Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I am really excited to have Dr Paula Redmond and Dr Mia Hobbs here to talk to me about their new venture in the world of therapeutic knitting. They are both clinical psychologists and avid knitters, and also both alumni of Psychology Business School, so I’m particularly pleased to have them here to talk about their new audio course, which is guiding people in using knitting for self care.
Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links for Mia and Paula:
@knittingistherapeutic - Instagram
Rosie on Instagram:
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TRANSCRIPT
SPEAKERS
Rosie Gilderthorp, Mia Hobbs, Paula Redmond
Rosie Gilderthorp:Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I am really excited today to have Dr Paula Redmond and Dr Mia Hobbs here to talk to me about their new venture in the world of therapeutic knitting. So, welcome to the podcast, Paula and Mia. I know you're both clinical psychologists and avid knitters, of course, and you're also both alumni of Psychology Business School, so particularly pleased to have you here today. And I'm very excited to talk about your new audio course, which is guiding people in using knitting for self care. But can we start with a little bit about each of you first, before we dive into that? So, seeing as we've had Paula on the podcast before, let's start with Mia. So Mia, can you tell me a little bit about your life as a professional and your background?
Mia Hobbs:Sure. So I'm a clinical psychologist. I qualified quite a long time ago, 2008, I think it was, and was working in the NHS. I've always worked, since qualifying, with children and families, and was working in CAMHS and in school based roles. And then in 2017, I think it was, took a kind of unplanned leap into the world of private practice. Mainly precipitated by a few push factors at work and having young children and yeah. And since then was working with children and families in private practice, but was always, I think the thing about working independently is the only obvious way of being paid is for therapy work. And I felt like that was quite, I was using less of a range of my skills, I suppose, as a result of that, because in the NHS, I would have been doing more supervising or service development, those kind of things. So I think I missed having a broader role, really. And, actually towards the end of my NHS work had ended up doing a team knitting project in my CAMHS team. And so when I was leaving, there were lots of jokes about, oh, I'm going to be using, you know, doing therapeutic knitting groups and being paid to go on exciting knitting retreats in the Arctic and all of these things. But I was kind of joking in a way. But I found it had a really positive impact on the team and it was just because somebody was having twins and lots of people wanted to knit. So I was thinking about knitting, but then I guess I just really, because I hadn't planned to leave the NHS, had to get my private practice up and running quickly. And then, I can't actually remember what year I joined Psychology Business School. It might have been 2021 or 2020. I don't know if you know, but I got a therapy dog who turned out to be the world's worst therapy dog. And I think, because I kind of thought that might change my working life and it really went very badly wrong in terms of…
Rosie Gilderthorp:Oh my goodness, I need to, I need to hear about this… I’ve never heard of a bad therapy dog, wow.
Mia Hobbs:This is another thing that bonds Paula and I, is our extremely difficult dogs.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Difficult in what way? Like interrupting clients?
Mia Hobbs:Er no. So my intention from the get go was that he would be a therapy dog. I had got insurance, I did some training. Yeah, and prepared all of it, did loads of research, but this dog does not have the kind of… when I first told Paula about him, the first question she asked was, what happened to him in his early life? Such a psychologist! And actually nothing happened, but he finds the world very challenging. He's extremely anxious. He's very specific preferences. He spends his entire life trying to predict my behaviour and I think I needed a sense of achievement or something that was going right because I was not going to get it from training this dog. So I think that was when I thought more about using knitting therapeutically as my different creative outlet.
Rosie Gilderthorp:That's so interesting. So there was a bit of a yearning from the beginning of your practice to do things in a slightly different way. And I completely agree with you. When I landed in private practice, also a bit unexpectedly, all I could think of to do was therapy, and it is the most obvious route to making the kind of income that you need to make. But it sounds like that was never going to be entirely fulfilling on its own for you. So you started looking for other routes. The dog was a potential, but he turned out to be a jerk, so that didn't work, and now it's knitting. So tell me a little bit about when you first had an inkling that knitting could be helpful in any way other than, you know, creating warm clothing?
