of the most common mental health difficulties around the world. If we look at a range of mental health conditions, a large number of them include sleep disturbances. For example, if you have an anxiety disorder then you might be so anxious that you struggle to fall asleep. I know when I had my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after my rape, most nights I couldn’t sleep because I was so anxious, I was having too many flashbacks and I was too distressed. If we look at depression, you have disturbed sleep because people with depression tend to sleep too much or too little. As well as mental health conditions negatively impact your ability to have a consistent sleep schedule so this reinforces and plays a developmental role in a mental health condition. If we focus on the stress experienced by young people, because research shows that young people are very vulnerable to stress. This can be because of interpersonal factors like their relationships with peers, teachers, academic staff, family as well as academic pressures. This is even more important when we consider that the extra stress created by university and other forms of education can exacerbate pre-existing mental health difficulties. However, if we take a systemic approach and if we view the social and societal systems that the young person lives in, then we can understand that there’s a global and cultural context that increases their stress. In turn, this increased stress can contribute to poor sleep quality, and this has a negative knock-on effect for their mental health. For example, in Europe, it isn’t uncommon for young people to face financial insecurity, mental health difficulties more often and job loss, compared to older age groups. Personally, this is a massive problem in the UK at the moment. I’ve spoken before on the podcast about the unemployment crisis in the UK, and how the unemployment rate for young people is 10% higher than the national average. It is next to impossible to find a job as a young person and then there’s the pressure of the housing market, the increase in fuel cost because of America’s war with Iran and other factors that only makes life more expensive. All in all, between relationships, academic pressures and society-level stressors, this has a negative impact on the mental health of young people. What is Anxiety and Rumination in Mental Health and Sleep? As this entire podcast episode focuses on why and how anxiety and rumination disrupts sleep, we need to make sure that we’re all on the same page about these two terms before we dive into how this negatively impacts sleep. Therefore, rumination refers to prolonged, repetitive as well as negative thinking about our distressing experiences, feelings and worries without taking any action to positively change that state. As you can imagine, rumination is a very common symptom in a range of mental health conditions. For example, I know when I had depression, I was constantly ruminating on how pointless my life was, how I was never going to get better and my life was a failure because of my mental health. Equally, when I had my social anxiety after my rape, I constantly ruminated about how bad I didn’t want to get raped again, I was scared of everything and I thought that everyone could hurt me. And as a final example when I experienced the worst of my anorexia, I was ruminating on the distressing nature of food, how I didn’t want to gain weight and how I wanted to lose as much weight as possible. On the other hand, anxiety and worry are a sequence of negative images and thoughts that are hard to control and they’re often accompanied by ways to mentally resolve problems with uncertain outcomes. These outcomes can be negative. For instance, when I’m lying awake late at night before a job interview and I’m worried about the interview. Then this is worry because there are negative thoughts because I am worried about failing the job interview, I’m worried about my financial situation and I’m worried about the outcome. If I don’t get the job then I won’t have money coming in and so on. The best way to remember the difference is that rumination focuses on past failures and worries whereas worry refers to future events. As a result, whilst rumination and worry are different, they both involve repetitive thinking about negative emotional experiences and they shift our focus away from the present to the past or future. Building upon the differences, rumination focuses on issues related to a person’s self-worth, loss and meaning whereas worry focuses on anticipated potential threats. Also, the conscious motivation for rumination is to gain insight into a given situation whereas the motivation for worry is to predict and prepare ourselves for potential threats. The main reason why I’m spending a section on these definitions is because we have to understand the similarities and differences between worry and rumination because they both have a separate impact on our mental health and sleep (Clancy et al., 2020; Tousignant et al., 2019). Why is Stress Related to Sleep Quality? Research tells us that stress is associated with a range of mental health difficulties, like depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, insomnia and anxiety, and research focuses on the relationship between stress and sleep disturbances. For instance, amongst university students, perceived stress is associated with insomnia symptoms, shorter sleep duration as well as lower sleep quality. With between 47% and 60% of university students reporting poor sleep quality. It’s worth noting that in academia “sleep quality” is made up of the subjective aspects of sleep, like the feeling of being well-rested and the depth of the sleep, as well as the more objective aspects. Such as the latency and duration of sleep. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, disturbed sleep is common in a range of mental health conditions because sleep relates to the neurological and cognitive functions of the brain and internalised difficulties, like depression and anxiety. And what I find really interesting about this relationship is that it can reinforce mental health difficulties because this relationship is bidirectional in the first place. I mean if you struggle sleeping in the first place for a few nights then as my episode on the importance of a consistent sleep schedule shows, then this increases your risk of developing mental health difficulties. Therefore, you might have trouble sleeping for a few nights because of noisy neighbours, a constant party going on next door or your walls are painfully thin so you hear what your neighbours are doing in the bedroom next to you. Then because you’re sleep deprived and because of the cognitive and neurological functions that this impairs, it can lead to increased mental health difficulties. All the references for this podcast episode are at the bottom of the blog post. On the other hand, if you have a mental health difficulty or condition like depression, anxiety or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder then you might struggle to sleep in the first place. I definitely experienced this during the aftermath of my rape. As a result, your mental health condition makes it difficult to sleep so you become tired, sleep-deprived and this has a negative knock-on effect for your already distressed and biased cognitive and neurological processes. Hence, the creation of the vicious cycle where your mental health difficulties cause poor sleep quality then your sleep quality causes your mental health difficulties to get worse, this leads to even poorer sleep quality and so on. What is the Cognitive Model of Insomnia? Now that we understand the importance of sleep and why rumination and anxiety negatively impact sleep and our mental health, we need to start looking at the why. Why exactly does rumination and anxiety impact sleep quality. As a result, a lot of research studies have shown that certain cognitive mechanisms as well as high general arousal might affect the relationship between sleep difficulties and the stress we experience. These research findings have led to the creation of several theories, including the Cognitive Model of Insomnia. The Cognitive Model of Insomnia by Harvey (2020) proposes that individuals with insomnia are more likely to experience excessive worry about their sleep and the consequences of their disrupted sleep on their health. This is definitely something that I experience because there will be times when I’m lying in bed, I can’t sleep and then I start to get concerned about how this disrupted sleep will impact me the next day. For example, if I have a job interview, I’m out with friends or loved ones or I have something else important that I can’t be tired for. Then I get concerned about it because I don’t want to feel exhausted, tired or any other negative state of being. In addition, this negative cognitive process that arises from worry and our rumination activates autonomic arousal and this disrupts our sleep. The Model assumes that our insomnia happens because of a combination of stressors, genetic vulnerability, learned behaviours, cognitive activities, like worry and rumination, as well as dysfunctional behaviour patterns. Building upon this, cortical, cognitive and somatic activity results in excessive general arousal and this can lead to anxiety, worry, high levels of daytime distress, a real sleep deficit and physiological arousal. In turn, this creates a cycle where the connection between our stress and our sleep quality is bidirectional as I explained earlier. Personally, I want to jump in here and add that I definitely agree with the theory so far. Since if I truly think about what I was experiencing during the worst of my PTSD and other negative mental health outcomes after my rape. I experienced constant cortical activity because my brain was constantly filled with thoughts, dreams and perceptions of danger because of my hypervigilance. I constantly experienced heightened somatic activity because I was shaking a lot, I felt the physical sensations of my rapist raping me over and over as well as my body was constantly tense because I was always in fight-or-flight. As well as I was always anxious, hypervigilant and other cognitive processes were going on, so all these heightened processes explained why my sleep was so bad. On the other hand, another theory of hyperarousal by Morrin et al. (2003) suggests that it is the coping skills that we use to manage our arousal that mediates the sleep-stress relationship. For example, it is how we appraise our stressors as well as how we perceive the amount of control we have over these stressors that increases our vulnerability to sleep difficulties. Morrin et al.’s research found that both good and poor sleepers had the same number of minor life stressors, but the difference between a good sleeper and a poor sleep was that good sleepers reported less pre-sleep arousal and they perceived their lives as less stressful than the poor sleepers. I can see where this theory is coming from because as I went for my specialist rape counselling, I learnt more skills and I was able to increase my feelings of control over my symptoms, my life and my relationships. I was able to start sleeping better, so there is no way for me to know if it was the decrease in my mental health difficulties or the increased sense of control over my stressors that led to improved sleep quality. There might be something to this theory. Personally, I believe it probably was a mixture of the two factors with the decrease of my mental health symptoms causing the most positive impact on my sleep quality. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Whilst this psychology podcast episode was more information-dense than usual, I really did enjoy it because it was fun to develop a deeper understanding of how our thoughts, feelings and other mental health factors can disrupt our sleep. I know from personal experience just how important having good sleep habits are, and after all my mental health struggles in the past decade, I know how disrupted our sleep can become because of excessive arousal, worry and rumination. It was really interesting to finally understand why. Also, we’ll probably explore this in more depth in future podcast episodes but everything that we learnt today can be directly applied to clinical practice. Since these research findings and theories are applied to a wide range of psychological interventions that are used to treat insomnia. For example, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia, better known as CBT-I. Therefore, to wrap up today’s episode, anxiety and rumination disrupt our sleep because they trigger physiological and cognitive hyperarousal. Since according to different psychological models, the repetitive negative thinking patterns associated with future-focused threats for worry and past-focused threats for rumination, they activate the sympathetic nervous system and heighten our cognitive, cortical and somatic arousal. This disrupts our sleep because it means we cannot turn our minds off and rumination disrupts sleep as it prolongs our emotional processing, increases pre-sleep arousal and it makes minor stressors feel more intense. Then as our arousal increases, we become more anxious because we aren’t sleeping and we’re concerned about how our disrupted sleep will impact us so this creates a vicious cycle. Ultimately, leading to decreased sleep quality and increased stress. Finally, to truly wrap up the episode, I would unofficially recommend that when we’re struggling to get to sleep because you’re worried and/ or you’re ruminating, you might want to try some breathwork to deactivate your sympathetic nervous system, you could practise Thought Stopping from cognitive behavioural therapy so you could just “shout” stop in your mind or out loud to get the thoughts to stop and this can disrupt them so you don’t constantly ruminate. As well as please consider practising self-compassion. If you’re struggling with sleep then this is okay, it’s normal and it’s understandable given your situation, so please be kind to yourself. Beating yourself up will not help you go to sleep any faster. Being kind to yourself is one of the best things you can do. I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET CBT For Depression: A Clinical Psychology Introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Clancy, F., Prestwich, A., Caperon, L., Tsipa, A., & O’connor, D. B. (2020). The association between worry and rumination with sleep in non-clinical populations: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Health Psychology Review, 14(4), 427-448. Davey, G. C., Meeten, F., & Field, A. P. (2022). What’s worrying our students? Increasing worry levels over two decades and a new measure of student worry frequency and domains. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 46(2), 406-419. Emran, M. G. I., Mahmud, S., Khan, A. H., Bristy, N. N., Das, A. K., Barma, R., ... & Roy, M. (2024). Factors influencing stress levels among students: A virtual exploration. European Journal of Medical and Health Sciences, 6(6), 67-75. Harvey, A. G. (2002). A cognitive model of insomnia. Behaviour research and therapy, 40(8), 869-893. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12294785/#sec1-ijerph-22-01001 Iqbal, N., & Dar, K. A. (2015). Negative affectivity, depression, and anxiety: Does rumination mediate the links?. Journal of affective disorders, 181, 18-23. Jansson-Fröjmark, M., Sunnhed, R., Carney, C. E., & Rosendahl, I. (2024). Conceptual overlap of negative thought processes in insomnia: A focus on catastrophizing, worry, and rumination in a student sample. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 22(6), 857-872. Joubert, A. E., Moulds, M. L., Werner‐Seidler, A., Sharrock, M., Popovic, B., & Newby, J. M. (2022). Understanding the experience of rumination and worry: A descriptive qualitative survey study. British journal of clinical psychology, 61(4), 929-946. Lancet, T. (2022). An age of uncertainty: mental health in young people. Lancet (London, England), 400(10352), 539. Liu, Z., Xie, Y., Sun, Z., Liu, D., Yin, H., & Shi, L. (2023). Factors associated with academic burnout and its prevalence among university students: a cross-sectional study. BMC medical education, 23(1), 317. Manzar, M. D., Salahuddin, M., Pandi-Perumal, S. R., & Bahammam, A. S. (2021). Insomnia may mediate the relationship between stress and anxiety: a cross-sectional study in university students. Nature and Science of Sleep, 31-38. Morin, C. M., Rodrigue, S., & Ivers, H. (2003). Role of stress, arousal, and coping skills in primary insomnia. Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine, 65(2), 259-267. Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Watkins, E. R. (2011). A heuristic for developing transdiagnostic models of psychopathology: Explaining multifinality and divergent trajectories. Perspectives on psychological science, 6(6), 589-609. Petak, A., & Maričić, J. (2025). The role of rumination and worry in the bidirectional relationship between stress and sleep quality in students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 22(7), 1001. Riemann, D., Spiegelhalder, K., Feige, B., Voderholzer, U., Berger, M., Perlis, M., & Nissen, C. (2010). The hyperarousal model of insomnia: a review of the concept and its evidence. Sleep medicine reviews, 14(1), 19-31. Schmickler, J. M., Blaschke, S., Robbins, R., & Mess, F. (2023). Determinants of sleep quality: a cross-sectional study in university students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 20(3), 2019. Segerstrom, S. C., Tsao, J. C., Alden, L. E., & Craske, M. G. (2000). Worry and rumination: Repetitive thought as a concomitant and predictor of negative mood. Cognitive therapy and Research, 24(6), 671-688. Thomsen, D. K., Mehlsen, M. Y., Christensen, S., & Zachariae, R. (2003). Rumination—relationship with negative mood and sleep quality. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(7), 1293-1301. Tousignant, O. H., Taylor, N. D., Suvak, M. K., & Fireman, G. D. (2019). Effects of rumination and worry on sleep. Behavior therapy, 50(3), 558-570. Watkins, E. R. (2008). Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological bulletin, 134(2), 163. Zhang, J., Li, X., Tang, Z., Xiang, S., Tang, Y., Hu, W., ... & Wang, X. (2024). Effects of stress on sleep quality: multiple mediating effects of rumination and social anxiety. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 37(1), 10. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

I simply cannot put this psychology podcast episode off anymore. On the day that this podcast episode goes out I will be returning from a wonderful long weekend away with my parents and my godmother to a little country escape in England. It will be a great weekend because the destination sounds good, we’ll be doing a lot of things and I enjoy spending time with my family. Yet this doesn’t hide the fact that I am nervous, anxious and in the days leading up to the holiday, I am a little dysregulated because of my autism and signs of ADHD. I am really nervous about the break away from my routines, if there will be enough stimulation for me in the evenings and even though the holiday is only for four days, it is still a massive change for me. Autistic people don’t always do well with change. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, we’re going to be exploring why travel is difficult for neurodivergent people, what some of the challenges are and most importantly, how can we support people with neurodivergence to thrive during traveling. I’ll also discuss implications for aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists. If you enjoy learning about ADHD, autism and real-world problems, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Gamification of Autism: A Guide to Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why is Traveling Difficult as a Neurodivergent Person? To kick off this psychology podcast episode, I want to briefly remind us what exactly some neurodivergent conditions are, then I’ll explain how these conditions can negatively impact someone’s experience of travel. Yet first, I want to mention that just because someone has autism, ADHD or another condition, it doesn’t mean that they hate traveling. Traveling and going on holiday as well as seeing the world can be great fun, beautiful and it can be an eye-opening experience. However, neurodivergent people can experience difficulties that neurotypical people do not. As a result, autism is a developmental disorder that affects information processing so people with autism have difficulties with communication and social skills. As well as autistic people have restrictive interests, engage in repetitive behaviours and they experience sensitivity or distress from sensory stimulation. For instance, bright lights and sounds. Then there is the additional symptom that autistic people love structure, routine and they don’t like change. Therefore, autism can make traveling more challenging for someone because traveling involves a large break away from their regular routines that help to keep them regulated. Airports, train stations and other places involved in traveling are often noisy, loud and very busy with a lot of pushing and shuffling, this all increases the sensory overwhelm that autistic people experience. Personally, there have been numerous times in my young life when my autism was more severe when I had wanted to scream, self-harm or just cry because traveling was just too much for me. This was even worse in 2024, because I had the sensory overwhelm and the associated distress because of my autism, but then I also had the extreme distress of the PTSD because of my rape. Traveling was a lot for me and it really did harm my mental health. In addition, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a neurobehavioural disorder that’s characterised by hyperactivity, impulsivity, inattentiveness and distractibility. This means that people with ADHD can struggle to concentrate on tasks, they might daydream frequently and they might struggle to stay organised, manage their time as well as keep track of their belongings. Also, people with ADHD like to fidget. As a result, ADHD can make travel challenging because there is a lot to remember when you’re traveling. You need to manage your time effectively so you don’t miss trains, flights or layovers. You need to keep track of your passport, tickets, clothes and everything else that you need when you’re packing, when you’re at the hotel and so on. Sometimes this is difficult enough for neurotypical adults to manage so I hate to imagine how difficult it is for someone with ADHD. Furthermore, as I spoke about in a previous podcast episode, Why Does ADHD Make it Difficult to get Started, a regular routine is a very important and effective strategy to help a person with ADHD to get started, to regulate and manage their condition. When you’re traveling this goes out the window so it can be harder for a person with ADHD to manage their symptoms. Personally, something that I worry about when it comes to traveling with some signs of ADHD is that I need stimulation so badly. I really don’t want to get dysregulated and bored and fidgety, like I was on Christmas Day. Even though my family are amazing and supportive, I don’t want them to kindly suggest that I go upstairs and do things on my laptop so I’m busy, I have my stimulation and I’m not pacing. Of course, this is a lot harder to do on holiday, especially in the evenings. Normally, in the evenings, I go on my laptop, I do writing, business or anything else that needs doing. At the moment in my evenings, I’m promoting my UK Government petition to improve the lives and employment prospects of psychology students. Yet I cannot do that on holiday and that concerns me. I don’t want to spoil the holiday for my family if I get dysregulated and… I just get anxious about it. Finally for this section, I’ve covered dyspraxia before on the podcast in-depth, but this impacts coordination, understanding sense of direction and a few other aspects that directly impacts travel. Truth be told, there is a joke in my family at the moment that because we’re going to Swanage that I shouldn’t drive because we should end up in Swansea in Wales (another country). This was because of my dyslexia and dyspraxia I thought Swansea and Swanage were the same exact place for the longest time. Therefore, whilst this isn’t a concern on this holiday, having a diagnosis of dyspraxia and/ or dyslexia can be concerning and stressful for neurodivergent people. Since it can raise concerns about if they’ve understood the holiday information right, what if they misread the destination name, the booking information or they’ve made another massive mistake that might mess up the holiday. Then you get into concerns about what are the other people you’re going on holiday with going to think about you and so on. It just adds to the immense stress of going on holiday. Some other challenges of traveling as a neurodivergent person can include communication difficulties so neurodivergent travellers might struggle with social cues as well as communication. This can make interactions more difficult in new environments and more stressful. As well as navigating brand-new public transport systems can be immensely stressful because public transport systems often lack features designed to accommodate neurodivergent needs. This decreases the amount of accessible options available to neurodivergent travellers whilst increasing the stress they experience. As well as there are personal safety concerns because neurodivergent people can be fearful of harassment and other safety issues so they can become less confident and less willing to go traveling. Why Does the Difficulty of Traveling as a Neurodivergent Person Matter to Clinical Psychologists? The difficulty of traveling as a neurodivergent person matters to aspiring and qualified clinical psychologists, because as you can imagine, we will never know who’s going to come into our therapy room, our mental health service and we will never know what our work will entail. You might be asked by a local authority, national government or another public service to consult on making the transport system or another aspect of daily life more neurodivergent-friendly. This knowledge will be immensely useful to you, and you’ll be able to apply the information from this podcast episode directly to your clinical work. Another benefit of knowing about this topic is you might have an autistic client who is making good progress in therapy, then they come to you and express their anxiety and distress about a holiday that their partner, family or loved one has booked for them in between now and your last session. They want your advice and guidance on how to cope with it because they know this trip is important to the loved one and they don’t want to disappoint. As a result, the content of this episode will help give you more awareness, understanding and empathy for the client in this normal-to-you situation. Lastly for this section, an aspiring or qualified clinical psychologist might be supporting a neurotypical partner or parent in therapy and they explain that going on holiday would mean so much for them, but they don’t know how to make it less stressful for themselves, the family system and their autistic or ADHD partner or child. The knowledge in this episode might help you suggest a few