Dr Jo Mueller, The Guilty Parent Club

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Psychology. In this season of the podcast, we are talking about fulfilment in our work and what we can do in independent practice to bring ourselves more fulfilment. So I'm really excited today to be here with Dr Jo Mueller, who has recently launched the Guilty Parent Club as a project that brings her more fulfilment in her work.

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

Links for Jo:

Website: www.drjothepsychologist.com

Instagram: @drjothepsychologist

Facebook: @drjothepsychologist

LinkedIn: Dr Jo Mueller

Refs:

Episode 112: CBT for menopause: How Simona Stokes is using her expertise to change lives

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• I ask Jo to tell us about her background and how she started as a psychologist 00:39
• Jo talks about her move into private practice 03:28
• Jo takes us through the challenges she faced starting an online practice 07:55
• I ask Jo what drew her to creating groups and online products and the first steps she took 10:14
• Jo explains how she found parents for the first cohort 19:30
• Jo tells us the most rewarding thing about running The Guilty Parent Club 24:34
• Jo talks about unexpected challenges she’s faced 26:02
• Jo tells us where she found support for her work 33:48

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

Psychology Business School: Start & Grow and Coaching

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

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

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

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

Mentioned in this episode:

Psychology Business School

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

Start and Grow

TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Jo Mueller

Hello, and welcome to the Business of Psychology. In this season of the podcast, we are talking about fulfilment in our work and what we can do in independent practice to bring ourselves more fulfilment. So I'm really excited today to be here with Dr Jo Mueller, who has recently launched the Guilty Parent Club as a project that brings her more fulfilment in her work. So I'm not going to spend ages rambling about Jo when she can do that much better herself. Cause I've known Jo for a while now and I'm really pleased to have her to talk to today. So hello, welcome to the pod, Jo.

Hi Rosie. Thank you for having me.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and where you started as a psychologist.

Yeah, so I actually started working as a research psychologist back in the day, I worked for University College, London and I worked in a small unit where we did lots of international projects looking at parent mental health and parent and child well-being in communities in South Africa, for example, and I also worked on projects supporting parents in, in Norway And so I, I kind of came up with parenting quite, quite early on, really loved it, but wanted to, to work more, more clinically. So obviously then did my clinical training and after clinical training, I worked in CAMHS services in, in central London for a number of years where I worked in sort of the main CAMHS service, but also in the neurodevelopmental teams and yeah, obviously I loved working with children, but for me parents were always kind of the, I guess the most important part because I just always felt like, you know, we see a child for maybe an hour a week at most in CAMHS, but of course, you know, they're at home the rest of the time. Even before I was a parent, I could see that being a parent was a really, really hard job, particularly if your child is, is coming to CAMHS for additional needs. And so I set up a number of groups and programs whilst I was in CAMHS to try and support parents. We introduced mindful parenting group, and then I subsequently had a secondment where I was working at King's College, London, developing a new parenting program for, for parents of children with autism. Because, you know, the post diagnostic support out there is really limited. And so that, that was something I really enjoyed, I think we ran that in an RCT. So yeah, I guess I've kind of done a number of things related to, to parenting. And then when I moved into private practice, I think it just felt really natural for me to focus my work with, with parents, partly because I was working mainly online at that point, and you can work with children online, but it's, it's not that easy, and working with parents is much easier. I'd also recently become a parent myself, and I think often our work as psychologists has some synergy with. And so, yeah, I started working with parents, not, I guess, both with parenting but also with parent mental health because they obviously go completely hand in hand. So yeah, I've always wanted to work with kind of both of those things at the same time.

What prompted your decision to move into independent practice?

