Psychology Worlds Issue 5: Social Media Psychology A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Cyberpsychology and Depression: Psychology Worlds, #5

By Connor Whiteley

Over 50,000 words of psychological knowledge, theory and practice by bestselling writer Connor Whiteley in one great collection. If you want great, fascinating information covering a wide range of psychological topics you NEED to buy this issue!

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Issue 5 contains two brilliant full-length psychology books:

Forensic Psychology

Social Media Psychology

AND contains 5 enthralling blog posts:

• 3 Awkward Things Clinical Psychologists Should Know In Therapy
• 3 New Tips To Help Build Psychological Resilience
• Psychology of Voting Part Two
• Ways To Reduce Social Anxiety About Socialising After The Pandemic
• Debates In Psychology

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• Language: English
• Publisher: CGD Publishing
• Release date: May 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215855492

Connor Whiteley

Hello, I'm Connor Whiteley, I am an 18-year-old who loves to write creatively, and I wrote my Brownsea trilogy when I was 14 years old after I went to Brownsea Island on a scout camp. At the camp, I started to think about how all the broken tiles and pottery got there and somehow a trilogy got created.Moreover, I love writing fantasy and sci-fi novels because you’re only limited by your imagination.In addition, I'm was an Explorer Scout and I love camping, sailing and other outdoor activities as well as cooking.Furthermore, I do quite a bit of charity work as well. For example: in early 2018 I was a part of a youth panel which was involved in creating a report with research to try and get government funding for organised youth groups and through this panel. I was invited to Prince Charles’ 70th birthday party and how some of us got in the royal photograph.Finally, I am going to university and I hope to get my doctorate in clinical psychology in a few years.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

As the editor of this magazine, I never know who you are who picks up this great magazine, well besides from the fact that you like psychology. I don’t know if you’re a university student, a psychology professional or someone with only an interest in psychology. Whatever the case I always try to provide useful, interesting and very engaging information to you.

That’s why I wanted to change it up a little this month as we head into the spring months, the weather gets warmer and it’s my birthday month in May.

Therefore, I really wanted to look at Social Media this month in the magazine, because I feel like there is so much information (both good and bad) surrounding social media that a lot of interesting information gets missed. For example, how social media communities can both harm and help people with mental health conditions.

If you’re interested in clinical psychology, depression and how social media impacts them then you really are in for a great treat this month.

However, before that great book, we’ll explore a lot of other topics that you’ll enjoy. Like ways to overcome social anxiety, the psychology of voting part 2, awkward things clinical psychologists need to hear amongst others.

There are plenty of great resources, information and books included in this great issue that you’re in for a great treat.

Now that the introduction’s done let’s dive into the fascinating world of psychology.

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3 AWKWARD THINGS CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS SHOULD KNOW IN THERAPY

Whether you’re a clinical psychologist or a university psychology student, in the future there might be a time when you’re sitting in a therapy room and there are certain things you might need to know about. But for the client, these things might be awkward to talk about. So in the great clinical psychology episode, you’re going to hear what some of these topics are and maybe how to help your clients talk about them.

3 Awkward Things Clinical Psychologists Should Know About

Before I tell you about these three topics, I should note that it’s always a good idea to encourage clients to talk to you about weird or uncomfortable topics as this can help you both to deepen the therapeutic relationship. Which enhances and helps the therapy in other ways too.

Difficulties or Information They Haven’t Revealed

Firstly, we have to think about this topic in terms of your clients because we might have the information that they’re depressed with a troublesome school life. But they may suffer from anxiety too.

So the fact they’ve come to therapy in the first place is extremely stressful and courageous because of the stupid stigma around therapy and being ‘messed up’. (That’s such rubbish!)

But then to have another difficulty on top of that and having to tell a stranger. That’s even more terrifying.

This is made even worse if the client has been abused or suffered some sort of trauma that they’re never told anyone. But it’s a factor in their mental health difficulties.

Therefore, it’s critical that we help our clients to trust us and stress the importance of them telling us things. Because if they don’t tell us then we won’t be able to help them deal with their difficulties beyond the surface level stuff we already know.

Of course, we need to remember confidentiality because if they tell us something that means we’ll have to break confidentiality. For example, if there’s imminent danger to a person. Then we will have to break it but we need our clients to trust us and tell us things. Otherwise, the therapeutic process will be so much harder.

