How The Internal Family Systems Model Can Help Build Confidence Online With Wendy Kendall

How The Internal Family Systems Model Can Help Build Confidence Online With Wendy Kendall

[00:00:00] John Cordray: Most of us in the world, we spend a lot of time online. We look at social media, that's practically a part of our culture. Now, just about wherever you're at, if you have a, a cell phone, smartphone, whatever you want to call it, you have instant access to getting online. It could be a, a blessing to, to have that and it could be a curse.

[00:00:25] John Cordray: And so we're gonna be talking about that very thing. And this episode is how the internal Family systems model can help build confidence online with Wendy Kendall coming right up. 

[00:00:39] Wendy Kendall: Oh, don't worry about today, or things we cannot change. It's over the past. We can 

[00:00:47] John Cordray: erase. Welcome to the Mental Health Today Show.

[00:00:49] John Cordray: My name is John Cordray and I am a licensed therapist and I am also the host of this show. And I'm very happy that you are here listening in wherever you're from, [00:01:00] whatever part of the world you are, you might be driving. You might still be in bed trying to wake up. You might be exercising or going for a walk or going to school, wherever you are.

[00:01:13] John Cordray: Thank you so much for choosing to listen to the show and being a part of the show, and I, I appreciate you and I don't thank you for granted. And some of you might be brand new and you're just trying to checking out the, the podcasts, and I appreciate that and really would love for you to, to be a regular listener and to come back and this is, this show is all about mental health and today in particular, We're gonna be talking about being online and social media and how that can affect us, and then how a lot of times it could tear down our confidence and so many other issues.

[00:01:48] John Cordray: And my guest today is a psychologist. Her name is Wendy Kendall from, is a co-founder of the self-led practice. The healthy virtual workplace [00:02:00] for mental health professionals. So all of you mental health professionals, listen in on this. And if you're not a mental, mental health professional, if I can say that right, I want you to listen too, because this will affect you.

[00:02:12] John Cordray: So Wendy is a British chartered occupational psychologist and internal family systems practitioner who specializes in helping self-employed psychologists, how to grow their private practices, and I love that. And she started her 25 year career as a psychologist for their British army before moving overseas and running her own talent development consultancy.

[00:02:38] John Cordray: Wendy, it is great to have you on the show. Welcome. 

[00:02:41] Wendy Kendall: Thanks so much for having me on your show, John. It's really a pleasure. 

[00:02:45] John Cordray: Oh, it's great. And just to give some context, tell us where you're at right now. 

[00:02:51] Wendy Kendall: So, I am in the southwest of France, just about halfway in between the Atlantic Ocean and the [00:03:00] Mediterranean Ocean, and about an hour north of the Piran Mountain.

[00:03:04] Wendy Kendall: So it's really very rural area that I am. It sounds beautiful. 

[00:03:09] John Cordray: Yeah. . It really is . I love it. So, okay, so you're a British Chartered occupational psychologist and a lot of people in the US we, we understand what a psychologist is, but can you tell us a little bit about what, what is a Chartered occupational psychologist?

[00:03:27] Wendy Kendall: Well, the chartered aspect is basically that I'm a licensed psychologist for the uk and the occupational part of it is that I deal with everything to do with people in work. And so that's why I got really curious also about how we show up as psychologists or therapists in our workplace, in our private practices.

[00:03:50] John Cordray: And I think that is such a great topic because a lot of people who are listening to this are. Going to therapy and they have a therapist or they've [00:04:00] been to, to therapy or they're looking for a therapist and, and a lot of times people don't really take in consideration the human being that's called their therapist and how important it is for the therapist to work on their profession, but also their personal.

[00:04:19] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, definitely. And you know, it's coming back to this topic about how do we create healthy workplaces for ourselves. In my experience, what I've seen is that we go into private practice sometimes because something's not working in, you know, maybe we're working for a certain employer or working in a certain way and that's just not working for us anymore.