Mia Hobbs:Well, so I think it took me an embarrassingly long time really, given that my mum taught me to knit specifically when in my first year of my clinical doctorate. She said she'd met somebody whose daughter had done the training and had learned to brick lay because she had this really strong desire to do something completely unrelated to psychology during the doctorate. And I was studying for my exams, like statistics exams or whatever it is you do in your first year of clinical training, and I said, fine, I'll just learn to knit because just to keep her happy. And then I took some knitting home with me back to London and it did end up to be really good thing to do while you're revising like just to a 10 minute break do one row of knitting, and I started on this triangular shawl that starts off with five stitches and then gets wider and wider and wider, and has an enormous wingspan now so it kind of grew with my kind of knitting ability and confidence, and even then it was like a slightly embarrassing thing I did. There were a couple of other girls on my training course who had, I think Claire Plumley says I taught her to knit, although I don't strictly speaking remember it, and there were a couple of others whose grandmas had taught them. So a few of us who would knit, not in lectures, but kind of, you know, we're just doing it around and about. But I think I didn't quite really, it took me a lot longer than that really to realise it, to use it more intentionally. And I think the first time I really did was in leaving the NHS and then I'd just done this kind of group knitting project, these two blankets for these babies. And I really struggled with leaving the NHS, it was not my plan ever to leave. It was kind of like my values were very aligned with working for the NHS. I didn't really know who I was if I wasn't doing that. And I intentionally chose a knitting project to get me through the transition. Which I think was really helpful, and looking back on it, it was this shawl that you start from two ends of this long kind of rectangle, and you start from two ends, and knit the same pattern towards the middle and then they are knitted together. So it's like these two halves of my career kind of joined in the centre. But yeah, I think that was the first time I was like, I'm going to allow myself to spend some nice, some money on this nice yarn that it's expensive. And I think it helped me to, yeah, give some time and space for that big transition, really not feel like I had to have all of the private practice stuff sorted from the get go, to tell my colleagues that it was a success, which I think was my anxiety.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Oh, I love that. So it's kind of been a personal journey and you then started to think about the fact that this could help other people going on from your personal experience.
Mia Hobbs:Well, I think I was seeing more and more, like, on Instagram, more and more people writing things about how knitting had helped them, and it was just, you know, you can buy little enamel pins that says, you know, ‘I knit because killing people is frowned upon’ or things that allude to there being some kind of benefit to your mental health of knitting and then, you know, people sharing. So it's nice to kind of keep, like, a folder of them on my computer and then eventually kind of got to the point where I thought there really is something in this, like lots of people find it very helpful. You know, surely we could use that more intentionally.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Oh, that's so interesting. I think often our minds start working on an idea without it being an unconscious awareness. And it's like we're just kind of collecting what we need to move forward with it when the time is right for us
Mia Hobbs:Yeah.
Rosie Gilderthorp:So coming to you then, Paula, can you tell us a little bit about your professional background and what led you to this path?
Paula Redmond:Yeah. So I'm also a clinical psychologist, and also qualified 2009. So been a while. And I worked in the NHS in older adults for a long time until I really couldn't anymore, I needed a change. And I think the biggest, a big driver of that was feeling really stifled creatively, you know, any kind of innovation or opportunities, you needed to go through a million committees and, you know, by the time you could get any kind of approval for anything that the moment had passed. And so I was feeling, you know, been in the same job for a long time, you know, various things needed, needed to change. And it was April 2020 when I left my NHS job. So right in the midst of other world events and interesting, you know, things, you know, challenges, you know, with home life and everything. And I think having, you know, various kind of experiences throughout my NHS career, and obviously being then in the midst of a pandemic felt a real pull towards supporting health professionals. So that was kind of where my private practice started in developing a niche around supporting health professionals with burnout and work related trauma. But I had also always wanted to have some creative element in my work. I think I, if I hadn't, you know, in another life, I would definitely have been an art therapist if I was better at art is what I would say to myself. So that's always something I wanted to explore and I kind of started some little bits around that of doing some creative workshops with staff teams for away days and little things like that, and actually using clay as a medium for that. I have a friend who's a ceramic artist and we did a few little workshops. But, I mean, I was, you know absolutely starting from zero in terms of business knowledge and, you know, any kind of idea about how to get those things, on the go. And I guess that's where, probably the Do More Than Therapy, the precursor to the Psychology Business School came in and, you know, really helpful starting point for developing a much more business kind of mindset and getting a sense of how to develop ideas and a practice, a business. And I guess a big part of that was networking and meeting other people in the membership like Mia. And I think, I'm not quite sure how it all sort of came about, but I guess we, I think we, we realised because Mia was doing her kind of therapeutic knitting stuff and developing her podcast. And I love knitting and, you know, have done for a long time just, you know, never going public with it, just a personal thing. And so we kind of realised we had that sort of connection and I guess just started talking about what possibilities there might be for, you know, doing some work together around that. So yeah, I think, and realising, yeah, that we have a lot in common, which has made it possible, like emotionally needy dogs and like, we've got kids who are the same age and, you know, wanting similar…
Mia Hobbs:We have the same birthday…
Paula Redmond:Yeah, which is really weird!
