Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 107: What is Cancel Culture in Psychology? – with Dr Deborah Kingston

Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast.

In this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist podcast, I am joined with the wonderfully inspiring Dr Deborah Kingston, a resilient trauma-specialist. Join us as we delve into the fear of speaking, the importance of being true to oneself, and protecting wellbeing of both clients and yourselves. We discuss how cancel culture affects both professional and personal dynamics and how it negatively impacts mental health and wellbeing. We express the importance of safety for both clients and individuals over important periods such as Christmas and other family gatherings, and briefly touch on the safety of assistant psychologists and its changing dynamics.

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): Introduction
• (01:09): A not-so-Christmassy Christmas episode
• (02:46): Introducing Dr Deborah Kingston
• (03:58): The fear of speaking too much and neurodiversity
• (06:31): The dangers of a one-sided approaches in cancel culture
• (09:17):The not so “merry and bright” side to Christmas
• (11:45): Where does all the emotion go when it's not been allowed to speak?
• (12:39): What is true to a person?
• (13:28): The drastic effect of putting people in boxes
• (17:14): Deborah’s choice in stepping away from the NHS
• (19:42):The cancel culture in private practice and the power behind the NHS badge
• (23:00): The danger of unprotected titles
• (26:29): The importance of protection as an Assistant Psychologist
• (30:37): How do you protect *yourself*? (+ a little blooper)
• (33:27): Being connected and looking after yourself over winter
• (34:55): Summary and close
• (36:37): Connect with Dr Marianne Trent!

Links:

📲 Connect with Dr Deborah Kingston here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-deborah-kingston-658871b9/ https://www.facebook.com/PTSolutionsltd/ https://twitter.com/DrDeborahK

🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses

🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support

📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0

📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97

💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested

✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision

📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent

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What is Cancel Culture in Psychology?

Coming up in today's episode, we are looking at something called cancel culture. That is the fear of speaking out, speaking truly in whatever situation you find yourself in for fear of what the repercussions would be. This is such an important episode and it crops up personally, professionally, and in all kinds of dynamics. I'm joined by a return guest, Dr. Deborah Kingston, and she is as compassionate and thoughtful and wonderfully inspiring as ever. Hope you find it so useful.

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide with this podcast way psychologist.

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent, and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Now, this episode is going to be available from Christmas Day 2023, and so there will be the occasional reference to the word Christmas, but this is an episode which is good for all year round, so it won't be advertised as a Christmas episode, but it's such an important episode and it runs through the veins of so much of what we do in our roles in mental health, but also as we might be trying to be the voice of reason in situations or having perhaps very different viewpoints on a variety of topics. Though actually sometimes it can feel like it's our duty to balance or address, but that can lead to potential conflict fallouts, and that's why I wanted to invite our guest back today who we met previously on the podcast talking about trauma and A DHD and dyslexia. And it's Dr. Deborah Kingston. So I hope you'll find this episode really useful. I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side. Just want to welcome back to the podcast Dr. Deborah Kingston, who we first saw in July, 2022. Where has the time gone? Welcome back, Deborah. I said

I hadn't realised how long at 18 months

Roughly. Where's it gone? Yeah, I blinked and missed it, but I think it's because you are in my world constantly because you are just so, so kind to me, Deborah, on socials. You are always so supportive and just, I dunno, you get what I do and why I do it. And yeah, your support is so valued and so appreciated. So thank you.

You're welcome. I think aspiring the next load of psychologists is so important that we have try and get the right type of people into our profession. The more you can get out there and the wider the reach, I think that's only a good thing for what we do in clinical psychology.

Yeah, thank you. Well, it means a great deal, so thank you. So one of the things we were speaking about recently was when as a psychologist or as aspiring psychologist or as anyone really that you give your opinion or you kind of share your truth and then it leads to negative reactions from people and it can feel a bit like what they call cancel culture really. And it can lead to a really complex array of emotions for us, can't it?

