Get Booked – Karin Sieger – Blogger, Therapist, Podcaster

Hello, I'm Hazel, and this is the Get Booked Show here at our studio in Covent Garden, and we are here to just help and support women's emotional well-being, and we are currently doing a series of episodes where we are talking to therapists and mental health advocates. And today I'm very lucky to be joined in the studio by Karen Seager. Hello! Hello, Hazel, how are you today? I'm very well, how are you? Uh, very excited because you're kind— you're a triple threat, aren't you? You're a, you're a psychotherapist, podcaster, and writer. Yes. And human. And human as well. Wow. I know. I know. How do you cope with all four? You might as well ask. Yes. So, uh, it's quite interesting. I've been looking on your website, karenseeger.com, and, um, I was listening to quite a few of your podcasts, and what I quite like is they're not too long, but also you supply the resources, don't you? I do a lot of it. Well, I do everything. Yes. It's quite helpful. Women, we can do anything. You know, sometimes I prefer it, then I know what I'm dealing with and you know it's done. Your words, not mine, but absolutely no faffing around. And I can blame myself. So if you just tell us a little bit about your background, how you became a therapist and decided to— because you've been writing a while, but the podcasting is quite new, isn't it? That's right, that's right. In a nutshell, in my early 40s, at the time I was working in media research, I hit a wall. I hit my sort of crisis of purpose, I'd like to call it, a bit like a midlife crisis. And I really felt I don't want to be doing this, or I don't want to live the life the way I'm doing it at the moment for much longer. I felt it was no longer good for me on a number of levels. And at the time, the company I was working for was also being bought out. So there was the opportunity of redundancy. So I grabbed that opportunity, even though it was extremely frightening. And I went to see an occupational therapist because I had no idea where to get career advice for a woman in her early 40s. And they did a number of tests with me, sort of aptitude tests, and they came out with, I can't even remember it, 3 different options for me, 3 different recommendations, and being a therapist was one of them. Really? And this was in the summer, and I immediately went to my local uni, which happened to offer the entrance course for it, and within 2 months I was unemployed and a part-time student. I'm quite intrigued, what were the other 2 options? To be honest, I can't remember. I'd love it, I'd love for it to have been gardening, which I love with a passion, but I do remember it was not among them, so I really can't recall. It was probably something in education along those lines. You see, it was quite a while since I was back at college, and I've just, you've just reminded me that this was done for me as well. And it's, and these tests, they kind of answer all, they ask you all bizarre questions and it comes out. And my top 3 were, one was a prison officer. Oh dear. One was an administrator. Yes. So I've got quite a logical brain. And the other one was a radio presenter. Really? Yep. And I ignored all 3. I only became a radio presenter about 10 years ago. Right. But no, they are quite interesting, these tests. They are. And but I think that was— it was also because the lady who was doing it then spoke with me, and she heard me, and she understood me. She understood my background. And I think that was really critical to interpreting the results. Right. And linking them up with me as a person. I don't think tests tests by themselves can give you the full picture. That's my personal view. I think we need to get a feel for the person in front of us. And I think that combination worked really well. And I had to take a risk, you know, I had to trust this a bit, but I was quite desperate. I knew I needed to do something and my gut feeling told me that's worthwhile exploring. Well, you did take the risk and it's working out for you. Yes, it is. And what's Can I ask this question? What's your favourite? Doing the therapy, the writing, or the podcasting? It's all a combination of the same. Brilliant. You know, everything is an expression of me. Even the way I do the therapy, it's very much me. I don't take out the textbook and say, okay, we've got condition XYZ and now we do the following. You know, because people aren't the same. No, people are not the same, and therapists are not the same either. We have to match. But just to go back to that original question, I find the more I do those things— and last year I started with YouTube as well— I see that as part of my own growth and development. If you had told me a year ago I'd be sitting here, I'd be doing podcasting, I I wouldn't have believed you, and I wasn't ready then. Well, that's the thing. It's about trying things out when it feels right for us, and when you kind of feel it here as well. Yes. There's quite a wide variety. You've got two different kinds of podcasts, haven't you? That's right, yes. One is kind of soul-searching, and the other is to do with cancer? Yes, it's called Cancer and You. Now, do you want to tell us a little bit more about that? Yes, absolutely. So, as life gives you those, or invites you for new challenges, I finished my training as a therapist in 2009, and in 2012 I was diagnosed with breast cancer, took a year off, and after that I also started with the writing. So there was a new chapter opening up, a new way of expressing myself, and I started specialising in supporting people affected by cancer. And last year the cancer recurred, a local recurrence, and a new chapter opened up, which was the podcasting. And I now felt I had been doing a lot of writing about cancer and my own cancer experience, and I just needed a new way of expressing this. And hence the idea of the Cancer and You podcast. But this is the