Rosie Gilderthorp:That’s really weird!
Paula Redmond:And another fact we learned recently was we both did our doctorate dissertation on hope, which is kind of a weird one, but we both did.
Rosie Gilderthorp:That's really unusual. Especially, you know, for clinical psychology training. It's yeah, it's really interesting to hear that you both picked a topic which is kind of in that more positive psychology arena when I wouldn't have said that that was typical. Very interesting. Wow, well I’m so glad that I in some way facilitated you guys coming together. That's wonderful. So I don't know which one of you wants to take this question, but whoever feels more like they want to, I suppose. Can you just say a little bit about how therapeutic knitting works to support self care? So maybe, you know, if it aligns with any particular theories that we might be used to thinking about, it would be useful to understand.
Mia Hobbs:Yeah, in terms of thinking about how knitting can benefit your mental health or your self care, I guess, I could talk for hours about it. But I think in terms of, I've interviewed lots of people on my podcast about how knitting benefits their mental health, and obviously they are the kind of converted. They're the people who knit, like I do, every day. I guess one of the special things, I think about knitting, potentially, is about the kind of soothing repetitive hand movements that happen. And I guess, there are various psychological theories that we can make links to. And I think a lot of our, the work Paula and I have done in, as part of our audio course is about borrowing psychological theories and using them to try and explain why do so many people find knitting therapeutic? And it's not that we think everybody will, but that there are lots of people who feel like it's really helpful. So I guess in terms of hand movements, we think about EMDR and think about whether there's something about those, because it's a bilateral movement, it's a kind of repetitive movement, and when you've been doing it a lot, it's kind of almost on, I guess it is in your kind of muscle memory, really. So we wonder whether there's something special that might help with, for example, processing, you know, just the minutiae of your day that is to do with those bilateral hand movements that aren't the same actually in all crafts, but they're often replicated in other types of things we do with our hands. Like some people feel similarly about things like gardening or baking or, you know, that kind of thing. The other thing about knitting is it is particularly accessible, particularly when, you know, maybe you're struggling in times of need. So you can do knitting from your bed. So many people on my podcast have spoken about feeling so depressed they can't get out of bed, but they can knit. Or from a hospital when you're recovering from a brain injury or you know, there are lots of hobbies that you couldn't. If you were an artist you can't bring an easel everywhere or I also make, I sew dresses, but I do that a lot less frequently because I have to get my sewing machine out. So you can do it in very teeny tiny increments, which I think is helpful if you're in a time in your life where, I don't know, time is hard to access. So a lot of people return to knitting after having small, you know, when they've had a baby and they haven't got much time for themselves. And I think there's something really helpful about the sense of achievement you get from just doing something and that could be as little as five minutes of stitches, but it all contributes to a bigger thing, and then all of a sudden you have a whole cardigan. So I think that lots of people find that really helpful particularly, so I guess we've drawn on theory, so we're thinking about things like behavioural activation, if you go back to very basic building blocks of behavioural or cognitive behavioural therapy linking it to we know that actually one of the best things you can do for low mood is to do things that give you a sense of achievement or give you a sense of pleasure and knitting can be both of those. Obviously, if you're introducing it to somebody for the first time, there'll be this hump of getting over learning a new skill, but I think that's I guess the some of those, yeah, very basic psychological theories And I think in our course, Paula, we've also used quite a lot of ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy to think about how you can more intentionally use knitting as part of your self care, really.
Rosie Gilderthorp:That's really interesting. And there's a few things I'm just fascinated by in that. But it was really reminding me of the model of psychological well being that we use a lot in coaching psychology, Seligman's PERMA model. Because I was just thinking that you know, it's an engaging flow state inducing activity. Again, I imagine once you're over that hump, which I've never gotten over, but I think I see people knitting and they appear to be in a kind of engaged flow state. It gives you that sense of achievement, as you mentioned, but also of the things people knit seem to have, sort of meaning woven into them. Like you've mentioned a couple of things that you've made already, Mia, that have got real significance to you, and especially if you're knitting for somebody else, or you're knitting something at a time of transition in your life, I imagine it's kind of ticking all of those perma-boxes for people. But I'm really interested in what you mentioned about the EMDR potential for it to help people with processing because it's kind of bilateral. I hadn't thought of that before. Have you, you know, had people talk to you about, you know, getting clarity on things or changing their thinking while they've been knitting?
