What would make someone turn down a place on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) after years of hard work and applications? In this episode of The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, Dr Marianne Trent speaks with Assistant Psychologist Will about his bold and values-led decision to decline a DClinPsy offer from Liverpool.

We explore what it feels like to get the long-awaited offer only to realise it doesn’t align with your personal wellbeing, relationships, or long-term goals. Will shares the emotional impact of saying no, how location and stability shaped his choice, and what it means to prioritise authenticity over external expectations.

This honest conversation will resonate with aspiring psychologists facing the pressures of applications, rejections, interviews, and offers. If you’re wondering what really matters when making career decisions in psychology, this episode offers clarity, courage, and hope.

This is a powerful listen for aspiring psychologists navigating applications, rejections, offers, and the difficult decisions that come with building a career in psychology.

#dlinpsy #dclin #clearinghouse

⏱️ Highlights & Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Introduction: Why would anyone turn down a DClinPsy place?
• 01:05 – Meet Will: Assistant Psychologist and DClinPsy offer holder
• 01:52 – Saying no to Liverpool: how the decision unfolded
• 03:48 – Visceral reactions: why dread outweighed joy
• 06:26 – The importance of stability, relationships, and location
• 08:11 – Pros and cons lists, health factors, and neurodivergence considerations
• 09:55 – Long-distance relationships and self-care realities
• 12:28 – “If it was local, I’d have said yes”: information in itself
• 14:19 – Loss, growth, and embracing future opportunities
• 16:27 – Working on self-understanding and mental health alongside career goals
• 20:02 – Regional challenges and placements: why location matters
• 23:15 – The importance of early, honest conversations with partners
• 28:24 – Three years isn’t “just three years”: weighing the life impact
• 30:51 – Loving the job you’re in and choosing timing that feels right
• 33:06 – The need for more open conversations in psychology about difficult decisions
• 36:59 – Final reflections: your authentic self matters more than the pedestal

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To many people. Turning down a place on the doctorate in clinical psychology might seem unthinkable, especially after four rounds of applying countless hours of prep. And finally, hearing the word yes from the outside. It looks like the ultimate goal, the finish line, the thing you've been working towards for years. But what if that, yes, arrives at the wrong time? What if actually saying no is the most compassionate values led decision you could make? In this episode I'm talking with Will about what it really means to walk away from a dream offer and how doing so can shake up your identity, challenge expectations, and invite some surprising growth. I'm Dr. Marianna, qualified clinical psychologist, and if you are interested in honest conversations about psychology, mental health and the realities behind the profession, make sure you like, subscribe, and follow along for more hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, and I'm joined here today with our guest Will, will is an assistant psychologist. Welcome along. Will

I Welcome. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

You are so welcome to be here. So thank you for agreeing to speak with us because actually you give us a really interesting and important narrative because you were offered a place which might for many of people and for you in a past version of your life, have felt like a dream offer on a decency course that was probably familiar to you because you'd done your undergrad uni at that university, but for a variety of reasons, mainly prioritising yourself and your own real life experiences. You said no to an outright doctorate clinical psychology place in 2025. Didn't you will?

I did, yes. I said no to Liverpool. I had two interviews. I had one forter, I had one for Liverpool. I got an offer of an interview, sorry, an offer of a place at Liverpool and I turned it down. It was an incredibly difficult decision, which I'm sure we'll plough into in the rest of this recording, but it was a really, really difficult decision, as you said, past life. Me three years ago, four years ago, this would've been absolute dream. So I did my undergrad, I actually did at Liverpool Hope University and then was also the Deon Places, is it Liverpool Uni of and yeah, I love that city. I love that place. I have friends there. But as we know, life has its own ways of encouraging us to make different decisions. And yeah, I won't say that it was an easy decision. That is far from the case. It was a really, really difficult decision to make.

