The Business of Psychology

How did I write a book with no time?

Welcome to The Business of Psychology. This is a short series to let you behind the curtain on my journey to publishing my first book, You Are Doing Enough. I'm not doing this as a polished, look how easy this was, success type story. I'm doing it because I know so many of you listening are therapists and psychologists who have your own book idea sitting somewhere, and I really want you to hear what the process has actually been like, and my tips for getting that book out of your head and onto the page.

In this episode I talk about how I actually got the book written. If you listened to the first episode, then you'll know that my book, You Are Doing Enough, came to me at a moment of crisis for my family, and that a lot of what motivated me to write it were also obstacles to actually having the time to write it. So the questions that I get asked a lot, especially from coaching clients that want to write books, are around the practicalities like, yes, you're really motivated, but how on earth do you actually find the time to write a book? So I'll share what worked for me. It may not necessarily work for you in your circumstances, and in different seasons of life, different strategies will be more effective, but I'll share what worked for me and a couple of other ways of approaching it that I've heard from other authors that I know have been helpful.

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

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

Pre Order You Are Doing Enough and get access to Get Your Book Published with Louise Buckley

Click here to pre-order You Are Doing Enough

Pre-ordering now gets you a ticket to Get Your Book Published with Louise Buckley (literary agent) live on 6th November at 11:30 (replay available); just fill in this form after purchasing: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/rGsNE9iF

How I actually got the book written

I found writing at the same time in the early morning every day really helpful, but I never ever wrote for more than an hour. For the entire time I was writing the book, I think maybe I did two sessions that were more than one hour long, and those were when I was lucky enough to have a bit of extra childcare at the weekends, and because writing's really cathartic for me, I used them for that. But most of the time, it was very time limited, one hour between 6:00 and 7:00 every morning. That works really well for my brain because I wake up with the most focus I'm ever going to have through the day, and it was the only time I could take that wouldn't have felt like I was snatching it from somebody else, it was just my time. But I know that isn't going to be the correct timing for other people. Don't sacrifice sleep for anything. Sleep is so important for wellbeing. I really hate the idea of people getting up super early to be productive. I naturally was waking up at that time, and I was lucky that at that time, my husband was at home in the mornings, so it was safe for me to go to the garden office and write for an hour, which felt like a real luxury to not have to do the very early morning stuff with the children. I'm not in that position anymore, so if I was writing a book now, it wouldn't be six o'clock in the morning. That wouldn't work. I would have to look for other times that worked. But I think the important thing is to have a consistent time that works for you. So I'm doing edits for this book and another project at the moment, and my editing time is between 8:00 and 9:00 PM, which, as you can imagine, slides a bit sometimes when I don't manage to get all three kids in bed at the time I would like them to be, but I know I'm only going to do one hour, and it's at a time where nobody else is going to be asking anything of me. So I would recommend having that kind of structure if you've got a brain like mine that it works for really well.

Carry a physical notebook

Another thing which I think is really helpful, is to always carry a physical notebook with you, because we had times during this writing period where I didn't get to go to my laptop at 6:00 in the morning. We had hospital visits, we had Christmas, we had all the stuff that happens with a full and busy life. On those days where I wasn't going to make it to a computer to type, I still wrote in my notebook, so I was still doing the action of being a psychologist writing a book, even if I wasn't at the computer to do it, or it couldn't happen at the time that I would like it to. I guess that's a little bit of rigidity combined with flexibility, but that's what I found really helpful. The other thing that I found useful about having a notebook on me is that those moments when an idea strikes or a metaphor hits you that would work really well to illustrate a point, or if you see something in the real world that you're like, "I've gotta work that into the book because that's so meaningful," which I do all the time when I go to support groups for other SEND parents, or when I go to talks and things, all the time I'm seeing stuff that inspires me. So that's a habit I've stuck to, even though I'm not yet writing another nonfiction book, I still carry around that notebook for inspiration, so I found that really helpful.

Say ‘no’ to things

The other thing I did was say no to things. As I shared in the last episode, this was really hard. I had to close my clinic, which I made that decision quickly but painfully, but I also found that a lot of opportunity came my way in that time because of all the work that I've put into the business over the years and being quite visible in my community, I was getting asked to do lots of stuff that would've paid well, but also would've been really exciting for me, and I had to say no to most of it. Most of that was not because of the book, it was mostly because of my family life. But I think if your diary is really crowded and you're not holding your boundaries well, then the space for creativity just isn't there. It's not necessarily about, do you have one hour a day to write a book? It's also about, do you have any thinking space? Because most of when the book gets written is not when you're physically typing into the page, it's actually when you're just thinking about stuff, while you're living the rest of your life. And I think there have definitely been times in my life where I've been so busy that actually there hasn't been any thinking space, when I've been doing 10 other things at once, and that wouldn't have worked very well. So that's something to be mindful of as well.

Using AI for research

Another thing I wanted to mention was AI. So I didn't use any AI in the writing of the book at all, and I'd really advise you against it. Firstly, because I don't want to read a book that's been written by AI. When I read a book, I connect with the author. Part of what I love about writing and reading is that we get to connect with people that we might never meet in real life. It is so sad to me that AI might be getting in the way of that. So I wasn't tempted to use AI to help me with writing, but I did find AI really helpful in research. I used perplexity.ai to help me to find the most recent texts that have been written about particular topics which I wanted to be up to speed on. I would never just take the AI summary as read, but Perplexity's amazing at giving you the references to follow so that you can then click through and find the actual text that you were thinking of. For example, I was thinking of a point about why we are prone to labeling people and why I don't think it's realistic that we would ever get rid of diagnostic labels, even though many of us have a lot of concerns about what they might do in terms of identity for people, and I was saying the reason I don't think that's realistic is because of the way the brain works, and I wanted to reference Danny Kahneman's ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’. But for the life of me, I couldn't remember what section of the book that was in, and it is a tome, it's a very, very big book. And Perplexity was able to tell me exactly what chapter I was referring to when I put my point in, and that was really helpful. And there are other kinds of key seminal psychology studies that I mention, but I was like, "Ah, I don't remember who did this study." So I could put it into Perplexity, and it would find the actual paper, which I thought was amazing. And other things like, I can ask it what are the most recent papers that have been produced on, say, the impact of masking on mental health of autistic people. And it will come up with a list of the most recent studies in that area. So I think I couldn't have gotten through all the research that I did for the book without it helping me to do that. I think that's a really great use of AI. Of course, you always have to check everything. Perplexity will give you a pretty accurate reference, but the DOI will probably be wrong, so every single one you have to click through and check that it's the right paper, but you would do that anyway, and I think it's been a real time saver for me.

The biggest obstacle: how much to disclose

So those are the things that made writing easier. We also need to think about what were the biggest obstacles. I've already mentioned that there were days where I was in the hospital with one of my kids, and I just got around that by, even if it was just a few words, jotting something down in a notebook still made me feel connected to the book, so I'd really recommend that. But actually, I think the biggest obstacle that I faced in writing the book was not knowing how much of my personal life I was willing to disclose. I started writing with no thought really about publishing, so I was just being completely full and free using my kids' names, really not worrying about that because it wasn't going to go anywhere. Then when I started to think it probably was going to go somewhere, I became a little bit paralyzed, by really not knowing what I was comfortable with. And actually, what got me through that to a place where I felt that I found a kind of compromise that was still meeting my mission of normalizing and validating for people, while protecting my children's right to privacy, was by talking to other psychologists who are also authors about their thoughts about how much of themselves they'd put into their books. I had a chat with Naomi Fisher about it. She was really generous in talking to me about her experience, and I talked to quite a few other people, and I also joined some authors' forums and looked at people who were writing a memoir and just got a sense of all these different positions that people had taken. And it seemed like there were some people who very much came down on the kind of all self-disclosure is fine, I really want to put it all out there because sharing this is more important than how I feel about it. There were other people who felt like our families should be treated with the same confidentiality we treat clients, and who had very tight rules for themselves about what they would and wouldn't disclose. So I kind of found my definition, which was tricky. And it's tricky to describe it really, but I suppose I kind of thought I'm happy to share what I think I'd be happy to say about my child in front of them when they're an adult who's old enough to object. Which I suppose for me is just a visual way of connecting with the fact that my children will grow up, and I don't know to what extent, but they may very well be aware that I've written this book, and they may not be comfortable with it, or they might have an opinion on it. So I wanted to hold that adult version of them in my mind when I was deciding what to include, and how much detail to include. That means that there were some really powerful things that I'd written that I knew I had to remove from the book because they were never going to be the kind of story that you would be comfortable being out there about you as an adult. So those had to come out. But there were lots that I wrestled with and I took to other psychologists. I talked at length with my agent and my editor about those things, and I kept getting stuck, and that was probably the biggest obstacle. But sitting with that stuckness, interrogating it, seeing what it means - is this just a fear of visibility, or is this a real ethical concern that I have about the future? I found really helpful.

