How to be a psychologist in the media (amongst other things) with Dr Carolyne Keenan

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really pleased to be bringing you an interview with Dr Carolyne Keenan. You might have heard Carolyne's name if you listen to BBC Radio 1. She makes a big impact with her media work. But the reason I'm really interested to talk to Carolyne is that she shows how it's possible to build a portfolio of different activities, all of which use your skills in different and exciting ways, and to find professional fulfillment through that autonomy that we can have in independent practice. I know how many psychologists and therapists tell me that they feel a bit stuck. Like they're stuck in the therapy room and they don't know how, in their independent work, to step outside of that. I think Carolyne and her journey in independent practice is a really great example of how when we have the courage to step outside, we can make a really big impact.

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

Links for Carolyne:

Instagram: @drcarolynekeenan

LinkedIn: @drcarolynekeenan

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Carolyne tells us about how her career in psychology began 01:30
• I ask Carolyne how she went from a quite unpleasant experience to finding a passion that let her do a doctorate 10:55
• Carolyne talks about how she started stepping out into private psychology 13:14
• We discuss the difference of opinions around charging for services and cancellation policies 16:14
• Carolyne talk to us about what her private practice looks like today 26:06
• We look at the pros and cons of media work 29:15
• I ask Carolyne about how she plans her social media content 36:34
• Carolyne tells us where to find her online 42:55

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SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Carolyne Keenan

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really pleased to be bringing you an interview with Dr Carolyne Keenan today because you might have heard Carolyne's name, perhaps if you listen to BBC Radio 1. She makes a big impact with her media work. But the reason I'm really interested to talk to Carolyne is that she shows how it's possible to build a portfolio of different activities, all of which use your skills in different and exciting ways and to find professional fulfillment through that autonomy that we can have in independent practice. And I know how many psychologists and therapists tell me that they feel a bit stuck. Like they're stuck in the therapy room and they don't know how, in their independent work, to step outside of that. And I think Carolyne and her journey in independent practice is a really great example of how when we have the courage to step outside, we can make a really big impact. So I'm really excited to bring you this interview with Carolyne today.

Let's jump into the interview with Dr Carolyne Keenan. Hello and welcome to the podcast, Carolyne. It's lovely to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. I'm really excited.

So there's a lot that I want to talk to you about today, but let's kind of start at the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about how your career in psychology began?

Well it's a long and winding road to be honest. I started doing my psychology undergraduate, like most of the people listening probably did, and that was at Cardiff, and totally fell out of love with it. I don't know if you found this, but with this psychology undergraduate, I just found it was a lot of, to be honest, regurgitating theory in drawing pictures of eyeballs, it was just things that I didn't quite associate with how I saw psychology. And so I came out never wanting to read another psychology textbook ever again and uploaded my CV to, I'm trying to remember what the drive was called, it was something like Monster or like where everybody put their student CVs coming out, and I got contacted by hundreds of recruitment agencies. So I don't know if this is an experience anyone else had, psychology undergraduates are very attractive to sales people and sales roles because we've got lots of transferable skills and I was promised all these huge salaries and commissions and thought, yeah, I'm done with learning, that's for me. So I got told by a lot of agencies that I probably wasn't cutthroat enough to do recruitment. I don't like being told what to do or what I can and can't do, and so that just made me even more determined to do it. And weirdly, as it turned out, I was not cutthroat enough for recruitment and I lasted about six months.

So this might be a daft question, what actually is recruitment? Are these the people that come in my inbox every now and again and try and make me go and work for some company doing autism assessments?

Yes. So I worked for trade floor banking. So the… I have absolutely no technical knowhow or prowess, but I was doing the sort of backend of trade floor, so recruiting people that knew about banking software and trading software and that sort of thing, and I was appalling at it. But yes, essentially you are the person that kind of bridges the gap between the company that's looking for an employee and the employee that's looking for a job. And it's a lot of cold calling, a lot of trying to force people into jobs that you can tell they don't really want.

So that's the cutthroat bit.