But actually when we get what feels like might be life-changing news, I invite clients to do this as well. Actually, we really need to think about where we notice that in our body, what visceral experiences we have to that and getting a deeper inside place. I've had the extreme privilege of often being the first person someone's ever told, they leave me a voice note and they're, oh my God, Marianne, I've, oh my God, offered a place. And to hear what that means to them in their voice and to have known them and watched them grow and supported them through that process and then them to get in everything they are striving for, have been striving for, that they believe they want is incredible. And they have that moment of melts and overwhelm and joy. But the fact that you didn't have that is really, really important. How was this news conveyed to you? How did you find out you'd been offered this place? Well,

Yeah, so I was at work, obviously got the email and I remember just being sat at my desk and I got the email through and was just like, at first, I think first response was disbelief, as I'm sure for many people is name send it to the wrong person. This isn't right. This can't be wet, this can't be possible. And I was like, oh my God, there's a lot of feelings that I'm feeling and I'm not sure exactly what I'm feeling. So she was the toilet. I read it over again and was like, oh wow, this is a genuine offer. And you talk about that kind of visceral response. There was energy, there was emotion, there was a lot of things that I was feeling. And then the thing that kind of settled that seemed to come through the most for me was this feeling of just dread, of just like, oh goodness, I've actually got to make this decision.

Then I've got to talk to my partner about the fact that I might be moving four hours away and that I'm going to be leaving my family behind and I'm going to have to think about a place to live. And all these kinds of things that really factor into these conversations. As I've said, I'm talking through the intro for some people, that idea of something new, that idea of something far away of this kind of promised land and new friends and this kind of stuff is really valuable and they're happy to just go off and drop and try new things. And I think three, four years ago, again, that might've been me, but today I stand in a stable relationship and I have, I'm a bit older and I've got another things that I'm happy to have and proud to have and want to hold onto. And yeah, so that's why I made that decision. But yeah, the initial kind of visceral reaction was definitely kind that sense of dread of anxiety and it wasn't one of pure just joy elation. Yeah. At all. So yeah, it sounds like it was different for it has been for other people.

Well, yeah, but you are a different person and you're allowed to have a different experience. But also when we are making our choices what to put on that electronic form for a course choice, we are not really doing that with informed consent. We are thinking, oh, it'll be doable. It'll be all right. It's different than someone saying, here's the keys to the castle, but you've got to move here. And actually, because I think your interview was in person, I guess you'd had recent experience of making that trip and what that would be like. And actually then you do have more of an informed consent and it would bring back the real life reality of having studied in Liverpool already for three years. But I guess also the networks we make when we are on training, you'd have those all up in the northwest. That's right, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right.

And then when you're qualified, most of your qualified connections would probably stay in the northwest and actually you would always be planning to probably move back down to the southwest. And so I do think you've made a very wise, brave decision to honour yourself and to take control back again. Could you have made it work? Yes, you could have. I spoken to people in the past that have made a very big move away from their partners, away from their stabilising factors that have found it incredibly difficult, incredibly destabilising. It's made them think whether they want to quit the course, which also has lots of layers of shame and blame and guilt. And what if and shouldn't I be grateful? But actually you were able to really think this through in advance and you were like, no, I think this is a stretch too much and I salute you for it.

I really appreciate that. Not all of the feedback has been positive as you might expect. Everyone's going to have their own opinion and they're totally entitled to that. And some of it was hard to hear and some of it was important to hear. It was really important to hear some of that stuff. But absolutely, I think thinking you mentioned there about stabilising factors and things like that, and that was really what helped to ground me, I think, in this decision. Did I feel particularly grounded when I made the decision? Absolutely not. No. But the things that helped me around the decision in making that, I spent a good few days really just really only thinking about this. I didn't really feel like I had any other space for anything else. And those stabilising factors are a really important part of that kind of decision and how I made that decision.

Shout out to my supervisor, Nicola, for being just absolutely amazing and super supportive. And she suggested I do the classic pros cons list, why not? And also then valuating those as well out of 10. So you rated all of those and then you add them together and you minus, so you add all the pros and then you minus the cons and it's like, what's that waiting? That was great. That was really helpful because not only did it help me do make the decision, it informed that, but it also just kind helped me think about all the things that I would really listing that down or anything. What are the things I'm actually going to have to be thinking about? And for me, as someone who I had a lot of other factors, I had other factors think about which were the fact that I also have type one diabetes and I had to think about what management and changing gps and making I access to medication.

