TikTok, Group Programmes and EMDR Intensive with Dr Claire Plumbly 

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. In this series, we're exploring the different ways that psychologists and therapists can work in independent practice. Today I'm here with Dr Claire Plumbly. Claire is a clinical psychologist and director of Good Therapy Limited, an online therapy centre for trauma focused therapies. As well as one to one therapy, including EMDR intensive therapy, she runs regular workshops on burnout, boundaries, anxiety, and overthinking. Claire has an active presence on social media, her TikToks and Reels are great, where she aims to make psychological ideas and resources more accessible to the public to help improve well being and debunk those all too common therapy misconceptions.

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

Links for Claire:

Website: www.drclaireplumbly.com

Instagram: @drclaireplumbly

TikTok: @drclaireplumbly

YouTube: @drclaireplumbly

Facebook: DrClairePlumbly

LinkedIn: ​​drclaireplumbly

You can buy/pre-order Claire's book "Burnout: Why an Overwhelmed Nervous System Takes Over Your Life and how to reclaim it" here.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burnout-overwhelmed-nervous-system-reclaim/dp/1399733419/ref=sr_1_1?crid=32LG4D43LJ8ET&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-5OSVCNZPOcWP1ROPVvSUA.pDnBAfxB4BThSW0whqsUls1DHmDbpPKu4obK_rWWjCQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=dr+claire+plumbly&qid=1714143131&sprefix=dr+claire+pl%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-1

EMDR Intensive Service Therapist Checklist: subscribepage.io/JHkvuP

References:

Burnout: Solve Your Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

ACT for Burnout: Recharge, Reconnect, and Transform Burnout with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Debbie Sorensen

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Claire tells us about how her career in clinical psychology began 01:06
• I ask Claire what encouraged her to move away from working just in the NHS and strike out independently 06:35
• Claire talks about what her business looks like now 11:09
• Claire tells us about her marketing and social media 21:31
• Claire gives us her advice for people that might want to try EMDR intensives or think about starting them 26:38
• I ask Claire about the book she’s written about Burnout 31:40

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.

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Claire Plumbly

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. In this series, we're exploring the different ways that psychologists and therapists can work in independent practice. Today I'm here with Dr Claire Plumbly. Claire is a clinical psychologist and director of Good Therapy Limited, an online therapy centre for trauma focused therapies. As well as one to one therapy, including EMDR intensive therapy, which we'll talk about later, she runs regular workshops on burnout, boundaries, anxiety, and overthinking. Claire has an active presence on social media, her TikToks and Reels are great, where she aims to make psychological ideas and resources more accessible to the public to help improve well being and debunk those all too common therapy misconceptions. I've also had the pleasure of working with Claire as a coaching client and as a member of Psychology Business School, so I'm really pleased to have her here today to talk about the different ways that she's serving her clients. So welcome to the podcast, Claire.

Thanks for having me, Rosie.

So can you tell us a little bit about how your career in clinical psychology began?

Yeah, so I just really liked learning psychology at school. So I think I just developed a passion from that perspective. And my mum was a nurse, so I kind of had a really good role model of, you know, helping others and thought a profession in that would be good, and I was also in that year group where psychology was the first A level being the first year it was being offered as an A level, so it felt kind of exciting. And then my mum managed to set up an appointment with me to do a bit of work experience with a psychologist. And it just felt like everything he said sounded really insightful. And now I know, I'm a psychologist that he was using all the models and being informed by that and everything he said, but it just felt like an exciting career. So yeah, so that's how I ended up going and carrying on into uni and then taking all the steps that you have to do to get your work experience and do the doctorate.

I actually think that's interesting. I know you think it's a boring story. I do not think it's a boring story, because I think, you know, you're one of the only people I've spoken to who actually knew what a psychologist did at such an early stage.

I had a very limited view of it, let's just say, I didn't know the breadth of what we do at all, but yes, I had a, my, I was quite lucky that my mum was able to just sort that out and it was only a couple of days just kind of not really doing anything interesting, but it just still felt like I was doing something.

