The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - How does Knitting improve mental health?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. Coming up today, knitting is more than just a hobby. Yes, you heard me right, knitting.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Join me and my guest today as we enter the fascinating world of needles and yarn, where creativity intertwines with mental health. Have you ever wondered how a simple stitch can soothe the mind and uplift the soul? Every knit and purl is a thread of tranquility, where stitching is serenity. Discover how the gentle rhythm of needles can mend the mind and mend the soul one stitch at a time. Stay tuned as we explore and unravel the therapeutic benefits of knitting and the secrets behind

Starting point is 00:01:46 every loop and twist. Hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. I like to bring you a variety of topics in this podcast. If you've been here for any or all of the previous 116 episodes, you will know that no two episodes are the same. I love how we as qualified or even aspiring psychologists can begin to bring things that are important to us to the way we practice and the people we serve. It's not about us, but actually as humans, we are absolutely a really important part of the intervention. In today's episode, I am joined by Dr. Mia Hobbs,

Starting point is 00:02:41 a qualified clinical psychologist and a knitting for mental well-being advocate it's a fascinating chat and I loved it I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side of this hi Mia lovely to have you here on the podcast today thank you for joining us hi thanks for having me so we first crossed paths on Instagram um where you advocate the beauty and the benefit of knitting which is obviously interesting from a mental health perspective but you caught my eye because you're a clinical psychologist who's also a big fan of knitting aren't you yeah that's right no I've been using um knitting more and more in my work but I joined Instagram I guess for the knitting having not thought there was anything on Instagram particularly for me back in I think 2017.

Starting point is 00:03:31 I just love how varied and niche social media can be yeah I love it. So before we plough into knitting could we hear a little bit about you and how you got into psychology please? Sure so I think I knew I wanted to be a clinical psychologist about maybe most of the way through my undergraduate psychology degree. I did a year kind of a placement year in my third year in undergrad and was working in a school with kids with autism and I was looking into educational psychology but I was more I think attracted to doing more intervention than I think maybe educational psychologists often have the opportunity to do and then after that yeah took a more kind of clinical route. And I think I did a couple of assistant psychologist posts before then training at UEL in London.

Starting point is 00:04:30 Perfect. When did you qualify? I qualified in 2008. So I don't actually know how many years that is now. That means that you qualified the year that I I started so we had a little bit of overlap but um yes quite some years now it's what I think I'm about I was I think I was starting about 15 years ago something like that so you probably qualified about 15 years ago something like that lovely and you mentioned that you work with children and young people have you done that since qualifying yes so I've only I've I see occasionally I will see an adult in private practice but I've I've worked in the NHS from 2008 when I qualified to 2017 and that was all um yeah with children and young people in partly in primary schools and then in

Starting point is 00:05:27 kind of more generic camps. Can I ask what factors were involved in your decision to leave the NHS and that's with no barbs or kind of pressure because I've done the same myself like if that feels okay for you to answer it I'd love to know and I'm sure our audience would love to know too. Yeah absolutely it was a really tough decision and it was a decision actually that like I think that was also the time that was the first time I intentionally used a knitting project to get me through a transition in like my life I think I think I'd done it but not really thought about it intentionally before that but when I left the NHS I think the team I was working in there had been a lot of changes as most NHS teams I'd gone back after having my second child part-time and I think was struggling

Starting point is 00:06:21 with being the kind of middle level of the CAMHS team where we were seeing, you know, we were of the level that we're expected to take the more serious, risky clinical cases at the same time as supervising more junior members of the team. Also then attending some kind of more management type meetings and all of that in only part time, which felt like a lot of pressure and that there was enough, just about enough time to do all the things you kind of had to do to hit all of the targets of how many clients you're seeing. Are you supervising everybody? But not enough time to explore anything kind of above that in terms of like interest or CPD or that was really difficult. And I'm married to an NHS doctor and I felt like it was not really sustainable, sadly, for our family. I think it had also been winter and my kids had been sick very often um so in that sense it was a really difficult there was some things in the team that were really unhelpful and I didn't really agree with I felt quite frustrated I think and not being able to do anything about it so it felt like a very sad decision at the time and wasn't really one that I wanted to make and it

