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00:00:01
Kate O'Connor
80 Plays4 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Kate O'Connor.
To keep up with or connect with Kate:
✨ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateemmaoconnor/
✨ Website: https://www.kateemmaoconnor.com/aboutkate
✨ Substack: https://thepsychoalchemist.substack.com/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm so excited to get to have this conversation with you Good morning and thank you for being so generous and doing it in an early morning time. So for anyone who doesn't know you, can you say thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, yes, I totally forgot that.
00:00:17
Speaker
I don't know if I told you this, but for years at an agency I worked at, Brafton, we had an Australian office. This time of day, I would often be on calls with folks in their morning and the seasonal thing. I don't know. It's so weird. Like you are in a whole different cycle and part of your year. And do you feel disconnected when you talk to folks in other hemispheres or do you sense that or not really?
Seasonal Energies and Hemisphere Differences
00:00:44
Speaker
I have patients overseas and there's like a character in the room of the place, like where we both are and what's going on. and Because there's different energies in the seasons, right? Like the winter, like it's this drawing in and quiet and kind of yin thing. Whereas everyone on the other side of the planet is like getting up into this summer energy. Such an interesting thing to stay in touch with.
Guest Introduction and Professional Background
00:01:12
Speaker
I want to talk about your sub stack and we're going to promote the heck out of that because think it's great. But anyone who doesn't know you, can you just intro yourself a bit? Yeah, so my name is Kate O'Connor. I'm a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and based in Brisbane, Australia.
00:01:30
Speaker
Putting my toes in the water of writing via a newsletter on Substack called The Psycho Alchemist. So I've been using that as a platform too talk about my work, but also sort weave together.
00:01:42
Speaker
lots of different areas of interest for me in like more esoteric realms to do with like magic but also like poetry and cultural things and how they can help us understand therapy and understand our experience of being human so i'm finding that really fun I really like it so much for anyone listening. We'll put a link to it in the show notes if they want to read and subscribe.
Connection with the Host and Past Influences
00:02:06
Speaker
i highly recommend it. I think it's so cool.
00:02:09
Speaker
I would definitely want to get into that in a little bit. And also, lee just mentioned about magic. I am going to double click on and click into. But curious. And I have had, I've been lucky to have a bunch of therapists on when I think about it.
00:02:23
Speaker
Dr. Lindsay Gibson, who I feel like folks know of adult children of emotionally immature parents, she was great. And I think it was after her episode that you and i connected. that one.
00:02:35
Speaker
Lisa Marciano, who's on of this Jungian life. And she
Jung's Influence on Therapy and Mysticism
00:02:40
Speaker
was great. And you are, you're not officially a Jungian analyst, but you've definitely dabbled in Jung as like among the schools of thought that kind of informs the way you approach things. Is that right? Like, how did you first come to Jung and what schools of thought are you interested when it comes to therapy in general right Yeah, great. I trained in clinical psychology and it's interesting in Australia. I think this is probably true in the States to some extent too. At the moment, the kind of dominant cultural paradigm is cognitive behavior therapy.
00:03:11
Speaker
So that's really seen as like a gold standard treatment. In my clinical training, psychoanalytic therapy was only ever mentioned in a really degrading way. So they only brought up Freud or to go these are outdated antiquated kind of silly treatments that don't work anymore and now we do this other thing that really works that has not been the case in what I found in my clinical practice at all and it's also just not in my sensibility so I was lucky then in my kind of postgraduate training I did a master's to find some teachers who were psychoanalytically psychodynamically oriented and that really opened my
00:03:52
Speaker
well to that a lot more. i had my own analytic treatment and I was reading and doing more training and supervision with other therapists who were that way inclined.
00:04:03
Speaker
And I think with Jung's work in particular, that's been a real portal for me into how to bridge my clinical work with the mystical or the esoteric, because he was really the champion of that.
Mysticism in Therapy: Challenges and Acceptance
00:04:18
Speaker
And kate I also think he's a mystical guy. He really does show up in this other world and bridge a huge gap. So I use him for that a lot. I think I really like him.