I just think it speaks to how important it is for us to get out there and be more visible because when young people know what psychology is, they do tend to be inspired by it, like in all its different forms. But I don't know how many young people get that opportunity these days. But I know there are lots of people, lots of them in our community, including your good self, doing some excellent work to make us more visible. So yeah, I just think that's really, really important.

Yeah, thank you. And actually, when I do, I do some lives at the moment on TikTok, and I always get several students or wannabe Psychologists and I think that just goes to show there's a lot of questions about how did you get there and all of that, and you could probably just set up lives just to answer that and you'd get lots of people interested.

Oh, definitely. I get people, even though I don't really talk about the career path into psychology very often, I get people's mums contacting me quite a lot.

Oh, like mine!

Yeah. Being like, oh, could you talk to my child about psychology for a bit?

Which is, you know, problematic on all sorts of levels, but the demand to see what we do and see behind the curtain a little bit is certainly there. So I think the more we can do the better. So tell me a little bit about how your particular interests in trauma and EMDR developed.

Yeah, so I started out after qualifying in what was a general psychology service just again, a year before IAPT kind of rolled in, and so I was there for about six and a half years and in that time there was a lot of development and lots of opportunities to get involved with different projects. So I tried lots of different things. I tried some, like there was a bit where you could get extra training and working with couples and then extra training working with trauma, in health difficulties, and I did enjoy the trauma in particular. And then when I had, after I'd had my second child, I realised that the commute, which was an hour and a half, I lived in South London, my job was North London, and I realised how bonkers that was once I was trying to do the nursery drop off. And yeah, and some opportunity came up to work close to home in a sexual assault referral center at the Havens in London. That was only a 40 minutes commute. And I really loved the manager there, the psychologist managing the team, she had a really lovely approach that was very calming and thoughtful. And after the busyness of IAPT, I just knew that that would hold me a lot better. I kind of had this sense from, because I ran an emotional regulation group in IAPT for people who weren't kind of needy enough for the personality disorder service. But when I had supervision at the PD service, I could see how held everybody was and that that wasn't happening in IAPT. There was a sense that we just see the people quickly and, you know, throughput and the teams where that were more specialist seemed to be held a bit more. And so I definitely got that sense when I had this interview with the SARC, and so when I started there, I had my EMDR training, and heavy work, but also, like I say, more held and training opportunities were lovely.

I always think I'm very envious of people that got to train in EMDR within a service because it's so helpful that I think the number one barrier to people in independent practice training in EMDR is the confidence to take on EMDR clients.

I agree. Yeah. Because I supervise now in EMDR and I, I'm often trying to help people just get going with something. And I think there's a feeling of now I'm stopping this therapy and I'm now starting my EMDR. So trying to help make it a bit more fluid and like finding a small thing you could get going with.

So what was it that encouraged you to move away from working just in the NHS and strike out independently?

So I did a little bit of private practice, one evening a week towards the end of mat leave. So I was part time in the NHS, because I know you have to be a bit careful, but you can use some of your part time when you're not meant to be at the NHS to start doing private work if you would like without doing anything wrong. So I hired a room and just did it one evening a week just to start building up a bit of finances because of course when you go back to work with two kids and childcare that is really tricky for making ends meet. So I had a little bit of that experience. And then when we got in 2017, I'd had a third child and we knew we wanted to move out of London because we lived in Beckenham. So we moved to Somerset, and that was obviously a big move because I had to leave my NHS job and my small private practice that I’d built up. So I joined a group, an associate group practice here. I did look and see, and there wasn't any NHS jobs that felt right for me. And so it did, it did feel helpful that I had had a little bit of experience before going into that full time. So of course that was, that felt a big risk.

Yeah. I mean, a big, a big life transition to move from London in the NHS to Somerset and having to go fully into the private sector. How did you feel about that at the time?

