Tyson Conner 00:00
So today, I'm here, once again, with Dr. Jessica Kim. Hello.
Jessica Kim 00:06
Hello! Hi, Tyson. And hi everyone.
Tyson Conner 00:10
Dr. Kim is currently a postdoctoral fellow here at Relational Psych. One of my co workers.
Jessica Kim 00:16
Yes, I get to work with Tyson every day. Which is - uh - it's okay. Haha It's a treat. Yeah.
Tyson Conner 00:26
And today we're going to be answering the question: "What is psychological testing used for?" And specifically at Relational Psych? What do we use psychological testing for?
Jessica Kim 00:39
Yeah, so I am going to go about this two ways. But usually people come with a diagnostic question, or they are wanting to know something for a certain purpose of getting accommodations or getting an official documentation or proof of whatever it is. And so most people come in with the question of, "Do I have ADHD? Do I have anxiety? I feel like there's something going on; what is going on?" And a lot of times, our clients are looking for answers.
Tyson Conner 01:10
Generally speaking, people come in with a question of, "Do I have x? Do I have ADHD? Do I have autism? Do I have anxiety?" And the reason that they have that question could be because of some need for official documentation, something for school or work. Something like that?
Jessica Kim 02:01
Yeah. So just like Tyson said, yes, it most people are coming in wanting something, wanting a report. And it's because the institution - school doctor or whoever is looking for an official document that confirms that they have blank, or they don't have blank. But just beyond that, I do want to talk about how there are so many different types of psychological testing. For today's purpose, and what we do here at RP, is more comprehensive psychological testing. We don't do neuro psych, we don't do forensic, that's a different specialty. We won't be able to do it here. But if you have the question of, "Do I have ADHD," or "I feel like this is more than depression," or "I just want to know more about myself."
Tyson Conner 02:29
For the sake of the listener, and also for me, because as the listeners might know, I am not a doctor, I'm not trained in psychological testing. That's not part of what I do or what I know about. So what is the difference between this comprehensive testing, which is what we do here, and neuropsychological evaluation or forensic evaluation?
Jessica Kim 02:55
Yeah, so I can't speak to it too well, because I'm not in those fields. But from what I know, you have to have special training as an neuropsychologist to administer neuropsych testing, which is more like testing for Alzheimer's or dementia. So it's more looking at the brain cognitive functioning. Yes, we also do that too. We look at like executive functioning or intelligence levels. But I would say neuropsychologists do more in depth, and they look at more functions of the brain. Which we're not really trained for to that extent. And forensic psychology is different because it's used for a trial.
Tyson Conner 03:38
So what I'm hearing is that, like, a neuropsychological evaluation is interested in like, what is happening structurally, organically in the brain? Right? What's going on in there? Are you experiencing some kind of neurodegenerative disorder like Alzheimer's, or other things that could cause dementia? Are there certain parts of your brain that are being impacted in specific ways that are causing this kind of outcome? And a forensic evaluation is an evaluation that's for the legal system. That's what it's for - for a judge to look at. And for some lawyers to look at to say, "Are you fit to stand trial? Is this someone who has like a personality disorder that maybe isn't safe to go out on parole" or whatever?
Jessica Kim 04:29
Yeah, so exactly, all of that. So different purposes. And because these fields or the specialists are trained so differently, and more specifically, I would not be you know, comfortable administering any of these tests, nor do I know how to or the language and everything - it just looks so different. So that is something that we will not be talking about, but we'll be talking more about just general comprehensive psychological testing where most people are wanting diagnostic clarity and wanting treatment recommendations.