Make physical time and mental space

Last time I finished on the advice that if you're struggling to get started, I would really recommend connecting with other psychologists or therapists who are also authors. So, I can't give the same advice again, although we've made the point today as well, that connection is really important. So I suppose my takeaway for today is that if you want to write a book, then you need to make time for it. Physical time in your diary where you will be writing, but also mental space. It takes mental space to have the creativity that you need to write a book that you'll enjoy writing and that people will enjoy reading. Making sure that you're not trying to do this in a season of life where you just don't have those things. And if you think you could make space for it, then treating that just as seriously as you would client time or anything else that you do for work, rather than letting it be that thing which gets eroded by all the busyness of life.

When my clinic dies and the idea for a book was born

Welcome to The Business of Psychology. This is a short series to let you behind the curtain on my journey to publishing my first book, You Are Doing Enough. I'm not doing this as a polished, look how easy this was, success type story. I'm doing it because I know so many of you listening are therapists and psychologists who have your own book idea sitting somewhere, and I really want you to hear what the process has actually been like, and my tips for getting that book out of your head and onto the page.

I talk about what got me motivated and into the zone for writing the book, because I have wanted to write a book for a very long time, and have started many books that I never finished. I've written 30,000 words and thrown them away time and time again, but this felt different from the very beginning. I want to talk about why I think this was different from ideas that haven't gone anywhere before, then in the next episode, I'll talk about what I did to enable myself to write the book, and then I'll talk about the steps I took to get an agent because this book will be traditionally published. Later in the year, we'll do a few more episodes about the nuts and bolts of publishing and selling a book, and hopefully that will coincide with the book's release date. It’s due to be published in May 2027, and is already open for pre-orders.

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

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

Pre Order You Are Doing Enough and get access to Get Your Book Published with Louise Buckley

Click here to pre-order You Are Doing Enough

Pre-ordering now gets you a ticket to Get Your Book Published with Louise Buckley (literary agent) live on 6th November at 11:30 (replay available); just fill in this form after purchasing: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/offers/rGsNE9iF

The moment I knew this had to be a book

I have written the beginnings of many books before. I write a lot. I write for my Substack, I write for other organizations' blogs. I write materials for Psychology Business School. I write materials for my clients. I really love writing. It's always been a passion of mine. But the idea of writing a book always intimidated me, partly because I don't know that I have the kind of brain that finds it easy to structure something as long as a book. I have lots of ideas, I’m quite good at the actual putting of words on the page in a way that is engaging for people. But I've never been sure that I could hold somebody's attention for an entire book, because that seems like a real art of pacing, and knowing where to put the major learning points. I think that's why I'd started lots of books and then been like, "I don't know how to bring this home as a complete book that somebody would actually want to read from start to finish." Then I’d lose my enthusiasm because I couldn't imagine it being successful. As you're probably thinking to yourselves, that is a form of imposter syndrome, and it's exactly the same as the imposter syndrome that I coach people through all the time when they're starting their businesses. Because actually writing a book is a skill, and if you put your mind to it, you can learn a new skill, and I just hadn't been allowing myself the time or the opportunity to invest in learning that skill, probably because deep in my heart I was worried I didn't have it in me to do it.

Those were all the reasons I hadn't written a book before, but this one felt different, and I think that's because it came in a moment of my life which felt a bit like a crisis. As some of you may be aware, I quite suddenly lost the childcare that I'd been relying on to run my clinical practice, and it was really difficult. It's a moment I talk about in the book because as other parents of autistic, otherwise neurodivergent, or children with learning disabilities will know, finding childcare for a child whose needs are unusual is really difficult. For a couple of years, I'd thought it was impossible for us, and that meant that my working time had to be very limited. That meant my clinical time was extremely limited, because for good reasons we need to have very protected and secure childcare for clinical hours, slightly less so for coaching and writing work. I'd always managed a few clinical hours a week, but I really wanted to scale that up. We'd moved back to Kent, where I've got much more of a support network, and I was really excited about having an in-person practice again. I had a lovely premises in town, and I really put my back into filling up the books. We had found some childcare to support that, and she was brilliant. My son, who was the person who most needed that individualized support from her, formed a really close relationship with her. She was great.

But unfortunately, for valid and important reasons, she needed to leave us. She gave in her notice at about six months and left us after nine. As you can imagine, having put all of that work into building up my practice, to then need to wind it down again so quickly when I knew there wasn't going to be somebody else around the corner was devastating. But what was really interesting to me was there was no part of me that wanted to start looking for a replacement. I knew as soon as she gave me her resignation that I would not replace her. I knew that I was ready to embrace a new chapter in our lives, and that would involve a different way of working. Rather than just trying to plug gaps in childcare to make my old model work again, which is what I'd been doing for the past five years or so, I was ready to recognize that what my children need from me is different, and that actually I want to be the one that is around for the unpredictable pickup times, the reduced timetables, the meetings, and that I could not bear to bring in a conveyor belt of people who my kids would attach to and would then leave them. I knew that I wasn't going to put them through that.

I tend to make big decisions quite instinctively, and I knew immediately that my clinic was going to close and this time there was not going to be a plan to reopen the doors. But that didn't make it any easier. I was certain, but I was really sad, and the grief hit me quite hard because it felt like a final acknowledgement that the career that I'd imagined for myself, which was already looking pretty different to the one that I'd been sitting in training at Salomon's imagining, but this was the moment where I accepted that I probably wasn't going to return to that path, and that seeing lots of clients wasn't going to be in my future, at least for a long while. So that was really difficult. Something I know about myself is that I tend not to sit for very long with the way that I feel about things, and that's something I often work on with my clinical clients. A lot of the clients that I was supporting at the time were also parents of neurodivergent children and children with learning disabilities, many of whom had come to me because they'd also been through traumatic experiences. I noticed that something that I work with regularly with my clients was this idea of allowing the grief to be there, and that we all had different ways that we needed to sit with that. My clients tend to be a bit like me and very often dive into action. I noticed that because I wasn't doing what I've always done when we've had a big shock or a big change in the family, which is immediately think of a resilience plan, I wasn't doing that. I was like, "It's not going to work, my plan is not to replace this part of my income straight away. My plan is to allow this to go for the time being." So I felt like I needed an outlet to help me process what that meant for my identity, so I started writing.

When I started, I wasn't writing a book. I thought it might be a Substack series or something I didn't publish. I was really writing to consolidate my thoughts about what we'd been through, what my children have been through, what myself and my husband have been through as parents, what I've been through as a professional. I was trying to make sense of it; it was my attempt to make sense, made ink. We've got lots of question marks over the labels that we use for neurodivergence, the diagnostic process, I had so many questions about all of that. What it meant for my children, what it meant for me, what it meant for the future. All of that uncertainty pinging around in my head, combined with not knowing how we're going to make this family life work, how I'm going to make my professional life work. I just thought, this is too much for one mind, I need to put this on paper in order to process it. So I started doing that. It was taking the form of shorter form articles because that's what I'm used to writing, but they weren't really designed to be read by anybody or go anywhere.