We Said Something Upsetting

This will happen to everyone at some point, I know from personal experience when I’ve said something as a joke and people have got horrifically offended in my personal life.

However, in terms of therapy, a clinical psychologist can make offhand comments or say things that upset our clients. It might be something that minimises what they went through, how far they’ve come or they’re just annoyed by it.

Normally and ideally, the client would tell you in the moment so a clinical psychologist knows not to say it again. But sometimes clients won’t and it will continue to annoy them.

The reasons why it’s important to tell the client to inform you when you’ve crossed a line or said something upsetting is for a few reasons. For example, it can help a therapist to know what not to say in the future as well as it gives them a deeper insight into the client’s emotional make up.

And it helps to create a deeper more empathetic relationship between the clinical psychologist and the client. Since honesty and open discussions can be considered what great therapy is made from.

Yet most importantly, it can advance the therapy because if the client gets offended by something in particular. It could reveal something they haven’t told you (or knew about) and it could reveal another difficulty they have.

For instance, if you said something about your mother and the client got annoyed by that. yet they kept insisting they were perfectly happy with the mother. Then the question is why were they offended by it?

Just something like that.

Clinical Psychologists Aren’t Understanding It

As I always say, something I love about psychology and learning is that there is always more to learn about human behaviour and other cultures.

Although, there are downsides to this too because everyone works in a different industry, a different job, has different names of different things and so on. All creates a problem in therapy because someone might be trying to explain a habit or difficulty of theirs and because we use different vocabulary and different words mean different things. We might not understand it.

Such as let’s use a fictionalised example of me as an author working in the publishing industry (very niche I know!) and I was letting you about my anxiety of a certain large audiobook platform and how it wasn’t paying authors properly.

I can guess some of you would be able to get the general idea but a lot of you won’t. That’s fine. But as a client without going into the ins and outs of it I wouldn’t be able to explain it properly and you might say you understand it, but not.

It’s a terrible example I know.

Anyway, the reason why this is important is because this can make our clients feel like they’re not going valued or understood. Which is why it’s important to remind our clients to tell us these things so we know we aren’t correct and we can focus on making sure we understand what they’re talking about.

Conclusion

Overall, there are a lot of topics our clients might want to talk to us about but they feel awkward and bad for telling us. This is okay but for the sake of the therapy and therapeutic success, we need to encourage our clients to talk to us. And tell us these things so we can help them to the best of our abilities.

Because that’s what our clients deserve!

Clinical Psychology Reference:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/friendship-20/201503/6-awkward-things-you-should-always-tell-your-therapist

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3 NEW TIPS TO HELP BUILD PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE

After having a lot of different conversations recently about psychological resilience and other clinical psychology topics, I wanted to revisit resilience by offering some more tips about how to build it.

With resilience being the ability or measure of how well a person can deal with psychological distress and the situations that create it. Some people are more resilient and can bounce back faster than others.

3 New Tips to Help Build Psychological Resilience:

Compassion

Just as a quick definition compassion is our sympathetic concern for others when they’re in distress and it’s when we want to eliminate it.

This is an interesting new take on resilience because in clinical psychology we know the importance of compassion in mental health. But in terms of resilience, compassion is also very important because research shows people higher in self-compassion tend to report less distress when faced with distressing situation.

Therefore, this supports what I’ve said before on the podcast about self-compassion and how important it is to our mental health. As well as if you don’t know too much about self-compassion then I’m fairly sure I’ve spoken about it before on the podcast.

Overall, compassion is a great resilience because when we have the ability to show compassion towards others and ourselves. This can help us to be more resilient when faced with situations that cause us psychological distress.

Growth Mindset

Personally, I think this is one of my favourite types of mindsets. Not only as a psychology student because I always want to keep learning and improving, but as an author too.

As a result, the point of the growth mindset is to help a person unlearn their fixed mindset. Because the growth mindset helps a person to foster their passion and curiosity for learning as well as it helps us to embrace risk and choose how to act when situations change.

This is all needed for effective resilience as without embracing risk and learning, we won’t be able to enjoy life as much as we could. And both these things help us to explore the world, have fun and take new opportunities.

However, without a growth mindset, a person might not learn how to choose and respond effectively when they encounter new situations. Leading to possible further psychological distress.

