Hi there and a very warm welcome to Season 5 Episode 23 of People Soup – it’s Ross McIntosh here. 

P-Soupers - it's my honour to introduce you to Dr Sarah Cassidy. What an absolute joy to speak to this pioneering, exceptional human. I was so captured by this conversation that I've decided to break it down into three parts. Sarah Cassidy, Ph.D., has been working as an educational, child and adolescent psychologist in private practice in Ireland for the last 20 years. In part one - we get to know Sarah - her geographical history, her extraordinary parents, a bit about her career path and including what it was like to co-own a bar in Chicago. We also start to explore her approach to the psychological well-being of children.

People Soup is an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioural science, in a way that’s practical, accessible and fun. We're all about Unlocking Workplace Potential with expert perspectives from Contextual Behavioural Science.

Over the Summer we're running a series of LIVE Virtual Podcast Recordings. Tickets are free and we'd love to see you there.

Friday 28 July - 10:00 to 11:00 GMT+1

Come and meet Dr Richard MacKinnon, who's going to chat about his research into loneliness at work. Join us to learn how we can all connect and thrive. Get your free ticket here!

Another first for Season 5 is that I'm adding a transcript, wherever possible. There is a caveat - this transcript is largely generated by Artificial Intelligence, I have corrected many errors but I won't have captured them all! You can also find the shownotes by clicking on notes, keep scrolling for all the useful links.

• Tired of Anxiety - Outside the Box Learning Resources
• The Book - Tired of Anxiety - on the publisher's website - Pavilion
• Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn
• Sarah on Instagram
• Sarah on Facebook
• Dr Sarah Cassidy on Twitter
• Brain training, brain fitness, memory games with RaiseYourIQ
• New England Centre for OCD and Anxiety - Irish Midlands | Smithsfield Clinic
• Home | Smithsfield Clinic

Read about our Chisi Awards from #365daysofcompassion for Best Podcast

Leave a review as a WhatsApp voicenote on +00447771 851118

Ross' website

Our Podcast Website on CAPTIVATE

People Soup on Twitter

Ross on Twitter

People Soup on Instagram which also features plenty of Ross' photos of the Andalusian life

People Soup Page on Facebook

And you can connect with Ross on LinkedIn

PART 1

[00:00:00] START

[00:00:06] Sarah: And, it probably started much younger than that, like when I, I work a lot with, parents, children, families, I, I tend to work with the whole system.

[00:00:23] Sarah: We don't teach children to tolerate stress and frustration. We don't teach distress tolerance. And when we don't teach that young, the trajectory doesn't get better. It gets worse. So if we don't teach that early on, as a young person moves along their developmental trajectory and they move into, teen years, adult years, that gets worse.

[00:00:50] Ross: p Soupers. It is my honor to introduce you to Dr. Sarah Cassidy. What an absolute joy to speak to this pioneering, exceptional human. I was so captured by this conversation that I've decided to break it down into three parts. In part one, we get to know a bit more about Sarah. Her geographical history, her extraordinary parents.

[00:01:22] Ross: PEOPLE SOUP is an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioral science in a way that's practical, accessible, and fun to help you glow to work a bit more often.

[00:02:01] Ross: It's been a while in the planning and you'll find the link to all the details in the show notes.

[00:02:17] Ross: We'll be launching Sarah's book, Coping with Breast Cancer, which is based upon her lived experience her skill as a clinical psychologist and act. Tickets are free and you'll find the link in the show notes, so please do come and join us. Our second live guest will be Dr. Richard McKinnon, who will be talking about loneliness at work. So come and join us and hear all about his research on how we can connect and thrive.

[00:02:51] Ross: and bite sized habits. Jillian on Instagram said, Love this conversation. So good to hear a female expert on solid, compassion based behavioral theory related to habits. And of course, we all love Hobnobs. Looking forward to Heather's book plan. Ann Parkinson on Facebook said, Absolutely loved listening to this.

[00:03:24] Ross: Well thank you to Gillian, thank you to Anne, and thanks to everyone who listened, shared and rated part two of my chat with Heather. Your support is what makes the PeopleSoup community so special, so please do keep listening and sharing and letting me know what you think. It can get a bit lonely sometimes here in podcast land.

[00:03:55] Ross: Dr. Sarah Cassidy, welcome to People Soup.