Yeah, it really can. And if you think about some of the work that we might even think about doing in schools that when we go in and we're trying to explain how there's a child with neurodiversity, and it is been 40 years since I was really in the midst of school and being told I was too thick to learn, but actually going back in and thinking there should be way more change, way more issues. And when you start to put these things on the floor and explain what neurodiversity is and try and give a child's perspective to get men with a defence, sometimes that cancels out what we want to say and be passionate about what we're saying because it's just taken so wrongly because there's a multitude of professionals out there that are kind of not wanting or willing to listen. See, that's a huge one across our profession, whether it's in cams, whether it's in private practise, whether it's just even sometimes what we say on social media platforms around neurodivergence and neurodiversity. So even just from a personal point of view, hearing some of the comments that come out about people, even myself when I was out recently at dinner and I thought was saying something quite important and for the person involved and then she's like, oh wow, you talk way too much though, don't you? And I immediately froze and kind of thought, I need to shut up, I need to stop talking. And then I think she saw my reaction. I didn't mean it bad, didn't mean it bad, but you do talk too much though. Gosh,

That's strong, isn't it?

Yeah. And I don't think she meant it bad, but then I was thinking, well, I've heard all these different things you've said, so I couldn't have been talking that much that I've not heard and I just get passionate about delivering good advice whether I'm on duty or off duty. I don't think you can really separate the psychologist in is because once you

Knowledge, I absolutely agree.

You kind of want to impart it,

Especially it's not being a dinner party psychologist to people that haven't consented, but I just often find myself in very deep conversations with people, whether that's in work or whether that's in pleasure, whether that's by the football sidelines watching my children. It's just the frequency I operate on. I can do a little bit of light banter and chit-chat, but that's not really the frequency that I resonate at best.

And normally and it's the same. And I think recently as well, if you think about what's going on in Palestine and Israel, there's a lot of heated divide going on even in our country, even between us as professions where I think the media bias and the lens that's coming out sometimes means that people just can't give an honest fear or feeling about what they're feeling. And we have got clients that are coming into clinic saying this thing that's going on in the Middle East, I'm really worried about it and not feeling like you can say anything when things big are going on. Or it's almost like, especially on LinkedIn at the minute, somebody who's on there the other week saying about that if we're pro-Palestine, we must be anti Duke. And I was thinking actually, where is the humanity in that? We've had colleagues in the MDR world from Palestine and Israel that were once upon a time on shared training and these people were coming together to make a better trauma world in that region who've now again been segregated.

And I don't feel like we as clinicians should be able to come down on one side or the other without having a real view of humanity and what it must be like for both sides and understand that and formulate that from a perspective. When we put emotion in because we want to take a one-sided approach, I think that's where we get shut down in this cancel culture. So one of the responses I said was it's really a shame that women, children are being killed on both sides. And the person came back really blunt with me and just said, you've got it all wrong. And I can't remember the word word vacates my mind what it's called when you're anti you because there is a word for it, but I am so not

Antisemitic.

Antisemitic. That's

It. Do you want to do that little bit again?

My brain was, no, I'm happy. My brain was just totally dyslexic. I had a brain fog. It just wouldn't come out. And I think it's the same in anything. I grew up in a world where there was a lot of poverty and a lot of oppression in working class Scotland and people take a generational view of what oppression is from the English powering down the Scots. That's a very different world we're in now, but some people still hold that view and it is really personal to them. We don't just see this in the Middle East or in fractious parts of the world. You sometimes still see some of these conflicts and divides from generational histories and really kind of bearing down and who are we to kind of close down somebody's narrative without fully listening to it.

Yeah, really good points. Really good points.