Starting point is 00:07:46 was not done in a sensible way in the sense that um I didn't really have private work set up beforehand obviously I had a three-month notice period so I could get things kind of a bit up and running but I didn't really it wasn't really a planned departure um but I knew that private work was going to be more flexible for family life rather than finding another NHS job so that was the point at which I kind of left and took a leap into the unknown and I think yeah in terms of going back to the knitting side of things I feel like being in private practice has allowed me to be a bit more kind of flexible and innovative I suppose in terms of exploring other interests yeah yeah absolutely even today you know an aspiring journalist messaged me and said could you help with this research and

Starting point is 00:08:40 it sounded really really interesting and I really wanted to do it and so I've been like yes but obviously when we're in an employed capacity it makes that much trickier um so yeah I hear you like damn near broke my heart when I left the NHS as well it's an organization that I passionately believe in and I think that it offers a really pretty impressive service in very stretched resources um to many many patients across the the country across the UK for that matter but it's you know we absolutely need to be looking after that our own well-being and the needs of our own family and you know it may not be something that we do forever it may be something that we you know choose to stay away from forever but you know we we are people first and and psychologists second and we've got to have good work-life balance.

Starting point is 00:09:27 Yeah, and I feel like that has, you know, there are a lot of benefits, I suppose, in terms of, you know, being able to just decide that I won't miss any of my kids' assemblies or sports days or things like that, that, you know, for me, I was able to do that at that point um and that was fortunate and yeah and it might not be forever yeah like you say that um I would like to think I'll go back to the NHS at some point but yeah we'll see yeah I hear you like when they randomly

Starting point is 00:09:59 throw in an extra music assembly at 2 p.m on a Friday and you're like oh well I can go but I'm acutely aware that I wouldn't be able to if I wasn't in private practice that would be a bit more of a struggle yeah exactly and there just seems to be at the end of every term a whole bunch of those extra things where you have to show up we're approaching the end of year six now for my eldest and then there's even more kind of leaving stuff um that happens as well um so tell us about you and knitting when did you first start to learn to knit? So I think I learned I remember having some like Donald Duck knitting needles as a child and my mum was a knitter kind of on off knitter and she um she would you know periodically you just like kind

Starting point is 00:10:46 of watch her and she just could be clicking I remember thinking she's just clicking those needles together and it's kind of just happening by magic and I would ask to try and she'd help me and I'd make some very tight and frustrating little knitting like a kind of the size of a mouse blanket um so I think I did that a few times throughout childhood like my kids have also done and didn't you know it didn't stick I was always attracted to making things with my hands like I would do I don't know Fimo I had a cross stitch phase I was always doing something like that and I feel like there was a part of my brain that wanted like a project that was unrelated to, I don't know, work or anything that mattered, really. Just like a little creative thing.

Starting point is 00:11:34 Oh, you were an early adopter for mindfulness, Mia. Yeah, exactly. But I think I didn't really think about it in any formal way and then when I it was actually when I started um training at UEL my mum's had met somebody whose daughter had also done the clinical psychology doctorate and this um trainee psychologist had learned to bricklay because she really had this strong desire to I don't even know if she needed a brick wall, but that she had a strong desire to do something that was completely unrelated to psychology. And at that point, my mum was in a phase of knitting at that time and had, you know, shawls on the arm of the sofa that if you were cold.