[00:04:42] Wendy Kendall: And then we go into private practice. But what we do is we bring the habits. That we were taught, that we learned into private practice with us, and we don't necessarily free ourselves from those what may have been toxic patterns. So that's where I got really curious about it as [00:05:00] an occupational psychologist and just really thinking about how can we help ourselves as therapists, as mental health practitioners to have a mentally healthy workplace for ourselves.

[00:05:13] Wendy Kendall: Well, I 

[00:05:13] John Cordray: think that's a great topic and a. A great pursuit of helping other practitioners to kind of think about themselves and what is it that, whether it's a toxic pattern of behavior or maybe it's something else at work they picked up and they want to go into private practice and, and I always say that even therapists have blind spots.

[00:05:36] Wendy Kendall: Right. Yeah, 

[00:05:37] John Cordray: definitely. And, and we need help with that. And so that's excellent. But, but before we get into that, I would love to know kind of your backstory and what, what prompted you to become a psychologist? Was that something that you always wanted to do, or was it something else that you wanted to do and then you just became one?

[00:05:57] Wendy Kendall: So it's a little bit of a funny [00:06:00] story, and it's not unrelated to this topic for Alina about how media influences us. So I went to university, went to college in the early nineties, and as I was thinking about what did I want to do when I went to university, the big blockbuster movie that was on at the time was The Silence of the Lambs.

[00:06:21] Wendy Kendall: Oh yes. . So it was almost like, like zero moment for me. I was sat in the cinema and you know, this huge screen and there was Clari Sta. Running got this path and she was out jogging, you know, she was at this F B I campus and she was out jogging and she ran up this path and she got to the end and she was kind of huffing and puffing cuz she'd been running and there was this sign at the side of her that said, center for the Behavioral Sciences.

[00:06:52] Wendy Kendall: And I went, that is what I wanna do. . 

[00:06:56] John Cordray: That's great. 

[00:06:58] Wendy Kendall: Yeah. So it [00:07:00] was literally as simple as that. . 

[00:07:03] John Cordray: So, so it, it was the Silence of the Lambs that that movie influenced you. Yes. Just from that one scene. Wow. That is 

[00:07:12] Wendy Kendall: amazing. You kidding me? Just when that 

[00:07:16] John Cordray: Wow. So that's, that's pretty amazing. That's great. And so then you became one.

[00:07:21] John Cordray: And so has it turned out to be like it was in the movies

[00:07:29] Wendy Kendall: Fortunately, fewer serial killers, , 

[00:07:33] John Cordray: that's probably a good 

[00:07:34] Wendy Kendall: thing, right? Exactly. So, so, no, I mean, like, you know, what did Steve Jobs say in that commencement speech? You can never join the dots forward. So, no, it certainly didn't turn out the way that I anticipated. But to be honest, I didn't have great. I hadn't constructed a huge story about what it was going to be like, so you know, it was fine.

[00:07:56] Wendy Kendall: But yeah, looking back, the twists and turns have been a little bit [00:08:00] random. Sometimes 

[00:08:01] John Cordray: you don't. You bring up a really good point there, the twists and turns, because not many of us, no matter what we are doing and for our career, whether it's a mental health professional or a banker, a teacher, not many of us set out to say, I'm going to be this.

[00:08:19] John Cordray: And so often, and some people do, some, somebody might grow up and say, well, I want to be a fireman, and they become one, or I want to be a doctor, and they become one. But I would say most people don't really set out to do a specific thing. It just happens. And maybe it was a person that influenced him or, or a movie that influenced him and they pursued it.

[00:08:42] John Cordray: But getting there, getting to the end that all the, the journey and the twists and turns, that can be really hard in, in the moment, but it could actually define us. It could help us become more resilient. And I think a lot of times the hardships that [00:09:00] we go. Make us ready to be the person that we were meant to be in the career choice that we pursued and ended up becoming.

[00:09:09] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, and I dunno about you, John, but have you ever come across the life fairy where you say, you know, anytime you're tempted to make statements, like definitive statements about something, I always find there's a life fairy. That kind of says, mm, yeah, let's have a think about that. And . So I, I've had a couple of experiences of that.