00:04:29
Speaker
I love his life. I think I've listened to almost 80% of the episodes and the ideas and I find it very fascinating. Maybe you use the word portal, but I'm curious when you're trying to bridge being contextualized by and sometimes finding ideas useful in practice or other schools of thought with something like CBT, what?
00:04:55
Speaker
What am I trying to say? with Here's what happens for me. I love him and sometimes I worry I go too far down the rabbit hole and I've hit a moment where I am the ether and it is no longer. But I find it hard to like,
00:05:06
Speaker
What am I even trying to say there? I'm drawn to the mystical elements of it Big part of me really believes it. And then this other part of me is, on Meredith, you're just crazy. Just like but you yeah believing what you want to believe.
00:05:21
Speaker
But I do know it could be very useful and inspiring. And what am I even trying to ask here? How does it inform your practice sometimes? do you merge it with other modalities?
00:05:32
Speaker
And without
Balancing Exploration and Groundedness with Jung
00:05:34
Speaker
falling down the... Exactly. One of my favorite things about Carl Jung is that he was the king of the rabbit hole. He just fully... So here's how I imagine it. I don't know if you've read his red book. I have not the book. everybody's like got a copy that they carry around.
00:05:47
Speaker
My sense of his writing of that book was that he was this really successful, really famous... therapist he was going to work all day seeing all these patients getting home he had a million kids he'd have like dinner with his wife and his kids and then he would go into his study close the door and go insane and he would like deliberately induce this kind of he'd just completely go down the rabbit hole that book is just a description of his rabbit hole And then he got up the next morning and went to work. And so I think there's something really inspiring about who he was as a man and how he did his work that helps me with my own version of that question. Because it's what do we have against going crazy? There's like something to be found in...
00:06:29
Speaker
the edges of all of this and I think he was someone who managed in a very unusual way to do that without and and still being able to be grounded in his material life and still be able to be like connected to the material world like he built himself a house out of bricks and these things he did in the real world I think that were grounding and like ways of bridging what he found in his madness that I find really interesting and inspiring too That's a fascinating thing to think about.
00:07:02
Speaker
In some ways, I feel like he, what I like about him is, it's like he can accept without fear, like the extremes of some things. And maybe to your point, like, yeah, I'll just, I can go totally crazy and I can still get up and have breakfast and go to work. Yeah. thing What are some of the other, ah outside of Yen, what are some of the schools or of thought that you're interested in?
Modern Psychoanalysis and Patient Engagement
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, my recent training has been with a little school called Modern Psychoanalysis, which I'm doing some study with a school in the States. And that's really opened my mind so beautifully to this.
00:07:37
Speaker
I guess if I could summarize it, and I'm still a kind of new student in that world, but the psychoanalyst is not so interested in interpretation. a lot of the classical idea of psychoanalysis is that If we can interpret the patient's kind of neurosis or the underlying mechanisms in their symptoms, that will be what is healing.
00:07:56
Speaker
And the modern analyst has a goal in contrast to invite the patient and do anything they can to help the patient just be more capable of saying everything and being honest about how they really feel.
00:08:10
Speaker
about everything in their life. So what I'm finding, like how that teaching is changing my work is that I'm a lot closer to my patients' experiences. I'm not in this angled thing where I'm trying to show them something they don't know as much.
00:08:27
Speaker
And it's just been really transformational. I think it's made me a much better therapist. And I've learned much more about the people that I'm treating just by taking their side a bit more.
00:08:38
Speaker
And to your point, just being with them, their madness and not trying to cure it. These are ideas that are really installed into into kind of industrialization of psychotherapy mode. That's like this collection of things means that you're sick and this collection of things means that you're well and we need to side with the wellness and eradicate the sickness.
00:08:59
Speaker
Psychoanalysis really stands in defense of unwellness and symptoms and the reasons that people come to therapy because they signpost information about something going on in the patient's life that needs to be understood rather than gotten rid of.
00:09:16
Speaker
How does it feel different for you as a therapist when you're being in that mindset or approach versus when you're in that more traditional CBT or analytical? Is it easier because there's less resistance to their experience?
