Finding Purpose and Meaning Through Trauma with Dr Yvonne Waft

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm here with Dr Yvonne Waft, a clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant, and author of her new book, Coping with Trauma. Yvonne has a unique perspective on trauma, having lived through life changing trauma in her teens to becoming a Paralympic athlete and helping others through clinical psychology and sports coaching.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links for Yvonne:

Website: www.catalystclinpsy.co.uk

LinkedIn: Dr Yvonne Waft

Facebook: @catalystclinpsy

Twitter/X: @catalystclinpsy

Instagram: @waftyvonne

Book: Coping With Trauma: Surviving and Thriving in the Face of Overwhelming Events by Dr Yvonne Waft www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/waft

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Yvonne tells us what sparked her interest in psychology 01:13
• Yvonne talks about why she thinks she took decisions to try and seek out insight and meaningful activity post trauma 04:40
• We discuss EMDR training 18:00
• Yvonne tells us how her psychology career evolved 22:38
• Yvonne talks about her move to private practice 38:15
• I ask Yvonne about her book 44:42
• Yvonne tell us where we can connect with her 55:30

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice. 

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/

For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple of spots left for individual coaching so let me help you get 2024 off to the best start possible.

https://psychologybusinessschool.com/1-to-1-coaching-for-mental-health-professionals/

Mentioned in this episode:

Psychology Business School

Is this the year that you take your private practice seriously? Maybe you are just starting out or perhaps you want to grow your practice with a team or passive income. Whatever stage you are at, I would love to support you. For new practices, I have our group coaching programme, Start and Grow where you will find all the support, resources and knowledge you need to create an impactful and rewarding practice. https://psychologybusinessschool.com/psychology-business-school/ For more established practices come and take a look at my coaching for growth packages. I have a couple of spots left for individual coaching so let me help you get 2024 off to the best start possible. https://psychologybusinessschool.com/1-to-1-coaching-for-mental-health-professionals/

Start and Grow

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Yvonne Waft

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm here with Dr Yvonne Waft, a clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant, and author of her new book, Coping with Trauma. Yvonne has a unique perspective on trauma, having lived through life changing trauma in her teens to becoming a Paralympic athlete and helping others through clinical psychology and sports coaching. So it's wonderful to have you with us today, Yvonne. Welcome to the podcast.

Hi, Rosie. Thanks for having me on. I'm really pleased to be here. Really looking forward to it.

It's brilliant to have you because this series of The Business of Psychology is all about finding fulfilment in your work. And one thing that really struck me reading about your journey is that your personal experience seems to drive your passion for your work, and that really shines through everything that you put out there.

So I'd really like to ask you some questions today about your journey into psychology and then that transition into private practice. And of course, we're going to talk about your experience of taking on the massive challenge that is writing a book. So let's start at the beginning then. What sparked your interest in psychology?

I think, I mean, it's an interesting question, but I think it was a bit of an unconscious process that brought me into psychology originally. I think the driver was the fact that, as you said, I went through a very significant trauma at 19 years of age, I experienced bacterial meningitis with sepsis, which is quite a serious combination, often fatal, but fortunately in my case, not. And in the aftermath of that, I think I was very well looked after physically. I was patched up medically, surgically, all of that side of things. However, I think the emotional side was lacking. I think I really could have done with probably a health psychologist, a clinical psychologist, a counselling psychologist, someone to come in and spend some time with me, helping me make sense of what had happened and how I was going to move forward with my life from that point onwards. And that wasn't there.

That's quite shocking actually, isn't it? Thinking about a young person going through something like that, or anybody actually of any age going through that, to not have a psychologist involved. Yeah, that's shocking.

I don't know whether that's to do with it being the middle of the 1980s when it happened, or you know, whether there were many clinical psychologists around or counselling psychologists, or health psychologists. I know in some respects we're quite new professions, aren't we, the practitioner psychologists, but I would have thought that that would have been available back in the mid 80s. I've certainly had colleagues who were qualified in that era, who could have, who could have potentially worked in that sort of environment. So yeah, it was something that was distinctly lacking in my care. And I think, you know, over, over the course of a few years after that illness something drew me towards studying psychology. And I think it was an urge to understand more about what was going on in my head and, you know, how I was making sense of what had happened to me, which had happened to me on the back of quite difficult childhood experiences too, in that I didn't have the most supportive of parenting growing up and, you know, my father was quite a, an aggressive, angry man. And that had an impact on me too. So I went into this illness with already, I think emotional difficulties that really weren't helped by the trauma of the illness I went through. And I think there was a lot to sort out in my head and, you know, I found various ways of, of moving forwards after illness. So, as you mentioned, getting into sport was helpful to me. Finding connection with people who'd kind of trodden that path in various ways before me, that really helped. But I think, I think I needed a more sort of psychologically informed professional bit of guidance at that time and that that was lacking and I think that's what drew me into studying psychology at that time.

So it sounds like you were quite a proactive young person. What do you think it was about you that meant you took those decisions to try and seek out things like, you know, insight and meaningful activity, rather than perhaps going down a more avoidant pathway?