Those kind of decisions were also really important. Also thinking about potential neurodivergence within myself and what that might look like and how I might adapt and how I might be able to cope with some of those things. And just generally in terms of the stabilising factors in particular, like I said, my partner, I'm a very touchy, really, I like carles can't lie, and that's very stabilising for me and I enjoy that kind of sense of soothing and comfort and not having access to that regularly. I just knew that that would be something I would really, really miss. Not only would I be missing it whilst I was trying to do this course and trying to do all this other stressful things, I'd also not have access to it as well to help me cope with that thing too. So I think it was the kind of combined of those two of missing the person and that creating distress and whatever might come with that, along with the combination of stress from the course, let's be real. It is difficult, it's going to be hard. And also not having access to some of the things that would've helped me cope better or coping in a way that would've liked. So not having access those things was really important for me in factor in that decision.

And sometimes in our work, speaking from the perspective of someone who's been in a long-term relationship whilst I was training, sometimes we're so talked out that sometimes what we need from our partner is just quite companionship, but with them right here or that we're sitting on the sofa and we fussing each other's hair or whatever as we watch something and that's our moment of connection. Whereas sometimes having to be on the phone or FaceTime for an hour or so feels like actually not necessarily what you want to do to honour your self-care at that time. So yeah, it is a big deal to be in a long distance relationship and it's something that we should really spend time considering the impact on ourselves and the other person as well. I said to you before the cameras started rolling today that I'd met my husband, my now husband in the second week of the second year of my doctorate course.

And I told you there was no way I was quitting it because I was really enjoying the course and I was enjoying my life. And so when our relationship very quickly looked like it was going to be viable, so to speak, it was like we didn't want to be apart from each other, but there was no chance I was going to move to Brighton. It just wasn't happening. So it almost becomes like a, I wouldn't have given that as an ultimatum, but it almost becomes like if we're going to be together and we want to be together now you're going to have to move my friend. And so that's what happened. But if he had had Dependences already or a job that he really was enjoying, he was a musician, he was enjoying that, but he chose to put all the eggs in the Midlands basket and move up, but we are not the kings of the world. We shouldn't think that we can be the ruler that decides all the decisions just because we have this career. And so it sounds like you're very mindful and you've made a considered choice, but also I'm aware that if you'd been offered a place on a course closer to home, I guess there wouldn't necessarily have been the pros and cons list. It would've just been hands down, I'm accepting the one that's closer to home, which I think is information in itself really.

Yeah, it really is. You're absolutely right. If I'd been offered a place with extra, it would've been, or Plymouth, which is where I also applied, it would've been absolutely complete, yes, no questions asked. I think that's not true. That would've been questions asked of I think my ability to do the course as I'm sure most people would question themselves as they go through that process. But yeah, it would've been a much easier decision. And like you said, that's information in itself and it was really hard to explain this I think to the people closest to me that this process, although I said no, it really affirmed that this is really what I want to do. Honestly, the interview experience, the reflections that came with it was hard. It was a long process, but just generally this AP role that I'm currently in has been so informative in terms of formative, sorry, in terms of my self-esteem and my belief in my ability to do this stuff.

But also just then obviously getting offered the place was also formative and being like, yeah, I can do this. I'm good enough. The classic question, and that was just, I can't explain other than just it was such a good experience and this is what I want to do, this is what I want to do, and I know that, and that was a really difficult thing to communicate in a way that I could get people to kind of understand that, although this is what I want, I'm still saying no, it just didn't feel like the right place at the right time and of the other things that we've talked about. So yeah, that part was really challenging and I wrestled with that in myself to be like, how could you possibly know that this is what you want? Even though you're saying no, but having sat with that and had the space, the time reflected on it, yeah, this is absolutely what I want to do. It wasn't the right time.

Yeah, well, not necessarily not the right time and not the right place. Yeah,

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, that makes sense.

Sure. You still could have been a really great trainee, but I guess even the experiences you will have over the next 12 years, not 12 years, 12 months and beyond, hopefully it won't take 12 years, will just make you a better clinician and a better human as well. And it was always good to be a better clinician and a better human when you're going to be a trainee and yeah, you'll just be more compassionate to yourself, the world and others. And I think that's a really good thing, will

Absolutely. I'm really excited. After the decision was made, there was a big emotional outpouring. There was crying, there was, oh God, I don't I'm going to do with my life. Is this the right decision that I've made? There was a lot of things that I was feeling as I'm sure most people would be feeling either way on that decision. But once that kind of dust settled on the same day, my partner and I had been talking about moving in together, what that meant. That's where I'm now, we were talking about all these things that we'd kind of put on the back burner for delin. Really that was one of the main reasons that we didn't do some stuff. We hadn't really been planning too many holidays and we hadn't been thinking about how we would manage doing certain things together and activities and hobbies because the past few months I've been spending a lot of evenings either worrying about doing it or doing it.