Mia Hobbs:Yes, definitely. I have, so in actually my very first podcast interview, somebody talked about kind of knitting in their lunch break. She had a very kind of high powered corporate job and would go away and knit on her lunch break and would come back and find all her problems had been solved, things she couldn't find a solution to. And I often talk about, so I think it's lighting up different areas of my brain. And I think I spend, as you guys probably do too, lots of time in a very verbal problem solving part of my brain, and that sometimes I really need to switch that off. And I think in terms of things like, you know, I'm not very good at that.
I would say I've got quite a busy brain. I need a certain amount of things, you know, to keep me interested. I'm quite distractible. But I find if I get my hands busy, I mean, actually, Michelle Obama has written something lovely in her book about this, about that she’s, you know, for the whole, her whole life has been using her brain to direct her hands, and then she's reversing the flow. So she's kind of starting going hand up, and that that has, you know, gives you new ideas. And I feel like it opens a different trap door in my brain. I'll often bring knitting to the therapy room with me. And just before a client comes in, just sit and kind of think about, Oh, I don't know what we talked about in the last session, or think about that client for five minutes. And often we'll think of different things than if I'd been just sitting there with like a pencil trying to force myself to think of something, I think. I don't know what you think, Paula.
Paula Redmond:Yeah. I was thinking that especially when, you know, the work that we've been doing has a lot of it has been with health professionals, and I think there's something that makes a lot of sense for those people, I guess, cause we are as well, but just knitting I think enabling people to slow down. You know, people who are very busy and driven and, you know, you can't run around and rush and do it. You have to, you have to slow down, but it makes it possible to do that because you are also achieving something at the same time. So if you're a really, you know, driven, achieving person, just sitting to, you know, slow down, kind of, you know, reset the nervous system, just make space for whatever, you know, kind of cognitive emotional load you're left with is really difficult to do, but I think having something like knitting can make that possible from a physiological perspective and a psychological one. So we talk a bit about how it really fits with ideas around work recovery and you know, depending on the kind of needs that you may have, whether that is around kind of rest and digesting what you've been through, you know, in your day or a sense of achievement that maybe in your job, you're not getting. But also, as you mentioned, that sense of connection to values, that's a kind of big theme we have in our course, to identities, to connections, and really nurturing those. Knitting can help, either directly by, you know, maybe making something for someone and nurturing a connection in that way, or for yourself and nurturing that connection, and just, I think some of the steps, you know, not just around the actual knitting process, but around choosing a project, you know, deciding what you need from a project to meet your needs, whatever they are, makes knitting such a great tool for that because it's so versatile, in terms of the, you know, millions of different options of the kind of projects that you can take on.
Rosie Gilderthorp:I think it's so interesting because, you know, always when I do these interviews, I'm thinking, you know, how can I incorporate some of these ideas into my practice? And obviously, I'm somebody that can't knit, even though my gran did teach me, and I could do it as a child. But I was thinking, you know, I've just started offering EMDR intensives, and one of the things that I encourage people to do a lot in that process is get up and move and, you know, go for walks, whatever kind of physical activity feels good for them. But I have, I've not had this happen clinically yet, but I'm aware that there will be clients, particularly in my client group, that can't do anything particularly physical, because maybe they're dealing with an injury or, you know, as you said, difficulties with motivation, lots of reasons that people might not be able to use their body in the way that they would like to, to help with processing. And I think this is a really interesting avenue for that. And increasingly, I'm thinking we need this kind of diverse toolkit to be able to offer people options for how they might soothe themselves, you know, aid their processing and all of the other things that we're trying to accomplish in the therapy room. So it sounds like your course could be really supportive for lots of people who are offering different types of therapy or therapeutic approach, but have a client that might really benefit from doing some of this themselves.
Mia Hobbs:And I think I do lots of kind of groups and I always liked, you know, some of them with quite young children and always like to have other options because knitting can be quite challenging and sometimes you meet somebody who finds it really hard. So I have like, for example, pom pom making, so basically you're just winding yarn around a pom pom maker or other options so that people can, a) it's quite nice to leave with something because knitting is not fast, so to have other options. And I think lots of people in my podcast have talked about the you know, sometimes they don't feel in a headspace where they can knit, maybe because of psychological kind of distress, or maybe because of some kind, other kind of injury or illness, but the idea of the tactile sensation of the yarn because it's, you know, soft or soothing, that that also has given them kind of comfort and the idea of the potential of this kind of new ball of yarn, that that gives them a bit of hope too. So I think there are ways of, you know, adapting it too.