ideas, explore different options and it will give you a starting point to help your client. How to Make Traveling Easier as a Neurodivergent Person? Thankfully, there are a range of tips and tricks that neurodivergent people can use to improve their travel experience, self-regulate and make the trip easier on themselves and others. Ensure Neurodivergent Needs are Baked into the Planning of Travel Firstly, ensure that your neurodivergent needs are met and involved in the planning phase of the travel. This ensures that the destination aligns with your sensory needs, your needs for stimulation and rest as well as your accessibility requirements. For instance, I don’t need any rest planned into my trip but I have had neurodivergent friends in the past who needed frequent rest breaks, so this should always be factored in. In terms of destination, you might want to think about how the climate might impact you and your sensory needs, what the hotel and country is known for and more. For example, if you find hot weather, getting sweaty and humidity to be distressing because of your sensory needs, then a hot country might not be the best destination for you. Equally, if you have a sensitivity to bright lights, loud noises and more, then a hotel known for its clubbing isn’t a good idea. Another useful tip when it comes to holiday planning is allow flexibility in timings and schedules. When I first read that tip I panicked a little because I flat out hate the idea of plans being changed, things not happening and people not sticking to the schedule. My autism hates that with an utter passion. Yet it’s important that you incorporate buffer time between your activities and these can be scheduled breaks that allow for decompression and self-regulation. As well as it can be a good idea to not overload your schedule so you don’t get overwhelmed, fatigued and you don’t experience autistic burnout. This allows you to enjoy the wonderfully relaxing comfort of a structured routine but it still allows you to have some spontaneity. A final tip for this first section is as part of your neurodivergent needs, it is perfectly okay for you to think about, bring and use items that soothe or stimulate you as required. Such as, a fidget toy, noise-cancelling headphones, preferred snacks and so on. As well as it can be a good idea to travel during off-peak hours or out of season to decrease some of the sensory overwhelm during travel. Ultimately, I would always stress that your needs have to come first. You are the most important person to you so your needs always need to be respected, appreciated and accommodated for within reason. As a result, there is nothing wrong with saying to your friends, your family or your partner about your sensory needs and what you need to make it enjoyable for you. It is not right that everyone else gets to enjoy the holiday or traveling except you. You matter. Therefore, as aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, I firmly believe that this is something that we can support a client with during therapy or counselling. We can help the neurodivergent client to improve their self-advocacy skills, their self-confidence and their ability to manage resistance to their needs and boundaries. All of these are important life skills, but they are even more important when it comes to a distressing experience like travel. Neurodivergent People can Create a Self-Regulation Toolkit for Traveling This is a tip for neurodivergent people whilst traveling that I am starting to turn my own mind towards. I understand that my routines will be disrupted, I will not be able to do a lot of the normal activities that I use to keep me regulated and this is a cause for concern. Therefore, whilst by its very nature travel does disrupt our routines so this can be very destabilising for autistic people, there are ways around this. Something I learnt during my rape counselling and I talk more about this in my book Healing As a Survivor, you can create a list of all the activities that help you to self-regulate and self-soothe. You can also divide them into different categories like self-soothing activities when I’m out, at home, with friends or I only have a few minutes before I need to do something else. Creating this list helps you to see all your self-regulation activities and you can pick a handful of them that you can take on holiday with you. For example, because it has been ages since I last went on holiday, and I haven’t been on holiday since my rape, I have no idea what self-regulation activities I can and cannot easily do whilst on holiday. Yet I have a rough idea. I will still be in the UK and I never use my mobile data so even if the caravan doesn’t have free Wi-Fi, I will have internet access. This means I can still be incredibly sad and autistic and maintain some of my routines. For instance, on the Friday evening, I can go on the UK Government’s petition website and sign all the petitions published that day that I support and agree with. That’s one way of maintaining my daily routine. Also, I can listen to my music that self-soothes me from the anime Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. As well as I can do a little bit of writing on my phone. Finally, I can do some reading because I always have a bunch of books to read on my Google Books and Kobo account. When I combine reading with using my mobile data so I can use my free likes on my dating apps, then this helps me to bring a little more of my bedtime routine and structure on holiday with me. As well as I am seriously debating getting a Crunchyroll subscription in the next few days so I can watch anime when I’m on holiday. Thankfully, Crunchyroll allows for offline viewing. On the whole, when you really think about it, there are a lot of self-soothing activities that you can bring on holiday with you. Whether these activities help you to self-regulate or just create a small sense of your structured routine from home, these activities can be immensely powerful and useful in helping to make travel easier for you. As aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, this is something that you might want to do with neurodivergent clients in a therapy or counselling session. Me and my rape counsellor spent a good chunk of time coming up with different ideas for different categories and it was really helpful, useful and even nowadays (18 months later), I still come back to that useful session to help self-regulate. What are Some ADHD-Specific Travel Tips? As I mentioned earlier, people with ADHD can have additional struggles when it comes to travel because they can experience time-blindness, decision paralysis, impulsivity amongst other psychological or behavioural symptoms that can derail or negatively impact their travel plans. This is why it can be useful to use digital tools to organise your travel plans and set reminders. Some people with ADHD recommend Triplt or PackPoint. I have not used these online tools personally so these are not recommendations. Other tips for people with ADHD can be to set reminders as well as alarms so you can remind yourself when you need to get going or start transitioning towards the next activity. Additionally, people with ADHD might benefit from allowing extra time whilst traveling to pack and they could ask their travel companion, their loved one or friend to help keep them accountable. A final specific tip for people with ADHD is to put essential items like chargers, comfort items and medication in a dedicated pouch that you always carry with you. In terms of aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, it can be useful to remember to work to a client’s specific condition and challenges. Since whilst the vast, vast majority of this episode will apply to all neurodivergent conditions, some individual clients will benefit or not from different tips. For example, all the bits mentioned in this ADHD section wouldn’t be useful to me personally, but that’s because I have autism, not a diagnosable level of ADHD. Therefore, the practical application of this section is a helpful reminder that we always need to focus on the specific needs, strengths and challenges of the client instead of assuming just because they’re neurodivergent they “must” struggle with x, y and z. Consider Checking Out Online Creators for Neurodivergent Travel Tips Personally, there was a lot of toing and throwing about whether I added this section into this episode, because I am incredibly wary of suggesting content creators, so I will not recommend any. I have this sense of wariness because I am always concerned of bad actors in the online creator space where people claim to put out science-based insights that are heavily researched, supported by clinical practitioners and more. When in reality, they are just making stuff up, pushing their own beliefs or they’re pushing pseudo-science. This is why I always mention that I’m a clinical psychology graduate in the introduction of my podcast episodes so you know I have university-level qualifications in psychology and I always include a heavy reference section at the end of the blog posts. This helps you to know that the information I put out into the world is coming from a good source. Other online creators aren’t so good when it comes to this verification. Anyway, jumping off my little soapbox, content creators do play an important role in building a sense of shared life experience as well as community. Also, it is really good when someone shares their life experience with other people (and they label it as their own experience and not fact or a universal truth). Therefore, you could go online, social media or YouTube and research neurodivergent travel tips so you can get hacks, tips and tricks for navigating airports, emotional support strategies and more as a neurodivergent person. This is helpful because it helps to normalise the difficulties that neurodivergent people experience when traveling. Whilst there isn’t anything too applicable in this section for aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists, I think there are some applications in self-efficacy. Since one of the reasons why I am able to manage my own mental health and actually recover from my trauma in the first place is because I was able to research, understand concepts and I was able to adapt my own life to improve it. I did it for my rape, my anorexia and my insecure attachment styles. Yet I have observed that a lot of people don’t know how to research, improve their life on their own and this can create difficulties for clients, especially after formal therapy ends. Therefore, I don’t know how this would work in a practical sense, but it might be an idea to explore with a client and walk through with them how they could research a problem for themselves that they might encounter in the future. This might be something that you do towards the end of therapy, because whilst you would have given the client a lot of techniques, tips and tricks to manage their mental health into the future. They might still be concerned about what if the techniques don’t work in a specific situation. This could be a good opportunity to increase their self-efficacy and explore how to research, find tips, resources and creators online to support them. It’s just a thought. Find Neurodivergent-Friendly Attractions and Travel Agencies A final set of tips and tricks that can make travel easier for neurodivergent people is to look out for neurodivergent-friendly attractions and travel agencies. Since different attractions might actively work to support neurodivergent people, so a museum might have sensory-friendly hours, there might be hotels with low-stimulation environments as well as there might be nature trails with quiet zones. These neurodivergent-friendly attractions are becoming more popular. On the other hand, there are travel agencies that specialise in travel for neurodivergent people by offering support staff, pre-trip consultations and tailored itineraries. These can all be immensely useful for neurodivergent people and families because it can help to alleviate any concerns, it can help provide that sense of structure and routine that neurodivergent people crave and it can get rid of a lot of the stress. In terms of aspiring and clinical psychologists, whilst this particular tip doesn’t apply to our clinical work. This is the sort of work that we could be actively promoting, encouraging and getting involved with. For instance, it isn’t rare for clinical psychologists to be getting involved in advocacy or consultation work, so a clinical psychologist gets to support a company or travel agency to create more neurodivergent-friendly products. As well as a clinical psychologist could consult on a business project to make a hotel or a new resort neurodivergent-friendly. This would actually be a lot of fun and it just goes to show you the power of psychology. Clinical Psychology Conclusion This psychology podcast episode firmly reminds me why I flat out love The Psychology World Podcast. I have been nervous, anxious and a little unsure of this week because I go on holiday for four days on Friday. I know I will enjoy it because I’ll be with my family, I get to experience new things and I get to explore and get new story ideas. Yet I am anxious about the disruptions to my routines, the questionable lack of stimulation in the evenings and so on. However, this podcast episode has given us a lot of different tips and ideas about how to make travel easier for neurodivergent individuals. For example, as I’m still in the UK and I have a lot of mobile data (because I never use it) I can do my nightly Duolingo, signing online petitions, reading, writing and using my dating apps to bring some of that routine and structure from home on holiday with me. Therefore, whether you’re a parent, a loved one, a clinical psychologist or a neurodivergent person yourself, I hope you’ve learnt just as much as I have. As a little reminder, here are some tips to help a neurodivergent person whilst traveling: · Advocate for your neurodivergent needs in the planning stage · Create a self-regulation toolkit that you can take on holiday · For people with ADHD, set alarms for transitions and schedule extra time for packing · Check out online creators sharing neurodivergent travel tips (check they know what they’re talking about though) · Find neurodivergent-friendly attractions and travel agencies I 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, Psychotherapy and Mental Health. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Barclay, D. M. (2022). Traveling different: Vacation strategies for parents of the anxious, the inflexible, and the neurodiverse. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. Castro, R. T. D., Batista, M. M., & Andrada, M. E. S. (2025). Airport accessibility for neurodivergent passengers: a global survey of initiatives and its implications. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo, 19, e-3077. Edwards, D., Csontos, J., Gillen, E., Wharf, T., Purcell, C., Ingram, B. J., ... & Lewis, R. (2026). The impact of changes in active travel infrastructure on disabled people: A rapid review. https://blog.oncallinternational.com/supporting-neurodivergent-travelers-challenges-strategies-and-support/ https://satgurutravel.com/neurodivergent-travel-guide/ https://www.motabilityfoundation.org.uk/media/t5yowvej/autistica-transport-report-2025-final.pdf https://www.travel-owl.com/post/neurodivergent-travel-planning https://www.walkwheelcycletrust.org.uk/our-blog/research/neurodivergence-and-active-travel-addressing-the-barriers/ Jepson, A., Stadler, R., & Garrod, B. (2024). Tourism and neurodiversity: A problematisation and research agenda. Current Issues in Tourism, 27(4), 546-566. Leger, S. (2025). Mindful Streets: Examining the politics and practices of everyday mobility negotiated by those who are neurodivergent and the potential for more inclusive (and just) street design for ‘all’. Sebastian, R., Kottekkadan, N. N., Thomas, T. K., & KK, M. N. (2026). Travelling for the ‘gifted’: neuro-inclusive family holidays. In Handbook on Children and Family Tourism (pp. 239-252). Edward Elgar Publishing. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

As I spoke about in a previous podcast episode, the United Kingdom has a massivequalification problem when it comes to psychology degrees. Therefore, on the 23rd April 2026, the UK Government’s Petitions Committee approved my petition for publication on their website. My petition calls on the UK Government to review how psychology students can gain the practical experience and clinical skills needed to become qualified mental health practitioners as part of an undergraduate degree. This could help to solve the mental health, NHS recruitment and graduate employment crisis. In this clinical psychology podcast episode, I’ll take you through my policy, the benefits and the challenges and solutions to make this policy work in the real-world. If you’re a UK resident then please sign this petition. If you aren’t a UK resident, then please share the petition online. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Policy Briefing Create Psychology Licensing Degrees. UK residents- sign the petition now! Non-UK residents, please share the petition online. Summary · Psychology students want to improve lives, decrease psychological distress and make the world a better place. · The Mental Health Foundation and London School of Economics and Political Science found mental health conditions cost the UK Economy at least £118 billion per year. This is because of lost productivity from people with mental health conditions and unpaid informal carers having to withdraw from employment to look after these individuals. This represents approximately 5% of UK’s Gross Domestic Product. · To fix the mental health crisis, the UK Government argued the NHS need to recruit an extra 8,500 mental health practitioners. Yet no one knows where to recruit these practitioners from. · Licensing degrees are commonplace throughout the United Kingdom. A 3-year social work undergraduate degree allows graduates to become qualified social workers. A 3-year nursing undergraduate degree allows graduates to become a registered nurse, including a mental health nurse. · In 2023, 42,770 psychology students graduated across the United Kingdom. These students are specialists in understanding human behaviour, mental health conditions and applying psychology in the real world. Under current UK legislation, psychology degrees do not allow psychology graduates to become qualified professionals. · Current UK legislation is preventing the Government from solving the mental health crisis by inhibiting the creation of psychology licensing degrees. These would allow psychology students to become qualified mental health professionals upon graduation. Recommendations for Policy Create Licensing Degrees. The Government should work with the British Psychological Society, Health and Care Professions Council and Universities to create licensing psychology degrees as soon as possible. This will allow psychology students to learn the clinical skills and gain the practical experience needed to become qualified mental health professionals upon graduation. A delay on psychology licensing degrees will be incredibly damaging to the NHS, the psychology job market and individuals with mental health difficulties. Create Jobs. The Government will create jobs by creating psychology licensing degrees. They will allow psychology graduates to become mental health practitioners. This will allow graduates to earn higher income, pay more tax and grow the UK’s tax revenue. This can be reinvested in public services. This benefits the Labour Party by demonstrating the Government is serious about creating highly skilled jobs that will improve our nation. Create Economic Growth. The mental health practitioners created by psychology licensing degrees will allow individuals with mental health conditions to get back into work, boost economic productivity and it will allow unpaid informal carers to get back into the workforce. This means these individuals will work more, pay more tax and boost the UK’s economy. Potentially by as much as £118 billion per year. Policy Challenges and Solutions Psychology Trainees Could Harm Individuals with Mental Health Difficulties. Critics might argue psychology trainees might harm clients with mental health conditions whilst on trainee placement. However, psychology licensing degrees should operate like any other licensing degree. Psychology trainees would receive high quality teaching and supervision, similar to nursing, podiatry and other roles. Trainee nurses are just as likely to harm a patient as a psychology trainee, but trainee nurses do not cause harm. Trainees are allowed to gain practical experience in hospitals with real patients. Psychology trainees should be given the same opportunity. Universities Need Partnerships with Mental Health Services. Some critics would argue it costs money, time and resources for universities to develop the partnerships needed with mental health services to give psychology trainees the practical experience required of a licensing degree. This is already commonplace in psychology postgraduate courses. Universities providing the Doctorate of Clinical or Educational Psychology have partnerships with NHS services and local authorities. This demonstrates universities already have the skills, connections and relationships to show the effectiveness of trainees in mental health. In a licensing degree, these partnerships would have to be expanded, but with government support and intervention, this is doable. Especially, with the potential Return on Investment being £118 billion a year to the UK Economy. Not All Psychology Students Want to Be Practitioners. It is true not all psychology students would want to become mental health practitioners, but if only 20% of psychology graduates from 2023 became practitioners, then this would solve the NHS’s mental health recruitment crisis. Psychology students should be given the option to take a non-licensing or licensing psychology degree. This will allow universities, students and Government the flexibility it needs to address the mental health crisis in the UK. Call to Action It is critical that psychology students sign the petition to encourage the Government to take this important action so psychology graduates can become mental health practitioners. This will help graduates become more employable, solve the mental health crisis and improve lives. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/764524 I hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

To kick off this mini-series on attachment styles in developmental psychology, you’re going to learn about what is secure attachment today. Since we constantly hear about the insecure attachment styles, like avoidant, anxious and disorganised attachment and for good reason. Insecure attachments can have damaging impacts on a person’s relationships, mental health and emotional regulation. However, I don’t think there is enough focus on secure attachment because not a lot of people know what secure attachment is and what it looks like. Therefore, in this developmental psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what secure attachment is, what the signs of secure attachment are in adults and children and so much more. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, attachment theory and child psychology then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What Is Secure Attachment? Secure attachment is the bond where a person feels supported, safe as well as connected so they can express emotions freely, confidently explore their environment and seek comfort from their partner knowing that they have a reliable base to return to. In attachment theory, this is known as having a secure base and children use this to explore the environment knowing that their attachment figure is close by and will protect and comfort them if anything bad happens. In addition, having a secure attachment style means they can communicate effectively with others, they can regulate their feelings and emotions, the person is comfortable with intimacy as well as they have good problem-solving and coping skills. Moreover, people with a secure attachment style are comfortable being alone and being close to other people. As well as they are empathetic, compassionate and trusting. I know some readers or listeners might be confused as to why this is a special form of attachment because this might be so normal for you that you believe this is the only way to be. In an ideal world, I completely agree that it would be lovely if everyone was securely attached. It certainly would have made my life so much easier, but unfortunately because of abuse, childhood neglect and other environmental factors some children develop insecure attachment styles. Mainly because their caregiver was either a source of fear, they were inconsistent with their love and affection or they punished or shamed the child for showing emotions. All of these go against secure attachment because if a parent shamed you for showing emotions then you are not going to feel safe communicating your feelings and you aren’t going to be comfortable with intimacy because you don’t want to be punished or shamed again for showing your feelings. What Are The Benefits of Secure Attachment In Children? The benefits of children having secure attachment include the child having high self-esteem. Since secure attachment helps a child to develop a positive self-image and a healthier sense of identity. Leading to greater feelings of confidence in their abilities as well as decision-making skills so this helps to improve their overall psychological wellbeing. Another benefit is secure attachment helps to improve a child’s ability to form and maintain relationships with others, so they show higher levels of social competence and empathy compared to others. A smaller benefit of social skills is that secure attachment means children are better at conflict resolution so they have more positive interactions with adults and peers. Thirdly, children with secure attachment have a better ability to express and manage their emotions, so they tend to have more stable mood patterns and healthier responses to stress. Lastly for this section, secure attachment allows a child to get a healthy balance between showing self-reliance and seeking support. This means the child shows greater confidence in exploring new situations and improved problem-solving skills when facing challenges without others. This point about independence is something I often struggle with because my anxious part of my disorganised attachment means I like seeking comfort some of the time. Yet the avoidant part of my attachment means I am extremely self-reliant and I hate depending on other people at times, so I will avoid expressing my own needs and seeking comfort at all costs. What Are The Signs of Secure Attachment In Children? Now that we know the benefits of secure attachment in children, let’s see what are the signs. Personally, I’ll hopefully always remember this really sweet moment when my brother, his girlfriend and her son were round my parents’ once. I think the child was about two years old and he was exploring my parents’ house because it was a new environment and he always loved it round ours. And he would crawl away, look back to see if his mum and my brother were still there and he would crawl forward some more and check again. It was so cute and lovely to see how a child reacts to having a secure base. Of course, I was the only one who understood this was because of his secure attachment but everyone found it sweet. Anyway, for a child to develop a secure attachment style, they need to grow up in an environment where they feel seen and protected by their caregivers. Since if a caregiver doesn’t respond to a child’s needs then the child might not develop a secure attachment style because there is a lack of a secure and stable bond. Additionally, children with a secure attachment have a worldview of the world being friendly and reliable. In other words, they learn to trust that the people around them are dependable and kind. As well as these securely attached children use their caregivers as a secure base to explore the social world and they see their caregivers as a safe haven to return to for comfort whenever they’re distressed. In turn, the caregiver helps the securely attached child to develop self-regulation skills so the child knows how to regulate their emotional, cognitive and social behaviours. These skills are taught to the child whenever the caregiver comforts them when they’re distressed. In my opinion, I do tend to find there are always moments when I research certain topics in psychology, like attachment, when I’m like “no, that isn’t how the world works,”. When I wrote about people with a secure attachment style seeing the world as a reliable and friendly place, I really couldn’t understand how someone could see the world like that. And it just reminds me that I need to catch myself with my own biased cognitive processes because generally the world is a great and friendly place. I just need to keep reminding myself that yes, I have a disorganised attachment style, but I need to keep reminding myself that not everyone is unreliable and unkind. Anyway, some other signs of secure attachment in children can include a child wanting to seek comfort from their caregivers, preferring their caregiver over strangers, comfortable interactions with others, a child comfortably exploring new areas and a positive response to the return of their parents. This reminds me of a conversation I was having recently with a mature student studying social work during one of the reading support sessions I run as a student ambassador. She was telling me how she couldn’t imagine not responding to her child’s needs even though she admitted she might be overresponding and giving them too much attention at times. And it made me smile because I know this ambassador very well and of course, you are not going to tell a work friend the bad parts of your parenting or your life because everyone has them. We are simply human after all. Yet I know this woman is very authentic, she loves her kids and she would never imagine not responding to their needs. It was a weird feeling for me to see that, but I guess that’s why I’m working on my attachment style. I don’t want these perfectly normal things to be weird for me anymore. On the whole, securely attached children show balanced behavioural strategies where they’re able to express their need for autonomy and intimacy. With autonomy being important because it facilitates a person’s interaction with the environment. This is even more important when we remember that the attachment style we develop in early childhood, whilst it can thankfully be changed, it does have a lifelong influence on our ability to communicate our needs and emotions, how we form expectations about our relationships and how we respond to conflict. What Are The Benefits of Secure Attachment In Adults? Shifting away from children for the majority of this remaining episode, secure attachment doesn’t only matter in children. Adults need to have secure attachment too because it helps them with their parenting skills because they are more likely to create secure attachments with their own children so they can continue this positive relationship pattern across the generations. As well as adults having secure attachment means they can have healthy relationships because they find it easier to trust others and maintain healthy boundaries in relationships. Therefore, like children, they show higher levels of social competence and empathy as well as they can develop better conflict resolution skills. This all helps adults have more stable and satisfying professional and personal relationships. Finally for this section, secure attachment helps adults to have improved emotional well-being. Due to secure attachment increases a person’s stress management skills and emotional resilience because they are better able to handle life’s challenges and they can bounce back from setbacks more easily. As well as they have improved emotion regulation skills so adults with secure attachment have healthier responses to stress and more stable moods. What Are Some Signs of Secure Attachment In Adults? As I briefly mentioned earlier, the attachment style we develop in early childhood is critical to the attachment style we have as adults. This continues to impact our relationship expectations, our worldview and how we interact with others as adults. Therefore, there are five main signs of an adult having secure attachment and you’ll learn about these signs now. Firstly, adults with secure attachment are able to open up about their emotions and how they feel, so they don’t hide their emotions or bottle things up. As well as they are comfortable asking for help when they need it, and opening up about their feelings so they don’t worry about being rejected or being let down. Another sign is that adults with secure attachment are resilient so whilst they might experience negative attachment-related events, they can still objectively assess events and people and assign a positive value to the relationship in general. In other words, a person, like a caregiver, can still let them down and not respond to their needs as an adult but the adult is still able to see that this isn’t a pattern and they don’t need to develop the anxious or avoidant behavioural patterns. Penultimately, secure attachments mean adults are comfortable with intimacy and closeness with others. Therefore, adults are okay with being close to other people and letting others be close to them so they feel good about themselves and they trust others. Also, people with secure attachment are comfortable sharing intimate moments with others and having their own space. I’ll have to admit that what is interesting about learning more about secure attachment is that I can really see and understand how disorganised my attachment style is. For example, I love sharing intimate moments with other people but equally, I seriously love having my own space away from other people, so it’s interesting seeing how I have two extreme behavioural strategies activated a good chunk of the time. Finally, secure attachment allows adults to show healthy interdependence, now this is a fascinating topic for me personally because I understand it from a psychology viewpoint. I do not understand it as a human being. As a result, healthy interdependence involves securely attached people being able to maintain a healthy balance of relying on their partner and meeting their own needs. This balance helps them to create deeper intimacy through being vulnerable whilst maintaining their own individuality. Developmental Psychology Conclusion I’ve really enjoyed learning about secure attachment because in clinical psychology and in psychology lectures, we spend a lot of time looking at insecure attachment styles. This is a good thing most of the time because it means we can understand what causes children and adults to have difficulties with social relationships and this has a massive impact on their mental health in turn. Yet if we don’t understand what secure attachment is then, how are we meant to know what attachment and relationship point of view, we’re helping them towards? I’m sure that question mainly comes from my own abuse, trauma and disorganised attachment background, but it has been a lot of fun focusing on secure attachment today. In future podcast episodes, you’ll learn about anxious, avoidant and disorganised attachment styles and they are even more fun. Here are some questions to get you thinking at the end of this developmental psychology podcast episode: · What moments from your life do you remember seeing signs of secure attachment? It can be from seeing other children or yourself. · Are you securely attached? · Think about your friends and yourself as adults, what signs of secure attachment can you recognise in them? · If you don’t fit into the secure attachment style, what signs don’t you have? · Why do you think attachment is important to learn about? I hope you enjoyed today’s developmental psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Your Unshakable Self: A Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology and Mental Health Guide to Sense of Self. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Child Psychology References and Further Reading Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Lawrence Erlbaum. Baldwin, M.W., & Fehr, B. (1995). On the instability of attachment style ratings. Personal Relationships, 2, 247-261. Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L.M. (1991). Attachment Styles Among Young Adults: A Test of a Four-Category Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61 (2), 226–244. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Volume I. Attachment . London: Hogarth Press. Brazelton, T. B., Tronick, E., Adamson, L., Als, H., & Wise, S. (1975). Early mother-infant reciprocity. Parent-infant interaction, 33(137-154), 122. Brennan, K. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1995). Dimensions of adult attachment, affect regulation, and romantic relationship functioning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21 (3), 267–283. Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (p. 46–76). The Guilford Press. Budniok, S., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., & Bosmans, G. (2024). The moderating role of oxytocin in the association between parental support and change in secure attachment development. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 02724316241296180. Bylsma, W. H., Cozzarelli, C., & Sumer, N. (1997). Relation between adult attachment styles and global self-esteem. Basic and applied social psychology, 19 (1), 1-16. Caron, A., Lafontaine, M., Bureau, J., Levesque, C., and Johnson, S.M. (2012). Comparisons of Close Relationships: An Evaluation of Relationship Quality and Patterns of Attachment to Parents, Friends, and Romantic Partners in Young Adults. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 44 (4), 245-256. Cassidy, J., & Berlin, L. J. (1994). The insecure/ambivalent pattern of attachment: Theory and research. Child development, 65 (4), 971-991. Collins, N. L., & Read, S. J. (1994). Cognitive representations of adult attachment: The structure and function of working models. In K. Bartholomew & D. Perlman (Eds.) Advances in personal relationships, Vol. 5: Attachment processes in adulthood(pp. 53-90). London: Jessica Kingsley. Comte, A., Szymanska, M., Monnin, J., Moulin, T., Nezelof, S., Magnin, E., ... & Vulliez- Coady, L. (2024). Neural correlates of distress and comfort in individuals with avoidant, anxious and secure attachment style: an fMRI study. Attachment & Human Development, 26(5), 423-445. Conrad, R., Forstner, A. J., Chung, M. L., Mücke, M., Geiser, F., Schumacher, J., & Carnehl, F. (2021). Significance of anger suppression and preoccupied attachment in social anxiety disorder: a cross-sectional study. BMC psychiatry, 21 (1), 1-9. Ensink, K., Fonagy, P., Normandin, L., Rozenberg, A., Marquez, C., Godbout, N., & Borelli, J. L. (2021). Post-traumatic stress disorder in sexually abused children: secure attachment as a protective factor. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 646680. Favez, N., & Tissot, H. (2019). Fearful-avoidant attachment: a specific impact on sexuality?. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 45(6), 510-523. Field, T. (1985). Attachment as psychobiological attunement: Being on the same wavelength. The psychobiology of attachment and separation, 4152, 454. Finzi, R., Cohen, O., Sapir, Y., & Weizman, A. (2000). Attachment styles in maltreated children: A comparative study. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 31 (2), 113-128. Fraley, R. C., & Roisman, G. I. (2019). The development of adult attachment styles: Four lessons. Current opinion in psychology, 25, 26-30. Haft, W. L., & Slade, A. (1989). Affect attunement and maternal attachment: A pilot study. Infant mental health journal, 10(3), 157-172. Hartup, W. W. (1993). Adolescents and their friends. New directions for child and adolescent development, 1993 (60), 3-22. Hashworth, T., Reis, S., & Grenyer, B. F. (2021). Personal agency in borderline personality disorder: The impact of adult attachment style. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 2224. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52 (3), 511–524. Hoghughi, M., & Speight, A. N. P. (1998). Good enough parenting for all children—a strategy for a healthier society. Archives of disease in childhood, 78(4), 293-296. Justo‐Núñez, M., Morris, L., & Berry, K. (2022). Self‐report measures of secure attachment in adulthood: A systematic review. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 29(6), 1812-1842. Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1986). Discovery of an insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In T. B. Brazelton & M. W. Yogman (Eds.), Affective development in infancy . Ablex Publishing. Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.), Growing points of attachment theory and research. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50 (1-2), 66-104. Meins, E. (2013). Sensitive attunement to infants’ internal states: Operationalizing the construct of mind-mindedness. Attachment & Human Development, 15(5-6), 524-544. Moghadam, M., Rezaei, F., Ghaderi, E., & Rostamian, N. (2016). Relationship between attachment styles and happiness in medical students. Journal of family medicine and primary care, 5 (3), 593–599. Murray, L. (1985). Emotional regulations of interactions between two-month-oldsand their mothers. Social perception in infants, 177-197. Powell, B., Cooper, G., Hoffman, K., & Marvin, B. (2013). The circle of security intervention: Enhancing attachment in early parent-child relationships. Guilford publications. Putri, D. E., Rahardjo, W., Qomariyah, N., Rini, Q. K., & Pranandari, K. (2021). Social problem-solving in freshmen: The role of emotional stability, secure attachment, communication skill, and self-esteem. Humaniora, 12(2), 141-149. Schore, A. N. (2001). Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant mental health journal: official publication of the world association for infant mental health, 22(1‐2), 7-66. Schore, J. R., & Schore, A. N. (2008). Modern attachment theory: The central role of affect regulation in development and treatment. Clinical social work journal, 36(1), 9-20. Sechi, C., Vismara, L., Brennstuhl, M. J., Tarquinio, C., & Lucarelli, L. (2020). Adult attachment styles, self-esteem, and quality of life in women with fibromyalgia. Health Psychology Open, 7 (2), 2055102920947921. Simpson, J. A. (1990). Influence of attachment styles on romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 59 (5), 971. Stern, D. N. (2018). The interpersonal world of the infant: A view from psychoanalysis and developmental Psychology. Routledge. Tabachnick, A. R., He, Y., Zajac, L., Carlson, E. A., & Dozier, M. (2022). Secure attachment in infancy predicts context-dependent emotion expression in middle childhood. Emotion, 22(2), 258. Waters, E., Merrick, S., Treboux, D., Crowell, J., & Albersheim, L. (2000). Attachment security in infancy and early adulthood: A twenty-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 71 (3), 684-689. Weinberg, M. K., Beeghly, M., Olson, K. L., & Tronick, E. (2008). A still-face paradigm for young children: 2½ year-olds’ reactions to maternal unavailability during the still-face. The journal of developmental processes, 3(1), 4. 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 majority of people think that local councils only collect their bins and they don't do anything else for them. However, local elections are a lot more important than people realize. From funding and policy on education, healthcare, mental health services and so much more, your local council directly impacts your life in endless ways. Especially for psychologists. Whenever a local council makes a decision to change mental health, education and adult social care funding, this single decision creates a ripple effect across a local community that can harm or benefit mental health. Therefore, in this political psychology podcast episode, you'll learn why do local elections matter for psychologists, why is voter turnout so low for local elections and most importantly, how do we improve voter turnout. If you enjoy learning about voter behaviour, systemic factors behind mental health and more, then this will be a brilliant episode for you.  Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Business Psychology and More to Real World Problems. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why Are Local Elections Important to Psychologists? Before we dive into the main topic of the podcast episode, I want to help set the scene a little bit more and explicitly explain why local elections matter to psychologists. The examples I'll use will be mental health services, housing and education.  Firstly, local elections are important for psychologists because if a political party gets a majority in a council and they cut mental health spending to the bone, then this will impact our work. Before an election, we might have been planning a brilliant new local mental health campaign that was really tailored to the individual needs of the council ward, it was a great project and the local community was fully behind it. Then the new party comes in and slashes our funding or they scrap the project because it doesn't align with their vision. This is all possible. Therefore, as you can see, psychologists have a vested interest in voting in local elections because we need to make sure Councillors who care about mental health get into power.  In addition, as psychologists, we should be interested in the mental health ideas and campaigns that candidates are putting forward. We have brilliant research, critical thinking and analysis skills. Therefore, if a candidate says that they have a brilliant idea to solve the mental health crisis in a council area, but as psychologists, we know it won't work without a lot more detail, then we need to think twice about voting for that person.  On the whole, when it comes to mental health services, psychologists should be interested and we should vote in local elections to help improve, sustain and protect our mental health services.  Building upon this, if we take a more systemic approach to mental health and we look at the more societal-level factors, if a political party campaigns to end housing benefits or to tighten up the rules without a good alternative, then this could have a very negative impact on a community and lead to more mental health difficulties. If you're a single mother with two children and you can only pay rent each month because of your housing benefit, then after an election, you lose it because of new criteria. Then that is going to be very stressful for you, you might have to get a second or third job, you might have to skip meals to feed your kids or you might have to turn to crime just to survive. As you can see, a single council decision can change a person's life for the worse.  If I apply this example more directly to psychology, this is important because this single mother is more likely to be overwhelmed, distressed and experience negative mental health outcomes. All because of the stress created by this council decision. Therefore, this is why local elections should matter to psychologists, because we need to use our vote to do what's best for the local community, and hopefully decrease harmful decisions that will lead to increased negative mental health outcomes, more strain on our public services and increase suffering for innocent people.  My final example in this introductory section is education. Councils make decisions on education all the time. Whether this is to do with student placement, special educational needs access or teaching, councils have a lot of influence over education. As an aspiring educational psychologist, I'm always interested in learning more about education in local areas. As well as if we apply Ecological Systems Theory to this example, one of the Ecological Systems that a child exists in is the relationship between the school and the local council. Since a local council might decide to reduce special educational needs funding by 5%, so this means the school needs to reduce teaching supply staff to save money so this negatively impacts a child and their education because there aren't as many support staff members to support them anymore. Therefore, this example shows how even though a child never directly interacts with the council Ecological System, they are still indirectly impacted by the council's decision.  Ultimately, this is why psychologists should be interested in local elections, reading through candidate manifestos and voting. We understand that council decisions change lives and they have the power to harm or enhance a child's education. Why Are Local Councils Important? After setting the scene and explaining why local elections are important for psychologists to understand and get involved with, let’s take a closer look at why councils are important. Therefore, local councils have an immense role in local life and they are a lot more important than individuals think, because unitary authorities in particular deliver over 800 local services to the community. For example, unitary authorities provide local people with social housing, transport, education, road maintenance, waste management, financial services and so much more. Local councils are flat out critical to everyday life. As a result this does raise a very important question for all of us, given how important and how much local councils directly impact our lives. Why do so few people vote in local elections compared to national elections? In addition for a bit of context, because I’ve been getting into local politics a lot lately, the national average of local election turnout is about 37% and for my council ward, at the last council election in 2023, the voter turnout was 26%. That meant just under 75% of voters did not vote for their local councillors. To me, that is heartbreaking because local councils are so important, they directly impact the local community and they directly impact individuals. This is why it’s important to understand why higher voter apathy, low levels of political efficacy and a lack of knowledge on the local government’s importance and electoral cycle is critical in understanding why voter turnout is so low for local elections. How Does Voter Apathy and Political Efficacy Lead to Low Voter Turnout? The first reason why election turnout is low for local elections is because of voter apathy. This refers to a person’s lack of interest in the political process, and this definitely includes local elections. Whereas political efficacy refers to a person’s belief about their ability to change political processes. These two beliefs are critical to understand because when you have higher voter apathy and reduced political efficacy, so when people don’t believe they can change the outcome of the election, then this leads to low voter turnout. The best way to reduce voter apathy and political efficacy is by communication and positive experiences with the local council. Personally as someone who is very interested in politics and as an aspiring psychologist, this is a little heartbreaking. Since I spent my life studying and wanting to help people using psychology. I want to improve lives, empower others and I truly want to make the world a better place. Yet it’s unfortunate that we live in a world where people aren’t engaged, they don’t think they can make changes and they don’t feel empowered enough to improve their local communities through political action. This is something I would love to change in the future. How Does Poor Communication Lead to Voter Apathy? The idea of poor communication leading to voter apathy is fascinating and really interesting, because this isn’t about the Council having a poor communication strategy with the general public. Well, at least in part. In fact, it’s about all the social media dialogues, news articles, the negative way how other councillors and political parties talk about the council as unpopular, pointless and very inefficient. All this negativity actually creates a sense of hopelessness, fatigue and like the local council is so pointless that there is no point engaging in it. This isn’t just limited to local news and local issues, this is actually a national problem because both local and national news stories about the inefficacy of local government is overly simplistic and negative. Personally, I think this is one of the reasons why in England, over the next few years we’re going to have a massive local government restructure that is not a good idea. It’s going to scrap a lot of councils, get rid of a good chunk of councillors and it means that local government will be more distant from local communities. Anyway, that is an issue that is way beyond the scope of this podcast episode. Anyway, I think because the general public is so apathetic towards local government despite how important it is to everyone, this is why the local government reorganisation can happen without much protest. All these issues can be traced back to these constant negative stories about the inefficacy, unresponsiveness and the unpopular nature of local councils. Of course, I am not saying that local government should not be held to account. It needs to be. For a democracy to function, elected officials need to be held to account more than ever before. Yet we can be more positive, more hopeful and more mindful of our communications about the council. In addition, when we compare the limited media attention of local government compared to national government and other international stories, the impact of negative media attention on voter apathy is a lot greater for local government when compared to national government. Finally for this section, another reason why there’s poor communication around local councils and this increases voter apathy, is because of the poor communication between the Cabinet and Councillors themselves. Since it isn’t uncommon for councillors to become informed of a new council policy by their electorate instead of the Cabinet themselves. This is a major problem for a range of reasons. For example, it creates unneeded conflict between the Cabinet and councillors, because councillors are being blindsided by angry voters, and it makes policy implementation more difficult. Another reason why this is problematic is because this can increase tensions between political parties within the council. This leads to different parties decrying the political system, shaming the council and this only