So, there were a couple of things that happened. So, I had my little boy in 2017 my husband also got a new job, which involved kind of more international travel, and so I needed a practice that was going to be flexible around location, but also around childcare. And yeah, it just seemed like the right move to make. My secondment at Kings was, was finishing, the research study was finishing. And so I had to kind of make a decision whether I was going to go back to my NHS post, which required a long commute and, you know, just wasn't that flexible and it just wasn't the right thing for our family at the time. It did feel like a really big wrench, I have to say, to leave the NHS at that point. But. Yeah, I was ready for, for a new challenge and to kind of see, see where my sort of interest could, could take me, I think.

Just sort of dwelling on that a little bit, because I think it often does feel like a big wrench for people, can you remember what it was that felt like a loss at that time?

I think for me, I had always intended to spend my entire career in the NHS. You know, I'd gone into, to training absolutely with that intention. And even after training, you know, I worked full time for, for several years. I finished training relatively young, so I wasn't straight into the kind of family cycle at that point. So I did benefit from, from that. And I just really hadn't at all envisaged not working in the NHS, you know. So I think it was just trying to get my head around the idea of not doing that and I think maybe in the past there was a bit of a stigma of psychologists working privately as well. I don't know if you've come across that at all, but I think now it's so, so different, it's really different now. But even five, well, certainly 10 years ago, I think it was looked down on a little bit. And yeah, I think just kind of trying to envisage a different type of career for myself than what I'd imagined.

Yeah, I think I really relate to that. I think in a very similar way it was about 2016, 2017 that I was making the decision as well, and I felt very stigmatised about it. And I think it'd been explicitly talked about in our training program as being kind of selling out and that we were being trained for the NHS and that you should stay in the NHS. I don't think it was even hidden. I think it was explicit. So yeah, I actually, I hear it a lot from coaching clients that they're feeling a lot of shame. And it, and it comes from that. I think for me, there was also, and I wondered if you would relate to this, because you've done such interesting things in your career, I was worried when I went into independent practice that that was going to be over, that there'd be no more research, that there'd be no more, you know, service evaluation and creating new stuff and testing it. Did that worry you?

Yeah, I definitely think that was in there because research has always been such a kind of core part of my work. Obviously that was what I did before I went into clinical, that was one of the reasons I wanted to train as a clinical psychologist rather than say a psychotherapist, because I really wanted that academic research component, you know, not that one can't have that, but it's an integral part of being a clinical psychologist. And yeah, and with the kind of international kind of element of maybe needing to move around a bit, the thought of not being able to work for a university was really, yeah, it was really difficult. And actually, I think COVID has done. Me a lot of favours in, in that regard because Universities have had to look at the rules that they've got about who they can employ and how and where. And I think that's made lots of things a lot more flexible for us. So I think that's, that's really positive and helped me to sort of feel more at home with, yeah, working in a more, as more of a consultant, I suppose, and now I, and I still have links with Canterbury Christ Church where I, where I trained I've been supervising a number of trainees on their MRP research, which is a, I really love that as a way of keeping a hand in with research. But yeah, I totally hear what you're saying on that front.

Yeah. So I guess now sort of bringing it a little bit more up to date, you know, what were the challenges that you faced when you, Started this kind of online practice, which back then wasn't that normal.

Well, the good thing about it was that I actually started before the pandemic. So when the pandemic came, I'd already been doing, working on zoom for, for a year. So I've sort of felt quite comfortable with that. And I think what was quite helpful was that I started up really slow when my son was little, I was really very lucky that there wasn't a financial pressure for me to suddenly have full time hours with an online business. So I could sort of just start and see, see what I enjoyed doing and see how it went. And it's kind of grown that way. I had a second child and, you know, so then you sort of slowed down a bit and then, but actually being able to work for yourself and being able to work online meant that I could go back to work a little bit sort of earlier than I would otherwise and kind of build up in a natural way. So that I was very fortunate for that.

So were there any kind of major hurdles that you've had to overcome in the development of your practice? Or did it kind of just follow that nice incremental path?