I think worrying probably the more of those two, but a lot of that time is just consumed feeling and doing stuff, and that was just really liberating. You planned a couple of holidays, you planned things that were going to go away and do small getaways, just general day-to-day stuff that we want to do more of. And that's just been, that was really, really lovely. I was so glad in that decision at that point. I think in terms of time as well, I think there was a few weeks of that bubble and then that bubble did kind of burst and it was particularly talking through this, my own counselling and reflecting and stuff, and once I started to give it space, it was like, oh, actually this does feel like it does feel a big loss. It feels like a loss of, we think about uncertainty and what the future means.

I'm not necessarily guaranteed to get through screening, to get an interview to get off of a place. None of those things are guaranteed, and I'm under no impression of thinking that just because I've been offered one that I'll absolutely be offered another one straight away or even in 2, 3, 4 years, we don't know. And under no illusion that is the case, but that just really felt like the best decision for me as a person at that time. There was things that I really valued, absolutely love my job. I absolutely love my partner and I want to be here and I want to spend time here. I want to go out and do positive things. I want to continue working on myself. And there was also a part of me, I think the main parts of this conversation was really working on myself. I'm someone who's struggled with mental health myself and found things quite difficult and only really recently connecting with this potential idea of neurodivergence and connecting with that and understanding what that means for me and also working in a diabetes service and having diabetes myself has been just amazing.

Honestly, this role has been incredible. I have no bad words to say about this role whatsoever. It's incredible and all these kind of things, but really the bigger picture here is this idea of understanding myself better, connecting more with what my needs are. And right now there's a part of me, I'm working part-time as well, three days a week, and all the bits and pieces that I do around the house and things like that as there's just a part of me that just was like, this stuff is really important. And actually that's as important, if not more important based on the decision I've made. I would say probably more important than just the career itself. I don't think I was ready to give up all of my spare time. I'm sure trainees will tell you it's not all their time. I'm sure there might be some people who maybe argue that it is all their time, but how much time that takes from you and the stuff that it takes from you as well as obviously gives you too. But I think that was something I just wasn't quite ready to give up on right now in terms of the space for myself, for my partner, for my family, and just, yeah, that wasn't something I was ready to give up.

I think it's commendable and it also shows us that you want this, but you want this on your terms and that you matter and that your wellbeing matters. It would've been your wellbeing, which took the hit if you'd gone for that option this year. And I think if there were more universities offering these places, it would ease the pressure. But we know that life is not perfect and we were just trying to look regionally at where else there was the office courses and I, at one stage there was Bristol, but there's no longer Bristol course. Depending on where you are in the country can very much mean that you are having to almost overstretch yourself for where you're going to commute. And it's not easy. It isn't easy. And what I moved to Coventry for what I thought would maybe be three years and then I would move back to milk Keynes area. Sometimes that doesn't happen. Sometimes where you move for your doctorate is where you end up having your family. It's where my children are. My children are conventions. Now it becomes your life. And so whilst we might enter into it with, I can do this for three years, I guess ultimately we need to think, I would want to potentially make this my life. Not always, not always, but we've got to be curious and there's got to be some capacity for that because we dunno what life will bring.

Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think that was something that I think I was struggling also to even allow myself to connect to this idea of, because I know that I absolutely love that city. I have really good friends there. I was best man at one of my friend's weddings up there. I love it up there. I said, I'm a Liverpool fan as well. I like the music. I'm also a musician, so being a Liverpool's great for that too. There's a lot of positives about being there. I think this just really showed how important it is and for me and my partner, how important that relationship is. And like I said, there's connecting and soothing things that come with that, which is just great. I wouldn't want to be without, and my typical neurodivergent brain has now gone off topic and now I can't remember what the question was, so here we are.