increases feelings of voter apathy and political inefficacy. This means nothing changes and this isn’t healthy or good for local democracy. Especially when it comes to our mental health services, the collective mental health of a local community and all the other interests of psychologists. On the whole, poor communication is a reason for low turnout at local elections because the prejudiced dialogue between Councillors, the poor public relations strategy between the council and voters and the communication strategy are critical reasons behind low turnout. This is why it’s important not to berate other councillors, because this doesn’t help anyone, it doesn’t help the public image of the council and it increases voter apathy. This is not a good thing. How Do Poor Experiences with the Local Council Contribute to Low Election Turnout? If you ask anyone what they think about the local council, they will all say something along the lines of the council doesn’t listen, there’s no point asking for anything because nothing happens or the opposite happens and the problems get worse and so on. This is important to take note of because it is these negative experiences with the local council that increase voter apathy and makes people believe that it’s impossible to change the political process and get a good council in power. This is further supported by Facebook Community Groups who reveal a similar opinion towards the council and their experience of interacting with councillors and council-run services. As well as if we draw on policy feedback theory (a political theory that proposes that policies actively influence the social and political environment over time), negative experiences with a local council leads to higher voter apathy, reduced political efficacy and lower voter turnout in local elections. In other words, these negative experiences just continue the same cycle of low turnout, minimal interest in politics and nothing changes. Why Is The Perception of Importance of Local Elections so Important? Another important aspect that explains why local election turnout is so low is because a lot of people don’t see local elections as important. Since whenever it comes to an election, voters do a “cost-benefit” analysis to see whether it is effective to vote and there are a range of internal and external factors that influence their decision. For example, research shows that strength of civic duty, education, income, age, length of residence and how much knowledge you have about the election increases your likelihood to vote. In other words, the older you are, the richer, more educated and the longer you’ve lived in an area, the more likely you are to vote in elections. Those are all internal factors. Also, before we talk about external factors, I want to comment on this from a psychology point of view. Psychologists are already very well placed to think about external and internal factors, because we constantly do this when it comes to supporting our clients in clinical psychology, or thinking about internal or external motivation in children in educational psychology, and even what external and internal organisational factors would help a human resources department thrive. We are already very well trained in thinking about these factors. Therefore, psychologists are in a great position to advise councils about how to improve election turnout, we can advise political parties what factors and challenges might impact the council’s likelihood to support or oppose a mental health policy and so on. Psychologists have the skills, expertise and knowledge to implement a lot of positive change. However, there are external factors that can impact someone’s likelihood to vote in a local election. For example, the logistical ease and accessibility of voting, the difference between the candidates and the seat’s safety. This refers to the extent to which a seat or council ward is considered a secure win for a political party or individual candidate. Personally, I would always like to challenge the idea of secure seats because as UK politics is increasingly showing there is no such thing as a safe seat. Any seat can be taken by another political party regardless of how many thousands or tens of thousands of a majority a candidate had at the last election. These external factors are important because research shows that the more contested a seat is, the more varied and numerous the possible winners are, the more likely someone is to vote. Personally, whilst this shouldn’t reveal my personal politics here, but this is why I am glad the UK is facing the end of a two-party system. It means the next general election might be evidence of a multi-party system where any of the four or five major political parties could win. This means that the two oldest political parties in the UK are going to have to fight, work hard and prove to the UK population why they should be in government if they want to remain in power. On the whole, all these internal and external factors lead voters to do a cost-benefit analysis because people will vote when the benefit of voting outweighs the cost of participating. As well as research shows that whilst all the different factors tend to remain constant between national and local elections, knowledge is the one factor that changes dramatically between each type of election. For instance, you might know what your governing or opposition party stand for nationally, but you might have no idea what they stand for locally and how they would improve your local area. This is important to think about because research shows the less people know about the council, council candidates and how the election works, the less likely they are to vote. As well as the majority of people sadly believe that local elections aren’t as important as national elections. To some extent, I would argue the opposite. Given how local councils impact your everyday life every single day through education, roads, mental health, social housing and other services, they have a much more direct impact on your everyday life. Conclusion: How Do We Improve Voter Turnout I have to admit that this psychology podcast episode has been a lot of fun to explore, because we’ve seen how the actions of councillors, the local authority and other societal-level factors can come together to decrease voter turnout. And it’s important to remember that this is a problem because if people don’t vote then this means that nothing changes, it means innovative mental health solutions cannot be proposed and implemented and it harms a community as a whole. Therefore, this means we have to question how we can improve voter turnout for local elections, and what does this mean for aspiring and qualified psychologists. We can improve voter turn out by improving civic knowledge about the importance of the local council and the over 800 services that they typically provide the local community with. As well as we can improve public image of the local council by investing and improving the interactions and experiences that individuals have with the council. Furthermore, if these problems remain unaddressed then local councils run the risk of implementing unrepresentative policies and initiatives because so few people in the grand scheme of things actually voted for them. As well as these so-called democratic policies are not being held to account by most residents, because most residents are not voting or interested in them. Moreover, we can improve and strengthen local democracy by improving civic knowledge, improving public relations and communication with the Council. We can do this by getting greater media distribution of the Council’s importance, their successes and their dialogue between Councillors. As well as whilst disagreements are flat out critical to a functioning democracy, we need to call out bad, toxic behaviours that only increase voter apathy. Ultimately, as aspiring and qualified psychologists, if we want to see improvements in education, mental health care and our mental health services, then we need to vote ourselves and realise that our vote has the power to change our local community for the better. As well as we need to help local councils and authorities to tackle these factors that led to voter apathy and a perception of political inefficacy. If we tackle these factors then it helps to protect our democracy and mental health services at all levels of society. To wrap up this episode, I want to share that personally (and I have no problem with someone stealing this idea as long as they aren’t in Medway) that I would flat out love to create a short assembly designed for 16, 17 and 18 year old students that explains the importance of local government, how it directly impacts these students, how they can inspire change as well as I want to give them detailed information on how council elections work, and how to register to vote. Since I strongly believe if students understand how easy it is to register to vote then it would increase voter registration as well as if they understood how council elections work, as we’ve seen in this episode, it would increase turnout to. This is even more important considering that in the United Kingdom at the moment, the Representation of the People Bill (2026) is currently going through Parliament and this legalises 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local and national elections. Given how I used to give assemblies, educational workshops and other in-depth talks to a wide range of students for years through my Outreach work, this is something I would love to return to at some point in the future. Anyway, please vote in your local elections. You can make a much stronger impact on your community than you ever thought possible.   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Business Psychology and More to Real World Problems. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Political Psychology References and Further Reading Frank, M., Stadelmann, D., & Torgler, B. (2023). Higher turnout increases incumbency advantages: Evidence from mayoral elections. Economics & Politics, 35(2), 529-555.Morales, M., & Belmar, F. (2022). Clientelism, turnout and incumbents’ performance in Chilean local government elections. Social Sciences, 11(8), 361. https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/news/2024/results-general-election-4-july-2024 https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/low-turnout-at-local-elections-in-england-why-it-matters-and-how-to-improve-it/ Kostelka, F., Krejcova, E., Sauger, N., & Wuttke, A. (2023). Election frequency and voter turnout. Comparative Political Studies, 56(14), 2231-2268. Maškarinec, P. (2024). Geography of voter turnout in Slovak local elections (1994–2018): The effects of size and contagion on local electoral participation. Transactions in GIS, 28(7), 2113-2133. Orford, S., Rallings, C., Thrasher, M., & Borisyuk, G. (2008). Investigating differences in electoral turnout: the influence of ward-level context on participation in local and parliamentary elections in Britain. Environment and Planning A, 40(5), 1250-1268. Rallings, C., & Thrasher, M. (2007). The turnout ‘gap’and the costs of voting–a comparison of participation at the 2001 general and 2002 local elections in England. Public Choice, 131(3), 333-344. Wu, L., Rogers, B., & Wang, G. (2023). Explaining voting participation gaps in local government elections in rural China. Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 8(1), 307-330. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page. However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you. Which I am going to say right now. Thank you! Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.

To celebrate the release of my brand-new book, How Does Ageing Affect Us , I want to share with you some fascinating facts about the psychology of ageing in this insightful clinical and cognitive psychology podcast episode. By the end of this episode, you’ll understand what is the neuropsychology of ageing, does bilingualism protect against dementia, what are superagers and so much more. If you enjoy learning about ageing, mental health in older age and how the brain changes as we age then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by How Does Ageing Affect Us? A Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology Guide to the Ageing Process, The Ageing Brain and More.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Extracts from How Does Ageing Affect Us? (COPYRIGHT 2026 CONNOR WHITELEY) Introduction To The Neuropsychology Of Ageing Personally, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I’ve always been rather interested in how the ageing process impacts us. Also, a few years ago, my Great-Uncle died from dementia and even though other family members looked after him a lot more than me because I was too young at the time. I did get to hear and occasionally see how the dementia was impacting his cognitive abilities and his behaviour. In addition, in the United Kingdom to become a qualified clinical psychologist, let alone get onto the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology (DClinPsych), you need to have clinical experience working with older adults. Hence, why I’ve always been interested in the neuropsychology of ageing because I knew one day I would have to focus on it as part of my clinical psychology journey. And I wanted to learn more about dementia as the condition had a massive impact on my family. As a result, to kick this book off, before we can start exploring how ageing impacts our memory, our brain amongst lots of other areas. We need to understand what actually the neuropsychology of ageing is and what topics we’re going to be investigating. Therefore, in this book, we mainly want to answer the following questions because by answering these questions, we’ll be able to get a deep understanding of how ageing impacts us from a healthy ageing perspective and a pathological ageing perspective: ·      How does the brain change as we naturally age? ·      How does this affect cognition? ·      How are our brain and cognition further affected in pathological conditions of ageing? ·      What are the clinical considerations when working with older adults? ·      Can we prevent cognitive decline and the incidence of pathological ageing conditions? Furthermore, the ageing process is important to study because there are a wide range of economic and social implications of ageing societies. For example, around 40% of government spending is spent on health care and pensions and when we consider the stark health outcomes and needs of an ageing population, this works out as a lot of money. As well as the proportion of the population that is of an advanced age is increasing decade upon decade. In addition, with people living longer, there is an associated increase in the frequency of dementia cases and cognitive decline. For example, in 2000, around 50% of people aged 85 years old and older had Alzheimer’s Disease with the greatest risk factor of Alzheimer’s Disease being age itself. As a result, according to Harper (2014), if you want to become an applied psychologist in the future, like a clinical or neuropsychologist then you need to be aware of age-related cognitive changes. Whereas if you want to become a more research-focused psychologist, like an academic, then you still need to be aware of ageing because researchers need to provide empirical evidence both to understand age-related cognitive change, and to inform us, clinical psychologists. Since without researchers, we wouldn’t know the cognitive baselines that differentiate “normal” or “healthy” cognitive changes from “pathological” age-related changes. It is by combining the work of researchers and clinical psychologists and other professionals that we can reduce the risk of pathological ageing. Is Ageing All About Decline? One aspect of ageing I do want to stress in this introduction to the book is that I’m not going to downplay and hate on ageing. That is not the point of the book, and I don’t want you to think that ageing is all bad and that ageing is a death sentence or a cliff edge that all of us are marching towards. There are a lot of beautiful things about ageing. For example, in older age, people are more prosocial, they’re wiser and they have more life experiences because they have more free time. Such as when my Grandma was still alive, her and my Grandad would go on holidays, cruises and exploring a good few times a year. As well as they had the time to do their different social groups and Church activities. Also, I’m constantly hearing from older adults how they don’t know how they ever had time to work because they’re so busy enjoying their life after retirement. There are good things about ageing, and older adults have increased vocabulary as well. Is Ageing A Disease? Finally for this chapter, I want to mention that there is a weird argument going on in the literature and wider world about whether ageing is a disease. Personally, I do not believe ageing is a disease because that’s a very negative and hopeless way of looking at it, because ageing is a perfectly natural thing that we cannot escape. However, there are people and organizations that argue ageing is a disease. For example, the ICD-11 (Jan 1, 2022) defines “ageing-related” disease as “caused by pathological processes which persistently lead to the loss of organism's adaptation and progress in older ages”. Which is weird because older adults experience a hardening of the arteries which is problematic, but it’s natural. As well as older adults experience wrinkles. Are both wrinkles and a hardening of the arteries a disease? I’m not sure. Here are some questions for you at the end of this chapter: ·      What are your attitudes towards ageing? Positive or negative? ·      How are you feeling about getting older? Nervous? Excited? Sad? ·      Do you think ageing is a disease?   DOES BILINGUALISM PROTECT AGAINST DEMENTIA AND ARE SUPERAGERS REAL? For the final chapter in this introductory section, I wanted to show how pop-psychology isn’t always correct or clean-cut. That’s why in this chapter, I’m going to show you two studies about bilingualism and superagers, because in the mainstream media, there are a lot of articles saying how learning another language is going to stop you ever developing dementia. A lot of people believe those pop articles and this is where my personal rules about if an idea from psychology has entered the mainstream media and everyone from news channels to celebrities to social media influencers are promoting it. Then chances are it is not the best finding ever. This chapter might support my personal rule. Let’s find out. Does Bilingualism Protect Against Dementia? Anderson et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analysis to see if bilingualism does protect someone against developing dementia. The background to this study was that as you can imagine, ageing is associated with a loss of cognitive function and we’ll look more at this loss in later chapters. As well as this loss of cognitive function is likely because in the brain, there’s a decrease in white matter, grey matter and neural connectivity as we age. In addition, age is the strongest risk factor for dementia with dementia affecting more than 50 million people worldwide and this number is doubling every 20 years. Therefore, you can see why it’s important to identify protective factors that can delay or prevent the onset of dementia.  Moreover, in past studies, there has been some evidence that bilingualism can contribute to cognitive reserve (more on that in the next section) and neuroplasticity (how the brain changes in response to environmental demands) in the brain. This allows people to resist the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. Although, within the literature, this “evidence” is controversial and instead of bilingualism eliminating the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, it might instead only delay the onset. Still, delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease is a lot better than not having an impact at all. Whereas another meta-analysis by Mukadam et al. (2017) found that bilingualism wasn’t a protective factor against Alzheimer’s Disease. And the analysis suggested that other studies that had found a significant effect for bilingualism being a protective factor had failed to control for education or cultural differences. Nonetheless, this previous meta-analysis had only considered the incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease and not the age-at-onset. In other words, this meta-analysis was only considering if bilingualism stopped Alzheimer’s Disease developing in the first place, not if it delayed the development of the condition, and this analysis only considered prospective studies too. That’s where Anderson et al. (2020) comes in because they wanted to see did bilingualism protective against incidence rates and/or age of onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms? As well as does the evidence differ when only considering prospective studies? To test these research questions, Anderson et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analysis of studies into the bilingualism, age-at-onset and incidence rates of Alzheimer’s Disease with a total of 21 studies being included in the final analysis. The results showed that bilingual people might show a greater cognitive reserve than people who could only speak one language, so their brain was better able to adapt to the decline of certain brain areas. For example, bilingual people showed alternate functional circuits compared to other people, so there was a shift in their brains from frontal areas to more posterior and subcortical neural circuits. In other words, the brains of bilingual people were able to use other brain areas to compensate for the deterioration of neurons in the frontal parts of the brain. Overall, this is believed to happen because learning another language might help to strengthen synaptic density and coupling. This increases cognitive reserve and protects people against the effects of pathological ageing, but it doesn’t stop the ageing process entirely. This will make more sense in the next section of the book where we focus more on brain ageing and the different theories academics have put forward to explain changes in our cognitive abilities as we age. What Are Superagers? The last paper I want to show you in this introductory section involves the idea of superagers from Harrison et al. (2012) with their paper on “Superior Memory and Higher Cortical Volumes in Unusually Successful Cognitive Ageing”. Now what’s interesting about this paper is that it was published before the replication crisis in the mid-2010s, but so modern research standards, this is a bad paper. I’ll explain why in a moment, yet it does have some interesting findings that help us to understand why as some people age they maintain their cognitive abilities whereas other people do not. We’ll learn more about “successful ageing” in the last section of the book, but until then please enjoy Harrison et al. (2012). The background to this study is that Superagers are people who despite their advanced age retain superior cognitive performance compared to other people of the same age. As well as this is important to researchers because these Superagers can be helpful to us in identifying protective factors against cognitive impairment. Also, it’s important to understand how the brains of Superagers might be different to the brains of non-Superagers. On the whole, the topic of Superagers can be very useful to society as a whole because if we “unlock” the protective factors that stop Superagers from experiencing cognitive decline and pathological ageing. Then we can create interventions and lifestyle tips that will do the same for others so the rates of dementia and other age-related diseases will hopefully decrease. And the burden on health and social care can decrease too. This led Harrison et al. (2012) to want to research do Superagers even exist and how do their brains differ from non-superagers. As a result, to test their research questions, the researchers got 12 Superagers who were aged over 80 years old and they were defined as people who’s episodic memory performance was comparable to individuals aged between 50 and 65 years old. There was an elderly control group made up of 10 people aged over 80 years old, and there was a middle-aged control group made up of 14 people. To test their episodic memory, the Delayed Verbal recall score from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Boston Naming Task, Trail Making Test Part B and Category Fluency Test. To test their brain structure, each participant went through an Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan (MRI) and three-dimensional MP-RAGE sequences were used to map the structure of the brain with their cortical thickness calculated by measuring the distance between representations of grey and white matter and the CSF. The results showed that the Superagers had an anatomic structure that deviated from “normal” agers and was similar to the younger cohort so Superagers might have an unusually prominent anterior cingulate cortex. Nonetheless, there were a lot of issues with Harrison et al. (2012) because there was only one measure of brain structure and no inclusion of brain function, and in all honesty, modern researchers aren’t sure if the study even used the right statistical analyses when comparing grey-matter volume across the three groups. The conclusions might be completely wrong or the differences might not be as stark as previously believed. Personally, my massive issue with the study was the sample size. There were around ten people in each group and this study is meant to be making generalisations and conclusions about the brains of humans as a species. The entire point of this study was to help identify differences in the brains of Superagers and non-superagers. There are over 7 billion people on the planet and this study only used ten people per group. How are ten people per group representative of the entire species? It is not, so this sample size is extremely small and in my very harsh opinion, almost pointless. Finally, this study is cross-sectional rather than longitudinal analysis, which is the most common issue with the ageing literature. This is a problem because a cross-sectional design doesn’t allow us to monitor a person as they age so we cannot see the influences and other factors that impact their cognitive performance as they age. On the whole, I would really like to think that this type of research paper would not be published today. Here are some questions to get you thinking at the end of this chapter: ·      Are you surprised bilingualism might not protect against dementia? ·      What do you think about Harrison et al. (2012)? ·      What factors do you think can protect us against the onset of dementia? Now that you’ve been introduced to the fascinating topic of the neuropsychology of ageing, let’s start exploring how the brain changes as we age and how this impacts our cognitive abilities. 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 How Does Ageing Affect Us? A Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology Guide to the Ageing Process, The Ageing Brain and More.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Whiteley, C. (2026) How Does Ageing Affect Us? 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.

