How does Knitting improve mental health?

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Coming up today, knitting is more than just a hobby. Yes, you heard me write knitting. Join me and my guest today as we enter the fascinating world of needles and yarn where creativity intertwines with mental health. Have you ever wondered how a simple stitch can soothe the mind and uplift the soul? Every knit and pearl is a thread of tranquillity where stitching is serenity. Discover how the gentle rhythm of needles can mend the mind and mend the soul one stitch at a time. Stay tuned as we explore and unravel the therapeutic benefits of knitting and the secrets behind every loop and twist. Hope you find it so useful.

(: 00:54

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. I like to bring you a variety of topics in this podcast. If you've been here for any or all of the previous 116 episodes, you will know that no two episodes are the same. I love how we as qualified or even aspiring psychologist, can begin to bring things that are important to us, to the way we practise and the people we serve. It's not about us, but actually as humans, we are absolutely a really important part of the intervention. In today's episode, I am joined by Dr. Mia Hobbs, a qualified clinical psychologist and a knitting for mental wellbeing advocate. It's a fascinating chat and I loved it. I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side of this. Hi Mia. Lovely to have you here on the podcast today. Thank you for joining us.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 01:57

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 01:59

So we first crossed paths on Instagram where you advocate the beauty and the benefit of knitting, which is obviously interesting from a mental health perspective. But you caught my eye because you're a clinical psychologist who's also a big fan of knitting, aren't you?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 02:17

Yeah, that's right. No, I've been using knitting more and more in my work, but I joined Instagram I guess for the knitting, having not thought there was anything on Instagram, particularly for me back in I think 2017.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 02:29

I just love how varied and nichey social media can be. Yeah, I love it. So before we plough into knitting, could we hear a little bit about you and how you got into psychology, please?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 02:44

Sure. So I think I knew I wanted to be a clinical psychologist about maybe most of the way through my undergraduate psychology degree. I did a year, kind a placement year in my third year in undergrad and was working in a school with kids with autism and I was looking into educational psychology, but I was more, I think attracted to doing more intervention than I think maybe educational psychologists often have the opportunity to do. And then after that took a more kind of clinical route and I think I did a couple of assistant psychologists posts before then training at UEL in London.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 03:29

Perfect. When did you qualify?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 03:31

I qualified in 2008, so I don't actually know how many years that is now.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 03:41

A lot. It means that you qualified the year that I started, so we had a little bit of overlap, but yes, quite some years now is what I would say. I think I was starting about 15 years ago, something like that. So you probably qualified about 15 years ago, something like that. Lovely. And you mentioned that you work with children and young people. Have you done that since qualifying?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 04:05

Yes, so I've only, I see occasionally I will see an adult in private practise, but I've worked in the NHS from 2008 when I qualified to 2017. And that was all with children and young people, partly in primary schools and then in more generic camps.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 04:27

Can I ask what factors were involved in your decision to leave the NHS? And that's with no barbs or pressure done the same myself. If that feels okay for you to answer it, I'd love to know and I'm sure our audience would love to know too.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 04:42

Yeah, absolutely. It was a really tough decision and it was a decision actually that I think that was also the time. That was the first time I intentionally used a knitting project to get me through a transition in my life. I think I'd done it but not really thought about it intentionally before that. But when I left the NHS, I think the team I was working in there had been a lot of changes as most NHS teams. I'd gone back after having my second child and I think was struggling with being the kind of middle level of the CAMS team where we were seeing we were of the level that we're expected to take the more serious risky clinical cases at the same time as supervising more junior members of the team and also then attending some kind of more management type meetings and all of that in only part-time, which felt like a lot of pressure and that there was enough, just about enough time to do all the things you kind of had to do to hit all of the targets of how many clients you're seeing.