I went in very gently just one day a week to begin with, and I did feel like I wanted to be held by some sort of formal organisation or system. And so I think my experience with the associate practice was, I was probably looking for something more team based, and it, so it was nice, I had the room and I made some connections, you know, with some associates there, but I think I was hoping for it to be more like the NHS than obviously it ever could be. So yeah, I think that was a learning curve for me that private practice is different and it depends on the associate practice, whether they are thinking about the team and what that might look like and offering any kind of community stuff versus, you know, she focused very much on her beautiful rooms and good referrals coming in and marketing, which I did really value because I, my books got full very quickly, so that's when I started to look for other ways to meet that need and started to look, you know, other opportunities like online, probably the best connections I've made have been in the last few years from going, particularly on Instagram, where there's lots of other health professionals that I think all the socials have different benefits, but that's been where I've made the most really good connections with other psychologists who are doing similar things.

Yeah. So I think often people talk about the loneliness in independent practice and really craving that sense of team that you get in the NHS and it is really difficult to find. And I've talked a lot about associate practice recently. I've done a workshop on it, and one of the biggest wake up calls for people who are stepping into creating their own associate practice is how difficult it is to foster that, even when you want to, you know, it takes financial investment, but it also takes commitment from the independent practitioners who are coming on board as associates. And simply that commitment often isn't there because of all the reasons we go into independent practice, often we can be a bit flaky, and so it can be really, really challenging to find that. And I love the capacity that social media has to connect us up in that way. I'm not surprised that you found people that want to talk to you on Instagram because the quality of your content is so good. That's why one of the reasons I always encourage people to put out content that is thoughtful rather than just jumping on trends all the time, because otherwise you're never going to meaningfully connect with anybody. If you're just putting out what you think will get loads of views, it might get loads of views, but you're not going to get any real connection at all. So, how did you kinda evolve from one day a week in an associate practice to the business that you have now, and what does the business now look like?

So my one day a week quickly filled, I would see up to five clients in a day. And so I went into two days, was renting a second room, and then three days, rented the room a third, for a third day. So that meant I was, at my peak, seeing up to 15 clients a week for one-to-one, which I'm sure you're nodding along thinking burnout central, which is exactly when what happened. And also, you know, I had my own website, so I was getting more people coming in and asking for therapy. And as soon as I have a connection, as soon as I have a phone call with someone, I feel like I'm involved. So then COVID obviously happened and that brought its own challenges, we're a very good team, my husband and I, but obviously nowhere to kind of like decompress after a clinic going and swapping kind of, and homeschooling and stuff. So I think that's when I discovered your podcast and you were talking about you know, lots of ideas and then the algorithm found me as well because I'd listened to some of that stuff and suddenly I'm getting like loads of adverts are like passive income, do this, do this, and so I was being like bombarded with all these new ideas for the first time. So I was like, oh, I could do something different. And then my youngest also, he's now in year two, so he started school. So I kind of had this sense that, you know, he's about to start school, I could do something here that's different and I know I don't want to just keep doing the same old one to one. I need something new. So the ideas coming up for me were EMDR intensives because I joined a group where that was being talked about, and I thought that could be good to go deep with someone, and then to set up my own group, which I did, I did Untroubled and I ran that for 18 months, and obviously then started to do my social media in order to attract people to these things. And then I've found that once you're present and visible online, that new opportunities tend to offer themselves to you because people then can see you and find you. So the associate group practice kind of evolved as a response to attracting people for the group, having those screening calls and thinking you're not the right fit. But now I'm involved I don't want to just say go to Psychology Today and find someone, so that's where I recruited some associates. That was quite a lot of an answer. Sorry. Did I mostly answer?

Yeah, no, absolutely. So it sounds like you had some really good ideas for things you could do beyond one to one therapy. So EMDR intensive and the untroubled group primarily. But then as you started to attract attention for those things, other things then became necessary. So the associate practice was almost like, I need to do this because otherwise I'm kind of leaving all of these people that aren't suitable for the Untroubled group with nowhere to go. And I hear that so often, because I think a lot of psychologists are like you and feel that once they've had that contact, they've got a real obligation to somebody. And I would say it's, it's real, especially, it's probably different in different postcodes, but I've lived in some parts of the country where people cannot find psychological support. You know, they get turned away from the NHS, that's becoming quite standard to hear in independent practice now, and then it's very difficult to find another psychologist with a similar specialism to you. I know that was a really big problem for a lot of my prospective clients. So it makes a lot of sense that you would then think, right, I need to set up an associate practice. But how was that for you? Because I think I knew you a little bit at that time and you were really busy running Untroubled and with your own work. What was bringing other people into the team like?