We often hear that social isolation and social withdrawal hurts our mental health and increases our risk of depression, but why? Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn why does social isolation harm mental health by exploring the psychological and biological changes that happen during social isolation, what causes it and most importantly, how we can help people experiencing social isolation. Ultimately, social isolation harms our mental health and increases depression amongst other mental health conditions, but why? That’s the entire aim of the episode. If you enjoy learning about mental health, clinical psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by How Does Ageing Effect Us? A Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology Guide to Ageing . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Social Isolation? Social isolation is when we’re cut off from contact with other people. We can cut off physically from others, but we can also be emotionally disconnected or cut off from other people during social interactions. This is a problem because as a species, humans are very social creatures and if any of us spend too much time alone then our next social interaction can feel exhausting or awkward, because we’re out of practice. Building upon this, people can become intentionally socially isolated or this can be done unintentionally, but the results are the same. Prolonged periods of social isolation, a period when we feel cut off from others, still harms our mental and physical health. As a result of, with our social brains being hardwired for social interactions, when we don’t get enough social connection, this negatively impacts our mental health as well as wellbeing. For example, social isolation leads to loneliness and increased feelings of anxiety, depression and our brains can change how they process emotions. Yet social isolation doesn’t only impact our mental health, it can impact our physical health too. For example, social isolation can cause increased risk in developing high blood pressure, weakened immunity, heart disease amongst other negative health outcomes. Personally, as an aspiring clinical psychologist, and as even an aspiring educational psychologist I look at this, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about social isolation, like many others have. Back in my Neuropsychology of Ageing module during my MSc, we had an entire lecture on the negative impact of loneliness and how social cognition decreases during older adulthood. As well as there is a lot of truth in the old saying that loneliness is just as deadly as smoking or loneliness is like smoking a hundred cigarettes a day. Loneliness and social isolation is that  harmful to our mental health. Furthermore, the reason why How Does Ageing Affect Us is the sponsor of today’s episode is because it deep dives into how and why loneliness occurs in older age. As well as how in clinical psychology, we need to adapt our therapeutic models to accommodate the unique challenges of older age to reduce loneliness, support the client and improve their mental health. For example, we need to factor in how the life transition, such as retiring, their children being grown and other changes that the client is going through will impact them. This is important for us to think about when talking about loneliness and social isolation because if you’re retiring and that was where you got most of your social interaction from, then retiring marks a massive loss of social connection. This might make you feel like they’re physically and emotionally cut off from others. Physically because you are no longer in the same place as your friends and other people. Emotionally because you might be struggling to adjust to retirement, this decreases your mental health and this ability to process emotions. Especially, because the social cognitive skills that social interactions require decrease anyway in older age. Just a thought. Of course I understand that social isolation is not exclusive to older adults, because when I was a young undiagnosed autistic kid, I always felt extremely alone in the world. This had an awful impact on my mental health. This is a reason why I mentioned that I think about social isolation as an aspiring educational psychologist. If a child is socially isolated in their life then this will negatively impact their ability to learn and thrive in education. Therefore, it can be useful to think about ways to reduce social isolation in a child or maybe a group of students and make the school system more inclusive for everyone to reduce the harmful effects of isolation on their mental health and education. However, my point is that social isolation has a massive impact on our mental health whatever your age and this is important for aspiring psychologists to recognise, be aware of and consider how this will inform their clinical work. Furthermore, social isolation causes people to experience a higher amount of work-related stress, have lower life satisfaction and they’re more likely to use drugs and alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism. This builds upon larger explanations of how social isolation harms our mental health because poor social support can make it more challenging to manage life’s stressors, deal with negative life events and any stress that they encounter. In my experience, this is one of the reasons why it is critical for mental health professionals to have a good, supportive team around them. Not only at work but at home too. Since as much as mental health professionals need an ability to compartmentalise and keep the stressors of work at work and never bring it home. There will be cases that cut a little too close to home and you might bring some of that case home. For example, when I used to be a teaching assistant and something happened at school, I would rarely bring those concerns home because they would impact me profoundly. This is why it was useful for me to be socially connected with the amazing team in my former classroom at work, so we could support each other. As well as I was socially connected to my family so they could understand why I needed to focus on self-care and social connectedness that particular night. This is just one example of how social connection can help us improve our mental health, and how social isolation can harm us. A final introductory note on this topic, whilst I will try not to use the terms of social isolation and loneliness interchangeably because they are slightly different, it’s important to note the differences. Therefore, social isolation refers to being separate from others as well as lacking social contact. Whereas loneliness is a more subjective experience because a person can feel lonely and socially isolated from others even though they might be regularly around and have contact with others. Both of these terms can have immensely negative impacts on someone’s mental and physical health. In the rest of the podcast episode, we’ll learn why these negative health outcomes happen amongst other topics. Why Does Social Isolation Affect Mental Health? The main reason why social isolation impacts our mental health is because social isolation causes changes in our mood, how our brain functions, our thought patterns and it changes our behaviour. All these behavioural, psychological and biological changes have a major impact on our mental health, and this is even more true if the social isolation lasts for a long time. As well as social isolation can change a person’s health habits so this can further decrease their physical and mental health. For instance, people who experience social isolation tend to have sleep problems, exercise less as well as consume more dietary fat. This can have a massive negative impact on a person’s mental and physical health because they aren’t eating the right food to feel nutritious and for their cognitive and physical processes to be working at their best. Their lack of sleep will impact their mental health and this will further harm their mental health. I talk about it in another podcast episode, called How Does A Consistent Sleep Schedule Improve Our Mental Health . During the worse of my Post-traumatic Stress Disorder caused by my rape in 2024, the more tired I was and the worst my sleep was, the worse my mental health was. It wasn’t until I managed to sort out my sleep that I was able to improve my mental health, decrease my depressive symptoms and start living again. As well as this connects to social isolation because honestly, during my PTSD, I felt so alone, both physically and emotionally from others. I didn’t believe that anyone could understand what I was experiencing, my pain and my suffering so I struggled to relate to others, and because I couldn’t go outside, meet up with friends and more, I felt physically isolated too. This was a major reason behind my negative mental health as I explain in my books, I Am A Survivor, Not A Victim   and Healing As A Survivor . Another example is the social isolation might cause an increase in depressive symptoms and this could lead to laden paralysis, so it might make the person with depressive symptoms feel like it’s impossible to get out of bed. This has a knock-on effect for their poor eating, poor personal hygiene as well as this makes them feel even worse about themselves so it further exacerbates the negative mental health symptoms. What Are the Signs of Social Isolation? Whenever we meet a client as an aspiring clinical psychologist, they might not realise they’re experiencing social isolation, so it’s important that we’re aware of the signs of social isolation. This will allow us to gently and compassionately help the client to realise they might be experiencing social isolation, the causes and what they could do about it. Therefore, some signs of social isolation include withdrawing from social activities or events that the client used to participate in, the client has no one to talk or turn to when they need advice or help, they feel sad, rejected or lethargic. Personally, during my PTSD, I experienced a lot of these symptoms, because I withdrew from a lot of activities that I used to enjoy. I stopped going to a lot of social groups because being outside would cause me to have panic attacks. I stopped wanting to see my family as much because my mind would twist it and everyone was a possible danger to me and I was scared of everything and every action and decision felt impossible to make. Everything just took so much energy, concentration and intent that it was so tiring. Staying alone and isolated was just the result whether it was intentional or not. My personal example above does highlight another sign of social isolation. A hypersensitivity to environmental stimuli. Another set of signs of social isolation include spending a long amount of time alone each day with little to no contact with other people, rarely communicating with others by phone, video call or text as well as lacking close, intimate connections with others. Here, I want to mention that the main difference between loneliness and solitude is choice and how happy you are to spend time alone. For example, there are some days when I am perfectly happy to not have much social contact with the outside world or even by text or phone calls, because I want to spend some time alone whilst I work or relax. This is normal. I know some people when they go on holiday, they simply contact their immediate family to say that they’ve got there and then that’s it for the next week. They simply want to relax on their holiday. You could argue that for those two weeks, the people on holiday have no immediate connections, they don’t communicate with others and they spend a lot of time alone with no real social contact each day. Yet that’s by choice, and in this fictional situation, they are not lonely. They are simply enjoying some solitude. As a result, whilst we’ll apply this more directly to clinical psychology in another section, I want to take a moment to reflect on this information from an educational psychology viewpoint. If an educational psychologist is working in a school because of concerns about a child disengaging with their education because they’re dropping out of social activities, they’re alone throughout the school day and they seem to have no real connections at school. My first thought after gathering more information from the teachers, support staff and management would be to understand if this is actually social isolation first at all. If it is a social isolation difficulty so the child doesn’t have social contact in or outside of school then this would require me to do other work. I would probably have to involve the parents a lot more, but if it was only social isolation in school. For starters, I wouldn’t use the term social isolation if the child has friends and regular social contact outside of school, but I would be curious to see how we could make school a more inclusive and friendly place for the student so they could forge some social relationships. Also, the student had once participated in a bunch of social activities and events at school and then they stopped, I would want to find out why and how we could possibly help or “fix” the situation. On the whole, I gave you that example to help you realise that if you know a little bit about social isolation or another psychological topic, you can apply it to your chosen area of psychology and start thinking about applying psychology in the real world to improve lives. What Causes Social Isolation? When we experience social isolation or when we’re supporting a client who is socially isolated from others, we have to look at the causes. Sometimes cases of social isolation will not have a clear cause or answer, but most of the time, it is clear why someone is socially isolated. For example, as I’ve mentioned before during the worst of my mental health after my rape, I was socially isolated because of my trauma responses and reactions, as well as social anxiety. Therefore, social anxiety can cause social isolation because social anxiety leads a person to experience intense fear regarding social situations. This means as a safety behaviour they will avoid social situations and in turn, this dramatically decreases their ability to form and maintain their social connections. On the other hand, trauma can cause social isolation because us, trauma survivors, tend to isolate ourselves to cope with the sheer trauma of what happened to us. As well as myself and the majority of other trauma survivors tend to be scared or even terrified of being hurt by others again, and the Post-Traumatic Stress we experience can cause us to avoid social activities that trigger memories of the traumatic event. For instance, for a long time after my rape, I didn’t like the idea of going outside in case I saw a white fat man because I was raped by a white fat man. Just seeing fat men would cause me to experience trauma reactions, panic attacks and I would get really distressed. Therefore, if I knew there would be fat men at a given social event, I would avoid it. Now that I’m writing it, I understand that this fear wasn’t plausible or realistic in the slightest but through the lens of trauma and my rape, it makes perfect sense and it’s understandable. Another cause of social isolation is depression, because as we’ve spoken about before at length on the podcast, people with depression typically experience low mood, fatigue, hopelessness, loss of interest and pleasure and loss of motivation. This makes it next to impossible to get out of the house, contact others, go out to social events and so on. Over time this all leads to social isolation and this reinforces the negative mental health outcome through a vicious cycle. Penultimately, physical illness can cause social isolation because if someone has a chronic health condition that impacts their mobility then this can make social activities very difficult, painful and extremely exhausting. As well as the associated stigma and shame that often accompanies chronic illness can make people with the conditions want to avoid social situations even more. If you want to learn more about chronic illness and how it impacts mental health, please check out my podcast episode, What is Chronic Illness for Psychologists? Finally, stress can cause social isolation because when a person goes through a major life stressor, like a divorce or death of a loved one, they tend to withdraw from the world and social activities. As well as life situations like the loss of a job, retirement, financial problems and even positive stressors like getting married, going to university or having a child, can have massive impacts on a person’s sociability. This can lead to social isolation by mistake because a person just doesn’t have the time, energy or ability to maintain or form social relationships during these life events. Clinical Psychology Conclusion: How To Cope with Social Isolation As a result of me explaining and talking about the benefits of talking to a mental health professional as well as me explaining how aspiring and qualified psychologists can improve lives, break the cycle of social isolation and help people to resolve the emotional and mental health difficulties that cause social isolation a lot on the podcast previously, I am just going to briefly summarise or comment on it. One podcast episode you might want to check out to further explain how psychologists can work with people experiencing social isolation to improve their mental health is What is Behavioural Activation . Another way to cope with social isolation is to look for ways to become more social, and this is one of the main principles of social prescribing as explained in my episode, What is Social Prescribing . Since if you check out your local community for events, social or volunteering opportunities then these can be great ways to help you connect and meet new people. As well as even if you only take one small step each day to reconnect or maintain a social connection then that’s’ better than nothing, and over time, these small steps really add up. Penultimately, as I explain in my episode, What is Animal-Assisted Therapy, you could consider getting a pet because getting a pet can help to combat feelings of isolation as well as having an animal provides a lot of mental health benefits. For instance, improving your mood, lowering your stress and if you get a dog, then you might meet new people when you take it out for a walk. Lastly, practising self-care can help you to cope with social isolation because if you create a routine that ensures you’re getting enough rest, eating the right food and doing a balance of social, pleasurable and necessary activities, as explained in behavioural activation. Then this can improve your mental health dramatically. On the whole, coming out of social isolation does take time. It can take the support of a trained mental health professional, your friends, family and it can take a lot of effort from you to change. This is why it’s important to be kind to yourself, have self-compassion and it’s okay that you struggle to make and maintain friendships as an adult. Lots of people have the same difficulties as you, but please, don’t be scared to reach out for support, go to new events and be kind to yourself. As a final tip, I just wanted to briefly recap what social isolation is and why does social isolation harm our mental health. Therefore, social isolation is when we’re cut off from contact with other people. We can cut off physically from others, but we can also be emotionally disconnected or cut off from other people during social interactions. Also, social isolation harms our mental health because social isolation causes changes in our mood, how our brain functions, our thought patterns and it changes our behaviour. All these behavioural, psychological and biological changes have a major impact on our mental health, and this is even more true if the social isolation lasts for a long time.   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 How Does Ageing Effect Us? A Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology Guide to Ageing . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Eres, R., Lim, M. H., & Bates, G. (2023). Loneliness and social anxiety in young adults: The moderating and mediating roles of emotion dysregulation, depression and social isolation risk. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 96, 793–810. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12469 Gorenko, J. A., Moran, C., Flynn, M., Dobson, K., & Konnert, C. (2021). Social Isolation and Psychological Distress Among Older Adults Related to COVID-19: A Narrative Review of Remotely-Delivered Interventions and Recommendations. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 40(1), 3-13. Guarnera, J., Yuen, E., & Macpherson, H. (2023). The impact of loneliness and social isolation on cognitive aging: a narrative review. Journal of Alzheimer's disease reports, 7(1), 699-714. Hämmig O (2019) Correction: Health risks associated with social isolation in general and in young, middle and old age. PLOS ONE 14(8): e0222124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222124 https://www.verywellmind.com/the-impact-of-social-isolation-on-mental-health-7185458 Iovino, P., Vellone, E., Cedrone, N., & Riegel, B. (2023). A middle-range theory of social isolation in chronic illness. International journal of environmental research and public health, 20(6), 4940. Kumar, A., & Salinas, J. (2021). The long-term public health impact of social distancing on brain health: topical review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(14), 7307. Luigi M, Dellazizzo L, Giguère C-É, Goulet M-H and Dumais A (2020) Shedding Light on “the Hole”: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on Adverse Psychological Effects and Mortality Following Solitary Confinement in Correctional Settings. Front. Psychiatry 11:840. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00840 Schrempft, S., Jackowska, M., Hamer, M. et al. Associations between social isolation, loneliness, and objective physical activity in older men and women. BMC Public Health 19, 74 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6424-y Shen, C., Rolls, E. T., Cheng, W., Kang, J., Dong, G., Xie, C., ... & Feng, J. (2022). Associations of social isolation and loneliness with later dementia. Neurology, 99(2), e164-e175. Umberson, D., Lin, Z., & Cha, H. (2022). Gender and social isolation across the life course. Journal of health and social behavior, 63(3), 319-335. Vlachos, I. I., Papageorgiou, C., & Margariti, M. (2020). Neurobiological trajectories involving social isolation in PTSD: a systematic review. Brain sciences, 10(3), 173. Wang, F., Gao, Y., Han, Z., Yu, Y., Long, Z., Jiang, X., ... & Zhao, Y. (2023). A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality. Nature human behaviour, 7(8), 1307-1319. 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.