The major hurdle for me is selling and marketing, which is why I know you Rosie, because I, you know, I was, I, I had the ideas for kind of various courses and groups that I wanted to run for parents and put the material together, And that's really a kind of labour of love for me. And we can talk a bit more about that process in a minute, but the, the fact of having to get it out there to people to actually see what you're doing, to see whether they're interested in doing it is really hard for me and really, you know, I find it quite unnatural. And so having support from, from you was really invaluable because. I can, you know, be in touch with not only you, but lots of other psychologists going through the same, the same process, because I think many of us find it quite, quite challenging. I would definitely say that's been my absolute number one stumbling block.

And sometimes it's so valuable just to hear that other people also don't feel comfortable with it and have that support for each other. So what drew you then to creating groups, online products, that kind of thing?

Well, I, I think, I expect many people when they start working in private practice, you start to see a pattern, more of a pattern to what people are bringing. I think in the NHS, it's a, it's a different kind of animal really, and maybe there's a bit more variety. I think in, in private practice, you do start to see patterns. And so I think that led me to kind of want to do two things, one of which was to, I guess create a, a framework, a model, I, that's how I think, I think in structure and I think in think visually a lot. And so I wanted to kind of create this framework that would make sense to parents, drawing together the, the psychological models that I was using but making it a bit more memorable for my clients. But it also made me want to kind of get these parents together because I could see that they were all having really similar struggles. And my experience previously from running groups with parents is that something magical just happens when you get them together, because not only is it, yes, it's more efficient, you can deliver the same material to the same people at the same time, but it's not that, it's the fact that the, the shame just sort of melts away because they can suddenly they're like, Oh, other people are going through the same thing as me. And of course, when you're working a lot with shame and guilt and trying to help parents develop sort of more self-compassion, which is kind of at the root of what I'm trying to do a lot of the time, having that extra special component of them melting it away themselves is, you know It's really invaluable and of course they have their own expertise, their own ideas and strategies that they then share, you know, over and above what I could ever put in a program. So that's where it came from really to want to, yes, I, you know, I love my one-to-one work, but doing something with a group of parents is extra fulfilling.

So what were the first steps you took? Cause I know that the membership that you're running now is called the guilty parents club, but I know you didn't jump straight to that.

Yes. So actually the first thing I set up was, it was more of a mindful parenting group, more similar to something I'd run in the NHS. And I actually set that up when my daughter was only about eight months old and what it, it was in person, in fact, locally, and what it did was gave me a night off. So that was, that was, you know, partly, partly for me, but you know, the material I loved and I know that it's helpful for me, but it's been helpful for a lot of my clients in the past. So I set that group up, ran that locally, it went really well. It was great. But then you, you had parents saying, this is all wonderful, I feel more regulated, I feel more calm, but I still don't know what to do when my child is doing X, Y, and Z. So I was like, okay, no problem, I already also have this kind of expertise in my, my toolkit, so I'll set up a, a course that's more about parenting tools. So I ran that. And then of course, parents are like, yeah, that was great, brilliant, really good tools. You know what though? I just can't use those. I can't use those tools when, you know, everything's gone haywire, and I just can't think straight. It doesn't matter what I've learned, I can't put it into practice. So I was like, okay, so, you know, obviously parents need both. They need both of these things at the same time. So that was when I started to put together the 6P key framework that, that I've developed, which has six types of strategy for parenting your child on the one hand, but on the other side, they also apply to us as parents about our well-being, our regulation and how. Yeah, we need to kind of look after ourselves to keep ourselves regulated before we can actually, you know, use the, use the other ones. So yeah, it's a sort of virtuous cycle, I guess, when you've got both.

