Sara Mathews

In this episode, Dr Peter Blundell interviews Sara Mathews about her life and work as a bereavement counsellor in the UK.

Sara is a Senior Accredited counsellor registered with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). She is a qualified Counselling Supervisor and Trainer. Sara headed up bereavement services in the voluntary sector for many years before setting up her Bereavement Counselling practice. She is passionate about working in a properly trauma-informed way with clients. She also offers supervision or consultation to therapists, health care and allied professionals.

Sara Mathews
Twitter: @plumjam61
Website: https://saramathewscounselling.co.uk/

Peter is the founder and co-lead of #TherapistsConnect. You can find out more about Peter's work via his website www.peterblundell.com.

Dr Peter Blundell
Twitter: @drpeterblundell
Website: https://www.peterblundell.com/

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Origins of #TherapistsConnect

Transcript

Peter Blundell: 0:39

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Therapists connects podcast. My name is Dr. Peter Blundell, and today I'm back interviewing therapists about their life and work in the therapy community. This episode is an interview with Sara Matthews, who is a senior accredited and registered counsellor and psychotherapist with the BACP. Sara is a qualified counseling supervisor and trainer, as well as an online and telephone counselor. Sara has headed up bereavement services in the voluntary sector for many years before finally setting up her own bereavement counseling practice. She says she's passionate about working in a properly trauma informed way with her clients. And she also offers supervision or consultation to therapists, healthcare and allied professionals. Thanks for listening to the Therapists Connect Podcast.

Sara Mathews: 1:24

Good morning, Peter.

Peter Blundell: 1:25

Good morning. How are you?

Sara Mathews: 1:27

I'm alright, thank you very much. How are you?

Peter Blundell: 1:30

Very good. Thank you. It's great to kind of finally meet you and chat to you properly

Sara Mathews: 1:35

Yes, it's really nice. Thank you so much for inviting me. I've always just been .. my husband and I have just been laughing because I've given up working at you know, a hospice and up until about three months ago, I would have been out of bed at six o'clock in the morning and on the row by seven but now - an appointment at nine o'clock. I've been running around like a headless chicken, trying to get myself sorted. So.. how quickly I've slid into...

Peter Blundell: 1:58

how you've e easily transitioned into it! I love it! That's fantastic. Could you tell us a little bit about how you came to be a therapist in the first place? What drew you to therapy?

Sara Mathews: 2:10

Yeah, two things, I think. First of all, which is, will come as no surprise to the community, I'm sure.. was my own story... having therapy myself, I had a difficult childhood. There was, there was sexual abuse, there was violence. And so I had to grow to a point where I was ready to address all that. And I did all that through counseling. Shout out to Tyneside Rape Crisis Centre, which 35 years ago literally saved my life, I think. So through my own personal experience. And then alongside of that, I had quite a mixed career, but a lot of it was in education and training. And I ended up working in an alcohol rehab, residential alcohol rehab and running kind of therapeutic groups, for the people who were living there. And realising that I was working way beyond my competence. And it, looking back on it now, I think I had a bit of natural ability; I was a qualified lecturer, so I could teach a bit, I knew how to do certain things. And I knew things from my own therapy. But there was a whole load of stuff I didn't know. And the organisation that I worked for at the time, which I won't name, I think they've gone bust, which is a good thing. They didn't know either, they couldn't explain to me what I knew, and what I didn't know. But I knew there were things I didn't know. And I could feel myself getting more and more wobbly. And my practice was not great. And my mental health wasn't good. And it came to a crisis point. And I walked out, I just stopped. And I remember thinking right, well, this is the time then, now's the time to do it. Because I've got this opportunity. I've got the space. And I've reached a real kind of difficult point in my own life. So that's when I started, I think I'd done a certificate in counseling years and years before, but that's when I enrolled on a degree. I thought, Okay, I'm going to make this happen. And I'm going to learn to do this properly. And for me, the massive massive learning, was about myself, which I think most counselors would say. So that's the kind of backstory I think to how I trained, certainly.

Peter Blundell: 4:17

Thank you. Erm so that's really interesting. It sounds like you're almost like you're finding your way through that role. So you had a sense of what it was, but then there was the things that you didn't, you didn't know. And (yes) there's something there that actually, I need more, you know (yes)...