Starting point is 00:12:19 So I was at her house and I just put wrapped shawl around me because I was cold. And she said, you could make one of those. I think you should learn to knit and I said okay fine like just to kind of keep her quiet really to be honest and um so she showed me the stitches I think my hands I always feel like people's hands remember even if their brains don't a bit like when I get my clarinet out that I used to play my kind of hands can remember even though I feel like I can't read music anymore um so she showed me how to do things and before I got on the train back to London we went to John Lewis and bought some yarn and I was just about to do my first year exams at the time and I feel like it was a triangular shawl I actually still have it so it starts off with like five stitches and

Starting point is 00:13:02 then gets gradually bigger and bigger and bigger and the wingspan of this thing is now you know huge like a couple of meters maybe and um it was quite good that it started small so I could just when I was new at knitting just do a row was very quick and when I was having a break in my revision I would just do a couple of rows and then I go back to my revision and I felt I've always felt like it is like using a very different part of my brain to what was required of a lot of me. It is still in my job now, but also particularly in training where you're kind of cramming information in and you're doing a lot of thinking and analysing and talking. And this was just a very different, I felt, part of my brain and I feel like it kind of opens a different trap door and then different thoughts emerge if I do a bit of knitting. So often now I'll bring some knitting with me to my face-to-face clinic and before somebody comes into the room I just sit for five minutes and get my

Starting point is 00:14:01 knitting out and then I think, oh maybe I'll just ask them about this thing or something new will come to me that I hadn't thought about and wouldn't have thought about if I was deliberately trying to think about it I think so that was when I started and actually as it happens a couple of other girls on my training course had also so some of them say I taught them to knit which may or may not be true. I remember my friend Rachel, her grandma had taught her to knit and she, I don't know, had some knitting at home. So a few of us used to randomly. Like knit a bit together, we'll talk a bit about it. So that kind of, I think, fanned the flame a little bit. But it was just something I did in revision breaks quietly at home and I don't think I realized how helpful it was for my kind of mental well-being until much later really but that was where it started

Starting point is 00:14:51 I love that and I love the idea of of the other trainee suddenly being like I need to build a brick wall so funny I guess I don't know who this person is and whether they have this brick wall it's so funny I guess I don't know who this person is and whether they have this brick wall that's actively in the way in their garden I like to think they do yeah because I guess a lot often a lot of the work we do you don't necessarily get that tangible result do you you might get a felt sense of actually the importance of what we do but so maybe there's something around you know I need to build a brick wall I want to knit a jumper like I need to do something but I love the idea that you can kind of use it as a way of decompressing from therapy sessions

Starting point is 00:15:37 but also kind of building your mind up for therapy sessions as well and so that becomes kind of part of the the knitted product doesn't it that all of those I think it's why it's so evocative you know I remember still going to see the Bay of Tapestry um on my school trip when I was in year seven so I was like 11 um but the idea that all of the people and all of the hours and the hands and the work and the dedication that went into creating that. And I think that's what the real beauty of handmade is. When I had my first born, one of my friends who was actually a clinical psychologist, gave me some beautiful blankets and kind of knitted teddies and things and it's just it's just a gift that is really tricky to put into words how powerful that is because

Starting point is 00:16:33 you need to pre-order that don't you you know you can't just suddenly have that it's it's being held in mind and somebody choosing to mindfully holding you hold your mind even whilst they're doing the planning even whilst they're going to the wool shop you know and then every time they're knitting that's really lovely. Yeah and I think when you do it you really you know you realize just how many hours of somebody's free time they've spent doing this thing or, you know, choosing the right colour or the right yarn or, you know. And I think that was one of the things that really made me realise how beneficial it was and how you could use it very intentionally. It was when I was part of my last NHS job in the CAMHS team, there was a colleague of mine who was having twins and they were very special babies because they were following her breast cancer and she was a

Starting point is 00:17:32 very, you know, very big character and a loved member of the team and we, lots of people came up to me because they knew I knitted and they said, oh I'd really like to knit something for these babies, could you help me do something? And and I was thinking actually I'm not sure these poor babies need like 15 half finished cardigans or um and you know they grow so quickly don't they newborns that um you could put in a lot of effort and make something they would only wear for five minutes so I said look why don't I buy some yarn and we'll all we can knit squares and I had actually as a trainee as I was a knitter and in my last placement um all of the team there had made me this amazing um like patchwork cushion and they'd sewn it all together and each of the members of the team had knitted a bit of this patchwork cushion and some

