Episode #27 Setting the Bar with Compassion with Amanda Connell

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. A 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, choose the helping profession is 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 your self.

Hi and welcome to another episode. I’d like to take a moment of gratitude for Maggie who left me a comment. Maggie said,

“Your podcasts are truly inspiring. I enjoy sitting, reflecting, and taking notes of the informative ways you and your guest speakers explore ideas, and share honest reflections about the difficulties they have experienced taking care of themselves at times.”

Thanks, Maggie, for your lovely feedback, I really do appreciate it and I’m so pleased that the podcast is making a difference for you.

Before we get into this episode, I’d just like to remind you of the CFT for Trauma training I will be running at the beautiful Sunshine Coast in November with my colleague Dr Lisa McLean. You can find the link in the show notes or reach out via my website.

I’m thrilled to introduce my next guest, Amanda Connell from Spilt Milk Psychology. Amanda is a clinical psychologist working at the intersection of infant feeding, mental health and early parenting. For too long, discussions around parental mental health have pitted parents against their children in the battle for happiness. Amanda passionately believes there is enough love for everyone. She champions finding solutions that honour the needs of both parents and babies, bringing fierce compassion to perinatal mental health. Her human-centred approach empowers families by providing insightful, practical, and relatable information and support.

I have the pleasure of knowing Amanda personally and she’s such a fountain of knowledge in this area. She has such a beautifully compassionate approach and I’m thrilled to have her on the podcast today. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed my conversation with Amanda.

Hey Amanda, it’s so lovely to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. It’s really nice to have another local Brisbane psychologist on the pod.

Amanda Connell

Lovely to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Hayley Quinn

No worries. So do you want to start with just telling us a little bit about yourself and what it was that drew you to the helping professions.

Amanda Connell

So my name is Amanda. I’m a Brisbane based clinical psychologist and have a practice called Spilt Milk Psychology. At the moment, I work largely in the perinatal space. So supporting mums and bubs and families through the transition to parenthood and early parents and the mental health challenges that can come through that. My pathway to psychology, I don’t even know if you know this Hayley, was quite very, I actually did a Bachelor of Mathematics before I did, so I studied pure mathematics before I did psychology then got to the end of that degree and was counting down to graduation and then realised, oh, when I finish this, that’s not the end, then I have to actually start doing it for a living. And freaked out, panicked and transferred to psychology when I stopped and looked at what were the things that I actually enjoyed doing in my life. And so I actually went into evolutionary psychology and worked with primates for a while. And I think that’s one of the things that drew me into what makes us human and what is our humaneness, and what are the things that are unique to us as humans but also connecting in not just to our common humanity, but our common being with other beings on our planet and our nearest relatives in particular are of great interest to me. And I think that’s also why I’m interested in perinatal psychology and particularly what drew me to CFT as well as their really strong connection to the fact that as humans we are animals, we are primates. We have bodies like we often kind of treat ourselves as consciousness moving around in a life support system. But I love how evolutionary psychology and CFT and these spaces help connect us to the fact that we aren’t just brains in bodies that we’re beings and that we fit together and our brain influences our body and is influenced by our body. And the perinatal space is a space of huge transitions psychologically, emotionally relationally. But also physically, like we have these big body changes that go on through this. So it’s all the transitions that come into parenting, where there’s so much change in our physical being, as well as our psychological being as well.

Hayley Quinn

So like so many of us, you didn’t go straight into psychology, you kind of took the long way round to get here, which I think can be more interesting at times.

Amanda Connell

Yeah, and I think it’s one of those things is at the time, I really felt like quite judgmental towards myself, like I’d wasted all this time studying pure mathematics. You know, such a waste, because I did my major and my mastery was operations and logistics. So looking at optimization, and those sorts of things and I’ll tell you what, as a parent, it’s probably a really useful skill to have that idea of optimising, rather than perfecting of recognising we have limited resources and you can’t actually just have 100% of everything, you can’t do that. And it’s also one of the things that strikes me a lot, because I think still quite mathematically, my mind often thinks in numbers and patterns. And those sorts of things, too, is how often I find myself like saying to people, it’s like, you do know half the time, you’re below average, because that’s how averages work. Half of the time, you’re below average, you can’t aim to be above average, most of the time, like, that’s mathematically impossible.

Hayley Quinn

I think that’s the thing, isn’t it, whatever we learn is never wasted. Whatever it is, it’s always going to be helpful in some way, even if that’s, I don’t want to do that anymore.