[00:04:02] Ross: I'm absolutely delighted you're here. And why was I so keen to have you as a guest? Well, firstly, your incredible pioneering work. Secondly, because my work is with adults in organizations, and the number of times those adults come up to me and say, have you got this stuff available for kids? And I don't really have a coherent or that useful answer.

[00:04:54] Ross: So, so just be aware, but I th I think they've done a pretty good job.

[00:05:28] Sarah: Yeah, that points correct. Yes,

[00:05:31] Sarah: Yeah. It almost sounds like there's a D in there, but there isn't. But you did perfectly well. Yeah.

[00:05:44] Sarah: did very well. You did very well.

[00:05:52] Sarah: that's right.

[00:06:11] Ross: Sarah is a peer reviewed act trainer and trained psychologists, behavior analysts, educators, psychotherapists, mental health professionals, and allied professionals in both professional and postgraduate settings throughout Ireland and abroad. I will ask at some point during our chat a bit later on, how the hell do you fit all this in?

[00:07:13] Ross: Finally, she's a member of the Association of a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Ireland branch and co-founder of a May new university based research spinout campus company focused on increasing children's learning potential. And that's at Raise your iq.com using Relational Frame Theory. And we spoke to one of your colleagues in that area, Shane McLaughlin, about his research around the, uh, raise your iq.com.

[00:08:06] Ross: She has worked with children and families with a wide range of mental health difficulties, but her specialty is children and families and explaining how to do difficult things in simple ways such that even children can understand them. She's also the mother of three children, though it sometimes feels like 100 children.

[00:08:26] Ross: She has one husband and several pets. She has lived in lots of cool places, but loves rural island, which is home, and she wishes there are a lot more hours in every day.

[00:08:37] Sarah: true.

[00:08:38] Sarah: They're actually very, very well, yes, very well.

[00:08:46] Sarah: Hopefully they've not done. Too much research here.

[00:08:53] Sarah: Sugar.

[00:08:59] Sarah: Okay. Okay. Good.

[00:09:08] Sarah: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:12] Sarah: Yes, correct.

[00:09:17] Sarah: I did. Yes.

[00:09:27] Sarah: I'll,

[00:09:27] Ross: like Joanna Bourne.

[00:09:32] Ross: Absolutely, and that's exactly what I would expect you to say if you were Joanna born.

[00:09:38] Ross: And finally they came across some rumors that you're in talks with r t e to be a regular co-host with Patrick Keelty on the Late Late Show. Now, I'm not sure if you're able to comment on that, Sarah.

[00:10:07] Ross: Well, do you know what happens when these rumors are put out there? RT might listen to this episode and go, Hey, that's a good idea.

[00:10:47] Ross: Mm, well, you should be, let's, let's just get that maybe that's a starting point for you, becoming co-host is to be interviewed about your

[00:11:01] Ross: as my mom used to say, shy band's getting out,

[00:11:05] Sarah: suppose, that's, that's good wisdom.

[00:11:23] Sarah: Well, um, yeah, geography is probably an interesting, an interesting point to start on. We moved an awful lot and so, so my history, when people ask me where I'm from, uh, I often don't know how to answer that question because, you know, I'd often say, you know, do you mean more recently because we moved so much when I was a kid and, you know, I, I grew up in Ireland, but I was actually born in Chicago. And my mother is, is Irish she grew up in Chicago. She's am American, but you know, born, born of two Irish immigrants. And so [00:12:00] she would've been back and forth to the states a fair bit and her parents were very much Irish and my father was an Irish immigrant, so they relocated to Ireland together. And I grew up in Ireland. but moved to Chicago then as a 12 year old. But we did a lot of moving around and that, I think that's very difficult as a kid to not really know where you belong.

[00:12:25] Sarah: so I felt I always had to do a lot of weaving in and out of different groups of different groups of people.

[00:12:31] Sarah: And I think I probably became a studier of people as a very young kid because I probably had to figure out. From very early on what I needed to do to belong, or what I needed to do to fit in or to understand, you know, what's the culture in this group or what's the culture in this classroom? and that worked really, really well for me.

[00:13:15] Sarah: and I would've been glued to my mother's hip for a lot of years. My mother, brought me to lecture halls. She got married when she was 19. And, so I was in the lecture halls of Manu with my mother, uh, taking notes for her because, you know, we didn't have a childminder. So I was sitting in the lecture halls with her, um, from the age of, maybe seven years old, and she used to say, take notes for me.