Yeah. Because your commission is based on them taking the role. And I think I was on a basic salary working in Piccadilly with a train fare from, I don’t know if you know Hawley, but it's sort of Gatwick way, Surrey way, on a basic salary of about £17,000 a year, which didn't go very far. So yeah, it was, the whole point is that you're supposed to get people into these roles and then you take a portion of their salary. I mean, I was working with people that were making £200,000 a month, you know, that were working with people on temporary contracts. And so they had, some people had, we know they were managing about a hundred different temporary contractors and then taking a bit of all of their hourly rate and just ramping up. But you know, you have to be good at it and you have to be good and trusting sales processes and the theory behind sales and a lot of that, no disrespect to any recruiters that are out there listening, but a lot of that is working from a script which, in reference to my brief statement about not liking being told what to do, did not suit me very well. So it's not a great role, I don't think, if you question things, if you think critically about things, if you see people as individuals and you feel a bit uncomfortable about, you know, the general trends and people will do this if you say this and all that. So, yeah, I found it really quite grueling and grim to be honest. And it was long hours, really, really long hours, which wasn't what I signed up for. So yeah, I left, which I think everybody was pretty pleased about because I don't think I was very good. I don't think they were sad to see me go. But I went from there to a really interesting role. I moved up to Manchester for a change, and I started working for a drug and alcohol service, and it was a tier two service, which is sort of assessment and point of entry. But in the drug and alcohol service I was working in, that meant doing a lot of outreach for people who were street homeless and using on a daily basis, drugs like crack cocaine and heroin. And we did a lot of say, for injecting, education, we provided clean injecting equipment, so works for people. So I spent a lot of time sort of just wandering around the streets with a sharps bin and a picker, a litter picker picking up discarded needles and trying to encourage people into service and into treatment. And that was absolutely what I loved doing. It was such an interesting job. Brilliant for relationship building. I was a southerner up in, I ended up working in Wiggan, actually, Wiggan and Lee in Greater Manchester. So, to use quite a lot of my relationship building skills because not everybody wanted to talk to me. They thought I was some stuck up Southerner coming to tell them what to do and that sort of thing. But actually it was an amazing job and I loved it. And the only reason I left was because I was a Band 5 substance misuse practitioner, was the sort of technical term, and you didn't have an awful lot of autonomy. There wasn't an awful lot of change that you could bring about within the system. And I think like a lot of NHS systems, it came with flaws and it came with frustrations. And I think actually this might be interesting for people to hear because it floored me. I became very complacent in the role. It felt like I knew exactly what I was doing. I'd been there for a little while, a few years and got called in by the manager who'd taken over who basically said, I don't think you're very interested in what you're doing anymore, and there are people queuing around the block for this job. So if you don't want it, move on. Like, if you see yourself doing something else, then please go and do that, because at the moment you're sort of wasting our time and wasting your own time. And that really knocked me. I was thinking as someone who you know, at school I think most people that go into psychology tended to have been, maybe people pleasers, I dunno if that resonates? Tended to do relatively well at school, tended to get relatively good grades, so to get feedback like that, I think it was probably the first time in my life anyone had said, you, you are actually not doing a very good job at this. So if you see yourself going and being a psychologist, I think I was making noises about maybe considering going back to do a doctorate. I think it was that, or becoming a makeup artist. And my Dad said, I'll support you financially if you go and do a doctorate, but I am not helping you out if you want to become a makeup artist. So that'll tell you something about what was prioritized in my family.

That is interesting because I, yeah, I can imagine a really glittering career in makeup artistry, but clearly your family were more interested in the psychology side of things for you.

Yeah, certainly. I think for my dad, there was something about the doctorate particularly that had a bit of a lure. But yeah, so it had been completely off the cards. Uni for me was a bit of a rollercoaster. I failed my first year. I think I'd been dumped in the first month by a boyfriend that I'd been with for a really long time. Didn't take that very well, was told, you know, the first year you've only got to get 40%, so it's a shoe in, you'll be absolutely fine. It's all multiple choice, but it turns out it's only easy to get 40% in a multiple choice paper if you've got some idea of the answer.

Yeah, and I think people underestimate this. So I didn't do a psychology undergraduate in the traditional way, I did my psychology conversion while I was working in the prison service, so I did it part-time. Basically, I did it between three o'clock and 6:00 PM every evening.