I'm not entirely sure, but I wonder if maybe having a lot of adversity in childhood already had made me a very sort of self-sufficient, independent sort of person who felt that no one was going to do this for me, I was going to have to do it on my own kind of thing and I think that was a big lesson of my childhood. Nobody was going to do it for me, I was going to have to do it on my own. And then getting through this horrific illness, you know, I was looked after well in the hospital by nurses, doctors, physios, OTs. But it was the emotional side that I think was really lacking. And, you know, there was that part of me that just thought, well, you've got to do it yourself.

You've got to find your own way through this. You know, there was strong echoes of childhood, sort of, you know, you're just going to have to get through this yourself. happening there. So, so I think that's what it was. And that's what led me into sort of finding sport, finding connection there, and then moving into psychology and academia. And again, finding connection, finding my people. That was what was important to me.

And did that happen immediately? I mean, we've mentioned the kind of sporting side you know, how easy was it for you to slot into that world?

Well, I had a really lucky encounter, really. I, I was in hospital still and they were preparing me for discharge out into well back to my parents home initially and I was having an appointment with a physiotherapist and I was talking, talking about, you know, what am I going to do now and what's out there for me? And I somehow I knew that there was wheelchair basketball, I must have seen something on telly about it at some point earlier. And I asked about sport and it just coincidentally happened that this physio was actually working on a shoulder injury in the captain of the GB men's wheelchair basketball team at the time. Who he later, he later went on to be the chairman of the International Paralympic Committee, Sir Phil Craven.

So that was a really lucky chance encounter, and she was able to get his contact details and obviously permission to contact him from him. And so when I was discharged from hospital, I was a little bit nervous and it took me a while, but eventually I thought I'm just going to ring him and see what he says. And I rang him and sort of said, you know, I'm a bit broken here and I don't know what to do and I've heard you, you play wheelchair basketball. And can I play sort of thing. And he said yeah come along to, in a broad Lancashire accent because that's how he talks, yeah, come along to a training session. And somehow or other, I can't remember the details of how we did it, but he took me along to some training sessions and I just fell in love with the sport and, you know, I mean, it was mostly male dominated at that time. There were very few women playing but, you know, you were allowed to play with the men and, you know, if you were any good you could, you could sort of progress in the sport. And so I went along and I just loved it. And what was really, really positive for me was that these were people who were living their lives with disability. You know, a lot of them were paraplegic, there were some amputees there. I'd become a double amputee as a result of the septicaemia. There were people with all sorts of significant disabilities. Just living their best lives, doing sport, married, working with careers, studying parenting, all the things that you sort of look for in adult life, or you might look for in adult life, were happening variously amongst these people. And so for me, that was really inspiring, and encouraging. It allowed me to think, oh, oh, these things might be open to me still, because I didn't know, you know, I didn't have a template for how to be a disabled adult when, you know, what seemed like five minutes previously I'd been an able bodied 19 year old and suddenly here I was facing lifelong disability and not knowing what the rules were really.

It sounds like a really powerful experience to go into that space and meet those people doing such incredible things.

Absolutely.

But also overwhelming, I've got to say, actually, when I'm putting myself in the shoes of a 19 year old, I couldn't even talk to proper grown-ups when I was 19. So it, it must have, there must have been something really courageous within you to be facing all of this uncertainty in your life and to go, do you know what? I'm going to chuck myself into the lion's den.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I say, it took me a while to actually ring Phil, you know, when I got his phone number, I kind of put it somewhere safe and thought I will ring him, but I was terrified of grown-ups. I was a really anxious young person, really anxious. I mean, I hadn't had the best of, as I've already said, I hadn't had the best of childhoods and that doesn't set you up to be a confident young adult going into the world. So yeah, I was terrified and, you know, it took me several abortive attempts to pick the phone up and, you know, actually dial the number, you know, proper old fashioned phone, sort of, you know, dialling the number and actually speaking to Phil. And of course, he was lovely and welcoming and, you know, enthusiastic and keen and, and it, it was all lovely but yeah, terrifying as a 19 year old who, you know, it's just experienced a life changing illness that meant that I didn't know what the rules for living were anymore. I didn't know how to go about being a disabled adult at all. So yeah, it was, it was massively impactful. And I think that's what drives me now. In my voluntary work with Sheffield Steelers Wheelchair Basketball Club, where I am a coach. And, you know, I stopped playing a few years ago. I've retired a few times from wheelchair basketball as a player, played, retired, went back to playing, retired again. But now I have completely retired from playing, but I still coach. And, you know, it's lovely to see young people coming through, you know, either newly disabled or been disabled all their life, but maybe been in a mainstream school where they've had no opportunity to engage in sport. And often the disabled child in a cohort in a year group at school is the one who gets given the stopwatch and told to time or be the starter, you know, and so they've had no experience of actually, you know, participating in sport in a meaningful way, and they come into wheelchair basketball and suddenly they're on a level playing field with other people dealing with the same issues. And it's not just about the sport, far from it, it's so much about the sort of opportunities for social engagement, for seeing what people can do, for, you know, seeing what's possible in life, not just on the sport pitch or court. You know, it's, it's very much about having those role models, those people who are out there

living their life as a disabled person, and suddenly you start to see, actually there's possibilities out there for me. You know, I don't have to be this isolated person who can't go out and do things. And I think that's incredibly powerful for the young people that I coach now, you know, seeing those of us that have been there, done that, got the t shirts, and just being able to follow in our footsteps. or wheel tracks, I suppose, for some of us.