So I encourage you to keep learning, keep exploring and keep wondering so you can develop your growth mindset. Allowing you to become more resilient over time.

Grit

Whilst this is never taught in clinical psychology and rarely in wider society but grit is a great skill or ability to have when it comes to resilience. Due to grit encompasses the persistence times when a person has showed lots of perseverance, determination as well as dedication.

With grit being a much stronger predictor of a person’s success compared to natural talent and school grades.

The best way to think about grit is it gives a person the power to preserve and carry on in the face of a rough situation that causes them psychological distress. For example, a university student wants to study clinical psychology but failed a recent essay. Some students would be devastated by that but people with grit would dust themselves off and carry on. Probably engaging their growth mindset so they could learn and not fail on the next one.

Conclusion:

Overall, I do enjoy talking about resilience from time to time because it is important for mental health and everyday life. Therefore, I really hope you got something out of today’s episode.

Clinical Psychology References:

Merriam Webster Dictionary

Luo, Xi & Qiao, Lei & Che, Xianwei. (2018). Self-compassion Modulates Heart Rate Variability and Negative Affect to Experimentally Induced Stress. Mindfulness.

Laura King, (2001). The Health Benefits of Writing about Life Goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27(7):798-807 Angela Duckworth Carol Dwek

DEBATES IN PSYCHOLOGY

In this week's episode of The Psychology World Podcast, I thought we would go back to the psychology basics.

This episode touches on all areas of psychology. Like, abnormal psychology, cognitive and developmental psychology. Since we're looking at the timeless debates of psychology. 

Personally, I think all of these debates are pointless because all these have merits and no one argument is more correct than the others. 

Nature Versus Nurture:

This argument is extremely outdated because all behaviours are a mixture of genetic factors and environmental factors. 

Overall, this outdated psychology argument looks at is behaviour determined by genetic or biological factors or environmental factors only. 

Nowadays, this argument looks at which factors contribute more to behaviour. 

Materialism Versus Constructionism:

Whereas this psychology debate takes a different approach because it looks at whether behaviour has a material basis or a construction basis. 

Since Materialism believes all behaviour is down to the physical material, like the brain, and these materialists believe all behaviour is just down to neural activity. 

Whereas constructionists believe human behaviour is caused by environmental factors only. 

Again, both these arguments are correct to various degrees. 

Consistency Versus Change Across Development

The last psychology debate I want to look at is a developmental psychology one. Since some people believe some skills, personalities and abilities are developed by late childhood and they're fixed for the rest of our lives. 

Whilst others believe, our personalities, skills and abilities can change through our life span. 

The answer to this debate is complex and it really depends on the trait you're looking at. If you want to know the answers to this debate please check Developmental Psychology Third Edition and my Personality Psychology book in late 2021.

Debates in Psychology Conclusion:

In scientific psychology, everyone works to develop ideas, theories and concepts that help us to explain behaviour. However, none of these theories exists by themselves. They all interact with one another in addition to situational and biological influences. 

So, if anyone tells you a particular argument or they themselves have all the answers. They're very wrong indeed because human complex as well as we need to understand that our understanding of Behavior is rooted in broad sets of assumptions and even some of these might be debatable.

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PSYCHOLOGY OF VOTING PART 2

On the day this podcast episode goes out, there are local elections happening in the UK for local councils and other such things. As there are no local elections when I am, I really know too much about this round of elections, but I still really want to continue with our look at factors that can influence how we decide to vote. So let’s look at our final three factors.

Psychology of Voting: 3 Factors That Affect Our Voting Behaviour

Before we dive into these 3 factors I want to mention that like always I do not use these episodes to voice my own politics. As well as I wanted to mention that the scandal section of this podcast episode does help to address a lot of political misconceptions and myths.

The Weather

Personally when I found out this was a factor that affected how people vote, I was a bit sceptical. Because whilst a lot of political psychology (and psychology as a lot) research is correlational so we CANNOT get cause and effect from these studies. Sometimes I feel like some of these factors are a bit... too out there which is why I’m not mentioning two of the factors that I researched.

However, there’s evidence from the USA (Gomez, Hansford and Krause, 2007), Spain (Artes, 2014) and the Netherlands (Eisinga, Grotenhuis and Pelzer, 2012) that suggests the weather really can impact how we vote. For example, those same studies found that for each inch of rainfall