Well of course, because I hadn't done it before, I didn't really know what I was getting in for, but yeah, I had, yeah, a one off coaching session with someone who had an associate practice and she kind of gave me some ideas. So that was helpful, and then I spoke to Claire Veal and got her to help me with that contract side of things.

That's our lawyer from Aubergine Legal, for anyone that doesn't know Claire, she's fab.

She was really good. So that was… obviously your resources helped me just feel like this was possible, I could just, I, it was just a, it was less friction to the next step, I guess. And so I just put an ad out on, I think the, you know, the Facebook group and had a few people come in and ask, and set up some like interviews and did a checklist of what I needed from them, and set up an inbox for referrals. I already had, this is really important. I had a PA, so I had had a PA for about a year by then doing my invoicing and onboarding and disembarking, what's the word for that? Off boarding.

Yeah, discharge paperwork, I suppose, something like that.

And so I said to her, how would you feel about more work? Because I think this is going to be more work to kind of, you know, make sure we've got all of their paperwork somewhere secure and safe, and also eventually when I feel ready and I've had a sense of how it works with incoming referrals and screening, I will write you a script and we will work together for you to help me with that.

So that's how it now works. We've got scripts, she responds to people and I keep an eye on the inbox as well and when there's tricky ones I step in. But for the kind of everyday ones and she's just matching people up, she does the majority of that. And this script idea came from some coaching where it hadn't occurred to me to have a script, which sounds, I was just responding because like, that's just how you do it, but to kind of, I think if you're going to run a business where you've got kind of people in job roles, it really helps and also really helps them to tweak it when it's not working. You don't need to, because where my head would go would be, what was I thinking? I'm not cut out for this. I'm not a leader, I can't run an associate practice, so it would go to all those places whenever there was any problems or like a, like lack of referrals or lack of referrals kind of taking hold and going anywhere. And then I would just go in and look at the script and just do some little tweaks and then that would be like, the version two, and she would try that and then we would evaluate that again after a couple of months. And I found that really, really helpful. And I know that's something you talk about with, that was a coaching session we had when I was doing my, one of my workshops and you're like, just get into the data and look at it. And I think that's really helpful for taking the heat out of it.

Absolutely. A spreadsheet can always help when you've got those mindset gremlins that are telling you that it's all about you and you can't change it because you're just a terrible leader, that’s something that I have in my mind all the time. Actually having some hard data, you can look at and just watch things improve slowly, I think that really does help. Also the templates, it's a really big time saver and it's brilliant for overcoming those days where you're just a bit vulnerable to feeling rubbish, you know, the number of times I find it really difficult to respond to somebody, or I don't really know what to say, and it's just because I'm having a bad day and having the template there really speeds that up. So even if you're not at the point where you've got somebody else doing the work for you, or you've got a team, I'd still really recommend templating all of your responses to inquiries and anything difficult like DNAs and stuff. And actually that's one of the reasons I think since, since you left, and I know you've now come back to us, we've introduced a perfect processes module, which has all of those templates in it for people, because it's so important, I think.

Ah, I'll take a look. That sounds good. So yeah, because exactly that I started to have draft, I had draft emails in my inbox, sorry, in a folder in my mail to just literally copy and paste ready. So it sounds a bit like what you're talking about as templates. And I would just, you know, populate it to be, you know, sensitive to the issues coming in and then press send. It does, it does help a lot, but whenever my PA is unavailable for a week, I always feel quickly overwhelmed again. So I just know that's been the best decision to have someone helping with that because it's the, it's that kind of tennis game of feeling like suddenly someone's rolled out a second tennis ball machine and firing extra shots at you that you can't return in the fashion, timely fashion that you'd like.

Yeah, I think that's so important. And certainly if anybody's thinking about associate practice, you just can't do that on your own. You really shouldn't try and do that on your own because it just leads to bad customer service really, to be frank, so I think it’s really wise.

