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Integrating Behavioral Health: Insights and Experiences from the Field: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Integrating Behavioral Health: Insights and Experiences from the Field

Amber Watkins43min

Afik Faerman, PhD

00:08

Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining Palo Alto University in the Division of Continuing and Professional Studies for talking Mental Health Careers podcast episode featuring health psychology. My name is Afik Faerman, and I'm an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and an adjunct professor at Palo Alto University. I'm very fortunate to be joined today by our experts, Dr. Daniele Levy, and Dr. Helen Ma, both affiliated with Palo Alto University as an alumni Where as Dr. Levy also chairs the school's Boards of Trustees currently. Thank you both so much for being here for this important conversation. I'd like to start by giving our listeners a little background information on each of you, and then get each of you to tell us a little bit more about yourself and your career. Dr. Daniele levy is a licensed clinical psychologist with a private practice in Menlo Park, California. Dr. Levy specializes in providing cognitive and behavioral therapy to adults struggling with an array of emotional and interpersonal concerns, including stress, anxiety, depression, work problems and relationship difficulties. She's a level five master clinician and trainer in team CBT, an innovative framework for delivering evidence based psychotherapy developed by Stanford University's Dr. David Burns, and is trained in DBT, ACT, CBTI and CBT. She was previously Chief of Integrated Behavioral Health at the San Mateo Medical Center, where she led all clinical operations, and an APA accredited training program in addition to providing psychiatric services in primary and specialty care. She's the recipient of San Mateo County's excellence in Leadership Award. Among other recognitions, she also practiced in college counseling community mental health and the VA. Her psychology career follows a prolific business career, where she led diverse organizations for global brands and startups. You can learn more about her background at CBT therapy.com. Dr. Helen Ma, is a pain psychologist working at the Loma Linda, VA, where she completed her internship and postdoctoral residency in clinical health psychology. She has conducted suicide research in Hong Kong and in the United States, and pursue training and diversity and clinical issues. Her clinical interests include health psychology, Asian American mental health, cultural adaptations of psychological treatments, and reducing mental health care disparities for minority and underserved communities. She has always had a passion for culture and was in global brand management prior to switching to a career in psychology. Okay, Dr. Levy, let's start with you. Please tell us more about your career path and professional experiences that you had.

Daniele Levy, PhD

03:01

Absolutely, it's so nice to be here with you Afik and Dr. Ma. I have a pretty torturous path to where I am today, which I think it makes for a great example for those who are considering a career in psychology. So that as I talk, you notice an accent the accent is Portuguese. So I was actually born and raised in Brazil, and did most of my schooling in Brazil, came to high school in the US did some college in France, ended up going to undergraduate studies in Brazil and I got an undergrad in Chemical Engineering. So right there, it kind of starts being an unconventional path. I work for Procter and Gamble and their Latin American headquarters for a few years and then moved to the US to get my second degree in, in business administration. So I got my MBA here at Stanford, worked in management consulting, tech companies, startups ended up building a career where I was a vice president at a fortune 500 company in charge of product and marketing for some of the internet's leading brands at that time. And then I shifted again, and I said at this point in my story, it's usually like one hour and one beer, at least to tell you the whole story. But I was basically looking for something that was more meaningful, more impactful in my life. And I started researching different career paths and I looked into nonprofit work teaching and I had this passion for psychology that I carried with me from my undergrad days it was either psychology or engineering. So I went back to psychology joined what was then Pacific Graduate School of Psychology PGSP, which is now PAU. In their Ph.D. program with specialty track and Clinical Neuroscience in women's health at Stanford Medicine, and really ended up falling in love with the with the practice with a career and stuck with it. It was a hard transition. I had young kids at the time that I started my PhD. I couldn't have done it without a lot of support from family and childcare. And you know, a lot of folks helping me along that path. My training in psychology happened at the VA in community mental health in college counseling, and culminating with the hospital setting where I did my postdoc fellowship, and a whole number of those choices were shaped by what I could realistically do with a young family at the same time that I was working towards my degree and my licensure. So I ended up building a career in public health, I was part of the San Mateo Medical Center, integrated behavioral health team. San Mateo Medical Center is the county hospital here in San Mateo County, I had a lovely ride there as a trainee, initially, then I was hired as a staff psychologist that was then promoted to had their clinical Latina from providing Spanish and Portuguese language services to a largely immigrant population, and eventually has stepped in to head all of the integrated behavioral health operations for the hospital. During the pandemic, most recently, also for a number of family related reasons I left San Mateo Medical Center, I have been working full time in private practice now, I have become more and more involved in board governance at Palo Alto University, and also spent a good chunk of my time teaching CBT. So that's the that's the short version.