Yeah, it must be amazing to now be that example that you so needed as a young person. I can imagine that's an incredibly fulfilling place to be.

It totally is. It really is. And I think for me that, you know, one of my values, one of my really strong values is about sort of educating or, or well learning first of all, but then sharing that learning with others. And I think that applies both professionally and personally. So what I learned personally through getting into sport, I can now convey that through my coaching to the younger people who are coming through. But then similarly, what I've learned psychologically, I can then pass on, you know, through therapy, through supervision, through writing, through sharing my learning and through teaching as well, the various ways that, you know, I'm, I'm now functioning as a psychologist, there's, there's many, many different sort of elements to what I do now. And that, that all comes from that sort of value of initially learning and then sharing that learning.

I think it's so powerful when you can connect with something like that, which is a core value, then it kind of pulls together all these disparate elements of your life. And I think work feels a lot more fulfilling when it feels like that, when you can connect it to something which It's not just about your career, you know, if they took away psychology from you, you would still have that part of yourself and you would find other avenues for it. And I always think that that is a really, you know, powerful realisation to have.

Yeah, absolutely. I think so. I think, you know, as I've kind of reached my slightly more advanced stage of life now, I'm starting to see how these things fit together more. There were times when, you know, I would think I had basketball and that was over there doing that thing and I had, you know, psychology work, doing therapy over here, doing that thing and, you know, when I worked in the NHS that was, that was a thing that I did and it felt very separate, and then there's the parenting role and, you know, the, the life stuff. But as, as I've kind of reached this point in my life where I'm a basketball coach, I'm quite well respected there. I'm quite well respected as a psychologist, as an EMDR consultant, as a facilitator on EMDR trainings now you know, I'm, I'm called into Leeds University at least once a year to do a bit of training to the clinical psychology trainees there, so I've got that kind of, you know, sense of I am, you know, respected in my various fields and actually they're all really, really closely linked. So they're all about kind of, you know, sharing that sense of, I’ve trodden a path through trauma, through learning, through sport, through psychology. And now I'm sharing that knowledge and giving it back almost to the younger generations in all these various fields that I'm connected with.

That sounds really powerful. I also was wondering about that kind of, you know, although at times it might have felt like a small part when you were right at the beginning of that journey, but that kind of powerfully courageous part that was willing to put yourself in really frightening situations, in pursuit of a better future, of a better life. It strikes me that that part of you was probably present when you were taking the plunge into psychology as well, because that's an intimidating world to walk into.

Isn't it just? Absolutely. I mean, I think there's always been this kind of battle between two major parts of me, there's been the kind of terrified child part of me that has felt very criticised very vulnerable to criticism very afraid of putting herself forward and that very much comes from you know, the, the critical parenting, the, the at times emotionally abusive parenting I received, particularly from my father growing up. And that part of me always kind of tries to pull me back, hold me back, not venture, you know, stopped me from ringing Phil Craven to you know, sort of get involved in basketball sooner I, but there's always this part of me that's wanting to drive forward and be noticed and get ahead with things and so that part does, you know, there's this inner battle that goes on. But, thankfully, at times the strong, courageous part says no, for God's sake, just pick up the phone, just ring the man, what's he going to do? You know, what's the worst that can happen? And, and I think that part of me is led by this value of wanting to succeed, wanting to be noticed, wanting to be respected, which is in contrast to this part that's terrified of not being respected, terrified of being criticised and put down, and there is a part that really wants to get forward and be noticed and respected, and that part has riven forward against all the sort of friction caused by this more critical part, a more vulnerable part. And I think I have, you know, I, I have repeatedly throughout my life, put myself in situations that have been utterly terrifying and I still do it, you know, I recently completed the, the process of becoming an EMDR training facilitator, which involves facilitating on EMDR training under the supervision of the trainer themselves, and then being observed and, you know, sort of judged and criticised and assessed, and it's horrible. You know, I really, really still struggle with that, less than I used to, but it's still there that kind of got to put myself through this awful process of being assessed and observed. And there's part of me that thinks I am probably going to go on and become an EMDR trainer because I, you know, one of the things that really has helped me on my journey and improved my sort of sense of being an imposter has been EMDR therapy. I've received it as a, as a client and I've also delivered it many, many times as a, as a therapist. And it's, I really sort of strongly feel that I want to bring this to more people. And so becoming an EMDR trainer is the next logical step on that journey.

And it really fits with that value you were talking about, about sharing your knowledge. And I think it's so funny with EMDR, somebody said to me on the advanced training I went on, it's a bit like we've all drunk the Kool Aid and it is, isn't it? It's like you need to share it when you've experienced how powerful it can be.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, I remember back when I was first curious about EMDR before I actually got on my first training, and there were people that, there seemed to be sort of two sides to it. There were the sort of EMDR evangelists, you know, the ones who were sort of almost singing hymns to kind of the wonders of EMDR, and then there were the people sort of muttering in the background going, Oh, it's a load of rubbish, load of rubbish, load of rubbish.