Starting point is 00:18:24 of them were you know quite dodgy knitters and they'd taken photographic evidence to show that even the consultant psychiatrist had done some knitting and so and so had been tempted to take it home and get his wife to do it but they'd actually persuaded him he could learn to knit and it was such an amazing gift I've still got it now and yeah so that was what inspired me so I didn't make anyone join in but lots of well one person maybe um he was a very good friend of the person whose babies they were lots of people came together and I so there were many people who'd done a bit of knitting before but lots of people who hadn't and we all kind of sat together at lunchtime and even if it was like 10-15 minutes

Starting point is 00:19:02 people put their work down they sat in the staff room not at their desks and did a bit of knitting and it opened up different conversations and people had a bit of non-working time and I really noticed how it made a big difference to team morale so I think that was you know what made me think about more seriously, could I actually use it as part of my therapy work? Really? Oh, that's just so lovely. And that brought a little tear to my eye, the idea that everybody in the team knitted you a square. I know! That's really, really powerful, really lovely and just really, really nice. Do you ever use that in session with clients do you ever kind of knit together and then the client takes away the work with them so that they can kind of hold that

Starting point is 00:19:52 in mind as a tangible product of the work they've done with you yes I have done that um and have recently finished like a therapy blanket that I'm making with a client at the moment where we've both knitted squares and put them together and sometimes we do a bit of knitting as part of you know an engagement strategy and then eventually once they feel comfortable talking their knitting needles don't come out so often but yeah it's been you know lovely I've done it a few times actually in different workplaces where we've made a blanket together and that has felt nice when it's had a purpose I think um yeah and some people I've taught them how to knit or maybe reminded them and then they've gone away and it's been a a kind of almost like a transitional object but something that they've needed to hold on to through therapy sessions like to keep them

Starting point is 00:20:45 going until the next week or over a break for example or to make something for a significant person in their life to kind of um yeah help them feel close to them also I think a lot of us as knitters were taught by family members and it helps us feel closer to other people you know maybe who aren't with us anymore so I think there's lots of ways in which I found it's been um yeah really helpful and I've also um started having these conversations on my own podcast with people about why they knit and how it benefits their mental health and people have shared some amazing stories because I think there's just so much anecdotal evidence that knitting can be hugely beneficial to your mental health. Yeah. Just before we hit record, you were trying to teach me to knit.

Starting point is 00:21:35 And it did immediately transport me to being cosied up in an armchair at my granny's house because she was an avid knitter. And she only really seemed to stop as her cancer advanced unfortunately but she always just had a knitting bag full of knitting the needles and you know projects and and balls of wool and I think those are almost really nice things to pass down the generation as well aren't they so that you can kind of finish someone's knitting and I'm kind of a bit sad now that I didn't think to do that um I don't know where they are now but yeah like it's really powerful isn't it and you know that idea that maybe my fingers do remember I just need to I need to have some help with casting on that's where I was struggling

Starting point is 00:22:19 yeah my neighbor no there's actually an amazing um organization now they're based in the US but they've got knitters all over the world um called loose ends who were based around that exact um issue of a loved one no longer being able to knit or not being around anymore and having an unfinished project so now they have they match projects with finishers who volunteer their kind of skills so you can volunteer for them and say I can do I don't know knitting and crochet and they find a project that somebody's been left with who doesn't knit and then people finish them and it's it was amazing to speak to them for my podcast about you know the I had thought about how nice it would be for the person who had who was grieving to have this item finished maybe it was a teddy bear for their

Starting point is 00:23:13 the grandchild or something like that but what I hadn't thought about was the um that lots of the people who'd applied to be finishers were actually also people who'd lost somebody through grief or wanted to do something nice for another person so it's an amazing project but oh that's that's got repair shop written all over it hasn't been watched that would make a fantastic series you should pitch that as a as a tv idea because Davina McCall could present that, surely. Maybe Claudia Wilkin with her love of knitwear. Like, that's got legs. Kirsty, she could do it. She loves a bit of knitting, doesn't she? That's got legs, that has.

