Wendy Kendall 00:00
What if your private practice was a space for your healing and growth too? What if we could move our practices from a stress driven business model, to a practice that grows as we thrive? What if we become courageous leaders and agents of change through our practices? Join us as we explore the journeys of inspiring psychologists who are healing through private practice. Hello, and welcome to the inspiring psychologists podcast. In this episode, we're talking about trauma in the psychologists chair, how we navigate our personal healing in private practice, you know, whatever your background or training as a psychologist or as a therapist, private practice also has the potential to activate your own trauma, you know, wouldn't be the first person to have come into psychology as a profession, having had my own trauma background, my own trauma history. And so I know that, you know, from talking with my clients, my colleagues, and over the years recognising that, you know, as human beings, we're also not immune to trauma, and perhaps even as people who became interested in psychology as a profession, sometimes that comes from a place of kind of lived experience as well. What I've also found that Oh, and in fact, you know, the premise of this series is that private practice can also hold the potential to be a healing pathway. When I first started my career as an occupational psychologist, I remember reading a passage in a book that I think was by Carl Rogers. And, you know, reading that one of the quotes that has just stuck with me the whole time was this idea that, and I think it's the way that Rogers phrased it, which was, there's nothing about the work context, that means it cannot be a therapeutic environment. And this is a really important kind of philosophy or principle or value that I bring to my work as an occupational psychologist, which is, how are we creating environments that hold healing potential for us, it's not the same as you know, the work that trauma therapists do. But I also want us to think about how the world around us can be supportive, nurturing, and provide a context and a backdrop. That can also be a place where we process and move through maybe the trauma that we've experienced. So our two guests in this episode are Dr. Monica village Co. and Dr. Yvonne waft. Monica is the founder of the guide to afterlife practice, which supports people whose spouse has died. And Yvonne is a trauma therapist and director of catalyst clinical psychology, and she's also author of the book coping after trauma. So welcome to the podcast, both of you. Hi, Monica. Hi, Brian. Lovely to see you. Hello. Great to be to
Dr Yvonne Waft 03:38
be here. Thank you. Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko 03:39
Thank you for inviting,
Wendy Kendall 03:42
so if it's alright with you, I wanted to start with kind of thinking about this question in relation to yourself. Could you share whatever you're comfortable with about your own story briefly about how trauma has intersected with your practice as a psychologist? I'm going to come to Yvonne first because I've recently been reading your book, and I know that you have some stuff in there about this. So yeah,
Dr Yvonne Waft 04:13
yes, I mean, there's a lot to say, but I'll keep it as brief as I can. I had various experiences growing up in maybe not the most nurturing of households, not the most emotionally connected of households. So that would was the first element of my trauma journey. And then at the age of 19, I had a very nasty experience of bacterial meningitis that left me disabled, the full time wheelchair user going forward. So that was kind of my trauma journey. And then I think a process of things happened during which over the next few years, I became very much drawn towards some Studying psychology initially, perhaps to maybe understand myself a bit more and what I've been through and how I'd coped with it. And from there sort of fell into a career in clinical psychology actually working with people who've experienced trauma. And out of that has come the book that I've written.
Wendy Kendall 05:20
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think what I took from reading some of that story within your book, Yvonne is also about how some of the, the context in which those events were happening. And also kind of added to the traumatic experience of it. So you describe kind of finding yourself at 19 years old, and being, you know, a suddenly finding yourself disabled. But that was in the context of the 1980s. If I'm, if I'm getting the timing, right. And yeah, there being, you know, much less support and so on.
Dr Yvonne Waft 06:07
Yeah, it was a much less equal society. I mean, I have to say, we've gone backwards in the last maybe 10 to 14 years, in terms of equality and opportunities for disabled people. I'm not getting onto my soapbox about that right now.
Wendy Kendall 06:27
Plenty time to get into that.
Dr Yvonne Waft 06:31
I think back in the 80s, there hadn't ever been any sort of anti discrimination legislation that was worth the paper it was written on in this country. It was another nine years from me becoming disabled in 1986, to the Disability Discrimination Act, being sort of enacted in 1995. So there was a good sort of nine years between me becoming disabled, and the being really any protective legislation in this country. And I think there was a period of hope there where, you know, things did improve. And, you know, shopping centres became more accessible theatres, cinemas, those sorts of things became bit more accessible. It was a bit more hopeful. But yeah, I think I think things in recent years have gone backwards. And I think there's lots of reasons for that political reasons. Yeah. But also COVID, as well, I think that that has helped the cause. And I think there's all sorts of complex issues around that.
Wendy Kendall 07:36
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I'm guessing that you're now holding space for for other people within your practice as well.
Dr Yvonne Waft 07:45
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the last, I don't know, how long how long is it since COVID, four years now coming up to Gosh,
Wendy Kendall 07:55
it's amazing.
Dr Yvonne Waft 07:57
I mean, it's crazy, isn't it? But But yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of things coming out now about, I don't know, health care issues that people have had as a result of COVID, you know, young parents who brought children into the world during COVID. And how their needs weren't met, you know, mums who had to go for scans on their own and had difficult news to receive during that time. So yeah, I mean, COVID has has had a sort of lasting impact that that is still sort of unfolding, I suppose for us. But But yeah, there's, there's lots there. And I think, as far as disability goes, COVID was a real sort of test of sort of the political will to treat disabled people with any sort of dignity or rights. And I think, you know, there were lots of decisions made and put into law, the COVID Act actually. Effectively said that, you know, if a disabled person needed a ventilator, and there was only one, and an able bodied person needed it, then, you know, disabled people would have to be thrown under the bus basically. So there was lots of stuff that was coming out around sort of the beginning of COVID and beyond. And then I read a statistic somewhere and I can't remember the exact specific statistic. Sorry, but it was that a vast proportion of COVID deaths were people with learning disabilities. Yeah, and there were lots of lots of things put into larger and COVID around you know, people with autism and learning disabilities having Do Not Resuscitate orders put on their medical notes without consent.