And I didn't know which side of that debate I fell on. I was really curious and I wanted to find out. And I went on my EMDR training. And on my part one training, I had a really profound experience just in the bit where we practise on each other in the EMDR part one training, that you know, this poor person working with me practising EMDR skills started on something fairly straightforward and innocuous, just a very sort of lightweight memory, but my mind wasn't satisfied with that and it bounced back to something earlier and then something earlier still, back to a really, really early memory that was really, really transformational for me to process that. And that was on my part one EMDR training. And it really was like, you know, I was a convert.

I was, you know, hallelujah. Yeah, EMDR is the thing. And I, I've been absolutely converted to it ever since.

I had such a similar experience on my training. And I think when that's happened to you, it justs ignites something in you, which thinks, okay, I've got to share this. And it sounds like for you, so much of your fulfilment at work does come from sharing knowledge.

Yeah, it really does. And that's something that, you know, me probably 10 or 15 years ago utterly terrified of, but something, you know, that strong, courageous part of me kept driving forward and saying, right, well, we've got the EMDR practitioner status. Let's go for consultant. And then there was this sort of push pull and I, I'd move forward a few steps and then I'd say, no, no, no, it's not for me. And then I'd push forward again. And, eventually did all the necessaries to get that consultant status and, you know, started delivering supervision more. I already did do some supervision before that, but not specifically in EMDR. And yeah, I just started to really think, actually, I really do enjoy the supervision aspect, possibly more than the therapy sometimes, you know, maybe equally so. But there's such a demand for EMDR supervision now that having that status as a consultant means that I've constantly got people wanting a space, you know, either for one-to-one supervision or in a group. And yeah, like I say, I've, I've then gone ahead and become an EMDR facilitator. So I'm kind of at the trainings doing sort of supporting the trainees through the practical parts of the training through the sort of, you know, trying it out on each other parts and helping them to problem solve that and learn, you know, the mechanics of it all through that. So, you know, that, that just, it really does fit with that value of, you know, sharing the knowledge. Absolutely.

So can you tell me a little bit about how your psychology career evolved?

Yeah, so I came to it late you know, I'd had a bit of an interruption to things at age 19 to say the least and it took a while. I think, you know, you don't just bounce back from something like that and think, right, I'm going to do a psychology degree, I'm going to understand myself, and I'm going to get straight into clinical. It just doesn't happen overnight. I mean, clinical psychology doesn't happen overnight for anybody, but recovery from that kind of trauma doesn't happen overnight, either. I think sport was instrumental in me, sort of starting to see that I could have a life, I could do, I could get back to the academics I could get back to you know, pursuing a career, but that all took time and, you know, I needed to grow and develop through that time. So I was mid to late twenties when I went and did my undergraduate degree in psychology, thoroughly enjoyed that. The imposter part of me made me work very, very hard through that degree thinking I was going to fail and came out with a first. Which I don't think, you know, it was a bit of a perfectionist kind of striving need to not sort of, you know, not, not drop the ball at all throughout that training, throughout that undergrad. And at some point during my undergrad someone came and did a lecture to us on clinical psychology, and the subtext of that lecture seemed to be, it's out there and you can do it but really don't bother trying because it's virtually impossible. You know, that was basically all the, all the grounding we got in clinical psychology from my undergrad. It’s mad, isn't it? But, and so there was this sort of slightly vulnerable, self critical part of me thinking, well, that's no use, you'll never do that then, but then there was this other part of me, the, the fighter part, I suppose, that just said, right, well, that's a red rag to a bull. And that's what we're going to do, we're going to do clinical. So, yeah, then I went through a process of, I suppose, having various jobs, trying to get assistant psychologist jobs as people do. I was also going through various other life stage things at the time. I'd met my then future husband you know, we were sort of looking at getting married, all that sort of thing.

We were looking to relocate. We were in London at the time, wanting to move back up to sort of the north of England. So, you know, there was all sorts going on. And gradually I got into the assistant psychologist posts and had my daughter, actually in between, in between assistant posts, I think I had my daughter, can't remember the exact timings of everything, but then started clinical training as a disabled person, aged mid-thirties, with a two year old toddler in tow, who actually had some emerging special needs as well. So she had some issues that were complicated and just emerging, we didn't really know what we were dealing with at that time. And so I really did have my hands full. I started clinical training full time at Leeds and the first year nearly broke me, I have to say. I was in quite a mess by the end of placement visit at the end of the first year we'd had various sort of things going on with my daughter, she'd had some surgeries, we'd had some diagnoses, we'd, you know, there was lots going on, and, you know, just the sheer effort of parenting a two year old, any two year old, whilst working full time on, on a course that's more than full time. Their idea of full time is approximately seven and a half days a week. And I was trying to parent a toddler through that. So I, I did have a bit of a breakdown in my end of placement visit, and my tutor just said, oh, you can go part time, you know. And I thought, why didn't someone tell me this before? Why? I've been so, and there is that part of me that always thinks, well, you know, I've got to manage this on my own. I've got to struggle through, no one's going to help me. So maybe there was a part of me that just internalised all of that struggle and, and didn't ask for help when I should have asked for help. But I kind of was reaching breaking point and thinking I was going to have to drop out of the course. And so he suggested I go part time and they sort of reduced me to, I think, a contract of 30 hours a week, which still amounted to a lot of study. Yeah, it's a lot with a two-year-old, well, three year old by then, I suppose. It's still a lot. And, It was, that was only the sort of contact part of the course was reduced to 30 hours. As you know, clinical training involves an awful lot of self-directed study on top of being in placement being in uni doing your research and all the rest of it. So effectively what they did was they freed me up a day from placement to do some of the self-directed stuff, but it was still not enough, I was still very busy. But it just about saved my sanity and just about meant I could hang in there throughout the course. And so I was able to struggle on and complete the course. And I have to admit, once I'd had that meeting in my intern placement meeting, I started being much more upfront with my placement supervisors. And I started just playing the, you know, I'm disabled, I've got a disabled kid. I'm really struggling here. You know, if I need to go early for, for a doctor's appointment with my daughter, you know, can I just go early, please, please don't make me make the time up? And I started to ask for more help. And I think that was a really important learning point for me was actually, if you ask for help, sometimes people will allow it. And that was…

