Episode #1 – Bringing this podcast to life
Hi, this is Welcome to Self™ – Caring for the Human in the Therapist Chair, and I’m your host, Dr Hayley D Quinn, fellow human clinical psychologist, supervisor and trainer. Welcome to self is a place where you can come and learn ways to elevate your own care and compassion, and place to rest, be soothed and at times, maybe gently challenged to think about yourself and your practice. A place to remember that you are human first, and choose the helping profession as just one of the roles in your life. My aim is that this is a place of soothing, comfort, nourishment, growth, and nurture. A place where you can also welcome Yourself.
So Welcome to Season One and the very first episode of Welcome to Self ™ – Caring for the Human in the Therapist Chair. I’m so excited to bring this podcast to you, and I’m really hoping that it’s going to be helpful. The idea for this started quite a long time ago, long before I ever thought about doing this as a podcast. In fact, I don’t think I ever imagined I’d be doing a podcast, but anyway, here we are.
Let me tell you a little bit about myself and why this has become my new passion area for work. Quite a few years ago now, I struggled with my own ill health and burnout. I was working for myself in a group private practice as a Psychologist, usually seeing about six clients a day, generally three or four days a week. I had a busy private life, busy enough social life for somebody who’s somewhat more introverted, like myself and I had spent the past number of years before that, raising my child on my own, studying my Bachelor degree, Honours degree, and a clinical PhD, during which time I was also working various jobs to pay the bills.
What I wasn’t doing very well. Even though at the time I thought I was, was taking care of my own well-being. To cut a somewhat long story short, I eventually had to make the decision to leave the private practice I was at because my health had got the better of me. I found myself struggling to get through my client sessions and sometimes I had to cancel days of work because I was just too unwell. It became really apparent that I was not able to engage in my work in the way that I wanted to. I couldn’t be there for my clients in the way I wanted to be. And I certainly wasn’t being there for myself and my family in the way I wanted and needed to be. I had nothing left, I was exhausted and felt burnt out, and because I hadn’t been listening to my body and my mind, I ended up, as many people do, faced with ill health and little choice but to slow down or stop. I knew I didn’t want to stop, I’d worked really hard and overcome a lot of barriers to complete my training and do the work I had been loving and I also knew I couldn’t keep going the way I was.
So I made what was a really difficult choice at the time, because I really loved where I was working, and I really loved the people I was working with. By this time, I was married to a beautiful and caring man, so felt very grateful that I was no longer the sole income earner in my household. This made my decision to change my work situation easier for sure, but when I say easier, it was still emotionally a really tough decision. I made the choice to leave the practice and my colleagues, and I started my own solo private practice, from a home-based office. It felt scary and uncertain, and I really wasn’t sure what the outcome would be for my health or my business. At first, I just worked minimal hours whilst I focused on regaining my health and my strength. And thankfully, over time, I did regain my health and strength and built up a successful business.
I had come across self compassion many years prior and now I was able to use this to really change the relationship with myself and care for myself on a much deeper level, particularly after a training I did with Dr Dennis Tirch around this same time. I attended the training with Dennis in Byron Bay. For those of you who don’t know where that is, it’s a beautiful coastal town in Northern New South Wales on the East Coast of Australia. A very tempting place to go and attend training! During the training Dennis asked if anyone would like to do a demonstration role play or a real play. Now I had become quite brave at doing these things, as I had recognised the personal value and growth from those experiences, so once again I put up my hand. I was at the height of my chronic illness, really struggling with that at the time and I thought you know what I’m going to take that as my example to work on for my personal practice during this workshop. This demonstration was for chairwork and working with our multiple selves. A concept we use a lot in Compassion Focused Therapy.
So we did the chair work exercise using the example of how I was feeling about my chronic illness, and when I engaged with my self critic I shocked myself with how harsh and vicious my self critic was about my health situation, it was brutal. I also engaged with my anxious self and realised that I had so many fears around now being inadequate and useless and worthless, which my self critic was happy to reinforce for me. I had fears that I would have to give up work completely, I had fears that my husband would get sick of the burden of care he had to carry and that I would ultimately be on my own again. I knew I had been critical of myself through the process of finding out what was happening with my health and having to make the changes I was making in my life, but I wasn’t aware of how awful it was.
Let’s face it, it’s easier to ignore or minimise the suffering we are experiencing than to face it head on. Although in my experience, facing it does tend to allow us to take care of ourselves better. I had been practising self compassion for some time before attending this training, so was able to meet the compassionate part of myself quite quickly. As I connected with this part of me, I had a really deep sense of connecting with my true self for the first time in my life, and the words Welcome to Self came out of my mouth. Even as I think about that experience today, it gives me goosebumps and a sense of gratitude for how my relationship with myself has changed since that day. As Dennis was debriefing the exercise with the wider group and asking for feedback, a woman said to him. So Dennis, Hayley used a term, Welcome to self, what is that concept and Dennis looked at me and I looked at him and he said to the woman, actually that’s just Hayley’s so I’ll let her explain. So I explained what my experience had been, and since then I have held on to the words as a reminder to myself to, as best I can, remember the whole of me and to treat myself with care, kindness, grace and compassion. I have now used it as a part of my branding to represent the meaning behind the work that I do with myself and others.