Wendy Kendall 09:50
Yeah, so to
Dr Yvonne Waft 09:52
lots of lots of things like that where yes, the 1990s did bring some hope and In a sense of yes, we've got rights now. But it's very, very easy to kind of let those slip away. And I think campaigning groups have really struggled to keep up that early hope that we had. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Wendy Kendall 10:17
Yeah. And, you know, just thinking about how when we, you know, experience trauma, we get interested in psychology, it's a way of kind of helping ourselves to process, maybe what, what we've experienced, we move more into the professional context. And then we're exposing ourselves to situations where potentially we're kind of pressing on some of that trauma history again, and again. And that I think, is one of the you know, the paradox also in in, in private practice is that we actively choose to do that, or we make, you know, we make decisions around whether we do that or not. And I think, I think for me, that's kind of been an interesting thing to hold as well. Monica, could I come? Thanks, Yvonne money could come to you and ask for? Yeah, just same thing, really? What is your kind of intersection there? Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko 11:26
You know, listening to what you were saying about that, that like almost like a different world of living in, you know, how it was in in the 80s. And I was thinking, Yes, I kind of kind of relate and on a different level, but the sense of privation. That is kind of quite a crucial element of my history of trauma. And, and I suppose, yeah, coming from from I'm originally from Poland. So coming from a place where, when I was born, it was kind of towards the end of the communism. And one of the focal kind of description of the cultural and political scene is deprivation and the lack of provision of all sorts of resources, and generally speaking, a sense of never being enough. And kind of when you were talking about COVID, or the kind of lack of recognition that that really strongly resonated with me on so many different level and and I think that that was probably one of most like, transgenerational trauma that was the Second World War. I think it all started even way before I was born. And I think those side effects kind of remained so vocal in in terms of not just political, but so social scene in Poland and, and then I moved to UK when I was about, I think, 24. And obviously, I did my psychology degree in Poland and did some more studying in the UK. And I, and I suppose that that was, again, the torment of becoming an immigrant and moving to another gallery, and feeling like you have to find your own feet. And I think often we don't really talk about it in this open way, that what does it mean to move to another country and reestablish yourself to find your own two feet and in a completely different environment and trying to catch up with with the rest and getting into training as a clinical psychologist, that in itself, like trying to prove yourself in a way that you, you have something to offer and, you know, being discriminated number of times, on the basis of where I'm from, and competing with people from, from from the UK. And, and that was a big part of, of my journey, I suppose. And, and then moving to NHS, which wasn't at the time, but I think, in many different ways, you know, go into a system that cannot function and all I could hear throughout my career of, I think I've worked for NHS about 12 years, before I left. It was the deprivation that used to be better, we used to have more and everyone talking about the probation and how, you know, we can't offer our patients enough and we can't do this, we can't do that. We should be grateful we can see people for six months or a year because other people see them for 12 sessions. So always been presented as you know, be grateful what you have Don't ask for too much. And I think that's always been somewhere in the background of my personal story. But I suppose that that's always been somewhere as a background, but I think the one of the major my major life events was First illness and then loss of my husband in 2022. That was in the midst of COVID. And in relation to that, that whole experience of another form of deprivation of your mom's space. And, and I think that was probably, I would say, probably the biggest trauma, and then the one that kind of left me in a place where I really had to rebuild everything, including the way I thought of myself, the challenge challenges that that experience brought of, especially especially prolonged illness, he died of bowel cancer, and that was quite a horrendous experience of caring for someone knowing mentally, that they're going to die. And then the aftermath of that, which was, you know, coming to terms with, with that loss and that point in your life when you're thinking of having family and moving on with life, and, and suddenly, that's been quite short. So I think I've always thought of trauma as something I'm helping people with, and, and I suppose simultaneously working on my own things in my own therapy, but I think when something like this happened in your life, you kind of realise that. Yeah, no amount of knowledge and skills that we have can is enough, I suppose to prepare or in some ways to even help us get through it. And I think that that probably was the main, the main kind of traumatic, I still, if you know, something I'm working through.
Wendy Kendall 16:43
And you took some time away from your practice as well, Monica, if I understand correctly, and then started to reformulate and reshape what it might look like. And when you kind of come back to what your what you want your practice to be, again, what did you What was that process, like, of kind of stepping back and then and, and processing? Away from, let's say, the psychologist chair?
Dr Monika Wieliczko 17:17
Yeah. Well, it was a bit of a it was a very interesting experience, because I, well, I left NHS, I decided to leave NHS and that was simultaneously working in private practice, but decided to stop because I think, frankly, speaking, I think I had enough and I thought, well, I can't just cannot go like that go on like that. It was just too much. i The idea of actually being working as a psychologist made me feel so unwell on that, it's like me, I just couldn't, I just couldn't do my job. I think it was a crisis point. That was also an incredibly important turning point from from my career because it helped me realise that the way I used to work the way I thought I should be practising as a clinical psychologist wasn't working for me. And, and I think, the experience of looking after and I had to, in a way, when I was looking after my husband, my husband, I had to drop most of my clinical work. And I think in a strange way, that that was the moment when I realised I don't want to go back, I don't want to be doing things that they used to do. I don't want to be spending most of my time being responsible for other people and practising from a place of almost like constantly being in a position of someone who's maybe not necessarily rescuing but but but has such tremendous commitment to my work, especially working in secondary care and mental health services with very complex presentations is that that element is always present. So so so for me, it was it was that moment when I when I thought to myself, you know, it's enough I have to make room for myself and I stopped working for a year. And I at some point, I packed my bags and I when I went away to Southeast Asia for a few months and and been travelling and just through I suppose rediscovering my myself trying to rebuild myself and yeah, so that was quite a good time. In many ways. It was good. In other words, it was difficult, but I think it was Yeah.