(: 05:56

Are you supervising everybody but not enough time to explore anything above that in terms of interest or CPD or that was really difficult. And I am married to an NHS doctor and I felt like it was not really sustainable, sadly for our family. I think it had also been winter and my kids had been sick very often. So in that sense it was a really difficult, there were some things in the team that were really unhelpful and I didn't really agree with that. I felt quite frustrated I think, and not being able to do anything about it. So it felt like a very sad decision at the time and wasn't really one that I wanted to make. And it was not done in a sensible way in the sense that I didn't really have private work set up beforehand. Obviously I had a three month notice period so I could get things kind of a bit up and running, but it wasn't really a planned departure, but I knew that private work was going to be more flexible for family life rather than finding another NHS job. So that was the point at which I kind of left and took a leap into the unknown. And I think in terms of going back to the knitting side of things, I feel like being in private practise has allowed me to be a bit more kind of flexible and innovative, I suppose, in terms of exploring other interests.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 07:31

Yeah, absolutely. Even today, an aspiring journalist messaged me and said, could you help with this research? And it sounded really, really interesting and I really wanted to do it. And so I've been like, yes. But obviously when we are in an employee capacity it makes that much trickier. So yeah, I hear you damn near broke my heart when I left the NHS as well. It's an organisation that I passionately believe in and I think that it offers a really pretty impressive service in very stretched resources to many, many patients across the country, across the UK for that matter. But we absolutely need to be looking after that, our own wellbeing and the needs of our own family. And it may not be something that we do forever. It may be something that we choose to stay away from forever, but we are people first and psychologists second, and we've got to have good work life balance.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 08:26

And I feel like there are a lot of benefits I suppose, in terms of being able to just decide that I won't miss any of my kids' assemblies or sports days or things like that. That for me, I was able to do that at that point and that was fortunate. And it might not be forever, like you say that I would like to think I'll go back to the NHS at some point, but yeah, we'll see.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 08:56

Yeah, I hear you. When they randomly throw in an extra music assembly at 2:00 PM on a Friday and you're like, oh, well I can go, but I'm acutely aware that I wouldn't be able to if I wasn't in private practise. That would be a bit more of a struggle.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 09:09

Yeah, exactly. And there just seems to be at the end of every term, a whole bunch of those extra things where you have to show up.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 09:17

We are approaching the end of year six now for my eldest, and I know there's even more kind of leaving stuff that happens as well. So tell us about you and knitting. When did you first start to learn to knit?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 09:31

So I think I learned, I remember having some Donald Duck knitting needles as a child and my mum was a knitter kind of on off knitter and she would periodically, you'd just kind of watch her and she'd just be clicking. I remember thinking she's just clicking those needles together and it's kind of just happening by magic. And I would ask to try and she'd help me and I'd make some very tight and frustrating little knitting like the size of a mouse blanket. So I think I did that a few times throughout childhood. My kids have also done and didn't stick. I was always attracted to making things with my hands. I would do, I dunno, I had a cross stitch phase. I was always doing something like that. And I feel like there was a part of my brain that wanted a project that was unrelated to, I dunno, work or anything that mattered really just like a little creative thing.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 10:32

Oh, you were an early adopter for mindfulness, Mia.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 10:36

Yeah, exactly. But I think I didn't really think about it in any formal way. And then when it was actually when I started training at UEL, my moms had met somebody whose daughter had also done the clinical psychology doctorate and this trainee psychologist had learned to brick lay because she really had this strong desire to, I don't even know if she needed a brick wall, but that she had a strong desire to do something that was completely unrelated to psychology. And at that point, my mum was in a phase of knitting at that time and had shawls on the arm of the sofa that if you were cold. So I was at her house and I just put wrapped shawl around me because I was cold. And she said, you could make one of those, I think you should learn to knit. And I said, okay, fine.