I started doing that, and I set it up as a practice for myself that I was going to take time before the kids woke up every morning, to get these thoughts out of my mind, to help me feel more settled and more regulated for the rest of the day. And I found the practice extremely soothing. I've always been somebody that has found writing therapeutic, it can really settle my nervous system, and I found it really beneficial. It started off purely as a process thing, and then about a month in, I started to think that some of the stuff that I was writing about would actually be quite useful to share, because the more I wrote about my own experience, the more I realized that has a lot of synergy with families I’d seen, or reminded me of what clients went through. I started to think, what those clients had in common when they sat in front of me in the therapy room was they all thought that they were going through this alone. Almost all of them would talk about coming out of an assessment appointment or a meeting with the school and either on the walk home or sitting in their car, just feeling this wave of emotion crash over them and feeling all of this shame and anxiety and fear, and then buttoning it back up and carrying on with their day and not talking about it until they came into therapy with me, because they couldn't find a way to talk to their friends and family who hadn't had those experiences about what they were feeling, about why sometimes the moments that don't look that big or dramatic are the ones that really make you terrified about the future, or frightened that you're not doing the right thing for your child. I thought one of the biggest breakthroughs that tends to happen in therapy is validation and normalization of those moments, and if I could put some of this stuff out there, then I could reach all the people that are willing to pick up a book, and give that feeling of validation, that reassurance that those feelings don't mean that you're inadequate or that you're not doing a good enough job, or as the book is called, You Are Doing Enough. I thought if I could give that to people, that would be such a powerful use of the time that I can no longer spend providing therapy. The more I wrote, the more I realized that the clinical psychologist in me that loves working with human beings, needed an outlet. That part of me needed a way to be useful to people. And the more I wrote, the more I started to think, I think this could be it.

That was the time when I knew that I was going to keep going with this, and that I was going to try and shape it into a book, and I wasn't going to leave it as a Substack post, or turn it into training or something like that. It was that thought of somebody who feels really alone sitting on the tube, coming back from a harrowing meeting, just picking this up and going, "Okay, this is normal. I'm not on my own”.

Discovering the structure

Everything I wrote for the first three or four months was more memoir. It was stories from my life with a bit of psychological formulation about what was going on for me and my family, but it was really about our story. As I moved through the diagnostic process, I started drawing on more research and clinical and psychological theory to try and explain to the reader why our diagnostic labels are the way they are, and why it's okay to question them or think of them as a bit blurry around the edges. Because the other thing that I would hear a lot from families, and that went through my own mind in the diagnostic process, was this worry about, “this label doesn't completely fit”, or “now we've been given this diagnosis, does it mean that my child is not the person I thought they were, and they're actually going to turn out to be totally different to the person I thought I was seeing unfold in front of me?” And it felt really important to me to start infusing more of the knowledge that I have as a clinical psychologist about all of that, that I wouldn't have if I was in a different career. So I started to infuse some of that. and as I got to the end of the memoir part and the stories about our life, I decided that I wanted to go back through, and after each story think about what I would advise or what would probably happen in a session if an individual or a family had come to me with that story.

So the structure of it started to come together, and I realized I was writing a book where every chapter would be broken into two sections. The first section is me talking about my experience, and the second section is me as a clinical psychologist saying what I would say in a session with a family going through that experience. Once that structure hit me and I was like, “this is the way that it works as a book", then I started to research other narrative nonfiction books and how their structures worked and how they were engaging for the reader all the way through. All of those worries I'd had about, “can I actually write a book to completion that will be interesting from start to finish?”, instead of just thinking that was to do with my innate talent, I actually invested the time in those 6am sessions in seeing how other people had done it, learning how a good narrative nonfiction book is structured, and then imposing that structure onto my work. So that was it really. I never doubted from that point that I was going to get this book finished. What I wasn't clear on though, was whether there would be a market for this kind of book. At this point, I didn't know whether I would turn this book into a serialized Substack, whether I would seek a traditional publishing route, or decide to self-publish. My thoughts were all about wanting to complete this thing, partly for myself, but also because I have this really strong drive that it might be helpful to other people going through this utterly crazy and destructive system that parents of neurodivergent and children with learning disabilities have to go through. I had this real conviction that this is how my skills as a clinical psychologist can be useful in this season of life that I'm in. And because writing it was helpful to my mental wellbeing, it was never a struggle to show up every morning and do the writing. It was very reinforcing in and of itself. I would not have regretted a single writing session even if no agent or publisher had ever been interested. If the book never went anywhere, I would still not regret the time that I spent on it, because every moment of it was valuable to me. It was my processing time, and I have had therapy as well, but I feel like I made much better use of that therapy because of the thinking that I'd done writing the book.

Writing from a place of imperfection

The other thing I did with this book, that I think was really different to what I'd done with other ideas I’d had, was that even though I didn't know whether I'd ever publish it, and I had really substantial imposter syndrome about it, there was a very loud voice in my head that was like, "You have not worked in learning disabilities for 10 years", and most of my experience in neurodivergence is lived experience, not professional experience. Don't get me wrong, from a professional perspective, I've done additional training, and I've got a huge amount of interest in this area, so there aren't many books that I haven't swallowed, but that's not the same as somebody that spent 25 years in community pediatrics. So there was a really loud voice in my head saying “You are not the right professional to write this." And I think every SEND parent will relate to this, I am not knocking it out of the park all the time in my own life. If you go on to read the book, then you'll see that I have not got it all sewn up, because that's not possible because you're dealing with human beings in a really hostile and difficult system. So there was also a part of me that was like, "Do I really feel like I'm in a position to give advice to other people?" But actually, writing the book was the thing that got me over and through that because I realized that the message I'm trying to give to people is not, "You should do this, this, and this, and then your life will be golden." It's actually accepting that life looks really different and what looks like success for us and our families might be really different to what we thought it looked like, and that's the biggest adjustment we can make for our own mental wellbeing. I realized that me writing it from a place of imperfection is entirely consistent with the message that I'm putting out there.

Connecting with other psychologist authors

The other thing I did, and this is probably my biggest advice, is I connected with other psychologists who had written books, and I told them that I was writing a book so that I could be really honest about all of those wobbles and how awful I felt. Claire Plumbly and Caroline Boyd in particular were so kind and willing to share with me how vulnerable they felt writing their books and how challenging it had been at different moments for different reasons. I think that is what enabled me to keep going with it, but then also eventually seek an agent's representation. It was knowing that those people that I really respect, and that I think their books are amazing, that they also felt insecure at points during their writing process. So I think, as is the answer to so many struggles we have in business as psychologists and therapists, the answer is connection. Make yourself a bit vulnerable, talk to your peers, and that fear of what people will think of you starts to dissipate. It was so powerful for me, and I'd recommend it to anyone. So do go along to the Psychosocials events if you're a psychologist, or get out to your local networking events, and make sure that if a book is on your to-do list, you talk about it with people who have done it before, because hearing their insecurities might dilute your own enough for you to get a good start.

Fear in the Therapy Room with Michael Guilding

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. My guest today is Michael Guilding, a retired psychotherapist with 30 years of clinical experience, including over a decade working within NHS psychological therapies as head of counseling. Michael spent the past 10 years studying the human fear system, building on attachment theory and polyvagal theory to understand complex trauma and depression. He teaches workshops for the Complex Trauma Institute and has just released his book, Fear in the Therapy Room.

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

Links for Michael:

https://michaelguilding.com/

Book: Fear in the Therapy Room:

https://michaelguilding.com/book/

Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/00rg0AWB

Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/fear-in-the-therapy-room/michael-guilding/9781781612903

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Michael tells us about who his book, Fear in the Therapy Room, is written for 01:37
• Michael talks about the fear system draining Energy 5:45
• We discuss burnout and our awareness 9:44
• I ask Michael about fear alert, fear arousal, and fear collapse 13:33
• Michael explains about the link between fear collapse and depression 20:59
• We look at the role of cognition 28:28
• Michael talks about rethinking therapeutic touch 32:20
• Michael looks at resistance to change 37:08
• I ask about supporting clients through chronic stress 43:15
• We discuss how to support therapists 50:35
• Michael tells us where we can buy his book 52:19

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Safeguarding for psychologists in independent practice with Dr Rebekah Eglinton

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today, we're tackling a topic that strikes a chord of pure anxiety for almost every independent practitioner; safeguarding. In institutional settings like the NHS, we're used to having an embedded safeguarding lead, clear-cut multidisciplinary pathways, and a collective safety net. But when you step out into independent practice, that ultimate accountability falls squarely on our shoulders, often leaving us feeling isolated and really anxious when risk comes into the therapy room. So to help us move from a place of paralyzing fear and towards a place where we can feel more kind of realistic, grounded, and confident, I am joined today by the brilliant Dr Rebekah Eglinton. Bekah is a consultant clinical psychologist and the clinical director of Eglinton Consultancy. She has a really deep background in high-stakes safeguarding governance, having previously served as the chief psychologist and head of support, safeguarding, and police referrals at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, where she oversaw thousands of sensitive national-scale referrals. She's also a registrant council member and non-executive director at the Health and Care Professions Council and an associate non-executive director and wellbeing guardian at Devon Partnership NHS Trust. So I have got a brilliant person today to help you deal with your anxiety around safeguarding, and we're going to be talking with Bekah about the things we really need to watch out for in independent practice and also about some training she's developed to help us all feel much more confident as we step into the therapy room, possibly for the first time with clients that might have some risk in their background.

