Reflections on 2024 and intentions for 2025

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. This is the last episode in this series which means that it must be very nearly Christmas. So Merry Christmas everybody! I hope that you're easing your way into the festive period this year. 

This is an episode that I actually planned for last year and I chickened out of posting. When it got to January, and it was too late to post it, I did a bit of reflection on why I hadn't aired the episode that I recorded this time last year, and I realised that I wasn't living my values in the best possible way. The reason that I hadn't posted it was that I was worried that some of the stuff in the episode wouldn't be liked by everybody, that it might be controversial to some people in some ways. and ultimately, I just wasn't in a place to be particularly courageous about that. Actually, when I look back on what a year I'd had in 2023, I can completely see why I didn't want to open the door for any hostility, potentially, or any controversy at all. It makes sense. I'd had a really tough year, and although this year has also been challenging, it hasn't been as emotionally demanding as last year, and I do feel in a position now where I actually really want to engage in debates, especially professional debate around the stuff that matters to me. So what I thought we'd do in this episode is think a bit about the stuff that's going on in mental health, particularly in the UK, but globally as well, and what that might mean for us, and questions that it's planted in my mind about where we might go as a group of professionals. I'm sure you won't agree with everything that I think, and that isn't the point, the point here is just that I think we need to engage with this stuff more, and I think that we need to be less concerned about agreement, and more concerned with professional and intellectual curiosity.

I've been really enjoying this year; doing a lot more collaboration with colleagues, getting into research again. And I think it's ignited in me this desire to really interrogate some of the assumptions that we make in our work, so I wanted to talk about that. And I thought I'd also reflect a little bit on what's been going on in my life and my business over the past year and how those two things might interweave with each other and maybe set some intentions going forward for 2025 because I think that's really important for all of us to be doing right now.

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

Episode 151: The Immune Mind - Books that make you think

Episode 153: AI and the future of mental health with Dr Rachael Skews

Episode 149: Selling mental health services to organisations with Jessica Lorimer

Episode 133: An invitation to pause and reflect before 2024

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Shownotes 

The mind-body connection

The first thing, which you'll have heard me talk about this series when I reviewed the book The Immune Mind by Dr Monty Lyman, is that the mind-body connection is getting better understood. I think many of us have been very interested in it for a long time, but there wasn't anything in my training, really, on the mechanisms by which the body and mind might interweave and I think that the research that's coming out about links between the gut and inflammation and loads of other biological factors that really put the bio in the biopsychosocial model. I think it's really important and our formulations are going to need to adapt radically to not just pay lip service to the role of biology, but actually start thinking about how we might interact with it, and potentially how we have to work with colleagues in order to provide effective treatment for people who are struggling in a particular way.

One example of that is in my specialist area of hyperemesis gravidarum there's been research published this year around the genetic component that might predispose somebody to struggling with hyperemesis. This is really powerful and you might think as a psychologist how is that going to affect the way you work with people, but it absolutely is because a lot of the time, a lot of what we're working with is a huge amount of self-blame and negative beliefs about the self because of struggling with such a debilitating illness during pregnancy, and this has big ramifications for that. Whether somebody is tested or not might have a big impact on their psychology. Another reason it's really important is that if we understand the gene, we might be able to understand treatments that could work in a preventative capacity. We might be able to put treatment programs in place for people before they become debilitated. And that's just not the way that it's worked historically, and it certainly isn't where psychology is placed in the pipeline. So, in order to make sure that our work is as effective as possible, we need to be able to understand the gene, what the geneticists and the medics are communicating around these changes, and I don't feel that well equipped to do that. I've got a real interest in it, and I've absorbed quite a lot of stuff, but I don't know the right terminology. The acronyms are boggling my mind. And I think that might need to change in our training, and I can't think of a specialty that this doesn't touch. If you've read The Immune Mind, or listened to my review of it, then you'll see that that book alone touches on almost every clinical specialty that I could think of. But other books I'm reading too, like Ultra Processed People by Dr Chris Van Tulleken, that's all about how lifestyle and diet is likely to be impacting on mental health and neurodivergence. It feels like every book I'm reading that is about physical health is also telling me something that I didn't previously understand or want to do more investigation into related to mental health or neurodivergence. So, I think this is a wave that we need to ride and we really need to up our understanding and our ability to communicate and liaise with other professionals, especially in our independent practices where we don't automatically have access to those professions. So, I've been looking a lot at MDT working with gynaecology and endocrinology, which I wouldn't really have been considering before. And I'm very interested in looking at how I might be able to work alongside people that understand the gut and the microbiome far better than I do as well. So, loads of interesting stuff, and I don't feel like we're there yet. I don't think we've got the understanding that we need, but this is something I think we really must pay attention to as professionals to make sure we're giving the best care that is evidence based, because actually the evidence is starting to tell us that the bio part is really important.