So I love that for two reasons. Firstly, I think it's really powerful to develop a framework that people can remember. And so people might remember if they’ve listened to this podcast for a while, when I interviewed Simona Stokes about her EMBERS model. That's another really nice example of this. It sticks in people's minds, which means they're better able to access it when they're stressed. So I think it makes it more effective, but also it gives you something to confidently talk about, you know, I know from talking to you when we've done coaching together, that the idea of doing stuff like the media rounds is quite intimidating, but you've got your framework to fall back on. So, you know, your default answer is going to be one of those P's or all six. So it's like, okay, I've got this thing that is always safe to talk about, that's always going to deliver value to people and put my core message across. So it really makes your life a lot easier because it means you can hinge your content, everything you're putting out there around that framework. And so I love that. It's a really good example. But also you developed it by listening. You didn't assume what people needed. You put out a test offer that wasn't massively stressful and arduous for you to create. And then you listened to the feedback, put out something else that wasn't really stressful and arduous for you to create, and then from that, you got the feedback you needed to create the thing, which probably has been a little bit more arduous to create.

Yeah, I think, I think you're right. And I think what's, it's useful to kind of see that process because when you start looking at the, you know, the marketing space and everyone's saying, don't create, you know, a massive course, definitely don't do that, you know, don't create a course that just contains everything, you know? And I was a bit like uh-oh, that's literally what the guilty parent club is. And so I kind of had to just ignore that bit of advice really, because I felt genuinely like I was responding to what people had told me and what I, I sort of know they need from an experience level, but also from a theoretical level that, you know, that we, you know, it is a vicious circle, we can't do one thing without the other. So, you know, there were good reasons, I think, why I…

Well, I think the reason that most of the advice is not to jump in and create a massive course is because most people don't do the first two rounds that you did. So most people jump straight into trying to create a big course without having listened to people first. So yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with creating something which gives everything you think people need. I think that can be a really good thing. But there's kind of two things to consider. Firstly, do you know that's what they need? And you can tick that box. And secondly, the format in which you deliver it. Is it actually accessible to them? Cause that's the other mistake I've seen. Psychologists in particular, tend to make this because of our love of research and theory and, and all of that stuff, is that sometimes we present people with what our brains can handle and we forget that we've had, you know, often 20 years to accumulate that information, whereas, you know, we're dumping it all on people that have maybe never gone beyond a GCSE in science, so might really struggle with it.

Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good point. And it's definitely something that I, you know, constantly have to work on for myself, to, to make sure I don't kind of run away with things that are too complicated. And what's really lovely actually about the first cohort of the, the Guilty Parent Club is that I am able to take on feedback from them. So although, you know, a lot of it was, was planned and kind of written, I'm recording the podcasts for it as, as we go along and I can hear what, what the parents are saying. And there's been a few things that they've asked for, you know, additional kind of written materials to make things make a bit more sense or you know, the length of the podcasts, what's best for them. So, yeah, it's definitely a kind of a work in progress. And certainly doing it as an audio podcast based course, sort of club community was in response to, to feedback from parents that they just, you know, and I know this, I find it really difficult to find the time to sit down and watch a video, but can you stick on a five or 10 minute podcast while you're doing something else? Yeah. You probably, you probably can so that aspect combined with the live meetings we're having every two weeks, which is again, seems about right for parents, it's not too much, not too little, seems to be working out at the moment.

Brilliant. So I know a lot of people will be wondering, so how did you find the parents for the first cohort? Was it, was it an easy marketing job? Can you talk us through a little bit of what you did to get those first people?

Well, I think one of the things that, that helped a lot was that I ran a webinar, which I know is a pretty tight, tried and tested route for marketing, but definitely it, it gave, I think it gave parents quite a bit of value on its own, and that was kind of my intention. So it was a webinar about how guilt and stress can get into a vicious cycle for us as parents, and the ways in which we try to deal with those feelings of guilt actually often just kind of perpetuates it and makes us more stressed, which makes us kind of make more, in inverted commas, mistakes with our parenting and then feel worse and worse. So there were a lot of parents that came to that, which I think, and they felt, you know, that was just really useful to know in of itself. And also, you know, people want to get to know you, they want to see you, they want to see you talk and figure out whether you're the kind of person that they like. So I, I can see why running a webinar like that is, is useful for bringing, bringing people in.