And I think with Christmas coming up, I think it's a really important point about how do we come together, even look at families at Christmas sometimes there's been some divides. You might have grandparents and parents and children, totally different generational stances and opinions. How do all those voices get heard? Christmas can be one of the most stressful times for families or Thanksgiving that they've just had in the states where you want to come together to put what this perfect view on where everybody gets on and sings from the same song sheet. And a lot of time, a lot of opinions get closed down in families and it can feel really invalidating those experiences and those differences. How do people manage that if we as psychologists aren't mirroring it even sometimes in some of the work that we are doing out on social media?

Yeah, really important. And it's so easy to forget that not everybody exists in an ecosystem in their family or even in their wider family system that feels that they are seen as important, valid, special, that they have a voice that's worth hearing even. I know I was listening to something this morning on the radio of someone who is a gay man and had spoken about in the past, it had been really taboo to be outwardly and openly gay, but he's supported in his family, but that's not always the case. And with these festive celebrations, and not just Christmas, but whatever it is for whatever faith people follow, of course when people do get together, sometimes we're asking people to keep themselves in a box, aren't we? To make themselves smaller. And I used to see this a lot with when I was working with people who were kind of second generation, been raised probably by Bangladeshi parents and very different people to their friends than they were able to show to their wider family and sometimes even their immediate family. And it was feeling like they were not living their authentic truths because of this fear of the council culture being told you are not a good enough daughter, you are not a good enough person, you are not good enough in your religion. You are bringing shame on yourself or even us. It's a big deal, isn't it?

It is. And even if you think I've got some transgendered clients that have to dress not in the way they want to or be addressed in the way they want to at Christmas because of the older generations that might be at the table and they've almost got to put a huge part of themselves in that box and turn up and be somebody they don't feel congruent with. And that's such a sad position where they just don't feel that they can be good in themselves as themselves. And I think that cancel culture just can really impact. If we think about suicidal rates, if we think about mental health rates at the minute, the more we impact on that cancel culture where people just don't feel safe to say something. I think what we do is we constantly put a part of them in a box and where does all the emotion go when it's not been allowed to speak?

What happens when we suppress people from being their true, authentic, genuine selves when we say don't put your armour on stable. What do we do to people when they're then faced with a high level of criticism and they're not wearing the ram because they're being true authentic selves, it's going to hurt and penetrate into the core of them a lot bigger. We're a lot faster and a lot deeper. So I think it's something we as psychologists, we need to be thinking about in terms of cancel culture in terms of what's okay to be discussed or not discussed. It's about what's true to the person. And it's not always like it has to be said in a particular way that alienates other people, but I think it has to be said in a way that is a truth that can be then explored curiously by other people.

And I know you weren't asking that question, it was semi rhetorical, but I guess what I see when people have had to keep themselves in a box is it might be more anxiety because actually what I often see is that inverse relationship of when anger is not able to be felt and anger doesn't always look like smashing stuff up, does it? Sometimes anger just looks like asserting yourself. You get more self-harm, you get more anxiety and you get a dipping in self-worth. And if that goes on for a long period of time, it reduces your drive in every aspect of your life. And before too long it feels like you haven't got people in your tribe that know you as you and it feels very hard to find a way

Forwards. And it also exacerbates the sense of shame. We feel about ourselves when we do comparisons with other people, but we know shame in itself can be toxic to the way the brain processes information, the way we relate to other people, even the way we interact within what should be our tribe. Because shame is meant to be one of the protective emotions that keeps this regulated within the social norm. Sometimes it just gets way too big. And also if you are constantly invalidated, there's going to be a huge depth of sadness that nobody's seeing in there's no connection. And sometimes that depth of sadness is totally misunderstood because what people see is its best body anger coming along to say, this isn't fair, hear me. And the more anger gets involved, the less people get heard and then it becomes a vicious circle that we just keep going round and round.