Tyson Conner 05:03
Gotcha. So diagnostic clarity, meaning they want to know "What do I have? What's going on in my brain." And as a psychotherapist, I often diagnose people, usually when they would need a superbill for insurance reimbursement. And my diagnoses tend to be more broad and more, for lack of a better word, kind of vibes-based. I'll go down the checklist of like, what symptoms do you have - yes or no? And then I'll just diagnose based off of that, but it sounds like this kind of evaluation, this comprehensive evaluation is beyond the level of just "self reported symptoms," right? It actually evaluates like certain parts of mental functioning,
Jessica Kim 05:51
Yeah. So the way that we do testing is that - kind of like what Tyson was saying - all therapists do diagnosing. This is a different type of diagnosing that's more in depth, and more, I would say robust. So it's not just based on you and - sometimes we're human, so we can be subjective. It's not just that or just the questionnaires. But it's a lot of norm testing a lot of other clinical interviews, not just with the person, but like, with parents or with spouses. And so we have a lot more data, we have a lot more evidence for whatever we're saying that this person might possibly have.
Tyson Conner 06:33
And norm testing is the idea that, like, the tests that you administer, you know, what the results mean, relative to like, the norm of the population, general population, right. So, you know if someone is given a scale of one to five, and they circle five every single entry; then, you know looking at that, like, how unusual that is - how far it differentiates from what's normal.
Jessica Kim 07:03
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So it's really just backed up by a lot of research, a lot of stats. And so I would say, that's why it's robust. And so sometimes when I can't trust myself, and my subjective diagnosing, I feel like the data, the patterns, the consistencies that we do see throughout the whole testing process; when I give my feedback session, I feel pretty confident that this is what the client has. And I'm able to answer the question, because it's not just me, but there's just so many other things that we're considering. And so I feel really confident that I know the person, that I've gotten to know the person throughout this whole testing procedure. Yeah,
Tyson Conner 07:42
Yeah, neat! So what are some of the institutional, like, systemic reasons that someone would want evaluation? Beyond like, getting to know yourself better or separate from that? Is this like people's doctor's offices that are asking for these? Or workplaces, where are the situations? Yeah, eat meat. So what are some, like, of the institutional, like, systemic reasons that someone would want evaluation beyond like, getting to know yourself better or separate from that? Yeah. What like, is this like people's, like doctor's offices are asking for these are workplaces, where the situations,
Jessica Kim 08:09
You know, it can be all of the above. I have done - I think the most typical ones that we do here is ADHD diagnosing. And so that would be for if students want accommodations. So they're struggling at school, they're wanting a report, they want concrete evidence that they have ADHD so that they can get accommodations for academic challenges. Sometimes psychiatrists also want testing done and a report so that they can prescribe medication. I've also done accommodations for bar exams. And so basically, that would be confirming that they have a mental health condition that will make it more difficult for them to perform compared to the norm, and therefore will need additional accommodations.
Tyson Conner 08:56
Gotcha. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So let's talk a little bit about this, like, the "comprehensive." Like, it's the comprehensive evaluation, right? What's so dang comprehensive?
Jessica Kim 09:12
Yeah. So I think, if I can explain it, I would say this exam or this comprehensive testing is kind of like when you go to the doctor. You're kinda like, "Okay, I think I have a cold. I'm not exactly sure what this is." So the doctor says, "We'll do a bunch of tests, we'll do a blood test, we'll do this and that, and we'll figure out what's really happening to you." Right? So it's not just your symptoms that you're reporting, but we're looking at all the different functionings of your body to see what's really happening. Right. And "is it a cold? Is it the flu? Is it COVID?" To know what it is means that you'll get the right kind of medication, the right kind of treatment, and that's why having an accurate picture of what this is and where it's coming from, really helps you to treat what's going on. And that's what we're trying to look for when we do testing. And it's comprehensive, because we are complex beings, we're not just symptoms, different things interact with other things: your cultural background, if you have other mental health conditions, all of it interacts. And so it's not just a standalone, 'we're looking at your symptoms,' but we're trying to capture where some of these symptoms are coming from, and how it integrates with everything.