Definitely, especially in the parenting space. Because the, there's a lot of diversity isn't there in parenting interventions that are out there and people do tend to be, you know, very repelled by the one that is not their natural camp. So, you know, you've got the gentle parenting side and you've got the people that want to follow a Gina Ford type approach. And so people have really got to work out if you're the right fit for them before they're going to invest with you.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I would feel the same and it is, it is quite a crowded marketplace, and I don't want to kind of add to the noise of that. And I think, you know, everyone that's signed up to the Guilty Parent Club are people that like a bit of science, you know, they like a structure, they like evidence-based practice. And so, yeah, good to kind of get, get a sense of what, what someone's offering, what their vibe is before, before going for it. Other than doing that, what did I do? I don't know. I did lots of things. I, you know, I have a, an email, an email list when I, and I tried to send valuable content out to them. There was a bit of word of mouth as well. I, I know that a couple of people joined on the recommendation of either a friend or their psychologist, even, who happened to be a colleague of mine. There’re some parent groups round about where I live and there was a bit of word of mouth. There, somebody joined directly from Instagram. You know, so I, it was, it was a real, it was a real mix.

It's always interesting I think to look at where people have come from so that you can look at what's your most valuable angle for next time. So, you can sort of double down on the stuff that was most effective for you. So, it'd be really interesting to see what happens when you go for cohort two, whether you see the same pattern or whether it changes slightly. But I'm just wondering that initial webinar, where did you get people for that?

Well, I think most of them, yes. So I, I promoted that on, on social media, on my email list and on the kind of the parent, the local parent WhatsApp chats. I think it was probably relatively even split between those things. And I guess, yeah, I think, I think I'm probably going to do one cohort a year for the club, just so that I'm not constantly on a, a marketing treadmill, because that is something that I find really takes a lot of energy for me. And if we're talking about fulfilling practices, then, you know, I think that makes sense, sense for me to kind of do it not as frequently as maybe I could. So yeah, I'm interested to, to see what happens next time, because obviously there's always a bit of a sort of first time, effect, isn't there of, you know, people see something new. So we'll, we'll have to see, we'll have to see what happens this year.

Well, next time, of course, you'll have the feedback and the testimonials from the people that have been through the first time and all the word of mouth that they will generate. So, yeah, I wouldn't be too pessimistic about that. I think that the kind of first time effect is not that great because your reach is always really limited when it's your first time out, whereas what you'll learn from this is, you know, how to reach the right people. And perhaps, you know, put more effort into those things that did bring people to you and sort of ignore the stuff which wasn't so effective. So don't worry, have confidence, Jo.

Okay, I will. I shall.

So, thinking about the positives, what's the most rewarding aspect of running the Guilty Parents Club?

I mean, I think it's, it's what we all find as psychologists, isn't it? That we don't do this job to, to get feedback from people that we've really helped them, but it certainly is lovely when that happens. And you know, all the stuff that's in it, it's kind of like the distilled, the most useful distillation of all the, you know, the stuff that I know helps parents and to see that it actually does help them is, is just always really lovely and to get, you know, feedback, we have a, a kind of group chat and so when you get parents saying, Oh, I tried, you know, I tried this last night and you know, it worked like a dream or, you know, I'm just feeling really different about myself as a parent. Had one of the parents left me a really lovely voice note the other week, just saying how, even within like a month or month or so, it really feels like they've turned their family around and how she's looking at her son is completely different and how she's feeling about herself as a parent is completely different. And yeah, I, you know, that is just wonderful. It, you know, that's why, I think at least one of the reasons why we're in a helping profession, because we want to help. And so, yes, it is lovely when you, when you hear that.

Oh, that sounds so powerful. I Guess on the flip side, one thing I know from running this type of program is that there are always unexpected challenges. What kind of unexpected challenges have you faced running the club?