spirit of human nature, is when we have challenges thrown at us, it's what we do with it and how we run with it. And I think you need to be commended for that. I think that's absolutely excellent. And the fact that you are sharing your experience, 'cause everybody has a different experience. That's right. But sometimes you just need to talk about it. It's really to encouraging the conversation, and it's not to say my experience is your experience or the next person's experience. You're absolutely right. We have to do this for ourselves. But there are some common themes like the uncertainty and the worry which we have, whatever. We don't need to have cancer to have those feelings. But it's really encouraging people to get in touch with those frightening feelings and not to ignore them because that's when we get stuck. Interestingly, I had a gentleman in on the show about a month ago called Raz Shaw with "Death and the Elephant," and he, it was a cancer memoir, absolutely excellent, you should read it, very funny, very to the bone, and he talked about the complexities of dealing with other people who didn't know how to deal with you because you have cancer, or whether, and the fact that sometimes it's laid upon you to actually make the other person feel comfortable, and people who you don't really like coming to wish you well when you're not feeling great. And he covers all those kind of areas as well. And it's not just dealing with the illness, it's dealing with everybody around you. Absolutely. And thoroughly recommend the book, but you will be laughing at some of the things he goes through, and you have to have a particular sense of humour as well. But as you said, You started writing, which is cathartic. Absolutely. Which is what the subject of one of your podcasts was, the cathartic nature of writing and reading. And reading and listening to audiobooks, for example, have somebody do the reading for you. Absolutely, yes. It's living— this is why I do this show, because reading is not just entertaining you, it is living somebody else's life. It is learning. It is escape. The amount of times I see people getting frustrated on transport because they're stuck here and doing that and doing whatever. I take a book with me everywhere and I don't even notice how long I'm on these trains. And I get we've all got to be somewhere, but reading does so much. Writing does so much. Yes. I do blog and a lot of the things that I write about don't necessarily go out there. I just need the process of writing and And you can have— sometimes it's ordering your thoughts and there can be too much craziness going on. And when you write that down, you either order those thoughts or when you see it written down, it's not as bad as it appears to be. I like especially the last point. Exactly. It becomes even a fear that is totally unrealistic and unreal can make us feel very frightened. If we face it though, if we say, say it out loud or write it down, as you said, it takes on a very different status almost. It's something out there, and I feel, you know what, chances are I can cope with this. It's no longer in our head and screaming at us. I wrote a blog actually a couple of weeks ago, and it's about taking back the control, and I actually urge people to think about what they were actually fearful of and what could actually happen. And actually, if that happened, How bad was that? If you started a business and it failed. Yes. It failed, it means that you can do it again and know how to do it better, or at least you tried, or if you, there's so many things that we can do that we can fail at and it's not the end of the world. Sometimes it is, but we need to just not assume that all fears are the same, and that's what I was writing about, and you're right, You know, writing things down, just, it rationalises and it's, the therapeutic elements are just incredible. Absolutely. We've got so much that I want to talk to you about. I've got about 30 questions. We've gone through possibly half a question so far. We're gonna pop off. We're at the end of our first section already. Can you believe it? I know, time flies, yes. It does indeed. And it's quite a few other little bits and pieces, some tips on mental health that I want to ask you about as well. We'll be back in a couple of minutes after these ads. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. 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We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. And we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones, focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own, and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website at mediamattersforwomen.org. You're listening to Women's Radio Station supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter @WomensRadioStation, that's Women's Radio S-T-N, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to the second section of Get Booked. Here today we are chatting away to Karen Siegel. We've been having a good old chinwag, haven't we? We have indeed, Hazel. And this, we do this so often where we just go off on a tangent because it's such a rich subject—books, mental health, mental wellbeing. And I'm hoping that we don't—oh, just banged the desk, sorry—that we don't get to the last 3 minutes and I quickly have to go question, question, question, question. So I'm going to be on this. Now, one thing that I really want to know is what are the topics that you're seeing emerging within your field at the moment? In my field, my work specifically, or? As a therapist. As a therapist. The topics that come again and again is confidence. It's really people getting— living their busy lives, taking care of so much and losing connection with themselves and losing connection with the confidence that we all need to deal with problems. And then as people get older, sometimes, you know, more problems arise. Parents perhaps