Katherine King, PsyD

10/15/2024

I hear it all the time. "Self-care, who has time for that?"

It's one of the biggest misconceptions about the topic, and one of my motivations for writing 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘦𝘳.

Sure, it's lovely to have time to "do" self-care. But when life is hectic, it's all the more important to remember that we can "be" self-care too. How?
- Be patient with yourself
- Be a kind companion to yourself
- Be willing to laugh at yourself
- Forgive yourself
- Honor your good intentions
- Don't harass or cajole yourself
- Don't relentlessly criticize yourself

What's your favorite way of being, not doing, self-care?

06/13/2024

This just in: The Well Helper was selected as a Finalist in the 18th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards! I am over the moon, feeling so proud and honored to have my work acknowledged with this prestigious award.

03/25/2024

'The Well Helper' has finally arrived!

This book was a labor of love to write. It is the book I wish I had when I started my career. It is also the book I wish my doctors had, the book I wish my students had, and the book I wish my colleagues had.

You deserve to thrive in work and life. May 'The Well Helper' help you do that. 🙏

The blurb:
"Burnout. Compassion fatigue. Self-care. Work/life balance. In the midst of all these buzzwords, there are real human beings – nurses, doctors, first responders, social workers, teachers, therapists – all trying to navigate the perils and promise of the helping professions...
.. Working as a helper asks a lot of us personally, but we rarely get the training we need to handle the complex challenges we face – let alone unlock the deep personal growth potential available in our work. With compassion, wit, and wisdom, The Well Helper guides you to explore your motivations for becoming a helper, the potential obstacles that could block you from deeper fulfillment, and the essential self-knowledge you need to forge your own path forward."

03/25/2024

'The Well Helper' has finally arrived!

This book was a labor of love, and a heartfelt offering to my fellow helping professionals.

It is the book I wish I had when I started my career. It is also the book I wish my doctors had, the book I wish my students had, the book I wish my colleagues had.

You deserve to thrive in work and life. May 'The Well Helper' help you do that. 🙏

From the Amazon blurb:
"Burnout. Compassion fatigue. Self-care. Work/life balance. In the midst of all these buzzwords, there are real human beings – nurses, doctors, first responders, social workers, teachers, therapists – all trying to navigate the perils and promise of the helping professions...
.. Working as a helper asks a lot of us personally, but we rarely get the training we need to handle the complex challenges we face – let alone unlock the deep personal growth potential available in our work. With compassion, wit, and wisdom, The Well Helper guides you to explore your motivations for becoming a helper, the potential obstacles that could block you from deeper fulfillment, and the essential self-knowledge you need to forge your own path forward."

08/05/2023

Grad students need help learning how to informally resolve ethical dilemmas involving their supervisors, so we created and evaluated a lesson and shared our results with the world this week at . Congrats to my student, Lesli Dubose, on their first poster!

03/15/2023

So... this just happened!

Some days it's hard to believe I got to where I am from where I started. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported and encouraged me along the way - family, friends, mentors, teachers, supervisors, superfans, students, the list goes on.

11/29/2022

It was a pleasure to be interviewed for this rich article! | Death Anxiety Is a Thing, and Here’s How to Deal

Basically, let’s normalize talking about dying more.

08/08/2022

Been feeling existential, so I wrote this...

Some struggles are universal, but that doesn’t mean we are helpless.

07/17/2022

It was so fun talking to Mike & Jad over at The KindMess Podcast! If you like Noble Mind you'll enjoy their show too. Have a listen - https://redcircle.com/shows/the-kind-mess-podcast

Episode 11 of The KindMess Podcast
https://redcircle.com/shows/the-kind-mess-podcast
Dr Kate King joins us from the Noble Mind Podcast . On this episode we explore many themes including:
- The value of suffering, you have to VALUE something to suffer even in the first place. Suffering can point to what’s important to us!
- Our natural Aversion to suffering and how that becomes another layer of suffering on top of the original suffering
- The good news about how this is the part we can really work on with mindfulness and compassion practice
- The wonderful analogy Dr Kate shared about how sometimes you can walk past a table at a restaurant and know a couples having a hard time even though you might not hear what they are saying, sometimes our mind is like this - our thoughts might be rational but the vibe can still be hostile or critical !
- Understanding that the parts of ourselves that often cause us suffering often come from a place of trying to protect us

06/22/2022

Thrilled to share our new qualitative paper exploring trauma in the life stories of older veterans, just published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society!

Background Eliciting life stories is an important component of person-centered care that may aid in understanding how an individual's unique background and narrative impacts their health. Such life ...

05/10/2022

Alert: You don't have to keep suffering through all that relentless self-criticism! Here are a few tips to get you started down a new road.

Self-criticism is a common struggle, but it doesn't have to control your life.

04/13/2022

What factors influence students' interest in careers in aging? This is a question I've been exploring with my dear colleague Kirsten Graham, and we just had this manuscript on the topic accepted for publication in The Gerontologist. I'm overjoyed to share this work, representing years of our shared effort, and to have it accepted by such an influential journal. I'm particularly thrilled that my thinking about the influence of adultism has made it to publication for the first time. More to come on this in future research in the works! Have a peak here: https://loom.ly/O0LEGaw

AbstractBackground and Objectives. The ongoing workforce shortage in geropsychology requires continued efforts to understand the factors that influence whether