Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 98: Community interventions, human connection and being a black male in Psychology with Jonathan Padi

Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast.

For those of you who are applying to the EdPsy or DclinPsy, I hope applications are going well. October marks Black History Month! In line with this, in this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, we welcome Jonathon Padi, an assistant psychologist working in the inner heart of London. Join us as we explore the need for human and local connections, what it is like working in a high intense setting as an assistant psychologist, and the gap in diversity in the psychology workforce. Jonathon also discusses different networks for ethnic minorities and a group he runs specifically for black males in psychology! Plus, Jonathon gives us a top tip to reduce burnout – helpful to all. Join us as we learn, grow and reflect on our personal experiences and our work.

We hope you find it so useful.

I’d love any feedback you might have, and I’d love to know what your offers are and to be connected with you on socials so I can help you to celebrate your wins!

The Highlights:

• (00:00): Summary & Introduction
• (03:02): Introducing Jonathon Padi, Assistant Psychologist
• (04:30): Jonathon’s spark in Psychology
• (07:51): Jonathon’s current stepping stone in the world of Psychology
• (10:28): Why is it so hard to not call an ambulance?
• (11:51): The lack in human connection in our world today
• (14:52): The range of people that Jonathon works with
• (16:39): The permeance of trauma in intense settings
• (18:48): A gap in navigating emergency service systems
• (20:52): Possible cycles of continuation in high distress clients
• (22:36): Making connections outside of the workplace
• (25:47): The importance of diversity and culture in psychology
• (27:51): Creating a community for diverse backgrounds in psychology
• (30:16): Searching for different communities for ethnic minorities within Psychology
• (34:03): Holding clinics and their significance to inspire hope
• (37:07): Jonathon’s top tip in reducing burnout
• (39:35): Connect with Jonathon & his BMAP group
• (42:06): Summary & close

Links:

💡 To connect with Jonathon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-padi/ To join Jonathon’s BMAP group: MBAP2023@gmail.com

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Community interventions and black males in Psychology with Jonathan Padi

Coming up in today's episode, I am joined by my guest, Jonathan Padi, who is an assistant psychologist living and working in London. We talk through so many great topics, including trauma, community psychology, and his experiences of wanting to see more black male psychologists in the profession and how he goes about supporting and encouraging people to come forward and be part of a really encouraging aspiring community. Hope you'll find today's episode so useful. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. With this podcast you'll way to qualified Aspiring Psychologist podcast Trent.

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent, and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. You might well be listening to this when it's released, which means we are in the middle of application season for educational psychology and for clinical psychology. And yeah, if you would like some more advice or support or guidance, please do check out the free compassionate q and a replays, which you can find on my YouTube channel. Dr. Marianne Trent, do please bear in mind there's the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book and the Clinical Psychologist collective book too, which get wonderful reviews and can be really normalising and validating. And today's guest and I are talking all about that sense of being validated, of being seen and feeling like you are part of something, and that's something that those books and my own Aspiring Psychologist membership does really well.

But it's a really, really interesting conversation. I'm joined by Jonathan Padi, who's an assistant psychologist and I hope you'll find it really interesting. I'd love to know your thoughts on this episode. Please do connect with me on social media. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. And do come and hang out with me on the free Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. If you find this content helpful, please do like, subscribe, share it on socials, that would be wonderful, and drop the odd comment in here and there too would be fabulous. Anyway, I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side of this episode and I hope you find it useful.

Hi, my name's Jonathan Padi and I'm a guest on the podcast episode you're about to listen to. When Marianne and I recorded this episode, we didn't realise that it was going to come out during Black History Month, and so we haven't mentioned it in the podcast at all. So I thought it was important to come on and just speak about it very quickly before we listened to the episode. So Black History Month is a month in which we actively try to send to the black experience, something that I think is incredibly important, and we've managed to do that serendipitously in this episode. I think it's really important to have these conversations about the experience of black men, of black people and other prioritised groups, but these conversations need to be also had outside of these specified men. I think if we consider the lack of diversity within clinical psychology as a profession, so both in terms of the staff members and the clients that we see, it's really important to discuss how we can do the work to become a more equitable profession. And I think that includes considering the power that we all hold and to use that to support people from minoritized communities. Anyway, thank you so much for having me on the podcast and I really hope that you enjoyed this episode.