[00:13:55] Sarah: she went back to school after

[00:14:31] Sarah: And

[00:14:33] Sarah: I, I didn't, I actually didn't really have the money to do a PhD and I wasn't a hundred percent sure what way I was going to do this. And I had been accepted to, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

[00:15:11] Sarah: I had just been away for a year traveling around and studying and finishing my psychology degree. And I had this giant, giant backpack filled with all the things I owned and all the things I thought I, I needed. I, I actually never opened that backpack again. It's probably still under my mother's dining room table in Chicago. And, uh, so my gran said, don't go. Um, and she had deteriorated significantly in the year that I've been gone. And so I didn't go to Peru and instead I, and I never went to the, the Volunteer Corps in Peru. I, I was always kind of, sorry I didn't go, but instead I, I bought a pub with my brother in Chicago and we had a great time. I learned a lot about human behavior then and, uh, you know, fell in love. got pregnant, [00:16:00] um, moved back to Ireland. And, um, had a rather, uh, tumultuous, uh, love affair with the, father of my first child. We, we did not last. That relationship didn't last.

[00:16:32] Sarah: and there's a long there, there's probably 40 episodes in, in, in all that story.

[00:16:36] Ross: well maybe we're thinking of a, a spinoff series here, Sarah.

[00:16:43] Ross: what Sarah did

[00:17:06] Sarah: you know, my own dad had had a really, really difficult upbringing. My own father was the 13th, the 14 children, and he would've grown up under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Like when, when I look back on my dad's life, what always really strikes me, actually, my, my dad is, an extraordinary man.

[00:17:34] Sarah: You know, I had no shoes on my feet, but like my dad literally had no shoes on his feet and, you know, had no food on the table. And like, it's a miracle that the man survived. But actually what's what's really miraculous to me is when my father talks about his childhood, um, like he tells stories with laughter and with fun and with curiosity and, he would've really taught us from very early on how important it is to work hard and how [00:18:00] important it is to persist and, the importance of curiosity and the importance of, looking under the bonnet.

[00:18:21] Sarah: And I think in some ways, that might have been a thing that would've led me to maybe living with somebody that didn't treat me with respect. You know, cuz I would've said, oh, well, you don't know what, what it was like for them growing up.

[00:18:51] Sarah: has a degree in psychology and has, you know, owned her own business and, has always been, you know, an academic and an intellectual. but actually, you know, if you've, if you've grown up in a home where, your parents are always telling you, you should give people another chance and you should try to understand what's going on for somebody, sometimes those things happen together, but, um, at that time I would've said, actually, I need to understand what's happening here.

[00:19:40] Frustrated with ed psych system in ireland

[00:20:05] Sarah: And, uh, so that, led me to do my PhD. and we came up with some, some excellent intervention. I'm still doing a lot of that research with Maynooth and with, colleagues in the states I mentioned, Dr. Brian Roach, but also Dr. L Kirsten in New York, and, colleagues of the uk, Ian Tyndall and, and, and Shane McLaughlin is still doing that work and some colleagues in gen as well.

[00:21:14] Sarah: But, um, when people come to me in, in my clinics and, in lecture halls, they have access to that. and you know, they, they have privilege or they have people around them or adults, you know, you mentioned that, that you work with a lot of adults, but they have adults around them that are able and knowledgeable or have access to money or resources that can bring them to somebody, like me or like you and can say, you need this, you know, you need to know how to do this thing.

[00:21:47] Sarah: Not everybody has that, and, rates of mental health distress are really high. They're really high. And there are kids, let's say for example, like my father growing up as a kid, he didn't have the [00:22:00] likes of me or you in the background or the likes of, you know, my mother.

[00:22:31] Sarah: And there's so much out there in the world that's so incredibly difficult and, yeah, I'm, I'm going on a mad tangent here, Ross. But, um, it, it, it's just that there, there's so much to me, there's so much out there that's, that's so in incredibly difficult. And, sometimes I suppose I feel the weight to that like that.

[00:23:00] Adults in the Workplace

[00:23:04] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:23:23] Sarah: yeah,

[00:23:27] Ross: But if they are the parents of children and they're noticing their kids are anxious and they're dealing with their own anxiety and distress, it probably leads them to. Perhaps sort of berate themselves even more, punish themselves even more as I, I'm a bad parent because my child is anxious and where's the support.

[00:23:53] Sarah: it, you're, I think you're a hundred percent right. And then the other really important point that I [00:24:00] think sits in underneath what you're saying is that, that's multilayered. So where did it start? Like none of that is a separate system to me. So like those, those parents or those adults that you're talking about, their anxiety didn't start when they were adults.