Sara Mathews: 4:32

Yeah. So I knew I was, I had ability, but I was unstable. And I wasn't, I didn't understand anything at all about therapeutic frame. I hadn't done enough personal development. You know, I thought I had and I hadn't. And it was all of that stuff. But at the same time, I was drawn to the work because the work had meant so much to me, and I could see it meaning things to other people. And there were flashes of bits where I got it right, but lots of times where I didn't get it right. And just didn't hold people properly. So yes, I had a sense of what was going on. And an extraordinary sense of being aware of what I didn't know, which is something I've tried to kind of nurture and cultivate ever since because that's continuing in the profession, isn't it? The things I like about it, you know, there's always stuff to learn. You've never cracked it. So I enjoy that. I think,

Peter Blundell: 5:25

each step I take I think oh yeah, I've got more clarity here and then there's more unknown that opens up behind that (yes).. You know..

Sara Mathews: 5:41

it reminds me of when my stepson was a kid we used to play endless games of PlayStation, which I never really cracked, but you, you like get to a level and you're like, yeah, look at me, I'm at level four. And then suddenly you think... oh, okay, but what that does is it opens up the next level, which is mega.

Peter Blundell: 5:57

or multiple levels.

Sara Mathews: 5:58

Yes. That's what it feels like. But I do actually really like that. And here I am at 61. And I feel, you know, full of energy for what's what's to learn next. So I like the fact that I don't find the work boring.

Peter Blundell: 6:11

Can you tell us a little bit about your career over that time? As a.. as a therapist?

Sara Mathews: 6:14

Yeah, I mean, I was, I was really lucky. And I had no sense of how lucky I was because I got a paid job, at the end of year two. I went on to do the honors bit of the degree, so I still training. But I got a paid job, I got a paid job, I'd done 98 hours of my placement, and I got a paid job. And I think I got that on what I'd done before, because I got a job working as a counselor in a drug and alcohol agency. So obviously, I've managed an alcohol rehab. I've written care plans for this organisation, blah, blah, blah. So I got it on the back of other stuff. And had at that point, no understanding whatsoever ... came out of college with no political or social understanding of where counseling sits in the world. So got this job. So that was, you know, extremely fortuitous. And it was really hard. I would say it was really hard work. They, they asked us to overbook, they got so many DNA. So we were booking in seven a day, at some points. I know, it was like a nightmare if they all turned up but people didn't, there was massive DNA's. So it was like counseling bootcamp. Looking back on it, I just had a room in an organisation, I didn't see anyone else. I saw my supervisor once a month, and she was psychodynamic and I was terrified of her. So it was hard, hard, hard, hard graph. But good. Looking back on it. If it has to be brutal, which it was for me, then I learned so much. And during that period of time, I got really switched on to - "Blimey, there aren't any paid jobs, like no one gets paid for this stuff". What.. IAPT wasn't even a twinkle in(something's) eye at that point. So I realised that there were paid jobs in hospices, if you could get one. And so the truth of the matter here I am as a bereavement specialist all these years later, and it is my absolute passion, but it wasn't my passion at the time, my passion was earning money. And I thought, okay, I can maybe try and get a job in a hospice. And there was a lot of loss, I think that underpins a lot of people's stories around problem gambling or substance abuse or problematic drinking. So I'd started to read and was interested. So perhaps not quite true to say I didn't have any interest. But I certainly bigged it up for the interview telling them it was my life times ambition to work in hospice, the juke was I wanted to be paid. So I've always held those memories very strongly, in my mind, and they inform some of the things that I now feel about our profession. But that's how I started. So I mean, over the next period of time, I worked in three different hospices in the North East, which is where I live, but not where I come from. And no, I haven't lost my accent. I come from London. But yeah, so, and I gradually sort of worked my way up to a point where I was in a position where I was running a big service and had autonomy and agency to kind of develop that, along with the chief executive was a wonderful guy called David Smith. Thank you, David. So we, I did some really interesting work during that period of time, and have just recently stopped and come home and set up in private practice, which is suiting me really well actually, I'm really enjoying it. The joke I'm making to everyone is I'm like one of those battery chickens that kind people adopt, you know, and they come in, they've got no feathers, they've never been out and they will really stressed. And then really quickly, their feathers come in and they start pecking around having a good time. That's how I feel coming out of work... I mean, the work was great, don't get me wrong. But oh my god, it was exhausting. And I had quite a big commute. And you know, managing staff is always really, really tiring. So not doing it... I feel, you know, yeah, my feathers have come back in!