So it's about saying how do we hear people without immediately jumping in on an emotional response? How do we understand what's going on for them and how do we really hear the nuance of what they're saying behind the mask of anger or assertiveness? How do we get in and say, we see you for who you are and we are connecting. So I think whether you are just an aspiring psychologist or a psychologist or a mom or a sister or a brother or a friend, this isn't just for us as professionals, this is for all people. Because I think if we could get that balance, and I know it might be utopic of meeting want that, but if we could get that, there'd be less discrimination in our everyday world.

And sometimes I speak to clients who've got really good support systems around them who are able to have really, I dunno, I think of as Dawon Dawson's Creek style existential conversations without that fear of cancel culture or sometimes that's what we have together in therapy actually. And I guess my plea to the world is there are people out there who will get you or who will help you explore yourself and your hard limits, your soft limits, the things that you don't like about yourself, the things that maybe you've always felt proud about yourself but feel like they're not things that other people think are good things. There are people there can be change. It's that adaptive belief that people can change, that suffering can reduce, that distress can be neutralised and that people can be happy, people can thrive. I passionately believe that. And I've got quite a lot of systemic leanings and it can be really hard to do that in systems that are so stuck or so archaic or so old. One of the reasons I sort of stepped away from the NHS, it was all too slow. It was all too slow and a bit too archaic. But I know there were probably really forward thinking NHS trusts and teams as well.

Well, in a way, that was one of the reasons why I stepped away from the NHS was this massive idea of cancel culture and not being able to point out some of the negatives that were going on and how we could enhance patient care, patient satisfaction, therapeutic goals. And when I tried to challenge the status quo I was met with huge resistance of pen pushers and adminners that were kind of like, no, no, no. And I was saying, but we're not delivering. If we strip some laborious bureaucratic processes out of clinical work, we'd do more clinical work and therefore we'd see more people and we do better therapy or better nursing or better occupational therapy or whatever the profession was. If we strip away a huge facet that's not actually clinical in process, we'd get better work done. And if also we strip out the millions of layers of management that one is suppress you, we'd also have got more done.

So especially having managers that weren't psychologists felt like your role should be because of your pay banding wasn't because of your intellectual, your clinical skill, they would do a medical doctor. All of a sudden we were pigeoned as very different to medical doctors in the fact that we weren't seen as good enough as them. We weren't seen as bringing the big offerings of a medical doctor, but yet we could transform somebody's life just as well, if not better than a medical doctor. We see the whole person now, we can't treat a broken leg, but we can treat the trauma that goes with the broken leg that might stop the leg from healing under the orthopaedic consultant. So there's stuff we can do and we should know our place. And I think sometimes cancel culture comes in when people feel threatened that you might know a little bit more.

You might be trying to change a system that the equilibrium is set as broke and you just may want to say, do you know what? Let's change that equilibrium to something that might be working. And the pushback on it, both in the NHS and sometimes in the private sector, not as much in the private sector. They have to fix it because private sector are a profit led organisation the NHS don't seem to have that same ethos yet with the more foundation trust there are, they're becoming their own mini businesses. So again, does the business drive the clinical work or does the clinical work drive the business? But again, we're not allowed those discussions.

Yeah, I think this is probably particularly resonant for the people listening to this podcast that might well be aspiring psychologists. So I know we do have qualified, we do have people who are not yet even doing their psychology degree or might be thinking about doing a conversion masters. We've got such a wide range. But what we are likely to have is people that are highly driven, that are highly motivated, they're probably reading, they're listening to these podcast episodes, getting these current themes, and so they are energised. And certainly when I was an aspiring psychologist, I had all this abundant energy and drive for change. And this is why my supervisor is saying, God, we love having assistance. We love having trainees because you've got all this energy, you've got all these ideas, but it can lead to burnout if you are not able to actually put that in place. So I guess this is my little shout out to our audience who are thinking, yes, this describes me, but I'm not able to make those changes. And you do risk burning out. You risk just not voicing your ideas because you think, well, what's the point? No difference will

Happen. And that's the thing I think when people are looking at why a psychologists leaving the NHS, nobody really wants to hear the answer. You want it. And even in private practise, if you think about cancel culture and private practise is huge, especially where I am. We go to meetings as private psychologists. It might be a safeguarding meeting, it might be a meeting in the school. And we are treated with suspicion and scepticism because we're not wearing an NHS lanyard. We are treated as if we are not as good as our NHS counterparts, yet we know the level of CPDI do is phenomenal. I've got three supervisors have no supervision in the NHSI had to pay for it privately. I have all this stuff. But when we go to these meetings, our opinion, our clinical opinion is cancelled because we don't wear an NHS lanyard.