So yeah, I think when I, you know, when I reached out to a therapy practice for myself and didn't get a reply for four days, like I do, I'm on the other side of it,

so I do get that, but that felt like a really long four days. So I do think it's really important to try and yeah, be responding within 24 hours if possible. And most of the time we do do that, occasionally we slip a little bit, but we're pretty good.

Yeah, no, I completely agree. So what's really interesting about your independent work is that you've got experience of marketing really different services. So you've got the group that was delivered online, you've got therapy work, and I know that you've done other workshops as well, and you've got EMDR intensive, and these are all quite different sort of ‘products’ in inverted commas. Have you noticed a difference in the type of marketing strategies that are effective for each of those things, or y’know, how have you done it basically?

I don't feel like I'm in the data enough to answer this question very well. I mostly just try and put things out on all the different socials. One to one I've always just found fills up very quickly. I've never, I do now track that, some of it's a mixture of Google search and a lot of it is the social media as well. Some of it's word of mouth. My intensives, I think now people have seen that I offer them and often it comes, there's two therapists who have referred a few times to me, intensives are really good, particularly if you're a therapist who's been working long term with someone and there's like a little nugget of something you can't quite get into and you kind of already have the attachment relationship which you want to continue so we can work quite nicely alongside that, like just press pause on that therapy for a bit, come and do your intensive and then do a hand over back. So I've got a couple of therapists I've done that with a few times, and that's been really brilliant. It's my favourite way of doing an intensive actually. So yeah, networking, I think probably has been the best way for EMDR intensives. And then, yeah, my workshops, yeah, just sometimes I would ask people to share if I thought it might be good for their, you know, audience, and I just make sure I'm doing the same for people. So it kind of feels like, you know, we're all supporting each other and we're all doing such good work and I feel sometimes like the algorithm is against us. So the more that we can all do for each other and for the people out there who, you know, just because the algorithm doesn't take a like to it, doesn't mean it's not good. And I think often my self esteem has been pummeled by that rather than genuine, you know, data around whether it's a good offer or not.

Yeah, I always think again, data kind of saves you, doesn't it? And I look at, with things like social media, I look at how often a post was saved because I think that's such a better indicator of whether you put something out there that was useful. And often you know, if, if it's got a few saves and I've had a couple of people DM me and say, thanks for that, I needed to hear that today or something similar, it's worth it then, I'm glad that I put that out there, even if the algorithm decided it didn't want to show it to very many people because we can't control that bit. I think the quality of the content and knowing that you're proud of it will carry you through sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

So what would you say has made you so successful online, because it's really working for you, your social media, by the sounds of it.

Thank you. I hedge my bets, but I do what probably people say not to, but I don't just focus on one, but I think that has helped me because, so what I tend, I quite enjoy TikTok because I find it just easy, the videos can be a bit more raw or like unfinished than I feel like the curated look of Instagram invites. So I just found I could get going on that, people putting comments with like genuine questions and comments of like people who'd not really kind of come across stuff before, whereas on Instagram, when I put stuff out, I get lots of supportive comments from other therapists, which is nice and then I could say it's really good for the networking, but it just feels like you're reaching different people. So I just find it helpful to make my TikTok and then I download it onto TikSave, and then I upload them onto all the other platforms like Facebook, YouTube shorts, if they're relevant on there, and sometimes also on to LinkedIn. And then I just find that a good way of getting different types of conversations about the same content. So TikSave is good because (I don't have any affiliate links or anything with them) I just, it's a tool that I just find really helpful because you can literally just download, it gets rid of the watermark, you upload it and it, and there's a bit, you can copy and paste the text you've already written. So actually, you just make it once, you upload it and that's it.

That's brilliant. And you said that will go on to LinkedIn as well?

I don't often do videos on LinkedIn, only because I don't think they do perform that well on there, but I do, but you can do, yeah.

Wow. What a clever tool. TikSave. I'll definitely have a look at that one. I haven't really been brave enough to go on TikTok yet, because as you said, the psychologists and therapists are mostly hanging out on Instagram, so it's, I've just stayed over there, but for my pregnancy psychologist account, I have been thinking TikTok's probably a place to go. So yeah, I'll definitely have a look at that one. Thank you.