Afik Faerman, PhD

07:01

Thank you so much, such a diverse and rich life and journey that led you to talking to us today about psychology. Dr. Ma, please tell us more about your career path and your professional experience.

Helen Ma, PhD

07:16

Yeah, so it's actually quite coincidental that Dr. Levy and I are alumni in more than one way. I also started out in psychology, I did my undergrad in Canada. And I thought to myself, I wanted to apply psychology. So I went into marketing. I did a Master's in Global Marketing, Communication and Advertising. I've interned at advertising firms before and I also ended up at Procter and Gamble at some point doing brand management. For personal reasons, I took a sabbatical in Hong Kong, and I worked as a research assistant doing Suicide Prevention Research in Hong Kong back then they were kind of at the beginning of using social media and the internet to do outreach. And they wanted someone with some of that expertise. So I was able to kind of pivot and provide some of my experiences there. And I decided that that was when I really wanted to commit to doing Clinical Psychology. So I went back to school, PAU and I suppose now you can say I'm an early career psychologist. I actually got a license just a couple of weeks ago. Yay, it happened. It can come true. Yes, and primarily, I've been working at the VA, but throughout my training, I've trained at various sites, actually, on both the East Coast and the West Coast, Community Mental Health. I've trained in hospitals, also primarily VAs, but I've had a kind of, you know, they say if you've been to one VA, VA, you've been to one VA and I really think that that is true, there's a lot of overlap, but there's a lot of also unique, unique aspects of each health care system, despite all of them being VAs. So that's kind of where I am . I started specialists specializing in health and medical psychology and somehow fell into a pain psychology position. So now I'm a pain psychologist is what they call it.

Afik Faerman, PhD

09:26

Awesome. Thanks so much for sharing. And I really do find the coincidence of both of you. Were at some capacity, Procter Gamble. Quite interesting. It was not planned for our listeners.

Daniele Levy, PhD

09:37

This could be this could be the health psychology podcast or a career shift from brand management podcast. Yes.

Afik Faerman, PhD

09:46

Yeah, we'll take a vote from the listeners. Maybe we'll do another podcast about it. Hear you're changing and also coming from, you know, branding and financial worlds. So you know, you're describing some with similar paths conceptually, but you ended up doing different things. As psychologists, and we hear a lot this term health psychology, particularly more now than in previous years, can you tell us a little bit about what, what does a health psychologist do? Or maybe walk us through a typical day in your work life?

Speaker 1

10:21

Sure. I mean, you know, it's interesting because health psychologists almost like an oxymoron, right is like we want. We do psychology, we do mental health, because we want people to be healthy overall. But I think in the, in within the world of psychology, when we talk about health psychology, I think Dr. Ma and I are coming at it from an integrated behavioral health or physical mental health lens that basically aims to reduce suffering, right and improve health conditions, by tackling not only the underlying biological reasons for that suffering, but also the mental and emotional processes as well as the behavioral processes that either trigger maintain or exacerbate those conditions. Right. So it's really in the service of health behavior, behaviors, right in reducing the burden of chronic disease management and reducing suffering in primary care, specialty care in increasing access, reducing stigma, those are the roles that health psychologists play that are plays. That is, I think, a slight variation from a broader, like psychology mental health approach.

Helen Ma, PhD

11:48

Yeah, I would, I would really agree with that. I think when it comes to health psychology versus just, you know, your more straightforward kind of outpatient mental health clinic is that you get to learn a lot more about how medicine or how the physical disease also overlaps with the mental health conditions. I think one, one of the parts of my work where I find a lot of fulfillment and excitement in that we might not think so much about is, I really think of myself as being part of that oil and the big machine where I get to work with other providers and work with them on how to help patients. So it might be working on bedside manner, it might be helping them communicate using a motivational interviewing approach so that they can work more effectively with patients as well. And, you know, I think maybe we underestimate the impact of that kind of work as well. So if you want to do more patient facing work, there's that if you want to do more provider facing work, there's also that as well, it's truly, I think VA especially is very, very interdisciplinary. And so I really, really love that aspect of my work.

