So...why the blog? Well, that's a complicated one. I’ve been wondering about what’s led me on this particular career path for a while now and I read recently (in Psychologies magazine I think) that it can be a good idea to think back to what you were interested in as a child. This can help you clarify what you enjoyed doing before being subjected to outside influences in the form of peers, media sterotypes, parental expectations and the like! The theory is that this can provide clues as to what your 'signature strengths' are. You might know that psychologists in the field of positive psychology (e.g. Martin Seligman, http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx) have found that identifying our signature strengths can lead to a sense of 'flow' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi#Flow) - the state of being so immersed and absorbed in the enjoyment of one's activities that other concerns become immaterial. This led me to think about what I enjoyed as a kid and whether this bears any resemblance at all to what I’m now doing as a trainee clinical psychologist ;)

Well I have definitely always been more of a listener than a talker which I guess could be a valued quality of a CP. But what I remember most is happily spending hours reading - fiction, non-fiction - whatever I could lay my hands on really. I don't readily admit this but I was actually quite into ‘how-to’ guides (things like the Girl Guides Handbook springs to mind!) - it was the 'improve yourself' aspect that I loved and I guess some might argue this bears some similarities to what a CP is all about, (although my psychoanalyst would of course be making links with other reasons why self-improvement and wanting to be different captured my interest...but that's a story for a different day). And the other thing I loved was writing – putting thoughts into words and making experiences come alive.

So in a round about way I guess I'm wondering about how to get back in touch with those early interests. But why so publicly, on a blog? I think I'm a funny mixture of show off and wallflower. I like the idea of putting my ideas ‘out there’ in some way but at the same time am hugely aware that the world of clinical psychology is an incredibly small one. So this blog will stay as anonymous as it can be. Plus if you’re reading this as a graduate psychologist and thinking of applying for training I think there may be space for some real life experiences of clinical psychology. If so I hope it may be a source of insight for you.

Another reason for wanting to do some writing is that I recently discovered that it can be very therapeutic. A study conducted with people with experiences of chronic pain demonstrated that self-expression in the form of writing helped with their ability to manage their pain, whether or not they chose to write about their pain or another topic entirely (this isn’t the study but a link to the general topic: http://chronicpaincontrol.net/expressing-yourself/writing.php) I don’t suffer with chronic pain but I do have a different health problem to manage so I began to wonder if putting some of what I’ve been experiencing in training down in black and white may help me to make sense of it. It all feels very unknown. Risky even. But I’m aware of the many times I’ve said to my clients when faced with embarking on a behavioural experiment of some kind in CBT, “What have you got to lose? It’s an experiment – whatever the outcome we can learn something”. So it feels like it might be time to take my own advice. Here goes.