Update: I have just discovered that a network of therapists offering free or low-cost treatment already exists, the Free Psychotherapy Network. They rely on individual therapists to volunteer their services, though. I'm going to contact them to see if some fundraising might enable their members to o...

I'm reeling after this election, and frightened, as I expect many of us are. Rather than give into the temptation to bury myself under quilts and cats and not come out for five years, I'm thinking of ways that I could try to make things a bit less awful, at least for some people. I'm thinking of set...

MindfulPsych wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 23, 2019 4:09 pm

1-5. I got offered a position as a Trainee High Intensity Therapist! Absolutely over the moon!

Congratulations!!

1.) At the beginning of the month I spent five days as a psychiatric inpatient. I think that short week will be informing my professional life for a long time to come. It was an eye-opening experience. It also left me with a lot of hope. There was one conversation with a psychiatrist and another wit...

Look for roles in NHS mother and baby units, and also consider the third sector - Women's Aid, supported accommodation for homeless women and their children, etc. They tend to recruit for support workers and mentors fairly often.

I was referred to as a non-qualified all the time when I was a HCA. The term was used by both nurses and by other HCAs. It didn't bother me then and it wouldn't now. I just took 'qualified' to mean someone with HCPC registration who had general responsibility/oversight for my work, not as disparagem...

Thank you, Arya. I think the twisted insistence that we're somehow at fault is actually just a response to helplessness in a terrible situation - if we blame ourselves, we're saying that we had the power to make things different, when in truth we didn't. Accepting powerlessness in the face of grief ...

At 32 I'm slightly older than you. I work part-time as a research fellow/lecturer and part-time in a more clinically orientated role. As an academic who only obtained my PhD a couple of years ago, I certainly sympathise with the need for stability (precarious short-term contracts are the norm for ju...

I think all CPs would agree that social workers are fantastic and much-needed. However, to be brutally honest...you aren't a social worker yet, and all you've done here is share that the application process isn't as competitive as clinical psychology and that you feel social workers make decent mone...

This has been discussed a few times on the forum, if you dig around for the threads. I believe one of the current trainees (Randomswirls) was in the same situation as you. There are definitely qualified CPs with lived experience of mental health difficulties, including receiving inpatient care. :) I...

1.) I keep thinking I see my cat moving out of the corner of my eye. It will be months before I stop finding traces of her fur in my socks, I expect. This is hard. I'm so touched by how kind everyone has been, both in my 'real life' and here online. Thank you. 2.) I miss my ex, but I am also feeling...

Thank you. Hearing that does help. I think it's extra difficult because so many things have happened in the space of three weeks - my mum's major surgery, then my ex breaking up with me, then my aunt in hospital, then my cat, and all this with two publication deadlines looming. I feel as if I've had...

She died in my arms. :cry: I went to the hospital straight from the train, as they didn't think she'd live through the night, and she was all spindly and emaciated and hooked up to all manner of tubes and monitors. Her spine was sticking up through her fur like teeth. She recognised me. She tried to...

Thanks, Geishawife. It doesn't look good. :( They're talking of a blood transfusion. Right now I'll settle for just being there to hold her at the end. It's so hard to forgive myself for getting a kitten. If I'd been content with the one lovely cat I have (had? :cry: ) this might never have happened...

3.) My cat doesn't seem to be very well. :( The catsitter wants to take her to the vet. I'm worried. It doesn't feel as if there is much else that can go wrong in July, but this is bizarrely comforting - if I can survive being broken up with while my mum was in hospital undergoing triple bypass sur...