Afik Faerman, PhD

13:00

Thank you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I keep hearing from both of you that the breadth of, of what it could mean to be a health psychologist, or what could fall under this umbrella of health psychology. And it makes me think about some of the misconceptions that people might have about it. Would you share a little bit about, you know, what are common myths or, or, you know, misunderstandings about what it means to be in your field of work.

Speaker 2

13:29

Do you mean from a patient's perspective or from other students looking at health psychology?

Afik Faerman, PhD

13:36

Yes. Both?

Speaker 2

13:38

Both. Okay. So I think from a patient's perspective, they a lot of them kind of underestimate the the pervasiveness of how mental our mental state or mental condition can affect their health. And so I get a lot, I find that I do a lot of education, I would say, generally, the world default still on a very heavily biomedical model. And I tell them, that's not the latest science, you know, there is no kind of body brain divide. It's all together and they all influence each other. And they didn't know that, oh, you know, if I'm having problems with sleep, if I'm having problems with weight management, all of these things a mental health provider can can help with. So they're often like pleasantly surprised by these things. I think the way I see myself in a medical system besides being provider facing is when I'm patient facing I'm here to support lifestyle changes. I'm not here to do these yo yo diets are like a one off thing. It's really helping them make major shifts in their behavior to support a healthier lifestyle and that can take a lot of work.

Speaker 1

14:56

Yeah, no, I think it's, that is right on. I was thinking This question from, you know, the perspective of folks listening to the podcast and thinking about a career in psychology or thinking about a career in health psychology. You know, again, I don't know Dr. Ma, that happened for you as well. But for me coming from, you know, the industry coming from business to psychology, a lot of my friends are like, Are you crazy, like, you're gonna listen to people's problems all day, you're, you know, if people are depressed, you're gonna end up being like, so depressed. And and I think that is a common misconception, right of folks, when they think about psychology, and I'm sure if you, you know, have navigated that to it. For folks who are considering a career in psychology, what I just said, couldn't be further from the truth in the sense that, yes, we are hearing about people's challenges, difficulties suffering, but the way that I think about it is if somebody walks into my office, and they're like, you know, this much depressed and for those who are not watching the video is like this high up depressed, and they walk out of my office, and they're like, this depressed, and the second, this is a lower, you know, amount. I'm not focusing on the amount of depression that's left, I'm focusing on that delta, of how much less depressed they are, because of that, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes or 50 minutes that we spent together. So it's, I think it's actually, for me, my experience is it's the opposite by alleviating people suffering actually brings me a lot of joy. So that's, you know, one of the misconceptions about psychology in general, I think about health psychology, for those who are already in psychology and considering, like, you know, is health psychology, something that's interesting to me, one of the common misconceptions is that, oh, you can't help people in primary care if you're just seeing them for a few minutes, you know, after a doctor's visit, right, like there is no way to help individuals in the short, infrequent sessions. And that's also a fallacy. If you think about the modal number of therapy sessions in the United States is one, right? Most people only see this, you know, a mental health professional ones. So you need to read, we all need to rethink, right? How we spend that one session. And I think, you know, our experience and the data and the research shows that absolutely, you can give folks really actionable insights and skills in 30 minutes or less. So that's a that's a misconception that I think needs to be debunked as well.

Speaker 2

17:38

That reminds me, there's another one that that needs to be debunked is if you see me you are someone with a mental health condition. In health psychology, that can't be further from the truth. I see a lot of people with no mental health condition doesn't have, you know, any type of mental health history, but they have chronic pain. And we know there's a significant psychological component to the pain experience. So I feel like in health psychology, it's one of those kind of rare things where you're actually you might be seeing a bunch of people who just aren't here for their mental health specific.

