How I Landed In Professional & Parenting Quicksand
When SEND parenting and being a clinical psychologist don't seem all that compatible
Today, I want to talk about those moments when the previously solid ground of who I was started to feel like shifting sand beneath my feet.
There have been two distinct times in my life when I felt truly shaky about calling myself a Clinical Psychologist. The first was when I was first plunged into private practice at 29. I felt very far from ready, and very much like an impostor. Not fit for the title of Clinical Psychologist. I did a lot of work to try and avoid the title I had spent 8 years fighting for. I tried to offer different kinds of support to people and I attempted to set up a brand for my business that had no reference to me or clinical psychology. Obviously, none of that worked, and I’ve documented that story a lot on my podcast if you are interested.
The second time I started to struggle to call myself a Clinical Psychologist was when my children began to struggle with attending school. I was suddenly "that mum" I never expected to be, with the local authority banging on my door, social services at the end of the phone. I found myself unable to perform the one job I had been certain, absolutely certain, would be the bare minimum standard for my parenting: getting my children an education.
I've never been particularly perfectionistic. I feel it creeping in with my late 30s, but anxiety usually shows up for me in the form of denial and “over optimism” rather than perfectionism. I never expected that I would be a particularly skilful parent; I never thought I'd have an answer for everything. I never dreamed that my children would be easy or academically exceptional. I know it is odd, and its very definitely a defense mechanism, but I really never had any projection into the future of what my children would or would not be. Despite this rather strange lack of future planning, there were certain things I had never questioned about the order of my life, things that are baked into our cultural understanding of what the parenthood journey is. And one of those was school.
Earlier in my parenting journey, I had enjoyed a pretty benevolent inner voice. Years of supporting other families and the compassion and mindfulness I practise regularly, genuinely helped me through the inevitable comparisons and dark moments of two under three in a pandemic. Even when things went wrong and I’d eaten an entire Toblerone, my inner voice remained kind. It did not remain kind when I found myself unable to do something which, in my cultural belief system, was non-negotiable.
When my children first started refusing school, I'd never met anybody that had been through it. So, when in 2022, the reality hit me that I may not be able to achieve something which I thought was fundamental to my parenting, it was like it threw all of my psychological balls into the air at once. On top of that, no school, meant no working time for me which meant for the second time in 5 years, the therapy practice I had worked so hard to nurture, had to close. I had to re-evaluate and reassess who I thought I was and what I valued in every domain of my life. With precisely 5 minutes a day of thinking time to do it.
Two significant periods of time where I couldn't practice in the way that I'd always expected to, plus not being able to parent in the way I'd always expected to, led me to lose my professional tether. I started to feel like maybe I didn't have the right anymore to call myself a clinical psychologist. Maybe I wasn't effective enough. Maybe I hadn't learned enough from my professional training. Maybe there was something fundamentally deficient about me that meant I shouldn't be trusted to guide people through their darkest times.
And the trouble is, like other SEN parents I've spoken to, I didn’t have the luxury of stopping, taking stock, going to a retreat, getting a therapist, processing. Because you have to keep going. You have to keep your children, to the best of your ability, fed and clothed and well. You have to try and minimise the financial pressure by working in the tiny dark cracks of the day. The usual parenting juggle goes from unmanageable to torturous so you just stop thinking and keep doing.
I look back now from a place of relative security. We have found a way to build a life around the struggle that is *just about* working. Now I have some time and safety to reflect I thought it might be worth sharing what I think has helped me re-construct my sense of self and professional and personal identity in both times of tumult.
In both cases, action taking was key. Small things I could do each day that connected me with some sort of purpose. On a professional level that might be reading a book that caused me to reflect on my values as a professional. As a parent, it was often watching a webinar from Dr Naomi Fisher that showed me a different way to approach parenting, one that fit the new values that were emerging for me slowly. These were tiny things, often in chunks of less than ten minutes with tired eyes and a heavy soul, but they kept me moving forward towards a reconstruction of my values.
Community, however, was the real change catalyst for me. Supportive and compassionate community with other psychologists, who were able to gently connect me to my professional values when I might have been in danger of losing sight of them was incredibly meaningful. Through it all I continued my work in Psychology Business School helping others to serve their clients more effectively and to have an impact in the world. Seeing the difference I could still make, even when I couldn’t work directly with my clients and helping others through their own (often similar) struggles showed me the direct link between my values and my challenges.
I credit my MBA here too. Because while I never would have signed up for it if I had known the shit was going to hit the fan quite so epically and there were a thousand moments where I wished I didn’t have the pressure of it, the escape into the land of the economy, industry and entrepreneurship also showed me that there many varied and creative ways to make an impact on mental health. I mixed with a lot of people who had no knowledge of the mental health system, of what clinical psychology was. They didn’t share my preconceptions of what our careers should look like and accepted readily my interest in entrepreneurship and changing systems.
And so, slowly, through what turned into nearly three years of challenge, I feel that I have been able to build a version of being a clinical psychologist and a SEND parent that feels like it fits.
I'm not the parent that always gets their children to school. I'm certainly not the parent that always gets them there on time. But I am the parent that puts the mental health of my children first, even when it's difficult.
I am the parent that thinks about their long-term health, well-being, and aspirations, rather than getting stuck in the weeds of today. And I think I'm proud to be that parent.
I’m not the clinical psychologist who sees 7 clients a day and has 50 associates or who leads an NHS service or academic department. But I am proud of the difference I make and I’m excited to find out where my obsession with innovation and entrepreneurship could take me.
And that will do for now.
Help me shape AI in mental healthcare
Before I go I need to ask for your help. I’m working on a project at the moment to build a digital product that will help us enhance the services we provide for our clients/patients. If you could take a few minutes to answer some questions about how you use tech in your work at the moment and what possible features would interest/excite you it would mean the world to me.
I know we can make this next industrial revolution a game changer for mental health (in a good way) but only if professionals, like us, are steering the ship. This is my small attempt at giving us a voice in the way AI impacts our practise as psychologists and therapists. I would be so grateful to include your views.
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This resonates so much with me, both personally and professionally. Thank you Rosie.