The Business of Psychology

Introducing the Business of Psychology Podcast

Do you want to help more people than you can stuck in an office? If you are a psychologist or therapist with big ideas then this is the podcast that will support you to make them real! Visit drrosie.co.uk to join the movement.Link to Crowdfunder (ends March 30th 2020!) https://natwestbackherbusiness.co.uk/thebusinessofpsychology

Business planning to supercharge your psychology private practice part 1

LinksJoin the Psychology Business School membership here.The Do More Than Therapy FREE Facebook groupRuss Harris' ACT Made SimpleMore info and useful resources at https://psychologybusinessschool.com/Blog PostDo more than therapy in your psychology private practice If you are setting up a psychology private practice you need a business plan. And it needs to have more than therapy in it… Many of us stumble into private practice as an add on to an already busy NHS (or other public health) role. It is too easy for us to just assume that all we do is rent a room and use our existing skills. Many talented clinical psychologists, therapists and counsellors are shocked to discover that they don’t make much money from their private practice. I was in that position a year ago. I had gone full time in my practice and was busy with clients. But I wasn’t making much money, didn’t have the flexibility I needed to fit around solo parenting my two children and most annoyingly I found myself with NO time to do the community psychology interventions I was passionate about. I noticed I was heading for financial, creative and emotional burnout and invested in business coaching to figure out how on earth to make it right. It was the best decision I ever made and I have put the key learning points into this blog and the psychology private practice business plan workbook (available when the Crowdfunder goes live on March 2nd!) to help make sure you don’t make the same mistakes as me. If you are just starting out you might find yourself feeling resistant or “a bit icky” about some of this stuff. Don’t worry that is part of the journey. You will feel better when you are up, running and helping lots of people. The Foundation of a Psychology Business Plan Mission: What do you want from your private psychology practice or project? All too often we set off into a venture without being intentional about what we are trying to create. However you run your practice, whether full time or part time I guarantee it is going to have you working more hours than you ever did in the NHS. The good news is many of those hours won’t feel like “work” at all if you are passionate about the purpose of your practice. So don’t skip this bit if you want to feel fulfilled rather than drained by your work! The following questions should help you figure out your personal and professional mission: What is the change you want to create in the world?What is the change you want to make in your life? Write out one or two clear mission statements that sum up the impact you want to have for other people. Then write one that puts into words what your work needs to provide for you and your family. I want to help X (insert group of people you want to help) to do X. I will use my X skills to do this. I want to create a life that allows me to live my values. The things I value most in life are x, y and z. My business will help me to have more of these in my life by x, y , z. My examples: I want to help solo parents to parent confidently through hard times in life. I will use my therapy and writing skills to do this. I want to help psychologists and therapists who want to have big impact but feel stuck and don’t know how get their projects off the ground. I will use my writing, marketing and coaching skills to do this. I want to create a life that allows me to live my values. The things I value most in life are health, being present with my family and creating social change. My business will help me to have more of these in my life by giving me financial freedom, flexibility in my hours and the ability to reach people who find it hard to access NHS services. Structure of the Business: Should my psychology practice or project be a Ltd company, social enterprise or sole trader? Don’t get hung up on this! This question is mostly about what is going to happen to your “profit”. I am not an expert in company formation (by a long way) but my research for my own business has given me a basic understanding. It seems to me that if you are a sole trader all your money (less your personal tax allowance) is taxed through self assessment so all you need is a separate bank account and rock solid records of everything you spend and receive. In a social enterprise you pay yourself and others on the team a salary and then the profit gets reinvested into your business or other projects that align with the social change you told the government you want to make. There are a few different ways of setting these up that dictate how much freedom you have. A Ltd company usually involves paying yourself a salary and then taking a dividend if you make extra “profit” on top of that basic salary. It can be tax economical if you are making good money and most SEs and all Ltd companies have the benefit of limiting your liability so your own assets are protected if the company goes bankrupt and can’t pay