I can, and I do have data on that if you want me to send you who my audience is, but it's definitely that group that you're talking about. Loads of people on there. Yeah. It's not just like dancing granddads and teens.

So one thing I'd like to know a little bit more about is EMDR intensive itself, because I've had a few people on the podcast talking about an interest in it. It seems like it's picking up a bit of traction, but I know that there'll be a lot of people listening who just kind of feel a bit intimidated by the idea, even EMDR therapists. So have you got any particular advice for people that might want to try out EMDR intensives or, or think about starting them?

Yes. So, I've been doing them for a few years and there's someone called Sarah Butler who has set up a kind of informal intensive group which is open to anyone, if anyone wants to get in contact with me, I can support you with linking up with that. But what we've noticed, Sarah and I have joined forces with another psychologist, to start doing a bit of research into intensives and maybe write a case study or that kind of thing, just to support it, to kind of get more momentum because we're all advocates of it. And what we've noticed other therapists fearing is things that we just don't think of the issues. So fearing that it's more risky, fearing that clients will have an expectation that's not realistic, that you'll basically be, you know, in inverted commas fixed at the end of the intensive, there's the practical issues as well which just take thought basically, whether it's going to be possible or not, but the main thing is that there are different ways to do intensives. It's a very broad definition. Intensives just mean longer and slightly more frequent sessions, but you can do a day long intensive, for example. So the way I run mine, I do mine on a Monday, Wednesday and a Friday for two and a half hours. And I meet with people before that to screen, and you are thinking more carefully about if now is the right time and, you know, that they're set up, you know, properly to not be expecting it to be the quick fix and having a specific area that you're going to go to for it, but I just find that frame really helpful for the week together. It really focuses both of us and people protect their time as well. So you have that luxury of knowing someone's coming and that's their main focus for the week. Whereas often they're trying to fit it in around other things. And so I think that's where you get quicker gains. So it's kind of like, the way I often say it to put clients is, imagine like that it's speeding through, say 12 sessions of EMDR if it was weekly, but in the course of a week, so you're kind of just getting progress a bit quicker and clients can relax into the session a bit more because you've got that longer time together rather than feeling like you've got to kind of wrap it up quite quickly, so you get deeper into it. So yeah, I think it's very satisfying as a therapist, myself and the others agree, and the clients enjoy them as well. So, yeah, if anyone, and actually, I hope this is okay, but I have, I've had a few people approaching me asking just like for some mentoring kind of sessions, so I have put together like a checklist, therapist checklist.

Oh, fantastic.

So yeah, so setting up your EMDR intensive service therapist checklist, so can we put that in the show notes?

Yeah, of course we can. Yeah. I'll definitely put that on there because I think hearing from people that actually offer it and getting that advice when you're thinking about setting it up is so important because it, you know, for me, it'd be very intimidating. I refer out when I want to send somebody for EMDR intensive and I think this will be useful for people like me who can't offer it for whatever reason and want to know who is offering it. You know that you exist, which is brilliant, and might want to connect with you and have a chat, but also for anybody who thinks, yes, this would fit really well for my client group. I've got loads of clients who could work in this way, but they're just feeling a bit shaky about the actual setup of it. It'd be lovely if they could get in touch with you and a checklist is a great place to start.

Yeah, there's a couple of blogs on my website about EMDR intensives and the benefits and the research, but I mean, essentially the research is equivalent to, you know, working with someone weekly in terms of outcomes, but you get less dropout, so you're more likely to have someone complete the course. So yes, it's really positive.

It makes sense, doesn't it? And I think there are clients who will find it much easier to prioritise that way of working and there are others that it's just not gonna be realistic for. So again, it's, it's knowing your client and which way of working is more likely to get them to that completion. Brilliant. So the other thing I wanted to talk to you about today was the book that you've written about burnout. So what, what brought the book about? What sparked the idea?

Well, you know, research is research, and part of going into all of my extra variety of things has been to break, break up some of that kind of burnout from being like worn down from the same kind of experience of work and that kind of almost vicarious trauma, I guess. So, that's when I started to kind of post more about burnout on my socials, you know, a couple of years ago. So somebody invited me to put a proposal for a book to them as a publisher. I don't know if you remember me talking about it?