Paula Redmond:I think our course kind of takes, goes through a process of kind of tuning in to, really drawing on ACT skills and tools, so teaching some of those using knitting as a medium, but the process of tuning into what you need and picking an activity that can give you that, while supporting, you know, with, you know, managing mistakes and kind of, you know, compassionate resources around all the frustrations that can come up, and just keeping on kind of reviewing whether what you're doing is meeting your needs, is much more broadly applicable. They're knitting, but I guess for us, knitting is, can tick so many boxes because it is accessible and portable and, you know.
Rosie Gilderthorp:So how did you get the ball rolling with this project then? Because, you know, it sounds like a really great idea, you're both really aligned on it, but I know that that process of coming up with a plan and actually turning something from an idea into a reality can be quite challenging. So did this, you know, become a real thing for you guys?
Paula Redmond:Well, I think it's been a winding road, I would say that we definitely didn't have this as a plan at the outset. And I think what we originally had wanted to do was to run retreats, and in person events. And I think probably particularly driven by coming out of a pandemic and having a yearning for, you know, being in rooms with people. And we did develop that. So we developed a kind of day retreat for health professionals, based on this kind of therapeutic knitting approach and developed the content around that. And we ran two retreats, which were really successful and we really enjoyed doing them, but the experience of the kind of, I think, you know, processes of getting that running didn't, wasn't that stress free. I think the, the realities of putting on an in person event, you know, was really tricky in terms of, you know, finding a venue that could work for us, keeping the costs down, you know, picking a date that, you know, the first, the first one we ran, they announced train strikes three days before, and we had to cancel it because no one could come and that was really stressful.
Rosie Gilderthorp:It’s such a big problem. And we were talking, just before we hit record, we were talking about how different the world was in 2019 and how we wouldn't have anticipated the things that we're doing now, and this is one of the things which I don't think we'd have anticipated being such a big problem. But I know a lot of very experienced event planners who have been doing in person events, you know, since we were children, and you know, they're thinking twice about running them now because of these infrastructure problems, which just don't seem to be going anywhere.
Paula Redmond:Yeah, yeah. And I think also, the kind of, I guess, marketing reach that you need to pull that off, even though we were running, you know, really small events was, I think, beyond us at that point, or we hadn't quite, you know, got there.
Mia Hobbs:Well I think in fairness, it was, I think we, we got, we did quite well in terms of marketing based on the audience size we have. I think that we were limiting ourselves with geography and dates that we were kind of those, because it was an in person event, those gave us certain restrictions that we just don't have with our audio course. And I know we don't have statistics on where, where I don't think, Paula, do we, on where people have bought from, but I think a lot of our sales have not been from the UK even. Because I know my podcast certainly has an audience that's skewed to the US and Canada. Yeah, so I think, but I'd also think we were quite good, I think actually at, which I think is probably something we learned from you, Rosie, at looking at what do we actually like doing? And we did not like marketing to a deadline. So I think in terms of our process, there were loads of learning points from running those retreats that, yeah, with the benefit of going through all of the learning in, you know, Psychology Business School that we, we kind of could really appreciate that part of the process. And we were confident with our content, weren't we, Paula? That was really well received.
Paula Redmond:Yeah, and I think also we were kind of, you know, feeling that just for us in our stage of our life, you know, primary age kids, you know, we were running the retreat on Saturday. Like, it just wasn't something we wanted to continue doing. But we were, it had given us a chance to try out the content that had been, had worked really, really well, and we knew that we had something there.
Rosie Gilderthorp:I love that, because testing is everything and so many times, especially with my coaching clients and students in Psychology Business School, people want to come up with a perfect plan before they get going. And you can't do that because there's so much that you don't know. There’s so much that you don't know about the content and what people need from you that you can only learn by delivering what you think is best and seeing how it lands. But also there's a lot that you don't know about your needs until you try these things out. You know, I never would have anticipated how draining I find in person events. I find them really, really, really, really tiring. Doesn't mean I never want to do them. But, you know, I couldn't do something like run four retreats a year. That would be impossible for me to do. But I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't tried. And I think it sounds like you learned so much valuable stuff from doing it one way, that that enabled you to then pivot and find a way of delivering that amazing content that fit your lives better and also the needs of the client group a bit better too.
Paula Redmond:Yeah. I think what we came to was an idea that, you know, drawing on our, you know, our, from our needs and our skills and assets and resources already in that both Mia and I have a podcast, and we know how to do that and we like doing that. And particularly, you know, Mia's podcast audience, you know, is really big and, you know, really like to consume content in that way. And so, you know, putting our content, our course, creating an audio course, which is, you know, a paid for podcast type thing, made a lot of sense for us in terms of both our audience and our needs and resources. So that's how we came to put it all together in that package.