[00:09:34] Wendy Kendall: When I was at school, my French teacher said to me, how come you're not gonna study for your exams in French? And I said, well, because I've never been out of my hometown at this point. Well, I don't know any French people. I've never been to France. I don't wanna go to France. I don't wanna learn French. And then I met a French guy at university.

[00:09:57] Wendy Kendall: I got married, I had two French kids and I became a French [00:10:00] national , I call it. Yeah, it's the life fairy. And anytime I'm tempted to make a definitive statement that this is it, it's always 180 degree, the opposite. Oh, that's, 

[00:10:14] John Cordray: Yeah, well, and we just, we just never know where we'll end up. We don't know what the journey is, and sometimes if we knew what the journey was gonna be, we may not pursue a certain path.

[00:10:26] John Cordray: Exactly. So you spent a lot of time, speaking of college and university, you'd spent a lot of time studying in particular internal family systems and how that relates to growth and wellbeing and innovation. . Tell me a little bit about, first, what is internal family systems model and then how do you use that in your practice?

[00:10:50] Wendy Kendall: Right, so the Internal Family Systems model has really been developing since the early eighties. The originator is a guy called Dr. Richard [00:11:00] Schwartz and the. Basic idea is that our mind is made up of multiple voices and experiences. So these parts of us that we experience, like our inner inner critics, maybe like our gut instincts, maybe like the little life fairies that speak to us, you know, the small still voice inside.

[00:11:23] Wendy Kendall: All of these descriptions that we have in our popular language actually relate to. An internal experience that is somehow very real . So, you know, we're very often we are having inner conversations with ourselves and Dick Schwartz essentially realize that if we start to engage with our internal experience, what we realized is that there's almost a cast of characters in there.

[00:11:55] Wendy Kendall: And those parts of us might be very young parts of us. [00:12:00] Are still very active in there. There may be slightly old parts. You know, sometimes inner teenagers come out when we perhaps feeling a little bit rebellious or we are resisting something. Maybe we also hear the voices of our mother or our father or other influential people and all of these internal voices.

[00:12:24] Wendy Kendall: Kind of relate to one another in predictable ways. So this was really where I Fs started to unpack this idea that it's not just random voices and thoughts that we have, but really there's a conversation and a dialogue going on inside. And you know, once we start to engage with that and explore it, what is really central to IFS as well is this idea that all of us have.

[00:12:50] Wendy Kendall: A resource within us, which is called Self, and it's usually spelt self with a capital S. And self. Is [00:13:00] this, I mean, you know, in lots of cultures it, it might be, it might be described in different ways, but in IFS, self has these qualities, which are called the eight Cs, and those are courage, curiosity.

[00:13:18] Wendy Kendall: Connection, calm, confidence, creativity, compassion and clarity. And the principle of IFS is that all of us, all of us have access to that, but sometimes it, it can take us, you know, depending on what our experiences have been in, in life and depending on. How active all of our different parts are. That experience of self energy can get kind of hidden, but it's a little bit like the sunshine behind the clouds.

[00:13:51] Wendy Kendall: So in I Fs therapy and using the I Fs model, what we are really trying to do is to help our [00:14:00] clients to engage with those parts of themselves in a way that allows. Allows us to experience also the self qualities. So bringing in curiosity, bringing in calmness, bringing in compassion, and then creativity, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:14:18] Wendy Kendall: So the way in which I use that in my practice, I mean, I do a lot of coaching with psychologists in private practice, and the thing that really strikes me is how demanding on our internal system being in private practice really. And it's not, it's not just the work that we might do supporting our clients, which of course, you know, it, it draws on our emotional energy.

[00:14:45] Wendy Kendall: But often we have, you know, highly trained internal therapist parts that really are highly skilled and they really know how to work with clients and do a really good. But when it comes to working on our practice [00:15:00] and maybe marketing it, maybe writing books, maybe putting blog articles out there, the business elements of it, dealing with money, all of that starts to bring up.

[00:15:13] Wendy Kendall: Lots of other parts of ourselves, you know, parts that really worry about money, parts that maybe had parents that taught them how to be really afraid of money. Parts that really don't wanna be a business person, really struggle with that. And what it means to be both a therapist and a business person.