Amanda Connell

It’s also one of those things, it was really interesting for me and my training was going from maths to psychology, and maths is a very male dominated field, especially pure mathematics that I was doing. And then moving to the psychology which is quite female dominated. And I remember going to my first couple of psychology lectures and being like, this sounds different like the lecture theatres sound, the space is such a different space and realising even just right down to the acoustics of when you walk into a room full of men, it’s mer mer mer mer. And then you walk into a room full of women, it’s like mih mih mih mih. It’s a different pitch. And seeing that influence I think of the world we find ourselves in as well.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah. So you mentioned you work within the perinatal field, can you tell us how you came to be passionate about that you’ve sort of touched on that sort of evolutionary psychology. What are some of the highlights and challenges that you face in your work? Because I imagine that could be quite a challenging area.

Amanda Connell

Yeah, it is and it’s one of those spaces, I’ve always been really interested in women’s health as well, and I don’t know if that was again, coming from a very male dominated space into a very female dominated space and recognising the role of feminism and feminist psychology and those sorts of things. So I was women’s officer at the University where I studied at AMU when I was there, and really got involved in looking at feminist discourse analysis and the impact of the patriarchy and the medical model of being so strongly influenced by men. And then, even moving through the evolutionary psychology stuff, always in the back of mind was women’s experiences and how they differ in psychology and in accessing psychology services. And then through the transition of having my own children of realising and entering the motherhood space and being and hearing the experiences of other women around me. And like, when I became a mother, I joined the Australian Breastfeeding Association for support for myself, and then used that time to train as a breastfeeding counsellor and worked as a volunteer breastfeeding counsellor for the Australian Breastfeeding Association for seven plus years. And during that time, as well it sort of brings to the fore how universal these challenges are for so many families and how complicated all of these transitions are and it just really sparked a fire in me I think, too. Improve the quality of care that women receive and families receive. Because I think that’s a really big part that plays into the perinatal space unlike a lot of other areas of psychology where we do recognise the role of relationships and social and psychosocial events. In the perinatal space, there is still the medicalized model of the individual, it’s the distress that women feel when they become a mother and put it on her. We’re recognising that actually a lot of the challenges that a woman faces in the perinatal space isn’t just from becoming a mother, it’s the impact that that has on her intimate relationships, the impact it has on her identity, the huge identity shift that comes, and that when you work in the perinatal space there’s a winnicott who is kind of the father of attachment theory and things. So talks about that, you know, there’s no such thing as a baby, there’s a baby and someone because, you know, as I said, we’re fancy monkeys and a lone monkey is a dead monkey, especially a baby one, we need, we rely, we’re social beings. And the very first need that we have, the need that we are born with is to be loved, is to be cared for. Because without that we don’t survive. We can’t, we are dependent. And so the first need that we have is to be cared for. It’s such a strong primal need, and that need doesn’t go away. And in the same way, when a winnicott says there’s no such thing, as a baby, there’s a baby and someone, there’s no such thing as a mother, there’s a mother and someone because without the context of her baby, she’s not a mother. She’s a woman, she’s a person. And there’s no such thing as a parent, there’s a parent and someone it’s the same for dads. A dad’s identity doesn’t exist outside of the context of a baby. And so it means that working in the perinatal space, more than more acutely than in other areas of psychology, you are always having to work relationally, dynamically, triadically family systems, you’re always having to hold in mind the other parties. So that’s the biggest challenge.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah, I think, you know, it’s beautiful work you do because I think, you know, as you touched on before, that there’s a lot of, husband or probably still is, a lot of blaming and shaming of women, when they struggle when they transition into motherhood. So this is really important work. You mentioned you were drawn to compassion focus therapy, how is your training in CFT changed how you work? And also what impact has that had on you personally?

Amanda Connell

It’s one of those things, I love CFT and all the modalities in the compassion space around things, I love working with flows of compassion, I think an expectation management of things. But again, in the perinatal space, I think we have cultures that frame the mothers as compassionate. But often the only flow of compassion that they’re looking at is the flow from self to other of how a mother cares for others. And there’s not as much consideration given for the receiving of compassion, which often in the perinatal space contributes more to distress than anything else is that especially for high achieving independent, capable women as they transition into motherhood and have suddenly have, as I said, that needs to be cared for, and the touching, right to the bone of that primal need, to be to belong and to be accepted, to be judged as capable, and to be supported through their suffering. And we, again, have a culture of motherhood meant to be this time of bliss, and wonderment and the most rewarding job you’ve ever done. And the expectations on women to be loving every moment, or what does it mean about me? If this is actually a time of great pain, or great personal suffering and struggle, that women often feel like they’re failing in that space? And they set the bar so high, like I said that that and even when they try not to, like even, like, the, the framing of what a reasonable expectation sounds like when when a mother says to me something like, you know, I know I’m not going to be perfect, I just want to be the best mum I can be. And again, that’s actually impossible. You can’t be at your best all of the time. You can’t even be at your average half of the time. That idea, but if you’re constantly aiming for your optimal performance, then the vast majority of the time you’re going to feel like you’re failing. If your goal is to do your best.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah, it’s such an important point, isn’t it? It’s like setting the bar when we think we’re actually not setting it that high. But the bar is actually still being set really high. And then so much judgement from society and what have you, isn’t it around parenting as well.