Peter Blundell: 10:01

Sara... I love that. I love that metaphor. I think we might end up using that as a little clip, you know, that we advertise this episode with(yeah, go for it). You're all people... so so then you end up with like a specialist interest grief and loss. What do you think are the important aspects of practice when you're working with those particular issues?

Sara Mathews: 10:27

One of the things that I feel really strongly about is that you know how grief and loss and death sits in our society and how we are about all of that and that I think is reflected often in people's bereavement, that they feel ashamed about what they feel, they feel like they're doing it wrong, that there are rules. And actually there are some rules. They might not be explicit, but there are, there's certainly rules that people trip over around kind of not getting over it quickly enough for other people's taste and all of that kind of stuff. So I think that one of the first things that often emerges in the work is helping people to work with what they think about what they feel. And is it okay to feel what I feel and their internal permissions and their relationship with themselves, their immediate community and the wider community. So the lived experience of being in grief and bereavement I think, so that I think is, you know, something that emerges in all sorts of different ways, I think. Then I think there's you as a therapist, and how you are with that, which I'm sure is the same, I mean, a lot of the things I think I will say today are absolutely applicable to everybody else as well. It's just that I work in bereavement and loss primarily. So I think you have to be very aware of your own feelings, and you have to have your feet steady on the ground, I always think of it as... I think I'm quite grounded as a personality, largely because I wasn't at one point in any way grounded. So I hold that very dearly. And it's very precious to me. And I think that communicates itself in the therapy space that I'm steady. And I'm not scared. I think my abusive childhood actually helps me there. Not that I'd wish it on anyone, but it makes me not frightened of people's extremity of emotion, I think, yeah, bring it on. It's fine. Whatever you're feeling, let's, let's do it. So I'm not afraid of the depth of it. And I think often people who are in grief are afraid. So someone needs to be not afraid. And it's almost about holding that so that it gives people a space to gradually become accustomed to what they have to do. And the adaptions in bereavement are... God, they're hard, aren't they? I mean, they're just and there's so many of them. You know, from who puts the bins out to what is the purpose and meaning of my life and back again. So I like a big existential conversation. I always have, I think ever since I trained. And so I enjoy that aspect as well of grief work is that you get to talk about the big stuff. So yeah, I think that would be a summary, I guess some of the things that I think about when I'm first getting to know a client and meeting them, and hearing what it's like for them.

Peter Blundell: 13:29

Thank you. I mean, that's really interesting. My first placement was a bereavement service, when I was when I was in training. So I'm so grateful to have had that experience as a therapist as some of my first experiences as a counselor, because I feel like it's helped ground me in the rest of my work, even when I'm not working with bereavement and loss. I feel like it gave me a good grounding. And, as you say, the kind of the idea of some of those extreme, really raw feelings. Someone's really kind of frightened of where's this gonna go kind of, you know, I'm not sure what's going to happen here. Can you hold it? Can you support me while I'm, or be with me while I'm going through that, and not not be frightened of it. And I think for me, that's that experience as a therapist early on, really has helped I think throughout my whole whole career, working with all clients bringing all different types of

Sara Mathews: 14:23

I can hear it in what we're saying, when you issues. start reflecting that back and saying about the holding, I could literally feel my arms prickle a bit it, because it's so important. And it is so terrifying, isn't it? And you know, I don't know, I don't think I've spoken to very many people who are bereaved who, for example, have lost a child. Or perhaps they've lost somebody from death by suicide, where you don't at some point, think to yourself, 'so is there any point in me living'? I mean, that is actually part of what it is you have to do, isn't it when you have a significant death, it's you have to reconfigure the purpose and meaning of your own life. And so you are being with people who are considering whether they live or die, and you have to really know how to hold that space, I think. But not rush in and rescue. That's absolutely the last thing I think or suddenly say, oh, safeguarding, you know, and go off and do something ridiculous. So there is some very careful judgments that need to be made in collaboration with the client is where I would go with all of that. Always, always.