00:09:31
Speaker
by I think it's a really interesting dance. I think there's something really freeing about just being with people in what they're actually going through.
00:09:45
Speaker
And there's something illuminating about that for me to ask so be asking myself different questions. What if I say my patients had a huge conflict with someone to just think to myself, what if you're just completely in the right here?
00:09:59
Speaker
And whatever you've done here is totally reasonable. What would that mean?
Emotional Labor and Therapeutic Relationships
00:10:03
Speaker
But it also, I guess one of the tricky things about being therapist for me in general is just, it really, you're really utilizing your own self and your own soul as like the tool in the work.
00:10:18
Speaker
I can end up feeling... There's a tender line in there between being with someone and kind of losing something of my own that I need to keep track of for my own life.
00:10:34
Speaker
Because if relationships are really intimate, and'm really they can be really big. And so finding the line there is hard.
00:10:43
Speaker
It's very interesting. And when you say you're using like your own soul a bit, What does that feel like?
00:10:54
Speaker
Be using your own soul in that kind of work. Like when you're sitting there, what are you feeling? What are you thinking? What are you saying or not saying? How does that work for you? Yeah. I think one of my favorite aspects of psychoanalytic theory is this idea of transference and counter transference.
00:11:09
Speaker
And this was one of Freud's great contributions that the patient shows up with a kind of blueprint of how they've experienced relationships. their transference reaction is how that kind of plays out in the therapy.
00:11:22
Speaker
So if my patient has a history of being disappointed or abandoned or mistreated, they're going to anticipate and maybe end something with me. If it's going well, that repeats that pattern.
00:11:37
Speaker
And on my side, what this induces in the therapist then is what we call counter-transference, where I have an emotional experience that gives me a clue about that patient's blueprint.
00:11:49
Speaker
The theory invites this real freedom and creativity in how we understand our reactions to the people that we're treating. And what I offer my job when I'm supervising other therapists is that they come to me and they go, oh my God, I feel so guilty. I was so bored with this person.
00:12:05
Speaker
this person made me so angry. and then it's my job to invite them and go, I wonder why you were bored. You're not a neglectful person. There's something they're doing that's inducing a boredom in you. And so we can use our experiences, our emotional experiences of what happens in the relationship to learn about the other person.
00:12:25
Speaker
at a level that they can't explain themselves yet.
Embracing Patient Energies and Intuition in Therapy
00:12:28
Speaker
I believe it all. i think it's so fascinating. It's totally different, but it's reminding me a little of conversations my husband and I have had because we realized that we think of emotions differently and sometimes i tend to think of them more as almost like they're in me but also it's like they're clues like we're detectives and they're around us I honestly believe you could accidentally walk through like a cloud of disappointment on the way to putting laundry in the machine in talking through with him was like he had just a very different visualization or thought around them what you're describing is so interesting
00:13:04
Speaker
And also, so it sounds, does it feel like physically exhausting or draining? If you do a bunch of sessions, are you tired at the end of the day? How does it impact you? It's truly emotional labor. like Yeah, yeah.
00:13:17
Speaker
That's the whole thing of a career way, just sitting down for thousands of hours. think that's one thing at a practical level, but it depends on the patience. It can put me to sleep. It can can make me feel really energized. It really depends on who's got what going on on what day. But it's incredibly affecting for sure because I'm really, that cloud of disappointment, whatever that is, that's I think it's everywhere. These things that play out in therapy are playing out all the time.
00:13:44
Speaker
i think though when I decide to be a therapist, I'm saying, hey, I'm really open to whatever this is and letting it hit me and using it to understand something. One more slightly off plan question. And then I want to talk about magic.
00:14:00
Speaker
But when am I going to lose it? I just I had to ask this. What was it? Oh, my God.
00:14:11
Speaker
What happened? It was about Matt. Oh, okay. Yes. Okay. I remember. I was like, do you find that when you tell people what you do, is there ever a moment where you feel almost, they're like, oh, because I'll say anytime I love therapists, I think almost a ton of my favorite people are therapists.