Amanda Connell

Also the qualities of what makes a good mother. And particularly for women who’ve had experiences of mental health concerns in the past, like we think of some of these implicit cultural ideas of like, the mother is supposed to be organised. It’s mothers are meant to have excellent executive functioning. And if you’re someone with ADHD, that’s going to be something you struggle with automatically. Or that mothers are meant to be really well regulated all of the time. And that when we think of what the qualities of a mother is we think of someone who is, you know, calm and serene and grounded. And these qualities that for a lot of people do not come naturally or are not skills that they may have been taught, or had modelled to them or have experienced in their own childhoods. And so it’s very easy for them to experience huge levels of shame, and particularly around certain emotional expressions. Again, we were almost actually, I like normalise anxious mothers, you meant to worry about your baby. Good mothers worry about their baby. We feel pity towards sad mothers, you know, we will comfort a depressed mother. But if you’re an angry mum, if you’re a mum who experiences who dysregulates or her experience is strong anger. Angry mums are seen as crazy mums, angry mums are seen as dangerous mums. Where actually anger in the perinatal period is an incredibly common and actually also valuable emotion. And yet, it’s one that gets demonised and suppressed and separated out. So they’re probably the biggest things where I think compassion focused therapy has had such a powerful influence in the way that I practice in helping the de-shaming. And so much work constantly in that space of de-shaming and helping people to understand how so many of the things that we do, are actually functional, but in dysfunctional amounts. So like anger in the parent atmosphere is actually a really functional emotion. But it might be presenting in a dysfunctional or maladaptive way. So being able to de-shame that and CFT has such beautiful tools for that.

Hayley Quinn

Absolutely, absolutely such important work. And how has the CFT kind of helped you? Because I mean, you’re a mum, you’re recently a solo parent, you’re a working mum, you’re a therapist, working with mums, you’ve got lots of roles going on. So how has that helped you as well? Because I know I’ve talked a lot about how CFT has been life changing for me and in how I relate to myself and, you know, not just professionally but personally how it’s impacted my life. I’m curious, how, what have you taken from it personally?

Amanda Connell

Oh, yeah, it’s huge. And it is one of those things, I think CFT really encouraged me to be able to step really authentically into my work, and to allow myself again, with those flows of compassion, like so many other mums, this flow of compassion that I struggled with probably the most was compassion from others to self and allowing that space. So over the last two years, I got separated, I separated from my husband and 2020. And then within, in the process of actually moving out of the marital home when moving furniture, I injured my spine. Again, I have a history of spinal issues and had to take an unplanned, very chaotic break from work from clinical work and had to manage triaging my clients out lie took a break to have spinal surgery rebuild and navigating that again as a single parent through those challenges of care arrangements and shifting things around. And we do have all of the, you know, the triggers that inner critic and those fears around what’s this going to mean what other people kind of think and actually holding and allowing space for appropriate compassion from others for saying actually, it’s alright for me to need to step back. It’s alright for me to need to breathe for myself. Before I can breathe for others and CFT I think it really gave me the skills to honour what I needed through that time. And also gave me the skills I think that I needed professionally at that time to be able to come teaching you to hold space for others while holding space for myself, that I could show up for my clients, and still honour and make space for my own needs, both in the immediacy of being in session, but also outside of session of giving myself that that space to process, I think the tools that come from working from that compassionate framework, and again, the biggest one for me has been that lowering the bar, I go, oh, I thought the bar was lower, it needs to be lower, lower, lower, under the bed, far away. And so, so often, as we often find, in working in a space that’s had a life stage, where you’re in a similar life stage is that oftentimes, you’re speaking to your clients, but you’re also speaking to yourself. And it’s one of the things I talk to parents about, so often what we need to do is to say what we need to hear. And that way of honouring the needs of the other, we also honour the needs of the self, like when my kids are, you know, frantic and stressed and and chaotic, is being able to just say, It’s okay, take your time, you’re right, take your time, or you didn’t want it to be like this, I know you didn’t want today to be like this, is to know that I’m talking to me as much as I’m talking to them. Like, I know you’re sad that mummy was running late today, you wished that I could be here on time, I wanted that too. And to really be able to tune into that and get the same validation, I can offer them I can offer myself and both in again, with clients and with your own children and so much perinatal work involves a lot of re parenting of your clients as well. So there’s a lot of those skills where you’re constantly in a state of learning and growing.