Peter Blundell: 15:35

I, I ... absolutely So how would you define your therapeutic approach? Is that something that's changed over time? Or have you stayed with with...?

Sara Mathews: 15:50

what the other person, so you feel a bit unhappy today, and you're pissed off about your mark... So it would be like that. So obviously, we've got to start somewhere and learn but yeah, so I, we started with that. And I fell in love with Carl Rogers, and I haven't fallen out of love with him to be honest. Even though I do find his books bit boring. I prefer the books that are written more recently, which are a bit more moved on, if I'm honest. But anyway, I love the principles and what he stood for, are absolutely embedded in me. So relational stuff, the stuff that lots of us would say, I think. In terms of the other developments, I mean, it's some of its been driven by supervisors that I've had. So yeah, I mentioned I had a psychodynamic supervisor in my early stages, I was terrified of her, but but actually came to really like her. And we struck up a good working alliance, and I thought, oh, maybe there's good stuff in here. And then of course, I was working in bereavement. So you can't I think work in bereavement without looking at attachment, and all of that kind of stuff. And you're looking retrospectively a lot in grief and loss, because you're looking at the relationship people have lost. So you're reflecting back, and then coming into the here and now. So I think I've, you know, got very interested in, in that. And transactional analysis. I think I've had several supervisors through my career have been really big on that.

Peter Blundell: 17:21

I wondered if I'm flipping back now to what we were talking about earlier. Sorry, sorry, random, random path of questions. But when you were talking about working with grief, bereavement and loss, and I wondered whether there was any particular resources that you think, and that would be available for therapists who maybe want to work in this area, or are working in this area, and they're looking for additional stuff that might help them?

Sara Mathews: 17:45

Yeah, I think I've got a few things I wrote them down... and I'll just refer to my bits of paper, a shout out to my friend, John Wilson. He works at York, St. John, and he wrote'The Plain Guide to Grief'. And if you want to read something that's straightforward by somebody really knows their onions about grief and bereavement, that's a good one, I would say. It's a wonderful book, I think I've recommended it to so many colleagues, but lots of clients as well, it's really accessible for all of us. So that I would absolutely recommend. And I went on a training course recently and discovered that there's going to be a new book out in January'23, which is the 'New Handbook of Grief Therapies', which is edited by Maria Stefan and two others Millman and Neimeyer(sp?) I don't know how to say it. But the thing I think that is going to be really good from what I understood of what she was saying at the time, is that it's it's very pluralism-based. So it's lots of different ways of working with grief through lots of theoretical orientations, based on what does the client need, which I, that, speaks to me, I like that. So I'm looking forward to that. I've got that on pre order. So I'd say look at that, because it might be that you have a theoretical training in, in an area and thinking can I do grief though, do I know... And I think that that will probably offer us all a kind of, okay, this is how I can apply what I know. And this is how that might work. So I think it will be an empowering read. When Richard Coles lost his partner, his husband, I think it was wasn't ih? I, I, he wrote 'The madness of grief'. I think that's a wonderful book. I really cried buckets over that and laughed, I, all of it, all the feels, and I love him. So I'd really recommend that. And then going back a bit over I say, 'Beloved' by Toni Morrison is a wonderful book on loss, oh God. I can hardly even say it without feeling like I've got tears pricking in the back of my eyes. So for me that's been seminal. So yeah, those will be my recommendations

Peter Blundell: 19:47

That's brilliant. It's a brilliant list of resources there. Then moving to a slightly different topic, which we ask everyone, obviously, because it's the Therapists Connect podcast. And I was just wondering, how do you see the wider kind of therapy community? And how connected do you feel sort of... to other therapists?

