Continuing with our series of Meet the Trainers, we are sharing the work at Senior Trainer Carolyn Hinds. To learn more about Carolyn, take a look at the questions answered below.
What is the best thing about being part of the British Isles DBT team?
I love working with a very committed and highly skilled group of trainers, who are all striving to provide the best possible quality of DBT training. I learn something new each time I train either from the other trainers or from the delegates. It motivates me to learn more all the time. The event liaisons and the staff back in the office are also great to work with.
What led you to become a trainer?
It seemed a natural step to share my experiences and enthusiasm for delivering DBT to clinicians who are just starting their DBT journey or who want more advanced training. Having worked with adolescents for most of my clinical career in DBT, I had seen first-hand the difference it made to this group of people so early in their lives. I really want more clinicians out there to offer this evidence-based intervention to this adolescent client group and other client groups too!
What do you enjoy most about training with biDBT?
We are committed and work hard AND we have a lot of fun as a group of trainers and with the delegates! I like being a member of a group and organisation that is offering very high-quality training to delegates.
What advice would you give to new DBT therapists?
Be kind and compassionate to yourselves as you learn DBT, and be open with any struggles with your consultation team so that you can benefit from their experience and guidance to offer the best DBT you can. Life is one big learning curve, and we are all doing our best at any one time, and we need to constantly revisit the texts to enhance learning. Demonstrating fallibility to our clients when we do get it wrong, enables them to be more open with their difficulties and cements relationships. They love hearing our stories of when we used skills and the more exciting and dramatic the story, the better they remember them! Also getting clients to rehearse skills and writing what they did in session down in detail helps them to put those skills into practice in their real lives – it really makes a difference to troubleshoot what may get in the way of using skills and getting a commitment to use the skills from the clients. Clinicians often forget to do this.
What is your favourite course to deliver and why?
I like the National Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Intensive Training™ the best, as you have teams from all over the country come together to learn DBT from a range of specialities. We teach them DBT for Part I of the training over 5 days and then look forward to meeting them all again for another 5 days 6 months later! I enjoy seeing how they got on with the development of their DBT team and also guide and shape their DBT clinical work. I also enjoy the 2-day DBT Skills Training: Essentials™ Workshop, when clinicians first learn about DBT and leave with plans to deliver DBT skills classes or have new tools for their individual work.
What is your favourite DBT-related quote?
The one that I often use with clients related to the importance of staying in the moment one-mindfully is from Kung Fu Panda “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present”. My clients think it is funny and don’t forget it!
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?
I am somebody who likes to be busy and enjoy a good social life. I also volunteer at the local theatre, I am learning to play the saxophone, like reading murder mysteries, and run the Parkrun each week.
What is a fun fact about yourself?
I love charity shop shopping – and call it “guilt-free retail therapy” – it feeds into my difficulty of resisting any bargains I see in any shop and supporting various charities and I buy most of my reading books there!
Who would you most like to swap places with for the day?
I would like to swap places with an astronaut for the day. We are approaching the age of space tourism, but I think I may be too old or not rich enough to be able to do this myself. It would be so amazing to experience being out in space, the weightlessness and seeing Earth from that perspective. It would be awesome!
What has been your biggest achievement?
Without sounding really corny, I think that my biggest achievement has been helping some of the young people who I saw within our DBT programme use DBT skills to reduce suicidal behaviour and achieve their life worth living goals. Some of my ex-clients keep in touch with me to tell me that they have got married, had children, has successful careers or are content with their lives. Changing people’s lives is the biggest achievement for me!