Stress in psychology jobs?

[hellothegrrreeeen]

Background - Currently a teacher in mainstream and the stress of it is killing me. 30 children each with individual needs, severe special needs children in classroom for 6 hours each day. I am a tough person but with so much pressure and stress of behaviour i am finding it very overstimulating and overwhelming.

I have always been interested in psychology and am wondering if retraining in a psychological profession (cbt therapist, pwp, clinical psychologist) would be any better? I know it is a lot emotionally, but you are one to one with clients, as opposed to an entire class. Has anyone else done this transition/ can comment on stress levels in psychology jobs?

I don't want to jump from the frying pan into the fire!

Children’s psychotherapist here. Also been a teacher.

Honestly? They are both exhausting. At least when you are teaching you can set work, get them to work in pairs, show a video etc.

In one to one sessions you have to fill every corner of the session.

Working with adults is generally easier, but you still get some who don’t really want to talk. You shouldn’t work harder than your client but it’s a long 50 minutes if you don’t try to engage them.

I 100 percent prefer being a therapist over teaching, but large parts of that are because I’m self employed and set my own hours. I hated fitted into the structure of education.

I made the very transition you're thinking about... In my case I went from being a secondary school teacher to an NHS-based therapist. I'm hoping to train as a clinical psychologist one day but getting onto the doctorate is highly competitive and until relatively recently I didn't have enough good experience to apply.

Some thoughts...

You will almost certainly have to take a big drop in salary at first. Of the jobs you mention, only clinical psychologists and so-called 'High Intensity CBT therapists' earn roughly equivalent to a classroom teacher or in some cases more. The NHS will pay for your training and you will earn as you train but only if you get a coveted spot. Being a credible candidate for this training requires gathering experience in more low-paid positions... think mental health support workers or even volunteering posts. If you have a psychology degree you could potentially apply for Assistant Psychologist posts but these are fiercely competitive and tend to require prior experience in mental health too. The whole thing can take many years. Being a PWP is a good stepping stone to other psychology careers potentially but these roles are again competitive, require prior experience in mental health ideally and are not very well-paid; nor can you move from being a PWP to any other NHS-sponsored training without a 2 year wait.

If you are prepared and able to train privately as a counsellor or psychotherapist of some kind, that would be different. I did some initial training part-time whilst also teaching full-time. There are lucrative opportunities in private practice but it is quite a saturated market in some parts of the country. The NHS does sometimes employ people with counselling or psychotherapy-type training directly, although (unfortunately in my view) most jobs seem to be looking for people trained in CBT.

In terms of the actual work: I'd echo @onewayoryourmother in that both teaching and any sort of psychological work are hard and emotionally draining. I would say I find delivering therapy more rewarding over all and maybe one balance actually less stressful than teaching. I'm really glad I made the change because I enjoy what I do now more and feel like I've grown more as a person in my new role. But at times the change was painful too and in my case I was only able to make it thanks to luck - luck in terms of landing on my feet with good jobs and opportunities; luck in terms of family pressures coming at the right time so that I could make my career change at a point where no one else was relying on me to earn well for a couple of years and I didn't have a mortgage.

A final thought: it might be good to do an introductory counselling course or to try to get yourself volunteering for Samaritans, Childline or similar before you leave teaching. I found both of these great experiences that allowed me to start to explore how I'd find a mental health-related role.

Oh I'd add one more thing: I think if you are a therapist / psychologist in a role where you are trusted to make decisions and have the freedom to deliver the therapy that you think is needed, that is amazing. However I know a lot of psychology professionals / workers are having to deliver things they don't believe in: highly manualised therapies that don't chime with all clients; therapy under intense time pressure and with pressure to demonstrate you're helping people to progress rapidly (this mirrors some of the worst aspects of performance management in teaching...). So much depends on where you work and how you work.

Ed psych here- was a secondary school teacher. Currently much less stressed :)

Another ex secondary teacher, now educational psychologist here - I find it much less stressful and more enjoyable, and don’t regret the change for an instant. I’ve also found the teaching experience really valuable and think I’m a better psychologist for having taught (even though I don’t miss it!).

One thing which really helps is having regular supervision (psychological supervision rather than line management - that threw me when I first started) to discuss, reflect on and process difficult parts of the job. I find there’s much more of an understanding and acknowledgement that at times it can be emotionally intense so you need that space.

Thank you I really like the idea of doing some volunteering roles or a counselling course - they offer one at my local college. Great post. Thank you

This is a great post thanks
I had a couple of quick questions

1. how numbers heavy is EP? I get some data is involved but is it super difficult / high level of maths and is this a large part of the job
2. I’m a teacher with a busy tutoring business and a lot of them want referrals to EP. Could I do this without first having full time experience as an EP in schools? That’s probably what I would want to do as I could fit it into my current schedule. But I would be happy to get a full time role for a while if I had to, but not ideal

many thanks

I’ve trained people moving from teaching to psychotherapy and counselling. One thing that can be very difficult is the shift in mindset needed - teachers are, for obvious reasons, very proactive problem solvers whereas counselling and psychotherapy need a much more hands off, non-directive approach which can be a hard transition to make. I’d echo doing volunteering - Childline is an excellent way to develop good listening skills with children and young people.

@knups81 so long as you’re reasonably ok at maths, I’d say you’ll be fine. I’d describe my maths ability as confident GCSE, and good at arithmetic (and statistics where needed), and I’ve never felt the maths involved is beyond me - mainly you’d need it for scoring and interpreting psychometric tests if you use them. I don’t a lot, to be honest, but some EPs do and you want to feel confident doing it either way.

The place to look for the most up to date information is the AEP website, but I believe once qualified you have to work as a local authority EP for a certain period of time (2/3 years I think). I would hazard a guess that you could do independent work alongside this too if you could find a part time role, but some time doing local authority work/working in a team with more experienced EPs would be quite important in developing your skills anyway.

Good luck if you do decide to pursue it, it’s a great career!