its debts. If you are setting up something big involving other people it is best to consult a lawyer to get some advice to make sure things are set up well from the beginning. In my opinion, if you are doing it on your own it is usually best to get started as a sole trader and then look at becoming a social enterprise or limited company once there is money coming in with which to pay an accountant. This will be an upcoming topic on the podcast and I will get some proper expert advice for you. For now just don’t let this stuff stop you. So long as you have the right professional indemnity insurance my advice would be to get started and figure it out later… Mindset Don’t skip this! I used to think mindset work was a bit woo… It often is… But it is also completely essential. For now just be mindful and notice what comes up for you when I start asking you to think about how your business will make money and how much money you need to make. There will be ickyness and I use a lot of the tools of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help me deal with it so I can keep working towards my mission. It isn’t easy and there are plenty of times I would far rather hide than show up online a put myself out there. Keep your mission at the front and centre of your mind and commit to dealing with some painful feelings in order to make it happen. If you are new to ACT or don’t use it much in your work the key principle that is useful here is that when we are doing something that pushes us outside our comfort zone it is normal and inevitable that we will feel anxiety, stress and other unpleasant emotions. That is our mind’s way of trying to keep us safe. If however we know that we need to do this scary thing in order to live the life we want to live, including serving others in the way we want to, then we need to allow these feelings and do what matters to us anyway. There are loads of tools in ACT that can help us to do this and if you are interested in learning those DM me and I will happily send some resources your way. For now my favourite is one from Russ Hariss’ ACT Made Simple. Russ asks you to imagine the icky feeling as an object in your body, locate where it lives within your body, what shape it has, texture, temperature, whether it is moving or still. Spend some time really getting to know the object, examining its colour, weight and density. Once you have done that then try sending some soothing breaths into and around the object, imagining your body softening around it and making room for it. I find this technique very helpful when I am doing something scary, like recording a podcast for the first time.

Tragedy, trauma and mess. How a Psychologist helped the survivors of Grenfell tower.

LinksPlease support the Crowdfunder for this podcast and the Do More Than Therapy community! You can find it here.Also come and join the FREE Facebook community here.You can find more blogs and podcasts at www.drrosie.co.ukYou can find Hannah on instagram @ChildhoodMindedon Facebook @HannahAbrahamsPsychologist and on her website www.hannahabrahams.comTranscript of Podcast EpisodeTragedy, Trauma and Mess: How a Psychologist Helped the Survivors of GrenfellFoundations: How and why did Hannah become a psychologist?Rosie (00:00):Today, I'm talking to Hannah Abrahams. Hannah is an educational and child psychologist who's worked beyond the therapy room in both the public and private sector, starting out as a primary school teacher before training as an ed psych in 2005. She's been involved in projects that would seriously intimidate most of us, including setting up a school and supporting the community after the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower. Not to mention setting up and building her own private practice. Welcome to the podcast, Hannah, there's so much that I want to ask you about and so much that we could talk about. So let's start at the beginning. What inspired you to leave teaching and become an ed psych?Hannah (00:38):Gosh, what a big question, and what an introduction. It actually made me really emotional listening to that. I think I always knew that I wanted to work with special needs children, and in my second year of teaching, it was really made concrete. There was a little boy that I had in my class who had been diagnosed very early on with autism. And we formed a really strong bond and a really good understanding of each other. And I think that absolutely cemented the fact that I knew that I wanted to go and work as an educational psychologist and kind of work in a more systemic way supporting staff and families and working very collaboratively. Yeah, the picture of him and my mind is so clear, but I remember coming into the class one day just going, yep, I absolutely have to follow this. So I think I had an idea from very early on.Hannah (01:35):I also did work experience when I was 16 in a school for children who were deaf, and they taught me to sign really quickly. Obviously, I was not fluent. But I think for me it's always been about communication, and interestingly, about communication with people who find it more difficult to communicate in the neuro-typical way. So I think from a really young age, I was really interested in building relationships and building bonds. And I think that ed psychs have an incredible gift of being able to do that in all sorts