It's okay. I don't think there really was one. I think it was just that when we accept it was probably more of a statement, as my husband would say, when we accept a place offer, we have to be open to the potential that this might then be where we spend the majority of our lives, and that has to be okay. I guess I was thinking as well about my experience of making big decisions. So when I was kind of toing and froing between should I go all in self-employed, should I leave the NHS, I found that anytime I had a spare moment that I would be trying to weigh things up. So every time I went to boil that kettle, and obviously during the pandemic, that was a lot, right? Because we were all working from home. I found myself doing those pros and cons lists thinking, should I stay? Should I go? Should I stay? Should I go? It's exhausting. It's exhausting. It is. So when I handed in my resignation, which would've been January, 2021, similarly to you, I've had this moment of I don't need to do this anymore. I don't need to deliberate. I've made my decision and I had this moment of euphoria where I then felt free of that decision and looking forward to the reality that I'd chosen, knowing that I'd done that for the reasons that I'd decided were the most important to me. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. It makes sense and I can totally resonate with the idea of euphoria. I think once everything had settled, once I made the decision and being, like I said, those two, three weeks of planning, of positivity, of feeling more connected, it creates this kind of disconnection. I could be leaving, I could be four hours away in a few months time and there permanently it could be really difficult and it always just kind of lingers and it just stays. And that was even before I'd been offered at the place because at the end of the day, we submit applications in November and you don't know what's going to happen until March. So it's a long time of thinking and kind of deliberating. And one thing I think that I kind of wish I guess I had done was to think about having the outright conversation with my partner and to think about, well, this actually is potential this could happen.

I think that's something I avoided because I think for me it was self-defensive. It's like, oh no, I'll never get a place. Let's put that down. It doesn't matter. Yeah, no, I'll never get a place protect myself. It'll be okay. We don't have to worry about that. And as soon as you get off the place it's like, oh, wow, I really should have just had that conversation. I should just talk through what those practicalities are going to look like and how we're going to manage this, which I think would've made that decision easier. It would've made it, some of this stuff would've already been thought about and probably in a less emotional environment for myself as well, I'm sure. Yeah, so that's definitely something I think I would do differently if that situation were ever to present itself again,

And I guess had you not already had the experience of Liverpool, you might have been unlikely to put that as a wild card, and so it's maybe younger Will was sort of helping you fill that form in, but actually it was older Will that had to, okay, we're going to take back the reins there because actually that's not practical. And so yeah, three local-ish courses and then one wildcard, it's like, well, what are the motivations for that? Unless the course is doing something very unique. So people do choose courses in very different areas of the country because they're like, I think these courses are a bit of me, but I'm not necessarily sure that's what was happening here. Obviously it was a course that you'd be excited to do, but the location was maybe based on younger will and your connections to the area.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was, absolutely it was. And like I said, three, four years ago when I was still in my twenties, I think that still would've been a decision I would've jumped at and would've been an opportunity I would've jumped at. Like I said, when I think about this decision about making my application again in November, we've got to do that process again. And I think there's part of me that's still sort of like there's this dream part of me of like, yeah, no, it'll be okay. You can advise live four, you'll be all right. It's definitely still, I absolutely acknowledge that part because there's so much positive experience I've had there. It's really difficult to ignore the emotions and the experiences that I've had and the friends that are still there, all those things that come with that decision as well as just, I couldn't say a bad word about the interview process.

Live four are amazing. If anyone's thinking about it, would highly recommend, it was very inclusive, it was great, and all of that stuff is really important, but honestly, if I'm being brutally honest, I don't know what decision I'm going to make in November, I might still apply for Liverpool, I might not. I think that's going to have to be communication. Being open, seeing about where my self progression continues and where I'm at and what we're feeling and having an open conversation before I put that down with my partner would be a really good starting point I think,

And maybe starting to have those conversations early as well so that you can be excited about your choices as well so that you can kind of put those eggs in that basket. But I guess thinking about placements, we apply for a university and certainly in my mind, I was moving to Coventry and so I thought, well, I'm going to live in Coventry. My university's in Coventry and my placements will obviously be in Coventry. That is not the way universities work. In my case, I was assigned a base, an employment base, which was not in Coventry, and so that affected my mileage. I was actually given Warwick, which meant that whenever I had placements, I couldn't claim any mileage until I'd already gone more than eight miles or whatever it was. And so that 16 miles round trip, and so I was financing my placement mileage because I wasn't able to make those claims.