Wendy Kendall 19:42
I mean, and also just to kind of not just leave leave you to out there describing how this intersects with your practices, but also to talk about how this intersects with my practice as a psychologist as a as a non clinical psychologist as a you know, As an occupational and coaching psychologist, I ended up going into psychology because I was thinking of a, I was thinking of a correct way of describing it, because because my family were chaotic, because it was a traumatising upbringing, because it was, I literally, as a teenager, couldn't figure out why I couldn't make my adoptive mother happy. And on. So, you know, way back, I ended up being adopted into a family. So this is in the early 70s, early, mid 70s. And at the time, it was something called the baby scoop error, which is where hundreds of 1000s of women across different Western countries, but including my mother, were given no choice. But if they weren't married, their children were taken off them. And that was, they were no read. Many of them were not at any risk to their children. They were perfectly healthy people who were going to grow up and have families, but for moral reasons. They had their children forcibly removed. Yeah, hundreds of 1000s. And yeah, and so shocking. Yeah, yeah. But
Dr Monika Wieliczko 21:32
it was a practice. I mean, I'm, I'm this is the first time I'm hearing it's almost makes me think that that can't be like, yeah, it's
Wendy Kendall 21:39
a real hidden history. That's my Yeah, it's, it's, it's an unspoken history. In USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and then different countries around the world. So my mother was one example of them. And, and at the time, the other thing that was part of that story for me was, I was adopted into a couple who had been trying for several years to have a child who, and the, I was there to fix the domestic violence situation. So my adoptive father was extremely violent. And his excuse for that was, it's because we can't have kids. So that's, that's how it was in you know, in those days, as they say. So. So that led to various kinds of chaotic experiences, which then and traumatising experiences, which then led to me going to university because I was going to figure it out. Now, fortunately, like we kind of Fortunately, for me, at the time, the clinical doctorate was, I think it's still the case, clinical doctorate was a nightmare to get on to. And I was really interested in the world of work. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm gonna go into being an occupational psychologist, I'm really kind of curious about that. And so I didn't then carry on with a kind of training, which was then reference to my own kind of trauma history, I just kind of carried on coping with it. And similar to you, Monica also experienced that moving overseas, which I think started to unpick some of the you know, nicely buttoned down trauma history at that point. Because of things like loss of identity, loss of cultural reference points, loss of almost kind of professional status, where nobody knows who you are, what you've done, what your background is, what anything means seen as a lot of a lot of kind of loss of reference points. And, and then private practice was a place where I started to reconstruct my identity, I would say, and you know, there was a real kind of change and shift in how I constructed my identity. And then the thing that really became pivotal for me, was this period around 2017 2018, where I had got in contact with my dad, meaning my bio biological dad. And there was a whole bunch of stuff that that brought up. But that led then to me, coming into contact with internal family systems, and deciding to take the internal family systems training, partly from a personal development point of view, but then just got really curious about our ifs and systems internals. systems show up in the workplace. So for whatever reason, there has nevertheless been this intersection of how can all of the parts of us show up in our workplaces? I remain infinitely curious about the context of work and how we decide to kind of show up. And and yet that, you know, this experience of private practice brings still brings many questions to me about should I should I do things, which are, you know, it makes me think about what my reasons for doing things. And it also makes me think about, you know, if, for example, one of the things that I get really curious about is adult adopted people, and how we, how we're brought into a context where we are there to do a job to fix a couple or to fix a family or to make a family, there's a whole kind of job element to it. And, and, yeah, exactly in an identity things. Yeah, it is a full time job. And then, and that influences how we then show up in work subsequently. And from, I think, from a coaching psychology point of view, there's some interesting work around that. But nevertheless, I think to myself, do I want to go into that place where it would actually connect with a lot of trauma history? And so, you know, at the moment that that idea just carries on percolating. So. So, I mean, there's a lot of things there that are around, you know, social and political and economic contexts. Yeah, the impact on those the decisions that we have. And I think that's kind of interesting, then how that comes back into how we show up in a workplace like a private practice. So how, how has Yeah, thinking about your, your practices themselves? How have those experiences then kind of fed into the ways in which you work the ways in which you practice, I'm going to come to you, Yvonne, because I know you started to hinten some of that.
Dr Yvonne Waft 27:32
Yeah, I was just actually reflecting briefly there on the parallels between Monica and myself in terms of how working in the NHS very much was, in many ways, a traumatising experience, and also a very limiting experience. I think. I totally heard what you know, and recognise what Monica was saying about not being able to work the way you want to work, and do the work you want to do and being kind of pressured into shoehorned into certain models of working and, you know, that didn't sit well with me. I wanted some freedom to work the way I wanted to work, and I wanted I think I react badly to being controlled. I think, having had having had a very controlling father exact growing LARP. And, you know, having become a disabled person at the age of 19. And being told, Well, you can't do this, and you can't do that. Now. There was definitely I mean, going to the IFS thing as well, you know, there's a part of me, that's if someone says, You can't, there's a part of me that says, Watch me, you know. Exactly, exactly. And so, you know, I wasn't going to be long term, I just as the NHS was changing through, you know, while I was working there, things were becoming more and more sort of, you will work this way, you will do it this way. And, you know, we weren't being allowed to work with people for the length of time that people sometimes need. We weren't being allowed to use the range of integrative skills that people sometimes need. We were being told, Well, can you not just, you know, CBT them for six sessions, will that not sorted out? And we're talking about people with really, really complex, you know, histories, and no, six to 12 sessions of CBT is not going to touch the sides. And so, yeah, generally just feeling like I needed that freedom I needed to get away from that controlling sort of environment. And also discriminatory stuff that I experienced, again, heard what Monica was saying about discrimination in the workplace. Certainly there was some of that and there's a lot of internalised ableism with me, and I kind of took that on as my sort of burden to carry or my thing to solve. But looking back now While I put up with a load of stuff I shouldn't have put up with, you know, on the journey to becoming a clinical psychologist, and through the sort of 1012 years that I spent as a NHS, clinical psychologist. And I think working for myself, in private practice, now I have the freedom to work with people in the way I want to work with them, and the way that they need me to work with them, I have the freedom to work the hours I want to work, I have the freedom to say, actually, you know, it really helps me if I can move my body in a morning. So if I can go for a swim, you know, which is something I love doing, you know, if I can go and have a swim at least a couple of mornings a week before work and start work later, you know, I didn't in the NHS, the option was kind of work nine till five, you could reduce your hours and work fewer days, but it was difficult to have the flexibility around hours. And so if I wanted to go to the gym, it was kind of you know, and have a bit of a swim before work, it was ridiculous to try and do that I had a child as well, you know, it was such a difficult logistical thing to go to the gym at any point around working. And for me, now I can run my day exactly how I want to run it within reason, you know, obviously, I have to bring in an income. So I don't have to see people, I can't just completely have that freedom and flexibility. But I can I can work my working day around my physical needs my emotional needs, you know, on a Friday, often I don't do a lot workwise I might catch up on some admin, but I might go to the gym, I might have a nice swim, I might go for a massage, you know, things like that. And I've got that flexibility now to do that, which certainly working for an organisation didn't give me that.