of different settings. So I hope that answers your first question.Rosie (02:09):Yeah, it does. I mean, I was just thinking about how strong that motivation must've been. Like you've literally, I can see, the audience can't, but I can, and see like Hannah gets really animated when she's thinking about that boy. I'm thinking, was that what got you through what must've been really difficult? Because training as a psychologist is hard, especially as a second career.Hannah (02:29):Yeah, I think I had a real clear vision, I was very lucky because I had a very clear vision right from the start. And I'd read psychology at university with a kind of view to, I know I want to follow this. But I also think that I wanted to work with children in the sense that at that age I was probably quite naive and thinking, well, you can make a bigger difference with younger people. And I suppose it's maternal instincts and mothering instincts as well that kind of kick in. So I think that very much played a part.Hannah (03:08):Training to be a psychologist is incredibly tough. You will know too. It's really, really tough. And I think there is the difference of becoming an ed psych, because when I trained you had to be a teacher, and we had all these teachers who'd come in, who'd felt incredibly confident and competent being in a classroom, and then when you're training to be a psychologist you're questioning everything, and suddenly you feel like your skill base is zero, and you're looking around for validation the whole time. And it was very... What's the word? There was a very uneven feel about walking into their schools when you knew you understood a school, but suddenly you were coming in as the outsider.Hannah (03:54):And I think that was the part of the training as a psychologist that was the really, really tough bit, is that suddenly you just felt completely deskilled. But actually we understood how schools worked, and the pressure that teachers were under, and the pressure that families were under, and the different systems in place. So I think that plays a massive part in rebuilding your confidence when you're training.Hannah (04:20):I think it's interesting, because I always question, when psychologists only train others, and the meaning behind that, and what are their needs ultimately? Because being in the front line is a very different place to be. So it's political, but I've always noted it and noticed it and questioned it, but maybe that's because I'm not a lecturer.Rosie (04:45):That's really interesting. So is that something that would ever appeal to you to do a bit of that?Hannah (04:50):Yeah, absolutely. And I've done more and more of it now since I've been in private practice than I did before when I was working in the NHS and the state system. But it's not something that I feel incredibly confident at. I think that's something that I have to skill myself up with regards to working as a psychologist, and I think that's part and parcel of who we are often in our nature.Rosie (05:19):Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think when you were talking about what it was like to retrain as an ed psych, I was thinking about just over a year ago, maybe 18 months ago, I did a course in online therapy. It made me feel like I knew nothing about therapy.Hannah (05:35):When you do.Rosie (05:36):Something I'd been doing for a really long time. But as soon as I was in that learning environment again, back in the role of the student, I started questioning everything, started thinking I was completely incompetent, felt totally deskilled, until I got in the saddle and started seeing people online, and I was like, "Oh, here are all my skills and knowledge to help me." Excellent.Hannah (05:57):It's funny, isn't it? I mean, I think we ping pong between kind of a safe space to a, "Oh my goodness me. How can I post a be know what I'm doing?" I mean, I had a really interesting experience a few weeks ago when, I've started going into more work settings, you know, working with lawyers or people who are in more corporate settings. And the feeling of imposter syndrome as I walked into these beautiful buildings, kind of thinking, "Do I know what I'm talking about? Have I got a clue?" And then watching people's eyes and knowing that actually, I know what I'm talking about most of the time and I'm still learning so much, but actually they gained, and I gained from them as well. And it's very much about perception, isn't it? And there's another psychologist I know who always talks about, just remember what you can do. And it has to be this constant little narrative in our heads, doesn't it? So yeah. It's about confidence.Rosie (07:01):Yeah. And that feels like the model of growth to me. You have to go through that feeling of feeling totally deskilled in order for your skills to come out and help you and to see how it all integrates and turns you into the psychologist that you can be.Hannah (07:14):Yeah. And I think that that's part and parcel of being a good practitioner is to be reflective as much as you possibly can, and be able to pull the positives as well as the bits that you know that you need to adapt and change and learn more about. So I think in the world of private practice, the gift that I've been given is that I've met incredible people and I've been given the space to become much more creative