Rosie Gilderthorp:I think that's really helpful because, you know, it's always about aligning what capabilities you already have with the idea that you've got to make it as easy for you as possible. And it's really helpful that you both already had podcasts and were already out there talking to people, because although a podcast is sort of one way when you're creating the content, you get quite a lot back. You start to see which episodes are landing with people the most and yes, you learn about people. Are people with this problem interested in learning in this format? And often if somebody's created a course that is struggling to sell, it's just because the alignment between what the client group is comfortable with in terms of, you know, what type of education they're comfortable with doesn't match the format that they've created their usually amazing content in. So you kind of solved both of those problems by coming up with an audio course. Just out of interest before we move on, I know that there'll be people listening who are like, Oh, great, good for them, but they already had podcasts, they'd already started doing that marketing. What advice would you give people who haven't necessarily got a core marketing channel yet, but are thinking, I'd like to do something, I'd like to develop a podcast or a blog, but I'm not quite sure what to do with it.
Mia Hobbs:I think for me, I would give them your advice, which was, to think of, which I think often about, actually, is the idea of do the thing you're going to actually do. Rather than the thing, don't do something that fills you with dread. Like, so if, you know, some people had said, could, why didn't you make your course like, or put your podcast on YouTube? And I think, well, that just adds a whole bunch of barriers. Then I've got to think about what's in my background or how I look or all of this stuff. And also I've had a, you know, attempts at writing blogs, and then I faff around with, you know, editing it too much. Whereas with the podcast, I listened to your, you know, episode with Charlotte Foster, and it was just about kind of, don't be a perfectionist. You're going to hate your voice to start with and just do the thing you're going to actually do. And for me that is, I love having, you know, I guess our job, what I've been trained to do is have a conversation with somebody for around an hour and ask them a bunch of questions and try and understand how they feel about things. And I just do that about their relationship with knitting and how it benefits their mental health. And I love having those conversations. I will always put off editing until I've given myself a deadline. So I have to record a trailer, put out the trailer, and then I start doing the editing. But I guess that would be my advice, is do the thing that has the least barriers for you and figure out, I think I've figured that out through a bit of trial and error, but I love listening to podcasts. I'm a big, you know, consumer and I feel a very, it's a very intimate format, I think. In terms of like, I'll often say to my family, Oh, my friends, uh, Richard and Marina told me about this, and I'm talking about, you know, The Rest is Entertainment, a podcast I listen to.
Rosie Gilderthorp:I love that podcast!
Mia Hobbs:Because, and I like that feeling, I suppose. Yeah, so that would be my answer. And I did, I learnt to do it all myself, actually, the podcast. I've never paid. You know, that's, it’s probably one of the most poorly monetised podcasts in the UK. However, it was an interesting learning to edit the audio myself. Like it was very different to being a psychologist at the time I had a bit of time to learn to do that. I couldn't afford to pay any money. And actually it was what people seemed to like listening to it. So, yeah.
Rosie Gilderthorp:What about you, Paula?
Paula Redmond:Yeah. Similar. I think I got into podcasting because I wanted to find a way of marketing that was good for me. And I had been writing a blog and, you know, trying more kind of email marketing and social media stuff. And I found it, I just actually found it lonely and working, you know, at home, online by myself, it, I felt, yeah, it was a kind of a lonely experience. And so I thought, you know, doing a podcast means that I get to talk to people and, you know, it just feels much more, you know, and I think from a business point of view, it also means you get to network, you know, people know who I am, who would not have known who I was before, you know, the guests, but also just being able to kind of reach people who, you know, I wasn't able to reach through other means and yeah, something that I've enjoyed. I outsourced the editing because I wasn't interested in learning that bit, so I'm in awe of Mia's skills. But that worked, you know, really well for me, and again, I think it is about finding that thing that you're going to do and that fits with your, you know, meets your needs as well. Otherwise, it's not going to be sustainable.
Mia Hobbs:But I think our combination of skills worked super well for the course, didn't they actually, in that I could do the editing stuff that you don't do and you did such an amazing job of the website and the workbook that accompany it. So I think actually we came together in a very complimentary way.
Paula Redmond:The course itself has been a creative process. You know, creating that has been a really nice experience, both from a creative point of view, but also just working with Mia and that partnership and having someone to do it with has been brilliant.
