That’s why I love Psychology – Lydia Brown

A Health Psychology trainee has been reflecting on her volunteering and educational journey.

Lydia Brown, who is in the first year of her Doctorate course at GCU, recently appeared on The Independent Teacher Podcast, where she spoke about her research and work with young people.

We sat down with Lydia to hear about her passion for her profession and how GCU is helping her flourish as a young psychologist.

Childhood

“I never had that moment where I felt like I didn’t know what I wanted to do…it was always psychology. My mum studied criminology before moving into the pharmaceutical industry, so everything was very health based and psychology was consistently there in the background.

My mum actually taught me the word ‘psychologist’ and it never left me. I’ve known I wanted to do it as my career since I was about 11 years old."

Volunteering

“I grew up in Birmingham, and prior to completing my A-Levels volunteered in various psychology roles. For example, I was a listening befriender through an online service called 7 Cups of Tea and that was lovely because it was mainly just chatting to other young adults.

“Just before I turned 18, I started training with The Samaritans and that was more focused on crisis intervention. It took me four or five months to be trained up and I then worked with them for a further six months. That gave me a really positive insight into supporting people with mental health issues, specifically."

Glasgow University – Peer Wellbeing Support

“In the second year of my Undergraduate degree at University of Glasgow, I had the opportunity to train up as one of the founding Peer Wellbeing Support workers in the University’s College of Arts.

“I played an important role in the creation of the service and it was just amazing to be involved. I volunteered from second year through to graduation and my role was basically being there to offer a confidential listening service to students.

“It gave students the opportunity to speak about anything on their mind, whether that related to their studies or life away from University. It wasn’t therapy, it was more about actual support and having someone to talk to.

“During the pandemic, I was supporting people through Zoom and a big part of our role was sign-posting them to things like financial and housing support. I was also involved in the social media and advertisement side of promoting it, which was fun.”

Buying into your interests

“I’m so grateful to have had the experience because as a Psychology Undergraduate you don’t get many opportunities to do anything practical – there are no placements or anything like that.

“I really bought into my passion instead, with mental health being a massive interest of mine. I think it was just helping in a low-level active listening basis that really worked for me.

“Thinking ahead to the future, I knew I wouldn’t get the chance to work directly with people if I just went straight into a PHD, and that seemed horrible to me. I wanted to help people so I knew I had to become a practitioner."

Coming to GCU

“My Undergraduate degree at Glasgow specialised in Psychology with Neuroscience. I studied health neuroscience under Professor Lawrence Barsalou, who is an American Cognitive Psychologist. I absolutely loved it and wanted to focus on it when I graduated last summer. I also wanted to stay in Glasgow because it is such an incredible city.

“When I looked around, I noticed GCU was the only place offering the DPsych Health Psychology as a course… it seemed like the perfect fit. I’m also disabled and GCU has a wonderfully accessible campus – I came to visit and just absolutely loved it here.“

Imposter syndrome

“I’d got a First-Class Honours in my Undergraduate degree, so I knew I was able to go straight into the Doctorate, but it was definitely a little daunting starting out. I’m only 23, so I realised I was going to be a lot younger than some of the other trainees and I didn’t know if that would potentially put clients off. Reflecting on it now, I actually think it’s potentially made me more approachable."

Podcast

“Being passionate about what you do definitely leads to opportunities… it’s actually quite funny how life works out. One of my old teachers, Susan Pallister, actually reached out to me through Linkedin and said she had been keeping an eye on the work I’d been doing.

“She was a fantastic History teacher at school and it pleasantly surprised me that she made the effort to get in touch. She has her very own podcast, The Independent Teacher Podcast, which has actually won awards, so I was shocked when she asked me to appear on it as a guest.

“She was really keen to shine a light on my experience volunteering with young people, and it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up!

“I was actually very nervous when it came to doing it because I’d never done a podcast before. I was sent the questions in advance and didn’t know whether to script myself. Thankfully, I didn’t…although my friends did say I sounded very scripted anyway!"

Research

“During the podcast, I had the opportunity to talk about my research, which is another thing I’m very passionate about. A lot of the conclusions from my research carried over into my volunteering support work.

“I have previously carried out qualitative research on how social relationships changed during the pandemic. One of the things I looked at was ‘Zoom fatigue” and how people stopped wanting to do video calls with friends because it all just felt like work. It was creating a lot of guilt with the people I spoke to because they felt like they wanted to maintain the friendships but that it wasn’t fulfilling enough just seeing people they care about over a screen.

“I’m by no means an unequivocal expert on mental health or anything like that, but in terms of my work with young people, I definitely noticed there is a lot of loneliness. I think covid and the resulting isolation has led to friendship groups getting smaller – even when people don’t want that to happen. We basically just don’t have the energy after everything that’s happened over the last couple of years."

Future

“Despite obviously doing a lot of work with young people, I actually see myself going the other way once I graduate.

“I did a little bit of work experience quite a while ago at a dementia care facility. It was the first time I’d worked with older people and it was quite a lot for me. I think that might have put me off slightly at the time but I was very grateful for the experience because it taught me the value of patience and even the importance of how you react to certain situations.

“Placement this year was the first time since that I’ve worked with older people – I found it unbelievably fulfilling. There’s something great working with older people who maybe didn’t appreciate psychology having that moment of realisation where something just clicks for them."

Pride

“It’s immensely rewarding to just be part of different moments where you can see you’ve made a difference. That’s why I love psychology. It never really feels like work when I’m reading up on things. I get so much fulfilment from helping people and just making them feel that bit better.

“Again, that’s why I was so glad to be asked on the podcast because I’ll take any chance I can to talk about my profession and the positive changes it can make to peoples’ lives.”