than I could in other situations.How Hannah found a psychological way to help the survivors of GrenfellHannah (07:43):So for example, when I was working at Grenfell, we had to listen to the community. I was doing things like going into cooking sessions and learning how to make amazing tajines. I was sitting in sewing groups. I was making slime with 30 children whilst we were talking about setting up a memorial for the children. And I wouldn't have had the capacity to do that in my old day job to the extent, because I had to be literally in the streets with the community and building trust. And that's a very different part of psychology that I've learned about and that I've embraced, and that has given me a heck of a lot really.Rosie (08:31):Yes. I think that this is part of your story that people are going to be really fascinated about. Because I know when the tragedy happened, I'd actually just recently given birth, and although I wasn't living a million miles away actually, I felt like I couldn't do anything, I couldn't help. But I did receive an email saying, "We're looking for psychologists, skilled in trauma therapies." And I remember feeling very bad about the fact that I was just breastfeeding around the clock, it just wasn't going to be possible. But there was also another part of me that, a bit like we were just saying, was like, "How could I possibly help?" Couldn't figure it out. So could you talk a bit about what that process was, how you got involved, and then the things that you were able to do to support that community?Hannah (09:17):So probably about eight years ago now, I learned about an incredible charity called Grief Encounter, which basically works with bereaved families and children. I mean, I think probably others would have heard about CBUK and Winston's Wish, and Grief Encounters sits within that realm. But they're a smaller charity. And I went on a six month training with them, and it was incredible. And I worked with a lot of the children that they were working with, and I ran groups, and I went on retreats with the families, and I became very much a part of the charity in terms of the support I was offering as a psychologist.Hannah (10:08):And when Grenfell happened, I mean, I live relatively close, but also the first school that I ever taught in is around the corner from Grenfell. So the little boy that I was talking about earlier is, he grew up around there. And there was something very much inside of me that kind of was lit in terms of, okay, I work in trauma. I don't work in trauma every day. But if I have a team around me, we can do something here, we can do something tangible, and we're not going to go in and wave magic wands... I often hear and I often observe in crises in school that we suddenly have 10 counselors around on a Monday morning after there's been a tragedy on Saturday. It's like, no, we're not doing that.Hannah (11:02):But I did meet with Grief Encounter and they said to me, "Hannah, can you do it?" And I waivered, because the enormity of this situation is beyond comprehension. But I agreed, and with a lot of trepidation and a lot of fear, we went down there. And we had connections with the other charities. And I also had connections with the council as well. And slowly but surely these meetings starting to happen about, what can we do and how are we going to make a positive mark, and just ultimately be there? And there was a lot of watchful waiting that happened.Hannah (11:47):And I built these connections with people who ran, I don't know whether you would have heard of something called Grenfell United. So a lot of the survivors formed together to build this community. And there are other communities that were kind of popping up. And I worked, I also built relationships with the heads and the deputy heads of some of the schools that were literally right in the vicinity. And there was a lot of listening, and there was a lot of watching, and there was a lot of changes made along the way. So you can't go in with a perfect plan. There isn't one.The importance of waiting and learningHannah (12:30):And there was and still remains incredible mistrust. So I think about six months of my work was about building trust. And that was being on the ground. So working with people who were going into the community centers, going into the children's centers, being with the staff, playing in the sand, all of those things. And slowly but surely all of these different groups came together and we built the trust in these families, and we knew when they wanted to talk to us and when they didn't. And that changed on an hour by hour, day by day, week by week basis.Hannah (13:15):But eventually the Metropolitan Police came to us and said, "We want to do something." Because their need was so great as well. If you can imagine the level of trauma, you can almost describe it as ripples of the waves against the shore. It just kept coming. And I think, obviously it's still going, but at that point it was so tangible. The liaison officers were working directly with the families who were not living where they had been, obviously, or where they wanted to be. And ultimately what we did is, the families started to say, "We need a space to memorialize what's been going on. And we need a safe space." So we had a couple of very private areas where we used to meet...