Hayley Quinn

And self reflection, isn’t it? It’s that you know, keeping an eye on yourself and an eye on your client or like you say, an eye on your child and an eye on yourself. And working with that. So you have recently made changes to your work life. So you’ve had some big upheavals in the last couple of years, you’ve recently made changes to your work life, and you’ve set up on your own private practice having been in a group private practice. And I think, you know, that can be challenging on different levels, and very exciting as well. I wonder if you could talk about how you navigated those changes, and what you found most helpful?

Amanda Connell

Yes, so as you said, I’ve had my own business, Spilt Milk Psychology, which has been around for about six years or so through which I provide health professional training and supervision. But for my clinical work, I’ve always done that as a subcontractor through a group private practice. And with the changes that came with navigating the shift to single parenting, I needed to have the flexibility of being able to work school hours and work from home and manage my own diary with a bit more flexibility than what being in a beat practice allowed for. So I made the decision to shift over and just start seeing clients via telehealth through Spilt Milk. And so it’s one of those weird spaces that I’ve been in private practice for years. And yet, I’m just starting your private practice. So I’ve got this kind of weird space of being an experienced beginner. It’s definitely that the challenges that come with that is that sense of feeling like, I should know what I’m doing, like, why do I not know what I’m doing? Why is this so hard, and then having to stop and go, oh, it’s because this is actually in your business. This is actually a new venture. And you don’t get to skip that part. But you’re always going to be a beginner when you’re at the beginning or something. And I think that the mindset that’s been really helpful for me during all this time, like as I’m watching my, my bank balance, slide downwards as I you know, transition through having fewer clients while I set things up and allowing myself the space to do that. Because I think it is that sense of urgency that can come and having to kind of comfort myself through that idea of going, you know, I’m not running away, I’m not falling behind, I’m taking a run up, you know, when you when you take a run up for something, you have to go backwards first in order to get that momentum to really be able to come at something well. And that’s really again, been a big gift that’s come from having the CFT training is allowing myself to underperform for a bit. And really recognise that, that that’s actually a part of the ebbs and flows and the seasons of life that we, in our capitalist kind of world that we live in. We have this idea of being in perpetual summer, and that we’re meant to be harvesting at all times. And it’s like, that’s not how that’s not reality. It’s not reality that we need to have. And so I remind myself of some of those things and then your workshops that I’ve run that I’ve called, you know, cultivating compassion and drawing on that idea of anything when we first plant, when you first planted the seed for a long time you water to dirt, there’s nothing to be seen, that you’re just watering dirt. And I think that that comes with, like skill rehearsal and things like that too, in a clinical sense. But it’s the same with any starting any venture is holding that struggle, holding that fear of, oh god, what if I’m just watering dirt? What if, what if this is a dud? Like what if this isn’t going to go anywhere? Or what if it’s not going to be enough fruit? Even if it bears fruit? What if it’s not going to be enough? And what if it’s not going to grow quickly enough? Having to hold that, that struggle of saying it’s okay, just water, the dirt. That’s all you can do for now. That’s where you are. And we’re cultivating, we’re preparing the ground. We’re creating the conditions. And all of those skills, I think, and that language has really come from my CFT training to be able to hold that space.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah, I think when we can reflect on our own three circles, and sort of see is this threat base drive, am I thinking I just need to book more clients in and I just need to, it doesn’t matter who they are, I just need to book them in to build my business is not a helpful thing, isn’t it? But when we can notice, it’s actually my drive system is being motivated by threat here. This is time to sit back and reflect and think no actually, it is okay to just be watering the dirt. I don’t need to keep trying to put more seeds in.

Amanda Connell

And then I don’t need to be trying to harvest anything, right now that actually it’s all right, to give yourself time to get prepared. And you know, that green circle space of stay and play, you know, let yourself dream and think and create a world that’s sustainable for me moving forwards. Especially through not wanting to overwork. I’ve overworked for years, just to kind of keep my head above water. And so creating that work life balance and going like, oh, this is productive. It’s just time cultivating rather than harvesting. And that’s a different form of productivity.

Hayley Quinn

And it can be hard, right? I mean, I think lots of us struggle with that. I know when I had to give up what I was doing because of my health, and I was setting out on my own. I started off just with a handful of clients and it was this thing of like, but what if this doesn’t work? And what will I do? And being in that space, and being willing to be with the discomfort that shows up can be really challenging.

Amanda Connell

Yeah, I think it’s that thing, too, isn’t it one of the skills I think from being able to when we can access out, that kind of compassionate mindset is often so much more flexible. The biggest thing that I noticed compared to if you are in that kind of threat drive motivation, where it can be very black and white and very rigid. And then very, you know that you either get it, you’re either right or wrong things are either working or they’re not working. And when you can access and tap into that, that more balanced approach is not is not about blind optimism. It’s okay, everything will be fine. It’s okay. Even if it all turns to shit. And so what happens if this fails? And it’s like, well then we get a different job. Oh no what if I’m not making enough money and I start to go bankrupt and say, well, then you’ll look for work.