Wendy Kendall 31:53
Yeah, yeah. And I think that relationship with personal agency and locus of control and things like that is I think we overlook how important some of that is to our healing journey, then.
Dr Yvonne Waft 32:09
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Wendy Kendall 32:13
Totally agree, Monica. For you, how has some of those experience kind of shaped and influenced now how you turn up in your private practice?
Dr Monika Wieliczko 32:28
Well, I think it really redefined how I think of myself as a clinical psychologist, because I think for a while I just couldn't, I just couldn't really relate to this identity when, especially when I wasn't working, surprises, whatever. But, but but then coming back, I was thinking, but who am I? So I think that really made me redefine my way of working. And I think it made me much more human. I think it's not like I wasn't, it's not like people struggled to relate to me. But I think I really started growing in ways that I wasn't expecting. And I definitely feel that working through the loss. And still, I'm still very much working through it. But But But starting to work through that really kind of opened up certain spaces in me that I don't think I've ever was aware of, or at least I would I didn't have access to and I think it depends on kind of more human level. I think it helped me bring more of myself to work. And I think the capacity to tolerate the distress that people go through not rushing to fix things, or be responsible for things and just being more mindful of my limitations. And I think that really shaped as well, the way I started thinking about developing something that very much resonated with what I went through as well. I'm going to use word widow, which I I absolutely hate. I can tell you a bit more about that in a second. But but but actually working with people who lost probably experienced loss of a life partner became that kind of element that I'm so interested in because I feel like often there is no recognition especially for women, working age women who are not necessarily retired or having kind of a bit more freedom, but actually people who want to be women and I suppose both both ends. But I think it's much more difficult for women than it is for men socially to rebuild your life interested for loss and and I think that the social context is very much around the expectation In the grieving should, should look in at the right way. And you know, that kind of picture of a woman wearing black clothes and, you know, being upset? And obviously not absolutely, the expectation is that you're going to grieve for I don't know, at least a year or is this some kind of expectation unconscious and expectation in the society. And when you step out of that, I think you realise that you're breaking certain roles, so there's a lot of kind of pressure on having to be in a particular way. And I definitely experienced that, which then made me want to, perhaps create a space where people can understand their grief from a different perspective, which I think goes back a little bit to my own experience of how I struggled sometimes with understanding that identity that was pushing me, for the society. And then, and then I suppose, you know, trying to create a healing space, but community or some somewhere where people can actually access help to understand how they can live their lives, wider grieving, as opposed to, you know, going through this process of grieving and putting everything else on hold, which I, which I've, or doing the, the opposite, which is not grieving at all, and then moving on with life and, and kind of ending up never processing or dealing for loss. And, and I think I'm, I'm kind of coming from a position of trying to bring both and, and so my idea was to kind of create psychotherapy groups and retreats, and generally speaking space for people to understand from psychological point of view, bearing in mind knowledge of as a psychologist, and, you know, as survival for spousal or loss to the mix and trying to kind of help people think about that from from a perspective of, of my, yeah, my own experience, but also the clinical, the clinical experience. And, and I because I've seen that there hasn't really been much around other than peer support groups or some kind of normalising experience, which is important, but I also see how many people just kind of got a bit trapped in, you know, greeting for years, and always been told that you have to give yourself more time and, and then thinking No, because life goes on, you have to really address your grief. So I think that really shifted completely the way I practice coming from, you know, thinking of myself as a clicker, so as a professional to bring you're more of that kind of person by which was a challenge. And, and I unless the other thing is massive part for me was to bring more creativity in to my practice, which, to me discovering my rediscovering my passion for writing from that kind of more personal place. And I'm currently writing a book, which is about creating the space to grieve and letting live. And describing my experiences and kind of trying to depict a bit of that experience, which is kind of a bit maybe not unheard of, but not a common way of speaking about green. Coming from a professional perspective, as a clinical psychologist bringing that kind of personal side, which I'm sure everyone you could relate to think about your book, that there's always this kind of freshing you know, how did you bring that in? Yeah, I don't know. Talk about yourself, how you talk about six or, you know, how do you talk about relationships in general? How do you talk about finding love again, when everyone's expecting you to grieve? And as if they used to kind of coexist? And I don't know, I think I think that was the biggest part for me just kind of bringing that in and actually enjoying day to day work as opposed to, you know, back to back. Exactly.