Afik Faerman, PhD

18:17

Yeah, that's such a good point. Because there is a lot of expectation coming up on an appointment with a psychologist, particularly if it's your first appointment, and you don't have any background, or history with psychologists that think it's important also, for those of us who are considering a career in behavioral health, or in psychology, or in health psychology, to be able to communicate this to our patients, that the fact that, you know, a patient comes to see us if we're on the phone with them or scheduling an appointment with them, it's important to communicate that it doesn't infer anything, and that it's actually a service that the healthcare system is providing to them, to help them manage their own symptoms, whatever they will be. And it's true that some some symptoms are more impacted by psychological states than other and I think others pardon me, and I think that you've named several of them. And also listen to what you were you both of you were saying, you were describing a set of skills, that, again, if I'm an undergraduate student, or a graduate student in psychology, planning for a career as a health psychologist, I think it would be important for for me to acquire or at least to get some experience in and I'm wondering, what do you think is in kind of an underrated tool that people might not think of, or might not take into consideration maybe a little bit out of the mainstream training in clinical psychology, that you think it's indispensable for you or for your job?

Speaker 1

19:49

I'm gonna answer that question in probably surprising way but you asked about underrated tools, right? I think one of the most underrated tool was in mental health care is humor is humor, and lightness, right? We offer often see therapy as the serious and somber endeavor. But it doesn't always have to be that way. When we're successful in truly connecting with somebody and instilling in them a sense of hope, we can join forces and make light of this negative self talk, right? And the nagging anxieties that they carry with them, for example, or the voices that tell them that I can't do this, or I shouldn't be doing that. So I often have my patients name, that negative voice in their head is something humorous, right? The voice that keeps telling them that they're not good enough, or that things won't get better, or that everything is dangerous. If they named that voice, they can more easily acknowledge and ignore it, or talk back to it. So some of my favorite names that my patients have come up with our bad Janet from the good place. So she's seen that show, that's actually a really funny reference that I have eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings, Darth Vader, or their nosy neighbor or the mean elementary school teacher. And I think that that tool of like humor, and lightness is underrated. But I think it's really useful in clinical care.

Helen Ma, PhD

21:21

I think for me, maybe being in Southern California, they're very like, into sports, which is really new to me. And so making comparisons with sports and the performance there has been so helpful with my work like my veterans love to hear themselves being compared to Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, like they have a team, do you think they only have medical providers? No, we're here to get you in tip top shape. It's not, you know, approaching your health in a singular way. It's approaching it from like a more wraparound perspective. And I think having these topics that they can relate to, is really, really helpful. Or I'll have veterans be like, you know, half the things you tell me I already No, why do I need to see you, I don't need you to teach me this. And I'll tell them about SoulCycle. I'll tell them that everyone who goes to SoulCycle already knows how to ride a bike, yet. They wake up at some ungodly hour on a Saturday morning to have someone ride a bike with them. So why do that? So, you know, relating these things to very everyday examples so that they can relate, I think is so powerful.

Speaker 1

22:30

Yeah, I think that I think that's a great example metaphors, right, in general are like, really powerful.

Afik Faerman, PhD

22:36

Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think, you know, in both cases, I can see the humor plays a role. I, you know, I will say, I am biased a little bit because I do research in hypnosis. And but this is kind of a shameless plug, because I get a lot of people that work in health psychology settings, reaching out to me, and asking for these for opportunities to get trained in it. So I wonder, you know, I'm thinking about potential clinical skills or clinical experiences, that you would recommend people that want to get into the field to get familiar with or maybe get some exposure to seek it out, and so on and so forth.

Daniele Levy, PhD

23:23

I was just going to ask a clarifying question is that for folks who are interested in going into clinical health psychology, what clinical experiences would be useful?

Afik Faerman, PhD

23:33

Yeah. So if they have to prioritize throughout their graduate training, for example, which practicum experiences to favor or which type of experiences or rotations to have? What would you recommend?

Speaker 1

23:49

I'd recommend anything that is in a medical setting, right? Any sort of placement that puts them in an interdisciplinary setting would be super helpful. Dr. Ma, do you think?

Helen Ma, PhD

24:04

Yes, I think putting yourself in the right setting and staying open minded. I would say if it scares you, that's probably a good place to start. If you feel like you have zero experience because I tell I tell our trainees this all the time, before your license. That's the one time you can try anything you want safely with supervision and without justification of why you can simply say it's because I want to learn you don't have to be like, well, I bring this in this experience. Therefore, I'm able to do this job. You don't have to prove anything. You can just do it simply because you want to try so if this isn't the time to try new things, I don't know when is

Afik Faerman, PhD

24:43

Fantastic. What is the most important personality trait or kind of attitude coming into the field to be successful as a health psychologist, in your opinion?