Hayley Quinn

It’s that trust in self, isn’t it? It’s, I can trust myself that I can try things and if they don’t work out, I can try something else. One of my favourite things I say to people is that the thing I like most about choice is you can always make another one. You know, you don’t make the choice and that’s it right? Well, you’re stuck with this till you retire, you’ve just got to make this one thing work.

Amanda Connell

I think that’s that thing too is if you can really target that punitive credit, that’s when you’ve made your choice, you’ve got to stick with it now. That is when we can tune into our own suffering as we can notice when we can notice how to fail quickly if we need to learn how to give yourself permission to step out. And bringing it back to the space that I work in. One of the areas I’m really passionate about is infant feeding, and mental health and both breastfeeding support but also in childhood feeding disorders and things. And I remember when I think it’s a really important skill as well, if we’re teaching a child who’s got restricted eating, we’re teaching them to eat. The very first thing that I’ll teach your child what to do is how to spit things out of their mouth. Because if we can’t trust ourselves to get out of the situation, we’re not going to trust ourselves to get into it. And sometimes the worst thing we can do to unintentionally reinforce fussy eating is to say to a child that you know, once you put a green bean in your mouth, you’ve got to swallow it. We can give ourselves that permission. If you don’t like it, you can spit it out. And then yay, you try green bean, well done. And it’s that same thing you’ve got and giving yourself permission to experiment with life to see if something works. What if I return to work before I’m ready? Well, then you’ve just cut your hours back then.

Hayley Quinn

It’s just a beautiful, gentle approach, isn’t it? Like we can be gentle with ourselves, and we can still get things done that we need to get done. We don’t have to be like so, so punitive around the things that we do.

Amanda Connell

And I think it’s one of those, the great irony of it is, is often the more we can give ourselves permission to stop, if it’s too hard, actually, the braver we become, the easier it becomes to make hard choices if you know, it’s okay for you to try something hard. Because if it’s too hard, you can stop. Where if we hold ourselves to that note, you’ve got it, you’ve made a commitment, you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to see it through. And once that green beans in your mouth, you’ve got to swallow it is going well what makes you brave to try a food and to try new things, is knowing if at any point, it’s not okay, you can stop and I’ll let you if it becomes unbearable, I’ll let you stop. And that if we know that we will honour listening when something becomes unbearable, it makes it so much easier to be uncomfortable.

Hayley Quinn

But my playful side, I’m googling, my playful side is coming out to say, can we just say as well to everybody, this doesn’t just apply to children. Like as adults, we can try new foods and if we don’t like them, we can actually split them out.

Amanda Connell

The woman who did the feeding training with me was an American and I still have in my mind clear as day what she’s like, if you don’t like it, you can wash it away. And I’m like, that’s just my mantra for life now, like you can try anything and if you don’t like it, just wash it away. Just spit it out and wash it away. It’s alright that you can be bold and brave and try new things. Yeah, and especially if you give yourself that if you’re confident of knowing I’ve got an exit plan like it’s alright.

Hayley Quinn

Absolutely. So you also have diversity in your work and a lot of people, when I work with other practitioners, I talk about this as something I think can be really, really helpful. Now, not for everybody. Some people like to do the same thing all the time for the whole week. But for many people, I think diversity in your work can be really, really helpful. What do you think that adds to the sustainability and enjoyment of your work life?

Amanda Connell

Hugely so as well as doing individual client work, I really love doing group work and group training, which has been harder over the past few years with the pandemic and navigating that. But I also love doing public education, like public health sort of stuff. And as I said, I’ve worked as a volunteer breastfeeding counsellor and loved running peer to peer support groups and doing that kind of group work and breastfeeding education classes and things like that. And my passion for that sort of stuff actually comes from my one of my non psychology hats, which is, I’ve always I’m a massive comedy nerd. I’m a huge comedy fan. And I actually used to do stand up when I was at uni. And so I did debating at school, and I did public speaking and those sorts of things. So I think there’s a part of me that actually quite enjoys, not even so much the performance side of things, but like I love stand up, I love writing standing up, I love thinking about how we put thoughts together and how we communicate. And I love mental health communication side of things. And so by doing work outside of individual clinical work, it makes a space for me to tap into that part of myself that I enjoy accessing as well around how can we communicate difficult ideas in really simple concepts. I love the analogy and metaphor. And so I liked I’d like to be able to tap into that. And so I started Spilt Milk online. And I have quite a big Facebook following. Not so much on Instagram, but still I’m on Instagram and on Twitter and things like that. And actually in 2020 I ran a 24 hour live stream for perinatal Mental Health Week.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah, that was a massive effort. Well done.