Wow. Oh, that's tough, Rosie.

No, it's not. So people always think this, but if you've got a mind like mine where knowledge doesn't go in unless you are using it, then it's the easiest way to study because that boring picture of the eye, I would then, you know, go in and try and work out, oh, you know, what can I see going on for this, you know, group of offenders sitting in front of me that I'm supposed to be teaching about anger. I'd be thinking about that picture of the eye while I was with real human beings trying to do something psychological, it makes the world of difference. I don't know that I would've been able to do it as a, definitely not an 18-year-old, you know, sitting in a lecture trying to let this wash over you. So I don't think it would be easy. I think all of that really dry content and no... I think what most courses seem to lack is the kind of ‘So what’ factor? Like showing their undergraduates, this is how you might use this to help human beings. I've noticed that, you know, so many people I've spoken to and you know, I've got friends on under, whose daughters mostly, are on undergraduate courses now. God, it sounds so dry compared to the actual jobs we do, which are so colorful and interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. So no, I don't think I'd have gotten on too well with that either. Difficult.

Yeah.

So how did you go from like that sort of really quite unpleasant experience, maybe dragging yourself through uni a bit to finding a passion that let you do a doctorate?

D'you know, I think it was the work in the drug service. It made me sort of realise what the training as a psychologist could look like in real terms, like how it could actually impact people. And it was the psychologist and the psychiatrist that seemed to be doing the more longer term work, maybe where you got to see a little bit more of the shift and the change. I think where I was, it was at the very beginning stages of treatment for people and there was a bit of a revolving door for one thing, so it could feel a little bit fruitless, you know, a little bit dissatisfying, unsatisfying perhaps, and maybe the longer term work seemed to happen a bit further down the line where people were able to engage on a more regular basis. And that was the psychiatrist and the psychologist that were doing that work. And I think I'd sort of got my head around the fact that actually I wanted to be in a position where I could be making more decisions for myself. I didn't see myself working within a big system forever, and I think I was seeing people even then that were stepping into private practice or were maybe doing something a little bit more hybrid. So a lot of the psychiatrists were doing NHS and private work. And so I think that just got me thinking, well, what could a career look like where I'm not just in one place every single day doing the same thing? Because I know that that doesn't suit me.

So that drive for autonomy was strong, even, you know, at that age. And I, yeah, I think that draws a lot of people to psychology. When people ask me like, oh, why didn't you go into nursing or midwifery, or lots of the other things I was interested in, I think, you know, I've come up with various intellectual answers over the years, but actually I think what it was, I quite liked the idea of being able to do something independent. Even if that was within an NHS service, I quite liked the idea of being the only psychologist, I got to shape things. So I know it doesn't suit everybody, but I kind of saw those opportunities and was attracted to that. So, that's kind of what propelled you in that direction.

Yeah.

If we fast forward a few years, how did you sort of start stepping out into private psychology, because everything up to that had been NHS?

Yeah. Well I was really fortunate. I studied at London City and one of our lecturers, Dr Courtney Raspin, ran a private eating disorder specialist service called Altum Health, which she still runs. And actually she's just released a book about GLP-1s, which is very interesting, called the Weight Loss Prescriptions, looking at the psychology behind these drugs and what needs to go alongside. So interesting. But she was advertising for a student to come on board for a placement. So I studied counseling psychology where a lot of the time you are sourcing your own placements, which can be extremely stressful. And I was very, it's very…

Difficult.