get older. There might be illnesses. There might be death, children leaving home, redundancy, whatnot, financial difficulties. An uncertain society, politically, socially, a lot of pressure, a lot of worries. And we need to have that internal connection to our confidence, to our intuition, to that knowledge. I can do this. It might not be pretty, it might not be easy. So confidence, coping with illness, coping with relationship problems, you know, coping with mental health issues or emotional health issues, I think it comes back to confidence. And the second one is, if I look at the blogs on my website that do particularly well, there is one about hopelessness. You know, we all talk about hope. We don't talk enough about having no hope and being hopeless and being resigned. And how to turn that? It's about feeling like we're powerless. Yes. Disempowered. And what I find contributes to this is the overwhelming nature of life. And we get so overwhelmed that we get out of practice as well. So what kind of advice do you— advice or what processes do you go through to try and increase people's confidence? There is a lot to it. I'm taking a deep breath here because there is not an easy answer to this. Yeah. You know, sometimes we have to go back and understand, you know, how much confidence or how much did we learn about confidence, perhaps the way we grew up. People often say, I don't want to look back. I don't want to talk about my childhood. I don't want to talk about my past. But sometimes that's where some of the seeds are sown and we need to understand those links. We also need to do a lot of reality checks because our minds are extremely powerful. Even when we don't feel well, our minds can make us believe that things are so awful and they are not. Yeah. It's a very similar other podcast that you did as well, isn't it? About kind of getting over, what was the title of it? Let me have a quick look about this one. It was about kind of getting over— Regrets or? Yeah, I think it was regrets and kind of, I've got the list here actually, 'cause you've got the creative writing and why reading is good for you, coping with difficult days, 'How to Let Go of Resentment.' Yes. That was the one. Yes. And sometimes the hopelessness is because we're not letting go, and it consumes our brain, which doesn't give us the capacity to move forward. It takes so much energy to hold on to things and to replay them in our heads and to replay them in the way we behave towards others, and then of course they're going to behave back to us, and then it The cycle continues. The cycle of anxiety and then feeling hopeless because you don't have the mental space to be confident. Absolutely. And that again then makes you feel hopeless. So, so it's, it's just a horrible cycle and we need to break this cycle. Um, I met a fantastic lady the other day and she was pointing out that you need to find something that just invigorates your soul. And things like, I think it was the spoken word for her, poetry, always made her come out going, "Yes!" And she's like, "You just need to find that thing, whether it's a concert, whether it's listening to music, whether it's cooking, and whatever it is that gives you that fire, you keep on doing it. If it's reading a book, if it's playing football, if it's doing sport, that's the one thing you have to find time for. If you find time for that one thing, everything else will slot into place. Yes. And you need to find that one thing. And I totally agree with you. And then there are a lot of people who will say, that's too simple. That's too simple for the problems that I'm facing in my life. But it's, as you rightly say, it's that fire. It's to reconnect with that. And I think we've lost a lot of that. And often perhaps people are not educated, perhaps in their upbringing, to realise this is really important stuff. You know, this is not Saturday stuff, this is daily stuff. And it's a starting point. Absolutely. It's, you know, I think in one of my blogs I wrote that sometimes, and it sounded so superficial, that I just needed to start coming up with outfits on Pinterest with the clothes I already had because if I felt good within myself and I felt good on the outside, And it's not that wearing a nice top with a nice skirt that looks okay is going to cure any problems. It is giving you that boost forward, which helps you do every other little bit. Start somewhere. If you, if you want to start a business, yes, starting a business is huge, but you've got to start somewhere. That's right. Decide the name, then that bit's done. You chip away and eventually it all becomes easier. That's right. You've got to keep going. Everything adds up. Every little step matters. Hmm, it does. And so this is why, and I understand when I asked you for advice on how to gain confidence, it's dependent on the person, it's dependent on, you know, what's going to work for that person. You can't tell somebody to go and do exercise if it doesn't feel like their bone. And that time of life, because you might find you start off with one thing and further down the line you realise, oh, it's actually another thing now, and changing and developing new preferences It's okay. Well, have you read Mark Manson's book? Nope. "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a," and I can't say the word here. It's very good. Right. It's beautifully done, but one of the things that he talks about is constantly reassessing what your goals are. Stop aiming for something that might have actually been 10 years ago, and what might have worked for you 10 years ago isn't necessarily gonna work for you now. So kind of check in with yourself every now and again, and things that used to annoy you about, say, a person or an issue in politics or anything, just sometimes check in because probably that doesn't even bother you anymore. It's not even relevant. It's about checking in with ourselves and