I do. Yeah.

And that was nice because, you know, with your imposter syndrome that tends to get very, well, I find easily triggered by going online and doing this stuff. It's really, you just, I'm just a regular psychologist trying to promote a service, but you kind of feel when you're visible that you need to be like the go to. That's almost what the marketing people say is that you need to be the go to, the person with all the answers. And of course that's made triggers all of that imposter stuff. So it was like, nice to have, to be approached and I put together a proposal, but I also went to an agent and said, this has happened, what do you think? And she said, okay, I think your proposal is a really good idea, but I don't think we should just go with the first person who's approached you. I think I should take that, support you to kind of tighten it up and put it out to other publishing houses here in the UK, because it was an American publisher, so she's been brilliant. So if anyone's thinking of writing a book, I definitely recommend getting an agent, because it's, you know, unless you've done these things before, everything that's new tends to trigger anxiety and unknowns, feeling like someone's in your team and is really amazing who, you know, there's a lot of expertise in this area. So she, yeah, so she put it out. And I got two offers, so we went with the one that looked best in terms of like, what they were offering in terms of support and connections and finances. And also they had a connection with America as well. So they will publish it in America and over here, which she said was a really good opportunity. So the topic is on burnout and… so burnout is a concept that started because of the WHO definition it's, which is that it's an unmanaged chronic stress in an occupational setting, I think the people who talk about it most are more organisational occupational coaches and psychologists. But actually, if you look at what's going on for someone when they're burnt out, it's still clinical stuff that we should be talking about lots. But I think there's a lot of, I've talked to a few psychologists just from my connections on Instagram. People say, you know, I've got a bit of imposter syndrome talking about burnout because it's not something we're taught and it's not a psychological condition per se, it's a kind of collection of issues around essentially kind of detaching and feeling like emotionally, just like completely flatlining and cynical and things like this. So, I just think, you know, from looking at papers, we should be talking about more, and that's certainly what some of the researchers say is why, why aren't clinical psychologists talking about this more because they should be. So yeah, some of the books, you know, it's really good, good books. I particularly like the Emily Nagoski one. Have you read that one?

No, I haven't. I'll put that in the show notes.

But it's a feminist book, it's aimed at women. And so when I've tried to suggest it to other people, particularly males, they were like, well, this isn't written for me. And some of the other books felt more like further, for people further down the line where they may be trying to do, like things like time management and like that stuff that you can get sorted when you can get out of your own way. So looking at the internal pressures that people experience, like people pleasing, like using busyness to avoid strong emotions, like perfectionism, trying to support people to understand, formulate that, and using polyvagal theory as well to kind of go beyond the kind of more simple version of stress psycho-ed that tends to be included in kind of, a lot of kind of literature. Because I just think, you know, in your trauma work where you use those types of psychoeducational material people find it so validating to know it's not my fault that I'm on autopilot and I'm kind of not functioning at capacity and I've got brain fog and I can't think straight and I'm not connecting. So that's the thrust of the book.

I mean, it sounds really interesting and something I've been thinking about with burnout recently actually was sparked by a client I saw who said to me, oh, I had a mental breakdown a couple of years ago and I thought, I haven't heard that term for a while. And actually it always, it has always troubled me as it has done everybody, I think, in our profession, that that term tended to be used as a reason to stop being curious. It's just like, oh, that's the explanation, oh, it was a mental breakdown, and nobody ever looked for what the constituent parts of that were, what was actually going on for the person where there could have been useful intervention in the kind of run up to the event, which most people were describing. And I sort of think that burnout is going that way too, that, I mean, just probably it's part of human nature, isn't it? We love a label, makes life simple, and then you can stop trying to do anything about it. And so I sort of worried that we're hearing a lot about burnout, but not that much about what that really means and how individual it is for different people and what is underpinning that and what you can do about it. So I love the idea of practical demystifying guidance being out there rather than just the proliferation of this labelling, oh, it's, it's burnout, you need time off work for that. Great.

