Dr Juliet Anton on finding identity as a qualified and accredited Psychologist.
01 September 2026
Ten years ago, I embarked on an MSc Psychology Conversion course. At the time, I knew I was taking a less conventional route into the profession, but I could not have anticipated how much that journey would shape my professional identity. Today, I am a qualified Counselling Psychologist, having worked across the NHS and prison service, and I now also run my own private practice. Yet, despite having been qualified for seven years, I still find myself reflecting on what it means to truly identify and belong within the psychology community.
Reading Laura Kövés's reflections on the experience of MSc Psychology Conversion students resonated with me deeply. Her words brought back not only the challenges of the conversion journey, but also what makes it such a distinctive and valuable route into psychology.
The mindset of powering through
When I started my conversion course, there was a strong sense that I needed to power through. I was already conscious that I had chosen the longer route into psychology. I had another degree, another professional identity and a considerable amount of catching up to do. I therefore felt I could not afford to waste time.
My instinct was to only look ahead. I began applying for doctorate courses whilst doing the conversion course, wanting to qualify as a psychologist sooner rather than later. Yet, inevitably, the reality of the route meant that some doors could not open as quickly as I wanted them to. Without the necessary Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership and the other requirements for doctoral training, I simply was not yet at the point where I could progress in the way I had envisaged.
That created a particular pressure: if I was going to take this career change seriously, I felt I had to prove that I had made the right decision.
For many conversion students, this can make achieving a particular grade feel like more than an academic goal. A 2:1 can become a psychological benchmark of whether you are good enough to continue. You know that doctoral courses are competitive and that academic performance matters, so the pressure can become enormous. You are not simply studying psychology; you are trying to establish your credibility within a new discipline.
There can be an underlying thought that perhaps everyone else belongs here more naturally than you do. You are trying to catch up, keep up and prove yourself – all at once.
The isolation of an intensive journey
The intensity of the conversion course can also make it difficult to experience university in the way we might imagine student life to be.
At times, it felt as though we were trying to absorb what could have been a three year undergraduate psychology degree in a single year. There was an extraordinary amount of material to learn, understand and apply. The pace left little space to stop and consider the wider experience of becoming a psychologist.
Building professional relationships takes time. Developing friendships takes time. Finding your people takes time. When you are studying intensively, particularly if you are also working or managing other responsibilities, there can be very little time left for any of these things.
There is also something distinctive about the motivation of conversion students. Many of us arrive with a very clear purpose. We know what we want the course to lead to, and often the conversion course is viewed as a stepping stone to the next stage. The focus becomes the next application, the next qualification, the next placement or the next opportunity. That does not necessarily leave much room for simply being a student, making friends or finding a community.
The question of belonging does not necessarily disappear after qualification
Perhaps the most surprising part of my journey is that the feeling of being an outsider did not completely disappear once I became qualified. Having been a psychologist for seven years, I still occasionally ask myself: Do I really feel like I belong within the psychology community?
Imposter syndrome is often discussed in relation to students and early-career professionals, but I wonder whether the experience can take on a different form later in our careers. Psychology asks us to navigate multiple identities: scientist, practitioner, researcher, clinician, professional and, ultimately, human being working with other human beings.
Finding a balance between being a scientist and a practitioner is challenging enough. When your own journey into psychology has not followed a straightforward path, that complexity can feel even greater.
Perhaps there is an assumption that professional identity develops naturally: study psychology, train as a psychologist, become a psychologist. But conversion students do not necessarily have that linear narrative. We arrive from somewhere else. We bring previous careers, degrees, knowledge, experiences and identities with us. That can sometimes make it harder to recognise ourselves within the profession and perhaps, at times, to recognise the value of what we bring to it.
But this is precisely what makes conversion students valuable.
The challenges of the conversion route are real. But I also believe they point towards what makes these courses uniquely valuable to psychology.
Firstly, conversion courses bring together people who may never have shared a classroom otherwise. People arrive with different academic backgrounds, careers, cultures, ages, life experiences and professional identities. My own cohort exposed me to perspectives that I would not necessarily have encountered had everyone followed the same educational route. That diversity is not simply something that makes a classroom more interesting. It changes the way we think about people and the questions we ask.
Secondly, people rarely arrive on a conversion course accidentally. There is usually considerable thought behind the decision to change direction. By the time we enter psychology, many of us have already experienced another professional world. We have had opportunities to reflect on what matters to us, what kind of work we want to do and how we want to contribute. That intentionality can become an important part of our development as psychologists.
Finally, for many conversion students, the MSc is not the final destination. It is the beginning. The qualification opens a door, but what follows may be doctoral training, research, clinical practice, organisational psychology, health, policy, academia or routes that have not yet been imagined.
Reshaping Psychology
Perhaps this is why I particularly connected with the article's suggestion that conversion students are not simply joining psychology—they are reshaping it.
Ten years after completing my conversion course, I can see that much more clearly. The MSc gave me the foundation to enter psychology, but the experiences I brought with me and those I encountered along the way have shaped the psychologist I eventually became. My work across the NHS, the prison service and private practice has taken me into different contexts, with different populations and different questions about what it means to support people.
So perhaps belonging in psychology should not be measured by how conventional our route into the profession was. Maybe it should be measured by what we contribute once we arrive. Conversion students can bring something psychology needs: different perspectives, different experiences and different ways of making sense of people and the world. The route may be unconventional, and at times it may feel isolating. It may require us to work harder to establish our place within the profession. But perhaps that is also its strength.
Dr Juliet Anton
HCPC Registered Counselling Psychologist, and British Psychological Society Chartered member
SOURCE:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/conversion-students-can-bring-different-ways-making-sense-people-and-world(accessed 23.9.26)
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