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

Links for Rebekah:

Eglinton Consultancy: Safeguarding Training for Psychologists & Therapists:

https://www.eglintonconsultancy.com/eventtickets/p/traumainformedtrainingtickets-2cdzs-2adsl

www.eglintonconsultancy.com

Instagram: @dr.rebekaheglinton

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Rebekah tells us what she sees as the most common safeguarding blind spots or oversights in independent practice 03:25
• Rebekah talk about GDPR 10:30
• I ask Rebekah about what ‘defensible documentation’ might actually look like for an independent clinician 19:55
• We discuss templates and AI as ways to help with compliance and note taking 24:16
• Rebakah tells us what motivated her to develop a training for psychologists in independent practice 33:08
• I ask Rebekah how she’s marketed the training 40:23
• Rebakah tells us where we can find out more about the training 44:15

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

If you're fitting private practice clients around an employed role that doesn't give you the flexibility that you need, this is for you.

Start Up Your Psychology Practice helps you build a practice that can replace your income with fees that work, a clear specialism and marketing that fits your daily life so you can finally let go of the juggle.

Right now it includes a two-hour one-to-one intensive with me to plan it all out together. Follow the link to find out more and book a call with me to see if Start Up might be right for you: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/lp/start-up-private-practice-bundle/

AI is changing therapy with Dr Aisha Tariq

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Almost every psychologist and therapist I speak to right now has some version of the same feeling about AI. A mix of curiosity, a strange sense of guilt, and a worry that they're either being left behind or they're about to do something unethical without realizing it. There is a lot of noise, a lot of hype, and very little practical talk about what actually helps in a real practice, and where the genuine risks of AI might be. My guest today has been doing AI since 2022, long before most of this conversation started. Dr Aisha Tariq is a clinical psychologist and the clinical director of Illuminated Thinking, a Glasgow practice of 25 clinicians. She's built AI into how that practice runs and how her team work clinically, so she can be really specific about what saves real time across her team, and also where the pitfalls are. She's also built her own AI clinical documentation tool, Cogent, and she's the co-founder of the AI in Psychology Summit, which is happening on the 5th of October in 2026.

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

Links:

AI in Psychology Summit - 5th October

Esther and Aisha are offering listeners 20% off the summit tickets!

Follow this link for the discount: https://aipsychology.co.uk/?ref=DRROSIE&discount=PODCAST20

Episode 162: Using AI in therapy and other legal questions with Clare Veal from Aubergine Legal

Links for Aisha:

Cogent Clinic

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Aisha tells us about her independent practice and she ended up with a practice of 25 clinicians 02:23
• I ask Aisha what it was that made her take an interest in AI 04:22
• We discuss the feeling of shame associated with using AI 10:29
• Aisha talks about rolling out AI to her team 13:42
• Aisha tells us what steps to take if we'd like to explore having these tools in our practices19:50
• Aisha talks about the development of Cogent 24:13
• I ask Aisha what common mistakes she sees psychologists and therapists making with AI 32:35
• We discuss the AI in Psychology Summit 33:54

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

If you're fitting private practice clients around an employed role that doesn't give you the flexibility that you need, this is for you.

Start Up Your Psychology Practice helps you build a practice that can replace your income with fees that work, a clear specialism and marketing that fits your daily life so you can finally let go of the juggle.

Right now it includes a two-hour one-to-one intensive with me to plan it all out together. Follow the link to find out more and book a call with me to see if Start Up might be right for you: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/lp/start-up-private-practice-bundle/

Fear of Judgement - Colleagues, Clients and the Internet

Welcome to the Business of Psychology Podcast, and welcome back to our miniseries on the beliefs that can make it really difficult for us to get started in independent practice or to grow our practice if we already have one. In this series, I'm reflecting on the beliefs that I hear most commonly from my coaching clients and the ones that have been pinging around in my head for years as well, and thinking about where they come from, but also what we can do to try and move through when we want to act against some of these beliefs and how uncomfortable that that can make us.

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

Links:

Episode 182: Neurodivergence: Having the big conversations and living your values with Dr Naomi Fisher

Episode 68: How to launch an online course as a psychologist with Dr Marianne Trent

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The Magnetic Profile

In my new mini course, The Magnetic Profile, I walk you through one specific business task. Over five short lessons, we use my Values, Voice, Impact framework to help you choose who your profile is for, say what they most need to hear, and plug it all into a simple template that you can use on directory sites, your website, and as a business asset that I'm going to show you how to repurpose in 100 different ways to help the right clients to find you. Most importantly, you'll come out of the course with a finished profile and proof that you can do this business thing in a way that feels ethical and manageable. You can find all the details here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/the-magnetic-profile

Fear of Judgement

The thing that I want to talk about today is the fear of judgment. This sounds different in different people's heads, but I hear a lot of, "Oh, I'm really scared about what my ex-colleagues are going to think," or "Will people think I've sold out? Will people accuse me of being a charlatan, or not good enough, or not experienced enough to offer this thing?" And that really drives a lot of people's reluctance to be visible, especially online. And as you'll know if you've listened to previous series’ of The Business of Psychology, I've recorded episodes recently with people like Naomi Fisher and Marianne Trent, where we've talked about this because it's a very big deal in our community; this is not in people's heads. I think psychology and psychotherapy can both be quite judgmental professional communities, and the way that we're interacting online at the moment is often not very compassionate and very judgmental. So this fear doesn't come from nowhere. Even the stuff we talked about in the first episode of this miniseries about the belief that ‘I'm not good at business’, and how often that can come from this massive pit of shame that people feel about needing money and needing to be paid for their work, and choosing that narrative as a way of keeping themselves safe from being seen as somebody that is money motivated, all of that actually comes from this feeling of being judged by our peers.

I'm not going to get into too much the reality of that and the reason that happens, because I know we've talked about that a lot in other episodes. But what I want to bring to your attention is the impact that might be having on the way that you're running your business, because sometimes it's so ingrained within us that it can fly under the radar, and we don't really realize how much our behavior is impacted by this concern about what our peers might be thinking of us.

Ultra-Genericism

The first thing that I see is ultra-genericism. This might be directory site profiles, website copy, social media content; incredibly generic, vanilla, safe content that doesn't really say anything at all. It's so bland it's pointless, and I always say to my clients, if your voice is not in it, if it isn't something which you're desperate to share with the world, don't share it at all. Because the world is so saturated and full of boring, generic mental health content, there is no point spending your valuable time creating more boring, vanilla mental health content. It's just not going to stand out enough to have any benefit to you or reach any potential clients. But I totally get it. I get why that feels safe, because you can't criticize something that's super generic. That's the first way that I see this showing up, and people really don't realize they're doing that most of the time. It's just what feels natural for them to share.

Sharing Photos Or Personal Details.

People might avoid sharing any photos or any personal details. I did this. I started my practice and tried to hide behind a brand. I shared a logo, I had a quite good name for the practice, and I hid myself behind all of that because I didn't want anybody to see me at all. It didn't work, spoiler alert! You might find yourself, if this is a big problem for you, over-editing, trying to sound like someone that you're not in everything that you write, everything that you say if you're in a visible setting. If you go to networking, for example, and find yourself talking in a really unnatural way, it may be that this fear of judgment is governing your behavior.

Real Risk vs Imagined Risk

Something I often talk about with my coaching clients, and this is often most useful in our group coaching sessions, is to assess the real risk versus the imagined risk, because there is real risk, and so we do need to deal with that. We can't just pretend that nobody's ever going to judge you. They probably will, but we need to think about the reality of that and whether that reality matters, and the reality of not doing the things that you're avoiding because of your fear of judgment, and whether that matters. So balancing that up, the consideration of what it's costing you to keep yourself small and invisible and generic, and weighing that against the potential that some colleagues may make judgmental statements.

Who Are You Writing For?