Well, we're about three months in or so, so I don't know if there could be more unexpected challenges coming up. There's been a bit of extra work to do, so there was a kind of particular type of overview document that the parents requested, so that's actually taken quite a lot of extra time that I hadn't quite bargained for. Actually, recently one, something that came up was that, so there's, there's a fair bit of, and I really try and break it down into really step by step, like understanding, understanding what self-compassion is, you know, why it's helpful to us, like what the impact of self-criticism is on us at a psychological, but also a kind of neurobiological level. And then thinking about how we can build up that, that muscle, not ignore what, you know, perhaps the more critical side of ourself might be saying, in fact, tune into it more even rather than pushing it away, but at the same time build up another side. And I've been really lucky that the people that have signed up have come in couples. So I actually kind of have to say, I sort of expected it would be mostly mums because mums tend to be the driver of joining parenting courses. But actually out of the, out of the 10 couples, yeah, about eight of them are coming regularly together. So yeah, it's absolutely wonderful. So we've got eight dads showing up regularly and one of the dads was just really kind of the self-compassion stuff was really like completely new to him. And I think sometimes as psychologists, we can forget how completely different this stuff can be for some people, because usually when clients come to us, either for one to one work or if they sign up to a course, you know, they've looked at the material, they've looked at what we're doing, they've kind of got some idea of these things, but I think this dad has kind of been brought along for the ride, maybe by his partner, hasn't really looked at it you know, the basis of what we're doing. And so listened to the self, the, the podcast about self-criticism and self-compassion and was just like, what, you know, oh my gosh, like this is really blowing my mind too. And so, you know, what I've done is I've offered him a, you know, I've offered him a one-to-one session for us to kind of talk, talk things through all the way through the course I emphasise how important it is that you take what's useful to you and you leave what's not useful to you. And I always preface, like, all of the exercises with saying, you know, bear in mind if you have, thinking about your background, think about whether this exercise is going to be right for you. And if you want to stop, then you can. But yeah, I think I hadn't quite anticipated just how new it might be.

So I'm really glad that you shared that because this is one of the biggest fears, when I am coaching people through setting up an online program of any kind, people often get really worried, you know, what if somebody has a really bad reaction to one of the exercises? Or they, you know, really struggled to cope with something that comes up for them. And so I think this shows the value of having a live component so that you have that contact because this person was able to give you that feedback and you've been able to support him through what can be an uncomfortable experience. It's just the reality of it.

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I, I think there was a lot of, I wouldn't say pressure, but certainly when you're setting up a group like this you know, you could just have the podcast material and send people on their way. And I just felt that wasn't the right thing for this, even though, yes, it makes it a lot less, you know, profitable or, you know scalable, but what I'm trying to do is help parents and I know that what they need is that live interaction in between listening to the material, like just listening to it isn't going to help them in the way that I want to help them. So certainly having that, that interaction both on the live session but also on our chat group it makes a huge difference. And then, you know, I do have the flexibility to say, look, let's meet, let's meet one-to-one and talk this through, you know, actually everything's okay. It's just that I think for this, this, this dad, it was just kind of came, he hadn't expected it and it was, it was so new to him, but yeah, I totally agree. I think that the interaction is really important.

Because the fact is, if you'd offered this as just a passive product, he’d have just disengaged, you know, that that's what happens, you know, if we feel not don't necessarily love this word, can't think of a better one, but if we feel triggered or resistance to something and it's a passive product, we just avoid it. So I think sometimes we get a bit too in our heads worried that people will stay listening to something, which is really upsetting them, but they don't, of course they don't do that. They, they take it off and run away from it. But what you've got here is that opportunity to develop the relationship. And that's so powerful. And it really reminds me of some of the experiences I've had teaching hypnobirthing. So I only teach hypnobirthing to people that have already been through a traumatic birth experience. And so often the partners, the birth partners coming along to that, they really don't want a bar of it. Because their experience, their life experience has taught them that birth is horrible and to be feared. And they're usually trying to talk their partner into having a planned caesarean or just, you know, very resistant to the whole idea. And so you've got a big piece of work to do in engaging them and sort of getting that scientific side of their brain to become interested in it. So I think it's a wonderful opportunity, if you can get people that maybe aren't already thinking in that way, to come and listen to you and to engage them.