don't waste our times on things that probably don't really matter to us or even relevant to us anymore. Because we are stuck in this loop, in this default way of thinking. And then sometimes we egg each other on, you know, we have a chinwag or we have a, you know, 'Natter' or whatever, you know, and we go on about the same old stuff because to some level it makes us feel good when we share, you know, anger or we're annoyed. But this can keep us trapped in the same old stuff that actually doesn't matter anymore, and we need to move on from those things. And that then opens up new space, new opportunities, new hunger, you know. Yeah, and for new adventures even. Reminding us who we are. Yes. Which is brilliant. So you're obviously a fan of writing. Have you read any good books recently? I prepared myself for this question. Oh, good. Oh well, I like a bit of preparation. Let's see what you make of this answer. Actually, I don't read at the moment at all. So I was looking at a bookshelf shelf, and then you might ask me, what books do you have on your bookshelf? And I thought, am I going to fake this today, or am I going to be truthful? Be truthful. Be truthful, absolutely. Because I go through phases, and this particular phase is lasting rather a long time. When I do writing, I don't read a lot. I read perhaps the odd blog here, the odd poem there, the paper here. For research? Not necessarily for for research, just because I feel my mind is open. And I personally find— other people disagree with this— that when I write, I need to keep in my own world, and I can't let other worlds and other ways of expressing things dilute that. It weakens the connection to my own creativity. See, this is why, I mean, this is why we quite often We're all different people, but I mean, I've always got a book on the go somewhere. I've seen your big book today, yes. I've actually got the authors of this book coming in in a few weeks, and it's a big 'un, but I find books sometimes— sometimes they entertain me, sometimes they are escape, and sometimes they kind of inspire another blog because we're living somebody else's life and they're explaining what's happening to them, and then suddenly you go, Oh, that's exactly it, that's what I was searching for. And yeah, so I, and we're big readers in the family as well, so I've always got, you know, a David Walliams book on the go with the kids, so I've got about 2 or 3 different books on the go, and my eldest son will read a book in 2 days. Brilliant. He reads a lot, it costs me so much money, but you know, there are worse things. Could do a lot worse, absolutely. But he's, and he'll read books again and again. Yes. He's that kid that when it's World Book Day and all the other kids are throwing the tokens on the floor, he's picking them all up and going down to Waterstones and going, "I'll have 10 books, please." And, you know, by the time we get home, we'll have gone out for dinner or something, we're all sitting there reading and he'll have finished a good 5 of them. Beautiful. 'Cause they're slightly smaller. It's so important at that age, I think. Well, it is, but it just means that he's well-read, which means his sarcasm levels and everything means that he can be, he can be interesting to go out for dinner with. How old is he? He's 12 going on 28. Yes. Anyway, I digress. We are halfway through today's show already. We're going to go over to a couple of ads, and then when we get back, I'm going to talk to you about some of your favorite tips on mental wellness. Welcome to the women's radio station supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. I'm Tamina Zaman, founder of Empower and Enrich. When it comes to money, do you clam up or get confused? Do you wish you could save more money, or are you hoping you have enough for retirement? You are not alone. Many women want to be smarter with their cash but just don't know where to start. At empowerandenrich.org, you will find a host of options to help you take charge of your finances and learn how to put your money to work for you in an easy, affordable way. Get in touch with me at empowerandenrich.org, and let's change your future together. Hello, my name is Natasha Anne Callagher. Welcome to you lovely lady listeners of your very own women's radio station. Over the coming months, I'll be doing a survey in big brand coffee shops interviewing customers, asking why they like to drink coffee and if they would like to give us a health tip for our listeners. The most shared and liked post will be the winner of a prize. Stay tuned for further details. Hi, I'm Carolyn van Beers. Please join me for a brand new show here on Women's Radio Station. It's Mother's Hour. If like me you're a mum juggling far too many balls and dropping most of them, this is definitely the show for you. We'll examine the highs and lows of motherhood and make sure you laugh out loud. Loud as we take on this challenging role together. With spoonfuls of advice, incredible stories, it will be a refreshing, honest, and funny look at being a mum. Are you struggling with money? Turn to us as a national charity helping people struggling to make ends meet. Job loss, illness, or bereavement can cause a real financial crisis. We give practical help to get people back on track Whether you're thinking of having a baby, trying to get out of an unhappy relationship, or just unsure what benefits you may be entitled to, we can help. Visit turn2us.org.uk. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station can give voice to your brand with a wide range of sponsorship opportunities, including individual programs. We can tailor your experience for you. For more information on how you can sponsor a show, go to womensradiostation.com. Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Welcome back to the second half of today's Get Booked. I'm Hazel Butterfield, and just a quick reminder that if any of you want to get in touch, if you want to be featured on Get Booked, or you have a book recommendation, you can email us at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Or maybe you have a book that you've read and you want to send in a 1-minute clip, a book review, just record it on your phone and we'll make sure that it's played out. It's all about sharing and caring. Or maybe there's a subject matter that you would like me to research and get somebody in to possibly talk about. Again, that email address is presenters@womensradiostation.com. Now we are— we have in the studio Karen Seager. We have been chatting away about her work as a therapist, podcaster, and writer. We've been chatting about all variety of subjects, haven't we? We have. Quite a bit so far. We have indeed. And you have a lot of experience in dealing with mental health and mental wellness issues. So would you have 3 tips for listeners on what you think can help promote mental well-being? I think we've started touching on this already earlier on. Mental health doesn't start when we have a problem. It's constant, it's a permanent thing that we need to pay attention to, and we need to pay attention to ourselves. We need to understand what are the triggers for us feeling perhaps upset or sad or angry, and we need to understand what are the things that give us good energy. That make us feel happy, that give us a sense of peace, that help us cope with difficult times. And even those things on their own are not easy for many people because we are too busy chasing whatever we need to chase to stop, as you said earlier on, and really think and reconnect. So we need to understand what are the things that make our lives difficult and what are the things that help us. And do I have a balance of this at the moment? Most people, we probably don't. So we have to need to think about how can I achieve a bit of a better balance in my life on a daily basis? And then when we know difficult things are going to happen, it's going to be a particularly stressful week, or I'm going to meet that person that I don't really like, they always rub me up the wrong way, or somebody is ill or whatever it may be, or somebody has died, a lot of difficulty I find out there dealing with grief, then we know that we have to perhaps pace ourselves. We need to sort of take a few things off our agenda, make sure we've got enough space to cope with those additional stresses so that we don't overload. We overload too fast. And a lot of us are extremely good at functioning very well at that high threshold, but we will break. Yeah. So it's really— and when it's a high threshold, it's a long drop. You will drop and you will drop and you will stay down there for that much longer. So, you know, in a lot of professions, we pride ourselves in having those high thresholds and being able to do it all. You know, oh, I can do all of this with 4 hours sleep, you know, whatever it is. Not for long you can't. No, you can't. And we applaud that. And actually, there is a high price to pay. So find out what's good, find out what's challenging, create a balance, and know when the tough times are coming, you need to make a bit of space for that. Interestingly, as we were talking about hopelessness, it's all very well that we've We've said, you know, find that thing that gives you hope or motivates us, but, you know, with some of the severer cases, you cannot even get up. That's right. Your brain, which is why certain drugs are used as well to try and refigure out the synapses and get them working back together and in sync again, to say to somebody who's in deep depression, "What do you love?" and the answer would be, "Nothing." Absolutely. Nothing will bring me joy. That's why I was a bit hesitant earlier on to give— you know, these are complex things and we all want to have this quick fix, but sometimes we will suffer and we will continue to suffer for a while. When we feel depressed, anxious, or hopeless— I've got my moments of hopelessness— then it's a dark space. On those days, I wouldn't be sitting here and talking to you because I would know I haven't got that inclination. And sometimes when that happens, I think we need to give it time and we need to allow that feeling. And people say that, but that's nuts. Why would you want to feel pain? But, you know, there is pain. There are painful moments. We can't deny this. And always when I personally allow it to happen, and I've seen it with other people too, there will come a point when we gradually, we will, you know, the pendulum will start swinging so gently the other way again and we come back out of it. And then we develop this, okay, I might just, what you were saying earlier on, what is it that I can do? What's quite interesting, I go for a dog walk a couple of times. I mean, I go every single day 'cause I have a dog, but I have two groups that I walk with on a Monday and a Thursday. It's 5 or 6 women. We all go out with our dogs and we speed walk and for an hour it's blalalalalala, blalalalala, and we are airing everything and sometimes we're quiet, but you know, and sometimes we have to work and we miss, because it's quite early on, so we can still go to work that day. But some of our— some of my friends have actually struggled if they've not been able to go to one of these walks for a while. Now, the point I was going to come out with is that one of these women that I walk with is a GP, so she is constantly dealing with people coming in with mental health issues. And on the basis that some people can't afford therapy or for it to get, for you to be, I've just forgotten the word, but when the doctor, referral, there you go. Need my coffee, where's the coffee? To get referral, it can take months. Absolutely. Absolutely months, and so she comes out with little things that she can do, and the amount of hints and tips and silly little things that patients do not realize she's doing to try and