Tyson Conner 10:33
So it sounds like you're looking at a lot of stuff, gathering a lot of information. And one of the really big primary reasons maybe that people get this is because they need documentation of like, 'this is what's happening for me.' For some systemic reason, right, a school providing accommodations or, you know, the bar exam example is fascinating to me. But it sounds like we also use this process to try to assist people in getting to know themselves better. Can you talk about, like, how does the psychological testing that we do here - how can that serve someone as they just come to know themselves deeper?
Jessica Kim 11:20
Yeah, no, that's a really good question. And I think that's one of my favorite parts of doing assessments. Of course, like the diagnosing and of course, having a name, a DSM name for what is going on is very helpful. But at the same time, I think what most clients don't really expect from our testing - our reports are 25, almost 30 pages long. So it's very comprehensive - is that they are able to know themselves better. And I think I feel like I've done my job, of course, like, I want everything to be accurate. But (I don't know if this is a good assessment of like, if I actually wrote a good report or whatnot,) when the feedback that I get from clients is, "Wow, this sounds just like me. Oh, so this is what was going on." Or they will say something about like, "Wow, like, you really know me." And so in some kind of way, I feel like sometimes when I do these feedback sessions, my clients feel so known and understood, and they have vocabulary or knowledge of understanding, like, 'this is something that I've experienced, now I have words for it. Now I have, like, explanations of why this is so.' Because we focused so much on the whole person. So a lot of assessments, not saying that all of them are like this or not like this, but a lot of them are more symptom driven, of like, I just want to know what this person has. Very diagnosis driven. I would say the way that we - I - hope to approach assessment is the whole person approach of like being able to see the whole person. And so I think whenever it speaks to not just the symptoms, but how it interacts with the being of the person, or maybe just tying in and connecting some of the dots of like, why this symptom is there and how it manifest in real life. And then if we have treatment recommendations at the very end that ties it together of: okay, this is where it came from. This is how it shows up. This is what we can do about it. I just feel like clients find that very helpful. And they feel like, "Okay, this is very personalized. This is just not what I can Google. But this is like catered to me."
Tyson Conner 13:35
Yeah. You said a minute ago that ADHD evaluations are really common. So let's use that as an example. Like someone comes in, they get this comprehensive evaluation, and through the process, you're like, "Oh, yeah, ADHD as heck, great." Like, how, first of all? How would that show up in testing? And then how would that show up in the evaluation? Like, how would it come out in what you're writing about? And what would some of the recommendations be? Yeah. You said a minute ago that ADHD evaluations are really common. So let's use that as an example. Like someone comes in, they get this comprehensive evaluation, and through the process, you're like, oh, yeah, ADHD is heck, great. Like, how, first of all? How would that? How would that show up in testing? And then how would that show up in the evaluation? Like, how would it how would it come out in what you're writing about? And what would some of the recommendations be?
Jessica Kim 14:05
What comes to my mind is just a process of what we do for ADHD testing here is that a lot of times we use Google or even nowadays, like TikTok or social media to say that, "Oh, I fit criteria for ADHD." The thing is, yes, but I think all of us do struggle with attention. And so I think what we do with our testing is that it's not just questionnaires and self report or personal experience, but we do look at normed testing. And also we do hands-on testing that looks at the executive functioning, which is directly related to ADHD.
Tyson Conner 14:42
Executive functioning for the listeners who might not know: it encompasses a lot of things that we use our minds for, but not everything. Executive functioning is like impulse control, short term and long term memory, decision making, those sorts of things. We all experience decreases in executive functioning, when we're stressed out and tired, right? So if you've ever been stressed out and tired, and maybe haven't had your daily stimulant of coffee for the day, and you like, left your phone at home on the kitchen counter on your commute to work, right? That's a failure of executive functioning. Your executive functions are the parts of your mind that say, 'Hey, don't forget to grab your phone. Hey, don't forget to call your dad, hey, don't forget to turn in that report or that piece of homework.' Right? So and executive functionings are a lot of the mental functionings that do get pretty directly impacted by ADHD. And, you know, there's that old saying, "According to Dr. Google, we all have cancer, right?" And like, I think the more modern version is, according to Dr. Tiktok, we're all neurodivergent. And like, maybe a lot of us are, that's valid. And everyone experiences decreases in executive functioning, just from like, being a human in the modern world.