I still live with a chronic illness but now I understand my own needs better and I am pretty determined to never go back to the place I was at with my health. So, focusing on a deep and courageous level of self-care, being more compassionate to myself and generally paying more attention to my own wisdom has become a really important part of my daily practice.
Prior to me taking action and making that difficult decision that would ultimately benefit my physical and mental health, one of the things I noticed was an increase in self-doubt, now I’m not talking about the reflective kind that sounds something like – “How can I improve my practice?”, “What training would be helpful to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge?” but more the kind of self-doubt that comes with a large side helping of self-criticism that sounds more like “I’m just a crappy therapist, I shouldn’t even be doing this”. “I should probably refer this client on to someone else who’d be better”, “How can I talk about well-being when I’m feeling so crap all the time?”.
Over the years I’ve made it a focus to work on my relationship with myself and my self-critic is a lot quieter and a lot less frequent these days. That’s not to say I’m never self critical or doubt what I’m doing, but I am far more likely to be self compassionate than self critical nowadays. Believe me, this is a big change to how I used to be. So when I do notice an increase in self criticism or self-doubt, it really is an indicator for me to stop and tune in and think about what else is going on for me. It’s like of one of my little red flags so to speak.
My own experience highlighted to me, how self neglect and always focusing on the other can have harmful consequences, and prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, I was dreaming about a forum where therapists could come together and shift the focus from outside of themselves to within. Somewhere practitioners could get together and settle in the stillness, turn to one another and offer or receive support, somewhere that held its focus on our own care and well-being. A place of compassion and understanding and connection. At the start of 2020, when the pandemic hit, I realised that we needed this more now than ever, so I started a free weekly Welcome to Self zoom room and FaceBook group where practitioners could do exactly that. The group has been so well received by those who attend, and from that the idea of a podcast was born. I know it’s not always easy to attend a group at a particular time on a particular day, so this podcast allows you to tune in wherever you are and whenever suits you.
I know that many of you are struggling to keep up with all the information related to Covid, manage businesses, families and tasks of everyday living, whilst trying to work well with your clients. You spend so much time focusing on how you can best serve your clients, your employees, your families, and your businesses. You may be feeling the distance of being separated from loved ones, I know I’m looking forward to being able to visit the UK again. And we are seeing increased levels of distress in our clients and within ourselves.
But ask yourself, how much of your focus is on you and your well-being? Do you get the best of you, or do you get the leftovers, if there are any? Do you want to change the way you’re treating yourself? Would you like to make yourself more of a priority? And when you think about that, do you notice discomfort show up? Does it go against messages you’ve had from others throughout your life? Beliefs you hold about what it means to be a therapist or helping professional, a parent, a partner, a friend? I invite right now to take a moment right now to think about what would be one small thing you could do today that would benefit your own well-being? It doesn’t matter how small it is? Just something? It could be to drink one extra glass of water, or go to bed a little earlier, or perhaps say No to something you haven’t got time to do. Why not give yourself some time today to have a think about what might be helpful.
I hope that tuning in and giving yourself some time to focus on you, will allow you to think about how you can take care of yourself whilst doing the caring work that you do so beautifully. My own experience has been that by incorporating compassion practices into my life and work I have increased my capacity for caring, courage and wisdom. This has allowed me to stay engaged in the work that I do in a healthy, meaningful and sustainable way. I’d love that for you too.
I look forward to bringing you more episodes, focusing on well-being, and how we can care for ourselves whilst caring for others. Generally, episodes will be kept brief and uncomplicated, there’s enough noise out there and I don’t want to add to the burden you may already be feeling. Some episodes will include invited guests, who will come and join us, and share their wisdom, and these episodes will be longer. If you have anything you’d like to hear covered, or you’re a helping professional and would like to jump online and join me for an episode, please reach out to me and let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who has encouraged me, believed in me and supported me to this point whilst I’ve been bringing this podcast to life. See you next time
Thank you for sharing this time with me today. I hope your time here was helpful and supportive. If there has been something in this episode that you have found helpful. I invite you to share it with another person you think might benefit. I’d also love it if you’d like to leave a review wherever you tune in. Reviews really help to increase awareness of podcasts, meaning I can spread helpful information more widely. All reviews are welcome and much appreciated as I know they take time out of your day. If you’d like to be notified when the next episode airs, please use the link in the show notes to join my mailing list.
Music and editing by Nyssa Ray. Thanks Nyssa. I wish you all well in your relationship with yourself and may you go well and go gently.
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