[00:15:32] Wendy Kendall: And you know, really worry about the ethics of that. And so all of this complexity gets brought up by just being in private practice. And IFS is really helpful to supporting therapists to hold space for all of those different parts of us that are impacted. So that's essentially how I'm using I F S in my business.[00:16:00] 

[00:16:00] John Cordray: Well, I think, I think that's excellent and I, I think back when I was in private practice and I was in private practice for about 10 years. You brought up a lot of good points that what we're not taught, and I've talked about this in some other episodes too, on, on specific mental health marketing. What we're not taught as professional counselors is, is how to run a business cuz most counselors are not business minded unless they have their undergrad and business a business degree.

[00:16:32] John Cordray: We don't really have a lot of knowledge on finances or marketing or social media. And that's all extra. And, and that's one of the things I think a lot of, a lot of people don't realize. When you go see a therapist and they're in private practice, you don't realize all the extra things that, what I call transferable skills that therapists need to be able to know how to do to run a successful business.

[00:16:58] John Cordray: And I, and I always say [00:17:00] that that is really important for you, even if you're not a mental health profess. It's important for you to know that because you, you need to know that, that your therapist might be struggling and might need the extra help from someone like Wendy with their private practice, because if they don't know how to do it, well inevitably the private practice is gonna shut down.

[00:17:25] Wendy Kendall: Yeah. So this is a really key point of my mission with all of this as well, John. It's really great you brought that up. We need mental health practitioners more than ever, right? Absolutely. We need people to, to feel confident in running their practices so that the running of the practice is not. So emotionally challenging as well.

[00:17:51] Wendy Kendall: So you know, you talk about how to run a business and you are absolutely right. The learning, the business skills [00:18:00] is another task that we need to take on when we learn how to run a private practice. What I have found though, what really strikes me is how much we also need to learn how to be a business person and how that raises so many questions for us in private practice because we have all of these other ethical and social concerns about wanting to be there for our clients.

[00:18:29] Wendy Kendall: And yeah, it just creates certain amount of tension. and that, you know, if we can help people in private practice to feel much more confident, calm, connected, et cetera, all of, you know, bring in more of these qualities of self and helping them to just feel a lot more space inside so they know when they're working with clients, it feels.

[00:18:58] Wendy Kendall: Good. They can feel [00:19:00] connected. When they're working on their practice, they don't feel so isolated or overwhelmed or de-skilled and you know, all of that. That just adds to the overwhelmed bucket. 

[00:19:12] John Cordray: You're exactly right, and it translates into the session right now. The therapist wouldn't want that. The psychologists wouldn't want that, but it does.

[00:19:20] John Cordray: I mean, things that happen in our lives, in our environment, it does affect us because we're human beings. And we can't, we can't keep the bad things from happening to us. And, and sometimes it could affect us. And so if your private practice is not going well, you're gonna be worried about that. You brought that up earlier.

[00:19:40] John Cordray: You're gonna be worried about that. In the back of your mind, you're thinking, oh my gosh, I, I'm, I'm not doing well here in my practice, but I have to focus on this client in, in. And it's hard to do that sometimes, but if, if the, the therapist can build their confidence level of the business side of things, [00:20:00] it's going to also build the confidence on the therapy side of things.

[00:20:04] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, I believe that too. I've seen that. And yeah, just thinking about. You know, being in private practice and kind of one of the things that people really say to me when I'm working with them is that, you know, the clients are great. They have loads of ideas. In fact, they have so many ideas about how much more they could help their clients, and they just can't find the mental space.

[00:20:34] Wendy Kendall: And they just don't know where to start with it. And from an internal family systems point of view, what happens is that they get stuck on an internal loop. So in I Fs, it gets called a polarization Sometimes maybe in other systemic therapies it might be a familiar concept. They get stuck on a loop with, I really wanna help clients.