The other thing I always encourage people to think about when this is a big problem is who they're writing for, and to be really clear on the benefits for the client of everything they're putting out there. This is something that I teach through all of my coaching, that the client's need comes first. So we're not putting out a social media post unless we're really clear on what the benefit is to the potential client. We think about how what I'm saying here is going to leave them feeling? What is it going to give them? If we don't have a strong reason that it's going to be beneficial to the client, whether they come on and pay for our services, or whether they're just passively absorbing this content, we want to always be leaving those people with a benefit. So if we know that, if we're really clear on, "Okay, I'm worried that my colleague might read this and judge me, but I'm also really confident that somebody in this client group reading this is going to get a real benefit from it," very often we can move through the discomfort of what our colleague thinks because we know what we're trying to do for the client, and we're really confident and happy that that is aligned with our values. So it's a good example of how we can use our values like a North Star to guide us through the swamp of a fear of judgment, which never feels nice really.

Locus Of Control

The other thing I always encourage people to think about is the concept of locus of control, and specifically that you cannot control what your colleagues think or why they're going to think that about you. It's classic, isn't it? People have their own psychological reasons for judging other people. We can't control any of those. And so you can be really careful about what you say, you can be really careful about what you put out there, but the reality is, if you do anything, there are going to be people that don't like you and that judge you for it, especially if you're successful and you get in front of lots of people, then it's absolutely inevitable that you're going to face judgment and that you're going to annoy some people. What you have to be clear on is what makes that worth it for you. There are some battles that I choose not to fight. There are some things that I see happening, and I don't put my head above the parapet and I don't fight for every cause that I believe in because I'm a human being and there's a threshold for what conflict I can take, but there are certain things that I will speak up about and I am willing to be visible talking about even when not everybody will agree with me, and that's a lesson I really had to learn writing my book about being a parent to autistic and ADHD children and putting out my content on my Dr Rosie Gilderthorp Instagram profile, which felt so much more vulnerable than stuff I share in other places because I know not everyone will agree with me. We don't all agree on issues surrounding neurodivergence and labels and all of that stuff, and so it feels scary to me, and it will never stop feeling scary because I like to be liked, like we all do, and I don't like it when people get in touch to say that they hated something that I said, and it devastates me if somebody's upset by something that I said. But I know who I'm doing it for, I know that I'm sharing messages that there is a big group of people that need to hear, and I get lots of positive feedback too from people that have been helped by those more controversial things that I've put out there, and that's what I hold onto and that's what gets me through this worry about judgment from my peers. And I'd encourage you to think in the same way. Be really clear on why you're doing this, and then it's much easier to see that the people that might judge you for it have got their own stuff going on. You can't control it, and it's not worth sacrificing your mission and your values to try and make them comfortable because you can't control it anyway, and you might never be able to make them comfortable.

Find Ways of Being Visible That Align With Your Values

I know that this has been a short one from me today, but I hope that it's been helpful if you're somebody that feels maybe that fear of judgment has been running the show in your practice so far. I hope it's helped you to see that you're not alone, that we all struggle with it, even those of us that are quite visible, and you might see us popping up a lot online. It never actually feels comfortable, it's just that we know why we're doing it, and we have a strong enough reason to want to do it, to move through that discomfort.

So now you need to find those ways of being visible that feel aligned with your values, and that feel ethical and helpful for your client group as well. This isn't about forcing yourself to do stuff that feels shouty or performative or marketing that isn't aligned with who you are and who your ideal client group is. Often the first step is about having a really clear message about who you are, who you help, and the reasons that you're a really good person to support your client group, because that's something we can really struggle with when we're fearful of judgment. And if you don't have that underpinning everything else you do, all of your marketing efforts are likely to be thwarted by it.

This is something that I can help you do in my new mini-course, The Magnetic Profile. Over just five short lessons, we work together to decide who you're writing for, who those people are that you really want to help and support. We get really clear on what they're struggling with and how they would talk about that in their own words, and then we talk about your experience in a way that feels honest and helpful to the client, putting their needs first, matching your experience with what they need to hear from you. By the end, you'll have a profile that you feel comfortable with and that makes it much easier to take the other steps you need to take to be visible. If you'd like that kind of guided support, you can find all the details and join The Magnetic Profile mini-course at the link that's in the show notes, I would love to see you in there.

Procrastination, Overwhelm and the Illusion of "I’ll Start When…"

Welcome to The Business of Psychology podcast and our special miniseries on the beliefs that keep people stuck in either a private practice that doesn't really work for them or that stop them getting started in private practice at all. These are mini episodes where I'm sharing the things that I've learned from coaching hundreds of other psychologists and therapists and also going through my own mental struggles with the rollercoaster that is business. Today I want to talk about procrastination and overwhelm, and specifically how frequently I hear people saying that they're just not the kind of person that can overcome their procrastination or overwhelm.

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

Links:

Episode 179: Why every therapist needs to use social media to improve their SEO

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The Magnetic Profile

In my new mini course, The Magnetic Profile, I walk you through one specific business task. Over five short lessons, we use my Values, Voice, Impact framework to help you choose who your profile is for, say what they most need to hear, and plug it all into a simple template that you can use on directory sites, your website, and as a business asset that I'm going to show you how to repurpose in 100 different ways to help the right clients to find you. Most importantly, you'll come out of the course with a finished profile and proof that you can do this business thing in a way that feels ethical and manageable. You can find all the details here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/the-magnetic-profile

Procrastination And Overwhelm

I think most psychologists and therapists acknowledge that all human beings use procrastination as a technique sometimes, and that it is part of a normal human experience to get overwhelmed sometimes. But I think a lot of people do have this story about themselves that they are a procrastinator, or they are someone who becomes overwhelmed easily, and as a result, the world of successful business is not available to them. And this really troubles me, and I have to say that something I think is unhelpful about the way that some people's late diagnosis of neurodivergence is framed, is that some people will receive that diagnostic label and then think that writes them off from being able to ever achieve success in business. Or they'll heavily criticize themselves because their assessment has illuminated perhaps things that they're not so brilliant at and they will feel like they're going to have to push a boulder up a hill to be successful in business. When actually, if we think psychologically about what procrastination and overwhelm actually are, then there are so many ways that we can use the strengths that lie behind those tendencies to supercharge our businesses.

Some of the most successful clients that I have worked with would identify themselves as procrastinators and people who struggle with overwhelm, because those come from places of deep care and passion for the people that they want to support with their businesses. I think it's really important that, while it's helpful to identify in yourself if you do have tendencies towards procrastination or becoming overwhelmed, we shouldn't allow that kind of story to become a way that we define ourselves that then blocks us from looking for the ways we can play to our strengths to implement good business advice that we might be given. I want to share today, how we can move through the blocking belief that we might have about ourselves, often by accepting a bit of support where we might need it.

Something I hear all the time from clients that come to me for coaching is that they've signed up for coaching because they're really annoyed with themselves. They've usually done loads of work, but they feel like they've got about 20 tabs open on their browser and nothing is actually getting completed. They can never tick anything off their list because it's never good enough. Some people will talk about this as procrastination. Other people will talk about the emotional experience. They'll talk about feeling completely overwhelmed. So they open all the tabs, but then they never feel like they engage properly with anything that they start because they become overwhelmed, and they just run away from it. If we think about where this comes from psychologically, you would not feel that way if you didn't care about your potential clients, if you didn't really want this business to be successful. So although this is classic avoidance behavior, there's motivation behind it, and where there's motivation, we can work with that. I never feel despondent if I have a client who is a procrastinator, who's becoming overwhelmed, because it actually tells me that they want to do this, that deep down, this is important to them, or this wouldn't be procrastination, it would just be something that they decided they weren't going to pursue.

We know the brain likes to procrastinate because it allows us to avoid the potential for shame, rejection, or failure. An excellent short-term strategy. It gives us the illusion of safety because we get to stay safe in our research mode, which a lot of us really enjoy. But the trouble is procrastination and perfectionism go hand in hand. It is so likely that the reason that you feel like you need to avoid these tasks is that the bar you've set for yourself is super high, that you want this to be the best, the most perfect independent practice that your community has ever seen. That can make every task feel too big to start. It's also true that if you set the bar for yourself that you need to have a complete understanding of something, it can become overwhelming really quickly. This often happens when people talk to me about overwhelm rather than procrastination. Often it's because they're expecting themselves to become a lawyer, because it tends to be that people get really stuck in the overwhelm around the legal aspects of setting up their practice. This can be because they look at the legal templates and think that they need to be able to understand why every comma is in the place that it is. We do provide training with our legal documents because I want you to understand the principles behind them, but the fact is, unless you're going to train in commercial law like Clare Veal from Aubergine Legal, our lovely lawyer, has done, then you're not going to understand every minute detail of your contracts and policies. We can understand the broad brush principles, but we're not lawyers and we don't need to become lawyers. We have our own expertise and that's why we pay Clare Veal to draft those templates for us, because you don't need to become a lawyer. And if you think that you do because you believe everything needs to be perfect and you need to be in full control of every minute detail of your practice, then of course that's going to be overwhelming.