(: 11:26

Just to keep her quiet really, to be honest. And so she showed me the stitches and I think my hands, I always feel like people's hands, remember even if their brains don a bit, when I get my clarinet out that I used to play my kind of hands can remember even though I feel like I can't read music anymore. So she showed me how to do things and before I got on the train back to London, we went to John Lewis and bought some yarn and I was just about to do my first year exams at the time and I feel like it was a triangular shawl. I actually still have it. So it starts off with five stitches and then gets gradually bigger and bigger and bigger. And the wingspan of this thing is now huge, a couple of metres maybe. And it was quite good that it started small so I could just, when I was new at knitting, just do a row was very quick.

(: 12:16

And when I was having a break in my revision, I would just do a couple of rows and then I'd go back to my revision. And I've always felt like it is using a very different part of my brain to what was required of a lot of me. It's still in my job now, but also particularly in training where you're kind of cramming information in and you're doing a lot of thinking and analysing and talking and this was just a very different, I felt part of my brain and I feel like it kind of opens a different trap door and then different thoughts emerge if I do a bit of knitting. So often now I'll bring some knitting with me to my face-to-face clinic and before somebody comes into the room, I just sit for five minutes and get my knitting out and then I think, oh, maybe I just ask them about this thing or something new will come to me that I hadn't thought about and wouldn't have thought about if I was deliberately trying to think about it.

(: 13:09

I think. So that was when I started. And actually as it happens, a couple of other girls in my training course had also, so some of them say I taught them to knit, which may or may not be true. I remember my friend Rachel, her grandma had taught her to knit and she, I dunno, had some knitting at home. So a few of us used to randomly knit a bit together or talk a bit about it. So that kind of I think found the flame a little bit, but it was just something I did in revision breaks quietly at home. And I don't think I realised how helpful it was for my kind of mental wellbeing until much later really. But that was where it started.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 13:52

I love that and I love the idea of the other trainee suddenly being like, I need to build a brick wall. I know. So funny. I guess I dunno

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 14:04

Who this person is and whether they have this brick wall that's actively in the way in their garden. I like to think they do.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 14:11

Yeah, I guess often a lot of the work we do, you don't necessarily get that tangible result. You might get a felt sense of actually the importance of what we do, but so maybe there's something around, I need to build a brick wall, I want to knit a jumper, I need to do something. But I love the idea that you can kind of use it as a way of decompressing from therapy sessions, but also kind of building your mind up for therapy sessions as well. And so that becomes part of the knitted products, doesn't it? That all of those, I think it's why it's so evocative. I remember still going see the Bay of Tapestry on my school trip when I was in year seven, so I was like 11. But the idea that all of the people and all of the hours and the hands and the work and the dedication that went into creating that, and I think that's what the real beauty of handmade is. When I had my firstborn, one of my friends who was actually a clinical psychologist gave me some beautiful blankets and kind of knitted teddies and things. And it's just a gift that is really tricky to put into words how powerful that is because you need to pre-order that don't, you can't just suddenly have that it's being held in mind and somebody choosing to mindfully hold your mind even whilst they're doing the planning, even whilst they're going to the wool shop and then every time they're knitting. That's really lovely.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 15:53

And I think when you do it, you realise just how many hours of somebody's free time they've spent doing this thing or choosing the right colour or the right yarn. And I think that was one of the things that really made me realise how beneficial it was and how you could use it very intentionally was when I was part of my last NHS job in the Cams team, there was a colleague of mine who was having twins and they were very special babies because they were following her breast cancer and she was a very, very big character and a loved member of the team. And lots of people came up to me because they knew I knitted and they said, oh, I'd really like to knit something for these babies. Could you help me do something? And I was thinking, actually, I'm not sure these poor babies need 15 half finished cardigans and they grow so quickly, don't they newborns that you could put in a lot of effort and make something they would only wear for five minutes.

(: 17:00

So I said, look, why don't I buy some yarn and we can knit squares. And I had actually as a trainee, as I was a knitter, and in my last placement, all of the team there had made me this amazing patchwork cushion and they'd sewn all together and each of the members of the team had knitted a bit of this patchwork cushion and some of them were quite dodgy knitters. And they'd taken photographic evidence to show that even the consultant psychiatrist had done some knitting. And so-and-so had been tempted to take it home and get his wife to do it, but they'd actually persuaded him, he could learn to knit and it was such an amazing gift. I've still got it now.