Sara Mathews: 20:04

Well, thanks to you, Peter, a great deal more connected than I did. Cos you know, hello! Yeah. That's obviously more important for me, at this point in my career, now I'm at home than it perhaps ever been, because I used to work in quite a big community of counselors, quite unusual, I think working in a service where there were, you know, quite a few counselors knocking about and always someone that you can talk to. So I thought really carefully about that when I I mean, appreciate your honesty with all of that. And I think jumped ship and kind of thought about setting up in private practice. I mean, I really enjoy online dialogue ... I don't do Facebook, well, but I do do Facebook but for personal stuff, I don't do it for professional stuff. I'm not in any Facebook groups and I, I mean, I'm sure there are some that are fab, but I view them with fear and dread, because I see all sorts of things that people say, and I think 'Oh my God', but where I sit is I sit in Twitter, so I hope it survives. And I really enjoy that I think I've learned loads of things about how to be in that space. And I've certainly got it wrong and been clunky and rude. And I've sort of like got the hump about people saying things and they've got fed up with me. And there's been all sorts of stuff that's gone on for me. So it's quite a dynamic space, I think. But I've enjoyed the self reflection that that's engendered in me, I think, I think that's good for me. So I quite like sort of thinking carefully about what to say, and, but then at the same time, trying to also still be authentic, and, you know, responsive to people. So I really enjoy the hurly-burly of all of that. I think that's a great space and very supportive. Brings me on to something I think that I did want to kind of bring up really, something has changed, because what I was doing when I was in paid work was running a great big service in the voluntary sector, where only about 15% of the counselors got paid. Shoot me now. So I was quite cautious and anxious and conflicted about that. And, you know, I'm sure there'll be people listening and saying that, you know, you should have resigned, but I didn't, okay. Now I have, and I certainly didn't resign because of that. So I'm not trying to occupy a moral high ground that was not mine to occupy. I changed and got out of that for personal reasons, really. But it does make a difference now, because it's almost like all this kind of political sensibility, which I felt really anxious about, it has now got a bit more oxygen to breathe. And I now think that paying counselors is the number one priority for our profession that and avoiding SCoPEd, SCoPEd, I think, let's not do that. And let's try and get paid. Those are the two things that I now feel I can say with clean hands. Whereas I didn't, I felt like Lady Macbeth before. And I felt like I'd always got this kind of, yes, but look what I do. And, you know, Peter, I worked my socks off to make sure that it was a good place for volunteer counselors to be and it was a good offer. And you know, they got their supervision, and they got CPD, and they got a library and they got a community and they got all the, all the resources that I could muster, except for pay, given to them, but it still felt crap. So, you know, there we are. That's the world we live in. it's, personally, I think it's really difficult because it's much more in recent times that I think people have started to understand how systemic, that is, you know, it's not just the odd service here, the voluntary service here, there. It's the whole profession built, built on that, you know. So I think people being able to speak out and talk about it now, so that so that change happens, I think is really important. So I really admire you for kind of (Yeah, thank you). It feels like maybe a nice moment to finish on as well. But I suppose maybe just a little last question for you might be, what do you have planned next? Do you have anything planned next that you'd like to, to tell the listeners about? Well, I'm in private practice now. I've got a website, SaraMatthewsCounseling co.uk. So you can find me if you want to,or you can find me on Twitter. I'm doing a mixture of supervision and client.. really interesting when I first went into private practice, which is literally only three months ago, loads of supervision. And I think that's because I tried to make myself a bit known. The client work has been slower. So I think I'm about two thirds full at the moment. So I'm still looking for clients, I'm sure a lot, I'm not the only person there, I get that it's a lot about word of mouth and initially you have to pay loads of money for the advertising. So I think, yeah, you know, please be aware of me. And if you think I might be helpful, then let people know that I'm around. And can we all do that for each other would be my thought, because, you know, that's what we should be doing, isn't it? I'm absolutely delighted if I can direct somebody to somebody that I think might be really good for them. And always very pleased if people do the same for me. So I sort of want to ask for that support, but also offer it as well.

Peter Blundell: 25:12

Brilliant. Well, it sounds like you've got a lot going on. And yeah, if anyone wants to find you on Twitter, you have lots of interesting discussions on there about therapy and also related things as well.

Sara Mathews: 25:23

Other things!! Indeed, yes, please do. Please come find me, I'm @Plumjam61, if you want to follow me on Twitter. So...

Peter Blundell: 25:33

Sara, thank you so much for have you on to the podcast. And I look forward to chatting to you again in the future.

Sara Mathews: 25:40

Absolutely Peter yeah it's been it's hopefully useful and interesting for other people but it's been a real pleasure for me to meet you, so thank you I've enjoyed my morning..

Peter Blundell: 25:48

It's brilliant thank you. Take care

Sara Mathews: 25:51

See you Peter, bye.