A Need To Do Everything At Once

The other thing that I think contributes to overwhelm and procrastination is a sense that people need to do everything at once, like getting their practice up and running and fully competent tomorrow. That's not possible. I am a big believer that we can make a lot of progress, my core coaching program is called Start Up in 90 Days, because you absolutely can, over 90 days, get a practice up and running and clients coming in. That is possible. One week is not possible, not to do it to the standard that you're going to want. I think often people have a really unrealistic expectation of themselves, that they're going to be able to learn everything they need to learn and implement it all in a very short period of time. And of course, that is massively overwhelming.

Overconsuming Advice

The other thing I see is people over-consuming advice. Sometimes people do this with this podcast or with my coaching programs. I'll see in the backend of my coaching website that they've watched every single one of my lessons, and that's a red flag, because if you watch them all in the first week that you're in the coaching platform, that tells me you're taking on board a lot of information, but you're not taking the action. When I coach people, I give very short, 10 or 15 minutes of information, and then I give something practical for you to do to move it forward in your business. The reason I do that is that we are really prone to overwhelming ourselves by thinking about the whole picture. And actually, we tend to get much more success if I give people a template of the business plan that they're going to have fully created by the end of the program, because I do want people to know what we're going to cover and how everything fits together, but then I encourage you to go step by step. Because if you think about the whole big thing, of course that's overwhelming. But if you just take the next step, the next thing we need to do, then it is much easier to get started.

Unrealistic Comparisons

The other thing which contributes to the sense of overwhelm is comparing yourself to people who are years ahead of you and thinking that you can reverse engineer from what you see on the outside. Very often people will scroll Instagram and see somebody with a successful practice and instantly start criticizing themselves for not doing it like them yet. So then they'll try to do too much. They'll try to make everything happen overnight to be just like that person. But what they haven't seen is the years that it took for that person to get to where they are now, for the support structures and foundations that they put in place to enable them to be able to do the thing that you can see. For example, if I'm doing a launch for something, you're going to see me in lots of places. You're going to see that I've got Substack, I'm posting on Instagram, on LinkedIn. You're going to see that I've got Facebook ads. You might see my Google ads. You might hear me guesting on podcasts and all of that stuff. I can only do all of that because I have a team who run the admin of my practice for me, and I've got really good support in all the other operational parts of my business as well. So I'm showing up for the stuff where you see me showing up, but I'm not having to do all of the stuff that you're probably doing right now behind the scenes. In the early days, I could not have been as visible as I am now around a launch because I didn't have all that support, so I was having to do all of the backend stuff. That is not possible for you to see from the outside, and a lot of business owners don't talk about the support they have behind the scenes because it's not relevant to the thing that they're launching, but that doesn't mean it's not there. You also don't know how other people's circumstances might be different from yours. I only actually work about 16 hours a week, probably less some weeks, because my children have additional needs. They don't do full days at school. I have to take lots of time off to go and support them for various things that they need from me. So that means that I can't get done in a week what my amazing colleague that does 9:00 till 5:00, Monday to Friday can get done. So if I was comparing myself to her, I'm going to feel really bad and probably really overwhelmed all the time because I'm going to give myself an impossible to-do list.

One of the reasons I love working with people in coaching is working out what is realistic and what success looks like for you in your real life. And when you do that, instantly, it tends to become a little bit less overwhelming because you're no longer striving for some idea of perfection that doesn't exist for you. You're working towards a life which actually works for you and your family. I think that kind of comparisonitis that we talk about so often is a really big contributor to procrastination and overwhelm, so getting stuck in procrastination or overwhelm does have a cost to it. People often come to me saying that they got burnt out in their NHS job because they were procrastinating making the decision to change. It was so difficult to get through the procrastination or the overwhelm that they stayed stuck, and stayed somewhere that was harming their mental health, for longer than they needed to. I also think people can miss out on the learning that comes from taking imperfect action when they get trapped in procrastination or overwhelm. It's another thing I love to help people out of, because there is only so much that we can learn before we hit publish. Most of the most valuable stuff I've learned about running my practice, I've learned from making mistakes, from putting something out there and then being like, "Oh, that was terrible, that didn't work, but this is why." And then taking different action as a result of that. If you aren't able to go through that process because you're so trapped by this horrible feeling of overwhelm and the need to avoid that, then it can be really difficult to get that learning. As a result of that, people that are trapped by this often, if they do have a private practice, they'll stay reliant on a referral stream that might be a bit patchy or a bit low paid, and they end up feeling bad about themselves because the business never really flourishes in the way that they want it to. Their lives are hard because they're not making enough money to get the support to build the business that works for their lifestyle. It can be really damaging.

Focus On One Thing You Can Do For Your Business

As I've mentioned already, there are lots of psychological approaches that we might take in coaching to help somebody to get out of this trap. We might use compassion, I might get people to think from different perspectives, how this would look if it was happening to a friend, and what they might suggest to a friend or a colleague in a similar situation. I'll try and help people activate their compassionate self, and take that perspective that a compassionate person would have on their business, rather than the very self-critical one that they're often stuck in. Alongside that, and the thing which you can do for yourself too, is getting stuck into just one practical task. Rather than thinking about all the things that need to be done in order to make a business successful, I'll often encourage somebody that's prone to procrastination or overwhelm to laser focus on just one thing that they can do for their business that will have a tangible result. Because if you can get that dopamine of completing something, and then you get continued positive feedback because this asset that you've created is working for you in your business, that can really help unstick that procrastination and reduce that overwhelm. Because you start to see, "I am capable of breaking something big down into a small task, completing it, getting somewhere positive, and moving on to the next thing."

If you're feeling really stuck in procrastination, or you're frequently falling into these feelings of overwhelm, I hope I've made it really clear that this isn't a motivation problem. You're not lazy, you're very motivated, and that's exactly why this is coming up for you. I'm sure you're aware already that this is about avoidance, and it's a very understandable and very common mechanism for dealing with the discomfort that comes from the vulnerability of setting up a business. You're not alone, but one of the kindest things that you can do for yourself right now is to narrow your focus to one meaningful thing that you do for your business, an asset you can create, and make everything else wait for now.

For a lot of people I work with, the thing that I recommend is creating a really good directory site profile. Because once that exists, every other bit of marketing has somewhere useful to direct people to, and a really strong basis. You've probably heard me talk on the podcast recently about creating that digital footprint that lets AI and search engines really understand who you are and who they should be recommending to come to you. A really strong directory profile can be reused in so many different places that it can really turbocharge that digital footprint and make sure that your digital presence is doing the heavy lifting and bringing those referrals to you. It's a small task that has a big ripple effect across your business.

The Magnetic Profile

I have a mini course at the moment to support you through this, called The Magnetic Profile. Over five days, I walk you through step by step creating or refreshing your directory profile using my Values, Voice, Impact framework, so you don't have to look at the finished product and get overwhelmed. I am going to give you something short and actionable that you can do in 10, 15 minutes a day over five days. At the end, you will have that dopamine hit of having something finished that will start bringing the right people into your practice. I think this is hopefully a bit of an antidote to that summer feeling of procrastination or getting stuck and overwhelmed that you might be feeling if you know that you want to start your business in September or you want to make a change in your business in September. I really hope if this episode resonated with you today, that you're going to find that useful. You can find the link to sign up in the show notes, and I would love to see you in there.

“I’m Not Good at Business” - The Stories That Keep You Small

In this miniseries I'm going to talk about some of the beliefs that I see most commonly in psychologists and therapists that keep people small, safe, and not really getting the most benefit out of being in independent practice. I'm going to share how if we can become aware of them, there are practical steps we can take that most of the time will get us through the discomfort that comes along with these beliefs. If that can give you a little bit more confidence to step forward in your business, I will be extremely happy.