(: 17:41

Yeah. So that was what inspired me. So I didn't make anyone join in, but lots of, well one person maybe he was a very good friend of the person whose babysit were, lots of people came together. And so there were many people who'd done a bit of knitting before, but lots of people who hadn't. And we all kind of sat together at lunchtime and even if it was like 10, 15 minutes, people put their work down, they sat in the staff room, not at their desks and did a bit of knitting and it opened up different conversations and people had a bit of non-working time and really noticed how it made a big difference to team morale. So I think that was what made me think about more seriously could I actually use it as part of my therapy work. Really.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 18:28

Oh, that's just so lovely. And that brought a little tear to my eye, the idea that everybody in the team knitted you a square. I know that's really, really powerful, really lovely and just really, really nice. Do you ever use that in session with clients? Do you ever kind of knit together and then the client takes away the work with them so that they can kind of hold that in mind as a tangible product of the work they've done with you?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 18:54

Yes, I have done that and have recently finished a therapy blanket that I'm making with a client at the moment where we've both knitted squares and put them together and sometimes we do a bit of knitting as part of an engagement strategy and then eventually once they feel comfortable talking their knitting needles don't come out so often. But yeah, it's been lovely. I've done it a few times actually in different workplaces where we've made a blanket together and that has felt nice when it's had a purpose I think. And some people I've taught them how to knit or maybe reminded them and then they've gone away and it's been a kind of almost like transitional object, but something that they've needed to hold onto through therapy sessions to keep them going until the next week or over a break for example, or to make something for a significant person in their life to help them feel close to them. Also, I think a lot of us as knitters, we're taught by family members and it helps us feel closer to other people maybe who aren't with us anymore. So I think there's lots of ways in which I found it's been really helpful. And I've also started having these conversations on my own podcast with people about why they knit and how it benefits their mental health. And people have shared some amazing stories because I think there's just so much anecdotal evidence that knitting can be hugely beneficial to your mental health.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 20:31

Just before we hit record, you were trying to teach me to knit and it did immediately transport me to being coed up in an armchair at my granny's house. She was an avid knitter and she only really seemed to stop as her cancer advanced unfortunately. But she always just had a knitting bag full of knitting needles and projects and balls of wool. And I think those are almost really nice things to pass down the generation as well, aren't they? So that you can kind of finish someone's knitting. And I'm kind of a bit sad now that I didn't think to do that. I don't dunno where they are now, but yeah, it's really powerful, isn't it? And that idea that maybe my fingers do remember I need to have some help with casting on, that's where I was struggling. My neighbour, there's

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 21:20

Actually no, there's actually an amazing organisation now they're based in the US but they've got knitters all over the world called Loose Ends who were based around that exact issue of a loved one no longer being able to knit or not being around anymore and having an unfinished project. So now they match projects with finishers who volunteer their kind of skills so you can volunteer for them and say, I can do, I dunno, knitting and crochet. And they find a project that somebody's been left with who doesn't knit and then people finish them. And it was amazing to speak to them for my podcast about, I had thought about how nice it would be for the person who was grieving to have this item finished. Maybe it was a teddy bear for the grandchild or something like that. But what I hadn't thought about was that lots of the people who'd applied to be finishes were actually also people who'd lost somebody through grief or wanted to do something nice for another person. So it was an amazing project.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 22:28

Oh, that's got repair shop written all over. It has that, but that would make a fantastic series. You should pitch that as a TV idea because Davina McCall could present that surely Claudia Wilm come in with her love of knitwear that's got legs, Kirsty, she could do it. She loves a bit of knitting, doesn't she? That's got legs that that's a really lovely idea. And it was making me think about a fantastic rainbow bright jumper that my granny knitted me and she also knitted me my little pony jumper. But I only ever got to wear it once or twice. I left it on a holiday. Oh no. All of those hours. I never got it back and sad, but I guess I really enjoyed it when I wore it. But yeah, sad times, sad times.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 23:17