Amanda Connell

Yeah, we’re I streamed online for 24 hours as part of perinatal mental health week with a project called Parenting’s a 24 hour gig. And it was lovely, it was huge. But as well as doing that, like it taps into different parts of my needs, and being able to serve as different parts of the community, but it also means that I can build a diary and a calendar that allows me to have that flexibility of how much time I’m working directly in client facing contact, how much time I’m doing project work, how much time I am thinking about content creation, and building that space and also being able to tap into different populations. So I really love as I said, that kind of education role. So I love doing supervision with colleagues and supporting them in, in building their own confidence as well in the space and doing that health professional training, both within psychologists but also I do training with like midwives and lactation consultants working in a perinatal space. So it’s nice to tap into different parts of the community of the population I work with as well. And so you sort of, you’re getting different clinical presentations and different needs. So it makes it in terms of sustainability. It’s certainly for me, I found that a lot less emotionally draining just by being able to have that that gear shift between the clinical work versus the professional education, work, supervision, work, online, content work, so I love it. I love that diversity.

Hayley Quinn

Me too, that for me with my health has been really important that I’m not doing one on one appointments that I have to be at, at particular times all week, I have lots of different things that I do. And it doesn’t just have to be in the field of psychology, there’s my husband, I have a building company, and I design houses. So that for me is completely different to doing psychology, and is tapping into creativity, isn’t it, it taps into, like you say these different needs that we have. But also I think gives you flexibility for life outside of work as well. Because if you’re not committed to an appointment time where you’re sitting in front of somebody, and you know, you’ve got time within your week, you’ve still got to get the work done, but you’ve got flexibility. Whereas for you, you might have stuff on with your kids. I was a single mum for 13 years, I’ve now got an adult son, who you know, I still parent, but in a different way to when he was a child. And I think having that space and time within your week can be really valuable. So I think I always sort of say to people, you know, this doesn’t have to be within the realm of psychology either. It may be finding something that you’re doing that complements the work that you’re doing in psychology as well.

Amanda Connell

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s one of those things is that that’s still something I’m still working towards is further diversifying out of just strictly psychology. As I said, I’m a massive comedy nerd. And what are the benefits it’s one of the upsides it’s come out of the pandemic is more online comedy communities and things. And I’ve actually found some really fun friendships with some some stand ups in the UK and actually have a book project in the works with them with one of those that we keep, we say it’s book chat, but mostly it’s more chat less book.

Hayley Quinn

So you’re a busy working mum, you have many roles in your life. And you’ve got lots of skills on board from your training on how to take care of yourself. But like everybody else, you’re also a human being. And I’m just curious as to what are some of your biggest challenges that you face in terms of taking care of yourself across all your roles?

Amanda Connell

I think that it’s absolutely the fact that, as you said is that I’m not immune, just because you don’t have all the skills doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to use. And sometimes I think that the more experience we get in things, what we’re doing is we can sometimes just be sharpening the stick with which we poke ourselves. When it comes to I know like in my early psychology training of things like behavioural activation, and this and that, and the other routine setting and all these lovely skills. And you’re like those are great, but that’s one of the things that I again, love with CFT is anchoring into that idea of, you’re still a human though, and we still have all those same, the same social conditioning as every other human being, you still have the same fears and competing needs as everybody else. And so one of the biggest challenges, I guess, like from a practical standpoint is again, being single parenting makes it difficult because my children are still too young for me to leave them at home unattended. So even things like going for a walk, I live right near a bay. And just being able to get out of the house and go for a walk, where previously I might have done that in the morning and gotten up early, before the kids are even awake and being able to leave them at home with their dad while I go to the gym or go for a walk because I don’t have that option anymore. So having to kind of fit things in and that’s again, why we’re being able to kind of juggle my schedule a little bit helps. As I also mentioned, I have a history of spinal injuries and so I need to really take care of my body. And there was I was watching a clip the other day. Again comedian not a psychologist, but was talking about there was something that I thought gee that resonates with them with CFT with the idea of human suffering because she says, “When I move my body too much, it hurts. When I don’t move my body enough, it hurts. When I stand up for too long, it hurts. And when I lie down for too long, it hurts. And when I feel all my feelings, it hurts. And when I don’t feel my feelings, it hurts this.” And she sort of was like, “I think I’ve worked out that actually just being in a human body hurts.” And that the only time when it doesn’t hurt is when we’re in a state of flow. And we find this ability to flow and she was talking about in the context of dance, and that for her, she’s like, that’s the one time I’m not in pain is when I’m dancing. And when we’re actually in the moment and being in our body and being in a state of flow. I think it is that thing of trying to find that and prioritise that within our own lives is what is your sense? What is your state of flow, and when am I most in that state? And for me, it’s those little things like I’ve bought a very expensive chair that I do my work on, and I have to be constantly aware of my posture, needing to find those moments of self care, again, lowering the bar. And recognising that the way that I fill my little emotional fuel tank is kind of like how I put petrol in the car when I was a uni student, it’s just enough to keep the fuel light off. And, seriously, the difference, though, of driving around in a car with a fuel light on all of the time, feels really different than if you can just keep that fuel light off, even if you’ve never have a full tank of fuel, is I made just enough self care to keep that fuel light off. And so that’s kind of my, again, the bar, I don’t need to be driving around with constantly full tank of fuel, I don’t need to be at a state of perfect well being. What I need is to not be in pain, I need to not be agitated, I need enough time and enough sleep to not be agitated, even if I’m not getting a good sleep. That it’s finding those those tipping points of what are the non negotiables. And I think in the parenting space and juggling, it is actually allowing my kids to see that too. Like that’s that flow of compassion of others to self like letting them know when I’m having a hard time going and letting them have a harder time so that I can have an easier time. So it is those things like when my kids are at school and I have time to myself, I don’t go grocery shopping, they hate grocery shopping, but I hate grocery shopping. So I’m not going to use my alone time to go grocery shopping, we can all go grocery shopping together.