Wendy Kendall 39:13
And what I love in all of that, and where I see parallels also with my experience, and you know, again, coming back to one's book, which is coping after trauma, with
Dr Yvonne Waft 39:25
trauma,
Wendy Kendall 39:26
they Oh, my goodness, I've made the face. Thank you coping with trauma. Yeah, that will be okay, coping with trauma. I won't Yeah, I won't get that wrong again. Is this so all of us are kind of talking to an extent of the the experience of post traumatic growth right. So about our private practices as not just their private practices, our lives generally is, you know, how we move In, move into or through this, there's post traumatic growth and how private practice also then can give us a context where post traumatic growth can become a reality where where practices can literally be a reflection of that post traumatic growth. And I guess the thing that I find really interesting is that if you'd have asked me 20 years ago about that, I might have imagined that the trauma processing had to be over here, and then that that kind of got ended, you know, that finished, and then we would move into a process of post traumatic growth. And what I see which makes sense to me is that we make, we might do, you know, trauma processing somewhere. So we may all continue to have therapy outside of our practices. And the Post Traumatic Growth grows alongside it. And I mean, I mean, you to a clinician, so you may have already, you may have known this all along, but to me, I'm like, Oh, look at that. That's interesting. And I'm just wondering, on your reflections
Dr Monika Wieliczko 41:14
I completely hear on this. And one day, I had no idea this is possible, right?
Dr Yvonne Waft 41:20
Yeah. I mean, interestingly, nearly 20 years ago, I wrote my thesis on post traumatic growth. I'd been growing like been dealing with trauma for a long time at that point. But then, like you say, the two things continue in parallel. And I, I've been in ifs therapy for just over a year with one of our colleagues, still working through various elements of my traumas, and, you know, sort of how they still show up day to day, you know, parts of me still show up that gets in the way. However, there has been growth and the, you know, the, the parts of me that know that I can, and I will have grown over, certainly over the last 20 years as a clinician, and some of the parts that were a bit scared, and, you know, felt very, super critical or are vulnerable to criticism, and would hide away and hide everything I could do away from the public eye, you know, those parts have sank back a little bit now. And let me kind of get on and do things. So, you know, I wrote my thesis on post traumatic growth, as I say, nearly 20 years ago now. And I was encouraged to publish something from it, you know, write some articles, do some, you know, get something published, or possibly parts of me showed up that said, no, no, we can't do that. People will see, you know, people might criticise it. So I shied away from doing that. However, you know, 20 years of growth and therapy and learning and development through my career, you know, those parts that thought I can have gradually grown. And the result of that, I suppose, at this point in time, is that, six weeks ago, I released a book onto the market called Coping with trauma.
Wendy Kendall 43:28
And I can't imagine ultimate publication.
Dr Yvonne Waft 43:33
10 years ago, I couldn't have imagined even writing an article for a peer reviewed journal, because the process of getting peer review would have terrified me. However, now my books out there, it's got, I think, four or five star reviews on Amazon. So far, it's only been out a couple of weeks, six weeks. So yeah, so that is that growth thing happening, you know, that trauma processing and growth thing? It happens side by side over time. And yeah, you can't really unpick, you know, you don't just do your trauma and then move into growth. No,
Wendy Kendall 44:04
it's interesting that we'd have that that, you know, I don't know where I absorbed that kind of linear mindset about it, that we will do the one thing and then we do the, but I think sometimes we do kind of talk about these things as though they're they have to be or that you know, that you've got to do them separately. It's not that you're processing your trauma in with your clients, and it's all getting messy, but it's it's that I feel like in fact, you know, it's making me wonder and I'm wondering what you to think about this, that having a parallel path of that allows post traumatic growth, that that is a space for post traumatic growth is that it enhances the therapeutic effect of the therapy I wonder about that. What do you think Monaco gonna come to you what, what would you what would you reflect on that?
Dr Monika Wieliczko 44:59
You know, I think I think the way you're kind of MIS described it is like they this split off part? Yeah. You know, it was like the bad the good and the bad, the ugly. I don't know, like how you would frame it. But But I think the more you integrate, yeah, to the more I mean, coming from my own personal experience of being in analysis for I don't know how I'm scared. Seven years this, this, I don't know, this has to kind of eventually integrate to kind of to come together otherwise. Like, oh, we try to put those different parts of ourselves that's been traumatised together. And I think that's, that's when the beauty happens, the growth, when you integrate, it's not the fact that the good comes from one place and the bad comes from from another place. But it actually when you put the two together, then then you start to grow. Yeah, it's very difficult. And it's easy to say, well, it's just happening. But it's hard work. Oh,
Dr Yvonne Waft 46:09
yeah, definitely.
Dr Monika Wieliczko 46:15
But it's really fascinating. When you see that happening internally, in your patients like it's, it's, it's it's the most beautiful experience, I think that's why we're so attracted to working clinically or with people in general. Because I think it happens everywhere. That you can see that growth, and and you see something being created in between, as opposed to one or the other taking over and yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Wendy Kendall 46:46
I mean, for sure. I mean, as I said, you know, I strongly in the area of, of working with people in their businesses, you know, it's not even the even kind of life coaching that I'm doing. It's like very much kind of occupationally focused. And yet, as you said, you know, holding space for people to grow and there is I have to say it, there is a there is a healing impetus in growth, right. So, I don't advertise therapy, I don't offer therapy, but I witness healing as people grow in their coaching process. So you know, what you say about the integration is, is just makes complete sense. And yeah, it's interesting that I've kind of held those things or that sometimes we are encouraged to kind of think about these things in very separate ways. Yvonne, and bringing the question to you as well, what's your thought about this kind of integration, this? This, this parallel processing?
Dr Yvonne Waft 47:53
Yeah, I think some somewhere in my book, I just, you know, I can't remember what it was talking about this particular bit, but I just ended a paragraph with humans are far more complex than that, you know. You know, the idea that we have a trauma, and then we do a healing process. And then when that's done, we then do a growth process. That's just not how anything happens in our lives is Yeah, everything is intertwined. And, you know, if you look at a sort of, I don't know, neural network, if you if you look at a representation of how the brain is, things don't happen, you know, neurons don't fire off in linear sort of directions. It's all networked and, you know, sort of all over the place, isn't it? So one thing happens there. And it's like, that was the butterfly effect, you know, a butterfly. Yeah, its wings over there. And something happens. I don't know. Don't know how that the world.