Hi, just want to welcome along our guest for today, Jonathan Padi. Hi, Jonathan.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for saying yes. And we got chatting on LinkedIn and we'll come to what we've got chatting about. But firstly, I think it's always really interesting for our audience to learn a little bit about you and your psychology passions and career. What first turned your head in the direction of psychology, Jonathan?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I started at A level, so it was just a choice that we had at A level and I thought, this seems like it's about people. I'm interested in people. And so I went for that and just found it really, really interesting really. And took that on and did that university. I actually didn't want to do clinical psychology at all going into university. Had a few lectures on it and really didn't want to do it, but it turned out I'd been misinformed really. So my lectures were really diagnostic based.

Yeah, we'd look at the D S M and the diagnostic manual and try and diagnose people explicitly, and I was like, I want to do a bit more than that really. And as I got find out a bit more about psychology, clinical psychology specifically, I was like, oh, actually I do really like that. I'm really interested. And then I think personally I had some things going on in my life, my friends' lives where their mental health was really affected. And at the time we didn't really think about it as a mental health difficulty, but just some tough times going on for that person. And the more I had some psychological language and knowledge and reflecting on that, I was, I dunno, it just made me really interested in trying to support people in that situation, especially who didn't have the language or weren't able to name it and term that

Great. And yeah, I think what they're teaching in universities, but I certainly had a module on clinical psychology as part of my degree and it was so boring and it was taught I think by a clinical psychologist, but it was so unengaging and one-sided and flat and I definitely didn't look forward to those lectures and I definitely wasn't thinking, I can't wait to be a clinical psychologist. It was only when, I think it was the same lady was stood on stage in the final weeks of my third year and was telling us more about the actual job and then said, oh, it's so difficult to get onto, I wouldn't recommend it. It's really competitive. I was then like, oh, I'll give that a go then. But yeah, why aren't they being a bit more representative about what US Lin Sykes actually do and how amazing this is as a career. And I guess that's part of why I do this podcast really is to shed a light on the different things that are going on in the world of clinical psychology. I honestly believe that we are in the best job in the world and you are a little bit further ahead in your career, but I love that you are looking ahead to where you want to be as well.

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting that you say that you had a lecturer say that it's competitive and you shouldn't go for it. I think it seems like a lot of people have had that spiel from Ekra or someone senior to them at some point. It is competitive on finding that very much, but I still think it's worth going for sure. I think it's important. It's needed.

It really is. It really is. And we need such a range of different people within this sphere so that we are offering representative services, but also so we're being able to feed in our own rich experiences. Just before we met, we were speaking about you've lived all over the country really and had a very different upbringing because of that. And I think you're now living in London, but absolutely we should be having people that haven't just had the same experience. It's really important stuff and I know that's partly what we're going to be talking about as well. But before we go on to that, if we could have a bit of a chat about what you are doing now. So you're an assistant psychologist at the moment?

Yeah, so I'm currently an assistant psychologist. I work in a high intensity user team, so there's a few of them around the country, but I guess for those who maybe haven't heard of it, we essentially help people who present to a quite frequently or ring a London ambulance quite frequently as well. Usually for some kind of unmet need, whether it's mental health, social, physical health, usually a combination of all three and try and support them. So our team is made up of psychiatric liaison, nurses, some psychology and a little bit of psychiatrist time as well. So yeah, that's what I do correctly.

Great. I remember reading something, it was a long time ago, it might even have been in the early stages of my qualified life, so probably about 12 years ago, talking about the spend and the cost that's indicated in people who do regularly call the emergency services when actually their needs are not emergency based. And it was staggering. It was staggering. And obviously it overstretched an already overstretched system. Can you tell us about to case people are like, why can't you just go to ambulance? Why can't you just go to hospital? Could you tell us a few a bit more information about why that's not the best place for somebody who's having an existential crisis or something they can't sort out? I know it might sound quite simple, but I try to make this podcast standalone really so that people don't need to go off and Google stuff. So are you happy explaining a little bit more about that, Jonathan?