Starting point is 00:23:52 That's a really lovely idea. And it was making me think about a fantastic rainbow bright jumper that my granny knitted me. And she also knitted me a My Little Pony jumper. But I only ever got to wear it once or twice, because I left it on holiday. All of those hours, I never got it back. And, you know, sad.

Starting point is 00:24:12 I guess I really enjoyed it when I wore it. But, yeah, sad times, sad times. It's tough to lose hand knitted items. Yeah, I nearly lost a, I'd just finished knitting this cardigan and I'd not been knitting. It was quite a long time of me being a knitter before I knitted items yeah I nearly lost a um I'd just finished knitting this cardigan and I'd not been knitting it was quite a long time of me being a knitter before I knitted garments and I'd knitted this cardigan and was really proud of it it was one of the first you know like wearable like clothes I'd made and then it ended up in a bag that was left on a bus in from like Barcelona airport um I was reunited with it but um yeah that was quite sad when I thought I'd lost it for a few days I think it's gone

Starting point is 00:24:52 I love that you got it back how do you even begin to knit a jumper is it like is it stitched together or is it like one thing uh they can be stitched together. I can't quite tell from you. I think your cardigan is pieced. Yeah. But so, for example, this jumper I'm wearing now is cast on the neckline and knitted in the round. And then it's knitted kind of down to the shoulders and then you put the sleeves on hold and then knit down the torso. So it's knitted in kind of three tubes basically um so usually I prefer to knit them kind of all in one piece because you can try them on as you go so then you know if it's long enough or if it fits okay that's easier oh that is just so clever so clever how has the cost of living crisis affected the knitting

Starting point is 00:25:46 community has yarn prices shot through the roof or are they fairly consistent I think with yarn um there is like the knitting is not a cheap way of getting clothes the way I see it is that it's kind of a hobby that I'm going to knit anyway I happen to end result in an end product which is also wearable for me which is almost a bonus because I think I knit 90% of why I knit is for the process rather than for the outcome but what surprised me actually about knitting was the um my how it's changed my I don't know if the word is body image or self-concept or kind of uh relationship with clothing as a result of being somebody who can make their own clothes um but I think you can buy yarn in a pound shop and you can buy yarn that is hand dyed and um

Starting point is 00:26:40 super expensive but um yeah so I think you they can there's something there for every budget but I guess like everything probably most things have got more expensive more expensive recently thank you and in terms of research I've sort of got some vague vague fact rattling around at the back of my brain about people who are using their brains in certain ways are more or less likely to develop certain kind of degenerative conditions but I don't know if I've made that up is there anything around knitting that you're aware of that's kind of in that realm of kind of the actual functional kind of benefits for our brain so i suppose the research i've more looked into is more on a mental health angle so in terms of the research about it being beneficial for

Starting point is 00:27:34 our mental health rather than um to do with thinking about degenerative conditions but i guess generally i guess the research in that vein is that using you know your brain or using different skills is helpful for retaining them and I guess it depends probably how you you're using your knitting because I guess one of the great things I think about knitting is that you you and I could need very different things from knitting and it could offer us both so if what you wanted was something very simple to do while you're watching telly to relax, we don't really have to think about it. But your hands are moving or you wanted something to do during, I don't know, a really long Zoom training where you just have to sit and listen and it helps you focus. It would certainly help me focus if I was sitting and listening to something um you could do that whereas if you wanted something to I call it active relaxation so

Starting point is 00:28:32 you want something to completely absorb your brain so that you actually can't think about something else something is not happening you can't think about what you're making for dinner tomorrow or the last client you saw or any of those things you could have that so I tend to have projects in both camps on the needles at all times so I've got something super simple I can do while I'm for example listening to my kids read or I can whip it out in the dentist waiting room and then I've got something really complicated that absorbs all of my brain and means I can only think about that actually and I can't also think about something else at the same time. So I think in terms of the research there's certainly research that it can help with things like ruminative thoughts all of the research is