Jessica Kim 16:12
Exactly. Yeah. So we're not diagnosing based on TikTok or just the DSM. We're looking at so many different things. We have questionnaires, for ADHD specifically, we do want to ask about childhood. So we're going to ask about childhood symptoms, we're not just going to ask you, we're going to ask someone to report on your current symptoms, someone to report on your childhood symptoms. And so I think we get so many data points and what we're looking at here is we're not just focusing on one test, but throughout the whole testing process, are there patterns? So when you come in for testing, I also am observing your behaviors, is that consistent with an ADHD profile? And so we're looking at peaks and patterns, elevated scores. And then that's when we kind of put it together. That is just kind of like the diagnosing part. But I think when we integrate and weave in the person, I think we consider the person's culture, the person's upbringing, what was said about ADHD when they were growing up. And if they do have other underlying mental health concerns, such as anxiety or trauma, something that we try to do is we try to tease it apart, because a lot of these symptoms overlap. Not just that, but we want to also talk about how trauma and ADHD integrate with each other, how it gets manifested in real life, and how it all integrates. And so I think that's kind of a unique thing that we can offer. We put it into context.
Tyson Conner 17:44
Have you ever had an experience where someone came in for an ADHD evaluation and from the DSM checklist they would have totally met criteria, but then through the course of evaluation, discovered that because of cultural factors, or trauma or whatever else, that actually you didn't feel like ADHD was appropriate. Does that happen?
Jessica Kim 18:05
Oh, yeah, that happens a lot. Yeah. I mean, not a lot. Because a lot of these symptoms, yeah, do overlap. So for example, like restlessness, like hyperactivity, if you have experienced trauma, heck it could look like hypervigilance or anxiety. Also, the symptom is restlessness. And so some people may think, Okay, this might be ADHD. But really, if you dig deeper, it's not.
Tyson Conner 18:29
So this is a great one. And I want to dial down on on it a little bit more, because I think is a great example. Hypervigilance is specifically when someone who has experienced trauma, their body and their mind is constantly on the lookout for where the next hurt is going to come from, where the next danger is going to come from. And that can look a lot like both hyperactivity that you see in ADHD and inattention that you see in ADHD, right? Because hyperactivity is means - if you know you're Greek and Latin roots means that someone is too active. Hyper means too much, right? They're just the bouncing off the walls, right? When you think about ADHD, you might imagine, like, an eight year old kid who just can't sit still right, that's hyperactive. But there's also the other side of ADHD, which is inattention. Right? I've worked with people who were deeply inattentive ADHD, that was their diagnosis. And like, that didn't look like a kid bouncing off the wall, that looked like a kid who was like, were they depressed? Were they traumatized? We didn't know. And it took a little while to figure out oh, this is a kid with ADHD, but they don't have the hyperactivity. They just have, like, for whatever reason, their attention couldn't stick. Right. So they were sort of daydreaming or off in another world or - for this person who I'm thinking about - they were thinking about Star Wars. That's what they were thinking about every time. And if someone's traumatized and has hypervigilance, their mind is looking out for the danger so much that it can look like they're just not paying attention, because in their mind, because the trauma is saying like, "it doesn't matter what the teacher saying, it doesn't matter what your boss is saying right now, it doesn't matter what your wife is saying right now, what matters is keep an eye out for where the danger might come from."
Jessica Kim 20:23
Exactly.
Tyson Conner 20:24
Sorry, that got me excited.
Jessica Kim 20:25
No, that was all very important things to say. And then something that I want to ask is the Star Wars?
Tyson Conner 20:31
Yeah. Haha! Could have been! Yeah, no, this person I'm thinking of was even more into Star Wars than me. You know, that's another feature of neurodivergence in general, but including ADHD, right? Is having a special interest?