Wendy Kendall 48:55
I know what you mean.
Dr Yvonne Waft 48:57
Yeah. So So yeah, I don't think humans are as linear and straightforward as that. And life isn't linear and straightforward, is it? You know, while you're busy dealing with your trauma, you might also be dealing with family and friends and stuff kicking off with people and jobs and careers, and everything's all intermingled and, yeah,
Wendy Kendall 49:19
yeah. So on that intermingling note thinking about how have you designed your practices to be places that help you to kind of release to process or to overcome trauma because as you said, you know, we're, we're exposed to it, we see it, we experience it ourselves. We have to hold space for the growth, the healing, the processing of trauma for ourselves and for other people. What have you designed into your practices? I mean, if not, you, you talked about your your Swimming and things, but are there other things that you would say, have really helped you that you've designed into your practices that helped you to release process overcome any trauma?
Dr Yvonne Waft 50:13
I think one of the things would be continuous learning, you know, sort of going on new learning journeys, whether that be through going into therapy, which, you know, I've worked into my working week, or going on a training course. So many years ago, I trained in EMDR. And actually, when you trained in EMDR, which is a trauma focused therapy, and one of the things that you do as part of the training is you practice on each other. So it's interwoven into the training that you actually yeah, you actually work on each other, and you you work on real stuff, it's not pretend it's not roleplay. To get the full effect, you've got to work on your own real stuff. And my very first I think I initially went to my first EMDR training session with the sort of half an idea of this can't be possible, it can't be true. It can't possibly work the way they say it does. So I kind of almost went with this notion of almost debunking it, surely I'll prove them wrong somehow. And then I had this really, really profound experience of the first bit of processing that I was kind of put through in the sort of first afternoon or whatever it was, where I brought a very sort of straightforward little memory that I thought was nice and safe to work on and wouldn't go anywhere difficult, and could be nicely contained and stay within that window of tolerance that we talked about.
Wendy Kendall 51:46
Monica knows where this is going, laughing
Dr Yvonne Waft 51:49
because she knows what must have happened. Of course, I started on that nice, straightforward, simple little memory of I don't know, getting picked on at school over something silly. And my mind immediately jumped towards my father yelling at me in an aggressive and frightening manner for something. And then my mind jumped way back to being a tiny little toddler and getting whacked into the middle of next week by my father. And that's all in the work of the course of an afternoon's EMDR training. And, yeah, that was immensely healing. Actually, it sounds quite traumatic, actually. And it wasn't expected at all. But we worked through that with the support of the training team that was there that are there to pick up these things and help you work through them. And it pushed me into going and putting myself into some EMDR therapy with a local therapist once I got home from that training. But even just that one afternoon of being on that training, shifted something for me, it enlightened me about something, and it shifted the trauma of that particular moment in time, in a way that, you know, was just huge for me. So yeah, I investing in training and ongoing training, you have these little moments where you can just do a bit of work on yourself sometimes. So that's another way that you know, working for yourself, you've got that freedom to book onto trainings where you might get a little bit of that going on.
Wendy Kendall 53:22
Exactly, I mean, though, there would have been no way that an employer would have paid for me to go and do my ifs levels. absolutely nowhere and but it was absolutely transformational for the way I approach my my business. Monica, any experiences from you? What have you kind of designed in or what kind of really works for you in terms of how you structure your practice?
Dr Monika Wieliczko 53:49
Well, I, I think because I like coming back to working clinically, I was very fortunate in some way because the environment is that you start to build from away from scratch and and I think that really gave me the power to set the limits, right was in terms of how many patients I want to have and what kind of work I want to do so instead of just doing one to one like moving more towards, you know, developing ideas, which I'm very much at the stage of developing many of those but thinking more about giving myself space to think first of all, I think that that would be the very first place and I think having that kind of structure, especially when thinking about your your coaching programme TPA and, and having that kind of environment where the thinking is protected and it hasn't been, I don't think I've ever had that experience of, of coming in and actually white on the second like instead of doing can we can Think what what needs to happen or how you want things to be, and I'm using my creativity to the to deck to get there. So instead of, you know, trying to Okay, so this is my plan, I'm gonna see this many patients, you know, this is, this is my business normally is, I actually started to think, Okay, so maybe maybe I don't want to first of all realising, acknowledging, I don't want to be doing that. And that was my way of protecting my internal resources and thinking, actually, maybe I can reach way more people, if I use some of my time, trying to put things across in a way in a form of writing, speaking to people and actually creating content that is of high quality, as opposed to mechanical on this kind of experience of producing, I don't know, marketing content. So I think I think my very much my thinking goes, Oh, how can I share my knowledge and skills with people, which is such a big problem in our profession, that we are so bad at sharing our knowledge, partially because we always undermine ourselves? And secondly, because I think we kind of are a little bit greedy. And that's my little theory. But I think, you know, it's just just me, but I think a lot of the time, we are really aggrieved. And we don't like to share, although
Wendy Kendall 56:33
there's a lot of scarcity mindset as well. I mean, just to kind of what I, you know, there's two kind of, that's not I don't say that to kind of excuse it, but what I see is there's this sense of if we don't hoard our knowledge, we won't be as exalted as we won't be kind of held in as high esteem. And that, I think, comes from a place of scarcity, if I've not got all this, if because I've let it go, then I won't have a thing because it will have been taken. And, yeah, so I can relate to and I can, yeah, I don't know if that's what you were meaning, Monica. But that's what I was taking it.
