Catherine, not her real name is a GP who came to I Matter Training with a role as a Lead of an Integrated Care Community. Here she speaks about the needs she observes in her role and the way that the training has assisted her professionally in her role.
In 2019 I spoke with Catherine (not her real name), a GP with a special interest in mental health, who came to I Matter in her role as GP Lead for an Integrated Care Community. She worked through the online learning and then met as a group with professionals from health and education. Here she talks about the needs she was seeing in families, and how the training has helped her in her surgery, in meetings and at home.
This interview is from 2019, when I worked directly with local services. I’m not offering that at the moment, but the online learning Catherine used is open to anyone, and I’m happy to talk with practitioners who’d like to use the ideas.
Something missing for families
Cathy: Hi, so I’m sitting here with Catherine, not her real name. Catherine’s a GP, and she’s agreed to speak a little bit about her experience of working with the I Matter project. Hi, Catherine. Would you like to say a little bit about yourself and your role?
Catherine: Yes. I’ve been a GP for a long time, and I have a special interest in mental health. I’ve become increasingly concerned about the lack of provision for children and families with emotional wellbeing. I’ve become quite distressed at recent teenage suicides in the area, and feeling that there’s not enough help for young people with emotional health problems, and just feeling that there’s something missing from what we’re providing for children and families. So I was really happy when I was introduced to Cathy, and all her work seemed to fit in and fill the gap, the big gap that I was so worried about.
Cathy: So do you want to say a little bit more about what you were seeing in terms of families’ needs in your role? What would it look like?
Catherine: Well, I was having parents contacting me and bringing children in to see me who had been to lots of different services, but still didn’t feel that their child was getting the help that they needed. In fact, they were going around in circles trying to get help, and meanwhile the child seemed to be deteriorating. I was seeing the stress building up in the families, and feeling unable to help them myself, really: not knowing how to help, really wanting to be able to help, but not knowing what to do. It all just seemed very complicated and confusing and very worrying, really.
A common language at last
Cathy: So, what was your experience of completing the I Matter training?
Catherine: Well, just being introduced to the I Matter training was a really happy time, a really hopeful time. I found it all very interesting, but easy to understand, and everything started to fit together from what I was experiencing, both at home and at work.
Cathy: And you were part of a group, weren’t you, where we had a mixed group of professionals of different disciplines, from health and education, coming together, and you were working online and then coming and meeting as a group.
Catherine: Yes, and I found it really interesting, learning from the other different people in the group. Really fascinating discussions, and I just felt like I learned a lot through it, much more than I thought I would. It just felt like lots of things clicked into place. I’ve been reading books and trying to learn about children’s emotional wellbeing for a long time, but it was almost like, as soon as I finished one book, I’d forgotten it, because it didn’t quite work for me. But then when I started to do I Matter, everything came back and started to fit together, like the pieces of the jigsaw.
Cathy: It is that feeling. And there’s something very interesting about having a multidisciplinary group, because in a sense families move between professionals, don’t they? They go to see the GP, then they go to see the teacher, then they come back and see the GP, and then they see somebody else. And when you bring all those people representing all those roles together around the table, they’re all seeing this stressed family, lots of families, moving around the network, but they often don’t get together to share their different angles on things.
Catherine: Yes, and I also felt really happy that we had a common language. At last, we had a common language: a structure that helped different organisations work together. Because even though we want to, it has been difficult to work with schools and health visitors and other professionals, because everyone seems to have their own language and their own processes around helping families, CAMHS included, and just trying to link in with those has always been challenging. But now it just seems a lot easier to be talking with teachers and health visitors and other professionals. So it seems like we’ve got a model where we can really work together to help families and not confuse them, not confuse parents by giving them slightly different language to deal with, which, when they’re under a lot of stress and distress, is just going to make things worse, I think.
“At last, we had a common language.”