[00:20:57] Wendy Kendall: I have all these great ideas. I feel really [00:21:00] overwhelmed, so I'm just gonna help the clients, but I really wanna help them in a different way. You see what I mean? And that loop can leave people feeling really stuck for years and years. And then gradually the burnout creeps up on them and it's like, you know, I'm not sure, I don't know if I'm really feeling like I have a mission or a purpose or a meaning and just starts to degrade the experience of working in private practice.

[00:21:26] Wendy Kendall: And that's just a loss for everyone then. 

[00:21:28] John Cordray: Mm-hmm. , you're exactly right. And, and that does lead to burnout because when, when a therapist, especially if they, maybe they worked in a company. And the company that they worked for as a therapist didn't work out well. Maybe it was toxic, maybe it was a bad manager.

[00:21:48] John Cordray: It didn't work out well. And so then they thought, oh, what if, and they were dreaming, what if I start a private practice? Yes, I love that. I'll be my own boss. And so there's a lot of freedom on that. And [00:22:00] then they start their private practice or leave their, their company. And then the, the realization. Oh my goodness, I can't do this and I don't know how to do this and all these problems because I'm, I'm speaking from experience here.

[00:22:13] John Cordray: I had a private practice. I had to learn everything on my own and it was stressful at times. 

[00:22:19] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, like rewriting your website homepage, . 

[00:22:23] John Cordray: Yeah. Right, exactly. So what you are doing, it's a great service and it's called the self-led practice. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about. 

[00:22:36] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, so we started to think about, you know, one of the biggest challenges in private practice is also this sense of isolation.

[00:22:47] Wendy Kendall: I went through that for years and years after I first moved to France and I set up my own business and you know, I'm in a tiny little village of 200 people and the only [00:23:00] outlet I had, the only way of connecting with people was going. Which is an amazing facility, but the reality was that it felt, I guess with the technology that we had at the time, which was like bulletin boards and things, it was that long ago.

[00:23:14] Wendy Kendall: It just felt really isolating still. And now we have much better technology. And so with the, the self-led practice, We really started thinking about what could we provide to people in private practice that would give them all the benefits of having the freedom of running their own business, but it would still feel like they had a team around them when they needed it.

[00:23:44] Wendy Kendall: And so we have a combination of. Group and individual coaching where, you know, with the group coaching, we get together once a month. We help one another with our practices. We kind of share, you know, the joys [00:24:00] and the pains and so on. Some individual coaching from, from me, from that kind of i f s lens, it's helping people feel like they're more.

[00:24:12] Wendy Kendall: I call it being the c e o of your inner leadership team. So how are you just kind of managing yourself internally and leading yourself internally? And then we have daily co-working sessions, and we start those usually with an I F S guided visualization. So who's showing up today internally, what's impacting us internally, and then just working in site of one another.

[00:24:40] Wendy Kendall: So using something as simple as, you know, zoom technology and just doing a co-working session. There's something about being able to concentrate on working on something for your private practice. It might be writing an article. I think the deep work [00:25:00] session that I did today, I, I basically planned out this podcast, , you know, I wrote up my notes for the podcast and so on, but the fact that I've got.

[00:25:08] Wendy Kendall: Six other people online and when I look up, my colleagues are head down or maybe they're just having a little thing kinda look out to the window and it just feels far less isolated than if I was in my room looking at my walls the same every day. So the co-working sessions and then we have a resource library that we are building.

[00:25:32] Wendy Kendall: Which is about helping people to manage the transitions that happen in our private practice. So walk going into the office in the morning is a transition transitioning between clients, transitioning from working with clients to working on our practice, and then transitioning outta our practice at the end of the.

[00:25:57] Wendy Kendall: And we've been having a lot of [00:26:00] fun going around really beautiful parts of Southwest France and doing beautiful nature videos, and guided visualizations. You know, there's something really gorgeous about, you know, I've been ta taking walks through kind of beautiful mountain forest trails and you know, just that sound of.

[00:26:21] Wendy Kendall: Footsteps on the pine needles and the birds in the trees and the wind and the cowbells in the distance , and even just five minutes like that with a little bit of guided reflection is enough to just help us get some more of that self energy on a regular basis through the day. So that's kind of. Concept that that is the self-led practice, trying to bring that experience into our independent private practices.

