I live in Exeter, where I train mental health professionals at the university in postgraduate programmes. Two days a week I work in London, seeing clients in psychotherapy and also doing consultancy work advising organisations.
I get up at about 6.30am, do my short exercise regime, have breakfast, then either leg it down a steep hill to the station to make the London train, or walk up another winding hill to the university. I have always walked, but it was only after my diagnosis of breast cancer in 1995 that I began to take the idea of regular exercise seriously.
If I'm in London I see clients all morning. I work in a joint practice and try to grab moments to catch up with colleagues. Because I've written and lectured about breast cancer, particularly about its effects on families, I often get referrals from women who have, or have had breast cancer themselves, or from family members of people with breast cancer.
If I'm in Exeter, on Thursday mornings I work with a different group of clinicians, mostly family therapists, at the university. As it is a training clinic, we supervise upcoming clinical psychologists and family therapists in working with couples.
On other days I might be teaching. If there isn't a lecture scheduled I will be writing up or developing research and training projects. My work on breast cancer in families was one example of this; currently I am working on developing programmes around best management of conflict and early prevention of relationship decline within couples.
If I'm in London I will have made myself a lunch from home or else grabbed a salad en route. I eat between clinical appointments – I close the door, don't answer emails, and do the crossword, tuning out the world. It's bliss!
I am a psychologist who has always specialised in families and couples clinically and also as a researcher and broadcaster. Recently I have been working with Avon to create the Avon Breast Promise Report.
The report explores why, despite all the information available, woman are still not regularly checking their breasts and, based on the psychology behind what will motivate a change in this behaviour, advises as to how to get into the habit.
I was part of a family that experienced breast cancer over a long period, as it struck my mother and her sisters, each at the centre of their families, as young mothers, in a time when there was both little knowledge and little discussion of it.
I came from a strong family and my parents had a devoted marriage, but I experienced the toll breast cancer took on their relationship and their children.
My own mother ended up surviving until my early adulthood. She made me very aware of how to check myself from an early age. Significantly, the difference between my own experience, both of my mother's illness in contrast to her sisters' and my own, was early diagnosis and treatment. This is the main reason I was motivated to work on the report.
I leave my clinical practice on Mondays at 7pm or 7:30pm, staying over in London, and on Tuesdays I leave earlier taking a train at 6pm and getting home at 8:30pm. If I'm in Exeter I stop at 7pm.
As for unwinding, the rituals of it give a satisfying end to the shape of my day. If I miss them I feel frazzled. When I get home I listen to the radio and make dinner. When my husband gets home we eat, have a glass of wine and then watch an episode of a box-set we've chosen, and then it's time for bed.
I always read myself to sleep. Books are central to my life and to my winding down process.
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