Catherine
Cathy: So you’re saying that in this town we’ve got a combination of some schools where there are professionals who’ve done the I Matter training and are working with you, and other professionals who perhaps haven’t. But it sounds like, even working with those professionals who haven’t, you’re feeling more confident about where you’re coming from.
Catherine: Yes, that’s right, because everyone is thinking along the same lines. Once you start talking, because the I Matter language is so easy for anyone to understand, if you use that rather than anything else, then very soon you feel like you’re on the same wavelength, and you’re actually working collaboratively and starting to help a family together quite quickly, even those that haven’t done the I Matter training. Because it fits everything together, it’s like it builds a bridge between organisations and professionals, and parents, actually, because you can use this kind of language with parents, even those that haven’t done the I Matter training, and they’ll start to understand quickly where you’re coming from.
Staying in green in my surgery
Cathy: So, what was one of your favourite posters or lightbulb moments?
Catherine: I think my favourite poster... the triangle’s very important to me, well, to everyone. The triangle really illustrates what’s missing from so many services and systems. The one that I find really, really helpful is the I Matter model where you’ve got the families in red and the families in green, showing how the adult needs to be in green to start to help the child in red, and move the child into green. And that model can also help with helping anyone that’s in red. As a GP, you’re trying to help people: very distressed people, people with addiction, mental health problems. And I’ve found that by applying the I Matter principles, you’re able to help more people and stop yourself getting triggered by these people, because once that happens and you’re all in red, you can’t help them.
[In I Matter, being ‘in red’ means being distressed or triggered; being ‘in green’ means not being triggered, and so being able to help.]
Cathy: I distinctly remember a conversation we had where there was that moment for you when you recognised that we’d started talking about parents and children, and then you thought, oh, actually, this is me as a professional with the clients I’m seeing, the client who comes in very stressed out, and you realised you could use that thinking in your surgery. That if you could work out how to get yourself to green, even when you’ve got perhaps an aggressive or stressed patient, that was the same process, really.
Catherine: Absolutely, yes. It’s helped with lots of my consultations. But then I started to realise that it actually helped in other situations, in meetings, where people were getting quite agitated. I found that if I could keep in green, and also use the watching affectionately...
Cathy: The Foundations course, yes.
Catherine: So actually sitting there and not getting triggered by the people in a meeting, and thinking, look, we’re all human, and some of the people in this room are stressed, and that’s why they’re saying what they’re saying. It means that you can just focus on the objectives, on the outcome, rather than the emotions, getting...
Cathy: ...drawn into that interpersonal rhetoric where everybody fires off each other. It can happen so fast, can’t it?
Catherine: Yes. So actually, it’s ended up meaning that it’s made my whole job and my whole life more manageable.
Cathy: That’s really good, isn’t it? Were there any other lightbulb moments for you as you went through the training, where you suddenly thought, “Ah”?
Catherine: The lightbulb moments were when I changed my behaviour. I behaved differently from what I would have done before, and I just realised that the outcome from that situation was so dramatically different from what it would have been if I’d followed my instincts and got triggered and emotional about things. So I definitely had some lightbulb moments at work and at home, and they really reinforce the training and the practice. I don’t think you’d look back. I think you get to a point with it where you probably wouldn’t change back, because it starts to just become more natural to do it that way. And then the times that you don’t use what you’ve learned through I Matter, all of a sudden you can notice things going wrong very quickly, and stop, apply the principles and reverse it quite quickly, before too much damage has been done.
Cathy: So we say, even when you’ve done the training, there are always situations where we reach a limit, where we have a red brain moment.
Catherine: Yes, but you recognise it quickly.
Cathy: You recognise it quickly, and you get back on track more quickly.
Catherine: Yes, definitely. And because everything is so complicated, it just helps me think more clearly. I just feel like I’ve got a much clearer head now that I’ve done this training.
Hope instead of helplessness
Cathy: Well, it’s been wonderful working with you. What would you say has been the impact collectively, in terms of your role within the ICC, for example?