Yeah, it’s that, and once you're off work, then the problems can alleviate quite quickly, can't they? It depends how deep into burnout you've gotten. Obviously there's different levels of burnout where you've kind of completely come to a functional stop and that will take a lot more time to recover from, but yeah, because there are external pressures which are really hard to manage and so a lot of the business kind of stuff on Burnout is about, is aimed at managers and rightly so that, you know, there are organisational things you can do, but I think individuals, you don't want to give the message that it's all on the individual, but it's really supportive to know that there are things that, you know, I think people can feel, confused about why they behave in certain ways, why they can't just say no, why they can't just take their walk at lunchtime, and I think it's really helpful. So yeah, I also draw on compassionate mind therapy for that, but there is a recent book by another psychologist, so clearly clinical psychologists are having the same ideas at the same time, called Act for Burnout. So, I think that's worthwhile. I need to, to take a look, but I know that that's going to be a really good option and I draw a little bit on values because if you can reconnect to the, to those like you do in all your work, Rosie, that really helps a lot to kind of get back on track.

Yeah, I think that is really, really important. So I'm aware I've taken up a lot of your time, but I just wanted to finish by asking, and this is usually quite a difficult question, but what have been some of the most inspiring moments on your journey through all of this, the social media, the group programs, intensives, the book writing, is there anything that you kind of think of as being an inspiring time?

I think I definitely am a sucker for starting new projects and getting excited. I definitely feel most inspired at the start of a project when there's lots of possibility and enthusiasm. And I have to, my husband is the one who's always like reigning me in at the end of a project and going like, you did that, look at that. So, he helps me stay on track for the, to the end of it, to make sure I'm appreciating and kind of remembering that, because I think a lot of projects kind of end and have a bit of a kind of a fizzle, fizzle out kind of ending, aren't they? Where you’re kind of like, oh, I’ve done that now. It was like, so he's very good at going like you did that. But yeah, I think any one moment is very tricky because there are lots of exciting parts, I’m rambling a bit, sorry, I don't like this question!

No one does, but I always ask it because often I think what I go to podcasts or online content for is like a pick me up when I'm feeling a bit kind of low about my work or like I'm struggling to get that motivation, that inspiration for myself. And actually I think you've just raised a really good point that often it is a connection, a compassionate discussion with somebody that cares about you that will do that, because you often when you're feeling a bit flat about your work, I think this is definitely true for me, it is because you haven't appreciated something you've already done. So I think that's really valuable.

So with my book, for when I was getting wobbly, you know, whenever you're doing something new, you more or less get these wobbles. I've written like a whole list of affirmations and things I need to remind myself. And they will be things like, you know, just nice comments and when I've been invited onto a podcast. So when I was looking at it for this, I was like, oh and Rosie Gilderthorp asked me to be on her podcast. It was on there. And I didn't remember writing that. That was ages ago.

Oh, that's fantastic. And I think that's a really good thing to do. I keep it in Asana, I have a little board of nice things that people have said, so that if I'm having one of those moments, I can just go and have a quick refresh and then get back on the horse. So when will the book be out?

I think it's the 18th of July.

Oh, brilliant. So not that far away then.

No, we're onto editing process, which is eye opening. There's lots of like back and forth with like, red markups and things like that, which takes you back, but it's all in, you know, terms of making it a better, stronger, more useful book, because of course I've never written a book before, I don't know how best to do that. You have to make yourself, allow yourself to feel very vulnerable, like giving lots of people an opportunity to read it and feedback so that you can keep doing that. But yeah.

Yeah. It's such a valuable part of the publishing process because ultimately it's people reading it that have a different background to us. And that's so valuable. It gives you insight, I guess, about how the public will read it.

Yeah.

So very, very interesting. So I'm guessing that quite a lot of people listening to this are going to want to find you and connect with you because of all the amazing and interesting things that you do. So where's the best place for people to go and find you?

So yeah, I mean, like I said, connections on Instagram, I always enjoy. So if you send me a message on there, and you've got my website, which you can always contact me through, but yeah.

Brilliant. And I'll also put the checklist for setting up intensives into the show notes. So if you're interested in doing intensives and you want some advice from Claire, then please do check out the show notes and get her checklist there. Thank you so much for coming on today, Claire.

Thanks for having me. It's been great.