Today we're going to talk about the 'I'm not good at business' story. This is the one I told myself so relentlessly at the beginning of my practice, and I hear in around 50% of calls that I have with coaching clients. We're going to talk about the belief, where it comes up, how it sabotages your attempts to start or grow in independent practice, and look at some ways we can build new evidence to counteract the belief and move through the discomfort that it causes.

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

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The Magnetic Profile

In my new mini course, The Magnetic Profile, I walk you through one specific business task. Over five short lessons, we use my Values, Voice, Impact framework to help you choose who your profile is for, say what they most need to hear, and plug it all into a simple template that you can use on directory sites, your website, and as a business asset that I'm going to show you how to repurpose in 100 different ways to help the right clients to find you. Most importantly, you'll come out of the course with a finished profile and proof that you can do this business thing in a way that feels ethical and manageable. You can find all the details here: https://psychologybusinessschool.mykajabi.com/the-magnetic-profile

The 'I'm not good at business' Belief

At the beginning of my practice, I didn't think that I had the kind of personality that would make a good business owner. I'd been told throughout my life that I was quite soft, that I was quite gentle, that people would walk all over me. Elements of that were true. In my personal life, I don't particularly like to be the boss. I don't like telling people what to do. It's certainly true that in a negotiation, I will not do what they do on The Apprentice and be proud of having a laser-focused obsession with profit, and I'm not single-minded. We consume a lot of media about what good business looks like, and it's this very shark-ish, profit-focused, screw you, I'm going to take what I want attitude. I'd grown up watching The Apprentice and Dragon's Den and absorbing those narratives that don't fit my personality at all. So I think I'd bought the idea that if you weren't like that, you weren't good at business. Obviously that is not true at all, because when you get out into the business community and meet people who are really successful, you discover quickly that the people that make it to the top are warm, they are empathic, they're really good at working out what people need from them and finding creative ways to meet that need. There are some exceptions, but in the industries that we're interested in, in mental health or education, or industries adjacent to wellbeing, if you lack that empathy and you lack any compassion, it's very difficult for you to come up with the kind of ideas that are going to take off. I also learned that building relationships and being a trustworthy person to be in a business relationship with is a real accelerant to business growth. That's something, that if you're completely single-minded and out for the profit margin, and have no passion for helping people or your local business community, is incredibly hard to fake. Establishing meaningful relationships where people will give you a leg up, I think would be impossible if you had that kind of personality type.

What I discovered quite quickly in my business journey was that leaning into the skills that I have as a psychologist, the fact that I am much more interested in helping people solve their problems than I am making a profit, the fact that I genuinely care about the people that I meet at business networking, and I really get quite invested and excited in their business problems and want to try and help, those were superpowers that made me stand out, that helped me build the relationship network, which accelerated my business to being quite successful reasonably quickly.

What I do in coaching is try and encourage other people to really recognise the strengths that you have in your personality, that can be rocket fuel for your business, and to deal with what might be the limitations. I know that because I'm not naturally 100% focused on the profit margin, I won't make a deal with somebody on the spot because I know if I do, it's very likely that I'll undercharge or do something that compromises the health of my business, because I'm excited to work with them, and I'm not very good at doing the mental maths on the spot. I know that about myself, so I changed my sales process so that I'm sending the proposal after the call. I am never talking about the exact solution that I'm going to offer on a call. You'll notice if you ever do a coaching discovery call with me, that most of the time I'll talk about what you think about whether StartUp might be right for you. I might give you my opinion about whether one of my coaching programs is likely to be a good fit, but I won't make the offer and send you through all the details until after our call, because I don't always make brilliant decisions for my business in the heat of the moment. Rather than criticizing myself and saying, "I'm not good at business, so I shouldn't do it," I take an approach where I allow myself to play to my strengths, and then I mitigate the bits that I'm not so good at by getting in support or just switching up my processes so that I have more time for the bits that I know I'm going to struggle with.

That's the kind of thing that you can do if this ‘I'm not good at business’ story isn't dominating your psychology. While it's front and center, you don't see any of that. In those early days where I thought I was just bad at business, it felt very existential. It was like, either I make this really successful really quickly, or I've got no business being in business, and I should get out and get back into an employed role, which wasn't even possible for me. I think it's really important to try and move past this belief, otherwise you can make a decision which is based on very black and white thinking, defining yourself either as good or bad at business, when in reality there are so many ways that all different personalities can be good at business if we understand ourselves well and we're willing to structure our work around that.

The Culture

It's really interesting to consider where this ‘I'm not good at business’ belief that is so pervasive in our community actually comes from, because most people going into independent practice actually don't have any business experience. We by definition don't have evidence for this belief, and yet it is so common. I think the answer is that it's something that's really baked into the culture, in the NHS, but also in our training pathways.

There's so many deep reasons that might be baked into our culture, and I think one that needs talking about is the relationship between psychology, psychotherapy, and privilege. I think we have a strange cultural problem with the concept of earning money and a deeply ingrained belief that people that want money are less pure, less compassionate, less caring than people who don't even think about money. I could give you direct quotes of people saying that to me in training, so I don't think it's that much of a stretch. As with almost everything, I think that is uncomfortably linked with the class system that we have here in the UK, and that potentially psychology and psychotherapy came from this kind of upper class tradition where it wasn't polite to talk about money or think about money, but that's because you didn't have to talk or think about money. It's our job to challenge that and to think about whether we really believe in this way of thinking, or whether we want to start thinking a bit differently.

If this is the culture that you've been trained in, then the ‘I'm not good at business’ story is actually an affirmative one. It's one that began as positive; people telling themselves, "I'm doing this low-paid work because I'm a good person, because I really care about people, and that means that I must be rejecting all things that are about money and acquisition of money, and business falls under that category.” I think it's a classic example of stories that were once positive for us becoming toxic and holding us back as we develop through our lives and they start to become more problematic. If you are plagued by this, then getting together in your peer supervision group and chatting about it and thinking through where did this story come from for us, and is it satisfactory for the lives that we're living now, is really helpful.

We develop stories based on the things that we're rewarded for, and I don't remember anything in my undergraduate or in my doctorate where you were praised for coming up with ideas that would have commercial application. It wasn't part of the way that we thought about making an impact in mental health, and obviously that's quite different now. Now I spend loads of my time thinking about how we can use the commercial world to really start to change beliefs around mental health. That's something I'm really passionate about, because in my mind, while it sits in this kind of health silo, we're not going to have the cultural impact that I would like us to have. I think about it now, but I can't think of any time in any of my training that we were encouraged to think in that way or would've been praised for thinking in that way. Whereas you were heavily praised if you did stuff like voluntary work or internships, that kind of thing. Those were heavily praised and competed for and seen as a really positive thing. I think what we're rewarded for really contributes to how these beliefs develop.

Ethical and Entrepreneurial Role Models

I think we have to consider that we haven't had many visible role models who are both ethical and entrepreneurial because it doesn't really make the press. The people that do operate in that way are not likely to be on a show like The Apprentice because we don't make great television. We're very steady and boring and kind and nice. Occasionally somebody like that will break through onto a media platform, but often it's taken a long time for people to take notice of those people, and they get a lot less airtime than their more controversial, usually more shark-ish counterparts. We're just not seeing the reality that many people who are very good at business are very ethical and compassionate and have a real passion for helping people. I've been really fortunate to meet people in all kinds of different contexts as part of my MBA, and I can tell you there are people in the most high-powered corporate jobs that you would expect to have completely different beliefs and values systems to a psychologist or a therapist who spent most of their life in the public sector, and they don't. Actually, they often do their jobs for really similar reasons to us. They might enjoy the money, but they're not always 100% obsessed with personal gain, in the way that they're portrayed in the media. I think to sum up, the media does not help us with these beliefs. It sets us up to think in this binary way that I'm either a good person who doesn't do business very well, or I'm a bad person who's amazing at business, and that's not the reality.

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

So how does the ‘I'm not good at business’ belief show up in the way that we behave and become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? If you already think that you're not very good at business, you're very likely to avoid the stuff that you need to be good at in order to have a good, solid business.