Hayley Quinn

If I’m going to suffer, we’re all going to suffer.

Amanda Connell

It’s uncomfortable for all of us. But it’s unbearable for none of us, it’s okay. And that I can just let them have to go through the discomfort of grocery shopping with me, rather than me bearing that alone so that they don’t have to, if that then makes space for me in my day to be able to do half an hour of physio exercises by myself, or just sit and meditate and have a cup of tea. Or, you know, do whatever it is that I need to do. While I have that opportunity for stillness. So I think that’s probably the biggest challenge is learning how to make other people like letting other people be uncomfortable. So I can be more comfortable.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah. Look, I’m sure there’s lots of people listening who will resonate with that of this discomfort when we start to say I’m actually going to put my needs first here. And people are just like, oh, but it’s a practice, isn’t it? It’s a practice for all of us and learning to all be willing to be with the discomfort that shows up with that. Now it’s very wise. Make them all go shopping. I was hearing you talk before as well about the bar and I feel like putting it out to everybody to like, okay, let’s all put our bars on the floor. We’ll start from the floor and we’ll just pick them up a little bit. So there’s learning not to set the bar too high. It’s like just set it down on the floor and lift it a little bit from there rather than putting it up in the sky and trying to bring it down.

Amanda Connell

Yes. And it is that thing is that it’s that constant, I’ve got a, I might talk about a little bit in a minute, I’ve got some projects on the go that are all about that around looking at expectation setting, and how can we be a bit more reasonable in that. Because a lot of times, our expectations are so high that even when we think we lower them we haven’t.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah, absolutely. So what would be and I know this can be hard to distil it down to one piece of advice, but what would one piece of advice be that you’d share with our listeners?

Amanda Connell

One thing I think is that like what we were talking about before it’s the power of flexibility. Like, don’t be too afraid to allow yourself to change your mind. And that it’s okay. It’s absolutely okay. In everything in life to have a go at something for it to not have worked out. And be that personally, be that professionally, anywhere. And so it was a quote that I used to actually have in my bedroom when I was a kid on my notice board. It is the idea of if you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything. And because I was such a perfectionist child, and it would be that thing of I would be the kid who didn’t want to go sign up for an art class because what if it turned out badly? And it’s like, of course, it’s going to everything, you let yourself be a beginner. But let yourself make mistakes and realise that that’s actually how we make things.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah, that’s beautiful. I like that. So I asked this to everybody that comes on, this is one of my favourite questions. If you could meet your 80 year old self, what do you think she would say to you?

Amanda Connell

I think she would say, life is long. Life is really long. We have so many messages that life is short, constantly. And I think that I’m in a hurry, like I’m in my natural state, one of busyness, who has three jobs, races through and fits things in for everyone. And I come from a busy household and a big family and in a culture of hurry, hurry and urgency. And you know, of those you regret the chances that you don’t take in all of these sorts of ideas. And don’t miss your opportunity. Don’t miss the window. And I think that I think that my eight year old self would say life is actually really long. You’ve got time, take your time, slow down. It’s okay. And it’s alright to do what’s right for right now. And I think again, coming back to the idea of seasons. Give yourself time.

Hayley Quinn

I think slowing down is one of the most underrated things we have. You know, it is this hurry culture, isn’t it? I think taking time to slow and stop can be so so important.

