In this interview with expert Dr. Catherine Wikholm, you'll get to know one of Grokker's favorite experts as she discusses mental health, her experience with Grokker, and more.
Grokker’s experts are at the heart of our programs. If you’ve viewed any of our mindfulness or stress relief programs, then you may be familiar with Catherine Wikholm. She’s a clinical psychologist, author, and speaker who leads programs like Beyond Burnout and Breaking Free from Stress. She’s registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the British Psychological Society, so she brings a wealth of credentialed expertise to our programs.
Learn more about what makes her tick, which mental health myths she wants to debunk, and how she creates programs that meet the diverse needs of Grokker’s users.
I've always been fascinated by human psychology — why we think what we think and why we do things we do. I have two main areas of specialism: child and adolescent mental health, and trauma and PTSD.
My motivation for working with children is that adverse childhood events are such a big contributing factor to mental health difficulties in adulthood. When I was first training as a psychologist, I found that so many of the adults that I was seeing for long-term therapy were still struggling with difficult or distressing events that happened in their childhoods that they hadn't received support around.
In terms of my other specialism, trauma, and PTSD, my motivation is how effective evidence-based treatment such as EMDR [which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing] can be completely life-changing.
I also believe in the importance of making psychological information as accessible as possible in a way that I can’t do in one-to-one therapy.
There’s a myth that the only people who would benefit from therapy are people who are really struggling. I think that a lot of us can benefit from and deserve some support with our mental health. I think the earlier that you can access support, the better.
Another myth is that self-help isn't as effective as therapy. Self-help can actually be really useful and effective for mild to moderate difficulties, especially when it's the kind of guided self-help like we do with the Grokker Guides. I think the the only way in which self-help is not good enough, would be if difficulties are moderate to severe. But for most mild anxiety, low mood, or stress-related difficulties, I think self-help can be an accessible and more convenient way of accessing support.
One of the first things you might notice is if your sleep changes. If it's taking you longer than, says, 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep because you're lying in bed worrying about things, or you've got racing thoughts, or you're physically tense, that could be an indication. If you're waking up in the night and struggling to get back to sleep, or you're having very disrupted sleep, oversleeping, or early waking, that can be an indication of difficulties too.
We know that low mood and exhaustion often go hand in hand, whereas with anxiety, it's typically not being able to sleep. I think being aware of your sleep patterns can be a really good way of seeing how you're doing emotionally.
Other warning signs that you can look out for would be things like changes in appetite, loss of interest in things that you normally enjoy, loss of motivation, difficulties with concentration, and thinking more negatively about things.
When I think about what exercises to put in a program and what techniques to use, I always try to keep in mind that the way people experience emotions might show up in different ways. For some people, their anxiety is very worry-focused, whereas for other people, it might be very physical. They may struggle with things like feeling panicky, feeling sick with anxiety, and feeling physically tense.
In almost all the Grokker programs I have, I use techniques that address the cognitive aspect of things, like managing negative thinking or rebalancing thinking. I also include techniques that are much more physically focused, like relaxation methods that are about feeling more at ease in your body. I try to provide a range of different techniques so that there will be something of use to everyone.
I feel it’s really important to not represent any one thing as a kind of a panacea, or something that will work the same way for everyone. When it comes to building an emotional toolkit, it's about having the opportunity to try out various techniques, and then choose what feels like a good fit.
Online therapy is increasingly normal and popular now. I started working online right at the start of the pandemic, and I see a few clients face-to-face, but the vast majority of my therapy work continues to be online, and I think that will continue. For example, I do EMDR online, and there's platforms specifically for that.
I think that existing therapies will continue to be refined and developed. One therapy that's becoming increasingly popular is internal family systems. I'm booked in to do some training in that next year, which I'm excited about.
Thank you for your insights, Catherine! To learn more about her, check out her Expert page on Grokker.