Making it to Episode 21 of the Pain Free Living podcast means that we are now in the top 1% of all podcasts currently being produced so A HUGE THANK YOU for helping us to join that elite group.

This episode marks the start of a new era of the podcast with a change in emphasis, thanks to our new co-host, Clare Elsby.

Clare, is an experienced accountant who a few years ago made the decision to move into the mental healthcare arena.

In a change from our usual format, I'm doing the interviewing while she does the talking. During our conversation, Clare shares her journey, covering her decision to move to the UK, her career in accountancy, and how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led her to pivot from accountancy to become a qualified therapy coach.

Clare highlights her interest in neurodiversity and how it informs her coaching practice, providing valuable insights into the complexities of supporting clients who often feel disconnected from more traditional therapists.

The addition of Clare to the team means that we will be diving deeper into the link between physical and mental health because we share the view that you can't have good physical health without good mental health and vice versa.

We always aim to provide you with a holistic understanding of your well-being, highlighting the links between physical and mental health and supporting your journey to improved health.

In addition to our co-hosted podcasts, we will continue to bring you solo episodes and we are also planning to include some guests that we are sure you will find interesting.

We hope that you like the new format and stick with us as we hit episode 50 and beyond!

If you like the show, please share it with your family, friends, strangers, and anyone you think might benefit from listening or watching.

Reviews and comments are always welcome, and as well as being a cost-free way of supporting the show, the algorithm loves interaction and will ensure more people see it.

Feedback is always good, so let us know how we are doing, and if you have any questions, leave them in the comments and we will answer them as soon as we can.

Takeaways:

• Clare Elsby shares her transformative journey from Northern Ireland to co-founding the accounting firm, Elsby & Co Accountants.
• The pandemic prompted Clare to pivot her career from accounting to Non-Clinical Psychology Coaching, focusing on neurodivergent inclusivity.
• Clare emphasises the importance of effective communication in her coaching practice, particularly post-pandemic.
• We will be combining discussions about mental health with physical health, highlighting the connections and busting myths as we go.
• Clare discusses the different roles within the mental health spectrum, differentiating between therapy, coaching, and clinical therapy.

A bit more info

You can find out more about Clare here https://www.clareelsby.com/

This is the place to find out more about Bob and why he became an osteopath https://bit.ly/BobsOsteoStory

Sign up for his very popular Monthly Pain Free Living newsletter here https://bit.ly/PFL_newsletter_signup

If you want to follow Bob on social media, this is the place for you https://linktr.ee/Painfreeliving

Hello and welcome to the Pain Free Living Podcast with me, your host, Bob Allen.

If you've seen any other podcasts, you'll know who I am and what I do.

If this is the first one that you're seeing, I am an osteopath.

And again, if you've been following along, the first few episodes of the podcast were me and a co host.

The last few have been solo episodes, quite short ones, about various things like knee pain, shoulder pain, the use of heat and cold and that kind of thing.

The reason they've been solo episodes is because my original co host unfortunately had to leave the podcast because she is a business coach and she was getting so busy with her business that unfortunately, something had to give.

And even more unfortunately, it was the podcast.

So, Louise, hi there.

Hope business is going well.

I'm sure it is.

So, yeah, if you want to see what that was all about, catch up with some of the earlier episodes from.

From here on out, I'll still be doing a few solo episodes, but I've also managed to find a new co host who I'm going to introduce you to in a second, and that's going to take the podcast in a slightly different direction.

What direction you say, Bob?

Well, actually, first thing I'm going to do is to introduce you to my new co host and then we'll talk about.

We'll talk about her, we'll talk about where she's from, what she's been doing, and then the last little bit, we're going to talk about how the podcast is going to change and her contribution to it.

So without further ado, let me introduce the lovely and awesome Clare Elsbie.

Thank you.

What an introduction.

My goodness.

But no, thank you for having me.

I really appreciate this.

Glad you decided to join, to be honest.

So who is Claire?

What we're going to do, again, slight change of format, is I'm going to be doing a little interview with Claire, hence my list of questions here.

And just to give you more of an idea about who she is, her background, and how she's going to be contributing to the podcast going forward.

So the first question I sure I hear you ask is Claire, who are you?

I'm Claire Elsby.

I've fairly recently had a career change.

I have trained as an accountant.

I've been in business and still in business for 35 years with Elspeen Company, which is a firm of chartered Accountants, locally.

The pandemic made me rethink and I am now a fully qualified therapy coach.

I've known you as an accountant and more recently as a therapy coach.