Ever since I received my Spotify wrap for The Psychology World Podcast in December 2025 and noted that there's a large audience overlap between myself and a motorcycling podcast, I've been interested in learning more about the flow state. Then after watching the curling at the winter Olympics amongst other sports, I kept hearing the sports commentators mentioning the flow state time after time, as well as during the psychology news section of The Psychology World Podcast, I covered the psychology of the autistic flow state. Therefore, as you can see the flow state is important in so many different areas of our life. As a result, by the end of this cognitive psychology podcast episode, you'll understand what is the flow state, how to achieve a flow state and so much more. If you're interested in boosting your productivity, cognitive psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you. Today's psychology 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 available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. What is Flow State? A flow state is a cognitive state where you’re completely immersed in an activity. It can be writing, playing sports, driving or any other activity that you’re doing. As well as a flow state involves creative engagement, intense focus and losing your awareness of self and the time. For example, when I was watching the Winter Olympics and Grant Hardie and Bruce Mouat were playing Curling for Team GB, you could see that Bruce (who’s the Skip or Team Captain) was so intensely focused, his eyes were only on the curling stone and the house and he wasn’t paying attention to anything else that was going on around him. In addition, the flow state was discovered and the term was created by a Hungarian-American psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1960s when he was studying the creative process. He found that when an artist was in the course of flow, they would persist at their creative task relentlessly, even if they were fatigued or hungry. As well as he found that the artist would lose interest after the project was complete so this highlighted the importance of the process and not the end result. Personally, as a writer, podcaster and all the other creative projects that I do, I understand this point. Since I often joke to myself and my family that after I do a podcast episode and all the different steps that it takes, I rarely remember everything that I mentioned in the episode. This is because myself and a lot of other creators enjoy the creative flow and project, and when it’s done, we move on to the next creative project so we can get into a flow state and get that almost intoxicating sense of enjoyment again. I sort of imagine that it’s similar for Bruce Mouat when he’s curling, because curling can be a rather long game. Therefore, you would have to enjoy the process and this is probably why athletes keep going to different competitions, keep playing over and over and they don’t give up. They want to return to the flow state, immerse themselves in the game and they want that sense of enjoyment that can only come from playing the sport they love. Furthermore, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noted, flow is the joy of doing something for the sake of doing it. He largely based his research on lots of interviews with dancers, chess players, poets and other creatives and he argued that flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter” as he wrote in his book Flow.  As well as in my writing, I certainly understand this point because it is so annoying when something or someone jerks you out of your flow. I can happily be writing along, learning and just enjoy my creative project when someone knocks on my door, phones me or something else and it jerks me out of the flow. Honestly, sometimes I get really angry inside myself and it is just so frustrating because I was happy, enjoying myself and I was in the flow. Then someone just has to interrupt me. I am not impressed when that happens. On the other hand, this isn’t because I’m not a negative person, I’m easy to annoy or anything like that. It is because the flow state brings myself and others a sense of unique joy and we like being in it, and we don’t like that joy being removed from us by being jerked out of the flow state. Furthermore, the reason why the flow state is so enjoyable is because it creates a sense of pride, success and accomplishment so this encourages you to learn more as well as develop your skills. Also, throughout this podcast episode, I’ll be using the term “joy” to describe the feeling of being in a flow state, and whilst this isn’t correct, some argue that is. Since the feeling of joy isn’t forefront during the task since the person is enjoying the feeling of being immersed in the task and the experience. Personally, when I was writing the paragraph above, I was really interested in the idea of applying this to education. Since as an aspiring educational psychologist, I’m training myself to apply psychological theories, concepts and research to help learning and education more often. My mind goes to if we allow students to enter a flow state and if we set up our classrooms or learning experiences to encourage a flow state to occur, then we can help students associate learning with pride, success and accomplishment. This will make the student feel good and it will encourage them to keep on learning as well as developing their skills. Later in the episode, we’ll explore this in a little more depth. Moreover, because being in a flow state is a dynamic cognitive state, you always have to adjust the skill level, the complexity and the challenge of the activity. Since as you practice any given skill, you develop a level of mastery and this will change how the feeling of the flow state is. As a result of if your skill level has exceeded the activity then boredom sets in and this disrupts the state of flow. This is likely to be a reason why professional sportspeople want to progress up the leagues, take on harder, more challenging opponents and continue to improve. For the last two Winter Olympics Bruce Mouat and his team have been silver medallists so they’re second in the world. They’re really good, amazing and they are always in such a flow state. Yet I cannot imagine Team GB being able to reach a flow state in a curling match in a junior league. It wouldn’t be challenging enough and their skill level would be vastly superior to the challenge of the game in that lower league. How Do You Achieve A Flow State? According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, anyone can find a flow state simply by thinking of activities that would apply to the list of conditions that I’m going to give you in a moment. Since achieving a flow state isn’t about doing something creative because you can enter a flow state during work or chopping wood, but flow is about a balance between the tedium of boredom as well as the tension of anxiety. Ultimately, if you want to achieve a flow state then you become immersed and enjoy the experience of doing the activity itself. As well as the following factors help you achieve a flow state: ·       Find the process of the activity enjoyable instead of the end result ·       Don’t agonise over failure ·       Have a sense of timelessness or distorted time ·       Immediately seek the benefits of your actions ·       The activity is a balance between your skills and the challenge of the activity ·       Lose your awareness and distractions Building upon these factors, I want to focus on the second point, don’t agonise over failures , because my immediate reaction was I have no idea how Bruce Mouat could possibly enter a flow state during the gold medal match at the Winter Olympics. Yet then I remembered a lecture during the final year of my psychology undergraduate degree on sports psychology that was memorable for a host of reasons, but that’s beyond the scope of this episode. The sports psychologist told us about how professional athletes do a lot of mental preparation, training and they focus a lot on the experience of the games itself. For example, once the sports psychologist had the players shoot penalties in front of the immense crowds at the end of the match so the players could experience the pressure of shooting penalties with a massive audience. This would allow the players to get used to it in a real game and it would be less distracting for them. My point is that the reason why Bruce Mouat and other professional athletes can enter a flow state during such a high stakes game is probably because they’re used to this, they don’t worry about the stakes and they just focus on playing the game that they love. As well as they use whatever mental preparation tricks their coach or other professionals have taught them. On a final side note for this section, you can try too hard to search for a flow state, because if you push yourself to enter flow then you can lose the tension and skill level, so this stops your immersion and your flow state. How Does Your Comfort Zone Impact Flow? Your comfort zone can impact your flow because for you to be able to reach a flow state, the activity needs to push you outside of your comfort zone. This is one of the reasons why flow can be applied to sports, the workplace and educational settings. For instance, in the workplace, a project can leave an employee feeling that they’re in “the zone” of flow as well as in education, students can see a challenging assignment that has led to learning. Later in this episode, you’ll learn more about how skill and challenge can lead or cannot lead to the flow state in certain situations. Can The Flow State Impact Anxiety? Interestingly, flow can be used as a tool for better emotional regulation because if a person enters a flow state then the uncertainties that person has just melts away. This helps the person to reduce these feelings of anxiety because they’re so immersed in their activity that they don’t think about their anxieties or doubts. As well as being in a flow state during an activity that they enjoy helps a person to have a sense of autonomy over their time, mind and body. Personally, this is another really useful tool for educational psychologists because when I covered flow on a news section of The Psychology World Podcast, I focused on autistic flow states. This is very helpful for self-regulation for autistic people because it allows them to process their emotions, calm their anxieties and so on. This is another benefit of allowing students to enter a flow state and not interrupting them because it allows them to self-regulate, which is an important life skill. How Could Flow be Applied to Daily Life? You can apply flow to your daily life by doing daily activities and dip into the flow state. Since everyone is different, it is hard to say what activities will make you go into flow and what activities will not. For example, reading and writing help me go into a flow state, but cooking and gardening doesn’t. You might be the complete opposite. Therefore, a lot of us do have flow experiences throughout the day depending on our activities and daily tasks. Although, gaming and watching TV prevent us from entering a flow state because this doesn’t involve the loss of awareness of time and self, and our enjoyment typically comes from the TV or game itself, not the process or task of watching TV or gaming. How is Mindfulness and the Flow State Similar? It’s important to note that whilst both the flow state as well as mindfulness require the mind to be clear and free from distractions, they are different. For example, the flow state requires the mind to be lost in the process of doing something so the mind isn’t focused on anything in particular. Whereas in mindfulness, the attention is kept on what you’re doing, so a mindfulness meditation requires you to focus on your breathing. What is an Autotelic Experience? An autotelic experience is when an individual isn’t invested in glory, status, materialism or fame and instead, the person is content and comfortable with the flow of their life. For example, the person is content with their personal hobbies, their family and their work life. As well as the autotelic person doesn’t look for external praise or benefits to reaching a flow state. Personally, I think this is a really interesting idea because at first, we really wouldn’t assume that people in a flow state would be autotelic in the slightest. This is because normally when we think about the flow state, we think about professional athletes, writers, poets and other creatives who want to become famous, renowned and they want the glory of winning or producing something great. Yet if I really think about it, and a lot of other writers have said the same over the years, we write because we enjoy it. We write because we like the feeling, the flow state and even if we never ever made any money off it, we would keep writing because we love it. I imagine it’s the same for professional athletes, so I think it is very easy to say that entering a flow state doesn’t have to be tied to glory, materialism, fame or anything. You really can just be in a flow state because you enjoy the activity so much. How Is Flow Related to Peak Performance? A flow state can be seen as a precursor to peak performance because a lot of professional athletes, like Bruce Mouat and Grant Hardie, dive into a flow state when they’re performing. This is because their skill level matches the challenge of the curling match so as the athletes improve their skill and their mastery improves, this allows them to reach their peak performance in their chosen sport. Cognitive Psychology Conclusion On the whole, this has been a really fun episode to investigate, put together and produce because whether you’re doing a creative task, riding a motorbike or you’re doing something else that you enjoy, you can potentially reach a flow state. When that happens, you honestly feel great, joyous and it is a wonderfully unique feeling that is hard to get any other way. As a reminder, a flow state is a cognitive state where you’re completely immersed in an activity. It can be writing, playing sports, driving or any other activity that you’re doing. As well as a flow state involves creative engagement, intense focus and losing your awareness of self and the time. Additionally, these are the following factors that help you achieve a flow state: ·       Find the process of the activity enjoyable instead of the end result ·       Don’t agonise over failure ·       Have a sense of timelessness or distorted time ·       Immediately seek the benefits of your actions ·       The activity is a balance between your skills and the challenge of the activity ·       Lose your awareness and distractions Finally, I want to wrap up this psychology podcast episode by giving you some questions to think about to help you achieve a flow state: ·       What activities do I enjoy? ·       How could I minimize distractions whilst doing this activity? ·       How could I reduce my concerns about failure? ·       How could I strike a balance between my skills and the challenge of the activity?   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 available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Cognitive Psychology References and Further Reading Beard, K. S. (2015). Theoretically speaking: An interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow theory development and its usefulness in addressing contemporary challenges in education. Educational Psychology Review, 27(2), 353-364. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and education. In Applications of flow in human development and education: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 129-151). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Applications of flow in human development and education (pp. 153-172). Dordrecht: Springer. Csikszentmihalyi, M., Abuhamdeh, S., & Nakamura, J. (2014). Flow. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 227-238). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Groys, B. (2018). In the flow. Verso Books. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/flow Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). The concept of flow. In Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp. 239-263). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. 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.

Over the past few months, I've become more and more aware of how the menopause can impact mental health. Not because I experience it, but through listening to women, my family and seeing the menopause gain more representation in the media and crime drama. Since the menopause can create brain fog, decrease work performance and it can make women feel like they're going insane. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you'll learn what the menopause is, how the menopause impacts women's mental health and more. As well as I'll also talk about the implications for aspiring educational and clinical psychologists too. If you enjoy learning about mental health, business psychology and how psychology can be used in the real world to help others, then this will be a great episode for you.  Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Why Should Psychologists Be Aware of the Menopause? Psychologists should be aware of the menopause because this normal biological process that females go through has a wide range of impacts on their mental health. For example, during the menopause, people can experience feelings of emptiness or numbness, anger, depression, anxiety, they can experience brain fog and suicidal feelings as well as sleeping problems. I’ve previously discussed on the podcast how sleep is critical for our mental health . Therefore, because of the wide range of mental health impacts of the menopause, aspiring and qualified psychologists need to be aware, so we can support our clients who are going through the menopause. Later in the podcast episode, we’ll explore how the menopause can impact mental health in more depth. As well as in two sections’ time, I’ll explain some more situations where the menopause can impact our psychological work. What is the Menopause? The menopause is the time when periods stop and people can no longer naturally get pregnant, and this leads to a wide range of positive and negative impacts on our mind and body. Also, it’s important to talk about the menopause because whilst there are some symptoms that are very well-known, like a hot flush, there are other symptoms that aren’t as well-known. In addition, menopause can impact a person for years before their periods fully end. As well as some people might not notice the effects of the menopause whereas other people can find them really difficult to handle and this can lead to negative mental health outcomes. This is why it’s important to be aware of the menopause, know the symptoms and understand that experiencing the menopause will get better over time with the right support as well as treatment. Furthermore, in terms of who experiences the menopause, it commonly impacts females in their 40s and 50s. As well as it is possible to have early onset menopause, which is when your periods stop before the age of 45, or late onset menopause. This is when your periods stop after the age of 55. On a final introductory note, I want to mention that the reason why I’m trying to be gender-inclusive when it comes to the menopause is because trans and non-binary people can also go through the menopause depending on their age, the biological sex they were assigned at birth, any hormone treatments that they’ve taken in the past or currently taking as well as if they’ve had any gender-affirming surgeries or treatments. This is important to note because experiencing the menopause can be even more distressing for transgender and non-binary people because it might increase feelings of gender dysphoria and the associated negative mental health impacts. As well as treatment and support for the menopause when you’re transgender can be even more difficult because the services might not meet your needs or they aren’t inclusive. Examples of Why Psychologists Knowing About Menopause is Important Building upon this, I wanted to expand the section above on why knowing about the menopause should be important for aspiring and qualified psychologists. Firstly, when it comes to the psychologist themselves, and if they’re female, then we need to understand, be compassionate and be supportive if menopause symptoms impact their work. For example, the psychologist might be with a client, representing the mental health service at an important meeting or chairing a multidisciplinary team meeting and experience a hot flush. This will distract the psychologist, make the work feel unbearable and hot flushes are some of the worst things women can experience. When this happens to a peer or someone in our mental health service, we shouldn’t judge them, or stop them from doing their duties, because we need to support them. Some people might argue that if a woman is experiencing the menopause then they shouldn’t be in high-power positions. However, this thinking isn’t supportive, it isn’t compassionate and this view is outdated. Instead we need to support the psychologist so they can manage the menopause, continue their work and protect their mental health. In addition, if we apply my favourite psychological theory to this situation, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, then where we’re working in a school or mental health service, how we treat someone experiencing the menopause will impact our client. If management (a social system that indirectly impacts a client) takes a decision that doesn’t support women in the workplace because of the menopause, then this will have a negative impact on the service’s ability to deliver treatment and support our client. This is why we need to be aware and supportive of people experiencing the menopause. A penultimate example is when it comes to our clients themselves. We might have a client who is struggling at work, feeling depressed, anxious and they’re experiencing a lot of brain fog because they’re experiencing the menopause. If the psychologist is young, male and has no knowledge of the menopause then we might give them the wrong support, make the wrong referral and negatively impact the client’s treatment without even realising it. As well as knowledgeable about the menopause can be immensely helpful for the management of mental health services, because if a client comes to us with menopausal symptoms, then typically we might be able to send the client back to the doctor, hope the doctor gives them Hormone Replacement Therapy and the client’s life will be a lot better. This frees up the service to see someone new and it helps to reduce the waiting list, it means the service doesn’t have to spend time or money treating that person and we still get to improve the client’s life. A final example of why it’s important for psychologists to know about the menopause is for educational psychologists. Since if an educational psychologist was at a school for a situation along the lines of classroom management, behavioural interventions or essentially anything. Then they might notice that students and other staff members comment on a change in the teacher’s behaviour. They’ve been less able to focus, they’ve been snappier with the students and they’re struggling to get tasks done. Also, senior management has given the teacher two written warnings. All of these behaviours around the teacher have an impact on the school system and the different ecological systems that a child interacts with according to Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. As a result, an educational psychologist would find it useful to know about the menopause because it would help the educational psychologist understand the behaviour, explain the situation to senior management and might be able to help the teacher so the disruption to the school system could be fixed. Just a thought. What are the Stages of Menopause? The menopause happens in three different stages and these stages impact people differently. For example, perimenopause is the stage before you’ve stopped having periods for one year but you’re experiencing symptoms of the menopause. A person can be in perimenopause for several years. Then you have the menopause and this is when you completely stop having your periods for a year. In addition, whilst menopause only lasts for a single day, it is often used as an umbrella term to describe the whole time that you’re experiencing symptoms of the perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause. As well as post-menopause is the term for the time after menopause and you might experience symptoms of the menopause but typically they get better over time. These stages are important for psychologists to be aware of because the mental and physical health symptoms of menopause can start during perimenopause. As well as this is when it’s typically the hardest time to cope with these changes and symptoms, so this is when the person is most likely to need mental health support and this is where psychologists might come in. Finally for this section, a person might feel like their experiences couldn’t possibly be menopause until their periods have stopped completely, and sadly some doctors have this attitude too. Yet it’s important for all of us to acknowledge that your physical and mental health can still be harmed by the menopause even if your periods haven’t stopped yet for one full year. Why Does Menopause Impact Mental Health? In the future, I’ll dedicate an entire podcast episode to this question, but the menopause impacts mental health because during the menopause, people’s hormone levels change a lot. Since during perimenopause, our bodies decrease its production of testosterone, progesterone as well as oestrogen. Our brain needs all of these hormones to work effectively, because it is these hormones that help us to improve our mood and think clearly, as well as they interact with the hormones, dopamine and serotonin in the brain. As a result, when these three hormones decrease in the body, our brain might not work how it used to, and this is why brain fog and other mental health symptoms occur during the menopause. It is these hormonal changes that lead to changes in how we behave, think and feel. Furthermore, the reason why the physical and mental health symptoms are more severe during the perimenopause is because our hormone levels change constantly and, so people feel these effects more during this stage of menopause. The hormone levels are constantly going up and down. Another reason why menopause can impact mental health is because the physical effects of menopause can be upsetting, uncomfortable and painful. Some of the physical effects of menopause include, reduced sex drive, vaginal pain and dryness, sensitive teeth, headaches and migraines, hot flushes, sleeping problems and more. Also, I want to take a moment to add that to some people a reduced sex drive might not sound like a problem, but sexual difficulties can impact romantic relationships, and I’ve heard accounts of people feeling like there’s a barrier between them and their partner because of menopause. You could argue that this is another reason why couples therapists and other mental health professionals should be aware of the menopause. Knowledge about this experience would help the therapist or professional understand what the client is going through, how this could impact the relationship and they might be able to suggest some menopause-specific techniques that might help the relationship. A final reason why the menopause can impact mental health is because these massive physical changes occur at a time in our lives when we’re already experiencing a lot of changes in our lives. For example, perhaps the change in your physical health, you becoming a grandparent, you transitioning into a new career or you’re preparing for retirement or one of the thousands of other transitions that are just a part of everyday life. Yet when we add the difficulties and challenges of the menopause, then this can make life feel overwhelming, difficult and just impossible to cope with in addition to everything else. This all takes a toll on our mental health. How Is Stigma Connected to The Menopause? The final topic I want to look at in this introductory podcast episode to the menopause for psychologists is the stigma behind menopause. Therefore, stigma connects to the menopause because menopause isn’t something that people take seriously, often people joke about or trivialise it. Since people don’t understand how painful, distressing and uncomfortable the physical and mental health symptoms of the menopause are. In addition, attitudes towards the menopause are typically ageist as well as sexist, and they feed into the rubbish cultural narrative that women have less value as they get older. When we combine these awful cultural attitudes to the equally awful and outrageous myths about women are just weak and hysterical, this means that women are less likely to be taken seriously when they want support for the menopause. All these factors help to contribute to the unfortunate stigma that surrounds menopause, even though it is a perfectly normal biological process. What makes this even worse for people experiencing the menopause is that medical doctors don’t get enough training about the menopause, and I would add that psychologists receive none at all, as well as research into the menopause is limited. This all prevents us learning about the impact of treatment, how to support people with menopause better and how to create a better society for people going through the menopause. Moreover, it gets even worse when people go to a menopause support group or service because they’re finding it hard to cope, and they don’t have the same access to services or treatment because of stigmatised and discriminatory factors. Since research shows that disabled people, people of colour, people experiencing homelessness, offenders, LGBT+ people, people in poverty as well as people with mental health difficulties are less likely to receive support for the menopause compared to other groups. This is wrong on so many levels and this is why it is critical that psychologists are aware of the menopause. Clinical Psychology Conclusion Our duty as aspiring and qualified psychologists is to make the world a better place. I unofficially have a so-called clinical psychology mandate and for me, the mandate is to help improve people’s lives, decrease psychological distress and give people control of their lives again. Psychologists can do this. We can help people experiencing the distressing, uncomfortable and damaging mental health symptoms of menopause if we become more aware, more understanding and if we focus on it. If our great profession embeds even a single lecture or module on the menopause in our education programmes, so we can equip aspiring and qualified psychologists with the knowledge, the clinical skills and the psychological treatment ideas to improve the lives of people with the menopause. Then that will be an amazing step in the right direction. It will help us to improve the lives of our clients, it will help to decrease their distress and it will help our clients feel in control of their lives again instead of the menopause running the show. Just as a little recap, the menopause is the time when periods stop and people can no longer naturally get pregnant, and this leads to a wide range of positive and negative impacts on our mind and body. Also, it’s important to talk about the menopause because whilst there are some symptoms that are very well-known, like a hot flush, there are other symptoms that aren’t as well-known. In addition, menopause can impact a person for years before their periods fully end. As well as some people might not notice the effects of the menopause whereas other people can find them really difficult to handle and this can lead to negative mental health outcomes. This is why it’s important to be aware of the menopause, know the symptoms and understand that experiencing the menopause will get better over time with the right support as well as treatment. Let’s make psychology a groundbreaking, inspirational and amazing profession that all other healthcare professionals look to for leading menopause care. It’s a lofty aim but every step we take towards this goal means we can help an amazing amount of people experiencing the menopause.   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Biological Psychology . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading Brown, L., Hunter, M. S., Chen, R., Crandall, C. J., Gordon, J. L., Mishra, G. D., ... & Hickey, M. (2024). Promoting good mental health over the menopause transition. The Lancet, 403(10430), 969-983. Hendriks, O., McIntyre, J. C., Rose, A. K., Crockett, C., Newson, L., & Saini, P. (2025). The mental health challenges, especially suicidality, experienced by women during perimenopause and menopause: A qualitative study. Women's Health, 21, 17455057251338941. Hogervorst, E., Craig, J., & O'Donnell, E. (2022). Cognition and mental health in menopause: a review. Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 81, 69-84. https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/menopause-and-mental-health/about-menopause/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/menopause/symptoms/ Lewis Johnson, T., Rowland, L. M., Ashraf, M. S., Clark, C. T., Dotson, V. M., Livinski, A. A., & Simon, M. (2024). Key findings from mental health research during the menopause transition for racially and ethnically minoritized women living in the United States: a scoping review. Journal of Women's Health, 33(2), 113-131. O'Reilly, K., McDermid, F., McInnes, S., & Peters, K. (2024). “I was just a shell”: Mental health concerns for women in perimenopause and menopause. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 33(3), 693-702. Riecher-Rössler, A. (2020). Menopause and mental health. In Mental health and illness of women (pp. 147-173). Singapore: Springer Singapore. 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.