And again, that's something that's rippling through the private sector that I'm hoping the A CP pick up on and try and get some marketing out there to actually say, actually these clinical psychologists are bringing skills and we are working in an ethically sustainable manner to ensure our CPD knowledge is there. If we consider my..... I'M a trauma specialist, all I do is trauma every day long. I'm an EMDR consultant. I'm really passionate about trauma yet I went in to a meeting in an inpatient facility with a consultant clinical psychologist who hadn't done any training on the ICD eleven's complex trauma diagnosis. Now bear in mind I went in 2018 to the BPS in the January for that training of what was coming, how it was going to inform practise. I go to this meeting in 2022 and they still are talking about the ICD 10 and trying to label the client that was clearly complex trauma from adult, no childhood as potentially personality disordered because the person was challenging in the interpersonal dynamic when I laid out the formulation, I was just closed down as private.

So again, even when we bring the skills and knowledge that we get from the BPS with the A CP and the skills and training we've done from CPD currently in the uk, there is a real big divide between private work and it's just, but again, it probably doesn't help that our titles aren't protected. Anybody can call themselves a psychologist. And I think that also comes in because how do you guard against that in this idea of a cancel culture? Somebody's a trained counsellor, celebrate you're a trained counsellor, don't call yourself something you're not. If you're a trained psychotherapist, call yourself a trained psychotherapist. Go with what you are training and your competencies say we're keen to do. But I think that also has an impact, especially if you're aspiring psychologist, how many, we've seen some people who've done a degree get BPS status and then go and call themselves a psychologist as an undergraduate level and actually engage in some quite dangerous work. So there should also be a shout out please. It's about public protection. So we're all shouting out, not because we don't want to give you an opportunity and say don't do the work we're saying, do it in an appropriately supervised manner. So I know that's a bit of an extra rant, but it does tie into that idea of cancel culture where it is almost like we shouldn't even be saying that because do we fear upsetting somebody?

I think it's all related though, isn't it? So sometimes I don't say stuff as a qualified psychologist that people are saying very, very loud as unqualified psychologists and getting great traction. And it's like, I just dunno if it's safe for you to be saying that stuff or making those claims. And I wouldn't say them even though I'm a qualified psychologist and maybe it is that professional regulatory body. So when someone is, for example, using one of the protected, is it nine different titles including practitioner psychologists, but using derivatives of that forensic psychologist, health psychologist, et cetera, et cetera. One of those titles are protected titles which have, by the HCPC, we perhaps fear the cancel culture because we have that professional regulatory body, whereas people that are not professionally qualified and regulated don't have that.

I remember once a renowned counsellor calling herself a TV psychologist on this morning saying that OCD came about because of an infection and they just needed to take antibiotics.

What?

Yeah. And I'm like minute. I think I've got a wealth of complaints into this morning because again, and I think the media needs to play a role in this idea of putting the right professionals in the right place to get the right advice and kind of really opening the door to what is going to safeguard and protect the public within mental health because it is such a lucrative industry for some people. We're seeing businesses pop up all over the place trying to recruit psychologists to do some work to make some money off the back of somebody else, but wanting them to do half a job. And again, people are doing it because it is driven by money or a fear that they won't get clients and then they're penned into something. It's actually quite dangerous for them. These companies are editing their reports without letting them know, and lots of really spurious things going on in the market.

