Staff Room: Dr Emma Heburn Q&A

Dr Emma Hepburn is an NHS Clinical Psychologist, an illustrator, an author and a lecturer. She has amassed a huge following for her account @thePsychologyMum for her illustrations and advice on mental health

Antonia:  Lovely to meet you Dr Emma, we would love to kick off with a little background about yourself and your journey to The Psychology Mum

Dr Emma: I’m a clinical psychologist that has worked in the NHS for over 20 years. I have always used illustrations in my work with both children and adults, to help explain concepts, exercised in theraoy or to help achieve goals. In 2019 I was working on developing a brain injury group and illustrating some of the concepts as posters for this. I bought a new iPad so I could illustrate better and really enjoyed this so starteed illusatring other psychology concepts. I have always been passionate about sharing evidence based information and thought that other people, other than those I was working directly with, might benefit from these Illustrations/ concepts so started sharing them on social media. To my surprise this grew really quickly and had led to me writing and illustrating books and other products.

Antonia: Why do you think self-care is so crucial for nurses and healthcare workers in particular?

Dr Emma: Working in healthcare is a demanding job, with high physical, cognitive  and emotional load. Healthcrae workers have to deal with difficult scenarios and difficult emotion of a day basis, which can have an impact on how we feel.  They are also more likely to be involved in traumatic incidents, which can have an emotional impact on  healthcare workers. This can be exhausting and can take a toll, particularly  if we don’t take time to look after and nurture ourselves. 

Antonia: One of the illustrations you are sharing with the Nursem Staff Room is the Capacity Cup, please can you tell us more about what it represents and how it can help people check in with themselves?

Dr Emma:

The capacity cup is about noticing the demand and stressors in our life and how these impact on us. We all have limited capacity (the space in our cup) and when our capacity overflows (there are more demands  in our life that we have space to deal with)  this is overwhelming and have a negative impact on how we feel physically and emotionally. When we are near the top of our cup and have only a tiny amount of capacity, then we may have difficulty dealing with even small stressors that normally wouldn’t have much of an impact. 

The capacity cup is a tool I use to recognise where our capacity levels are at (how much capacity we have left) and to take action proactively if possible. If our capacity is getting full then can we reduce the demands coming in, find helpful ways to manage these demand or increase our capacity by looking after ourselves, such as taking some time out.