Starting point is 00:29:21 quite you know it's hard to get research funded when it's about knitting. And Betson Corkill, who was basically the authority on therapeutic knitting, used to have to call it a, I can't remember what she called it, a rhythmical bilateral psychosocial intervention. And everybody wanted to know about it. And if she said the K word, as she called it, everybody turned off and called her the mad knitting lady. So but it's very like I interviewed an oncology nurse who'd done a study about compassion fatigue using knitting with oncology nurses. And she said, you know, her point was it's such low hanging fruit, like it's such a cheap, easy and accessible intervention to offer that, you know, what could possibly, possibly you know it's highly unlikely to be harmful in any way um what could possibly be the problem with it but there's big there's you know being a big study that's um qualitative I think that was 3 000 knitters completed a study about I think they completed measures of depression and anxiety and it was kind of demonstrating the more you knit the more likely it is to have benefits for your mental health but you know as part of my podcast people have told me

Starting point is 00:30:29 some amazing stories about things like um reducing physical pain people with chronic illness um lots of people using it to kind of overcome bereavement i guess we can also borrow research from things like emdr because i guess it is a bilateral, a form of bilateral stimulation. And I think those of us who do it every day are probably doing a bit of that stuff that EMDR does just with the events of our daily lives every day. Absolutely, absolutely. So we have mainly mental health professionals that listen to the podcast, but sometimes there are people who are just really interested in mental health. So if I just briefly say what bilateral is. So bilateral is when we're using both sides of our brain. So

Starting point is 00:31:15 for example, when I move my left arm here, it's my right side of my brain that's doing that. And when I use my right arm, it's the left side of my brain. So when we're doing things like tapping or knitting or drumming or even walking, or therapies such as EMDR, we're activating both sides of those brains. So I love I love that idea for knitting. I think the only drawback I can think about really is if you were going to do that in a forensic setting is giving people potentially quite sharp pointy sticks. But yeah, like, you know know what's the danger you know is you're not going to harm someone by knitting no I think the main thing I found because I've taught lots of people to knit I've done some therapeutic knitting groups in schools and run

Starting point is 00:31:56 retreats and I think the main um challenge I suppose is when people are already in a period of their life where they're struggling let's say they were experiencing low mood then learning a new thing that might potentially be a bit tricky and frustrating it might be just too hard actually in that moment of their life they might not be able to cope with the kind of setbacks of it's not going to be that easy it might be too frustrating and that's why I guess when I talk about knitting I'm not advocating everybody starts to knit you know when I mention it in therapy I mention kind of I talk a bit about knitting and how I use knitting and I say have you got any

Starting point is 00:32:37 interest in knitting and when people say no I then don't talk about knitting anymore but we think about is there anything in your life that maybe you've done before maybe feels familiar maybe you did it in childhood when you were younger because often when I see teenagers they've kind of given up more creative hobbies that they used to do as a younger child because I guess we we offer those things to young children all the time and then I guess we just stop when people get older so often people can think about something that they've done before that uses a similar type of skill something that's a bit creative or it focuses on using their hands like it could be lego or it could be I've got somebody who uses diamond painting who I'm working with at the moment and um it could be yeah it could be painting, colouring, cooking, cake decorating.

Starting point is 00:33:26 You know, there's lots of different things that people might find more accessible than knitting. If, for example, they're not, you know, in a period of their life where learning something new feels like easy for them at the moment. Yeah, but there is also that importance of a sense of mastery and the excitement you can get about you know learning something new and what we know um certainly from a compassion focused therapy perspective is that that activates our drive and humans sometimes we can be lacking in drive so that idea of kind of being engaged learning something can be really really really lovely and um over the summer my little boy and I made a few of those friendship bracelets that you kind of weave around a circular thing by crossing the strings and it reminded me that I had a summer of of doing that when I was younger and absolutely loved it and I

Starting point is 00:34:15 thought oh I should make more of these but um how many friendship bracelets does one one girl need but um you know I absolutely yeah similar to your I used to like Fimo Fimo Fimo whatever it's called yeah Hamer beads like I loved all of that yeah and I think you know we do live in a world where actually you know a lot of well I suppose a lot of what you and I do doesn't have a very tangible product and things like therapy it's you know whether things are going well or you know it might not be very linear progress there might be lots of times with, you know, whether things are going well or, you know, it might not be very linear progress. There might be lots of times where, like, you know, things don't feel like they have a very clear path, maybe. Whereas I think that's part of the appeal of a knitting pattern.