It's tough to lose hand knitted items. Yeah, I nearly lost a, I'd just finished knitting this cardigan and I'd not been knitting. It was quite a long time of me being a knitter before I knitted garments and I'd knitted this cardigan and was really proud of it. It was one of the first wearable clothes I'd made and then it ended up in a bag that was left on a bus from Barcelona Airport. I was reunited with it. But yeah, that was quite sad when I thought I'd lost it for a few days. I think

Dr Marianne Trent (: 23:50

It was gone. Love that. I love that you got it back. How do you even begin to knit a jumper? Is it stitched together or is it like one, they can

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 23:59

Be

Dr Marianne Trent (: 23:59

The old thing,

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 24:02

They can be stitched together. I can't quite tell from you. Look, I think your cardigan is pieced, is it? Yeah, but so for example, this jumper I'm wearing now is cast on at the neckline and knitted in the round and then is knitted kind of down to the shoulders and then you put the sleeves on hold and then knit down the torso. So it's knitted in kind of three tubes basically. So usually I prefer to knit them kind of all in one piece. You can try them on as you go. So then if it's long enough or if it fits, okay, that's easier.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 24:39

Oh, that is just so clever. So clever. How has the cost of living crisis affected the knitting community? Has yarn prices dropped through the roof or are they fairly consistent?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 24:51

I think with yarn there is, knitting is not a cheap way of getting clothes. The way I see it is that it's kind of a hobby that I'm going to knit anyway. I happen to end result in an end product, which is also wearable for me, which is almost a bonus. I think I knit 90% of why I knit is for the process rather than for the outcome. But what surprised me actually about knitting was how it's changed my, I dunno if the word is body image or self-concept or kind of relationship with clothing as a result of being somebody who can make their own clothes. But I think you can buy yarn in a pound shop and you can buy yarn that is hand dyed and super expensive. But yeah, so I think there's something there for every budget. But I guess everything probably most things have got more expensive. More expensive recently.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 25:53

Thank you. And in terms of research, I've sort of got some vague fact rattling around at the back of my brain about people who are using their brains in certain ways are less likely to develop certain kind of degenerative conditions. But I don't know if I've made that up. Is there anything around knitting that you are aware of that's kind of in that realm of the actual functional benefits for our brain?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 26:24

So I suppose the research I've more looked into is more on a mental health angle. So in terms of the research about it being beneficial for our mental health rather than to do with thinking about degenerative conditions. But I guess generally, I guess the research in that vein is that using your brain or using different skills is helpful for retaining them. And I guess it depends probably how you are using your knitting. I guess one of the great things I think about knitting is that you and I could need very different things from knitting and it could offer us both. So if what you wanted was something very simple to do while you're watching telly to relax, we don't really have to think about it, but your hands are moving or you wanted something to do during, I don't know, a really long zoom training where you just have to sit and listen and it helps you focus.

(: 27:20

It would certainly help me focus if I was sitting and listening to something, you could do that. Whereas if you wanted something to, I call it active relaxation. So you want something to completely absorb your brain so that you actually can't think about something else. Something is not happening. You can't think about what you're making for dinner tomorrow or the last client you saw or any of those things. You could have that. So I tend to have projects in both camps on the needles at all times. So I've got something super simple I can do while I'm, for example, listening to my kids read or I can whip it out in the dentist waiting room. And then I've got something really complicated that absorbs all of my brain and means I can only think about that actually, and I can't also think about something else at the same time.