00:14:31
Speaker
But sometimes... it I do imagine, I'm always like, oh, are they picking up? So do they just pick up eight neuroses? I don't even know I have. Like, how do you feel like people act weird to you?
00:14:45
Speaker
And then how do you navigate the world being so attuned to probably way more than the average bear as to why what a little thing means or why people are doing what they're doing?
00:14:56
Speaker
Absolutely. People definitely have a reaction to it as a profession. Usually one of the ones you just said, they're either like, great, I love that. Or some terror about being infiltrated.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yes. I think what's changed for me over time is that when I was beginning, was really doing that deliberately. I was like, yes, I've got these powers and I want to understand everything that everyone's doing all the time. And I think I've just become more, I don't know,
00:15:28
Speaker
discerning or integrated or something there. So I'm less that thing people fear that I might be. And sometimes that can relax them. But it's fun to look at. And I've had like partners and people in my life go, oh you're just doing that because you're just thinking about that way because you're a therapist. And I think for me, i was always this way. And it just made sense for me to find this work because always been interested and I've always been paying attention at that level.
00:15:57
Speaker
Interesting. So you're like, no, I'm a therapist because I think this way. Yeah, exactly. All right. Like what's an average week in
Balancing Professional and Creative Life
00:16:05
Speaker
your life? What is your schedule? but Yeah. I'm really lucky at the moment.
00:16:09
Speaker
I have a caseload of mainly adults who see me long-term. So I have a really fixed schedule with my patients. The same people come every week usually.
00:16:20
Speaker
And I'm really at this place in my work that's like what I always wanted, which is I don't feel overworked. I'm not seeing dozens of people every week and I just get to be because it it's really rewarding and really it's a great job. But i what I've found over time is that there really is a limit to how much of it I can do.
00:16:43
Speaker
So I think I've found a kind of good place with that. now and I think like the writing and exploring other aspects of kind of a creative life have been a really important balancing thing there for me I know I talked to you about I recently did a big like renovation of my office which was like a cool design project for me and I've done things like yoga and physical theater and I've usually got some other thing happening on the side so we don't go crazy
00:17:16
Speaker
what okay yeah I loved your subst accent about the office renovation. And I guess for folks listening, you and I have chatted not on recording. And yeah you, I think, are really attuned and interested.
00:17:30
Speaker
and think what you say is interesting about how one's physical space can impact them. i was telling you that my husband and i have kind of offices that are mirror images on opposite walls of each other.
00:17:43
Speaker
but when we moved into this house two years ago, He within a month had his office, everything ordered perfectly decorated, masculine. And I've taken a really long time with mine and I've just worked in his space since he works in the office most of the time.
00:17:58
Speaker
And you were like, oh, there's a lot happening there. i bought a rug. And so what was the inspiration for you to like redo a space and what impact do you feel like it's had on the work that's done in those
Therapeutic Environment and Office Design
00:18:11
Speaker
offices? And how do you think about physical spaces impact the work we do?
00:18:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those things. i keep thinking about your work as we talk. There are these principles of thinking about the meaning of things that they're so applicable in so many areas, right? So there's so much analogous in my work and your work, I think, in terms of I keep thinking about the ghostwriting, like that you literally, there's this that's an aspiration to become the voice of another person. You need to be so empathic.
00:18:38
Speaker
And yeah, I think that the question of design has always had that in it for me. Like, even when I just started my career, I was working in like clinics or like other people's practices. And from the first one, I asked them if I could bring my own furniture because I was like, I just cannot understand how I could possibly do this job but in some random generic clinical looking space.
00:19:05
Speaker
So I've always been obsessed with that. And Freud was obsessed with that. He had this really, that I wrote about this in my sub-study, he had this really eccentric office. He had this chair like custom made for him so he could sit in this certain weird posture.
00:19:20
Speaker
And I think these things are important. I think I've had really fantastic teachers who have taught me about the importance of therapist comfort, but there's also this, and to fold in the magic thing, I think there's an enchantment that's possible in the collection of the right colours and objects and things sitting ah certain way in a space.