Mia Hobbs:That has made an immeasurable difference, I think, for me in terms of actually getting stuff done is the accountability of Paula, and I think her going, well, yeah, let's just apply to speak at this conference. And that gave us a deadline, which was entirely really self imposed to launch this course, wasn't it? And, but we did it. And had we not had that, certainly I would never have made it happen on my own. Yeah.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Yeah, I often hear that. I often think it's very powerful because when you've got a colleague, even when imposter syndrome is massive, or the other things that make us procrastinate and delay things are kind of looming large, you have someone else that you feel invested in and that you don't want to let down and that you are confident in. You know, even on my worst days, if I'm doing a collaborative project, I'll be able to move forward with that because I really believe in the other person. And that's kind of got me through some difficult times. And so, yeah, I really see the value of, of partnership on so many levels, practical and psychological. But it's never all easy, is it? So I wondered if, you know, either of you would be able to share some of the more challenging moments, the things that have been difficult on this journey so far?
Paula Redmond:Yeah, I was thinking one of the, the difficult parts was I think particularly doing the retreats and, you know, not, you know, worrying about selling enough places and, you know, really that thing of, you know, it being a deadline and if we didn't have enough people, should we cancel? Or what would it be like if like two people come? You know, is that even worse than cancelling it? Because you haven't sold enough. And just, I suppose that kind of, the stress around, around that I think was, was really difficult. And I suppose, you know, when you are doing a kind of marketing campaign, it also just can feel really exposing, that's how I felt. And so you're kind of, I don't know, feeling quite, I don't know, like, porous in terms of, you know, the intensity of how that feels, the success or failure of something. And, I think, you know, again, having, working with me and having a partnership around that was so, because I don't know how… I would have freaked out and run away, but having someone to kind of know that's, you know, hold steady, you make a plan, that's really important.
Mia Hobbs:Yeah, I think, and maybe we had our own little panics at different times and could see the other one through the, you know, it wasn't, I’m sure it was worse for you, Paula, but the night before our, when we were due to speak at the conference, and I was thinking, Oh, and Paula's son was in hospital, and I was thinking, Oh, I'm going to be maybe doing this on my own tomorrow, but there have been a few, like, little bumps in the road, haven't there? Like sick children between us, or stuff being cancelled, and the hotel we were running the retreat at, they were also like, tricky. And I think like, we're not really trained in playing business hardball. So I don't know how well prepared, I think we probably learnt through process.
And I know you also had some tech headaches with the course, didn't you? In terms of getting all the different bits of payment to talk to this one. And I was very grateful you took that one on.
Paula Redmond:Yeah, I think the tech challenges, although I actually find that quite fun figuring it out. Yeah.
::It’s so good to have someone who finds that fun on the team.
Mia Hobbs:I do not find that fun.
Rosie Gilderthorp:No, but you know, it's interesting because the common thread really through all of those things is that it would be easy, if you're on your own, it's really easy to take all of those things quite personally. You know, the hotel have screwed me over because they can tell that I'm not a good business person, or, you know, nobody's signed up yet for this thing because I've made a bad thing. You know, these are all things, or even, you know, I'm not clever enough to do the tech for this thing, and that's why it's all going wrong. And I wonder if having a partner just makes you externalise all of that a bit more, you know that your partner's good. You've got faith in them, so maybe you’re less likely to be completely emotionally blindsided by some of these things.
Mia Hobbs:And I think feeling the responsibility, like the accountability to kind of persist also, to not let Paula down or… But I think, you know, there were, in all honesty, after we stopped doing the retreats, I think we were, there was a really big helping of luck in terms of Paula and I being quite aligned in terms of how much effort and energy, how far we wanted to pursue things, that we both maybe needed a bit of a break. And we actually stopped and let it have some time to breathe and I certainly like missed, really missed working with Paula But didn't quite know what it would look like, you know, we didn't have a thing yet. But then the thing arrived didn't it? You know, we we kind of developed our content that we were both confident in, into a new thing, actually, that's working a lot better for us, I think, even though we've only done a bit of a soft launch of our audio course so far.