The AI revolution

If you listened to the episode with Dr Rachel Skews, I think you'll understand why I feel that this is going to fundamentally change how we work. I don't think it's going to do that within the next two or three years, but I do think in ten years, our practices will look quite different, and I think that could be really positive. I think there's loads of ways in which AI can allow us to provide more effective therapy, more effective consultation, more effective formulation. I'm really excited about the ability of AI to accelerate our work and our capabilities. But I also think that there's a role for us to play in the regulation of AI and in thinking through some of the difficulties that could arise if this train is allowed to just speed on down its track without any thought. So, I'm excited about it, but I also am a little bit nervous. I guess my message going into 2025 for myself and for anybody in independent practice is to be open minded and allow yourself to think creatively about how you provide the best service for your clients. I think it's been a bit of a theme of this series thinking about how we add that value and really allowing yourself to imagine how the tools that are being developed now can allow you to add more value and then being confident about that. I think if we have an existential crisis and start to think we're being replaced by AI, then we might be. But if we can take leadership and think carefully about how AI might enhance our expertise, I think we could actually take an important role in the development of AI and how mental health services shape around it. I've been writing a little bit about it recently, and I hope that what you'll take from this is excitement and enthusiasm and a desire to investigate what this might look like for your working life going forward over the next 5, 10, 15 years, because I think it is exciting.

The debates around neurodiversity and gender identity

Something I have been less happy about this year, and I do think is really difficult to talk about, but hopefully I'm not going to say anything radically controversial here, are two big debates that I see kicking off, frankly, in our professional groups. And that is the debate around neurodiversity and the labels, particularly, that we use, and the debate around gender identity. To be honest, I am quite ashamed of how toxic conversation on those subjects becomes and how quickly it descends into name calling and really oversimplification of the issues. I think we need to give ourselves a bit of a shake and remember that both of these subjects are going to be incredibly complex and there are going to be competing interests that are valid on all sides. So, we need to be able to cope with discomfort and disagreement and just respectfully consider alternate views that might have to sort of rub alongside each other. I think there's a drive, probably coming from a well-intentioned place, for this resolution where everybody agrees and everybody thinks, ‘oh yeah, you're right, I agree with you, I like you’. And actually, that might not be possible, because the number of stakeholder groups that have a legitimate stake in both of these big, big questions is just too wide. And so, there are always going to be people disagreeing. But I think it's frightening that we, as mental health professionals, are unable to talk to each other politely and compassionately and respectfully about these subjects. This is something I was worried about saying, because I don't want anybody to feel judged or shamed or that I'm criticizing a person here. I'm not. This is baked into the way that we've been trained. I remember this from day one of clinical psychology training. I remember it from when we did the psychotherapy week at the Tavistock. I really think that being very judgmental and critical of our peers is part of the way that we train our mental health professionals, and I think we have to change it. Part of that is around giving people the confidence to disagree and say it's okay to disagree, and we might get heated, and we might be passionate, but we are never going to accuse each other of not having the best intentions for the client in mind. What I see, is that everybody is coming from a well-intentioned place, they just think differently, and that should be okay. It's something that we do clinically all the time. Anyone that's done any consultation, families work, systems work, we're all really good at this when we're called to do it in those settings, but when we're left to our own devices, we seem to get into these really painful and quite vicious judgement loops, which I just don't think are advancing us at all. 

I am by no means an expert in the neurodiversity debate, but I do have a personal stake in it. I've got children that have the labels autistic, ADHD, PDA, I've talked about that before. People are always trying to label me with various things as well. And so I feel that I am a stakeholder in that debate and I think I've got a couple of different perspectives based on different stakes that I hold and what that has made me think of is the need for a large scale needs assessment where we really investigate what does the language we use around neurodiversity need to do for all of the impacted stakeholder groups? What functions do those labels need to serve for people? And I wonder if we could then cross reference that with what the evidence is telling us, the evidence that we do have around origins, developmental trajectories, and all of that good stuff that you, listening to this, are probably more expert in than I am. Could we cross reference those two things and maybe as a collection of professional bodies, come together and come up with a system that is better than what we have in the DSM5 for giving people labels which work for them, which enable us to develop services that give people what they need. It all starts with the language, I think, and maybe we need to take a leadership role in developing the right language which is going to imperfectly meet the needs of the most people possible. Because what we have at the moment is just these little incremental tweaks to a system which is fundamentally flawed because it wasn't right to start with. Because nothing is right, you know, we're always just using our best thinking at that moment. And now we know that that best thinking, from whenever it was, like the 30s or 40s, wasn't really that helpful. So why we're just adding little tweaks to it year after year and then wondering why everything is broken, I'm not sure. It feels like there's enough people with skin in the game that maybe we could all come together and do something really large scale. And at least the system, although it still wouldn't be perfect, would, in some ways, come from a place of thought and compassion and research, and an attempt, a genuine attempt to meet the needs of all the stakeholder groups rather than just a few people having a conversation in a room. So that's my view. I don't really want to see any more debate articles from psychologists (in particular) about labels until that's happened. Until all the stakeholders’ voices are present in the debate, I don't really want to hear people pontificating about it because that just feels a bit unhelpful. I guess I'm a believer in nothing about us without us. 