Today on The Psychology World Podcast, I’m joined by former Australian special forces veteran Tim Thomas for a brilliant conversation about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the life-changing healing power of breathwork and more. If you enjoy learning about mental health, trauma and trauma recovery then this will be a brilliant episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Healing As A Survivor: A Personal and Clinical Psychology Guide to Healing from Sexual Violence.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Who is Tim Thomas? Tim Thomas is a former Australian Special Forces Commando, martial artist as well as veteran recovery specialist who’s life story is a masterclass in resilience. He was raised in a racially divided South Australian town, and his early connection with Aboriginal Elders shaped his understanding of courage, community and culture. Tim left home at 17 to work on remote cattle stations before later reinventing himself as a full‑time martial artist and becoming a recognised figure in Australia’s early “no‑holds‑barred” MMA scene. After the Bali bombings, Tim joined the first Direct Recruiting Special Forces intake. This pushed his mind–body connection to the limits to earn his place among Australia’s elite Commandos. After tours of duty in Afghanistan and East Timor, he faced undiagnosed PTSD and he transformed his own struggle into a mission to help others grow through theirs. Nowadays through Commando In Your Corner, Tim uses powerful storytelling, humour and brave insight to show people that the most powerful force on the planet isn’t a weapon— it’s a conversation. How Can Breathwork Help People with PTSD? Connor Whiteley: Hi everyone and moving on to the content part of today's episode. So, today I'm welcomed by a brilliant guest. I’m looking forward to this interview because we're going to be talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, mental health, and trauma. And from my previous podcast episodes, as someone who's experienced a lot of trauma in their life, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. So, hi Tim. Welcome to the podcast. Connor Whiteley: Can you please introduce yourself? Tim Thomas: Connor, great to be here. Tim Thomas: So my name is Tim Thomas. I'm a former professional fighter and Australian special forces soldier. and these days I help people do things that most people have forgotten how to do and that is quality sleep. Connor Whiteley: Brilliant. Thank you. Connor Whiteley: And I definitely know why that quality sleep is important because I knew that for my mental health if I didn't get enough sleep, then it would only make my mental health even worse. Can you please tell us more about your journey from professional fighter and special forces into what you do now? Tim Thomas: I guess I got to the right path by doing all the wrong things. Tim Thomas: And not that I'd call what I was doing as wrong, but I was going about it in a way that fatigue and trauma was almost inevitable. Thinking you're bulletproof, thinking you don't have to sleep, thinking that you can cash in your tomorrows to live today and there'll never come a time where you have to pay it back. So the origin point where I realized there was something going on was in Afghanistan on deployment. And I was beyond fatigued cuz they train you for fatigue but then there's a whole other emotional fatigue because you've lost mates over there. You've seen all sorts of things happening to others. And it was like I only had two cents worth of energy left. And I t, There's no point carrying on. I'm going to die in this crap hole. And then a voice came through. I don't know where it came from. It said, "If you've only got two cents worth of energy, you better invest that wisely." And I didn't know what breath work was, but for some reason I looked at my left thumb when I was laying down. We never got anything you'd call sleep, but every now and then you could get horizontal in the dirt. And I looked at my left thumb and I pictured a pinhole in the tip of my thumb. And I just did a big nasal breath through this pin hole at the end of my thumb. And it didn't just relax my thumb. Eventually, it turned it into white light down through my thumb in my mind's eye. And then I did the same thing with my pointer finger. And then I fell asleep and I woke up with 20 cents worth of energy. And I t that's interesting. I went to bed with two cents, breath work turned it into 20. And again, I didn't know what breath work was, but just I was breathing. And so every time I got horizontal, instead of just crashing into fatigue, I'd invest that 20 cents get back $2. And eventually it got to a point where I was good inside my own skin. But it's funny how energy works. When I only had two cents worth of energy, Connor, all I could think about was me and my world and how it really sucked. But then as my energy rose, I became aware of other people outside of me. And you know what? If they're having a bad day, I'm having a bad day, especially in a war zone. And so I t, I can't just have enough energy for me. I've got to have energy for people around me because, even if I don't like them, who do I want around me when good times turn bad, so that idea of helping others, I kind of knew it, but it really got embedded in my DNA in Afghanistan. And again, I didn't know what breath work was, but then it just helped, so getting out of defense, I had undiagnosed PTSD and I didn't know I just knew I wasn't sleeping well and that everything was annoying. and why is everyone sort of doing well in life and getting by and I'm living this life of quite desperation. So after seeking unsuccessful help in the mainstream medical system, I realized that there must be a lot of other people stuck in this situation. So I've got to find a way forward for me because I've got a feeling there's many others in this same situation. And so I started creating these programs that worked on the things that I'd observed were the real problem areas. And these aren't on the spreadsheet. The thing about me  is I'm dyslexic, so I see things in patterns. And I saw that pain, it doesn't matter if it's emotional or physical, it'll eventually turn into loneliness, isolation, and you don't even know it's happening. And that's the real killer. and in that place of loneliness and isolation, if I'm the only one that's got my back, everything's a threat because everything is a threat. I can't drop my guard for a second because that means something bad is going to happen. It's going to be my fault. So fatigue was something that went hand in hand. So all the success metrics of the programs we ran sleep and the improvement of sleep was the metric we judged whether it was a success or… So breaking the isolation and getting people out of fatigue was sort of the main things that I discovered and seemed to really really work in the recovery space. Connor Whiteley: Wow, brilliant. Connor Whiteley: And thank you so much for sharing that because I understand that that must have been really difficult. So it's full testament to you, your strength and also your resilience in your lowest moment that you were able to do that breath work, you were able to realize that I need to be okay and I need to be more proactive  just so everyone else around me is okay. Especially in a combat zone so a massive well done. Because I know that for my personal experience it takes a lot to overcome that. Especially because as a survivor myself, the most annoying thing about PTSD is that when you're seeing everyone around you is living their nice happy lives, they're going to places, you're just trapped in your house because if you go outside you're going to have a panic attack. So I totally understand what you mean plus it's also really impressive that you were able to develop these. Tim Thomas: Yeah. How Did You Recruit Veterans for Clinical Work? Connor Whiteley: So how did it start in a terms of finding more clients or how did you actually start recruitment and the sort of like a business aspect if that makes sense? Tim Thomas: Yeah. No, no. I worked for a charity that worked for soldiers and no one was attending because the thing about it could be a guy thing too that we tend to think that if we ask for help that means we're weak and if we're weak we'll let the team down. So there's a bit of a thing that we stop ourselves. We're not our best friend in that area. And I noticed people would come into the center, and they'd go really quickly. Tim Thomas: So, I t, I've got to change the culture here. So, I started these men's groups and I had them at a very specific time of day. So, just as the sun was setting, it's light, but there's different spectrums of light. And those spectrums of light create melatonin, time to, sleep and rest. and I'd have a fire going and people as the sun went down, the men would gather around the fire. Again another safety thing and then they'd eat and then we'd all sit in a circle and I would simply interview guys that have moved forward in their journey and they're willing to share about how it was when they were in that place and how they got through it and it was such a simple thing but I understood that if you don't break someone's isolation then it's most resources of water off a duck's back. So, millions and billions of dollars go into, mental health, but if you're not breaking their isolation and then getting them out of fatigue, it mostly doesn't land. and we had a goal of saving 40 veteran lives from suicide. I would have died happy if I achieved that. But, Connor, that was achieved within 12 months because of those two things. Breaking the isolation and getting them out of fatigue. And sleep is a very measurable metric. And how with lessons learned in that area, I distilled that down into a business. Because what I've discovered is that your life is shaped by two moments every day. The five minutes before you go to sleep and the five minutes after waking. And if you've got PTSD, you're poisoning both. And breath work allows you to reclaim those two moments and find that peace, find that power. So that's how I created the business of understanding those two critical moments in people's lives and then making a very easy to use online tool for people to just have that there exactly when they need it. it's a tiny investment of time but it creates a massive shift on how your nervous system operates. And obviously this isn't just for people with PTSD. I just had to go that deep and get that effed up to find this universal truth. That was just natural and immediate and it just kept working Connor Whiteley: And also thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that because something that I've been very interested in now for a long time is that if we actually taught people and if we actually taught them the importance of sleep and the mental health benefits that it has in schools and stuff. Then it would mean that people like you and me who also go through trauma wouldn't have to hit rock bottom before we find this miracle cure, and to some extent, it really is a miracle cure because once you realize it, your entire life does get so much better. Tim Thomas: You're right. And the data is in sleep poor people have a two to 300% increase in mental illness. So you could be completely fine, but if you're not sleeping you have a 2 to 300% increase in mental illness or likelihood of mental illness. And to me, I look at that data, then if we can improve sleep, surely that means you can improve it by two or 300%. And in fact, in Afghanistan, we used to use that as a weapon of war. Tim Thomas: We used to deliberately run these operations that would disrupt the enemy's sleep. We didn't know about the science of sleep. We just knew if we could take it out for three nights, it would mess him up better than a bullet. Connor Whiteley: Wow. So that's really in impressive. And it does show that science can be used for the more like a darker side . Connor Whiteley: But it is really clever. Tim Thomas: But yeah, just to finish that off , so these days I say if you care about somebody, you care about their sleep. And people kind of know that, but I always like to ask the question, with all the people you care about,… Have you done anything active to make sure they're getting a good night's sleep? Connor Whiteley: Yeah, because it's so simple, but none of us ever think about it. We always think about the more so-called practical aspects in terms of comforting them, bringing them dinner, making them tea and stuff, but in reality, sleep is actually so simple that we often overlook it. So, thank you for that. And the second point that I just remembered was that for our audience you might be working in a mental health service and as Tim did if you find that your engagement isn't actually as high as you would have wanted. Changing it because like Tim said the men weren't as in engaged originally, because he restructured it so he focused on the fire, doing it outside and also doing it when the melatonin is actually being created is really important. Then it led to approved engagement because one problem that the west has when it comes to mental health is that we always do therapy indoors during the day and that just doesn't work for certain people. So adapting it is really good. Tim Thomas: Connor, you said a mouthful there. Tim Thomas: An underlying principle we found is us humans, we're light receptive beings. We're very receptive to the light that's around So sunrise, sunset, our ancestors for millions of years have been exposed to us and that ancient DNA is still inside of us. so natural light exposure is the first thing when I was in the throws of PDSD the first thing a good psychologist told me was Tim a sunrise is a natural anti-depressant because turns on the wake up chemicals and if you can get naked sunlight through your retina it hits a part of your brain called the supercarismatic nucleus. I hope I said that. But basically that's in charge of all your internal clocks, all your circadian rhythms. So when people say to me, "Give me a good sleeping tip." And I'm like, it happens first thing in the morning. If you can get that natural light through your eyeballs, then all your internal clocks are clocking on together. It's because sometimes people at the end of the day, they turn off the light, get in bed, and there's a part of them still running around the place. All right? And that really impacts on that golden 5 minutes before sleep. Connor Whiteley: And definitely after the podcast episode, I'm not going to go outside there, but just I can get that. But you were mentioned about culture. Tim Thomas: Sorry, I will just stop you just for a second… Connor Whiteley: Okay. Tim Thomas: because it has to be naked light. You would need to have your glasses off to get that light through your retina just so Otherwise, any kind of glass, looking through a window or having glasses on will stop the full spectrum getting in. I just wanted to tell you that so you can set yourself up powerfully. What Mental Health Lessons Could We Learn from Aboriginal Elders? Connor Whiteley: Thank you. So something else that I found on your website was that as a child you were connected with the Aboriginal elders of your community. Would you mind telling us more about that and some of the insights that you learned? Tim Thomas: Yeah, So growing up in that space, I grew up in a town that was very racially divided. So if you think of sort of deep south Mississippi type type stuff, my dad worked in the church for the Aboriginal community. And as a kid, I could see two types of spiritual connection in the indigenous space. They were connected to the land. They were connected to each other. And it was in everything they did. in church on Sundays, there was a lot of, white guys saying they believed, but it didn't really show up in anything else they did during the week. and I'm not saying it was all peaches and cream either. There was so much violence, especially around alcohol, in that community. I grew up just thinking it was normal. I sort of used to play t it was funny like a cartoon when all this stuff would happen but if it happened to a kid these days there'd be all sorts of outrage of but it was just normal back in the 70s right and it took about 3 years before the local first nation started trusting dad but then once you're in the community so I still go back there to this day and go hunting and fishing and camping. and it's kind of like you are what you marinate in. If you want to get a real close connection to the land, hang out with people that are, connected to the land. And yeah, most of the traditional foods I still enjoy eating. It reminds me of my childhood. And yeah, I hope that answers your question, Connor. Connor Whiteley: definitely because I find it really interesting learning about other cultures and I'm sorry to hear about the alcohol abuse of your childhood town. That must have been really difficult for quite a while so thank you for sharing it. Do you think that the Aboriginal people and their teachings taught you anything about modern mental health or anything that we could apply to today? Tim Thomas: Good question. I believe we're as powerful as we are connected. Our peace, our power, our happiness, our love is relative to how connected we feel. All right? And all the illnesses we have, mental, physical, and otherwise, are the blockages that stop that connection. In our natural state, we are divinely connected, I believe. But in my case, PTSD, that was In the modern western world, that creates a speed of which we do things that creates blockages. Modern society stops us often robs us of quality sleep and that's a fatigue is a big blockage. So if I was to say I'm almost hesitant to say this because most people don't understand if so Have you heard that term where you walk around barefoot grounding? So we don't just get nutrition from the earth by eating the fruits of it. Connor Whiteley: definitely. Tim Thomas: We get nutrition by putting our bare feet on the ground. And it's hard to explain this that how do you say to a white person that putting your feet in a sacred area feels better than we winning lottery? Connor Whiteley: I understand what you mean because it is a really hard aspect to say that word but grounding is really important because when I was having the worst of my PTSD and my panic attacks one of the most relaxing things that I found was laying on my back, focusing on the gravity pushing me into the ground just so I know that I was safe, I was anchored, and I was actually there. That was a really powerful grounding technique. But you're right , it sounds crazy, and it's not going to work, but it really, really does. Tim Thomas: Some places are more energetic than others as well. And this is where when you have a connection to a particular area and you can walk around barefoot, there is something that shifts. and it's hard to put into words, but it is like a nervous system shift. It has to be experience. You can't just talk about it. yeah. Yeah. Connor Whiteley: Yeah, thanks. I think I vaguely understand what you mean, but you're right until you actually go somewhere and until you actually experience this moment or this spiritual moment, you can't explain it and you can't really truly appreciate what it is. What is Breathwork In Bed? Connor Whiteley: what is breathwork in bed? Tim Thomas: it’s an app and I'll see most people try and fix their life while exhausted so breathwork in bed simply helps people recover their energy first. So do you remember how I spoke about our life is shaped by those two five minute moments before sleep and upon waking? Breath work in bed is a simple tool to help people through those moments with breath work in that place in your bed where most people often struggle with their ts going to sleep and then struggle getting out of bed. This is what the breath work in bed app does. It just gives you the breath work to turn your bed into a cloud literally tonight and then into a trampoline when you need it. Connor Whiteley: Brilliant. So could you take us through a step by step how the app works just so we have some more practical tips as well. Tim Thomas: Yeah, look, people who are exhausted don't want an extra thick sick things to remember, going to sleep. So, the genius of the app is you just tell it when you want sleep. when you want to wake up and we take care of the rest because when I'm tired and I'm going to sleep I'm like but there's a notification tap tap and then it'll guide my breath to breathe a certain way to elicit a certain medicinal response and then in the mornings you'll see a notification tap tap and then you don't get out of bed yet you stay in there breathe a certain way move your body a certain way remove some of that stuck energy and… Tim Thomas: your feet swing over the side in a very different way. Connor Whiteley: Okay, thank you. But yeah, because I know that when I tend to wake up. If I'm really bad, I go on my phone for a while, which I know you're not meant to do. I know that's bad, but I'm human. I'm not perfect . But it's really a good idea where if we can just take a moment to be mindful and do that breathing exercise. Tim Thomas: Okay. What Breathing Exercises Can Help Us Improve Our Sleep? Connor Whiteley: But what sort of breathing would you encourage us to do? Just so tonight when we go to bed we can use this for ourselves. Tim Thomas: I'll be happy to show you a little exercise now that'll help people. Connor Whiteley: Please do. Tim Thomas: So, all I'm going to get you to do, Connor, everything is an invitation. Nothing's forced. So, I always ask three simple questions before I do any breath work exercise with anybody. Tim Thomas: So, Connor, do you give permission to your very own breath to make every single cell in your physical body feel really, really good? Connor Whiteley: I do. Tim Thomas: That was Second one's just as easy. Connor, do you give permission to your very own breath to fully nourish and make your conscious thinking mind feel really, really good? Excellent. Last one. Do you give permission to your own breath to make your unconscious mind feel really, really good? Connor Whiteley: I do. Connor Whiteley: Yes. Tim Thomas: Fantastic. So, all we're going to do right now, Connor, is breathe in and then Breathe in more. just hold it and wiggle. Wiggle your shoulders. Wiggle your arms. Wiggle wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. And then, when you're ready, let it out with a nice big sigh. Connor Whiteley: that was fun. Yeah. Tim Thomas: Teeth start showing when we start breathing properly. And I'm going to show you how to boost that, my friend. Because you've just put your toe in the shallow end of the pool. I'm going to take it a little bit deeper now. So this time and this is what I love doing Connor. We all have these amazing bodies… Tim Thomas: but we just don't know what they can do. And you probably didn't know this but in your two fingers and your thumb you've got a power button. When you pinch them really hard you boost your inhale. So, I'm just going to play with this. So, before when you breathed in and then you breathed in more, you noticed that your top third was kind of filling up. Connor Whiteley: Yeah. Tim Thomas: All I want you to do with your fingers here is breathe in partway and then when you want to fill this area, pinch your fingers and breathe in. So, just play with that. Go. You notice those little power buttons? Connor Whiteley: it really does work. Tim Thomas: It's funny how it works, So, all we're going to do now, I've got my hands up here so you can see it, but keep them down by your sides. Have your power buttons down by your sides. And this time, we're going to blow it out. And as we blow it out, we're going to shake it out. We're going to blow out as much as we can. Tim Thomas: And then we're going to do a rapid inhale through the nose. And halfway through our inhale, we're going to hit our power buttons and look up. And then we're just going to wiggle. And then let out a big sigh. Cool. Connor Whiteley: Okay. Yep. Tim Thomas: I'll be right here with you as we do it. So Blow it Out. Okay. Connor Whiteley: that was good. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Tim Thomas: let's start this again and we'll do it together. So, when we blow it out, try and blow out as much as possible because this is where energy is and this is where stuck energy can sit. So, when we blow it out, try and blow it all the way out. And then when you breathe in, try and really rapid double the speed of the inhale so you're sucking that air over your nose. So behind our nose we have these sinuses and breathing through our nose creates a gas called Nitric oxide improves mood, immunity, performance, recovery, sleep. Tim Thomas: All these things get produced when we nasally breathe. That nitric oxide doesn't actually get produced when we breathe through our mouths. Connor Whiteley: Okay. Tim Thomas: Okay, fun little fact about the nose. So when I say blow it all the way out, I want it all the way out so you can really suck that air over your sinuses. Almost like you're trying to pull it through the back of your head. You got that? Connor Whiteley: Okay. Let's do it. Yeah. Tim Thomas: Let's Shake it Let your head fall forward so you can sort of squeeze out your stomach. And then with your power buttons, breathe in through your nose. Hit those power buttons. Look Hit the power buttons now. Wiggle out any tension from the day. And then let out a really big sigh. Connor Whiteley: Yeah. It’s definitely fun. It does make you feel more energetic and breathing just makes you feel good. And considering I woke up an hour and 15 minutes ago, it does make you feel a lot more energized. So I can see if you do that straight after getting out of bed, it could have even more of a positive impact. Tim Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because you and I have been doing it our whole lives. And that's why I've noticed that it does to get that medicinal dose. It does need to be guided. Otherwise, I'll tend to lose myself. That little reset breath, I call it, is really handy if you're kicking around your day and something's annoying me. I'm human. Things annoy me. instead of going stuff that guy and then I'm carrying sort of a of handful of gravel from that experience. And at the end of the day, I often had to drink a lot, in the past when I didn't know what was going on. But when that happens now, when something annoys me, I'll discreetly pinch my fingers together in public and shake it, and just discreetly let it out. And that becomes me plugging back into my sovereign space. Connor Whiteley: Yeah. Thank you. And for our listeners, I also just want to say that people do breath work all of the time. But what I tend to do is box breathing if I'm really annoyed. Connor Whiteley: So it's when you breathe in, hold for four ,let it out for four, then you would just keep doing it until your parasympathetic nervous system is activated and you're a lot more relaxed relax. What Are Some Tips You Recommend When Working With People With PTSD? So, the only other sort of question that I think we've got time for today is that so lots of our listeners might be a aspiring or qualified psychologist and maybe they want to work with people with PTSD. What are some tips and tricks that you might want to share or what do you think is important for them to know about PTSD beyond textbooks and lectures? Tim Thomas: I've literally come back from a documentary film shoot where we were speaking on this subject and a lot of the psychologists wrote down what I'm about to share now. So what you have to understand is that a nervous system even when it's not functioning well protects itself and it senses when anything could potentially change it even if it's for the better. And so we noticed with these veteran programs about 3 days out people would start cancelling. If you had, 20 people saying they're going to turn up, we used to have up to 18 cancelling and it started at the 3-day mark. And what we found the way to reverse out this cancellation was have the engagement not all on the date but break it up. So 3 days beforehand just a call up going, "Hey, how you doing? Just checking in. we're doing this event. what would be something you'd like to get from it? blah blah blah." And the fact is it's two humans making a connection. And when that happens, that nullifies any fight or flight. It keeps them in their prefrontal cortex out of their amygdala. And then that was 72 hours before. And then 48 hours before, just another call, checking in. All good. And then here's the kicker. We'd send them a text or a call the night before just checking in because a lot can happen at night time. And that's when the unconscious mind can run the show. And so what we found was if we didn't address them in that 72-48 and the evening even if they did turn up, they were completely exhausted. It's like the part of them that didn't want to change says, "Fine, if you're going to turn up, you can turn up, but we're going to have you completely exhausted, and you're working with no energy. and they're not going to get anything from it. But if we reached out beforehand and had that human connection that will get them out of their house across a space that they may not have traveled before to that to a door they've never been to before. And I know that doesn't sound like much, but if you're in that lockdown state where you don't want to change, you look for any reason to say it's too hard, turn around and go away. and these days what people do as if they're running a program is they'll get them to use the breath work in bed app for two weeks beforehand and have it as a bit of a screening test. Okay, we'll have you on the program, but for two weeks you've got to do this breath work in bed. And when they turn up, they're well rested. And that's a massive difference between someone who's well-rested, attentive, got some energy to work with than someone that hasn't slept, fighting themselves and even if they do turn up, they're completely exhausted. And it's very hard to work with someone who's feeling exhausted. Connor Whiteley: Wow, thank you. That is a brilliant tip about that text the night before, because I know for myself, and probably so many other people, when it gets to 7:00 at night and when it starts to get dark that’s when my PTSD and my mental health would go absolutely mad to be honest. It would be so intense so that's just a brilliant idea  because if someone gets that text, they know they're not alone, they know they're supported and that can make all the difference. And the idea that you can use that app two weeks before that's another very powerful idea because one of the problems that we definitely have here in the UK is that it's just that one-week session. There's nothing after it. So if you have any difficulties in between those sessions you can't get help. So the idea that we could use this app is actually a great idea. So a brilliant tip. Tim Thomas: In real life, we turn a 90% nonattendance rate into a 90 plus attendance rate on that principle. Connor Whiteley: Okay then. And that definitely goes to show for our listeners that when we go into mental health services, we probably won't be able to do this as assistant psychologists but once we're qualified, once we're higher level, and once we're able to advocate for changes, I think that we should potentially start exploring these different ideas. For example, the contact before the session and let's be a force for change that helps people for the long-term. Tim Thomas: Yeah. The high-tech part of the equipment here isn't the app. It's people actually discovering that they don't own a set of lungs. They own a medicine cabinet with a lot of different shelves. And as someone who has prescribed a lot of different medications, I lost six years of my life to pills. I didn't know my own breath could do a better job getting me to sleep, to do a better job relieving my pain levels, to do a better job creating anti-inflammation through my whole system, And the reason I made the Breath Working Bed app is for people to discover what's right there and have it handy because I don't do something unless I'm reminded of it. And the amount of times that this has saved my life at 2:00 a.m. when you wake up and your head's doing those ones. I've lost count. But because it's something I discovered, it worked in Afghanistan and it worked when I was going through my divorce. I'm like, "This actually works. This actually works." and I think if you find something that actually works, it's your responsibility to create ways for other people to access it as easy as possible. Connor Whiteley: I couldn't agree more. How Do You Support Someone Who Is Resistant To Psychological Support? Connor Whiteley: So I think that my final question is that, because we're starting to run out of time is that, how would you help someone who's very resistant to the idea of breath work or anything that you're going to present them with to treat their PTSD? Tim Thomas: We came across a lot of people that were highly resistant to any form of treatment. Tim Thomas: And we'd have two ways around that. we would support the family, Because it's not just the person that's suffering. Often it's their family that's suffering as well, the people around them. So we would do what we could to support them vicariously through those people closest to them. the other thing and this asks the question. So everyone's up against something and whatever you're up against ask the question how many other people do you think are in the same situation? So when I'm up against somebody who's resistant and again this is universal. I've just discovered this through the veteran space. This could be anyone with cancer relationship any form of anything. The golden question is how many other people do you think are up against what you're up against And then you count backwards from six. You come back from six again. And then eventually they'll go, " thousands." and that can break their isolation. But then the next question is, do you think if you could find a way forward for you, you could find a way forward for them? And you see how that breaks the isolation that golden question. and when we're isolated, we're in our fight or flight, fast but dumb. When that isolation is broken it's like the toricade comes off your intelligence and you can go into your prefrontal cortex you can sort of put a satellite in the sky and see it all so I work off the fact that everyone has everything they need inside of them our job is to guide them into accessing those resources so holding the right space asking the right questions And if it was someone that wasn't in my line of specialty, let's say it was someone with cancer who was resistant to, seeking treatment or anything like that, I would find people that had gone through what they had gone through and successfully come out the other side. Tim Thomas: So that person who's gone through that journey, they might say something that they've heard before, but because they've been through it, they can shift it from their head into their heart. And that's when the real unblocking the connection happens and… Tim Thomas: the person starts accessing their own ability to move forward. Connor Whiteley: Yeah, that was really insightful thank you because it's all about that sense of shared connection, knowing that you're not alone and if other people can come through this then that can be a really really useful realisation. Since I know for lots of us aspiring psychologists we're often met with job applications that want us to understand how to explain or how would you deal with treatment resistant people. Which I think is a horrible term and to be honest I probably misremembered it but really just helped a lot of us on job applications, so thanks. Tim Thomas: I might add one more thing because when people are isolated and fatigued, their cortisol levels are really high and too high for too long drives your hormone levels into the dirt. So that's another form of fatigue. So I've often had success with guys heavily resistant. I'm like, " have you had your testosterone checked recently? That's important." They say, "Yeah, it is important. I haven't had it checked." And then when they check it out and it's low, then they might see an endocrinologist, which works with hormones. They get their hormones balanced and all of a sudden they've got a part of their life that's out of fatigue, more energy, more options. Too many times I've seen people trying to fix their life from points of exhaustion and it just doesn't work. So my goal is, get them out of exhaustion and then all of a sudden they will often instinctively know what to do next. Connor Whiteley: Okay, thank you. Connor Whiteley: So, we're out of time, but it's been brilliant talking with you. So, please tell everyone and know where they can find you online and everything that you do. Tim Thomas: Three simple words, breathwork in bed. You can turn your bed into a cloud tonight if you want to try the breath working bed app. And for everyone listening, I'm happy to give them the 28-day free trial. Tim Thomas: It won't cost you anything and it might just make all the difference to your sleep tonight. Connor Whiteley: Brilliant. Best of luck with the future and a massive thank you for coming on the podcast today. Tim Thomas: Thanks, Connor. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bettersleepbetterworld/ https://breathworkinbed.com.au/ https://www.instagram.com/breathworkinbed/ https://www.facebook.com/breathworkinbed https://www.tiktok.com/@breathworkinbed ? 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 Healing As A Survivor: A Personal and Clinical Psychology Guide to Healing from Sexual Violence.  Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. 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In this reflective clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll hear my reflections on the lack of qualification that psychology degrees actually give you in the United Kingdom, how other career paths allow you to become a qualified mental health professional a lot sooner and why psychology needs to fix this problem. As well as how it could achieve this. If you enjoy learning about clinical psychology, careers in psychology and psychotherapy then this will be a brilliant episode for you. Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Psychology Worlds Magazine . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. A Reminder That I Love Psychology and Being A Psychology Graduate Before I start this podcast episode that is very reflective of clinical psychology, I want to take a moment to remind you all that I flat out love psychology. As I write this section, I can’t stop smiling because to me, psychology is amazing, it’s so much fun and it has so much power to transform lives for the better. Studying at university for my psychology degrees were some of the best years of my life. Not only because they allowed me to deepen my understanding and appreciation for the profession I love, but also because they allowed me to heal. In other podcast episodes and books, I’ve discussed how my psychology background has given me the awareness to recover from my trauma, my rape, my anorexia and everything that I have had to fight through just to survive. And I am so grateful that I studied psychology because without the awareness, the knowledge and the experience that psychology has given me, I never would have been able to recover from these types of trauma as I have. I would probably have died by suicide a long time ago without my psychology degrees. In that regard, my psychology degrees really have saved my life and studying psychology allows a lot of people to experience this. Whether they are clients in mental health services, someone looking to retrain and find purpose in psychology and more. In addition, I love psychology because of the amazing connections that I’ve made over the years. whether it’s a brilliant podcast guest, mutual professional connections that I have a vague working relationship with or just my friends and my lecturers. I treasure all of those connections and I was only able to develop them because I studied psychology at university. Finally, I flat out love psychology because without it, I wouldn’t have my business, I wouldn’t have my podcast and everything that makes me, me wouldn’t be here. I could reflect on all the reasons why I strongly believe everyone should study psychology, but that isn’t the point of this podcast episode and I’m sure in volume 10 of Beyond The Lectures , I’ll write about it. And in the interest of full disclosure, Beyond The Lectures is what I’m retitling future volumes of my Clinical Psychology Reflections series. On the whole, as you can see, I love psychology, I wouldn’t change my degrees for the world and this is a reflective podcast episode on the qualification aspects of the profession. Not the subject. Does Psychology Have a Qualification Problem In The UK? In the United Kingdom, if you do an undergraduate degree or postgraduate degree in psychology, clinical psychology or any other type of psychology, you are qualified in nothing. You are not a psychologist, you are not a mental health professional, and in the eyes of the job market, you are just as qualified as anyone without a psychology degree. Okay, maybe the last point is a minor overexaggeration, but it is still true to a large extent. However, if you do an undergraduate degree in social work, nursing or any other healthcare profession, then you can leave your degree in the UK and become eligible to be a fully licensed practitioner in that field. You can leave your undergraduate degree and become a qualified social worker, nurse, mental health nurse and so on. Therefore, in this reflection, I’ll be reflecting on the lack of qualification that psychology degrees actually give you in the United Kingdom, how other career paths allow you to become a qualified mental health professional a lot sooner and why psychology needs to fix this problem. As well as how it could achieve this. What are Licensing Degrees? In the United Kingdom (and I imagine for the rest of the world), licensing degrees are higher education qualifications that you complete to become fully qualified or at least eligible to register as a qualified professional with the relevant governing body. For example, if you do an accredited nursing degree in the United Kingdom then upon completion you can register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council to be a qualified nurse in whatever area of nursing you choose. Here is a list of the other licensing degrees available in the United Kingdom: ·                 Nursing (all fields) ·                 Midwifery ·                 Paramedic Science ·                 Physiotherapy ·                 Occupational Therapy ·                 Radiography (Diagnostic/Therapeutic) ·                 Speech & Language Therapy ·                 Dietetics ·                 Podiatry ·                 Operating Department Practice ·                 Social Work ·                 Dentistry (Dentist, Hygienist, Therapist) ·                 Veterinary Medicine ·                 Veterinary Nursing In other words, if you do an accredited degree in one of the above areas in the United Kingdom, you can potentially finish your undergraduate degree as a fully qualified professional. Moreover, this is important for aspiring mental health professionals, because in the past few days, I’ve been learning a lot about the non-psychology mental health job market in the UK, and to become a mental health practitioner in the NHS, you need to be either a qualified mental health nurse, social worker or practising psychologist. The route to becoming a psychologist, not including the years of unpaid work experience you need to do, is at least six years or 7 years if you do an MSc. Whereas to become a social worker and mental health nurse, it takes 3 years. One of my points here is that whilst I have flat out loved my psychology degrees and I wouldn’t change them for the world, if I was advising someone who was passionate about mental health which path to take. I honestly might not recommend psychology because compared to other qualified professions in the UK, it is so, so hard to get a job with a psychology degree. Because if you’re a psychology graduate, you actually are not qualified in anything. Nothing at all. Whereas if you want to work in mental health, you could do a nursing degree, do a specialised undergraduate degree in mental health nursing as well as you could do a social work degree and come out as a qualified professional in three years. This way you have a lot more jobs available to you because you’re a qualified professional, you can still work in mental health and you can almost be on the big money as soon as you leave university. Of course, I am not blind to the probable reality that it’s still hard to get a job because there are thousands of other graduates graduating each year, there are always work experience requirements and sometimes it’s about who you know, not what you know. On the other hand, unlike psychology and clinical psychology, nursing makes practical elements a core part of their degrees. For example, to become a qualified nurse in the UK, you need 800 hours of practical experience and this is already included in your undergraduate degree. Dear psychology readers, can you imagine how amazing it would be to get 800 hours of clinical psychology experience as a standard part of your degree? I would flat out love that and my employability would be amazing compared to what it is right now. There are so many mental health jobs available at the moment in the NHS, but because I only studied psychology to Masters level, I don’t have the qualifications to apply for them. Yet if a mental health nurse or a social worker saw these jobs after their undergraduate degree, they would at least have the qualifications as well as licenses to apply for these roles. To me, it’s insane that I did an MSc in clinical psychology, I lived and breathed clinical psychology and how to help people, but I’m not allowed to become a mental health practitioner. There aren’t even trainee routes into becoming a mental health practitioner. At least not really. There are occasionally mental health practitioner training schemes, jobs and opportunities but I haven’t seen any of them for months. Even if they only appear in the last four months of the calendar year, that is nowhere near enough to accommodate the tens of thousands of psychology students that graduate every year. Furthermore, the United Kingdom complains that there is a mental health crisis, more people than ever before are experiencing mental health difficulties and our mental health services are being stretched to their limits. As well as the NHS admit that there is a national shortage of NHS mental health nurses, which is why at the time of writing they give healthcare professionals a £5,000 a year bursary and a £1,000 specialism bursary if you study mental health nursing to encourage an uptick in the profession. Excuse me. You have tens of thousands of psychology graduates each year that are graduating from university wanting to work in mental health. Why don’t you look at them? Train them? Make them trainee mental health practitioners? Just a thought. How Could We Solve This Qualification Issue? If we want to make psychology a subject at university where you can become a qualified professional, then there are some solutions to this crisis. Since right now, doing a psychology degree does not do much to your employability. Especially because a lot of people cannot do the years of unpaid work experience that you need to even remotely get a foot in the door to the clinical psychology profession amongst all the other issues with the psychology job market that myself and other professionals have spoken about before. Firstly, stratify psychology degrees. I do not believe that we need to restructure psychology degrees entirely. Since even practising psychologists need to understand every single little thing that a psychology undergraduate teaches you from social, cognitive, biological and personality psychology as well as statistics. That doesn’t need to change. However, similar how you have some degrees in the United Kingdom that are different, we need to create some more specialist psychology degrees. For example, my undergraduate degree was Psychology with Clinical Psychology and a Placement Year. That is the official title of my degree, so it was not a psychology degree but it was a more specialist degree. If a university can create a specialist psychology degree, why can’t it create a more practical psychology degree that gives you a qualification at the end? But Connor, it’s hard for universities to get the partnerships and placement opportunities for students. I don’t doubt that counterpoint in the slightest and this isn’t just about universities. I understand that I am basically calling for a seismic shift in how the psychology job market works as well as how psychology professionals are qualified, but it can be done. Nursing shows us that. There are thousands of nursing students in each academic year across the United Kingdom, and somehow each student gets at least 800 hours of experience by the end of their course. Some of those 800 hours are stimulated experience done by practical teaching. Yet they still get hands-on experience with real patients in real hospitals with real people. What makes psychology so unique that we can’t do that? But Connor, not all psychology students want to become mental health professionals. I completely agree and during my psychology undergraduate, I knew tons of students that couldn’t stand the idea of seeing clients and working in an applied setting. As well as being a practising psychologist isn’t right for everyone. Lots of psychology students don’t want to be a mental health professional. Students might be passionate about psychology research, social psychology, forensic psychology or any other area of psychology that isn’t related to mental health. Also, there will be plenty of psychology students who want to research mental health without being a practicing professional. There are two things that I want to add in response to this great point. Firstly, if a medical doctor wants to research medical diseases or conditions, then they still need to have the same qualifications, including the practical elements, as a practising medical professional. The same goes for if a nurse wanted to focus on nursing studies and the research side of being a nurse, then they would still need the practical element and the nursing qualification that their degree gives them. Therefore, whilst not all psychology students want to become a practising psychologist or a mental health professional, they might benefit from a more practical undergraduate course that gives them a licensed qualification at the end of their course. It is no different to practicing psychologists having to learn about research methods and statistics during their undergraduate studies, even if they know they have no intention of having a career in research. Secondly, I would respond to this point by mentioning that this is why stratification of psychology degrees is important. If we create some psychology degrees that allow you to become a qualified mental health practitioner or psychologist upon completion, and allow other degrees to stay as “basic” psychology degrees that don’t allow you to become a qualified professional. Then that is one solution. Students can apply for the course that gives them what they want. But Connor, other science courses require you to have experience or a portfolio. Why shouldn’t psychology have the same requirements? Again, this is a great point. My ex-boyfriend studied biology at university and he can’t become a registered biologist or a qualified scientist because he doesn’t have the experience or the portfolio to register as a scientist. Therefore, you could easily argue that because psychology is a science, we should have to produce a portfolio and reflect on our healthcare experiences to become a fully qualified professional. But why can’t this experience be apart of our standard degrees? That is the point that I don’t understand and I’ll tackle more points throughout this reflection that build upon this so-called criticism even more. However, I strongly believe that we should have some kind of practical element baked into clinical psychology degrees that allows us to become a qualified mental health professional. Especially, as clinical psychology is a science and a healthcare profession. If a medical doctor, who is a professional in the science of medicine, then why can’t a psychologist, who is a professional in the science of behaviour, be a qualified professional? I do not understand that. But Connor, can’t a psychology student harm someone’s mental health if they make a mistake during training? Of course they can, but so can a trainee nurse or another trainee healthcare professional. If a trainee incorrectly inserts a needle and misses or punctures an artery whilst they take blood, then it causes a lot of blood to squirt out, they could die and it takes that artery out of action in terms of extracting blood. I learnt that during a blood donation that I went to a few years ago. Therefore, this means that we are willing to allow trainee nurses and other healthcare professionals to potentially kill, harm or injure a real person. Yet we aren’t willing to allow trainee psychology professionals the same, that’s weird, isn’t it? Psychology students are trained in behaviour, trained in how mental health conditions work and how therapy works and improve lives. Yet unlike other healthcare professionals, psychology students aren’t allowed to put their knowledge into practise? Whereas nurses and other healthcare professionals are given needles, blood pressure cuffs and other highly sensitive and important medical information during their training. It’s very high-quality training but I’m failing to see why my Masters’ education was less high-quality than an undergraduate in nursing. These are fair points. But Connor, won’t a licensing psychology degree take longer to complete? Very possibly. Whilst nursing, social work and other licensing degrees in the United Kingdom allow you to complete them and get your 800 hours of experience in 3 years, a licensing psychology degree might take longer. This is especially true when we consider that medical doctors, who are professionals in the science of medicine, go to university for 5 to 7 years. However, I am approaching this from the angle of I firmly believe psychology students would prefer to be at university for longer, come out as a qualified professional and have a lot more high-paying mental health jobs available to them compared to the current system of doing a psychology undergraduate and postgraduate degree and being qualified in nothing. Clinical Psychology Conclusion At the end of this reflection, I am not blind to the immense challenges that implementing my proposed ideas represent. This would require a massive restructure of mental health qualifications, universities forming partnerships with mental health services and it will require involvement from the UK Government, the British Psychological Society, the Health and Care Professions Council and so on. However, the real point that I am trying to raise here is that it seems really weird to me that I’ve completed an undergraduate degree in psychology, I’ve completed a Masters of Science in clinical psychology and I am not qualified in anything. I simply have a lot of knowledge, two degrees and a lot of experience in education but I’m not allowed to use any of it in a mental health setting. Yet if you do nursing, social work or any other licensing profession in the UK, you’re eligible to register and practice using all your knowledge and experience as soon as you graduate. That doesn’t sit right with me. What do you think?   I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode. If you want to learn more, please check out: FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET Psychology Worlds Magazine . Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca. Patreon for exclusive access and rewards Have a great day. 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.