Yeah, yeah, I can have a go. So I guess to say to start off, I think people should use a e if they feel like they need to. I think that's really important. That's one of the things that we say to a lot of our clients. If you feel unwell and you feel like you need support from go in terms of addressing what you're saying about the cost, there is yes significant cost attached to people frequently calling emergency services. That's definitely true and we see the numbers for that. I think you wanted me to touch on why maybe it's not ideal to be calling the London ambulance as often as some people do. I think it's really difficult to tell people not to do that. I find it quite difficult to do that and because usually what we see is there's been an unmet need or people falling through the crack somewhere so that they're just trying to seek support and show that they need help. I think maybe a way that could help that is to maybe fund services or to I guess provide more high intensity user teams across the country that could maybe intercept and help people and it catches people earlier really, I think I find it quite hard to tell people not to do that at all. Does that answer your question?

It does, yeah. You've done a really nice job. As I was listening to you, I was thinking about a book that I'm reading at the moment. It's called A Man called Ove. I dunno if you've read it. It's set in Sweden and it's about a little man who lives by himself. And I don't think it's going to be much of a spoiler to say that in the first chapter. He's trying to end his own life not having a very nice time, and as the chapters unfold, he becomes more and more immersed in the community and in his local connections. And what is really wonderful about it is that community psychology feel. And actually what I think we get quite often in services is quite often people are just lonely or they're not being able to find a purpose, they're not being able to find where they fit.

And I think there's definitely how we include people in society so that they do feel that they've got a function and so that they feel, I dunno, there's a point in them existing and that we are relying on other people. We're part of something. And I think when we feel disconnected from others, and even especially living in cities, sometimes you don't even know your neighbour and you might be suffering similar struggles as a parent or even somebody living independently or as a widow experiences of grief and trauma. And we just don't get a chance to know that. And so yeah, I'm really excited about any initiative to think about community psychology and starting people to be able to have conversations. So just before we hit record, I was telling you that I'd been to an open evening for a secondary school yesterday, and I really liked what they were saying that actually they put on events that are not just for pupils, not just for prospective parents and pupils, they put on community events. That's something I really like about our primary school as well because it is an opportunity to get together to do something different, to start conversations, to start connections. And I'm all for that.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds really great.

Yeah, so for me it is kind of what you do really is that you are trying to sort out people's problems in a way that negates and bypasses emergency services, which are always going to have a higher cost per minute or a higher cost, I dunno quite how it's priced up, but a higher cost and more of a planned and responsive approach to what you are doing. But it sounds like the work you're doing with your clients or your patients is very different from person to person.

Very much so. I think there's a huge spectrum of people that we see. So there's people on one end who are coming to Amy quite frequently for things that we can help with. I don't want to say they're simple, but they're easy for us to solve because we can mobilise the system in a way to support them. We do have people at the other end of the spectrum where it gets really, really difficult for us to help them. We're a very, very small team. There's not many of us, and we're one of the biggest teams, highest user teams in the country I think. So these people struggle with significant mental health difficulties, social difficulties, so that might include not having a fixed abode, so that might be really difficult for them as well as some physical health difficulties. So they could have a broken leg, for example, or an infection somewhere. So people have a combination of these things which are relatively complex and you have to work really hard to mobilise another hepatology team or some other team, orthopaedic teams, sometimes even a e to try and help these people and it can get really, really complicated. But I think we're doing some really good and interesting work things I've never really done before. So every day is very different.

It sounds brilliant. And from knowing what I know about people and knowing what I know about trauma, I'm guessing there's a lot of trauma running through a lot of the work that you do, even if it's not something that the client would necessarily describe as trauma. I think when we hear stories and we know about their upbringing, it's mind blowing, isn't it?

Yeah, we've had a lot of conversations about trauma recently and how difficult it's for people, how difficult these stories are and how difficult these lives are to us. I guess they're stories of people that we're try to help and support, but these are people's experiences and people's lives and trying to pay attention to that and try to help them as best we can through it. I

Think

One thing I was just going to say is that I don't think people, not everyone likes using the word trauma and so is trying to be really careful about how we bring that to the table.

Yeah, that's an important consideration. And when I worked in inner city Birmingham, there was lots and lots of different cultures and lots and lots of different languages and lots and lots of different understandings of mental health and what that means, whether it's stigma, whether it's embraced. And I used to work with many different interpreting or interpreters for supporting the clients to engage. Is that something you find that you are doing quite a lot in your role, Jonathan?