Amanda Connell

My son talks about birthdays being laps around the sun, like how many laps around the sun you do. And I think I like that every now and again to sort of stop and think about in the space of a year. Just how far we’ve come. Like if you think about the journey that we’re on as humans, and again, coming back to anchoring into that idea of us being this animal on a giant rock that’s hurtling through space, going look how far you go, that yeah, that there’s no need to hurry, you’ve got plenty of time and you travel great distances. And we often I think there’s like in business management things they talk about we we overestimate what we can achieve in a day and we underestimate what we can achieve in a year. And so just that pacing of life via reminding ourselves that it’s okay, you don’t have to hurry things up. Because I think that’s the thing our red circle threat system does all the time as well. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. And even our drive system. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.

Hayley Quinn

Quick, real quick. Get it done. Get it done. Be productive.

Amanda Connell

That life is long.

Hayley Quinn

Oh that’s lovely. So you’ve started to mention projects. Could you tell us a bit about any current projects that you’re working on?

Amanda Connell

Yes. So now they’ve said life is long, the last two years of my life has been very long and very short at the same time. Because I’ve had while going through the separation, and of course, lots of projects been on hold for a while. And one of the ones I’m most excited about launching in the next hopefully in the next couple of months or early next year, we’ll see what happens with it. But I actually am working on a project that is called the Low Bar. And about that idea of lowering the bar and expectation setting and what does what does it actually mean to allow ourselves in perfection, and changing that view of that we’re all works in progress. Like we do have this kind of idea that we’re all striving to become better people all of the time, and you’re actually allowed to take a break from self improvement. You don’t have to, we all have to be working towards self actualization as the point at which we can learn to love ourselves. It’s just if you lower the bar, you can just love yourself now.

Hayley Quinn

Actually, just absolutely. I interviewed Diana Hill, who’s an act therapist on the podcast last season, and she has a new podcast called Life in Process. She wanted to move away from this life in progress as well.

Amanda Connell

Beautiful. Yes. So that’s one of the projects I’ve got on the go is that one. And then I’ve got another project that’s coming that’s called Breathing Underwater. And Breathing Underwater is compassion focused therapy in the parent in the perinatal space. And it’s about talking about that idea that when we come into parenthood, oftentimes what parents do is they come into parenting, like they’re diving underwater, and they hold their own breath, while they parent. And then their lungs start to burn. And their baby goes to sleep for a nap. And they come up for air. And they disengage from the task of parenting in order to care for themselves. And they come up gasping, and then they dive back in again, and they hold their breath, while they parent, and then they come back up for air. And then when we parent in this way, where, you know, our identity and our needs are on the shore, and our children are underwater, it starts to make it really unappealing to be in the space of parenting and parenting can feel like drowning. Because while you’re in it, you you aren’t breathing for yourself, you aren’t meeting your own needs, you aren’t noticing or attending to what’s going on for you. And so I’ve developed and shaped up a CFT training around that idea of what we do so that while you’re in it, while you’re in the role of parenting, how do you breathe? What is it and it’s different to how you breathe on the shore? It’s absolutely very different to be breathing underwater. But that idea if we can do that, how does that change the sense of urgency, because so often when I work with young family, families of young babies, there is this urgency of I have to get my baby to sleep, I have to get my baby to play independently, I have to get someone to care for my baby so that I can meet my own needs. I’m waiting for you know, watching the clock waiting for their partner to get home so that they can do whatever they need to do for themselves. And instead of trying to shift and reframe that to being what would it be like to be okay, while you’re in it, rather than getting breaks to be okay, and go back to being because we actually inadvertently undermine our maternal identity and our parental identity, when we make parenting feel like drowning, and the shore feel like an oasis. So that’s, that’s a big project I’ve been working on for a good 18 months are really shaping up that content into that perinatal space of making CFT skills workable with a baby.

Hayley Quinn

Yeah. Oh, Amanda, that’s so beautiful. I think, gosh, I wish I’d known of you and known of this when I was a single mum with a very little child trying to do uni and all sorts of stuff. Because I’m sure I was holding my breath a lot of the time. That sounds absolutely beautiful. So if people want to find out more about you and what you do and get in touch, where can they find you and engage with your work, and I’ll put links in the show notes as well.

Amanda Connell

Perfect. So lots of my stuff’s going through an overhaul at the moment as these projects get ready to launch in the next six months. But the easiest place to find me is online, and it’s spiltmilkpsych.com. And then on all the socials, it’s @spiltmilkpsych. All one word. That’s where I am online and around the place.

Hayley Quinn

Wonderful, Amanda, it’s been an absolute delight chatting with you. And I’m sure people listening will find so much richness from this and find it so helpful. I really thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Amanda Connell

That’s been lovely to talk to you and lovely to catch up too Hayley.

Hayley Quinn

See you soon.

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 would 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 Your Self and may you go well and go gently.

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