Speaker 2

24:54

I think it's being curious and being flexible. because you just don't know what's going to come through your door, right, especially in a health setting, they may have a mental health condition, they may not, they might be a very complex case, and you might have to work with many different people and you uncover things and things come up, flexibility is going to be really important.

Speaker 1

25:17

Yeah, I think that's a, that's a great one, I think about it in like two buckets, right? I think to get into psychology, in general, I think, compassion more than anything, is that trait that you really want to tap into, right, you're gonna be working with people from all walks of life coming to you with a myriad of problems. Sometimes they're doing all they can to prevent the problem. Sometimes they're causing it knowingly, right? Sometimes people are victims, sometimes they're the perpetrator. Sometimes they listen to what you want to offer, or sometimes they dismiss it. So in all of these cases, you need to find compassion, to do the work that we do. But I think to doing greater behavioral health in particular, I think flexibility, as Dr. Ma mentioned, is paramount. I think teamwork is right up there. With flexibility, you need to be able to collaborate across this multidisciplinary team to be effective in a medical behavioral health setting. So you're going to be working with primary care, right, you're going to coordinate care with the primary care providers with the medical assistants, you're going to have to coordinate care with specialty providers, we're going to be working closely with the psychiatrist or nurse practitioners on the mental health team working with you, oftentimes, you're coordinating with social work, you may even have to loop into schedulers in the clinic or the admin staff so I can get to this person when they go see that provider. So you really need to play well with others to succeed in integrated behavioral health or health psychology.

Afik Faerman, PhD

26:53

Yeah, thank you both. And I think, you know, by answering this question, you're also emphasizing some differences between what the quote unquote traditional psychotherapy approach or the traditional private practice approach would look like from the experience of the psychologist, as opposed to working in an integrated healthcare system, where you're, you're a part of a team that's working together to improve the lives of the patient. And, you know, and for students that might listen to this. The approach, the structure of working in an integrated healthcare setting, is also different than working at a clinic or private practice, from the standpoint that you see a lot of people and sometimes you might not see the same person over and over again, like you're kind of used to in continuous psychotherapy. And so that the comment about flexibility comes in not just with a sense of, of, you know, beat keeping, keeping your mind open and being flexible to the needs as they come up. But also understanding that you might, your you might see a lot of people with similar presenting symptoms, but that would need quite different approaches to actually benefit from working with you. And that layer of thinking outside of the box and asking the right questions. And also, you know, thinking back for, to Dr. Levy's point about, about, you know, the, the the model, number of sessions in the US is one, you might want to ask those questions earlier, rather than later, you can't count on building long term therapeutic alliances with a patient because you really have a pretty clear set of goals, that hopefully the patient is clear about those goals too. But if they're not, then this is also something that we will need to do with them. clarifying why they're seeing a psychologist right now, many times they walk in and you ask them, tell me why you're here. And they say, I don't know. The doctor told me. So there's, there's, there's another layer of being a provider, a psychology provider, at this integrated health settings, that your students that walking or planning and working in, in medical centers, or in similar settings, might want to have some exposure to even shadowing someone and kind of getting the gist of what it's like because it's slightly different than what many, many students are exposed to in their typical training. Rotations. Assuming they haven't had a classic health psychology. practicum experience. Yeah.

Daniele Levy, PhD

29:43

yeah, you need to think about things differently. I used to tell my team Hey, guys, we're a funnel. We're not a bucket. Right? It's like we're getting all these people into the clinic. We need to filter through like what services we're going to offer those folks and keep them moving through the system right? either like our our model is to funnel people through this system, we're not a bucket doesn't mean we're getting people and just keeping them and like, you know, traditional therapy forever. That doesn't work in a hospital setting. And not they're talking about metaphor. Another metaphor that I use when talking about this kind of work is, you know, let's say you're hungry, and you need to get something to eat, you can go get fast food, you can go to like, you know, nice bistro Cafe, and get a meal. Or you can go into this fine dining, like, you know, a course meal. All of those will like address your hunger and integrated behavioral health, we need to figure out what meal we're serving. And it's very clear that in a hospital setting with the volume of patients that we need to touch, we're not doing fine dining, we need to have a referral resources, right folks need deep long term character logical type of interventions, I have referrals for that. Some people all they have time for is fast food, let's figure out like what kind of services we have that that address that and some detail Medical Center, we had workshops, people didn't want to be in therapy, come here of workshop about sleep health, right Come here, like, you know, 80 minute workshop about how to manage your anxiety, that's it, if that's all you have time for, we have that too. And then in that middle ground of like your, you know, bistro dining, we have six session, you know, 30 minute, integrated behavioral health sessions, brief interventions, with your medical appointments, or if you do need something more specialized, we will pull you out into 12 session cognitive processing therapy, but figuring out where the patient is, and what's the service that matches them ensures that we can get folks moving through this system, having a well rounded referral, almost a product offering. And referral system also ensures that we can get people moving through the system.