Paula Redmond:Yeah, and I think the, the thing that's been great is, both the encouraging each other, but also that like not hooking into, a kind of, well, for me, I, you know, need to hook out of an overworking tendency and having Mia be very like, you know, this is, this is the time and energy I have to put into this. And, you know, we're not working over the summer holidays, you know, has been really helpful just to make it actually really sustainable and really manageable and still, you know, I think for both of us, we have been really clear that this needs to add to our lives and not detract, and at the moment, it starts to take more from us than it's giving, it's not working and we need to, you know, pause or rethink or whatever. Yeah.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Yeah, I think that's, I think that's really important. And again, it is all about that ‘how does this align with my values?’ Not just the vision for the business or like these goals that I might have, but also my core values as a person in the life that I'm living right now. And it sounds like you've just done a beautiful job of working that out. And yeah, you're lucky that it aligns. for both of you. But then, is it luck or was it that you spent enough time getting to know each other to predict that probably your values were on the same page?
Mia Hobbs:I think probably there was a good helping of that, because I think I'm quite cautious about, yeah, kind of leaping into any kind of, you know, commitment in terms of, you know, what's expected of me, because I would worry a lot about letting someone else down. And, I think having our, you know, for example, just things like our families in similar positions, I suppose the kids, similar ages makes the difference in the terms, you know, that we both have other places we want and need to be over the summer holidays, for example, and that kind of thing.
Rosie Gilderthorp:So maybe this relates to that, but before we finish up, I'd really like to just ask both of you, you know, what would be one piece of advice that you would want to give to another psychologist or therapist who would love to do something like this, but maybe isn’t feeling so confident right now?
Paula Redmond:Yeah, I think I would say maybe, you know, finding, I think the work that we do is really hard and can take, you know, a lot out of us. And I think being able to find a way of bringing joy and creativity, whatever that looks like to you, into a part of your work and finding someone or a group of people who can do that with you. And that may take time and, you know, but I think it's worth persisting with, because for me, having this part of my practice has given me so much joy and such a way of, you know, meeting my needs for creativity and, you know, connection, and sustain me through really difficult, I've had a really tough personal year this year and to have this work and Mia and that partnership to, you know, just have a bit of my working life that actually feels good to be in has really sustained me, and I'm so grateful for that. So I think just putting some effort and some time and giving yourself permission to explore those avenues of connection and joy, even if you know, it's not going to make you millions, at least for a while, just, yeah, give yourself permission to do that.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Oh, I love that. It's actually quite emotional to listen to. But yes. Mia, do you have anything to share?
Mia Hobbs:Yeah, I think I would definitely agree with all of that. I guess the only thing, yeah, thinking about what has worked for me that I would add maybe is about the idea of being, like, I don't know, genuine, like, thinking about the kind of most mere thing I could do would be to talk about knitting and psychology and bring those things together, really. And I guess I thought about that for a long time, so I suppose it's partly that, about, like, genuineness, in terms of, like, showing up as yourself, and maybe a bit of more self disclosure that we don't do that much of in therapy, maybe. But I think people have responded very well to that, like in my podcast for example. But the other thing, and I think I wouldn't, had I not been talking about all of those things, like paula said being a knitter in the shadows, like that's what lots of us knitters were like, that's what I was doing during my undergrad. So, I think it's that. But also something about the process I think for me, like leaning into that your first idea doesn't have to be where it ends up, but it's the starting point to, you know, a bigger process and that you can kind of go with that journey, and like, we've given it time to breathe and stepped away a little bit and not had our foot on the gas in terms of producing something. And we just went to the knitting and stitching show together in that gap, didn't we? Yeah, and then new ideas came out of the woodworks.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Yeah, and there’s something in there about allowing it to be fun. And I've often noticed in myself I'll have an idea for some content I really want to create like an episode of this that I really want to record, or a blog I want to write and I'll be like oh no you can't do that you've got to write about this thing because this is what is, you know, going to be better for your SEO or whatever. And actually trying to know, go with what you're passionate about. Write or talk or do the thing which is really going to bring you enjoyment and fulfilment and you'll make better content, usually. You know, when I speak to people starting out and they've got this big list of blogs that they've got to write for their SEO, I'm like, yes, you do need to do a few of those, but do three of those and then intersperse it with stuff which you're like, the world needs to hear this, because otherwise, as we've talked about before, you're not going to do it. It's going to burn you out. Yeah. So I think that's a really nice message to finish on today. But before we go, where can people go and find out more about your course? Because I have a feeling that there's quite a lot of people who will want to go and benefit for themselves and certainly want to recommend it to people that they're working with as well.
Mia Hobbs:So the website is creativerestoration.org that's where you can buy the course, which is called ‘Self-care, one stitch at a time’.
Rosie Gilderthorp:Lovely title. And I'll make sure that all the links to your socials and to the website are in the show notes of this episode for anyone that wants to go and find them. So, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been really fascinating to hear about your journey, and I've got no doubt that it's going to be a massive success.