Working alongside Family Mealtimes Expert Sarah Alder is such a joy for me! – but in case you are wondering “Sarah is the expert in her field, what can a Clinical Psychologist bring to the table?!” (pun absolutely intended)…then I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you more.
I’m Victoria and I’m a Clinical Psychologist with a special interest in our relationships with food. I run Love Food, Live Well and over the last 12 months I have been delighted to have met and started to collaborate on a range of small but exciting projects with a number of professionals in the health and wellbeing field. One that stands out to me as most unique and intriguing is working with Sarah from Kitchen Titbits.
Sarah’s role as a Family Mealtimes Specialist caught my eye very early on and I was thrilled when she agreed to a chat back in April. After an hour chatting away it was clear that not only do Sarah and I share our love of all things food, family organisation and general frugalness, but our professional roles compliment each other so well that is wasn’t long before we started to cook up (another pun sorry) ideas for joint ventures.
From here the Stress-busting habits for healthier, happier family mealtimes masterclass was born!
Below I’d like to share our thinking behind how my psychological “stuff” slips seamlessly into (and lays a foundation to underpin) Sarah’s no-nonsense and practical tips on improving family mealtimes.
Here’s three key steps to this winning combo!
Dealing with habit change
This masterclass will help you identify old habits that may be adding to stressful mealtimes and inject new ones to help improve your experience. Sarah has a wealth of knowledge in this area and tips to help things run smoothly, however as a Clinical Psychologist I will bring new skills to help you lay a foundation ready to prepare the ground for change.
Facilitating change at a deeper psychological level is my bread and butter (sorry I just can’t help myself) and in this masterclass I will approach this by helping you increase self-awareness, identify the changes that matter most to you and get you going from a strong foundation.
Overcoming barriers
Whilst most people Sarah and I work with know what they “should” do differently, we can all very easily experience barriers that get in the way.
Whilst some of these may be practical (Sarah’s bit), sometimes these barriers are less easy to pinpoint and may be related to worries, long held habits or thinking patterns that may benefit from psychological tools to overcome; this is where I come in.
Staying calm
A core element of Clinical Psychology training involves my own capacity to remain calm, containing and mindful in the face of the emotions that are invited into the therapy room. In our masterclass, Sarah and I will be aiming to teach skills to help you adopt this calm, composed position when dealing with emotional storms around the dinner table – I will be sharing a specific tool that I practice personally for stress-busting and am here to support you in taking this into your everyday life.
So these are just three ways in which Sarah and I will be joining together to provide you with both the practical and psychological tools to help improve your experience of family mealtimes – in reality I’m sure there will be countless other examples during the masterclass of our work complimenting each other.
Every time Sarah and I sit down to plan and prep together we realise the power of our combined energies together and are super excited to share this with you in our masterclass!
Thanks to Dr Victoria Baxter for this guest blog post.
As well as collaborating with me on this masterclass, she will also be continuing to run her practice (Love Food, Live Well) and welcomes informal chats with anyone interested in taking a psychological look at their relationship with food – hop over to her Facebook page or website to find out more!