The gender identity debate, I don't pretend to understand fully at all, but I think a similar approach, where we accept that everybody's coming from a good place, but with really diverse experiences has got to be helpful. And I just really encourage the people with the expertise in that area to think about how, if there is a way that we could bring voices together, in order to have some sort of systematic approach to sorting this out. Because the toxicity of it has just got to stop, because it's dividing us as a profession, but it's also sending out really painful messages to the public, which I think are seriously detrimental. Maybe in 2025 we could start working towards something really positive that might have big benefits for the next generations.

My life and business

It feels really heavy to transition from that into thinking about my life. It seems a bit ridiculous, frankly, but I think possibly these things have informed or been in relationship with the changes that I've had in my life and that I've made to the business this year. I think it's always really useful to sit back and reflect on why you might have done some of the things that you've done this year, not done some of the things that you said you were going to do, and think about what is a good priority for you to take into 2025. So, in that spirit, I think that this year, I've had to adapt to a really radical new level of flexibility in my business. As you know if you've listened for a while, my business was always set up around the need to be flexible, around the needs of my kids. But over the past year, for about the past nine months, those needs have changed in a way that means that I've had to reduce my working hours. I'm only really working a day and a half a week now. I do squeeze in hours here and there where I can grab some, but I can only guarantee a day and a half. All of my delivery time, where I'm actually talking to coaching clients, talking to therapy clients, or delivering for organisations, that all has to be done within that time. Everything else I might try and fit into kind of two hours here or an hour there, but that stuff has to be very firmly bracketed into the limited amount of safe time where I know that I have childcare. That meant that I had to really focus on what do I need from this business? And of course, there's always two sides to that question. There's what do we need financially and there's also what do I need to feel fulfilled and to feel that I've still got myself, a part of myself, in the midst of what is a very challenging emotional time to be a parent. So, I realised that something I needed to get closer to and do more of this year was collaboration with colleagues and research, because I'm really passionate about independent practice giving us this ability to innovate and bring the latest evidence based practice to our clients and much more quickly than we can do if we're working in a very busy NHS service, for example, where you have to get the green tick before you can do things, but also where it's very difficult to spend a lot of time reading and going to conferences and doing your own research because the...

Supporting NICU families: Dr Frankie Harrison and Miracle Moon

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm really delighted to be bringing you an interview with Dr Frankie Harrison. Frankie is a clinical psychologist and the founder of Miracle Moon. In the episode I'm going to let Frankie tell you a lot about her work, but it's safe to say that I think it's one of the most important independent projects that I've come across in the perinatal mental health space, and I was absolutely delighted to be a small part of Frankie's journey as she's somebody that I have worked with and supported through Psychology Business School. So it's brilliant for me to have Frankie on today to catch up and hear about all the amazing things that she's doing with Miracle Moon. But I also hope that it's going to be really interesting for you to listen to, because we talk about the highs and lows of setting up something that you're really passionate about, working with a co-founder to do that, and also Frankie's aspiration to help many more families that have been through a neonatal intensive care experience.

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

Links for Frankie:

Instagram: @miraclemoonuk

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Frankie tells us about who she is and her professional background 01:27
• Frankie talks about what Miracle Moon does and who it exists to help 04:45
• I ask Frankie how it has been getting Miracle Moon off the ground, and we discuss online workshops and building a community 14:13
• Frankie reflects on difficult moments in the journey with Miracle Moon 25:06
• Frankie shares how she and her business partner built a working relationship that's been successful 28:54
• Frankie tells us her hopes for Miracle Moon and where she sees it going 34:07
• Frankie tells us how we can connect with her 37:16

The Business Growth Pack

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We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Can You See Me? By Libby Scott and Rebecca Westcott: Books That Make You Think

Welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. I'm back with another episode of Books That Make You Think, where I'm sharing with you a book that I found really inspirational; ‘Can You See Me?' By Libby Scott and Rebecca Westcott. 