• Finance and Fees: If you're telling yourself you're not good at business, it's very difficult to learn all the terminology you need to have an informed conversation with your accountant or understand whatever software you use, is showing you. That means that you won't make an effective business plan because you won't be able to model out what would happen if you take this decision or that decision, because you've avoided understanding your financial position properly. You might avoid raising your fees to the level they need to be to sustain your business. You don't realise that you're slowly eroding the money in the business rather than adding to it by undercharging and spending too much on things like CPD or supervision, for the amount that you're charging your clients. If you're thinking that you're not good at business, you're very likely to keep repeating those patterns and not challenge them because you're playing into the script you've already written for yourself.
• Hitting Publish: You're quite likely to struggle with actually hitting publish on the stuff that would bring the right kind of clients to you. It might be that you keep drafting a directory site profile, but never hit publish, that you never get that website written or good enough to hit publish, or that you forget to follow up with people that inquire with you. All of that comes from a mind that is utterly convinced that you're a failure already, so why would it take the dangerous step of putting itself out there and being vulnerable if it's already pretty sure that you're going to fail at this?
• Overinvesting in Courses but Not Taking Action: You might overinvest in courses and then never actually take the action. This is really common in people that have a really strong ‘I'm not good at business’ belief. If you think you're bad at business, maybe you think someone else is good at it, so you hire them to try and do the thing for you. But then they can't do the thing completely for you. You're still you, so it still comes down to you needing to implement whatever they've taught you or shown you or the framework they've given you. You made the investment because you believed in them, not because you believed in you. When it gets to the point of doing, it's belief in yourself that is going to get you to hit that publish button or do the thing that you've paid the money to learn how to do.
• Getting Stuck in a Burnout Adjacent Role: Maybe you set up a private practice on the side of a role that was slowly sapping your life force, but you won't jump in with two feet because you don't believe that you've got the ability to make it work, to make your private practice flourish, or to succeed in any other kind of role, so you keep punishing yourself by staying stuck in a job which is harmful to you.

I think what I've learned over the years in my business, doing the MBA, coaching other psychologists and therapists, is that business is just a set of learnable skills like anything else. It isn't a personality type. There are so many different personalities that can be really good at business. I think any personality can be successful. What really frustrates me is that psychologists and therapists are already doing business skills in their clinical work all the time. The kind of assessment, complex understanding of problems, holding boundaries, explaining complex things simply, getting people to invest their emotion and motivation in therapy when that might not have been the thing that they thought would solve their problem at the beginning of their journey. All of those skills, empathy, relationship building, they are so crucial to business, and they're the things which people from other industries often have to spend loads of time learning and developing. Yes, there are other skills that you might need to work on, but you've already got these superpowers that people from other industries would give their right arm to be able to sit and listen and do active listening and seem sincere, because they really struggle with it. If you can't do that, you're not going to do very well in any kind of business negotiations.

My message is that you're not going to be your idea of what a perfect entrepreneur should be, because that doesn't exist. It's something the media has created in two dimensions, and you are a complex human being, and there is no definitional perfect entrepreneur anyway. What you are going to be is good enough. You're going to be flawed. You're going to make bad decisions. You're going to take risks that you shouldn't have taken, that you will regret, and you're going to make some really good decisions too, and you're going to help lots of people along the way. You are never going to tick every box and say, "Oh, I had a perfect week in business,” but if you can learn to be okay with the fact that you're playing to your strengths, that you're leading your business according to your values, and that will have ups and downs and pros and cons to it, then you are going to bring so much to your business community, and it would be sad if you let any kind of belief that you're not good enough at business stop you from getting started.

What I find often makes the biggest difference, and what I'd encourage you to get started on, is to choose one small part of your business to really invest your time in understanding and developing so that you get that sense of achievement that gives you a little bit of a practical foothold in your business. Something tangible that you can use to say, "Hey, actually, I did a pretty good job of that, and it's working, and that must mean that I'm not entirely terrible at business."

If you've recognised yourself in this episode, I'd really love you to notice that your brain has probably been using "I'm not good at business" as a way to keep you safe, and it might have worked at one time, but now it's probably holding you back. If you would like to accept my challenge and pick something to start building to give yourself that practical foothold that shows you that there are things in business that you can be really good at and play to your strengths with, then I'd invite you to make that thing your directory site profile. I've come up with a mini course to help you to do that and get that quick win so that you can show yourself that you can really use the skills that you have already to create something really powerful for your business. The details are in the show notes.

Neurodivergence: Having the big conversations and living your values with Dr Naomi Fisher

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today we're joined by a guest I recommend often. When I'm talking to clients and other parents, I very frequently find myself recommending her books and accessible webinars on supporting children who are struggling through alternative education and reducing demand. And when I'm talking to other psychologists and therapists, I use her as an excellent example of somebody who's able to combine two specialisms and pull off a psychology based portfolio career beautifully.

Dr Naomi Fisher is a clinical psychologist specialising in autism and trauma. She's an EMDR consultant and trainer, and a prolific author who's cultivated her expertise through research, public sector work, and in her independent practice. Today we're exploring how her experiences doing her PhD in autism and NHS practice has shaped the impactful work that she does today. And we're also going to dive into the politics of neurodiversity and why Naomi is concerned that current social pressures are making it really hard for clinicians to have those nuanced conversations about diagnosis and education, and why she's launched her new podcast, Let's Talk Neurosense alongside Dr Danielle Drinkwater.

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

Links for Naomi:

Website: naomifisher.co.uk

Podcast: Let's Talk Neurosense: The Psychology of Neurodiversity

Sunstack: Think Again: Making Childhood Fit For Children

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Naomi tells us about her unusual route into clinical psychology, doing her PhD first 01:57
• I ask Naomi about the central question of her PhD 06:38
• Naomi talks about what drew her into clinical work 08:45
• We discuss the breadth of experience our clinical training gave us 12:07
• Naomi describes what she typically does in her practice at the moment 15:54
• Naomi talks about her drive get good information out there and the backlash she’s received 20:21
• I ask Naomi how she deals with being recognised 26:48
• Naomi tells us about her podcast, Let’s Talk Neurosense 37:33
• Naomi tells us where we can find her 51:48

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

Are you tired of just talking about starting your practice but never quite committing?

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And here is the best part: sign up before the end of May to get £200 off your investment. Let’s build a practice that gives you the freedom you deserve.

Apply today: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/lp/start-up-private-practice-bundle/

Consultancy and systemic change in private practice with Dr Laura Bennet

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. Today I'm joined by Dr Laura Bennett, a clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience supporting children, young people, and their families through some of life's most complex challenges.

Since qualifying in 2009, Laura has worked across a range of NHS services, before founding Oasis Psychology in Dorset in 2022. Her practice is a really good example of a specialist service, as Laura specialises in supporting children who are in care, those who have been adopted, and families on the edge of care, focusing deeply on developmental trauma and attachment, and most importantly, supporting the system around the child.

Today we are looking at Laura's work beyond the therapy room. Many psychologists and therapists worry that moving into private practice means narrowing their scope to just one-to-one clinical hours. Laura is proving the opposite. She's currently spearheading the Parenting with Trauma Project in collaboration with Dorset Action for Children and Bournemouth University. It's clear from Laura's journey that she's never really stopped at the therapy room and has been working with systems and research and data. So I know that you're going to find her story really interesting, and hopefully inspirational if you are somebody who wants to do a little bit more, or different from therapy in your work.

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

Links for Laura:

LinkedIn: Dr Laura Bennet

Oasis Psychology

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Laura tells us about her transition into private practice after 13 years in the NHS 01:57
• Laura talks about what she provides through her private practice, Oasis Psychology 5:21
• Laura discusses how she transitioned into a service that’s less focused on one-to-one work, and more about indirect support. 7:04
• I ask Laura about her work with Action for Children 21:42
• Laura gives us her advice for psychologists and therapists who have an idea for a different type of project, but feel a bit stuck 36:37
• Laura tells us the best place to connect with her 47:34

Start Up Your Psychology Practice

Are you tired of just talking about starting your practice but never quite committing?

If you’re ready to stop dancing with burnout and finally go 'all in', my 90-day program, 'Start Up Your Psychology Practice,' was made for you. This is a group coaching experience designed to help you ethically replace your full-time salary in part-time hours. We handle everything: from legal compliance and GDPR to attracting your first consistent stream of self-funding clients. No more piecing it together alone.

And here is the best part: sign up before the end of May to get £200 off your investment. Let’s build a practice that gives you the freedom you deserve.

Apply today: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/lp/start-up-private-practice-bundle/