(: 28:08

So I think in terms of the research, there's certainly research that it can help with things like ruminative thoughts. All of the research is quite, it's hard to get research funded when it's about knitting and corkill who was basically the authority on therapeutic knitting, used to have to call it a, I can't remember what she called it, a rhythmical bilateral psychosocial intervention. And everybody wanted to know about it. And if she said the K word as she called it, everybody turned off and called her the mad knitting lady. But it's very like I interviewed an oncology nurse who'd done a study about compassion fatigue using knitting with oncology nurses. And she said her point was, it's such low hanging fruit, it's such a cheap, easy and accessible intervention to offer that what could possibly, it's highly unlikely to be harmful in any way, what could possibly be the problem with it.

(: 29:09

But there's been a big study that's qualitative, I think that was 3000 knitters completed the study about. I think they completed measures of depression and anxiety and it was kind of demonstrating the more you knit, the more likely it is to have benefits for your mental health. But as part of my podcast, people have told me some amazing stories about things like reducing physical pain, people with chronic illness, lots of people using it to overcome bereavement. I guess we can also borrow research from things like EMDR because I guess it is a form of bilateral stimulation. And I think those of us who do it every day are probably doing a bit of that stuff that EMDR does just with the events of our daily lives every day.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 29:58

Absolutely. Absolutely. So we have mainly mental health professionals that listen to the podcast, but sometimes there are people who are just really interested in mental health. So if I just briefly say what bilateral is, so bilateral is when we're using both sides of our brain. So for example, when I move my left arm here, it's my right side of my brain that's doing that. And when I use my right arm, it's the left side of my brain. So when we're doing things like tapping or knitting or drumming or even walking or therapies such as the MDR, we're activating both sides of those brains. So I love that idea for knitting. I think the only drawback I can think about really is if you were going to do that in a forensic setting is giving people potentially quite sharp pointy sticks. But yeah, what's the danger is you're not going to harm someone by knitting.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 30:47

No, I think the main thing I found, because I've taught lots of people to knit, I've done some therapeutic knitting groups in schools and run retreats. And I think the main challenge, I suppose, is when people are already in a period of their life where they're struggling, let's say they were experiencing low mood, then learning a new thing that might potentially be a bit tricky and frustrating, it might be just too hard actually in that moment of their life, they might not be able to cope with the kind of setbacks of, it's not going to be that easy. It might be too frustrating. And that's why I guess when I talk about knitting, I'm not advocating, everybody starts to knit when I mention it in therapy. I mention, I talk a bit about knitting and how I use knitting and I say, have you got any interest in knitting?

(: 31:36

And when people say no, I then don't talk about knitting anymore. But we think about is there anything in your life that maybe you've done before, maybe feels familiar, maybe you did it in childhood when you were younger. Because often when I see teenagers, they've kind of given up more creative hobbies that they used to do as a younger child. I guess we offer those things to young children all the time. And then I guess we just stop when people get older. So often people can think about something that they've done before that uses a similar type of skill, something that's a bit creative, or it focuses on using their hands. It could be Lego or it could be, I've got somebody who uses diamond painting who I'm working with at the moment, and it could be painting, colouring, cooking, cake decorating. There's lots of different things that people might find more accessible than knitting if for example, they're not in a period of their life where learning something new feels easy for them at the moment.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 32:40

But there is also, there's that importance of the sense of mastery and the excitement you can get about learning something new. And what we know certainly from a compassion focused therapy perspective is that that activates our drive. And humans, sometimes we can be lacking in drive. So the idea of being engaged and learning something can be really, really, really lovely. And over the summer, my little boy and I made a few of those friendship bracelets that you kind of weave around a circular thing by crossing the strings. And it reminded me that I had a summer of doing that when I was younger and absolutely loved it. And I thought, oh, I should make more of these, but how many friendship bracelets does one girl need? But I absolutely, yeah, similar to you used to like FMO or fmo, whatever it's called, Hamer beads. I loved all of that.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 33:28

And I think we do live in a world where actually a lot of, well, I suppose a lot of what you and I do doesn't have a very tangible product and things like therapy, whether things are going well or it might not be very linear progress, there might be lots of times where things don't feel like they have a very clear path maybe. Whereas I think that's part of the appeal of a knitting pattern. It is kind of a formula of if you start with this and you do this, you get to this. And I think one of the other things that's been super helpful for me and for lots of other knitters is the idea of having somewhere to make safe mistakes. So it's a kind of part of creativity I guess, is trying things and failing in a space that feels like that's safe and acceptable.