How to publish a book: An inspiring interview with Dr Lucy Russell about Brighter Futures

LinksAs this episode goes live this is your final opportunity to support the crowdfunder for this podcast and the Do More Than Therapy community. If you know we need to step out of the therapy room and start making bigger impact you belong in this community. Become a founding member and start to make the change you want to see.Feel like you've got a book in you? The Crowdfunder has you covered bag yourself an amazing self publishing workshop for just £25 here.Missed the deadline? Don't worry head to drrosie.co.uk and you can still get a place.You can buy "Brighter Futures", Lucy's amazing book here.www.theyarethefuture.co.uk.Facebook @tatfwellbeing.Instagram @tatf_drlucyTwitter @DrLucyRussell.https://learndobecome.com/Transcript of Episode:Rosie (00:00):Today I'm talking to Dr. Lucy Russell. Lucy is the clinical lead for a successful child psychology group practice in Buckinghamshire called Everlief. If you follow her online, her passion for reaching parents of school-aged children is clear, and she's done an amazing job of reaching more families with the book she co-wrote with her colleagues, Brighter Futures. Brighter Futures is a book that I'm really happy to have my hands on before my kids hit school age, and Lucy is here to tell us how she made it all happen. So Lucy, hi and welcome to the podcast.Lucy (00:31):Hi.Inspiration: What motivated Lucy to Write Her BookRosie (00:32):Can you start by telling us a little bit about what inspired you to write the book and who it's intended to help?Lucy (00:40):Well, okay, what inspired me, like you, wanting to do something more. I do face-to-face therapy, and I enjoy it, but I wanted to do something more that reached a wider audience of parents and also something a bit more preventative because parents come to me when they've hit crisis point pretty much. So I was looking to do something that helped them before they got to that stage. And also the families that come to our clinic have suggested writing a book over the years, and so finally a few of us got round to it and wrote that book.Rosie (01:22):Yeah. I mean, I really resonate with that experience because I think so many families that I see are just saying, "Why couldn't we have had this help sooner? Why wasn't there something available that was more affordable at an earlier point?" And a lot of people are also saying, "I've got a friend who really needs this, but they can't afford to come and see you." And that's definitely what drives me to try and do something at a more affordable price point as well. What I love about the book is that it imparts a lot of the knowledge that we spend the first few sessions of therapy talking about anyway. So I think it would give people a real standing start coming to your clinic.Lucy (02:01):Yeah, that's what we were hoping. We were hoping that it would provide kind of the voice of a psychologist so that parents could really understand the process that they and their children would go through if they came to Everlief. But I mean, hopefully, most of them won't need to come to Everlief. It's just that it will provide the step-by-step process that they will get if they were to see a psychologist.Rosie (02:32):What I love about it is there's a lot of really human content. There's a lot about how the brain works and how development works and how normal a lot of quite distressing experiences actually are. And what came through from the way that it's written is that it's based on personal, not just professional experiences.Lucy (02:54):Absolutely, yes. I mean, there were six of us that wrote the book, and all of us are parents, and all of us have different aged children, some at university and some preschool age. Mine are 10 and 14 at the moment. But we all have experiences, and we've all had difficulties obviously, because that's human.Rosie (03:16):And I was really interested actually, before we did this interview, you told me that you'd had some difficulties with sleep when your kids were young. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, the number of parents I see because of sleep." It seems like something that's a real passion for you. It's also a real passion for me. So could you talk a bit about that?Lucy (03:36):Yes. Whenever I encounter families that have sleep difficulties, it's the one area that I really feel I can empathize with and really feel I can kind of give experienced advice on. I have two children, but the youngest, in particular, had severe sleep difficulties when she was a baby and really didn't sleep through the night till at least two. But up to about age six or seven, we had massive difficulties with her. She's 14 now, and she sleeps pretty well, although she still struggles to get to sleep.Lucy (04:14):But it really did. It had a massive impact on everything. It had an impact on my health. My immune system just wasn't functioning properly at all. We did go out, but we couldn't go out as much as some of the other families. For example, in my NCT group, I was so jealous of some of the families whose children slept. There was one whose child slept for 12 hours pretty much from birth, and I just... Oh, I was so envious. So I really did a lot of research, and there was a particular book called The Baby Whisperer that really, really helped me at the time, and things did get better. And hopefully, I can help parents to see that things do get better.Rosie (04:58):I think that empathy coming from that standpoint of I know how desperate you are, I know that you feel like you'll try absolutely anything, and just that shines through the way the book's written, and I'm sure it shines through all of your clinical work as well. I think that is so powerful for people because definitely my experience was that my little boy... I have two kids. I've got a daughter who's