Yeah, it's so grueling as part of the course because if you don't get one, then what you're supposed to do. Very stressful. I had a real interest in addiction because that's where I'd come from. Self-harm and eating disorders, that was sort of the area I saw myself moving in. So when this opportunity came up, I was really excited, coupled with that kind of drive to maybe think about private work eventually. I thought this would be a great opportunity to sort of learn how it ran. And I was really fortunate that I got the placement. So I worked with her for a long time and it meant that when I qualified, I'd already been in private practice for a certain amount of time, albeit as a supervisee, as a student on a placement. So that sort of exchange of services for money was something I'd started to feel a bit more comfortable with. And it was what a lot of my peers were sort of starting to feel very uncomfortable with coming out, so thinking, well, do I want to do a bit of private work and not being sure how they'd manage that. And it also meant I had a bit of an idea around things like the ICO, the Information Commissioner's Office and what you need to be thinking about in terms of… GDPR wasn't necessarily around them, but just storing notes. And it is stuff that's kind of taken care of for you within the NHS that you then have to think about when you're going into private practice. So I think that was the biggest stepping stone in making me think that it was possible. And then I carried on doing a kind of hybrid version of it, alongside an NHS role. I was also working for West Sussex County Council as a childcare officer whilst I was training, because the other thing is as a counseling psychologist, you don't get paid, so you need to work to fund things like rent and all of that sort of thing. And that was an incredible job. So I was used to doing lots of different things at that point, which was really nice for me and really suited me from a personality point of view, but also meant that I was getting some really nice experience and not necessarily niching. Whereas a lot of my peers that were in one NHS role five days a week full time, were finding that they were kind of developing specialisms quite early on. Which again, great, there's not, you know, there's no right or wrong way, but I knew for me, I wasn't ready to do that.

So I'm really interested in the point you made about the way you felt about having to exchange money for services and how that diverged quite a lot with some of your colleagues who had had just NHS experiences. Can you just say a little bit more about that?

Yeah. I think I was really interested in my own relationship with it because I actually didn't find it difficult. I don't know why. And I know a lot of psychologists really do. I mean, obviously I would have the odd session where I think, oh my God, that was not as good as I had wanted it to be, and they've just paid for that and how do I feel about that? I think that's really human, which sometimes will come out and we'll think I'm the best psychologist ever, that was so good, and it just went seamlessly. And then other times you think, oh God, what was I talking about? But other than that, I think the idea of it being a service that people would pay for, I never came up against difficulties with that. And I don’t know if that's because I was really lucky that, as well as being a brilliant clinician, Courtney was also a really good business woman. I don’t know whether there was something about just having that kind of mentoring relationship with someone who was really comfortable with it and good at it, perhaps helped. But I took quite a pragmatic view of it that for me it was about paying my wage. And so, you know, people do pay for the NHS actually, even though it feels free at the point of access, you know, we pay for it in a lot of ways through taxes and things like that. So, yeah, it was interesting. What I did find uncomfortable was a sense of perhaps judgment, not from everybody, but from some people within the NHS services that I was working in, where they were perhaps not considering private practice, and I have to say a lot of the time, that was from my clinical colleagues, people who'd done clinical training, and I think that the difference between the training roots, whilst I don't think that the people that we work with tend to be particularly different or the way that we work tend to be particularly different, I think our relationship with the NHS does. So I found it very difficult to get placements within the NHS. I did manage, but at the time, so I was training in 2009. 2008, 2009, I think, and I think it has changed a little bit, but I think there was a lot of suspicion around how regulated or how consistent the Counseling psychology doctorate course is or was. There certainly was when I was training, fantasies around the fact that we didn't do any neuroscience or we didn't have any idea about neurodivergence or assessments or anything like that. And I did find it hard, and also they weren't paying me a wage, I was working alongside. So I didn't feel that loyalty or commitment to the NHS that I think a lot of my clinical colleagues who had been sort of brought up by the NHS and paid by the NHS whilst they were training felt. And I do think that maybe that's where some of the judgment was coming from, you know, is that they felt very committed to the NHS and I understand why.

And that shocks me though, I have to say.

Really?

It shocks me that people can be so unreflective though, like to give out that judgment to you without ever having to stop to think how your life story might have differed from theirs, how your experiences might have led you to a different place to them, that you might need something different from them. It does blow my mind and, you know, I could reflect back and, I can think of so many conversations which are highly judgmental back when I was training and when I was working in the NHS as a qualified psychologist, so nothing you're saying surprises me.

Which is a shame actually.

Yeah, it is a shame, but I was always baffled about how it was okay that counseling psychologists basically had to drag themselves through hell to get qualified.

Yeah.

I still don't understand that. I feel like maybe there's some work that the BPS should be doing actually around sorting out whether we need this distinction, if it is useful, shouldn't both models be funded in the same way? But anyway, we could probably, we've both got opinions we could divert on that for ages.