00:19:46
Speaker
And having a hand in what that looks like, I've been so lucky because I've been able to, I own the suite where I work. And so I've really been able to choose everything. And I work in this, it's like a heritage listed building in the Brisbane city. So it's a hundred years old, it's full of ghosts and it's full of other therapists. There was a shooting there just after the second world war. It's fully haunted.
00:20:09
Speaker
folding all of that in and then having this. And the idea of, I have a little bust of Carl Jung in my office, being able to create a space that honours the history of the building, but also the history of the work that I do and the lineage of thought that's behind it. I think it creates something sacred that then when the patient comes in, there's a sense of, oh, we're here to do something really special.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah. I walked into my little study at home this morning before I was going to talk to you and it was a mess. i was like, oh, I can't talk to Meredith without fixing this. Like it won't be right. I think you can charge the energy of something if you have a sense of reverence about these things.
00:20:50
Speaker
Have you always been like that? Like i do feel like there are some people that naturally are like, they are creating their space very deliberately. or is it something that like it's through the therapeutic lens that it's more important for you?
00:21:04
Speaker
think I was always like that. I think I have a memory of being like 11 or 12 years old and going out buying like one velvet cushion for my childhood bedroom and being like, this is going to change everything in my life.
00:21:17
Speaker
I'm so curious when your wallpaper and when your office is all set up, what's going to happen? Yeah. Oh yeah. Five huge new clients in one day. Yeah.
00:21:27
Speaker
I should say too, i think this is interesting. When I did my latest work, renovation so I bought the space next door to my old space knocked out the wall and expanded and moved into another room and my current room now is really eccentric like it has a red ceiling and blue walls and it's really intense and some of my patients had a really bad reaction to it they found it incredibly intrusive and they really hated it it was an opportunity to talk about aspects of my character or like things in our relationship that are hard for them or that they experience is some people found it really imposing and grandiose and i think what i get another thing that's cool about that psychoanalytic frame is that there's no bad feelings it's just okay you hate it tell me about that that's so interesting do you feel when you say that do you feel like maybe some of them
00:22:23
Speaker
would feel like ah almost that like you are a big presence in the room or something and that's hard for them in some way so that was like the ah gave them something to tangibly be like this is too much kate or i'm having a feeling about yeah too much kate or i'm out of control here i didn't get to choose this you've imposed this on me i don't feel safe Can you say more about the ghost?
00:22:46
Speaker
I used to ask everybody. It was like a five episode thing I got bored with, but I used to be like, have you ever seen a ghost? Because Medfair does ghost writing. so You're on there.
Historical and Magical Elements in Therapy
00:22:55
Speaker
I had this feeling that this building was like a portal for me for this chapter of my life, all these kind of comic relationships.
00:23:02
Speaker
I felt that the first time I went there, I had a supervisor in the building when I was doing my training and I walked in and I was like, oh my God, like maybe when I'm really old and powerful and sorted out and would be able to work somewhere like this.
00:23:17
Speaker
But yeah, it's got a real energy. There was a disgruntled patient, like a former military man, whose psychiatrist refused to sign off his disability pension. This was after the Second World War.
00:23:28
Speaker
And he came in and shot him and set off some kind of like homemade bomb. in the building. Yeah, I think there's some sense of presence or heaviness there. I've always had a feeling like whoever's haunting, like whoever's there is broadly on my side.
00:23:44
Speaker
They're like, that patient is being difficult. like yeah they're like aligned with me. It's not for everybody. Okay, can we talk about magic a little bit? And how have you found yourself becoming interested in it? What are you doing?
00:24:02
Speaker
Tell me everything. Yeah, yeah. I guess that's been like a cool thing we're aligned on lately. I realized... That was a way that I had, I was coming privately to understand so much of the kind of forces in my, just the unfolding of my own life. I liked using the kind of analogy of magic to understand them, even with things. And I think the ah idea of alchemizing energy, transmuting energy in a kind of shamanic way, really resonates with me in all of the areas of interest in my life. So like the design
00:24:41
Speaker
thing feels like that to me like casting a spell I have this really great teacher he's Australian actually his name's Gordon White and he runs like an online magic school called Rune Soup And I've been listening to his work on and off for a long time. And I got really into that lately.