So again, for us as professionals and being regulated, I think we've also got to watch who we're signing up with, who are we working for, what are we doing? Who's protecting us? And I think there was a big debate about assistant psychologists not getting support in certain organisations or not being supervised in certain organisations. And I think organisations forget the role of an assistant psychologist is to be an assistant to a psychologist. It is in the definition of the title. So you can't employ an assistant psychologist without having a psychologist for them to assist. So these private organisations that want to put on their registration for commission or we've got an assistant psychologist, we're doing all these psychometrics, we're doing X, Y, and Z, but they can't, that assistant psychologist has no safeguarding, they're not protected because they don't have a psychologist to which to monitor, mentor and supervise them in the role. So I think it's huge for what we're looking at the industries, what we're looking at, not only for those professionals but for organisations need to be educated in what an assistant psychologist is or why we've got the layers in our training system of somebody coming out from a graduate degree. Psychology is the best field in the world for me to go study. So passionate about it, but we want to be celebrating the roles a lot more and not putting people in jeopardy and under risk. Totally tangible.

Yeah, I agree. No, it's all relevant. It's all related. And I think even in NHS jobs now, it's not just private industry assistant psychologist posts or what's called senior assistant psychologist posts going out at Band five. They're really looking for someone to be able to run a service often. And that's just not, as you say, it's just not the function of an assistant psychologist. It's not safe, it's not ethical.

And I think that's important, but once upon a time all assistant psychologists were paid at Band five, we were valued for the work coming off the back of a degree that was really, really hard. And like a nursing degree is the same length of time as a psychology degree. They can go straight into paid work and build up their layers. In the NHS, we have to only sit assistant psychologists and I think you should be paid your worth for what knowledge you're bringing. You have to be paid and monitored by a supervisor if you don't have that. What skills and experience are you actually teaching? The assistant psychologist. But again, this is management in the NHS and we're almost cancelled out of our opinion because they think we are trying to safeguard a particular job when they're trying to deal with the dynamics of cost funding. So I understand where the dynamic comes from, but at the same point, you've got to do things clinically viable.

I would say that a band five assistant feels like a hen's tooth. It feels like a rare thing to see and to find

It's now

They tend to be four. Yeah.

Yeah. Even in this area, when I was an assistant, it was band five, both my posts were band five. And then as years have gone on, it's band four and then you have to do several assistant posts to get a band five. But like you say, they want 'em to be more autonomous, have less supervision, but there's a whole criteria of what keeps an assistant safe.

Maybe that's another episode. Let's chat about that some more. I'll bring you back on in a few months. I think that sounds like a really, really interesting conversation. But if someone is spending time, perhaps even over this Christmas holiday, feeling like they fear being genuine to themselves or what they see as true or right, what can they do?

I think for me

To protect themselves, I guess

In clinic, one of the things I do with some of my young people that can't go be their true, authentic, genuine selves at Christmas, they notice the upset about it. We kind do a resourcing strategy where we get them to know what their values are in that. What are your values in who you are, what your values that you are bringing, what element can you bring to that Christmas day meal? How long are you going to spend there? What other things are you going to do that day that say that you can tap into those values that where you might not be able to and it's not fair that you're not able to. But what we don't want to do is create too much conflict with other people. So it is very challenging in a way if this is still being recorded as it is that frozen expression that you see with Dr. Marianne Trent. If we could have done that and roleplay that, that's a lot of the faces that people get when they sit around the table and they can't be their authentic self that they freeze out, they zone out, they can't connect, they dunno what to do. And sometimes that's when they're faced with that. It's really, really difficult because if you were sat around the Christmas table and sorry

Deborah,

Really hard,

We had a problem with, I wasn't there. My internet seemed to freeze.