Dr Monika Wieliczko 57:18
Yeah, yes, very much. So. Not very much. So. And I think, I think this whole idea that we, you know, I was thinking like practically, as a working clinical psychologist, you can't work in longer term, like, like I do, I can't possibly fit in more than maybe 1520 people. For several years. I used to work with people here. So what's the level of reach? I mean, how many people can I really help? And obviously, we're talking about some substantial changes in people's lives. But But actually, the reality is that we can offer way more. And I think that that switching point when it happened for me when I realised actually that that I've got so much more was quite an important turning point. Just just my own thinking, and then actually feeling like, I've got so many ideas, I want to be creative in psychology. And now I find myself thinking, Gosh, any ideas, how do I narrow it down? It's the story of my life. But it's such a powerful tool, being in private practice, and actually using your mind in a way that, you know, kind of excites you, as opposed to puts you down and makes you feel exhausted, like I don't work eight hours a day, I don't have this kind of sense of having to wake up every morning and go into work and hating my day, I think that is a wonderful feeling. You have, I always have time to go out with my dog. And you know, I'm training her to be a therapy dog, she's actually done quite quite quite a good piece of work recently with a girl who has dog phobia. So it's just kind of bringing all those elements that myself, I suppose the resources I have that I didn't think I could use in therapy. And it's really, it's really quite exciting to think about, oh, what else could I have here next year? Or what else I'm going to come up with? And I think that is a quite a huge shift. Yeah, I don't know about you on whether you have those kind of moments when you actually think okay, this is this is possible. I didn't think this Yeah,
Dr Yvonne Waft 59:37
very much. So yeah, I think, you know, my experience of working in the NHS was very much that you could either be a therapist, or you could be a manager, or you could be a therapist who did some management some days and there didn't seem to be an awful lot of, I don't know, creativity about the role or variety and what you could actually do, it seemed as though people were having to trade off, you know, They could do therapy stuff, but that limited them to certain bandings. Or they could move up the bandings. And that meant they became a manager. And it seemed very limiting as a model. Whereas in private practice, what I've found is that at times, I have done lots of therapy work. I've also done bits and pieces of medico legal assessment work. I've moved more into doing lots of supervision work more recently. And now I'm thinking what I wrote a book as well, that sort of happened on the side of all that I think that wouldn't have happened in the NHS, because there just wouldn't have been the time and space to think that and also would have been questions about the intellectual property, would it belong to the NHS where I was working? Or would it be my voice? Yeah, yeah. And likewise, then if you think about, you know, if I'm going to make some digital content, you know, maybe some webinars, maybe some, you know, teaching modules on therapy, EMDR, therapy, trauma, that sort of thing. It wouldn't be so easy to do, if you're working for an organisation such as the NHS, whereas in private practice, you can think you know, what, I've done some a lot of therapy, let's try something else for a bit. You know, you don't have that freedom when you're working for a huge organisation like the NHS, and you've got a job with a job role. And that's what you do. Whereas with private practice, you can done enough of that now. I mean, I did that with the medico legal work, I've been that completely stressed. Yeah, he's quite well, but you know, far too stressful. So, you know, but I tried it, I enjoyed it for a bit. But then I thought, No, I don't want to do that. And it's that ability to just sort of, you know, try something out, decide you don't like it, decide you love it, and just follow where wherever sort of energy is really. Yeah,
Wendy Kendall 1:01:59
yeah. And when I think about as well, you know, how the very, I'm very convinced now that we come into these, you know, we come into these private practices, we experience these healing journeys, where we connect with a lot of what is meaningful and purposeful, to us. And through that, what ultimately happens is we arrive at a place where we, we step into what I call courageous leadership, or actually a practices start to represent something that is very, that we want to stand for. But we want to stand, you know, we want to create, like you said, Monica, we want to create community spaces, actually, for people to have different experiences to be able to express different experiences around their grief and bereavement process, where, you know, we want to hold space for people who've experienced discrimination after disability and other forms of trauma, you know, in life, and then, you know, as you said, if I'm writing the book, standing for something, putting that out there. So there's something very, I think, you know, God, oh, Viktor Frankl with Man's Search for Meaning. I think it kind of steps into those spaces where we're actually at our, for ourselves personally, we step into often these spaces of courageous leadership. And, and we have the scope to do that. Because no one's telling us not to write it. No boss. No, except for ourselves. You know, yeah. So, you know, when I think about how our, I mean, the even the podcast, inspiring psychologists breaking the mould, there's something about for me, challenging. You know, even just in my personal life, people's ideas of what adopted people should think about the paradigm of adoption or the adoption industry. Knowing that I feel I don't feel worried that somebody like a manager is going to disagree with me on that, and therefore I'm going to get start getting bad appraisals. And there's a sense of secure base that you can build from a place like that where you don't have to apologise for what you think and feel about a certain topic that you feel really passionate about. And you know, yeah, but I
Dr Monika Wieliczko 1:04:44
would stop you here when the I think it's more that when you are allowed to think.