But your placement might be kind of within an hour, maybe in some rural areas within an hour or a half of university. If you are already commuting, they try to match you up fairly, but sometimes you might be an hour and a half the other side from where you are living, and we really, really need to be able to think about is this going to be sustainable for myself, for my wellbeing? It may be if you have problems sitting for long periods of time in your car, is this going to be sustainable for my physical health? Can I afford to bankroll all this fuel? We really must begin to slow down our reasoning process and not just get swept away with how exciting and how lovely it is to get this course over. We've really got to think about this being three years of our lives, and I know some courses do part-time options. It can be up to four years and three months of our lives. Like this isn't a short period of time and we must not gaslight ourselves or honeymoon ourselves into thinking that it's only three years because that's a significant period of time, I think will,

Yeah, absolutely. Scarily to think about that would be 10% of my lifetime right now thinking about spending away from my partner, from my life. As we were saying in the intro, I've born and bred in Devon in Somerset, so I had three wonderful years coincidentally in Liverpool, and that being amazing, but there is much more to life. This really needs to be a holistic decision. There is so much that goes into the decisions around Declan, and it's not just about your career, it's about your relationships, it's about your wellbeing. Although reflecting on that, I think as a part of me that thinks, I imagine there are some people who feel like it is just about the career and maybe they haven't been able to think, they haven't been forced into making a decision or they don't want to think about it because they can just think about it being a career.

And I feel like in my situation, for me, this really has made me think this has to be a holistic conversation because there is so much to do with adaptations and moving and living and paying rent and like you say, fuel and your placements and your friends and your family and all these kind of bits that fit together as you and your life and what that means for you. And at the end of the day, this is roughly speaking a mental health course and it would be nice to think that we can also prioritise our own mental health in the making of these decisions and how we contribute. Then I think also to the course itself, I want to be able to give my best self to a course, and I'm not sure at this time going to Liverpool would've been the best version of me that I could have put on that course, and then that has its own ramifications itself.

May not have performed as well. Maybe I fail a couple of assessments or something and you get kicked off, you don't know, or just maybe not as you've spoken before that maybe I don't enjoy it as much. Maybe you fall out of love with the work that you were doing and I don't want to do that. I don't believe that it would happen, but to say that it could never happen would be silly, and I want to love that. I want to enjoy it. I want to be passionate, and I can feel that in my current role, although typical NHS fashion, my contract is up for renewal, so that's obviously that's up in the air as well. But the idea of being here and myself, I feel very much that this is me as a clinician and I'm able to bring that to my job and I love it and I like being here and I'm working on myself, and those are all the things that I'm really happy to still have access to right now.

Good. And you may choose not to apply to Liverpool, and that's okay. You may choose to apply to Liverpool, whatever happens, Liverpool can still be somewhere that you regard as an important place. So my husband and I still like visiting Brighton and that will be always a special place he lived there and we can have mini breaks there and love that. And yeah, you can still have that in your life, but it might not necessarily be that you live there full time. Again, I'm excited to see where your story goes and how it unfolds. Well,

Thank you. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah, I've already signed up for the Liverpool Football Club tickets and stuff, so I'm looking to get tickets for this year, so yeah, I'm sure there'll be plenty of journeys up if I can.

So you want to be a season ticket holder?

Not season ticket just, but you've got the ballot systems now. Oh my goodness. That was his whole own conversation. But I've put in ballots for tickets, so for the first half of the season, so hopefully we'll see that come through.

My boys are Spurs fans and they're always like, can we get tickets? Can we get tickets? But it's so inaccessible because the season ticket holders get first priority and then it's not an easy thing to do. It's a whole other episode, but it's not an easy thing to do. It

Is very expensive as well. It's not easy and it is also expensive.

Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything we haven't said so far that you think would be useful for us to talk about before we finish? Well,

One of the props I was thinking about was this idea of having space for these kind of conversations in the profession. I think that is a really important part of this conversation where I feel super lucky, super blessed to have had supervisors who are amazing. I've loved my supervisors. I've been incredibly lucky. I'm also very aware that not everybody has that experience, but in terms of space for these conversations, I'm not sure that there is some of that space for these kind of conversations. I've had people reach out to me via LinkedIn saying like, oh, congratulations. I made something sort of similar and saying that their feedback hadn't been very positive, and I think that has been quite reflective also in my own personal life where I've had people being like, oh, that doesn't seem like the right decision. That doesn't seem like a good thing.

