Off Air X Therapy Works
Off Air with Jane & Fi
This crossover episode introduces psychotherapist Julia Samuel and her podcast, Therapy Works, to the Off Air audience. The conversation exp
Key takeaways
- Julia Samuel advises seeking therapists with professional accreditation from bodies like UKCP or BACP.
- The 'Change the Channel' technique is a CBT tool suggested to interrupt middle-of-the-night spiraling by focusing on a soothing image.
Main topics
- Psychotherapy accreditation
- Therapy Works podcast format
Notable quotes
The most personal is often the most universal.
Conclusion
A practical guide to understanding therapy and managing mental well-be
Transcript preview
Speaker 5 (0:00) Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Speaker 2 (0:03) Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your Vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only. Not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. Requires iPhone 11 or later. Speaker 5 (0:30) How do we truly navigate life's hardest moments? I'm Julia Samuel, psychotherapist and bestselling author. In my podcast, Therapy Works, I open the therapy room for candid, insightful conversations with people known and unknown. Discover what my guests have learnt and failed to learn about resilience and human connection. Listen to Therapy Works today, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (1:02) This episode of Off Air is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Thanks to research, children's cancer survival has doubled in the last 50 years. But too many young lives are still lost to cancer, and many who survive are left with lifelong effects from treatment. Cancer Research UK Speaker 3 (1:22) is determined to change this. For children like Tony, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia last year, aged three, he joined a Cancer Research UK trial, testing whether more personalised treatment approaches can help more children survive and with fewer side effects. Speaker 4 (1:40) Cancer Research UK is the biggest charitable funder of research. into children's and young people's cancers in the UK and is driving forward the progress that young patients so urgently need. They support the Speaker 3 (1:52) very best science across the country and around the world to unlock discoveries about cancers in young people and translate these into new and better treatments. Speaker 4 (2:01) Tony is now one year into his three-year treatment plan and is doing really well and excited to be starting school this month. Speaker 3 (2:08) Discover more about what Cancer Research UK is doing to help children and young people like Tony. live longer, better lives at cruk.org slash children. Speaker 4 (2:26) Julia Samuel is a brilliant woman. She's an esteemed psychotherapist. She's a Times contributor. She's a presenter of the podcast Therapy Works, a podcast about mental health and some of life's challenges. She hears from both known and unknown voices. I've been on Therapy Works myself. I've really enjoyed it. It has now joined the Times podcast family. Welcome, Therapy Works. Julia spoke to Fi and I for an off-air Therapy Works mashup episode. And we found out a little bit more about Julia and her podcast. So, Speaker 3 (2:59) Julia, why don't you tell us your exciting news? You're coming into our stable, I believe. I am coming into the Speaker 5 (3:05) Times deck of podcasts, which I am very excited about. And this is a weird connection. But I used to work in a big organisation, the NHS, and I worked with a charity, Child Bereavement UK, and I've been working on my own for about 10, 12 years. And although you really couldn't compare the organisations, coming into a system and an organisation where you can have a lanyard and... You Speaker 4 (3:37) can't beat Speaker 5 (3:38) a lanyard. I love a lanyard. You know, when I was at St Mary's, I got Tempe off at Costa Coffee with my lanyard. It beeped open doors. So as I walked into the... I don't get that here, do I? Speaker 4 (3:51) You won't get a lanyard, I'm afraid. No, but... Speaker 5 (3:53) Get a discount either way. No, Speaker 4 (3:54) just get Speaker 5 (3:54) the local... Speaker 2 (3:55) Do I? Yeah. What Speaker 5 (3:57) do I Speaker 3 (3:58) need to show? You Speaker 4 (3:59) just have to say you work here. Speaker 3 (4:00) OK. You can get money off in the ITSU down by London Bridge Station. OK. And Jane and I are here entirely for the discounted gym membership. Yes, well, I can Speaker 5 (4:10) see Speaker 4 (4:10) it's Speaker 3 (4:10) really doing the business. Be careful, Julia. Speaker 4 (4:14) You've only just joined the organisation. And we need Speaker 5 (4:17) picking up. We're very low on confidence. We need Speaker 4 (4:19) you Speaker 3 (4:19) to help us. Obviously, Speaker 5 (4:21) you need a lot of therapy between you. You probably need couples therapy, actually. Speaker 3 (4:24) Do you know what? I love that you've mentioned that because sometimes I think we do. Actually, we've been working together now for 10 years and we work together every day. I spend more time with Jane than my partner. I mean, it's just a treat. She's your work wife. Well, my marriage only lasted Speaker 4 (4:39) 11 years. Speaker 4 (4:42) We're very close. Dangerous territory. Close to a record. Can you tell us about your podcast and what people might get out of it? Yes. Speaker 5 (4:51) So the podcast is called Therapy Works and it invites well-known voices like Mary Berry, who is the first episode, who is an absolute... I mean, she's the most marvellous woman. I want to be more Mary Berry. And... We ask them what is a particular challenge they are facing or have faced. And then through the challenge that they talk about, we learn about what they find difficult, what supports them to manage it, and what they've learned from it. And I think, you know, the most personal is often the most universal. So when they hear her talking about her son, Will died. we can understand what grief feels like because we recognise what she's saying in ourselves. But the other thing about the podcast is that we also have unheard voices, people who've just written in who are facing a particular challenge. It may be that they have anxiety or that they can't find a job or that they have been diagnosed with cancer. There is no limit to what people's challenges are. And they are given as much... presence and time on the podcast as well-known voices and I don't think we hear I mean we do through your show actually but often I don't think we hear enough of kind of real people that we can really see ourselves through in that way as well. I Speaker 3 (6:19) would completely agree with you on that and of course the way that we hear from other people now is often when they're on send, they're sending out their message on social media. It's not a true reflection of ourselves. And undoubtedly, it's making it quite hard, isn't it, to be very honest about all of the stuff that actually most of us are going through. I Speaker 5 (6:45) agree. And I think the big thing about being on transmit is that if our kind of window of receive is really narrowed, our capacity to be in relationship is also narrowed. So I think what's important about the conversations that I have with my guests is that you hear that by... Speaker 5 (7:06) I mean, it's therapeutic, it isn't therapy, by someone kind of getting in touch, what they're finding difficult, voicing it, and then seeing how I respond to it changes their relationship with it. And then