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

‘Can You See Me?' By Libby Scott and Rebecca Westcott

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Shownotes

I was attracted to this book because one of the authors, Libby, is an autistic 11 year old and that felt like a voice I needed to listen to. The book tells the story of Tally, an 11 year old autistic girl as she navigates the transition to secondary school. Interspersed with the narrative are short autsim fact sheets from Tally explaining concepts like "pathological demand avoidance" and the reasons autistic people might engage in certain behaviours from her point of view.

I was thrilled to read a realistic depiction of autism in a girl with a pathological demand avoidance profile. I find this is a term that is not generally well understood, even amongst psychologists and the warm, engaging and, at times, heart-shaking writing encouraged the kind of empathy that autistic people do not always receive. I particularly valued the insight into what it feels like for a child who looks like they are being defiant or furious but is actually feeling terrified.

As a mum and as a professional I know this is a book that has helped me to connect more deeply and engage more fully with the autistic experience. I'd recommend it to any of you regardless of specialty. Check it out here.

PS. If you want to know more about PDA I very highly recommend Dr Naiomi Fisher's work, she explains it with exactly the straightforward human empathy people deserve.

AI and the future of mental health with Dr Rachael Skews

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm really excited to be interviewing Dr Rachael Skews, a psychologist, coach, trainer, supervisor, speaker, advisor, researcher, and author. She is an internationally recognized subject matter expert in acceptance and commitment coaching and has a really interesting background working with tech companies, including Headspace, to develop effective and ethical behaviour change initiatives. I saw Rachael giving a webinar for the International Society for Coaching Psychology, and I knew I had to ask her to be a guest on this podcast because I found her insight into how the emerging AI technology could support and enhance our work, so refreshing and so fascinating. I get kind of scared by the unbridled enthusiasm for tech that the tech community often has. But I'm also really uncomfortable with the alarmism and pessimism that the mental health world often defaults to when we're faced with new stuff. So it was really great to hear a balanced view from somebody that really understands the ethical issues and potential pitfalls, but also embraces the excitement of the new technology. 

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

Links for Rachael:

LinkedIn: Rachael Skews

Website: www.cognuscoach.com

Other Links:

Reading Our Minds: The Rise of Big Data Psychiatry by Daniel Barron

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Rachael tells us about who she is and her professional background 01:56
• We discuss human interaction and the role of technology in mental health 05:48
• I ask Rachael about working with other people from different backgrounds to psychology 19:23
• Rachael tells us about the opportunities she sees on the horizon for mental health professionals and AI 25:50
• We discuss wearable tech and using technology to get data that we wouldn't be able to get otherwise 30:43
• Rachael talks about managing sensitive data and GDPR 43:16
• We talk about the ethical considerations of using technology and AI 47:17
• Rachael tells us how we can find out more from her 54:12

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Thinking differently about your practice: A tool to put the client first

Welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. In this episode I want to share how we can use a value proposition to help us plan service that meets the needs of our clients.

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links:

The Value Proposition Canvas - Strategyzer Template

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Shownotes

In this episode I wanted to share how we can use a value proposition to help us plan service that meets the needs of our clients.

This is a great follow on from my episode talking about creating a customer persona and why that is so important. Essentially, once you deeply understand your customer, what their barriers are to engaging with support, and their real priorities then you need to move on to thinking about what your proposed product or service needs to do for them. In other words, how you add value.

There is a tool available from Strategyzer called The Value Proposition Canvas that is designed to help you do exactly that. You complete a canvas for each client group or customer segment that you are working with.

You start with the section on the right that asks you to define the pain the client is experiencing, what is keeping them up at night with worry, what are they doing that they regret, or not doing that they wish they were doing? What are they unhappy about? Then you move on to think about what they want to gain from their time with you. What are they hoping they will be able to do? What do they want to be different? How do they think their life will be enriched? Remember this is all from their perspective not yours! Then you move on to the "jobs to be done", again from the client's perspective, what does your service need to achieve for them? This can include practical things like "easy booking system" and "appointments that fit around work" to bigger things like "get me back to work."

Then we move to the left side of the canvas and start thinking about our product or service. Using the identified client pains we map out what we are putting into our product or service that alleviates those pains. Then using the client gains section we map out what we are including that will get those gains for the client. Finally, we check that the jobs to be done are all covered and give a brief description of the product or service itself. Whenever I work through one of these I always change something about my offer because I realise I'm not quite hitting one of the jobs to be done (or sometimes more). Also completing these has sometimes made me completely rethink a business model. For example, filling out one of these recently for my therapy service made me think an intensive model might actually be what my clients need from me more than a weekly therapy model. Definitely food for thought there!