00:24:59
Speaker
And he talks about the whole world in terms of magic. He talks about like time magic. And I wrote about some of his stuff in that sub stack about how to do magic, that space design can be a spell and history can be a spell and writing a story can be a spell.
00:25:15
Speaker
Because I think making the idea of doing magic something everyday and mundane is a really powerful act rather than seeing it as something that you have to go out buy a bunch of things.
00:25:28
Speaker
and Weirdly. yeah I think it can be really empowering and really fun.
00:25:35
Speaker
I think. When I remember yourself stacked, the first thing on the list, you were like, clean your house or keep it really clean and do it with intention.
Magic and Intention in Daily Life
00:25:45
Speaker
And a couple days later, I did a really deep clean and I was just thinking, well, she had said to do this with intention.
00:25:52
Speaker
How did it go? I think it did feel...
00:25:57
Speaker
It felt cathartic in some way and like doing it with intention, trying envision maybe some of the things that currently feel like sludgy and heavy in my life right now. Trying to just like, let's move this stuff out of here. Just like really trying to, it felt good, but I do think I've always been drawn to some of those concepts.
00:26:17
Speaker
I think I'm probably drawn to them during moments when maybe I feel like I'm having a harder time. or I don't feel like i have enough control over outcomes. And so there's something helpful there, but sometimes it also makes me feel sad because I'm just like, oh, I'm just trying to I don't know.
00:26:37
Speaker
think it feels like an act of desperation. Yes, but I do, I'm very open to a lot of these things. Sometimes I feel silly thinking they're real and other times I'm like, no, I think there's a lot out there that we don't totally understand and ancient things grasped onto.
00:26:54
Speaker
i like that you're interested in it and that you're open about it. I think it's very cool. there like little things you do every week or a month? Yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's so interesting, this idea of whether it's silly Because I think that's a question for lots of people. And he's Jung for this too. Because I always had this feeling of him as this very big, serious man who believed in magic.
00:27:20
Speaker
And like, look, Carl says it's okay. It must be real. but There's something in my own kind of therapy and spiritual practice that I made. i decided something recently that if a path or ah an idea...
00:27:34
Speaker
made me feel good about being alive and hopeful and correct like I was in the right place that I decided not only that was a good thing to believe but that was evidence that it was true like things that support my aliveness and my caitness in the world and empowered me instead of making me feel the alternative for me that is similar to your thing of feeling silly and small. It sounds like it's gonna, oh, if it makes me feel like, oh, what's the point? I'll just go to the edge of the earth and just wait there until it's over.
00:28:09
Speaker
I've come to see those things as tricks. I'm like, oh that the baddies want me to think that. And that's really made me a more powerful witch. think. Wow. I love that idea. I think i'm going to borrow that. like the idea of it's like a trick.
00:28:22
Speaker
There's this, I really love the Wood Brothers. Do you know them? They're like an American kind of folksy band. And they tell me.
Dealing with Negative Thoughts and Anxiety
00:28:29
Speaker
They threw out, it's just American folk music, but there's a lot of devil imagery in an interesting way. And one of their songs I love starts off with, I don't talk to the devil when he calls my name.
00:28:41
Speaker
I think it's a song about how like those, I almost like the idea that sometimes those really negative thoughts, feelings, or patterns are actually negative forces outside of us that we can just like not get tricked into letting in.
00:28:55
Speaker
yeah and there's another song that's about i don't read postcards from hell screw yeah and yeah i do i find it like empowering for me i think there's definitely like anxiety that shows up a lot in consistent ways like i feel like in the last year or so at night i'll get it's like almost like clockwork it's like i'm watching tv with my husband we're done for the night like It should be the time where I can relax, but suddenly I can almost feel this like rising a lot of fear.
00:29:26
Speaker
and I'm trying to figure out how to like. it It doesn't stop me from doing shit, but it's uncomfortable. I feel like thinking personifying it almost is very helpful.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly it's funny you say that and that you quote that music because that really is the language that I use in my own life. This is like energetic frequency that I recognize as the devil.
