Dr. Julie Smith

The core thing about mental health is you feel so out of control and overwhelmed and distressed.

But as soon as you see an avenue for something that you can do, your mind has a guide to follow.

And when I was sort of working with probably young women mostly, who would come along feeling that I was going to fix them in some way or that all the things that life could throw at you, they didn't know how to deal with it or that they didn't believe they could cope.

All that changed between the beginning of therapy and the end of therapy, life was still stressful for them and they still had lots of stuff to face, but they just realised they could trust themselves to do something with it.

I hope you're all good.

I'm currently sat in my kitchen.

Yeah, it's sort of exciting and terrifying all in the same kind of thing, really.

It's sort of... You never imagine it for yourself.

You never imagine that anything like that's going to happen.

And I had a thought about that on the train on the way here, actually, because I was holding my book and then I became aware of people on the train.

She's holding her own book!

And I thought, oh...

I remember back to being a kid when I was reading kind of self-helpy type books as a teenager.

If I'd have known then or if someone had said to me, you know, you're going to write one of those in the future.

I would never have believed it.

It's so brilliant.

But yeah, I mean, it's all good.

And, you know, when I go to these sort of big live events and things and there's people there that say, oh, it's helped me in this way or that chapter changed things for me, then it's just that sort of the reminder really of why I'm doing it, why I started in the first place and that it's worthwhile.

And yeah, so...

Yeah, because I think when you're recording or you're making content, it's not a conversation, is it?