Starting point is 00:34:57 It is kind of a formula of if you start with this and you do this you get to this and I think one of the other things that's been super helpful for me and for lots of other knitters is the idea of having somewhere to make safe mistakes so it's a kind of part of creativity I guess is trying things and failing in a space that feels like that's safe and acceptable like nothing terrible will happen and particularly for knitting unlike if you were I don't know painting um everything is undoable you can just unravel it and you've always got unless you get the scissors out in a dramatic way what you started with you've still got your two sticks and a ball of yarn so that I think has been really helpful in helping me to grow my kind of self-compassion around making

Starting point is 00:35:44 mistakes in other areas of my life as well actually because I think the assumption for me and all knitters is that you will make mistakes all the time you know I'm knitting this traitor sweater I unraveled the entirety of it you know yesterday all of what I got to and started again because I didn't quite like the fit of the the roll neck I love that oh I'm looking forward to seeing how your traitors sweater um develops over time I was definitely admiring Claudia's knitwear on traitors um yeah and obviously people can come out and check that out for themselves um where is your Instagram what's your Instagram address, please, Mia? So the Instagram is knitting is therapeutic.

Starting point is 00:36:28 Great. And tell us a little bit about your podcast. What's that called and where can people listen? So the podcast is called Why I Knit. And yeah, it's a podcast where I interview each week a different knitter about why they knit and how it benefits their mental health so we've got a very diverse range of knitters some knitwear designers some people who've contacted me to share amazing stories about what knitting has done for them in their lives um so that yeah that's called why i knit and it's available on my website which is therapeuticknitting.org or on any of the major podcast apps thank you so much and you've inspired me i'm going to get my neighbor to teach me how to knit and I'm going to keep you posted and maybe by the time this podcast episode is out which is

Starting point is 00:37:12 probably going to be around March time I think I will be able to share some progress of my of my knitting along with the socials and perhaps in the editing for this episode super thank you so much for your time and there's you certainly left us with a lot of interesting food for thoughts you're welcome thanks for having me you're so welcome thank you again to our guest dr mia hobbs please do go and follow her over on her instagram account which is knitting is therapeutic you can find Maya there and if you do that you will see that she has finished her traitor's jumper and it looks marvellous now I have to confess my knitting has not got a lot further since we met but I did bump in to a craft group where they were doing knitting in a local library to me and

Starting point is 00:38:10 so I popped in and I chatted to the lovely ladies there and if you're watching on video you will be able to see some of the I asked if I could take a photo not of them but of some of their work and they agreed also gave me a really useful youtube site to check out which is a lady called very pink knits and there should be an image of that on your screen right now they said that there's a really great video on there for how to cast on that uses like a plain background so that you can clearly see what you are doing. So I am going to still run with that gauntlet and I'm going to try to learn to knit and I will keep you posted. Please do come and follow me on my socials to see how that journey unfolds. I am Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. I'd love to know what you think to this episode. Has it

Starting point is 00:39:05 inspired you to get crafty or to bring any of your passions into the therapy room for the clients that you serve? Do come and let me know either on YouTube at Dr. Marianne Trent. Like and subscribe when you're there and or in my free Facebook group, The Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. It is my pleasure to bring this work to you. Please do check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective book and The Clinical Psychologist Collective book and let me know what you need, what you want. Check out The Aspiring Psychologist course for mental mental health professionals which you can do by clicking the link in any of my social media bios i will look forward to bringing the next episode to you as an mp3 from 6 a.m on monday or it's usually available on youtube the weekend before i love

Starting point is 00:40:01 being part of your world i love having you be part of mine stay kind to yourselves and I'll see you very soon take care if you're looking to become a psychologist then let this be your guide with this podcast that you'll start you'll be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist podcast My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one

Starting point is 00:41:07 and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me, you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - How does Knitting improve mental health?

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