00:29:49
Speaker
And it's not what... We were taught it's not those ideas that are represented in a religious context. I often think that, and I've done this work with clients who have left a religious framework, that the thing that they were taught was like the devil was actually their own will and their own spirit and their own aliveness.
00:30:12
Speaker
And the person telling them to suppress that was this full level.
Inner Compass and Empowering Beliefs
00:30:16
Speaker
Like, yeah i I guess the guiding principle for my work, but also my life is this idea that like we have a compass, like you have some The odd like thing inside you, like a will that is striving to fulfill a destiny and anything that supports you to feel like that's working and that that's bringing you more alive is the thing you should listen to. And the thing that makes you feel small, guilty, yeah hopeless is your adversary.
00:30:44
Speaker
And that's not a kind of delusional. I think the the counter of argument to that is usually you're just deciding to think whatever makes you feel better. And that's naive, but I don't think it's naive. I think it's empowering. There's a difference, obviously, between that and the kind of like grandiose. I'm just going to choose whatever suits me for my convenience or my comfort. But I think those things have really different like feelings in our bodies.
00:31:08
Speaker
There's a difference between all that that supports my spirit versus, oh, this makes me comfortable and means I don't have to deal with anything. I love this. so I love that book.
00:31:19
Speaker
Okay, because I feel like what you're talking about is like his idea of resistance. It's like a devilish force that's out there. And if you're trying to create something, it's trying to stop you. And I feel like my friend Liam is working on a book. i don't think he's read that book, but he and i were talking about the concepts.
00:31:35
Speaker
And sometimes, tell me what you think about this. Sometimes I'm like, if you're really onto something, it's like the resistance is like, we got to ratchet this up. I'm not going to caveat it. I was about to be like, I know that sounds crazy, but- People are still listening. They're with us, maybe. It's helpful. I love what you've just said there. And it's interesting that it sounds like that has, it's a true guiding principle for you. So I want to try and say back, you're like, you believe we have a compass in us. It's our life force that understands its destiny. It's trying to fulfill the assignment and that
00:32:10
Speaker
these thoughts or negative feelings around certain things that make you said like guilt that feel I love what you said that idea of you want to go to the end of the earth and stay there i think i know for me that feeling is always I want to dig a hole in the earth and bury myself in it yeah it's there like there's something there yeah I just you just made me realize that saying it back that I think there are I said this thing about symptoms earlier that they should be treated seriously as like pieces of information and I think there are these certain collection of bad kinds of feelings the ones that you just listed that are like evident like it's useful to notice that it's there but it's not inherently useful like the digging of the hole is not going to save you the guilt is not going to save you those are evidence that's not right for me i think
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I got to go back to our question list. Yeah.
Public Writing and Confidentiality Challenges
00:33:04
Speaker
All right. We talked about office spaces. Okay. As a therapist who you're writing about therapy, what type of responses do you get? Do you ever have a where you're like, oh, I really want to write about this thing, but it's too close to home for a patient? Or do you have to struggle with censoring yourself a little bit?
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't write anything for a really long time for that reason. ah was so worried about that. This has been a real challenge of mine personally in my career has been like how to hold, how to correctly hold with reverence for the seriousness of what I'm doing with people.
00:33:41
Speaker
That part of the job, that's where you become a really big character in people's lives without missing out on my own life. And I think what changed for me is that i got a new clinical supervisor and she was someone who was really public facing. She wrote and she spoke and she made videos and she's really, like she's really visible and really forthcoming. And I think having a kind of elder in that space, someone who I really knew to be an ethical practitioner out of great integrity who was still finding a way to have a public voice really helped me get into that and start to be able to tolerate that.
00:34:23
Speaker
It's been like the office that people have every kind of reaction. And in my work with my patients, I can just hear about it and we can just talk together about what it's like for them.
00:34:35
Speaker
I wrestle with that about the intrusion because I like if I have patients who are reading my work or where like my stuff pops up for them it is an intrusion on their therapy and on their life but I think every practitioner kind of has to find their own line with that in terms of what the right balance is.