I've linked to the Strategyzer template in the show notes so you can download a copy and start using it to check what you are offering fully meets the identified needs of the client group or to design something new.

Let me know how you get on with it over on Instagram. I'm @rosiegilderthorp and I'd love to hear from you. Also if you could spare a moment to rate and review the podcast I'd be so grateful, the reviews mean a lot to me and also help this podcast get found.

See you next Friday!

The Immune Mind - Books That Make You Think

Welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. Today we're talking about the book ‘The Immune Mind’ by Dr Monty Lyman. He has done really interesting work all around the idea of the mind-body-gut-immune connection, which are all things that I'm really interested in, in my practice, and increasingly I think that we need to incorporate into the way that we work, otherwise we're ignoring a lot of really good science. 

Full show notes for this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

The Immune Mind by Monty Lyman

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Shownotes

It has been ages since I've recorded a Books That Make You Think episode, but I absolutely had to revive the format for the book I'm talking about this week because it has completely changed the way that I think about my work fundamentally. Or rather, I would say it's actually given me more confidence to express opinions that I previously held, but didn't fully understand the evidence base for. 

So today we're talking about ‘The Immune Mind’, which is a book by Dr Monty Lyman. Some of you might have seen a documentary that he made previously, he's also written a book about chronic pain. There's a whole heap of really interesting work that he's done, and it's all around the idea of the mind-body-gut-immune connection. And as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, these are all things that I'm really interested in, in my practice, and increasingly I think that we need to incorporate into the way that we work, otherwise we're ignoring a lot of really good science. 

So, I'll give you a quick summary of the book, and then we'll dive into my thoughts and what I think it might mean for my practice, and hopefully it might give you some food for thought for your own work too.

The book's subtitle is ‘The New Science of Health’, and it begins by explaining the link between the immune system and behaviour in a way that I've not come across before. For example, in an extraordinary experiment, the author actually makes himself sick under lab conditions, and monitors the impact on his motivation, his concentration and his mood, in order to land the point that sickness behaviour looks a lot like mental illness, which it really does. There's also an explanation of the mechanisms behind that, which as a non medic, I found particularly helpful. I think many of us have known the distinction between body and mind is a really unhelpful dualism for a long time, and he spends a lot of time talking about that. I think about books like ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Bessel van der Kolk, for example, and that's been highly influential in my work, however, if I'm honest, beyond the word ‘psychoneuroimmunology’, I didn't really have the best grasp of how that works. And while I'm still not going to be able to explain it very well to you, Dr Lyman does do a fantastic job of outlining how the body's defence mechanisms of inflammation, microbes and the gut influence the way that we think, feel and behave. So it's given me a little bit more insight into the nuts and bolts of that mechanism, which just gives me more confidence to bring it up with clients. 

The midsection of the book also shows us some quite alarming case studies of situations where the body's defence systems have caused really extreme psychological responses, and often catastrophic psychiatric misdiagnoses. I don't want to give any spoilers away here because I was gripped by this aspect of the book to the point actually where I was exclaiming in public, and I really wouldn't want to take that away from you because it's rare, isn't it, when you're reading a book for professional interest that you can't put it down and you're literally on the edge of your seat. But if you've ever had curiosity about why we're seeing an increase in certain difficulties and diagnoses, or if you've ever experienced a client that just doesn't seem to benefit from any of the usually effective therapies - those people where the drugs certainly didn't work, and the talking therapies aren't really working and even EMDR isn't working - if you've experienced that, I think you'd have to be dead inside not to have curiosity about what could be going on for those people, what might be missing from our formulations, and this provides an additional lens for that formulation. So I'm going to restrain myself and leave it there, but you really do have to read this book if you haven't already. 