Jessica Kim 20:32
Was that you? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Tyson Conner 20:56
And this is where the whole TikTok diagnosis thing gets complicated, because like, it is a common human experience to be passionate about things, and to be really interested in things. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you have ADHD. And whether you have ADHD or not, being really interested in things isn't necessarily bad.
Jessica Kim 21:16
Yeah, no, definitely all of those things. And I think that is why the context really does matter so much, because you can ask about - you know, like, if, if I was just going through a checklist, I could just be like, "When you were younger, did you have issues with attention?" If they just say, "Yes," I can check it off for ADHD symptoms. But if I actually really ask deeper questions, "What was happening at that time?" It could be that we're going through a lot of trauma. So obviously, like Tyson explained, if you're going through trauma, at that time, it's hard to focus on your schoolwork when there's so much outside noise. And so I think that's why understanding the person's story and seeing the context, back then, and even now is so important.
Tyson Conner 22:00
So when you're actually writing this, like, 30, page report... First of all, that's impressive to have a 30 page report as a part of your job, whoo. I just have to write case notes and they are never even a page long. How do you weave this stuff together? Like, do you bring in people's stories that they tell you and say, when I like, "The client told us this story about growing up and that points to like this, and this and that,' or?
Jessica Kim 22:37
Yeah, so kind of like what you would do in therapy, where you connect the dots, I think we try to connect the bigger dots. Right. And so yeah, we do bring in, 'they said this during the clinical interview,' and then it matches up with their test data. So we connect the dots. That's how we do it. We summarize it, we bring things together. At the very end, the summary section, it usually ties everything together.
Tyson Conner 23:07
So outside of ADHD, what are the big picture categories that you're paying attention to?
Jessica Kim 23:15
Yes, we are paying attention to - Usually, what we do try to look at depends on the person's diagnostic question, but if it's like personality. So we will look at personality functioning. And that could be through some of the norm testing, we do projectives, we do clinical interview for all of it, we do like to talk --
Tyson Conner 23:36
So just to slow you down real quick, norm testing is like one of these tests that someone takes, and then you get a score, and it can compare to the norm scores. What is a projective test?
Jessica Kim 23:47
A projective test is a bit more different, I would say it's a bit more subjective. There's something called the T-A-T. So I will show you pictures and you have to kind of describe what's happening, or sentence completion or even the Rorschach. And for this, we're looking for themes. And usually, it feels like maybe it's never actually a one-off, it does tie in together. And so some of the themes that they talked about in the T-A-T or sentence completion, it does match up with and is consistent to some of their scores or things that they said in the past. And so we kind of bring all of that together. But TAT gets more like qualitative stuff.
Tyson Conner 24:30
Gotcha. Gotcha. So it sounds like the projective measures are not giving you a number at the end. It's more subjective as opposed to being objective. And they're about looking for themes that come up. So if you have - I've never taken any of these tests, although who knows maybe I will over the course of my time here I'll invest in it - if someone is constantly talking about through these images that you show them, they keep talking about themes of war and conflict and violence, then that's relevant as opposed to themes of like loneliness or isolation or disconnection. Like these are things you'd be paying attention to, and then connecting that back to other measures that you might have had.
Jessica Kim 25:20
Yeah. So all to say that nothing is ever standing alone. So I'm not going to diagnose or say that you have something based on what you put down on your sentence. It needs to make sense in the bigger picture. And also, it needs to be consistent with your other elevation of scores or what you've said, or what another collateral person said.
Tyson Conner 25:42
You won't just give someone a Rorschach inkblot test and then say, well, that proves that you got borderline personality disorder. That's not how it works. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Very neat. So, after this, like initial feedback interview, or -- what's it called?
Jessica Kim 26:04
It's called feedback session feedback session. Yeah.