start the process. I mean, there was one person who was absolutely lost and she just said, I want to see you once a week, but every day of the week in between, I want you to go to the shop. And she specified one was about a mile away. And, you know, to pick up this, this, this, this. And she goes, but every day you need to go and grab that same thing, whether it's a sweetie or a chocolate bar or a card or something. And I was like, "But should she really be, you know, replacing one thing with another?" She goes, "No, they're going out the house, that's it. It's exercise. They have to actually speak to the person behind the counter and it's a one-word sentence and she'll get used to it. It's socialising, it's out in the open." And she says, "But this," gets her used to being out, and then she might want to go a little bit further, or she might get used to the person, they'll say, oh, actually, how are you today? Yes. It's gradual and it's little and it is free. Very wise, very good GP. I applaud him or her, well, her, you know, and she took the time to share that and didn't just, you know, refer to the ever-increasing referral list. Exactly. I agree. It gets that person out. It starts to build that confidence. They are part of the world. They've got a purpose. They've got somewhere to go to. I mean, you asked me earlier on, what do I see people struggle with? Loneliness, isolation. We have a loneliness minister now. Yes, I know. And it is needed. It is the process of There's so much going on. We have people with 1,000 friends on Facebook, but nobody to talk to. And even when they do talk to somebody, they don't want to bog that time down with saying how unhappy they are in case that person doesn't want to speak to them again because they lowered their levels. It is, it's a minefield. And yet, really good friends, they want you to share because they want to make sure that you're okay. A bit the loneliness sometimes of just having so many people around you. And some of the most loneliest people are those who just— who are busy, who have got many people around them, who've got even big families or a busy job. We're lonely deep down, you know, deep down inside. We're alone with it all. I had, um, what I find quite interesting is, um, I don't necessarily do it to this studio, but there's another studio that I work at, um, and I take my dog in with me, and the response— and it's on a Friday, so it makes it a little bit easier— the response you get on the train when you put a beagle on a train, everyone starts chatting to each other. And it's just, I kind of like it because everyone's there on their phones, and all of a sudden they see a dog and they put the phone down. And, you know, I've had 20, 30 of us chatting to each other sometimes just about dogs, and then all about, all about dogs, dogs we used to have. And at the end of it, one time I was I was just coming off one of the trains and this woman said, "I live at so-and-so and so-and-so, which I think is quite close to you. I've been living there for 28 years. I've propagated my garden, it's absolutely beautiful. If I don't see you coming along with some scissors and nicking some of my roses, I will be absolutely heartbroken, Hazel." Oh, how nice. And says, "It was lovely to speak to you. Hopefully I'll see you again." There's another guy across there going, "I'll probably see you same time next week with my dog." I was like, "Yep, sure." People chat to each other. But you need to have that icebreaker, you know, and dogs can do it. Yeah. Children can do it. Yes. Yes. It is brilliant, and it's just, there were so many people that were sitting on their own that started speaking to each other, and it's just something really simple. Listening, chatting, or just a little bit of eye contact sometimes. Yes. And, you know, would it really kill every now and again, just 10 seconds out your day, walking through a park and just go, "Hi!" That's it. Unfortunately, depending on where you live, the eye contact can also be risky. Very scary sometimes. And it's, you know, that's another reality for a lot of people who are frightened because they don't know what the other person may make of them, what it can lead to. It's, it's, it's It's a minefield, it really is. Right, we're just going to go over to our last section of adverts and then we will be back. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. I'm Sarah Louise Ryan and welcome to Love Lessons Live on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte, on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie May Is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Women's radio station supporting women's well-being, and we're talking all things autism. Women, the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Tracy Whedon of Brownhill Insurance Group. We are an award-winning family-run insurance broker covering a wide range of insurance products ranging from commercial lines to personal household, high net worth, and fine art. You can contact us us on 0208 658 4334 or visit our website www.brownhillgroup.co.uk for your free no-obligation quotation. At Brown Hills, we've got you covered. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishcon. I'm a birth doula and mum of 3, and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show From Tummy to Mummy here on Women's Radio Station. Every week I'll be here with an expert guest talking about women's reproductive health, everything fertility, pregnancy, birth, and baby related, right through to the menopause and beyond. Please join us for an informative and fun hour. Hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover, and mental health advocate, and you can listen to my show Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station daily at 5 AM and 5 PM. Throughout my shows, we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chat to authors, publishers, and book enthusiasts, all with the theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well-being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci, and I'm the executive director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones, focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own, and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website at MediaMattersForWomen.org. You're listening to Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women, and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter at Women's Radio Station, that's Women's Radio STN, or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome back to our final section of Get Booked Here. Get Booked is all based around supporting women's emotional well-being, opening discussions, and offering support by the incredible writing community out there. Come and join us and get involved, and if you want to catch up on any previous shows, you can at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked. And we're up on SoundCloud. We're everywhere, just absolutely everywhere. Uh, we, we've been chatting away, and if you've only just joined us, make sure you can catch up on 5 AM and 5 PM every day this week. Now, we've been chatting to Karen about a plethora of subjects, and what I'd next like to know is a little bit about What inspires your writing? I get thoughts, Hazel. It's as simple as that. I do a lot of thinking, and it just sometimes grabs me, and I just need to get it out. I need to write it down. I need to, and then I develop it further. So it's really ideas that I get. Right, okay. And you said before you're a king gardener. Well, I like gardening. I don't have the opportunity to do a lot, but I'm spending a lot of time outdoors. I also have a dog, so I need to be— outdoors are always the right settings for me to look inside and to get those ideas. What kind of dog have you got? It's important to me. I know, it's a little white stuffy. Oh, really? Yes, yes, she's 9 and she's a very She's got a bit of Jack Russell in her, I think. Oh, really? Yeah, she was a stray. I got her from Battersea. Oh. Battersea Dogs' Home. Such a good place. Absolutely, yes. One of my other studios is very close to Battersea Dogs' Home, so we see them walking their dogs out all the time. Yes. And they're really cute. I ended up getting a beagle, but the Battersea Dogs' Home don't let families with young children take them because they can't always be sure and guarantee what's happened to them beforehand. Yes, they're quite selective. They are. Yeah, um, any other dog I've ever had, I've always got from a shelter, but once I had my kids, that was it. And there are so many stuffies now in shelters, you know, it's predominantly stuffies and greyhounds, I think. Really? Yeah, I think, what was the figure, was something, is it two-thirds of the dogs or even more are stuffies and Battersea. But they're the most loving dogs. Yes, well, misunderstood, I think, and get a lot of bad press and We see things happening with them and I always think it's a bit more complex than that, but yes. Well, and that's down to human beings. One of Charlie, my beagle's best friends, is a Staffie, Rosie. They get on very well. It's part of our walking group and she's lovely. But anyway, I seem to digress again. Do you know dog walking? Oh. It's so cathartic. I just, I absolutely love it. Just going out on your own, chatting to the dog, you know. She's been a lifesaver for me. The day after my first cancer diagnosis, I went to Battersea. I'd always wanted a dog and there was always a reason why it wasn't the right time, and I knew I needed that purpose, a reason to get out of bed. Yes. And that dog kept me going. No kidding. She kept me going. And we are like thick as thieves. She knows me so well. And I think I know her quite well too. So dog walking, being out in nature, you get the exercise, you meet the people. The amount of people I've met by being a dog owner is phenomenal. People I've walked past for years. And as you said early on with your own example, It gets us talking. It's lovely. You feel you belong, you know. And it is, it's like a, it's a green light, isn't it? Yes. See somebody with a dog, they're up for chatting. I must say, some people cross the road when they see you with a stuffy. That has happened too. Wow. People are really, you know, there's a lot of, a bit of a, okay, I'm not quite sure about this dog, I'll play it safe. So, yes, yes. Whereas, I mean, mine looks ridiculously cute and she can be an absolute pain in the bum sometimes, especially if you think someone's got food and there's another dog approaching, she'll be like, "Right, I am starving. I've not eaten in 3 and a half minutes." So, it's, you know, it's down to the individual personality, although she's great sometimes as well. And I keep on digressing. See, Melissa, you've got to stop me actually. My producer's looking at me. Gotta stop me talking about dogs, 'cause otherwise we turn this into a dog show. We'll start a new show on dogs. Brilliant. Yeah, great, thank you. So you, as you say that you start writing when you get in, something just comes into your head. Have you got any other subjects that you know are gonna be coming out soon onto karensieger.com? I think at the moment I'm going to work a bit more on the podcasting. I've got a few interviews that I've already done that I have to put all together which are going to come out. There's Breast Cancer Awareness Month coming up in October, so I'm going to do a few pieces on that. And I'm also focusing on doing not online courses, but perhaps stuff that people can download to help themselves. I do a lot— my writing is about enabling people to help themselves. But I'm trying a few other project ideas to see, you know, whether through meditations or cards or other guidance. So I'm developing new concepts. Do you think that you, because you've got quite a calming and soft voice, do