[00:26:55] John Cordray: Well, that's fantastic. So is the self-led practice only for [00:27:00] psychologists there locally where you're at? Or is it also virtually online? 

[00:27:05] Wendy Kendall: It's all virtual online. So we have clients currently, mostly in the uk, different parts of the uk and I think, you know, as we look to kind of grow that business as well, we'll look into seeing how we can support people that are in different time zones and so on.

[00:27:26] Wendy Kendall: But it's, it's very easy to kind of, to support people in different parts of the world, to be quite honest. So yeah, that's what we're planning to. . 

[00:27:36] John Cordray: Well, that's fantastic. And so if someone's listening to this and maybe they have a private practice or maybe they're getting ready to start one, how could someone reach out to you and learn more about what you do?

[00:27:48] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, so our website is@inspiringpsychologypractices.com, and you'll see on there there's a tab for the self lab [00:28:00] practice, and you can find out some more on there as well. The IFS based coaching that I do and so on. 

[00:28:08] John Cordray: Well, Wendy, that was fantastic. I think that you offer a very, very good and important service to mental health professionals who are in private practice or who are considering private practice.

[00:28:20] John Cordray: It can be very isolating, and so what you offer is an important service, not just to the practitioner, but also to the clients. A healthy practitioner creates a healthy environment for the therapy practice, and that is very, very important as you mentioned. So make sure you go on the website. I'll, I'll have it on the show notes, so, so if you're interested, go there and you'll be able to see it and visit the website.

[00:28:50] John Cordray: So, Wendy, before I let you go, something I ask all of my guests is about self-care. I talk a lot about self-care and the importance of it. What are some things that you [00:29:00] do for self-care? 

[00:29:02] Wendy Kendall: So, my greatest self-care is walking my dogs

[00:29:10] Wendy Kendall: I have an older dog now, so one of my dogs is nine and a half years old, so she's my girl. So like going, walking with my girl, like with my best friend is, you know, every morning is awesome. . I tell her a lot of things like, you know, and she's a really great listener as well, and she really, she really gets me.

[00:29:31] Wendy Kendall: And then we have a little puppy who is now six and a half months old. And he is just full of the joy of the world, . And so, you know, seeing him experiencing and exploring things for the first time is like looking at the world with new eyes. So I feel really refreshed every time. And, and they're Australian shepherd dogs.

[00:29:56] Wendy Kendall: So you don't get away with not going out for a great [00:30:00] walk every morning. . 

[00:30:02] John Cordray: Fantastic. So you get your, your exercise in as well. Yeah. That's great. Well, thank you so much for coming on and, and sharing your insights and the service that you do. I really appreciate you and what you do for the greater good of the mental health c.

[00:30:19] Wendy Kendall: Well, thank you so much John, and it's really been a pleasure to speak with you today. And also, you know, I love what you do also for our community of therapists because you are, you're always out there connecting us and also really supportive in this community, so that's awesome as well. 

[00:30:38] John Cordray: Thank you very much.

[00:30:39] John Cordray: Yeah. For those who are listening and, and maybe don't know what Whitney is talking about, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn specifically to bring other mental health professionals together, and I'm working on a mental health community ecosystem. I call it a ecosystem because I am wanting to create this community of other [00:31:00] mental health professionals to connect because it isn't isolat.

[00:31:04] John Cordray: Profession. And we want to utilize the, the internet as a way of shortening the gap, if you will, in reaching across the world and bringing the entire mental health community together. And so thank you Wendy for that. I appreciate that. Well, I want to thank all of you for listening as well. And if you're interested, if you're a mental health professional, make sure you check out the website and look into the self-led.

[00:31:32] John Cordray: If you are not a mental health professional, but you're wanting to learn more about Internal Family Systems, I'm sure there's information there for you as well. Thank you so much and I want you to continue to work on your mental health and remember, the Mental Health Today Show has been championing your mental health since 2015.

[00:31:52] John Cordray: Take care. Bye-bye.[00:32:00]