Not as much actually, which is surprising. We're in an area where there's a lot of people from Bangladesh, so I would expect to be using interpreters a bit more. But so far my role, I haven't haven't yet. I'm not exactly sure that is.

Yeah, that does surprise me, especially for a London service. It was certainly in Birmingham. I would say sometimes as many as a third of my clients were probably using interpreters, I would say. Do you think it's about, well, I guess your service is a bit different because it's people that are not necessarily engaging in other services, but I don't know, it's interesting, isn't it? Why are you getting mainly people that can speak English being referred to your service or repeatedly phoning for emergency services?

I think it's something about being able to navigate the system, so you need language to navigate the system somewhat. And yeah, I think that's probably what's happening. So if people aren't able to speak the language and have people around to support them and they can't get access to support and to help. So I think I was just going to say, people in our team do sometimes see people with interpreters, but not very often. I think it's a really interesting book to think about, and I might need to take that back to our service lead and think about how we can or see if there's a gap, see if we're missing people because they're not able to engage in services or communicate their needs. Yeah, really interesting point.

And I guess I was then thinking about whether there's potentially a role for an audit. Are you auditing who is presenting at emergency services and looking at their demographics to see where you can perhaps better engage? It's always quite fun to think about where you can potentially get some research and dissemination stuff to put on your form. Is that something that goes on quite routinely anyway, Jonathan, to help inform what you are doing?

So at the moment, there's quite a lot of conversations about audits and thinking about the kind of patients that we see. So our criteria really is that we need someone to have attended a m E over 10 times in the last 12 months. So we do have a minimum criteria, but what we find is that the people that we end up seeing often attend a significant amount. So I'd say significant being 25 times a month, something like that. And so the system is encouraged to get in contact with us and refer this person so that we can try and help support them

25 times a month. Gosh, that's almost once a day, isn't it? But I think

As a commissioner you might see that as a bit of a nightmare as a client, but I think what we see as professionals are, gosh, that's a lot of distress, that's a lot of uncontained, that's a lot of feeling lost, alone, scared, and really not sure what else to do. And when I worked in a youth prison, sometimes young people would harm themselves and there was different viewpoints around how that should be responded to because some people were like, oh, well if you're too nurturing, then almost the nurturing and the kindness from the nurses that care for you then become part of the problem because it's part of the motivation. It's like a secondary gain, but sometimes it's a primary gain. If I hurt myself, then I can be cared for, but we're not going to start delivering services that are not humane or not kind. And of course what we want to think about health service employees is that they are compassionate, that they are kind and it should feel like a safe place like a port in the storm, but there might well be more appropriate ports for storms. And I guess that's what you are trying to do.

Yeah, it's really interesting that you say that. Yeah, we do have some situations where people are coming to a repeatedly or calling the London ambulance repeatedly. And secondary gain of that is that their own receiving good care and support and some attention and people holding them in mind. I think talking about loneliness just previously, people holding their mind. I think it's really important for people to have that. And yeah, I think it does contribute sometimes to the presentation.

And I do try and practise what I preach a little bit. I do speak to strangers in the street. I developed a friendship with a lady who since moved away, which is really sad, but she was 87 when we knew her best and she lived by herself and me and my children would go round and visit her and she was just so delighted to have a phase of her life that she thought had passed her by, which was young children coming around to play. And it was really lovely. And I've befriended another little chap, I won't say what his name is, but we often kind of familiar strangers that walk similar routes at similar times of day. And I know his name and what I know about him and I know what he gets up to. And I love that, I love that. But I know that lots of people don't like talking to strangers, they don't like forming connections. But I do try to do it where I can and try and make a difference where I can as well, which is again, a little bit off topic, but it's related, isn't it?

No, it definitely is related. I'm thinking about, I'm smiling, sorry, because I'm thinking about London and that isn't so frequent in the city. People often head down marching wherever they're going. Although saying that recently we've had a couple of new neighbours move in and they've been super friendly and said hi. We moved into our house a couple of years ago, one of the neighbours bought some food over and I was super surprised and shocked, but it was a really nice thing for her to have done, which is great. I

Love that. I saw just on, I dunno if you've part of it, but there's a massive, massive Facebook group called, I think it's Family Tips, lockdown support or something. So it obviously started in lockdown, but now it's a massive group that gets really good engagement. And one of the viral posts on there recently was one of my new neighbours has just bought around all this food for me, and she speaks this language and I want to be able to culturally appropriately respond, how should I do that? And it was really, really interesting hearing people's descriptions of that and well, if she speaks Urdu, then she's probably a vegetarian, and actually maybe she wouldn't even be happy with accepting food from strangers, so you might be better to give her a card and give her some flowers. And I just found it so interesting and people were like, oh, that's such a lovely thing to do. Why don't people do that more? But I love that even two days in a row, you've now told me that that happens as well.

Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. It definitely does. I think what I was thinking about when you said that story is about how the diversity in that group is really helpful because you're able to then tap into different languages, different cultures, and you can better respond to the act of kindness, which is great.

We are partly meeting today to think about the importance of culture and the importance of identity and the importance of connecting with people that you feel you've got similarities with. So do you want to tell us a little bit about that and why that's so important to you, Jonathan?

Yeah, yeah, I can definitely do that. So I'm someone who's been in psychology for a little while, I think five-ish years, like you said before. I've lived in a lot of different cities in psychology, and to be honest, I haven't come across many, many men to start with, but many black men at all. I think I've met two black clinical psychologists and that's been black men who are clinical psychologists, and that's been with me actively seeking those people out to get some advice about things. And it's all kind of come to a head recently where I've applied for the course a couple of times and haven't been successful. And I was thinking about community and support. I think there've been a number of things that have, I've focused and get my head down and trying to achieve this thing. And I've forgotten about the other parts outside the psychology. And so I thought, you know what? Maybe I need a community and maybe other people are feeling similar to what I'm, so with that in mind, I kind of went about seeking people in spaces. So using Facebook groups that you've spoken about, the post on LinkedIn, which is what I think you saw. And then on Twitter as well. So just reaching out on all the social media spaces to try and recruit some people. And we've managed to do that and start this group, which has been really great, actually. Really great,

Well done to you. And I think there's absolutely a space for it. If you can't see it, it's harder to feel like you can be it, but if you can't see what you need, it's absolutely great to create your own. And what sort of, is it just conversations that you have? Do you organise events, other big plans there? What's going on currently? And have you got a view for how that might develop in future?

Yeah, so we've had potentially I think three or four meetings, three meetings. I think we've got another meeting next week. So yeah, I guess this is something that I had the idea about and I went and reached out to people, but I've currently got a co-facilitator on board who's been really helpful and we can working on things together, I'm hoping that we can get one more, so between three of us and we can try and curate and develop this space. I think two of the important principles is that, okay, yeah, so we want to grow from each other really. So having the space in the community so we can better support each other and grow from each other's experiences, I think that's really important. But yeah, the second thing I think is also a social space. So obviously the group ends up focusing on the Declan because a lot of people in that space want to get on this course and progress within psychology.

So not everyone there wants to do DClin, they want to do just progress within psychology doing other things. So maybe the CAT course, things like that. The other part is I think to make it sustainable, there needs to be a social element and a connection element. So we've been thinking about ways to keep that going. So we haven't yet met in person. We've had all three meetings have been on Zoom so far, but me and the other co-facilitators are trying to organise a meetup session, but I think it's a little bit difficult. People are in different parts of the country, so there's a fair few of us in London, there's people in Liverpool, there's people in I think maybe Coventry as well. So yeah, where you are, there's people all over the country and trying to bring those people together is a little bit difficult. There's about 15 of us right now hoping increase those numbers.

Sometimes it can be useful to piggyback off another event. So if you know that perhaps you are going to go to a particular conference or that something's happening, then maybe you could meet the day before that so that you're kind of in the same area of the country anyway. But there's, there's always room for planning something. But yeah, it puts costs up, doesn't it? But yeah, I think there is something around that connection in person that can be really special. And when sometimes I think via remote technology meeting, making friends and feeling safe can be trickier. So being in person can be really useful for that.

Yeah, I think we've had to name that. So when we started the group, we thought about how we want this to be explicitly a safe space, a non-judgmental space for people to come and be themselves or authentic selves. And I think that's really important. So you were talking about events before and sorry, I didn't really answer that about events. There's another group which I guess inspired me to create this offshoot, if you will, SNAP BAM, they're a group on LinkedIn, which I'm part of. They hold a lot of events for I guess people of the global majority really. So they have events for for that cohort, that group. And so we've been signposting people from our group to those groups to those events, sorry. And I think that's really, really useful for people because they've got a good thing going there. So we don't want to recreate the wheel too much. We're just sending people that way and we're thinking of what we can create in the future.

