Clementine is a hypnotherapy app designed to help improve the emotional wellbeing of women all over the world. Created by FemTech innovator and entrepreneur Kim Palmer, Clementine was born after Kim experienced a number of panic attacks whilst pregnant. The app’s aim is to make women feel calmer, more confident and better equipped to cope with everyday life. Here we speak to Kim about Clementine.
1. Why was Clementine created and how did you do it?
The idea was, unfortunately, inspired by a really difficult period in my life. I was working in a senior marketing role, earning good money and climbing the ‘ladder’ fast. But when I became pregnant, I didn’t slow down. I wasn’t eating properly, I was working ridiculous hours. And this resulted in my first ever panic attack. It was in the middle of my pitch during an important meeting and was horrendous.
New to the world of mental health issues and anxiety, I assumed things would get better when I left for maternity. But they actually got much worse. I developed social anxiety, continued to have panic attacks and found myself in a fairly dark place.
When I was ready to return to work, I took the redundancy package I’d been offered from my previous role and started working for a new company in Kings Cross. I’d still not dealt with my mental health issues and was finding presentations – and other aspects of working life – completely overwhelming so when a friend suggested hypnotherapy, I was on-board.
And it was incredible; it transformed my work life, home life and general self-esteem.
This difficult journey made me realise that I am not weak, as I initially thought – during that first panic attack – I’m strong. But that, like most people, I have periods of self-doubt and need a helping hand. So I decided to use my redundancy pay to launch an app that will help other women like me. Women who are struggling at work, or as a new mum, or with running a business. That was back in 2017.
Fast forward to 2020 – I’ve now quit my full time job to scale Clementine so that it can support millions of women (and men, as we do have a few male users too) all over the world.
What does the app do, and how does it work?
We help women who are stressed, tired, feeling low or a bit blah to feel calm, confident and able. We use hypnotherapy & daily mantras and other small nuggets of positivity to help shift negative, doubting thoughts and replace them with empowering ones. Basically, it helps women to cope with the demands of life and let’s face it, life is pretty damn hard at the moment.
It’s not a spiritual, hippie app – it’s clever, sharp and aesthetically on-point. It’s for the modern woman.
You don’t have to find time to benefit from our app either – we know that finding time in the day is impossible so we have created our help to fit within the day – so you could listen in the loo, whilst cooking dinner, walking, sleeping or get a boost as soon as you wake up.
How does the app boost confidence and help self-improvement?
We understand women so we create sessions and features that help with topics that women really struggle with – like saying no, social comparison, letting go of chatter. When you listen to these sessions you are learning skills but also getting the boost of encouragement that you need to hear (a bit like a best friend or a trusted coach).
We also believe that how you start and end your days are so important to winning and having the confidence to do things during the day. We’ve created support for when you wake up in the form of a morning alarm that sends you a motivational message so that you kick start the day well, Plus very short morning sessions (swear words included) to put a bit of a spring in your step, which is often needed in the morning. For sleep we have the most dreamy ‘deep sleep’ sessions – most people don’t even get to the end of these as they will lull you into a state of relaxation, shutting down all the stuff that happened during the day so that you can drift off and wake up feeling refreshed.