So what I think could be really useful to our listeners and our viewers is to just give them a bit more background about you and why you became an accountant, and then we can leap forward a little bit to work out why you have moved into therapy coaching.

So, Clare, why do you become an accountant?

Well, it wasn't something I woke up one day and really wanted to be.

I sort of fell into it.

I've been born and brought up in Belfast in Northern Ireland and during the Troubles.

And so I was quite desperate to get away and I was lucky enough to get to Aston Uni and I studied accountancy as part of my degree and that then led me to.

I was very fortunate to get a placement as my degree was a Sandwich degree with Grant Thornton and that brought me to Northampton.

Yeah.

And then again, fortune favoured me because after I finished my degree, Grant Thornton offered me a job, a proper job.

So that's when I started with them and I worked with them for eight years in their small business department and then also in their tax department.

So I got a really good grinding in all things, what it's like to be in business.

And then from there.

I believe you run your own business, you ran your own company.

Well, yes, again, that wasn't planned, as quite often things in life aren't planned.

But I had an opportunity to set up on my own and I left Grant Thornton.

My leaving present was a typewriter, which.

Shows how long ago it was exactly.

In those days, there wasn't broadband, there wasn't.

I don't even think I had a mobile phone.

I don't even think word was a thing.

So word processing and I had to get clients, I had to go literally around and knock on doors.

I picked up some really nice clients that I work with locally in Kingsthorpe.

So I set up from a back bedroom in Kingsthorpe, Northampton.

And then my husband at the time, he.

He was training to be a chartered accountant and he took the opportunity to join me.

Okay.

And just.

Sorry, just a little aside for those of you who are global and have absolutely no idea where Northampton is.

That's Northampton Town, uk.

And.

Yes, sorry, Claire, carry on.

No, that's fine.

Put it on the map, Bob.

We started then, so that must be 35 years ago.

I think we're still running the business.

It's based in Northamptonshire and it's a firm recharged.

Accountants.

So good to know.

Right?

So that's the background.

That's the background.

Let's talk now about becoming a therapy coach.

What led you down that path to becoming a therapy coach?

I think in hindsight, it was the pandemic those years, and I was blessed actually at the time because I was able to work remotely and a lot of people weren't.

And it was a very different situation for a lot of people.

But I think that was a time for some of us where we got to reevaluate what we were doing.

And I also realized that with remote working and trying to manage a team, to be able to do that effectively, I needed to be able to communicate better.

And I was very interested in how to do that.

And I got very interested in psychology and what makes people tick.

And I had the opportunity to do a foundations of counseling course during the pandemic.

And I'd also done some mental health training as part of my HR role.

So those three things all together have sort of conspired to push me on this road, on this path, to become qualified.

So.

Excellent, excellent.

I mean, one of the things that I was ignorant about is the different types of coach, different types of therapy coach.

Because initially I call Claire a psychotherapist, and she corrected me sound, slapped both wrists and told me that she's not a psychotherapist, she is a therapy coach.

Now.

What's the difference?

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

And I know you have this in your own field as well.

Exactly.

So.

But the easiest way I can explain this, I think, is if we can think of a horizontal line and we think of minus 10 at one end and plus 10 way at the other end, going through zero in the middle.

And for an individual where they have either a condition or something that's a clinical need, where there's either medication or it requires going to see a GP, generally that will be in the area of minus 10 to 0, and they will be then recommended to go and see either a counselor, a psychiatrist, or a psychotherapist.

So those are all the clinical areas of therapy.

And generally, people, they will cover things like clinical disorders, but equally it will cover things like eating disorders.

It might be grief, it might be trauma.

It's all those areas where there is clinical support and help that's needed.

And when you say clinical support, is that in terms of medication or psychiatry?

Exactly that.

Yes, exactly, exactly that.

So then we've still got the 0 to the plus 10 to think about.

So coaching per se is generally business coaching, life coaching, that Kind of area I would say would sit from about a 4 up to like a 7 or an 8.

And certainly in positive psychology, the idea is to help someone get from being a four to a seven and feel better about themselves.

And it could even be career coaching or they might be big decisions people have to make.

But the assumption all along is that actually the individual is in a good place in terms of their mental well being.

So they've got a good starting point.

They're starting at a four.

The area that I work in really is that zero to four.

Okay.

It's those people where they feel there is something lacking, but they're not quite sure where to go, how to get support, how to get help.

One of my clients, and I think this analogy has stuck with me, he called it walking around in his own private bag of fog.

So in other words, he couldn't see how to get out of it.

But yet he didn't think that he needed to go and see a gp and he didn't feel that he needed to go and see a counsellor.