three and a little boy who's 20 months.Lucy (05:24):Oh, wow!Rosie (05:24):So we're sort of still in that phase, to be honest. My daughter was a great sleeper, but my son was quite poorly as a newborn. And my belief is that that's why he's always struggled with sleep. It's because he just needs that physical contact with you to feel secure, and if I had as many lumbar punctures as him, I probably would too. And I think actually, I found that there weren't a lot of other people that viewed sleep in that way. When I was really going through it in the thick of it, there was a hell of a lot of people telling me to sleep train, giving me behavioral kind of intervention ideas.Lucy (05:59):Oh, really?Rosie (05:59):Which didn't fit with the kind of attachment-focused view that I had of the difficulties. So it's just really nice for me when I find you talking about it in a way that really fits with my way of thinking.Lucy (06:16):Oh, that's great. Yeah.Rosie (06:16):And the fact that you've got that on paper in such an accessible way for parents to understand.Lucy (06:21):The book looks at difficulties from lots of different perspectives, including behavioral, but we also have a big attachment focus. And the book is based on what we call seven basic beliefs, and one of them is that the importance of nurture just can't be underestimated, and you can't really give too much nurture. That's obviously massively important in sleep, especially with really tiny ones.Rosie (06:50):And actually, the seven basic beliefs are something I really wanted to ask you about because I love all of them. As a psychologist and as a mum, they just fit so well with everything that I believe and the way that I see the world. But I thought actually there were a couple in there which I know from my work with families can be a bit controversial. For example, concepts like sometimes the environment needs to change, not the child. And some problems are actually a good thing, rather than always being negative.Lucy (07:19):Yeah.Rosie (07:20):I thought those are two which I know I've kind of had a bit of pushback about in my career, and I wondered what the response has been like to those.Lucy (07:32):Wow, that's a really good question. I mean, I don't think I've had a negative response to those areas. I think, for me, the idea that the environment sometimes needs to change instead of the child is possibly one of the most important of those seven beliefs along with the nurture one, because we have to be very careful not to always site the problem as being within the child or even within the family. And I think that some schools, in particular, some of the culture around some schools, not blaming anybody in particular, but it's just the culture that's developed, is very tough for some children, for a lot of children. So I think we need to acknowledge that and try and help change that culture or make helpful changes in schools and in families as well where those are going to be helpful.Rosie (08:31):Have you had any feedback from people that have used the book?Lucy (08:36):Yeah. We've had lots of positive feedback from lots of families and some families that come to the clinic. And we've had reviews on Amazon that have been really positive. So overall, I think it's been a very positive experience. We've had lots of people asking for us to do a secondary version, which we'd love to do one day, but it was a lot of work, so I'm not sure when that might happen.Rosie (09:03):Yeah, I bet it was. How does it feel when you get that kind of feedback?Lucy (09:08):It feels really, really good. It makes it feel worth it, because there were times when it was a slog writing those chapters and trying to make sure that there was consistency between the different psychologists that were writing and making sure that it was nice to read and accessible to everybody that would be reading it. So it was hard.getting started: Writing a book as a psychologistRosie (09:32):I bet. And actually, starting out a project like that, it must've been really intimidating. What were the first steps you took to get started once you'd had the idea for the book?Lucy (09:44):I must admit, the idea was floating around for a good while before we took any action, maybe a couple of years. I guess the first step was to acknowledge that I didn't feel able to do the whole thing by myself, that I wanted to collaborate on this. So I asked some members of my team if they would be interested, and luckily five members of the team were. The other important thing was that we had Mike, who's my husband, but also manages the clinic, kind of project-managing the book. So he was doing all the negotiating and liaising with publishers and so on, and that was massively helpful. So that was a big step for him to agree to take that on and for him to start making small kind of action steps. The first step for us as psychologists was to get together, decide on a topic, which we did over a couple of evenings of nice drinks and cakes and things.Rosie (10:46):Oh, that sounds amazing.Lucy (10:46):It was.Rosie (10:49):Yeah, I love the sound of having somebody

SOS: How to survive as a psychologist or therapist during COVID-19

Thank you for listening and I hope you found it useful to reflect on boundaries. In my opinion the world needs our expertise at this time so I ceryainly plan to keep working but I also think it is important to work differently, protecting our boundaries and our own mental health as much as possible. Doing more than therapy has never been so important. That is why I am still shouting about the Crowdfunder which ends on Monday 30th March at 2pm.Join the movement. Commit to doing more than therapy by checking out the rewards we have on offer on Crowdfunder:https://natwestbackherbusiness.co.uk/thebusinessofpsychologyMissed the Crowdfunder? Sign up for a workshop or join the free community at:www.drrosie.co.uk