I do think it's a shame, I do think it's a shame though, that on a clinical psychology course, that help wasn't more proactively offered. And I know when I trained, it still wasn't being proactively offered to the parents on the course, or people with any kind of additional need. And I think that's something that we really need to address as a profession. I do not think that the way that we operate actually promotes inclusion. I really don't.

It absolutely doesn't. I think you know, people who are privileged and able to take maybe unpaid honorary posts straight out of uni are going to be able to get the experience they need and get on the course much younger before they're perhaps Managing with kids, people who've had kids young or people who haven't managed to get around to this until later and have kids are going to struggle to do those kind of honorary posts to get into the field and I think that's something that I've always felt very strongly, you know when my daughter was in nursery, when I got an assistant psychologist post on, I don't know what would have been the equivalent now of probably band three or four sort of pay, my entire salary was taken up by nursery fees. Luckily, I had a husband who was working. He was a teacher, so, you know, he was paying the bills, I was purely working for the experience. You know, I could have stayed at home and we'd have been exactly the same level of wealth and, and not pursued the career. However, I saw it as a longer-term investment, and so my entire salary went to the nursery to pay my daughter's fees. And, you know, that was seen by us as an investment in the future. And it has paid off, you know, it, you know, once you get through and you get to the point where I am now working in private practice. You know, I'm the sole earner now. You know, my husband's doing more of the kind of care stuff around my daughter's needs as a young adult. So, you know, it's, it has kind of reversed in a sense, and that was a worthwhile investment at the time, but it was, it was a struggle, and I think the whole journey up to and including sort of being qualified and working in the NHS, there were so many struggles that I faced that were more than was needed, you know, it was more of a struggle than it needed to be, you know, things could have been in place, there could have been much more reasonable adjustment and much more, you know, availability of part time and flexible working. Even in qualified clinical psychology posts, sometimes you might be able to go part time, but the idea of flexible working, maybe working around nursery hours or school hours wasn't really, you know, very available, it was very difficult to kind of negotiate that. And so, you know, trying to wrangle a special needs kid early in the morning to get them to school and to get them into childcare so that you could get to work for nine o'clock, as a disabled person, that was all really quite hard. And it's only now looking back that I realised quite how hard it was. At the time, I was just kind of in survival mode, blinkered, pushing forward, thinking it is going to be worth it. It has to be at some point, it has to be worth it. But it was a real struggle and I think that's something that you know, I really think there needs to be more thought about, you know, how we increase inclusivity in both the training pathway, you know, even pre training in the sort of, you know entry level jobs kind of area, and into training, and even undergraduate level you know the struggles I have there just with accessibility at university and I still see on Twitter you know students being, you know, in undergrad courses, not being able to accept access lecture theatres adequately. You know, there being one wheelchair space at the very back of the lecture theatre at the top back, you know if you've got, if you're a wheelchair user and got a visual impairment, how are you then going to be able to, you know, be included in that? So yeah, there's, there's all sorts of areas where, you know, adequate thought hasn't been given to including people fully at any stage of the journey.

It's so disappointing, isn't it, that that is still the case. I think I get the feeling we could rant about this for a long time. I really want to go off on about honorary positions because I think they're so disrespectful. Okay, so we'll reset because I really want to get into your transition into independent work. So we've mentioned there a few factors that were probably pulling you towards the flexibility of independent work, but was there, was there anything else that drew you towards starting out independently?

Absolutely. I think for me in the secondary care service where I was working, there was a lot of transformation happening in the way services were delivered. And there was a lot of move towards more agile working. So, whereas the department had previously been a department that stood alone, people came for psychological therapy, usually as outpatients, although we did do some work into the inpatient wards as well from there. There was a base, I had an office, there was an accessible bathroom. And, you know, it was, for me as a disabled member of staff it worked really well and for clients coming who had trauma histories, coming to a department where they knew it was nicely enclosed, it was secure and they would be seen in the same room with the same clinician, it was very rare that anyone burst into your room unexpectedly you know, which, I, I had experienced in other services, you know, when I did my child placement on training, it was a regular occurrence that you'd be just in the midst of a therapy session with someone and someone would burst into the room and say, I've got this booked from two o'clock. And you'd be like, no, I had it booked from… and you know, it was very, very difficult. And we didn't have that in the adult psychological therapy service, it felt very safe and secure for people who'd experienced a lot of trauma and it was very convenient for me. The transformation was going to involve moving into a hub with a fraction of the amount of space shared by multiple different teams and services. So everything was going to be thrown into this one hub. There was going to be, I think, one disabled parking space for everybody. So, you know, if I had to leave the department, you know, unless I got there first thing in the morning, I wasn't going to be able to park there.