Helen Ma, PhD

32:10

I also want to touch a little bit on the assessment aspect of health psychology. So I also do pre surgical evaluations. And so one of the things that students may not be so familiar with, they might be familiar with diagnostic or neuro assessments. But with pre surgical assessments, I tell I tell my patients, I'm like, probably, I'll come up with a bunch of recommendations half are probably going to be for you. And the other half is going to be for your team, so that they can work best with you. And you can work together to plan the rest of the treatment to set you up for success, whatever, you know, your health outcome is going to look like. So that is a big piece, I think of health psychology that people might not not know about. And for me, specifically, I'm on something called an opioid safety initiative team, where we just do chart reviews full day of looking at very high risk patients and its various different disciplines together, looking at the same chart coming up with recommendations for the primary medical provider who's managing this patient. So you can really add value in in many different ways in a medical setting that, you know, may not quite translate to a mental health clinic and so directly,

Afik Faerman, PhD

33:27

yeah, you know, reflecting on what you're saying, and my experiences in working in academic medical centers, mostly came from the neuro psychology aspects of more assessment, even though I did do I did provide behavioral sleep medicine as well. So reflecting back, I think the steepest learning curve, for me was terminology. Because there's a lot of medical terminology, and a lot of hospital specific terminology, names of teams and names of specific services that I'm expected to refer patients to. And in reality, you meet a lot of patients in the hospital when you realize that you're the only person sitting with them listening to their problem and actually providing them feedback, because everyone else is so busy taking care of what they need to do. So there's, it's a, it's a privilege on one hand, and it's a duty on the other hand, which really makes makes you really want to know your game and know your system and know, you know how to be up up to offer optimal service to your patient. So I'm reflecting back to my younger self. And I think if I would give myself an advice, I would say, spend that one day, getting to know all the terminology and all the names and don't just nod and say yes, like because you're uncomfortable that you don't know what a pen abbreviation means. Really get familiar with that because that would actually have an impact on that. From the service that you provide, what are some things that if you can, what kind of advice if you could give your younger self? Starting this career path? What would you tell yourself?

Daniele Levy, PhD

35:11

Um, you know, I think particularly for folks who are switching careers right into psychology, there is this eagerness to catch up with where you were previously right in another career or like, come up to speed really fast. And I think the, you know, advice that I would give myself starting out is just to have patience, and be humble. And you're always learning and psychology, which is one of the things that I specially like about it. When you think you know a lot about a subject, you're going to find a case or a presentation, that's going to remind you that, hey, you know, you'll never know everything. And one of my favorite metaphors in the in that regard comes from ACT Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, that's that two mountains metaphor is like the patient is in the process of climbing up a big mountain, right, that has lots of dangerous places on it. So my job is to watch out for them and shout out directions, if I can see places they might slip or hurt themselves. But I'm not able to do this, because I'm standing at the top of the mountain, like just looking down at them, right, if I'm able to help them climb their mountain, is because I am on my own mountain, just across the valley right next to it, I don't know exactly what it feels like to climb their mountain. But I can see where they're about to step and what might be a better path for them to take. So it's a it's a position of humility and continuous growth, that I personally had to work, my way to find it. And I think would have been much help help healthier and more helpful for me to have that stance from the outset. And I think along those lines, even as you're doing this, you know, for a couple of decades, you got to understand that you're always going to be learning through your work organically and through continuing education in an intentional way. So something that I didn't know, before I started psychology is that we have to always be doing continuing education, those included, you know, currently, they include a number of different paths and alternatives to acquire that continuing education. But a lot of it just comes in the form of courses that you elect to take, right. And that's mandatory as part of your licensing requirements. So using that continuing education, strategically, can help tremendously to build the practice that you want. So if you want to build expertise in health psychology, you can use your CPE requirements to get there.