Catherine: So, my role within the ICC, the integrated care community, with our aim being to work together for a healthier, happier community... I’ve found that it’s helped us with our projects around children and families. It’s helped get other organisations on board, it’s helped us to link with other organisations, and it’s given us this ready-made platform of ideas and tools that we can use. So rather than starting from scratch, which wouldn’t really achieve much, we’re already halfway there. We just need to get others on board with it, and actually you find that it’s what they’re looking for anyway, so it’s not difficult to get people on board with it, because it helps them.
Cathy: Yes, and I always say, when we start on this, sometimes the scale of unmet need in children’s services can be very overwhelming, can’t it, in terms of where on earth you begin. It doesn’t suddenly address all of this, but it does give you this clear map. It makes it clear where you’ve got to start focusing, and how, and what. So though it still feels quite a big process to share it more with other people, it’s at least clear where you’re heading.
Catherine: Yes, because in the past we could have sat there for an hour talking about what might be wrong with the services, but that wouldn’t really achieve much. Whereas with this model, very quickly, just by looking at the triangle, we can see what’s wrong with the services that aren’t meeting the needs, and then we can move on to use other parts of I Matter to address needs. So yes, it does give us a lot of hope. Where people have been losing hope and getting quite burnt out, and developing a culture of learned helplessness around children’s mental health, this replaces that.
Cathy: Yes, and it’s surprising really how quickly some of those changes can happen, even in really quite entrenched situations. We’ve worked, haven’t we, with several situations where there was that despair. And it is sometimes quite astonishing how, after years of struggle, suddenly, with the right knowledge and the right insights and lightbulbs, things move on.
Catherine: Yes, definitely. And it’s been really encouraging to see how well received it’s been by all our local GPs and lots of local teachers and other professionals and families. Families that have clearly been struggling for a lot of years, families that I thought we couldn’t help, have certainly moved forwards with it. So it’s all very exciting and inspiring. It makes you feel that you want it to develop, but not too quickly, because we need to keep it all as it should be. And it’s not a quick fix.
Cathy: Yes, it’s not a quick fix. It can make some quick changes, but it’s not a quick fix. People have to process some of this. In a way it looks easy, but some of it is actually quite challenging, isn’t it? There are moments, a bit of a gulp moment, that need time.
Catherine: But this seems like a sustainable solution for organisations and for families. So once it is properly established, then yes, definitely, it’s going to be a long-term solution, really. We just keep taking small steps up that mountain, don’t we?
What I Matter means to me
Cathy: So, overall, what does I Matter mean to you?
Catherine: I think it means a lot of things to me, really. It means I can keep a clear head. It means that my relationships at home are healthy and helpful. It means that I’m not overly anxious about my son, because I know how to support him, and I know that, given the right support, he will progress in the way that he needs to, in his own time. I know that there’s a way we can help families, even if the waiting lists for CAMHS and the statutory services are really high. There’s a way we can work with schools and other professionals, and there’s hope for the future. And it’s not difficult. It’s not too difficult for anyone to manage.
Cathy: It empowers what you can do, isn’t it? That I can do something now. I don’t have to wait for some distant, inaccessible person to make a decision. We can do something here. So what would you want to say to others, to encourage others who might be thinking about taking part?
Catherine: They should just try it. It certainly can’t do any harm, and I’m sure it will do some good for anyone that takes part in I Matter. Even if they just do a little bit of training or a lot of training, I’m sure that they’ll find that it helps in some way. It also opens up a new world. It helps to make relationships with other professionals. It’s really, really interesting and enjoyable. It’s a really good way forward.
Cathy: Brilliant. Thank you very much for sharing.
Catherine: Thank you, and thank you for bringing this to so many people and helping us all with it.
Cathy: Well, I couldn’t do it without your support, so likewise. Thank you.
If Catherine’s experience rings true for you, find out more on our What is relationship health? page, or start with one of our free introductions.
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