How can this be the case? When you go to any supermarket or any shopping centre and they have a mandated number of disabled spaces, they have to have, a proportion of regular spaces. How is this not happening at NHS premises?

Who knows? Who knows? There was, there was going to be hardly any staff parking at all, if any, I think. And there was going to be sort of one or maybe two, I don't know disabled spaces, but, you know, when you think about who attends mental health services, you get lots of people with physical disabilities, lots of older people who can't walk very far. And, you know, shock horror, staff as well who might have a disability, you know, we do exist! But they seem to be completely ignored in the sort of whole setup of this hub. And the other thing that was going to be a difficulty for me, I felt was that they were really pushing this idea of agile working and going out to other places to work with people and, you know, taking files and laptops and things out with you. Now, It's not impossible for me, but it's blooming awkward. You know, I'm a wheelchair user. I need my hands free to operate my chair. I don't want to be carrying heavy files and laptops around with me any more than I need to. So there was just a whole sort of oversight of, a complete oversight of what my needs might be, and, you know, any consultation process was a tick box exercise that wasn't really listened to. But the thing, one of the things that really tipped me over on that was I was speaking to a therapy client that I was working with at the time, and this person had a strong history of childhood sexual abuse, and was a very timid person, really struggled out and about in the world, really struggled to even just come to their psychology appointments, and she'd seen the consultation document on this new hub that was going to be built, and she said, I can't go there, and I said, oh, explain to me, you know, what's, what's the difficulty? And she said, there'll be people, there'll be men there, there'll be young people who might be dysregulated, there'll be people who might make sudden noises or sudden movements there. This was someone who couldn't have tolerated being in a place where someone might have an angry outburst, or might be having a meltdown, or might just be ticking, you know, in a Tourette sort of way this person was too fragile emotionally to be able to be in that sort of environment. She needed to come somewhere that was calm, safe and secure, not somewhere where there might be anybody around. Now, that might sound judgmental about the people, sort of people that we see in different types of mental health services, but they all have a need and they all need to be accommodated somewhere and seen somewhere. And maybe we need to be sensitive to how the needs of some populations might conflict with the needs of other populations. And, you know, we need to accommodate all of that. There needs to be safe spaces for people who've got that kind of very fragile trauma history, who need to be seen safely and securely.

Of course, of course. And so was it that kind of recognising the need that was not being met for your client group that encouraged you to strike out on your own?

Very much so, very much so. And the other thing that was happening in amongst that transformation was a demand for more for less. So see more people for fewer sessions, get them through quickly, just do a quick bit of CBT, don't bother with all this trauma stuff, you know, seemed to be the message we were getting. And that didn't sit well with me, I was working with very complex trauma. I was working with people who needed maybe six months of just, sitting in a room and, and getting to know me before they could trust me with their story. And what we were getting from above was a kind of pressure to sort of get them through and done and sorted in a lot less than six months. And actually, you know, I, I wanted to be able more to work in a way that I wanted to work and not feel that pressure. We'd been allowed to do that for a long time in that service before, and we've got good results. You know, we had people recovered and did really well as a result of having that lengthy intervention sometimes. So that's what I wanted to do and I started to do as I say, you know, working privately I was able to see people. More so, for as long as felt necessary, not everybody, I mean, some people could only come if, you know, their workplace policy was paying a certain number of sessions, so there were still limitations, and there were still constraints, you know, still are constraints on how many sessions people can come for, you know, if they've got a health insurance policy through their work, the health insurance might only pay for a set number of sessions a year, and you have to work within those constraints still, you know, it's not a complete idyllic sort of way of working, but you do have more freedom. And you know, there have been people who I've been able to work with for sort of two or three years you know, and do a really comprehensive piece of trauma therapy with them. And, you know, that's, that's really satisfying being able to do that and get them from, you know, that, that sort of very timid, very frightened, very unable to go about in the world without fear sort of state, through to confident, able to travel, able to maybe progress a career that, that maybe they've been very limited in previously. And I've had really good examples of that since being in private practice where people have, you know, really, really blossomed and grown through being able to invest that time in therapy. And these don't have to be particularly wealthy people it's just a question of them, maybe prioritising their finances towards getting a good bit of therapy over a period of time. And, you know, it can be absolutely life changing. So, whereas, you know, you might spend a couple of thousand pounds maybe on a fancy holiday that makes you feel better for a few weeks, if you go and see a private therapist you know, you might spend two or three thousand pounds equally on a course of therapy, that's utterly life changing and moves you forward in ways that you can't imagine, you know, before you embark on it. So I would say that you know the things that people sometimes do to feel better, you know, maybe drinking and taking drugs or going on fancy holidays, you know, the, the sort of sense of feeling better is very short lived with those sorts of things and sometimes can have a bit of a backlash.

You know, if you take drugs and alcohol to feel better, obviously that has side effects and downsides afterwards so you know, possibly better to invest that money in a good course of therapy.