Wendy Kendall 1:04:50
Yeah, no, you're
Dr Monika Wieliczko 1:04:51
not allowed
Wendy Kendall 1:04:52
to think for yourself. Yeah. And in many organisations
Dr Monika Wieliczko 1:04:58
Very much so. Yeah. It's just like such a threat that if you become your own person, that it's just, yeah, it's gonna be, it's not going to be received very well. And I've had those experiences where I express my opinion, and I'd have been shut down or treated like, yes. You know, like, like, I'm trying to do something by quitting. Yeah. So we I think we've five steps below. And the very basic fundamental level, you're allowed yourself when you're working for yourself. And I think it's, it's a pressure, you know, because you have to, you have to think for yourself. Yeah, for yourself. Yeah. You know, it's a really telling, yeah. But it's a bit like separating from a family, you know, you kind of know having to step away from what feels comfortable and familiar and slightly. This. But, but But you kind of get to do your own thing with your own set of challenges. But, yeah, I think it's, it's that shift once you start to think for yourself, I think, I think that becomes Yeah,
Dr Yvonne Waft 1:06:12
I was just thinking about that there. There is a risk of idealising private practice as well isn't there, and actually, it is quite activating at times, you know, that whole idea of you are your own boss. And that's great, because you've got the freedom, you know, liberty and everything else. But you're your own boss, and you've got to make a living, and you've got to get the clients in. And, you know, if you screw up, it's on you. And whilst that's probably true, if you work in the NHS, you know, if you screw up, well, they really support you. But if you are working in private practice, it is all on you. And, you know, it's it does, it's activates those more anxious parts of self, I think. Yeah. And, you know, as well, I think, for me, one of the parts that gets activated by working privately is, there's a very busy part of the striving part of me that kind of has to overcome. And I think that comes directly from a position of trauma. You know, a sense of, I've got to do this on my own, because nobody else is going to help me. And that can lead me into overworking and over striving, and, you know, that might not be healthy. And I think there is the space in a private practice to do the healthy things and to take yourself swimming and to take some time out to have therapy. But I think there's also the risks of, you know, activating those less helpful parts of sale. Yeah, that can lead you into kind of unhelpful places. Yeah,
Wendy Kendall 1:07:48
yeah, needing to kind of be aware of all of those. So I'm very mindful of, of, you know, what a rich discussion this has been, and, and thinking about how we can kind of draw this to a close. And I guess I'm going to ask both of you, you know, given our discussion, and just kind of thinking, in conclusion, what would you want practitioners to know about trauma in the psychologists chair when we're in this kind of private practice context? Yeah. So I don't know, you might want to have a quick reflection on that, or I don't know if something is kind of immediate comes immediately comes to mind.
Dr Monika Wieliczko 1:08:41
For me, like one thing that comes to mind is that I think this so much trauma, I mean, we all have our own trauma. There's no life without trauma. But I think that I think utilise finding that trauma and making use of it in a way not not making use of it. Maybe that's not the right phrase, but but kind of getting hold of it, I think can bring up so much value into private. Yeah, I do strongly feel that for private practice to be a true representation of us. I think it has to have the whole of us at the core of it. And I think that also includes those traumatic parts and I think all I've seen so far as people who forget somewhere in their life and feel fulfilled, I think it's the fulfilment part I think I'm looking for not how much money you're making, because you could easily just end up doing something that's profitable, but it's, you know, exactly, or exhausting. But but it's about putting yourself first there and really looking after yourself and, and finding looking After the trauma and doing and making good use of their, that stimulates curiosity and creativity and brings the best in you, in a way is when you integrate those parts. So that's my kind of advice. It's obviously not easy speaking from my own personal experience of having to talk about things I don't want to talk about sometimes, it does really benefit us in ways that is sustainable, and actually exciting and creative. And I think that that's, that are the main these are the main things for me. Yeah.
Wendy Kendall 1:10:35
Yeah. Thank you, Monica, Yvonne.
Dr Yvonne Waft 1:10:38
Yeah, I think I'd echo echo a lot of what Monica said there, really. I mean, I, I do supervise a lot of people. And, you know, they're all psychologists of one sort or another, or there's a few psychotherapists, I think in counsellors in some of my supervision groups. And I think, you know, you could probably count on one hand, a number of them that don't come with a trauma history, you know, when you start to listen to what they're saying, and, you know, I think it's really, really common in the helping professions generally, that people have been drawn to this sort of work because of their own history of trauma. And I think the key take home really, is you need to do your own work, I think, you know, you really need to do that work of understanding yourself, get to grips with what parts are being activated, you don't have to do ifs, there's many forms of therapy where you can explore these things, it's just, the thing that's resonating strongly with me at the moment is that, you know, those parts of yourself understanding which parts are being activated by the roles that you're finding yourself in and which parts are not getting a voice and, you know, maybe feeling resentful that they're not getting a voice. And you really need to, I think, I think we all really need to take that time to just sit with ourselves. And whether it's just mindful reflection, walking the dog in the woods, going for a swim, whatever it might be, it's taking that time to be with ourselves to understand ourselves better, and, and also to do that deeper work through through therapy, through training, through reading through, you know, all the things that we do that help us to grow as humans and as professionals.
Wendy Kendall 1:12:30
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, thanks to both of you for this, like really stimulating conversation, because I think it's helped me to really understand how supporting people in private practice is, does have its place in terms of, you know, allowing or holding space for parts of them that may have been stuck in trauma spaces, to actually then go on to have developmental experiences as they kind of update themselves. So if you see what I mean. And, and so just thinking about that path, those parallel tracks has been a real kind of mind shift for me. That actually, there is something really valid and healthy about having that that post traumatic growth track that runs alongside the trauma healing track, and and both help one another. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. This is why I enjoy connecting with my clinical colleagues and having these conversations.
Dr Yvonne Waft 1:13:51
Yeah, yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko 1:13:55
And yeah, very stimulating and hearing more about you, Wendy. Yeah, it's yeah, it's really, obviously, we've spoke about it. Yeah. But when these it's been quite nice to hear. Yeah, it kind of brings people together. When we figure out
Dr Yvonne Waft 1:14:14
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Another thing that comes out of private practice, isn't it being able to get on coaching programmes that give you that connection and that community through, for example, the TPPA process, you know, I've met loads of really, really lovely people through it. And it's, again, it's another area of growth and development. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Wendy Kendall 1:14:37
And yeah, and what I also like thinking about is how you can design into your private practice the things that you just want for yourself. Do you know what I mean? So yeah, talking about
Dr Monika Wieliczko 1:14:49
exactly.
Wendy Kendall 1:14:53
Okay, thanks so much for being here. This today. I've enjoyed this. So much. And I'm hoping our listeners have I'm sure they have really enjoyed this and benefited from it as well. Thanks to you. Thanks so much. And thank you to Monica village Co. And
Dr Monika Wieliczko 1:15:13
thank you so much.
Wendy Kendall 1:15:16
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