[00:24:28] Ross: Mm hmm.

[00:24:30] Sarah: So those anxious adults in the workplace, their anxiety didn't suddenly start when they were in the workplace.

[00:25:04] Sarah: Not better.

[00:25:25] Ross: It's alarming, but it, it's a joy and yeah, I, I, I'm not sure where I'm going now. God, how big is your mug?

[00:25:40] Ross: Suddenly that loomed up. I was like,

[00:25:45] Ross: the, I thought there was some sort of spaceship landing or something. Um, let me try and get, get my head back in the game.

[00:25:59] Ross: [00:26:00] it's superb to hear you talk about your parents and what you've learned from them and how generous they were in giving you freedom and being amazing role models for you. How were you as a, a child and an adolescent?

[00:26:15] Sarah: Actually, I was a very difficult child, uh, an incredibly difficult child. My parents wouldn't tell it like that, but I remember. And, uh, my, my mother has, rose colored glasses permanently affixed to her face. And I, I want those rose colored glasses for my, but it's, it's, it's really interesting because, I'm not sure I appreciated my parents.

[00:27:10] Sarah: And he never ceases to amaze me like all the things that he went through and, you know, almost escaped unscathed and, and managed to, be the kind of a man that would have, brought us along with him to work and would've, you know, taught us a lot of really, really valuable life's lessons.

[00:27:46] Sarah: And my mom was, again, would've, just taught us really amazing things. Um, teaching us kind of like philosophy and, uh, you know, I read long before I went to school and, [00:28:00] um, was encouraging us to travel and to read and, um, I knew about feminism and philosophy and, eastern religions, it was mad the things we knew, um, that weren't on the radar for other people.

[00:28:19] Sarah: but, um, and, and I think we, were very, very lucky, but, but we didn't know it, you know, I don't think we knew it. Um, but, I I also think kind of, moving around a lot was a blessing and a curse.

[00:28:54] Sarah: And I think it's an important one where anxiety is concerned, is trying to understand that, and, and it's absent for a lot of people that experience anxiety. It's, it's understanding that, concerning that concept of safety

[00:29:05] Sarah: and home.

[00:29:19] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:29:30] Ross: But a bar in Chicago,

[00:29:33] Ross: learning about human behavior in, in that environment

[00:29:38] Ross: gives you a, a thorough grounding, I would imagine.

[00:29:41] Sarah: yeah. That was an interesting, yeah, I mean, a hilarious good time, but, but, uh, like it was incredibly hard work and, um, I was also like, I mean, I would've also always been quite a hypervigilant person myself, and that, was probably [00:30:00] to my detriment, so, In other ways because I never really let myself relax.

[00:30:22] Sarah: I, I always considered those skills. I, I didn't realize actually that, you know, they, they might have been things that that harmed me in other ways. But yeah, I mean, working in the bar in Chicago was, um, I only realized that some of the things that I was doing in the bar in Chicago were problematic when I was pregnant with my first child, Patrick, because I all of a sudden realized like, actually this kind of a lifestyle that I'm leading, like, you know, staying up, all night to, make sure the pub is ready for the next morning.

[00:31:08] Sarah: the actual managing of a pub and the needs of so many different people and customers and, watching, there are a lot of rules too in running a pub in Chicago where um, if somebody has too much to drink, you're not allowed to actually let them over the threshold of the pub.

[00:31:46] Sarah: So there was a lot of really interesting things there too. but you're constantly hypervigilant, so if, if you wanna talk about anxiety, um, there's a, a huge amount there. And you never know when an inspector is gonna come in and, um,

[00:32:09] Sarah: There's a, there's a ton of different things going on there.

[00:32:24] Sarah: was exhausting. Yeah, it was exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Part one of three in the bag. Thanks so much to Sarah for being so open and generous in all that she shared. and for being a right hoot too. Thanks also to my producer, Emma. You heard me, P Supers. I've only gone and got myself a producer. Emma is a recent psychology graduate, full of ideas and highly skilled on the post production desk.

[00:33:21] Ross: And number three, share the heck out of it on the socials. This will all help us reach more people with stuff that could be. I'd love to hear from you and you can get in touch at people soup dot pod gmail.com. On Twitter, we are at People Soup Pod on Instagram at People dot Soup.

[00:33:59] Sarah: It's[00:34:00]

[00:34:05] Sarah: need a,