You know, there's kind of an interesting call-back there, because at the beginning of this interview, we were talking about the 19-year-old version of you facing so much adversity. I really have this feeling that you, you kind of leant towards the struggle that you were having and tried to deal with it, whereas the alternative path is the avoidant path, which I would say probably most young people in that situation would at least start off going down that path. And it's almost like, again, you're sharing your learning of, you know, I know that you've got these two options open to you. We all have those options, we can all choose to avoid, and sometimes we need to do that for a period, or we can kind of get stuck in and try and, as my old supervisor would, used to describe it, dissolve trauma, and yeah, it's like you're sharing that, that learning, having had that choice, and making the choice to lean in. Does that feel right?

I think it's, yeah, I think so. I think it's not necessarily as black and white all or nothing. I think, you know, I probably did dip into a significant amount of avoidance at times, and, you know, I certainly experimented with alcohol throughout my early 20s, probably in the way that many young people did in the 80s, certainly. I notice young people don't seem to turn to drink quite as much now as they maybe did then.

They must be doing something. I don't know what it is, but they must do.

They must have found some other way. I don't know what it is. But yeah, I think for me, I, I did dabble with avoidance, but it didn't resolve anything. And I also stumbled into very healthy, helpful ways of helping myself and maybe confronting some of what I was dealing with. And I think going into wheelchair sport was a way of you know, leaning into, okay, this has happened, here I am, let's roll with it and see what, what we can make of it. And, you know, that worked out well for me. And I don't suppose that options available to everybody. And, but other options, you know, for other people, you know, maybe music, maybe arts, maybe crafts, maybe other sorts of activities can, can be a way for people to accept and move on and develop as a person through, through all sorts of, you know, activities that might be led by their values.

So I suppose speaking of activities led by values, when did you decide that you were going to put all of this lifelong learning into a book?

It's interesting because people have often said to me you should write a book about your experiences and I've always thought yeah, yeah maybe one day. And, and I suppose, one of the sort of deciding factors years ago would have been that I couldn't possibly write this while my father was still alive because how would I account for, you know, having to, I couldn't write my life story or anything to do with trauma that included the personal revelations without, you know, sort of saying that I had a very abusive father. And so that was one deciding factor. So he's no longer with us. So he died, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago, something like that. I'm not entirely sure. So I don't have to justify myself to him anymore. So that was one deciding factor. Another would have been just a general sense of, well, I couldn't possibly write a book yet, I don't know enough, you know, that sort of impostery, perfectionist sort of thing that I think comes from having that sort of emotional abuse growing up, but also is rife amongst psychologists. I think we're terrible for not promoting ourselves and not feeling brave enough to say, we've got vast amounts of knowledge and we just keep it under our hats so much of the time and we need to, we need to really put it out there and share our knowledge because we know so much. And so there was a dawning realisation over time of that fact that I actually do know a lot of stuff. And I've been through a lot of stuff as well and so, you know, sort of putting those two things together. But then the sort of tipping point, the trigger point, was an email came out from the Association of Clinical Psychologists about three years ago, just over three years ago saying that Sarah Swan had had the idea of writing a book about her journey with breast cancer and, you know, sort of, coupling that with the sort of professional what to do, what, what can you do to cope with breast cancer. So she came up with the Coping with Breast Cancer book. She pitched that to the ACP and they said, Oh, this could be a series. And so somehow or other an email came out to all the members of the ACP saying, we're thinking of this series of books on coping with X, Y, Z. Have you got an X, Y, Z that you can write a book about, you know, from the personal and professional perspective? And I thought, yes, I have trauma. That's my bag, professionally and personally. And I pinged an email back without even giving my imposter time to wake up. I just pinged that email back and then thought, I don't know what I've done. And then it was really difficult to backtrack. So I kind of was swept along a little bit on this whole putting in a book proposal and getting writing and, and then just got into a rhythm of, well not every week but you know, kind of started trying to clear my Fridays a little bit so that I could spend time writing. And I wasn't 100 percent effective in that, but you know I did eventually it took two and a half years, basically, and there were a few times during that time where I said to the family, look, I'm not getting very far with the writing I'm going to book myself into a hotel for a few days there's food in the freezer, good luck, see you, bye, and left them to it for a couple of days, and that was just really helpful to me in being able to sort of go away to somewhere not, not far away, you know, somewhere with a swimming pool, I love to swim. That's, that's one of my sort of essential life's essentials for me is getting in water on a regular basis. So I went to a hotel, had a swim in the morning, went for breakfast and then just wrote all day long taking the odd break for a coffee or, you know, a snack. And that was a way that I managed to make a bit more progress on my book. And yeah, two and a half years later I submitted a draft. And then it, you know, it pinged backwards and forwards between me and the editors for a bit, and then there's all the, I don't know what happens at the publishing end, you know, it's all kind of, they have things to do like printing covers and typesetting and things like that, I don't know. And, and yeah so it's eventually emerged in written form in real life form. So yeah, it's a real book.

Amazing. And so what, what impact are you hoping the book is going to have?