00:34:56
Speaker
And it's been tricky and interesting and cool. And I'm really happy to be able to still be finding my voice there in the edges of what's relevant.
00:35:10
Speaker
That's really cool. I have this working theory that you can't write anything until you write the thing that like you're afraid to write. and And this thing of like magic and all these esoteric things, I fully for years just was like, they'll burn me at stake if I talk about this stuff.
00:35:29
Speaker
And it had to come. ah had to be like, okay, come for me if you must. yeah that makes so much sense. Wait.
00:35:39
Speaker
All right. so
00:35:43
Speaker
I guess so another question I had was Have do you had what I want, the question was what's been surprising about having public writing practice alongside your
Psychoanalytic Therapy Advocacy
00:35:53
Speaker
private practice? Has there been anything that you were like, whoa, I did not expect this.
00:35:58
Speaker
I think I spent so many years neurotically worried about every possible outcome that it's been. It's been lovely, like even to be able to do something like this with you as a function of having that outlet for myself is so exciting. And I think really healing for me in the areas where i have found...
00:36:18
Speaker
my sense of obligation as a therapist really heavy and I just want it to be. We live in this world where like everyone's making content and everyone's like making a little video about a day in their life and that all looks so fun to me and I go i can't do this stuff because I think that would move into the realm for me of being too intrusive.
00:36:35
Speaker
But yeah I think if anything the surprise has just been like how incredibly rewarding it is to have a channel that's about my own voice. Was there anything that you feel like you wanted to talk about or say?
00:36:48
Speaker
I'm just like wondering to myself whether I've adequately advocated for the practice of psychoanalytic therapy. I think it's just like the most incredible life-changing paradigm thought.
00:37:01
Speaker
It's a school of thinking that's been really attacked and really denigrated. And I feel... I think that I wrote this piece about the process of kind of alchemy in clinical training.
00:37:15
Speaker
And the first stage of alchemy is calcination, which is like this dense stirring up of the mud and the tar and you don't even know if you're doing anything and you even know if it's working.
00:37:26
Speaker
And that was so analogous for me to like coming into contemporary Australian clinical psychology training, which was just so... patriarchal and industrialized and brought with lots of the misuse of the idea of being scientific.
00:37:45
Speaker
And it it's been transformational for me. But like yeah, I guess my punchline is always just, I just love, I love this way of working. And I so really see it change people's lives. It's really changed my life.
00:37:56
Speaker
And I think it's a kind of pathway to the thing we talked about of finding a destiny rather than just stop, to stop being sick, to actually wrestle with what it means to be really well and to be yourself, not to just make people functional so they can go back to their job in the economy.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yes. That's interesting. When you're talking about that stage, I'm like, I feel like I'm at that stage right now. What comes next and what are the signs? Yeah. You're just like upside down and everything's weird.
00:38:27
Speaker
And I loved learning about that because i was like, oh that terrible feeling is a legitimate part of it. It's not just an error.
00:38:38
Speaker
When you say you're upside down and can't see anything, it makes me think of like the fool, the tarot card. Yes, it's the first card. Oh, wait, sorry, not the fool. i was actually thinking of the hanged man. Oh, the hanged man. yeah Yeah. But actually, wait, I'm glad he said the fool because after you and I talked a little while ago about alchemy, I was like really, i don't know, i was Googling, getting more into it. And I liked the idea they were about the tarot, like the major arcana is like a representation of alchemy. Yeah.
00:39:05
Speaker
There's so much there. It's so interesting. I love that you write about these things, that you talk about these things, and really happy there are people like you out in the world doing this stuff. And I'm just really, thank you for taking the time to do this convo, and I'm happy to know you, and thank you so much. kate It's such a pleasure. I've listened to your podcast so much, and you've such a therapeutic personal personality. Hearing it applied to this other kind of realm is so refreshing, and I think it's like the design and the tarot and all these other things, like just...
00:39:34
Speaker
applying this kind of listening and thinking about what's really going on in different areas even to the work that you do is really cool i just think it makes the world more beautiful thank you right i'm trying i will say sometimes i'm like should i just quit and go be a therapist i definitely have that thought with them yeah you but step and thank you