He hadn't got anything that he needed going back to childhood to discuss or anything.

He just felt he wasn't at his best.

Yeah.

But he didn't know where to go.

He didn't know where to go.

So what I can do is I can either act as a signpost.

So in that first discussion that I have with clients is I can generally pick up whether I think actually you'd be better suited to see a clinician.

Yeah.

So a kind.

And I have a whole network of psychiatrists, psychotherapists and counsellors that I can recommend people to.

Yeah.

Or if it's something that I think I can help somebody with, then we'll work together.

But the idea really is to give someone their own toolbox.

Yeah.

So that they can go away and.

And not need me anymore.

Yeah.

And I think that sums up what you do very well.

And it's one of those things that people who need support at the moment.

Exactly as you say, they don't know where to go and sometimes they're not even aware that that support and help is available.

So it's a vital role, and I think more people should know that it actually exists.

One of the reasons I was quite keen to have Claire on the podcast is because a lot of what we've covered in the past has been very much about looking at muscle and joint problems equally.

There is always a mental health aspect to these things.

So with Claire on board, we can start talking a lot More about not just physical health, but mental health, because they're intimately connected.

You can't have good physical health without good mental health.

You can't have good mental health without good physical health.

So the aim of the podcast now is to broaden things out a bit and to bring in more aspects of health and well being.

One of the questions I've got here is can you share any insights you've gained about mental health from both your personal experience and your new career?

The insights are there's always so much more to learn.

Really, I will never know everything that there is to know and I've become a neurodiversity informed coach.

So this is an area that I'm specializing in that is a relatively new area in terms of research, in terms of diagnosis, and therefore there's a huge amount that's needed in that particular area.

And again, a lot of the clients that I'm working with are those where potentially they've had a child go through the school system and might be either pre diagnosis or being recommended that they're being diagnosed.

And that leaves the adult, the adult parent thinking, oh, I wonder if it's me, I wonder if it's me.

Yeah.

So again, I'm helping people, I'm supporting people in that area as well.

And that could be any of the, anything across the spectrum of neurodiversity.

So, yeah, and again, one of the advantages of having something like a podcast is you can explain that and hopefully if people need that support, they can either come to you or you can signpost them to, you know, whichever area they are.

Absolutely, you can signpost them and guide them in that direction.

Which again is one of the reasons I wanted to broaden the scope of the podcast to bring in a different, the different aspect of healthcare.

Just going back to your changing career.

Claire, this is obviously from ChatGPT.

I will confess it was from ChatGPT, but it's an interesting question.

What advice would you give to our listeners who might be considering a major career change?

Well, with my business and accountant hat on, I've got to be Captain Sensible and make sure that actually it's a business that's viable.

So the first thing is research, research, research.

So it's all about planning, it's all about getting your ducks in a row, knowing there's a market out there for what you're going to do, working out, actually what you're going to charge.

Are people prepared to pay that for what you're intending to do, and then just making sure that you've got everything ready.

So it's about planning, taking real time to plan.

But then once you've got there and once you decided to do it, it's just do it.

Yes.

There's a lot of people that want, that think they want a career change and they haven't.

They have a great idea, they want to, they want a change in career.

They're hating the job, but it's what it's taking that next step.

And I think that's the hardest thing.

Yes.

And for me, yeah, I did the same major career change from IT to osteopathy.

The hardest thing was to lose that regular income and all of those things and jump into the insecurity of being self employed.

But it is, I can honestly say it's the best thing I ever did.

Yeah, well, I did that 35 years ago and it's.

I've got no regrets, Absolutely no regrets.

But yeah, it's a big step.

It's a scary step.

It's a scary step, but it's one worth taking very much so.

Right, Clare, I think we know more about you and why you, why you did what you did and why you, you've moved into this new career and doing what you do now.

Welcome to the podcast and let's see where we go from here.

So, as I said, the podcast is changing.

I'll still do a few solo episodes, but more of the future episodes are going to be co hosted with Claire.

We're going to look at different aspects of physical and mental health, combining the two and then coming up with things that we hope you'll find interesting.

So hopefully you enjoyed the episode.

Hopefully you're going to look.

Carry on following the episode, looking at some of the new ones we've got coming up.

The next one's all about ergonomics and posture.

That's going to be a good one.

And yeah, if you like the podcast, tell your friends, like subscribe, all those things that I normally tell you to do at the end of a podcast, please go out and do those and I'll see you on the next one.

And that's from me and Claire Sarap.

Is that what we say?

I think so.

I don't know.

I have no idea.