I think there's a number of ways I think it can be helpful. I think one of the ways it can be helpful is that people who've experienced trauma will be able to read it, and they'll be able to understand what trauma is, and why they're feeling the way they're feeling, and why they're acting the way they're acting, and maybe make some changes, you know, based on some really common sense, simple sort of ideas that I give in terms of things that you can do to maybe think differently about your trauma, feel differently about your trauma and act differently about your trauma. It, it uses a lot of ideas from acceptance and commitment therapy because that's a therapy that, you know, a lot of it can be very self-directed. It's not, you know, we've talked a bit about EMDR today, I'm not encouraging people to go out and do EMDR on themselves in a book, because that wouldn't be safe, people would end up getting into a bit of a pickle with, you know, potentially complex destabilisation. So, you know, this is things that you can safely do at home, on your own, or maybe with the support of a friend. And it, it's giving ideas about basic things that people need to be in place before they can really process their trauma. So it's the things that in, for example, in EMDR therapy, we do a lot on psychoeducation about trauma. So we try to encourage the person to learn about trauma. And then we do lots of stuff about. stabilising skills. So things like mindful breathing, things like visualisation, things like progressive muscle relaxation, but we'd also be encouraging people to take up maybe mindful activities, activities that help them connect better in society or at least connect with nature and, you know, sort of getting out and about and doing, doing things that are rewarding and driven by values. So for people who've experienced trauma, or people who are supporting someone who's been through trauma, it's, it's that sort of self-help level and it's written to be accessible at that self-help level, hopefully, I think. And that is the feedback I'm getting, that it is quite accessible. But also I think people, you know, ss a trauma therapist, I like to encourage people to go away and read something alongside their therapy to kind of speed things along, help them kind of support the stuff that we're talking about. And I've long since been suggesting people read things like The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris, which is a lovely book, very helpful, but it's not about trauma. And what I really wanted, and have wanted for quite a long time, is a happiness trap for trauma. And as I, I saw a quote a couple of weeks ago by a children's novelist, a deceased now children's novelist from the United States called Tony Penny Morrison, I think her name is, and she said, if you see a book that hasn't been written yet that you want to read, then you need to write it. And I, you know, that that kind of resonates with how this came about, you know, I needed a book to recommend to clients that I could say, this will help you with your trauma journey and with your therapy journey, and So I wrote it.

I think that's wonderful. And I think, you know, there'll be people listening to this who have also been looking for that book. And one thing I really love to do with this podcast is kind of fill up your bookshelves with these recommendations because so many times I'll be, you know, searching Amazon, looking for, you know, what's a good book about this. But you don't know what's a good book about that from Amazon. So I imagine there's lots of people today that have heard your story and, you know, got a bit to know what your values are, what the book's about, who will then be recommending it to their clients. So it's just such an amazing way to reach a lot of people with something that is so important.

Absolutely. I really hope so. And I think, you know, at an earlier point in my journey as a psychologist, you know, for example, as an assistant psychologist, when I had someone in the room with me you know, and I was supposed to be doing something and I wasn't quite sure what, it would have really helped me to have a book that was aimed at self-help that I could have kind of taking some exercises from or taking some psychoeducation from and I could have used that to guide what I was doing in the room with people and I think even throughout clinical training on the doctorate, one of the sort of regular refrains of the trainees in the teaching sessions was yes but what do we do in the room? You know, it was kind of stop giving me all this theory, stop telling me all about what so and so and so and so 1976 said, tell me what to do in the room. And I'm hoping that for those people at that beginning stage of the journey, this will at least give them some things to do in the room that will make them feel a bit less incompetent than I sometimes did at that stage.

Oh yes, I mean I remember that. I remember swallowing The Happiness Trap, because I had this client that I was really stuck with and my supervisor said, Oh, I think acceptance and commitment therapy might help. I was like, well, how am I going to learn that by next week? So I read the entirety of The Happiness Trap and I read one of Paul Gilbert's books about compassion focused therapy as well.

Then I was like, right, I'm just going to try these things. And, but what there wasn't really in those books was much understanding of trauma. And I do think that that's been a real gap in the self-help literature because people have been a bit scared to go there, I'd say. I think it's, it's really amazing that you filled that gap and been so generous with your personal experience as well, because that makes everything's so much more understandable for people and so much more real. I think there's so much power in, in sharing our own stories. So thank you for doing that in the book and thank you for doing that here today as well. I know I'm just mindful of your time because we've, we've run over slightly, sorry about that, it's just been fascinating and I know that there's going to be a lot of people that want to connect with you after this and follow what you're doing. So where is the best place for people to go and find you?

Obviously on the social media. I've got a website myself, so my website, obviously I've got a fairly unusual name, if you just Google it, I come up. And likewise on all the platforms, you know, if you look for Dr Yvonne Waft, you'll find me. I think you'll have all my sort of social handles in the show notes. I've got a fairly unique name, so I think if people just go on these platforms and look for Dr Yvonne Waft, I'll pop up and you know, so I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram, I haven't quite got my head around Instagram yet, it's all a bit of a mystery to me, but I'm, I'm trying my best and posting things when I can. And I'm also on Facebook. I've got a professional page on Facebook as well as, you know, separate from my personal Facebook. So there's leakage between those two, but mostly my professional page would be the place to look for me on Facebook.

Brilliant. I'll make sure all the links are in the show notes, including a link to the book, because I'm sure people are going to be really interested in that. So, anyone who's listening rather than watching, Yvonne's holding up the book and doing really good TV ads. And I'll make sure this goes out on YouTube so that people can see it.

But yeah, thank you so much for your time. It's been fascinating talking to you today.

Oh, you're very welcome and thanks for having me on. It's just so much fun doing these. I love it. So yeah, thank you so much.