The final chapters of the book are the practical ones, suggesting how we can reset our defence systems to protect against unnecessary psychological and physical distress. I found these chapters reassuringly similar to what we would have suggested anyway. Basically reducing the amount of processed stuff we eat, taking exercise, being mindful and practising compassion. So if you're an ACT or a CFT informed therapist, it's really the same stuff that you're already saying to your clients and probably to yourself. The only thing that I don't usually talk to clients about is the processed food. I don't really talk about diet at all with my clients, and I think it does raise an interesting debate for those of us that are trained in mental health, but not physical health, because I wouldn't comment on diet with a client. I talk about activity and movement because I do have some background in those things, but I don't give advice very much, and I certainly wouldn't feel competent or qualified to give advice about nutrition or anything along those lines, because although I used to be a fitness instructor, it wasn't a particularly in depth qualification, and I just don't feel like that's what my clients want to hear from me either. So for me, this book does raise the question of whether the knowledge silos that we've created are helpful, and perhaps the future of mental health care should involve practitioners trained more holistically. Maybe the rise of AI might make that possible, as we're able to augment our own cognitive capacities, and perhaps extend our knowledge in more different directions, and get qualified and competent in different things. So I found that exciting, and also quite daunting and scary. I'd love to know what you think about that? Whether you would embrace the idea of getting some training in the physical side of stuff under your belt, or whether you feel like we should stick to what we're good at already. I think it's a really interesting debate and one that I would really love to have more often. 

Returning to the book, one thing I would like to see more of in the book is attention to how the mind influences the body's defence mechanisms. This is talked about a bit, but the case studies focus much more on the other direction. And I understand this, as I suspect part of the drive behind the book is to provide support for those who have been dismissed as medically unexplained for so long, and I'm really on board with that mission. However, having witnessed a few extraordinary cases of physical recovery following trauma therapy, I would really like to see a deep dive on that with this new layer of understanding, possibly extending the work from The Body Keeps the Score. 

So that is my review of The Immune Mind by Dr Monty Lyman. You should absolutely read it, or you should do what I did and half read it and half listen to it on audible. He's a really engaging speaker, so it's one of those books which is a pleasure to listen to. Not every book works on audible, this one really does. I love to split it so that I've got the physical copy because there are bits I need to reread and go back to, and I think I'll be sharing bits of this book with clients as well. So I like to have the physical copy, but Audible is so much more practical for my life, because I can do that while doing all the other stuff that I do. So I'd really recommend, if you're feeling tight for time, Audible plus physical book; I have found that to be optimal.

Please let me know what you think of this book and this episode by leaving a review. I know it's a bit of a faff, but it really helps more people find this podcast, and to be honest, every review really means the world to me. I'm going to do another book review, maybe a couple in this series, because something that I've noticed is that when I make the time to read, I feel like all of my creativity expands and my work is just so much better. So although I know it's tricky to find the time to read new stuff, I really encourage it, and it's something that's really valuable for me. I don't have tons of other mental health professionals around me to talk about these things with, so it's really lovely to have the opportunity to talk to you guys about these books, and I'd love to get some feedback from you on whether you feel the same way as me, or whether you read it and have some completely different takeaways. So do review this podcast, let me know what you think, and come and find me over on Instagram as well. I'm @rosiegilderthorp over there and let me know what you think of The Immune Mind by Dr Monty Lyman.

I'll see you next week.

Celebrating 150 episodes of Business of Psychology with Dr Claire Plumbly

Dr Claire Plumbly takes over as guest host of the Business of Psychology podcast to interview Rosie on the occasion of celebrating 150 episodes! 

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

Episode Links:

Episode 106: A model for truly integrative therapy: SIP with Dr Melanie Lee and Bridger Falkenstein

Episode 120: All That We Are: Best Selling Author Gabriella Braun

Episode 62: Which social media platform works best for psychologists and therapists?

Top 3 Downloaded Episodes:

Episode 1: Business planning to supercharge your psychology private practice

Episode 18: Systematic reviews: How to do a systematic review in independent practice

Episode 41: How to set your fees in your psychology private practice with “pricing queen” Sally Farrant

Marketing an online course mini series:

Episode 84: Creating and marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 1: Creating a freebie to grow your online audience

Episode 85: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 2: Landing page essentials for psychologists and therapists with with Vicki Jakes

Episode 86: Marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 3: Promoting your freebie with Dr Catherine Hallissey

Episode 87: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 4: Do you have the authority to launch an online course?

Episode 88: Creating and marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 5: How to create an engaging online course (that people actually finish)

Episode 89: Marketing an online course for psychologists part 6: Creating inclusive online marketing and education resources. Guidance for psychologists and therapists 

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Links for Claire:

Website: www.drclaireplumbly.com

Instagram: @drclaireplumbly

TikTok: @drclaireplumbly

YouTube: @drclaireplumbly

Facebook: DrClairePlumbly

LinkedIn: ​​drclaireplumbly

The highlights

• Claire asks Rosie to introduce herself and how it feels to celebrate 150 episodes 00:00
• Rosie tells us how any guests she has interviewed 02:22
• Rosie talks about her solo episodes 04:45
• Claire asks Rosie how long it was from starting the podcast to opening PBS, and how many people have been through that 08:17
• Rosie talks about the importance of pausing to enjoy milestones 16:20
• Rosie tells us about her inspiration for starting the podcast 20:19
• Rosie talks about her most memorable moments from recording the podcast, both positive and negative 29:36
• Claire asks Rosie what the top 3 downloaded episodes are and which episodes she always directs people to 42:10
• Rosie tells us which episode(s) she thinks should have performed better and why she wants us to all go and listen now 44:20
• Rosie talks about her plans for the future 45:59
• Claire ask Rosie for some fun facts about herself 50:56

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Selling mental health services to organisations with Jessica Lorimer

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. In this episode, I'm interviewing Jessica Lorimer, sales expert and the person that taught me how to break into the world of corporates through her program, The C Suite. Jess specialises in consultative selling, in other words, helping clients to make sense of their problems. I can honestly say that following her process and keeping the emphasis on consultation at the forefront of my mind has helped me to feel completely comfortable with the extremely high levels of cold outreach that I’ve had to do to get my foot in the corporate door. This episode is a must listen for you if you're interested in selling your services to corporates or other organisations, but it's also a really great one if you've ever struggled with your mindset around taking money for your services.

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

Links for Jessica:

LinkedIn

sellingtocorporate.com

Selling to Corporate Podcast

Rosie’s affiliate link for The C-Suite: https://rosiegilderthorp--smartleaderssell.thrivecart.com/the-c-suite-self-study-course-2024bnpl/

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Jess tells us a little bit about who she is, how she helps people and the sorts of services that corporates might be interested in buying from independent psychologists and therapists 01:26
• Jess talks about why it would be worth corporates working with small providers like us 08:53
• Jess tells us how consultative selling is different 14:42
• We discuss the fear of reaching out to corporates and how our skills are relevant to consultative selling 21:06
• Jess talks about the need in public sector and not for profit for external support and guidance, and how if we are from a public sector background, we will still know people who need our skill set 32:32
• Jess gives us a good first move to make if we are thinking about offering services to an organisation 36:18
• Jess tells us where to find her and her podcast, Selling to Corporate 40:32

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Therapeutic knitting with Dr Mia Hobbs and Dr Paula Redmond

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. I am really excited to have Dr Paula Redmond and Dr Mia Hobbs here to talk to me about their new venture in the world of therapeutic knitting. They are both clinical psychologists and avid knitters, and also both alumni of Psychology Business School, so I’m particularly pleased to have them here to talk about their new audio course, which is guiding people in using knitting for self care.

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

Links for Mia and Paula:

creativerestoration.org

www.therapeuticknitting.org

Why I Knit Podcast

@knittingistherapeutic - Instagram

drpaularedmond.com

When Work Hurts Podcast

Dr Paula Redmond - LinkedIn

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

The highlights

• Mia tells us about life as a professional and her background 00:50
• Mia talks about when she first had an inkling that knitting could be helpful 05:00
• Paula tells us about her professional background and what led her to this path 09:00
• Mia and Paula talk about how therapeutic knitting works to support self care 14:08
• Paula and Mia tell us how they got the ball rolling with their therapeutic knitting project 27:24
• Mia and Paula give their advice for people who would like to develop a podcast or a blog 35:24
• Paula and Mia share the more challenging moments from their journey so far 41:24
• I ask Paula and Mia for their one piece of advice they’d give to another psychologist or therapist who would love to do something like this 48:09

The Business Growth Pack

Ready to grow your practice beyond one person and a laptop? 

We are here to support you to build a thriving, impactful and profitable business. 

Invest in our growth pack to confidently grow your service with associates, organisational work or passive income.

Our unique package includes strategy and marketing training from Dr Rosie Gilderthorp, Founder of Psychology Business School, and legal contracts from Clare Veal, Commercial Lawyer from Aubergine Legal.

Together, we will ensure that you have the strategy and documents you need for growth so you can expand your impact and income while maintaining your work-life balance.

Sign up now: The Business Growth Pack

Thank you so much for listening to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'd really appreciate it if you could take the time to subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps more mental health professionals just like you to find us, and it also means a lot to me personally when I read the reviews. Thank you in advance and we'll see you next week for another episode of practical strategy and inspiration to move your independent practice forward.

Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss an episode of the new series, starting tomorrow!

Let me know what you think of the topics we are covering this series @rosiegilderthorp on Instagram

Summer School: Legal contracts and celebration episode

Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology Summer School edition. 