A hundred percent. Yeah. And yeah, as you say, the necessity of it, I think when I was looking at training courses, I was attracted to it because it was sort of promising something a little bit more holistic and systemic and more about the individual, less diagnosis driven. But I would argue that, you know, when I meet with clinical students now, they are far less diagnosis driven than I was led to believe the course was. My husband actually is a clinical psychologist and I have really interesting critical conversations with him about things and his training was very different to what I was hearing about when I was trying to choose a training course. So, yeah, no, you're right. I think some change is needed. But individual circumstance, I think what you're talking about there is so important. And when you're going into private practice, I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong way despite what people might lead you to believe. But it has to suit what you need. And I hear that all the time with things like cancellation policies. What should I do? Someone's been sick or they've said their child's sick. And the variety of responses you will get from other psychologists, sometimes shrouded in a little bit of judgment, I have to say, around should you let people off? And what I would say about that is I think it comes from a place of real privilege sometimes to be able to afford to let people off. And I always use, when I'm talking to people who are coming up and considering private practice and feeling nervous about a cancellation fee, the day it shifted for me was I'd had a week where I had five clients cancel because they were really unwell. So it was in the depths of winter, colds and flus were going around. They all had really legitimate reasons. And again, I credit Courtney with this. I think the early experiences of that was that I understood, you know, you write your cancellation policy and you stick with it, and that is part of creating a containing, boundaried space that feels safe and consistent for the people that you're working with. So that's one thing. So I was very lucky with that. But I was thinking that's five people in a week. At the time, I think I was probably charging about £110 an hour, and that was competitive at the time. It was a reasonable amount of money to be charging. We're talking, what, 2012 now. And I thought, God, if that happened every week, I couldn't pay my rent at the end of the month. Like I simply wouldn't be able to do it. And every single one of them was incredibly apologetic. It sounded really legitimate. I really felt for them. But I equally couldn't afford to let each one of them not pay for that session. And that really kind of focused my mind on why I had a cancellation policy and the fact that the only way I could do this work is if I was protected in that way by a cancellation policy that I did enforce. And that sometimes meant kind of galvanizing against other people's judgments or decisions or comments because, you know, maybe they could afford to pay their rent or their mortgage if that many people didn't pay. Or even one or two, you know? Because I have to say at that point, there wasn't an awful lot of money floating about for me. I'd just come out of training that I'd paid for, that I'd worked alongside, and I was trying to make as much as possible. And, you know, I think to some people that sounded a bit mercenary at the time, but actually it was the only way I was going to be able to financially stay above water and do the work that I was enjoying doing that I wanted to do.

Yeah. And I think it's just so important to understand your financials and see what position you are in, because so many people I know, they have this gut feeling and they want to let people off. They want to be nice. They actually don't see that they're not going to be able to pay their rent at the end of the month. And then it's a massive shock. And then you've got a, basically a therapist in crisis.

Yeah.

Whether it happens quickly or slowly, that is what you end up with. And that's not a good therapist, unfortunately. So I mean, I do think this kind of knowing what you need, knowing how to look after yourself is responsible. And it took me a while to get there. I had, you know, I didn't have the mentor at the beginning, so I made the mistakes. I had the weeks where it was like, oh my God, everybody's canceled. I'm going to have to tell my husband I haven't got what I was supposed to have. And it was so stressful and yeah, it's really good I think now to be able to talk about this openly. And I do hope that some of those people that are still posting the kind of snippy, judgmental replies in our professional Facebook groups will start to have a think about whether they really want to put that judgment on someone else without kind of knowing what that person needs or what they might be going through. End of rant from both of us! And so I know from knowing a little bit about what you're doing now that you kind of broadened out your work, and I would describe it as more like a portfolio, what you're doing now. So talk to us a bit about what your private practice looks like today.