What was it you said the snap band?

Snap Bam is the name of the group.

Snap. Bam. Could you spell it and guide us through? I'm guessing that means black and Asian minorities does it, but snap. Bam.

So I think it stands for supporting network for aspiring psychologists, black, Asian, minority, ethnic, I think something to that effect.

Okay, so all of the letters are

Important

There. Snap, bam, right?

Snap, bam. Okay.

So if people want to learn more about Snap bam, did you say Twitter and Facebook? Is that where they

Yeah, they've got a group on Twitter, they've got a group on LinkedIn as well. I think that's almost like 800, 900 people in that space. So that's definitely really, really useful space for resources. And I've gone to events in the past and they're really good. They do really well and create them to the people who attend. So I think it's a really good thing to do. And in our group we'd hope to have events like that as well. But so far we're focusing on just trying to build some connections and we hold a couple of reflective spaces. So that's what we've done in the group so far. So a couple of times someone will bring something, we'll as well as having some sessions to try and develop some skills. So more recently we introduced something where we'll provide a topic to someone, a random topic, and not have to speak on it for two minutes, which is a lot harder than it sounds. So someone gives you a random topic and you just have to start speaking and it's really difficult. But our hope is that it builds a bit of confidence with people that they're able to take something random, hold it, digest it, sit their discomfort, and then bring something out that maybe is coherent, maybe it's not, but it's something about developing skills and sometimes it's quite funny.

I love that. And it's so interesting and it's so relevant to clin psych. So I spoke in a couple of episodes ago about a drop in clinic that I used to run when I was on placement five of the course, and that literally people would just turn up and I would know their name and that was it. And then it's like, go fix their problems in 20 minutes, get them on a right path. I guess it's probably somebody quite similar to what the work you do as well. But it was incredible and it was really a great way of learning and thinking on the spot and trying to be, like you said, trying to be coherent and trying to make sense, but they're really, really useful skills to have. And so yeah, that sounds like an absolutely brilliant activity.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's been good so far. I think another thing that we spoke about is trying to run some kind of clinics, like you say, to support people who are trying to progress in their career. So there's some people who are currently working as healthcare support workers. I've also done that role, and they're hoping to get into a more psychologically minded role. And so we're thinking of holding clinics and spaces where we can support people as a group. Someone can come in, speak to you, provide support. I've done that with one of the people in our group so far. He's recently just got an AP job, which is great. I can't take credit for that because I only spoke to him for 10 minutes, 20 minutes. But it's just really great to see that people progressing and doing well, which is great.

Love that. So important. And I held a very impromptu clinic in the back of an Uber recently as I was on the way back from my Galway trip. So the lovely chap who was driving me, we were just chatting, and he said that originally he'd gone to uni and he'd done law, but for a variety of reasons that I unpicked during that journey, he hadn't progressed. And by the time we finished while the homie dropped me at my house, he had a plan to at least Google in the gap that he had a master's to consider getting himself back on the law path. And I love that he was so fired up by the time we finished that sort of 20 minute journey that it's these micro interventions that can potentially have the difference to make a real difference and to inspire hope and possibility, I think.

Yeah, no, that's a really nice story. It kind of makes me think of some of the stuff that we do sometimes in a e and single session work. So you're not sure someone's turned up in a E, yes, they keep attending, but because we're nine to five service, we don't always see people out of hours. And so if they are down there in a e rush down and try and do single session with them and the hope that that will start a process that we can get back involved with. So yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking about when you were saying that

It's all about potentially being the difference that makes the difference, isn't it? And meeting them where they're at when they've got the capacity to hear that and to work with those changes. So I will likely never know the end of that story. And that's a similar thing with single session work, isn't it, that you don't get to know, but very occasionally people will contact you and go, you probably don't remember me, and you hear, oh, it made this massive change to me, I spending that time together. And so, oh, I just absolutely love it. So keep doing what you are doing personally and professionally. If you had any top tip for reducing burnout in aspiring psychologists, what might that be? Jonathan,