Over the six weeks of the English school holidays, we are doing things a little bit differently around here. If you're looking to start up an independent practice in September, then this is the place to be as each week I'm dropping in with a quick lesson and tasks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less from your sun lounger.

By the end of the six weeks, you will feel ready to step into your practice in September, confident that you can find clients and have a safe and viable business foundation. 

Each week, the lessons will go out on this podcast feed, but if you want the weekly tasks, workbooks, private community, and a live session with me at the end of the summer to hold you accountable and make sure nothing stands in your way, you will need to sign up here: PBS Summer School

I would love to see you in the community.

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

Links & References:

PBS Start and Grow

Discount code for Start and Grow: SUMMER200 valid until Wednesday the 11th September at 10pm

Episode 146: Data Protection for Psychologists in 2024 with Clare Veal

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Legal contracts and celebration episode

We have come to the end of Summer School, and as you might have noticed from the title of this episode, I'm combining two rather odd things here today, because firstly, I really want to say what an amazing summer this has been. Thank you so much for joining along with this journey. I have loved watching your budding businesses develop and hearing how your confidence has grown over the past few weeks.

I know September is going to be the start of so many epic psychology and therapy practices, and that is a fantastic thing. But one thing we haven't got sorted yet is your essential contracts and data protection policies, the legal bits. And these are critically important, but they couldn't really be fit into 30 minutes or less, and I did not consider them to be particularly sun lounger friendly, if I'm honest. But I do have a good solution for you for that one. 

Firstly, listen to the podcast that I recorded with Clare Veal, where we talk about data protection contracts and policies, the ones that you need and what needs to be in them. So do go and listen to that podcast. It's really amazing free advice from a leading lawyer in this space.

Then I have to recommend that you consider using your special summer school discount to join us in Start and Grow and get: 

• All the legal training policies and contracts that you could possibly need. 
• My clear step by step course to build a practice that supports your values and rewards your hard work. 
• Twice a month, group coaching sessions that keep you accountable and help you jump over any practical or mindset barriers. 
• Six months membership of our supportive student community where people will cheerlead you when you need a bit of cheerleading and give you feedback when you need a bit of compassionate feedback too.
• Access to our private student podcast so you can learn in your own time and in your own way. 

That takes the total value of the package to over £3000, but the legal documents on their own are normally £495, and you can get all of that within Start and Grow for just £650 for one week only. It's normally much more than that, but I'm doing a big discount for those of you that spent this time with me over the summer.

But you don't have to take my word for how good Start and Grow is. I've got some really kind words that some of the people that have been through the course recently were happy for me to share with you guys. And I think that's really important because why should you believe me, that Start and Grow is great, when we've had hundreds of psychologists and therapists come through the course. I think it's so much more powerful to hear from them. 

So this is what Dr Lauren Breese, who's a clinical psychologist focusing on neurodiversity in adults, had to say: 

"In a few days of implementing some of the strategies and guidance, I had new inquiries to my private practice. Having the community, resources, and specific supervision around growing a business has been invaluable. It's hard to find all of that anywhere else." 

And as you can hear, this feedback gets me a little bit choked up! 

I also wanted to share what Dr Misha Nixon, another clinical psychologist, had to say:

"I was thinking about joining Start and Grow for months before I actually did. I'm so pleased I decided to go ahead as, even though it's only been a few weeks since I joined, it's helped give me focus, provided a safe place to share my experiences with others and learn from others. And it's reduced the feeling of overwhelm and increased my confidence."

And that is really close to my heart because as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, confidence was my biggest problem when I started out in private practice. And having that community around you, and the knowledge and the skills to avoid some of the pitfalls of business can make such a big difference to your professional confidence, which should be sky high because you are all awesome.

And as I mentioned, there are a ton more testimonials and videos and you can go and find all of those on the sales page for Start and Grow, which I'll link to in the show notes. If you scroll down, there's loads down at the bottom.

I also wanted to mention that there is a special discount for summer schoolers, and I consider you a summer schooler, and you can use the code SUMMER200 until Wednesday the 11th of September at 10pm, at which point the discount will stop working. That will get you £200 off the normal price of Start and Grow. And as I explained, the legal documents alone make that a really good bargain. So I would love to come and see you in the program. 

If you have any questions about Start and Grow or anything that we've covered over this summer, please do ping me an email, or if you are a registered signed up member of the Summer School, then please do come along to our wrap up Q&A session on Wednesday the 4th of September at 10am. That is for signed up summer schoolers only and I will be at your disposal to help you troubleshoot anything that's standing between you and the practice that you want to build. So again, thank you everybody for spending this summer with me. I've really enjoyed myself and I can't wait to see what you all do in September.