you think you would start doing maybe guided meditation? I've just done one. Have you? I haven't yet, so check, keep an eye out on my podcast Soul Cravings. I will, yes, probably this month it will come out. It's the first one. It's a guide to guide people to do meditation for themselves, visualization. People often think this is too complex or you need to be that type of person and you need to have time. You don't need any of that. It's really simple. I do struggle with visualization. I mean, I do try and meditate. I love yoga. I do a lot of yoga. But the visualisation, I just sit there and go, "Imagine this is happening to you." I'm going, "It's not though." And that's okay too. Yes, well, but you know, that teaches you a lot about how busy your mind is. And to realise that, that is quite important too, because we need to get to know ourselves. And sometimes we may realise, "This is really hard for me." You know, and then we start thinking, "Well, I wonder why that is and how can I?" 'How can I quieten things down a bit, and how can I learn to focus a bit more and to switch off a bit more?' So— One of the things that I have started doing with a friend who has similar issues as myself with switching off is we've started going out on our paddleboards. Now, on our paddleboards, we put one key in one side of our sports bra and a credit card in the other, just in case we come across an emergency, but we don't take our phone, we don't take our watches, because if we fall in, they're ruined anyway. And we'll go off for 2 hours and we're just chatting. There's no pinging, there's no nothing. We have no contact at all. We have no— we have nothing other than just chat. And occasionally what we do is, um, I think you live in a very— you live very close to myself. We will go all the way from kind of Teddington down to Richmond and we'll sometimes just lay on our boards There's a lot of people going, "That's not paddleboarding." It kind of isn't, but it's very relaxing. And we'll lay there and we'll do some yoga moves, and then we'll really work our way back. Wow. And then we'll do some weightlifting, some kind of right arm weightlifting as we go past the White Swan and pick up a pint of cider. Very civilised, isn't it? It's fantastic. But this stuff, I mean, I live on the river. I actually live on a boat. Right. In Richmond. So I see these paddleboarders coming past. And recently, a few weeks ago, there was this cleaning exercise where there was hundreds of paddleboarders wearing green. Where they go across with bags and they just pick up all the rubbish off the floor? No, I think— not a floor, off the water. Yeah. And it was amazing. I think really learning to balance, you need to keep balance on those boards, don't you? And you need to be in tune with the water and with the tide. And it's— be wary of when the people come past as well. A lot of us have Yes, because some of the big ones can really make it quite wobbly. Yes, you're balancing, but there's something about concentrating on just that as well. It's a bit like with running, when you're just focusing on running. So you notice the difference that it's doing to you? Yeah, completely. We came away once, we'd been out for about 2 or 3 hours, so we'd probably done some really good exercise for about just over an hour, and then an hour and a half of sitting there chatting, yoga, and wait, because it's, it's flat on the water, when you lay your head back and you were just this far away from the Thames, and it's just, it's beautiful. It's, it's like being in some sort of water flotation tank. Yes, it's fantastic. If you want, for people out there that thought that they could never do something like paddleboarding, you can do it the lazy way as well, uh, but with paddleboarding you can do it on your knees, you can sit. Yes. And sit and do it as well and use it like a canoe, which is a lot easier if you want to wedge a pint of something between your legs as you're— I keep coming back to that pint, yes. Well, you've got to keep hydrated on the river. You do. I do, I find a way of making most kind of exercises suitable for everybody, so I do yoga for at least an hour a week, but I've, I'm actually a trained yoga teacher. I don't teach it, but my friends come over and we've started doing different kinds of yoga now. We've got just over a minute left. See if you can guess what these kind of yogas are. There's woga. Can you guess what that is? No. Yoga with wine. Oh, I see. Right. Shows how naive I am. Doga. Eating dog dough? With the dogs. Oh, with the dogs. Yes. When the dogs join in. Right. Yoga. Jogging? Nope. Gin yoga. And then there's a really good one that we quite often do, and it's a combination. It's called Choga Woga Doga Yoga. Cheese, wine, dogs, yoga. We do it all together. It's brilliant. She comes over on a Tuesday night, we do an hour of yoga, the dog's joining in, and then afterwards we drink a bottle of wine and have a cheese plate, and it's brilliant. And it's a way of just making sure that we find time and space to do these things. We're socialising, it's multitasking. Well-rounded, isn't it? Yes, it's fun. I'm here to help. Do you know what I've thoroughly enjoyed you being in today. So do I, thank you. You're very welcome. Hopefully you'll come back again because I think we've touched on like a percentage, a very small percentage of what we could have talked about. Absolutely. And make sure that you go and check out Karen's website at karensieger.com. Go and check out all the different podcasts, therapies, and everything else that you offer. And, uh, thank you. Thank you, Hazel. Bye-bye. Welcome to the Women's Radio Station, supporting women's well-being. Women's Radio Station is all about diversity, from opinions, career, ethnicity, education, and most importantly, women's well-being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. 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