Yeah, exactly. And it's a dialogue, isn't it? So, you know, what I say is. this is, this is a viewpoint you know, take, take from it, what's useful and what, what could be a tool for you. And if doing something differently in your life is working well for you, then that's great. That's, that's absolutely good.

Yeah. Sometimes it's just about planting seeds for people and, you know, they'll grow that into a flourishing compassion flower when it's right for them, which might not be now. But you've, you've done something really powerful by showing it to them and giving them that opportunity, which doesn't come up in a lot of people's lives. So yeah, really, really nice example to talk about there, I think. So I'm just wondering, you know, this is a challenging process. We've already alluded to some of the difficulties that come along with this type of work. And I always think we need to remember that we can't do it on our own. I think it'd be very difficult to get a project like this off the ground in a vacuum with nobody knowing about it. And I know that because I tried in the past. So where did you find the support for your work?

Well, as I said before, I found support with you, Rosie. And so, you know, all of the other psychologists and allied health professionals in, in your membership, I, I really, you know, I do think it's incredibly valuable to have a group of people that you feel that you can kind of trust and be vulnerable, and for us to support each other completely as well as having that more expert guidance from you. I think, you know, I, I also have other friends and psychology colleagues outside of that who I've been able to bounce, bounce ideas. I've spoken to, you know, various, various colleagues in different capacities for support with a bit of accountability as well, kind of going through and when, when is it useful to set a deadline for yourself? When is it not useful to set a deadline for yourself? You know, you don't have too much pressure, but at the same time, you know, it's hard to. So I, I absolutely think that having a community around us is, is, is crucial.

Yeah. I really agree. And it's just, and it’s what you're saying there, you talked about your ideas and you let other people know about them and give you feedback, and I think that's so important because when I see people really struggle, and some of my coaching clients have been through this, it's when they really won't tell anybody about what they're doing because there's, you know, maybe imposter syndrome or shame, which is making that really difficult for them. And I think we all feel that, you know, certainly I do, whenever I have a new idea, it feels like I'm being really arrogant or it's too grand and I, I don't feel comfortable telling people about it, but I've really noticed, just like you, that if I do share it with colleagues, it's so much more likely to happen because I can kind of gain some confidence from them.

I think so. And I think you also, you get to hear that other people feel the same as you. And I think it's so easy to look out there and see what other people are doing and think, Oh my gosh, like they've, you know, they've got this sorted, you know, they're so successful. You know, they know exactly what they're doing and yeah, I'm sure some people like that do exist, but I think there's also a lot of people who actually are just, just like you, they've had an idea, they're trying to, they're trying to help people, they're trying to kind of get things off the ground, and it's just a kind of work in progress.

Yes, and learning that it never goes perfectly for anybody. Like I have never launched anything where there hasn't been one really cringeworthy mistake. Like really cringe, like the wrong email going to the wrong people or you know, I've made some kind of technical problems, so the button goes to something completely irrelevant, like there's always something because there's so many moving parts. And it's only really talking to other people who have been through it, and you think, but you're so impressive and you sent the wrong email to a whole group of people like, okay, that must mean that that's humans. That's what we do. And we can't be better than human.

Exactly, exactly. And that's very much the kind of vibe of all of my work of what I try and, you know, talk to parents about. So at some point you have to kind of apply it to yourself as well.

Absolutely. I think that's a really good note to finish on. Thank you so much, Jo, for giving us your time today. I think there's going to be lots of people listening to this that want to go and check you out and connect with you. So, where's the best place for them to go and find you?

Well, my website is drJothepsychologist.com. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook @drJothepsychologist. You can probably also track me down on LinkedIn.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us. And I'll put all those links in the show notes.

Thank you so much, Rosie. It was lovely to talk to you.