I think the space for those conversations, as I was reflecting on that, I feel like that needs to be both bottom up and top down. I think that needs to come both from ourselves as mental health practitioners, whether that's be assistant psychologists, psychological wellbeing practitioners, whatever, to push for those conversations to be had. I know we've got the infamous Facebook groups and everything, which for me is too much. I find that overwhelming not for me, it's there's a lot of difficulty on that for me personally in that way, but in terms of making that space, that can be helpful for some people. But also thinking about bringing it into the workplace too, because this is, I remember being in an office in my first role in forensics and in forensic hospital, and it was six aps in that office at that time. That week of feedback where nobody got any interviews was just grim.

It was grim. It's not a nice experience and reflecting back on it now, yeah, we probably weren't ready and that's okay, but ultimately thinking it's not that experience is really difficult to have space for that. It's a sense of loss. It's difficult, comes with a lot of different emotions for different people. It might tug on these core values of not being good enough of overthinking, of whatever it might be that it might be tugging on, and then that was the case for me and to try and push to have those conversations, whether it be in supervision, whether it be peer to peer, whether it be whatever, create that environment where we can have these kind of safe conversations about what that actually looks like and how that might impact, I don't know, our workload, it might be called talking about, I don't know, having some annual leave planned if you haven't got some planned already, or thinking about what we can do to create a space where we are working towards being able to get that offer, the things that I need to work on and have that safe space to discuss that, and I know that that was what really helped me when I was in those conversations.

That would've really helped I think at that time. And then I'm thinking about top down as well, is that I think supervisors, I think it'd be really helpful if supervisors aware that I think of the impact. I don't think there's many people that I've come across that aren't aware of how difficult this is and bringing that into their conversations, but I think that is an important factor of just being aware of those dates and when people might be getting feedback and what might be happening and just being aware of some of those things. I think be a really good starting point, but also just recognising that at the end of the day, we are human beings and experience a cyclical experience of loss and of failure in, it's not actually failure, guys. Don't worry. It's okay. There is another opportunity, but that experience, it brings up a lot of those emotions and I think making space for that is really, really important. I know for me in making the decision after the decision, before the decision, talking it through with people, supervisors, friends, family, whatever, was such a good way just to get stuff out on paper, just to talk, just to make sure you've processed, given it space and processed some of that stuff is really, really important

And thank you. And thank you for helping us to make space for that here. And actually what I know is that this podcast changes lives well because people get in contact and tell me that it has not always when they watch it for the first time, but that it starts to percolate ideas through for them. And actually when it comes to key decision making moments, it's stayed with them and actually they think back at that as being a really pivotal moment and maybe even when people begin to fill in their forms in future, they will hold this in mind and really think about the impact of which Xs or which numbers they put in which boxes. And so thank you from me and from my audience for helping us have this conversation because I think it's really important. It's really powerful and it matters.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We do experience, like I said, other people and myself, that kind of idea of this pedestal for the Declan and although it's something that I think we're all aspiring to, maybe not everyone who's in the audience, but I know a lot of people are aspiring to that and is it great? Absolutely. Is it everything in the world? No, it's not. And your holistic self, your authentic self is really important and I only encourage anybody to try and explore that as much as you can to bring that to your work, but also just your life, just be you, keep doing you. That's what's important. Make sure that you're happy and keep working on that because that's what we can do.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your story with us. Will wishing you the very best of luck, and please do stay in touch. Keep us posted.

I will. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you so much to our guest today, will thank you for watching. Thank you for tuning in. If you would like to offer will some support, please let's get busy in the comments and let him know that we really value him spending his time speaking with us. If you love being a fly on the wall of people's real life stories in psychology, I think you will love the Clinical Psychologist collective book and the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book two. They get wonderful reviews and they really do help people to make sense of their own careers whilst reading and learning about people's reflective growth and journeys in their careers. They are uplifting, energising, at times, deeply emotional reads, and I think that you'll really enjoy them too. If you've already read them and not yet left a review on Amazon or Good Reads, please do take a moment to do that because it really does help audiences to know that it's worth checking out and if psychology is a bit of you and it's your time and you are ready for the next step, please do check out the Aspiring Psychologist membership and the Ready to Rise programme.

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