Yeah. So it's, it's just, I would say, just starting to get to where I have kind of wanted it to be. I've always had a bit of a fascination with psychologists who speak in the media. I remember reading Cosmopolitan magazine and seeing Dr Linda Papadopoulos writing for Cosmopolitan when I was probably about 15, and that was around the time I was thinking I wanted to be a psychologist. I was also very interested in performance and was thinking, God, how interesting that you could combine these things, you know, thinking creatively, but also bringing the work to people. I was seeing her on This Morning and all of that sort of stuff and thinking, wow, I wouldn't mind doing that. And then as a student driving home on a Sunday evening and listening to Dr Radha on BBC Radio 1, that kind of thing. And I think it was just planting these little seeds that it doesn't have to just be going into a clinic room every single day and talking to people. Although that was also a part that I was really excited about. So I've just been building up various ways of working with people that don't mean being in front of somebody all of the time. And so at the moment that looks like sort of corporate workshops and webinars, some media work, some therapeutic work as well. So I work with predominantly teenagers actually now, that sort of developed, but adults, families, couples sometimes, in a clinical way. So the therapeutic way, I know I'm struggling to say that in a succinct way. But yeah, the bits that I'm really enjoying are developing things like programs for people, to thinking about how I might take something that's working really well in the clinic room, but make it applicable to sort of groups, because I think actually people really benefit from being around other people that are experiencing something similar but can struggle to find spaces where that's contained and safe and facilitated. So at the moment I am developing a program, it's called Survive EBSA, for parents of children who are struggling with school avoidance. And the idea being that parents can come together and just share those experiences with the benefit of having a psychologist that works with this area on a day-to-day basis in the clinic. So it's not necessarily about how do I get my child back into school, but it is helping parents recognise that in order to do that work with their children, they need to be as resourced as possible, and they tend to be the afterthought when actually they need to be the center focus. So things like that. How do we work in bigger ways with people? So that's one of the ways, the programs. I really enjoy the corporate work and actually going back to the financial bit, it is the area that pays the best, far better than the media work. I think people are really interested in the media work and really interested in how you get into it, but actually it's the corporate work that really supports the business and kind of allows room to do some of the media stuff because actually to do that, you need to make time for it, and sometimes that means moving clinic around and yeah, that's not always easy, so you do need some scaffolding there to do it.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting to talk about what media is good and is not good for. Because I think people do imagine that in itself it's well paid and I know that it usually isn't. I also have heard from lots of different sources, lots of coaching clients of mine, that do a lot of media work, that it has real challenges to it, that they will call you and expect you to be available, and not really care what you have to cancel to make that come true, which for a lot of us is really difficult, but I also think that it probably has a halo effect which accelerates your corporate work. I think, you know, corporates feel reassured by these markers of authority. And if you have been allowed to be the expert on Radio 1, for example, which you do a brilliant job of by the way, but the fact that you have that endorsement from something as prestigious as the BBC, I think that allows them to have that trust that opens the conversation up. So it's sometimes about seeing what feeds each other and just making sure that this is an ecosystem that feeds itself rather than sometimes, you know, we might pursue a strategy and not really understand why we are doing it, or think we're doing it for one thing that isn't gonna work out when actually it could be really useful in a different way.

I couldn't agree more. I think I've really learned that over the last couple of years doing things blindly. So like you say, the media work, it is not worth canceling your clinical clients if that's gonna impact the relationship and their safety so that you can get on telly although it's very tempting. I've had to say no to lots of opportunities because as you say, they call you up and the expectation is you go then and there, or you are available then and there, and sometimes that's just not possible, and other times it is, and and that's lovely and sometimes there's time to plan. But you know, I think you're right in saying that it is very fast paced and yeah, it does mean being thoughtful around why you are doing it. Because you know, there is a bit of ego there as well. Let's be honest. There is something nice about being able to say I was on this or I was on that. You don't always get a final say on what goes out either. So I would urge caution. I've definitely been caught out where I have done things and it's not quite looked the way I had anticipated it was going to look. And I think then you have to make a decision. Is it better to be out there than not out there? Or do you become a bit more discerning over time and say no to things if you have a sense that it might not fit your brand or you know the work you're trying to do.

That's so hard though, isn't it? Because often the priorities of the production team might change. And so you could be a hundred percent values aligned at the beginning and not at the end. And I've, again, I've heard that story before.

Yeah.