Helen Ma, PhD

37:52

I really like the comment about humility. I think as a kind of a more early career psychologist, of course, you're going to have all those insecurities and that imposter syndrome. And it's helpful to have that reminder that you know, everyone's learning. Nobody has all the answers, even if you talk to like medical providers. It's not so it's not like so like mathematics where you just have a clear, correct answer. There's a lot of ambiguity and unknowns and, you know, lack of explanation, even within medicine, and like, so no one can be no one can know everything. And I always like to approach patients in a way where I tell them well, you're you're gonna have to be my expert on you. You're gonna have to tell me about you. I can bring in the psychology piece, but you need to bring in the piece about you. I can't know unless, unless you tell me. And so coming, having that humility, I think helps battle that imposter syndrome. A little bit.

Afik Faerman, PhD

39:00

Thank you. Yeah, this is really priceless. Because a lot of you know, a lot of students will walk in, walk towards the direction of becoming a health psychologist without really knowing what it would entail and kind of using inertia and maybe some rumors that they hear along the way. But your real life experience is, is priceless in navigating those, those pathways, those journeys towards that goal. You know, there is a question that I really this is for the students here that are listening. This is my favorite question to ask in interviews as well. When I'm being interviewed, so if you're ever applying for internships or positions or jobs, what is one question that I should have asked you, but it didn't. What is one thing that I don't know to ask you, but I should know.

Daniele Levy, PhD

39:59

I think one thing So we did talk about right. It's like we it's what is the best part of the job? Right? We talked about the underrated tools, or, you know, how do you navigate it? What are personality traits? But you know, what is it that I like about the job. And I think what really keeps me going and keeps me doing that job, regardless of the setting that I'm in is the ability to share in each other's humanity. It you know, as we go through our lives, we compare our inside, with everybody else's outside, right, I know what's going on inside my head, and I just see what other people choose to show me about their, you know, their reality. And as a psychologist, we get to see other people's inside life, right? The world behind the facade. So there's love, there's joy, there's herds, there's longing. But ultimately, there's humanity that I get to be a part of. And that's, that's by far the favorite part of the job for me.

Helen Ma, PhD

41:09

I think for me, it, it would be the question of how did I land on this, even though there's so many different things that I could have chosen from right, like why health psychology, why pain psychology, and it's not so much that I just landed in pain, psychology, but it's more this idea of where I'm working with our one of the specialty clinics in the hospital, they don't know how to use my service, I'm not quite sure what they need either. And so it's a learning process for both of us, we're here to explore that together, we're here, we're here to build that together, we don't have the answers. We're here to learn about each other, and what you know how that all fits in and what we can do to help our patients. And so I like that co creation kind of space, I really like that kind of potential. Versus if you're in like a kind of a service that's very, it's like a well oiled machine and you just have your roll. And that's what you do, then that's a little bit different. I mean, that has its own joys also. But I think for me, it's just this idea that with the health psychology and medical psychology and working in a hospital system, I think it's kind of a newer thing, and everyone's still trying to figure it out together. And I really like that aspect.

Speaker 1

42:29

I like I like what Dr. MA just said, and I'll just put in a plug right. For folks who are interested in health psychology. It's, I think it's one of those positions to just augment your skill set. Right? It hones so many different aspects of of your practice assessment, consultation, short term interventions, teamwork, referral, longer term interventions, if you have an opportunity to do that. So you know, it's something that some folks might choose to make a career out of it. Some folks might choose to make that a phase of their career, but it's a really enriching one, there really develops a number of important skills.

Afik Faerman, PhD

43:17

Thank you so much. And I really appreciate your time and for sharing your experiences with us. I'm sure students and everyone who is thinking maybe even mid career pivoting towards health psychology could really benefit from your from your tips and thoughts and kind of soak some of the things you you said and suggested. So thank you very much. And good luck. Thank you.

Helen Ma, PhD

43:43

Thank you.

Afik Faerman, PhD

43:44

Thank you again for listening. I hope you join us for the next episode where Dr. O'Connor will discuss Trauma with experts in the field.

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