Tyson Conner 26:06
After this feedback session, you give -- say one of our listeners comes to see you for a psychological assessment. They have this feedback session, you talk through what you've come up with, what you found. And then they have this 30 page report now, what do you do with it now?
Jessica Kim 26:28
Usually what clients do is after we go through it together, they like to read over it. They like to read over it and just digest what we just talked about, because it's a lot. And then, at the very end, we always do try to give very tailored and personalized recommendations. And so I think that could be a really good place to start. There's always, if you're seeing a therapist there's recommendations for therapy -- I have clients that give the report to their therapist of like, "okay, this is me. And then we talked about these things. But you know, this is another way to get to know me, and I want to talk about these things." And so, yeah, so that's one way. Like we talked about in the very beginning, we can take the test and the report; the ones that we write for you - the 30 page ones, it's actually for you to understand yourself - if you want a redacted report that's shorter, that just kind of stays focused, we can also shorten or edit the report so that you could give that to your employer or to your school.
Tyson Conner 27:36
Interesting, so when someone comes for assessment, they get the 30 pages and that's sort of like, the whole thing just laid out end-to-end. If someone says, "Wow, a lot of this stuff that you've written about, like, my personality structure, and my like, avoidance of conflict and stuff, this is really useful. I'm going to talk to my partner about this. Could you give me a version that I could take to my boss, to explain why I need more frequent breaks at work, or whatever?" And then that would take out all the conflict avoidance stuff, and all the personality stuff, and would just be about whatever, like sensory processing, or whatever this person is speaking to?
Jessica Kim 28:13
Definitely, yeah. So we're not going to be like bias and cut things out or whatnot. We want to be accurate and honor what we found. But yes, like, I think we're gonna take out a lot of the personal history stuff, right. And so we'll edit it so that it's accurate. And it still protects you - at least the privacy part. We do that. And I wanted to speak on what you were just saying about partner, right? Because I just finished testing with a client, who her partner also got a psych evaluation. And then she also received one and they're taking both of the reports to their couples therapists. So they know where to start.
Tyson Conner 28:34
What's an example of a like treatment recommendation that you would put at the end of one of these assessments?
Jessica Kim 28:42
Like I said, there's always a therapy recommendation. So whatever themes came up, it could be anxiety or trauma, or whatever it is, we try to actually give recommendations of findings that might be more underlying. So the underlying stuff, how about we look at this in therapy? Right. So there's that. We also give very like practical recommendations of like, 'try reading this book,' book recommendations, podcast recommendations, we always like to include like a self wellness type of recommendation that's more catered towards what could be fulfilling and satisfying for the person. Not just like, go running or exercise, but more personalized than that. And if the person is coming with ADHD or whatnot, we like to give more specific ADHD recommendations based on what we found from their cognitive testing.
Tyson Conner 29:42
And again, this comes back to I'm thinking about the the issues of Dr. Google and Dr. Tiktok, were the recommendations on social media can be generally good in the same way that like, 'everyone should exercise, everyone should spend 30 minutes a day, in like proximity to nature,' right? All these things are true. And when you have more specific information, you can say 'and for you specifically, it might be really helpful to do some yoga where you focus on your shoulders because your shoulders are tight,' right? That's like a physical kind of based thing. But like, from a cognitive level, what's an example of a sort of specified -- because of how your ADHD shows up, consider this self care thing.
Jessica Kim 30:35
We had a client that was just very, very verbally, skilled as in like, very discussion heavy. Whenever when it came to like writing essays and things like that, could not do, but was an excellent public speaker. She verbally processed everything, but she actually had to write a whole thesis, and she's like, I can't do this. But in every presentation, or any group discussion she does very, very well. And so I think knowing her strengths -- and so something that we do try to do during testing is highlighting your strengths. Also, really, you know, bringing to light some of the challenges or even struggles or even areas of growth, but we like to be very strength based. These are your findings, what can we do to maximize your strength? How can we use your strength in this way to maybe, like help with the areas of your weakness. So for this person, because it was so clear that she had very strong verbal skills, we even recommended things like 'when you're about to write your essay or whatnot, verbally process everything in a voice recorder. Process all of that. Or, if you're having a conversation about the essay with your friend, record all of that, and then use that to guide your thoughts. Because that's what works for you." Like things like that, I would say are more personalized.