I guess it's another place where I ask people to hold their judgment back a little bit because it's a really, it sounds really scary to me. I don't really do much media, as everyone knows, who listens to this podcast, my lifestyle at the moment doesn't accommodate the pace of the media. But I did have a stint of doing some, that's seven years ago, eight years ago now, and that was the bit that frightened me the most. I was like, what are you gonna do with this? Because you could carve it up, you could really make this look any way you want it to.

Yeah.

So it's brave. It's brave to keep doing that.

I think it's about, you know, what is it building towards? And the best piece of advice I ever got, don't ever read comments or reviews. I fell foul of that once with a piece that I contributed for the Metro and they had edited it, not badly I have to say, but they had missed out some things that I would say were fairly fundamental. And it did make some of the advice I was giving sound like sort of very floaty. I think it sort of made it sound like I'd suggested that people that were doing the terrible things that they were writing about should try a bit of mindfulness and therapy, which wasn't quite what I was suggesting. And the comment sections, I did read it and it was things like ‘they'd've been better off asking Alan Partridge’, ‘Dr Keenan's away with the fairies’. And I was like, Oh My God. But separating out what you actually said with how it was edited and kind of sitting at peace with your best intentions and, you know, what did you do with what you knew at the time, does that feel comfortable? I think is probably the only way that you can do the media work because otherwise you would just tear yourself up with how did it go versus how did I want it to go? And I have to say, generally I've had good experiences. So, you know, I'm talking about the really sort of, rare things that happen, but, you know, psychologists, as much as we are good at advising other people to let these things go, we also want to do a good job and feel like we're giving good advice and that we're, you know, doing no harm. And so it can sit with us if things haven't quite gone how we wanted them to.

Yeah. And I also think it's always worth thinking about y'know, did this really do harm? Thinking about the baseline that the people who heard it might have been at, because often I'll talk to people who are very upset by something that has been misinterpreted or has been simplified. I think simplification is usually the biggest problem. There's very, it's quite rare to hear about like malicious, I have heard of it, but it is quite rare, to hear about something being twisted in a sort of malicious way deliberately, but that kind of simplification where they've stripped out the nuance of what you were saying, that seems to happen a fair amount. And I guess to us, often we're like, that's not the perfect message. That's not what I really wanted people to take from it. But did it do them harm? That's a different question. I think often it's about finding that compassionate part of you that we try so hard to cultivate in our clients. Those practices actually, that can get you through some really dicey moments where you have to, you know, do a bit of self-care to get through it.

Yeah. I think that nuance piece is probably really at play in social media as well. You know, you probably find this, I know you are on social media. Trying to do what you need to do to be able to support people in the way that you want to within the tiny parameters that social media allows is really, really difficult. But as you're saying, this sort of changing landscape of social media and media work and media presence, means that in order to get some of those opportunities, it is very helpful to be visible in these spaces and trying to work with their limitations and do the best you can with it in order to open up those opportunities. You know, it's a constant juggling act.

It really is. I mean how do you navigate that boundary, when you're sitting down and planning your content? I know you have some support with that. The same person who's now supporting me.

Yeah.

So how do you kind of plan that out and have those conversations?

The changing point for me was getting Sam on board. So, Sam is my social media manager, Koala VA, and she is also now my VA, which has been life changing in all honesty, because I would agonize over a post, I would agonize over how it looked, how I'd written it, what I was saying, what other people would think about it, particularly, what other people would think about it. I think at the start I was very concerned about critique from colleagues, probably more so than the public, if I'm honest. And sort of putting yourself out there feels very scary and very exposing, and I felt very vulnerable. And I also felt annoyed and frustrated because I think that, you know, when I talk about people like Dr Linda. Who else? I'm trying to think of older, not older psychologists, but people that have been around much longer than me, Dr Tanya Byron and people that I kind of respected because they were in the media, I guess, you know, this kind of idea that, oh, if they're in the media, they must know what they're talking about. You sort of then think, oh God, if I'm putting myself on social media, does that mean everybody's gonna be looking at me thinking I know exactly what I'm talking about? And having Sam on board took away a lot of that noise. We would kind of agree the agenda, what do I want to communicate in these posts? And then she took away the fear because she would be the one scheduling and posting. So once we decided, once the post had been designed, once I'd done the content for, it just went out rather than me kind of hovering over the button thinking, oh God, do I do it? Do I not? What comments am I gonna get back? And you do get bad comments. It makes a huge difference.