(: 34:18

Nothing terrible will happen. And particularly for knitting, unlike if you were, I dunno, painting, everything is undoable. You can just unravel it and you've always got, unless you get the scissors out in a dramatic way, what you started with, you've still got your two sticks and a ball of yarn. So that I think has been really helpful in helping me to grow my kind of self-compassion around making mistakes in other areas of my life as well actually, because I think the assumption for me and all knitters is that you will make mistakes all the time. I'm knitting this traitor sweater. I unravelled the entirety of it yesterday, all of what I got to and started again. I didn't quite like the fit of the role neck.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 35:03

I love that. Oh, I'm looking forward to seeing how your traitor's sweater develops over time. I was definitely admiring Claudia's knitwear on traitors and obviously people can come out and check that out for themselves. Where is your Instagram? What's your Instagram address please? Mia?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 35:23

So the Instagram is knitting is therapeutic.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 35:27

Yeah. Great. And tell us a little bit about your podcast. What's that called and where can people listen?

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 35:31

So the podcast is called Why I Knit. And yeah, it's a podcast where I interview each week a different knitter about why they knit and how it benefits their mental health. So we've got a very diverse range of knitters, some knitwear designers, some people who've contacted me to share amazing stories about what knitting has done for them in their lives. So that's called Why I Knit and it's available on my website, which is therapeutic knitting.org or on any of the major podcast apps.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 36:01

Thank you so much and you've inspired me. I'm going to get my neighbour to teach me how to knit and I'm going to keep you posted and maybe by the time this podcast episode is out, which is probably going to be around March time, I think I will be able to share some progress of my knitting along with the socials and perhaps in the editing for this episode.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 36:23

Super.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 36:25

Thank you so much for your time and you certainly left us with a lot of interesting food for thought.

Dr Mia Hobbs (: 36:31

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 36:34

You're so welcome. Thank you again to our guest, Dr. Mia Hobbs. Please do go and follow her over on her Instagram account, which is Knitting is Therapeutic. You can find Maya there, and if you do that, you will see that she has finished her traitor's jumper and it looks marvellous. Now, I have to confess, my knitting has not got a lot further since we met, but I did bump into a craft group where they were doing knitting in a local library to me. And so I popped in and I chatted to the lovely ladies there and if you are watching on video, you will be able to see some of the, I asked if I could take a photo, not of them, but of some of their work. And they agreed, also gave me a really useful YouTube site to check out, which is a lady called Very Pink Knits, and there should be an image of that on your screen right now.

(: 37:35

They said that there's a really great video on there for how to cast on that uses like a plain background so that you can clearly see what you are doing. So I am going to still run with that gauntlet and I'm going to try to learn to knit and I will keep you posted. Please do come and follow me on my socials to see how that journey unfolds. I am Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. Love to know what you think to this episode as it inspired you to get crafty or to bring any of your passions into the therapy room. For the clients that you serve, do come and let me know either on YouTube at Dr. Marianne Trent, like and subscribe when you are there, or in my free Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. It is my pleasure to bring this work to you.

(: 38:28

Please do check out the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book and the Clinical Psychologist Collective book and let me know what you need, what you want. Check out the Aspiring Psychologist course for mental health professionals, which you can do by clicking the link in any of my social media bios. I will look forward to bringing the next episode to you as an MP three from 6:00 AM on Monday, or it's usually available on YouTube the weekend before. I love being part of your world. I love having you be part of mine. Stay kind to yourselves and I'll see you very soon. Take care.

Jingle Guy (: 39:07

If you're looking to become a psychologist, let this podcast, you'll psych with Dr.