When you read it, when you hear it back, I did a lovely little thing about your frozen face is sometimes what we get when people freeze you out around the table when you can't be your authentic self. And could you imagine how that would feel if you were talking in that dialogue with somebody that's not actually there? So I did a little thing just in case, just because I could see the timer going and I thought, I'm going to

Do something. I'm delighted you were still there. I thought that the whole platform would gone down and I thought it had lost all our recordings so far. And I was like, but it's been really good. So I'm back, everybody. I'm back.

I didn't pause, but then I thought, oh, I could use this to what I was saying about how people deal with that idea of going and not being able to be your true, authentic self. Because really what you're looking at is that idea that somebody's not fully with you and actually just being a part of yourself that around that Christmas dinner table or around a festive meal where people can't hear you in the way you need them to. So you listen, she's

Not a beginner at this, is she folks? She's a pro!

I just was winging it!

I lov e that! Was I doing something really unattractive? in my mid pause gurn?

No, you just looked slightly sad. So I thought it just captured. I thought that's perfect. And I actually said if we'd set that up that you could have done that, then that's what people are faced with.

Okay. Sometimes. Absolutely beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I hope that you are going to be surrounded this Christmas and this new year with people that make you feel really good, Deborah.

Oh, I am. I've got my grandson who's coming here who is just turned one and my daughter-in-Law. Lovely. And it's just our little family for Christmas because then anybody can say anything and be anything. And then I'm up to Scotland for New Year, which is my spiritual home. I'm going to the north of Scotland to be with friends who make me really, really happy. And then I get to celebrate with my own family for my nephew's 21st straight after the new year, and then it's back into a busy clinic.

Oh, well it sounds marvellous and thank you so much for sharing your wonderful view on all of this compassionate and balanced and just a really safe space as ever wishing you and your family and all of our listeners, of course, a really peaceful December into January, whatever that looks like for them, whether that looks like Christmas or whether it just looks like a bit of time off from the hustle to decompress and hopefully be the best you can be.

I think it just should be a time, forget that it's Christmas. We have multi-faith in our profession. It should just be a time where we connect with loved ones where possible and where not possible. We connect with other people that are like family that may not be blood, that allow us to feel like we're connected. Because being alone at any time of the year except in the depth of the winter is much, much harder. So I think it's just about being connected and looking after yourself.

Thank you so much. What lovely, lovely advice to end on. Thank you for your time and yeah, we'll get you back on to really take a look at what, I guess what a optimum gold standard assistant psychologist role should and could look like. So you and I can both perhaps have a little bit of a play in the background and perhaps this is an example for people to even anonymously share stuff about stuff that doesn't feel that safe or the other way around. If you've got stuff that you feel is really going well for you as an assistant, do send that into me and Deborah and I can take a look at that and kind of weave that into the episode as well. So wishing you a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and thank you very much for your time, Deborah. You're welcome. Welcome back along.

Gosh, how absolutely wonderful to speak about all of these things with Deborah. I'm recording this straight after I saw her, and so I'm hoping that the slight internet glitch I had meant that all of the content was recorded and is going to work. But we are going to leave that little bit of glitch in for you so that you can see that we're all right with not being perfectionistic. If you are listening to this on Christmas Day, then wishing you a wonderful Christmas day and Christmas period, but of course you might be listening to it on Christmas Day and not celebrate Christmas, and that is okay too. But wherever you are in the world, I hope that you are feeling safe. I hope that you are warm and I hope that you are being kind to yourself. Thank you so much for being part of my world.

If you'd like to come and follow me on socials, please do. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. If you are watching on YouTube, please do like and subscribe and share this content with people that you think might find it helpful. Come along to the Aspiring Psychologist Community Group on Facebook. Yeah, thank you for being such an important part of my world, giving me a reason to record podcast episodes all year long, and I look forward to bringing you more brilliant, fresh content. Please do feel free to pitch your podcast episodes to me. Thank you for being such loyal listeners and watchers, and I will see you very soon. The next episode will be along 6:00 AM on Monday. Take care.

If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be this podcast.