That's a really, really good question. I think burnout's probably quite common within aspiring psychologists. I know that me, myself, I've definitely, definitely been through that. I think it's trying to quickly race through all these hoops and gaps that we feel are in front of us. So for example, when I work as a healthcare system on a ward, I also volunteered as an AP in a different city. And so was doing the four days a week on this ward, driving to the city two days a week and then coming back and then going back to work. And very, very quickly within a couple of months was starting to burn out. And I think at that time what I used was the community around me, the people around me to kind of focus on the things that brought me joy. So that included playing sports, playing football, and going out with my friends, seeing my family, that kind of thing, and prioritising those things.

Even though yes, I wanted to move forward in my career. I think prioritising those things is really useful. And again, that's part of the reason why I think this bmap space is really important because some aspiring psychologists can feel like they need to go to, I guess different places in the country, so maybe or into Scotland, let's say they're from London going all over the country to do these AP jobs and their community can't always them. So what I'm hoping is that this space can be a constant for people and they might know people in that city and people can feel more comfortable wherever. Yeah, I think being part of the community really in summary to answer your question could be really, really useful.

Oh, what a lovely warming and totally on brand answer that was. So thank you so much for your time in talking with us today and guiding us through a little bit about your story, a little bit about what got you into psychology, what you are doing currently, and also how you are trying to support, encourage, and change people's experience of feeling othered or feeling lonely or feeling isolated and wondering if this is even the right career for them. So you're doing such incredible work. Jonathan, could you just remind us where the best place to contact you on socials is? And I'll make sure I put that in the show notes and we'll have it on screen as well.

Yeah, thank you. So we're on LinkedIn, so Or on LinkedIn. I personally am on LinkedIn as Jonathan Padi. We've got an email address, which is BMAP2023@gmail.com. And I think those places would be great to contact us. We haven't yet got Twitter, so we'll be working on that. But yeah, I just want to say it's not just me. Yes, I thought of the idea, but when I spoke to the people, they'd also had the idea as well. I guess it was just about reaching out to people and now I've got people on board who are really helping to support and bring this to life, which is great.

Good. Well, I'm delighted to be able to get word out hopefully further. And is it okay for international applicants to contact you as well? Because we do have listeners internationally.

Okay. Really, I didn't talk about that at all. Did I really? So our group is aspiring psychologist. We basically take anybody who has already done a psychology degree. So if you've done a psychology degree or conversion degree, that's fine. You identify as a man and you identify as a black man, then yes, get involved. I think we also accepting of trainees, so that's one thing you spoke about at the last meeting. I think having aspiring psychologists and trainees in the same space feels like it could work. We're not quite sure how we could manage qualified members of staff just because the power. So we're trying to figure that out in terms of international, if people are hoping to get on any of the courses in the uk, I think, yeah, we're more than happy, more than open because that's kind of where our expertise is. I dunno anything about psychology in other countries?

No. Okay, brilliant. Well, it might be that as your own group members evolve and grow, that you develop just naturally a qualified, you almost graduate to the qualified group. So I think it will do it itself naturally with time, but well done for giving yourself permission to do that and making the difference that you want to see in psychology. It's incredibly admirable and I hope that you help many, many people and I hope that you get on training very soon too. It sounds like you're doing great stuff.

Thank you. Yeah, no, I hope so too. I hope we can get people through the process, really. It can be really tough. So yeah, having this here for people, and I think it'll help support me, but should also help support other people. Yeah.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much for having me. Really happy to be here.

You're so welcome. Oh, what a wonderful chat that was. I feel really excited for the profession of clinical psychology and how people are just able to stand up and be the difference to make the difference. I think it's really encouraging. If you are doing something exciting in the field of psychology or you'd like to pitch a different podcast episode to me, please do get in contact with me on my socials. Like I said, I'm Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. And if you want to replay any of the compassionate q and a sessions, go to Dr. Marianne Trent on YouTube, click the live tab where they hang out there and you should be able to see them all. There's of course details in the show notes. But yeah, I will look forward to catching up with you for our next episode of the podcast, which will be available for you from Monday at 6:00 AM Take care of yourselves and thank you so much for being part of my world.

Jingle Guy: If you are looking to become a psychologist, then let this be on your, it's the Psychologist podcast.