Tyson Conner 30:35
That's very nice. Yeah.
Jessica Kim 32:08
Therapy is awesome, because we get to know ourselves. And we also grow in insight. And I think assessment is a different way of doing that. It's not like you're meeting with a therapist for 45 minutes. It's not as long but it is still very comprehensive. And it's a different way of also getting to know yourself. And I think we all know how useful having insight is. It informs where to start, where to begin, and what direction to go towards. And so I think that's why assessments are actually really cool. And it can work hand in hand as in like, after you find out these things about you, through assessments, you can work on some of these things in therapy. And so I would say it goes hand in hand.
Tyson Conner 32:09
Yeah, that's a really -- I like that. That's a nice cherry on top. That wraps it up really well, I think. Thank you for coming. This was fun.
Jessica Kim 32:57
This was fun. This was a blast.
Tyson Conner 33:15
Special thanks to Dr. Jessica Kim. Dr. Kim can be found at Relational Psych. For our experiment today, we are going to give you the option to take your own psychological assessment. Kind of. This test that you can take online is one of the many tests designed to evaluate attachment styles. This is the one that I actually took in grad school. It's linked in the show notes. This test is a series of yes or no questions that are designed to identify your likely attachment style. This is a normed test. So the results are reliable and valid for those of you who care about what those two words mean. However, it doesn't get to the same level of depth that a genuine psychological assessment, interpreted and explained by a psychologist would. This is simply a questionnaire that outputs an answer, and that you can interpret for yourself from there. For those of you who look at the URL, it does look a little sketchy and weird. Yes, it does. That's just because it's old. It's an old link from back before people were interested in branding information about attachment styles. If you just Google attachment style quiz, it's actually kind of hard to find this link. But I'm glad I found it again. Because it's a reliable test. And I know it works. For further reading. This is a little bit tricky, if you're interested in psychological assessment for yourself, you really ought to get one. Go out and get it yourself, that's the best thing to do. It's a bit of an investment. But that really is the best option: to go to a professional and get yourself an assessment done. The reason being that if you research and learn a lot about these assessments and how they work, it can actually interfere with your results. If you studied it and learned all the ins and outs of it, then it's less likely to work on you because you know exactly moment to moment what each answer means and what it studies. And that impacts how you react. So if this is something that you're interested in for yourself, we highly recommend that you get it done before learning about it. If after that warning, you're still interested in learning about it. I recommend starting with YouTube, actually. Multiple different professors have put videos of their courses on YouTube available for anyone to watch. During the pandemic, a lot of classes went online, and some of those classes became open source. So I think that's a great place to start. There are also a lot of textbooks that are about things like the 'Foundations of Psychological Assessment and Testing,' 'Psychological Assessment and Testing Second Edition.' These will be pretty academic and pretty in depth. But if that's something you're interested in learning about, I think YouTube is a great place to start.
The Relational Psych Podcast is a production of Relational Psych, a mental health clinic providing depth oriented psychotherapy and psychological testing in person in Seattle and virtually throughout Washington state. If you are interested in psychotherapy or psychological testing for yourself or a family member, links to our contact information are in the show notes. If you're a psychotherapist and would like to be a guest on the show or a listener with a suggestion for someone you'd like us to interview, you can contact me at podcast@relationalpsych.group. The Relational Psych podcast is hosted and produced by me, Tyson Conner. Carly Claney is our executive producer, with technical support by Sam Claney and Ally Raye. Our music is by Ben Lewis. We love you, buddy.
Further Learning:
Attachment Styles and Close Relationships Quiz:
http://www.web-research-design.net/cgi-bin/crq/crq.pl