Yes, you do. You will. And I think that was something I wrote in my notes actually to say about the media work and the comments is that if you ever need to be reassured that you're just gonna get bad comments, look under a completely innocuous article.

Yes.

And just because we are talking about mental health, we're talking about children or education, it brings out that. They're hot button topics, aren't they? So it just brings out this vitriol in certain people. And I, you know, I read something very neutral about EBSA on the BBC, and my husband said, don't read it, don't read it, don't read it. And I was like, why? And he was like, because of the comments. I said, don't worry, love, I don't read the comments. I did because he told me not to. I read the comments and it was unbelievable. And of course, you know, if you think about the size of the platform the BBC has got, as your personal platform gets bigger, you're going to get a percentage of that because it's out there and it's nothing to do, there is nothing you could post that can protect you from it. Because there are just people that need to make those comments, in my view. And yes, we should be thoughtful. But you don't need to be perfect because you are never ever going to be perfect enough that it doesn't set off something in someone somewhere.

Yeah. When it's such a difficult thing to achieve, you're trying to be, what's the word? You're trying to agitate enough to try and create a bit of change and a bit of conversation, and you want to be making a difference. And that means you can't always be neutral and palatable and right for everyone. You're never going to be right for everyone. And actually that's something I would say, a lot of people that are thinking about going on social media, particularly psychologists or other therapists will say to me, there's so many, there's so many already on there. What have I got to add? And I would say that we are all people that have different preferences and likes, and so, you know, my content about EBSA, for example, might really switch people off, whereas even if I'm saying something very similar to someone else's, there's lots of people talking about teenagers and anxiety and school avoidance and those sorts of things on the internet, but people will find their people and the people that they like to listen to. And so I really do think that there's room for everyone. And with the media work as well. You know, there's space.

I think it's mad actually when people are concerned about that because imagine, so say you are somebody that doesn't know anything about psychology at all. You've got a child who's really struggling. Are you going to take the advice of just one person? Even if that person's really charismatic and amazing, if they're the only person saying it, as a parent, I'm probably not going to go with that. We kind of need a snowball effect of, and have lots of us, lots of us coming at this from slightly different angles with slightly different metaphors and stories, and that's what will kind of turn the tide in the way that people are viewing a problem. So I do think it's funny, like when you think about your personal consumption of social media, you are not following just one expert for one thing. I guarantee it. Like I must follow about six different people just to know how to dress a body basically like mine. You know, and the beauty of social media is I can find six people who are all talking about, you know, five foot three, size 10 women. I mean, it's great.

Perfect. Yeah. No, and it is so true. I've gloriously, since I've hit 40, landed in the like, gardening side of like TikTok, and I follow, so it's like my antidote when everything's really starting to stress me out, I go on there and the algorithm sends me people telling me how to look after my dahlias and pinch out my sweet peas, and there's so many different people talking about it, but so relaxing for me to hear all of them. So yeah, I totally agree.

Yeah, that's a really nice example actually. I love that. I hope that mine brings me gardening.

Oh, it's wonderful.

But I had to train it a bit. It was bringing me loads of doom and gloom, but I've been slowly training it onto kind of the more vacuous interests of mine, to try and give my brain a bit of a break.

You need it.

Absolutely. So thank you so much for joining us today. I feel like we've covered loads of ground, but that's because your career is super interesting.

Oh, thank you.

And I'm sure people are going to want to find out more about what you're doing, especially all the stuff you're doing on socials about EBSA and your program. So where's the best place for people to come and find you if they want to know more about you?

Probably Instagram at the moment. That's probably what gets most attention. So it's @drcarolynekeenan on Instagram, but I'm also on LinkedIn and I'm pretty active over there as well. So again, @drcarolynekeenan.

Amazing. Thank you so much for being with us today, Carolyne. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. We could have talked all day!

I know, I know.