Restoring humanity in healthcare work with Lucy Mayes

Lucy: the naturopath thinks that their dietary interventions are the thing, or the doctor thinks that their pills are the thing or the, you know, whoever it is, whoever’s, whatever modality they’ve got.

Lucy: but actually a large part of the healing just comes from somebody feeling heard and seen and held

Caitlin: Hello, hello. Welcome to the place for offbeat health professionals who have bravely swapped their healthcare hats for nonclinical creative caps. I’m Caitlin, a psychologist, turn copywriter, and this is healers with hustles.

Caitlin: Today’s conversation is such an important one. and I hope you’ll Enjoy it as much as I did. So my guest today is Lucy Mayes, who is passionate about and committed to community connection, joy, the arts, and deep listening, drawing on a training as a lawyer and social worker lawyer. Lucy has worked in corporate law, governance, community, and economic development, leadership, and organizational development.

Caitlin: She runs her own business, Collective Wisdom Consulting, facilitating strategy, engagement, partnerships, leadership, and human centered organizational and community change. She has worked across multiple sectors including healthcare, corporate, not for profit, government, education, and the arts.

Caitlin: Lucy values and brings tools to facilitate deep listening, participatory process, diversity and inclusion, pro social purpose, connection with and learning from creativity, nature, and joy. All the things that I really value on Healers with Hustles.

Caitlin: So I’m very excited to welcome Lucy to the podcast today.

Caitlin: Thank you so much for being here.

Caitlin: Thanks Caitlin. Thanks for having me.

I’m super interested in hearing your story because it sounds like you’ve done a huge amount of things over the years.

Caitlin: I’m not exactly sure where to start. where do you usually start when you explain who you are and what you do and where you are now?

Lucy: well, again, that’s a good and not so straightforward question for me because I have done so many different things and worn so many different hats. I find it quite a hard one to answer and never quite know where to start. but I will probably start somewhat at the beginning, which is, that in what feels like a galaxy far, far away, I was a corporate lawyer.

Lucy: so that was my first career. And, I think I was just always really passionate about justice, social justice, truth, advocacy,equality. And so I thought law was going to be, you know, the obvious pathway and,And I worked really hard and I got in and then, and I sort of was about more than midway through the degree before I was like, Oh, I don’t know if this is for me.

Lucy: I just didn’t feel lit up by the way the system worked. But I thought I’d better give it the benefit of the doubt and give it a try. Possibly I’d taken a different pathway. then as a professional, it might have been a different outcome because I didn’t really follow my instincts towards the social justice side of the law.

Lucy: And I ended up in corporate law, and I died a very quick spiritual death. My values were very compromised, in that environment. And at the end of the day, I thought I could, you know, a few people said to me. if you’ve got an interest in social justice, you should do legal aid or, you know, work in a different environment.

Lucy: But by that stage, I was really disillusioned and pretty burnt out. And I just thought, I don’t actually think this is about truth or justice. it’s about power and money and I wasn’t interested in playing that game. So, not to say, you know, there are definitely very good people doing very good things in the law and I was a bit impetuous and young and naive probably, but that was my decision at the time.

Lucy: So I retrained as a social worker and Really loved that frame, which is kind of understanding, people in their environment and, and supporting, yes, it’s basically social justice in action. And I have a particularly strong interest in community and community development, community wellbeing.

Lucy: So my most of my career has been involved in that space, with a bit of a focus on leadership development, but quite a grassroots interpretation of leadership. So youth leadership and community leadership. and then, yeah, I don’t need to go too deep into what I did in that realm. But then more recently, found myself working more and more in healthcare, because of my husband’s work.

Lucy: So he’s a rural GP obstetrician. And he was, very severely burning out, at one point and I was extremely anxious and worried about him and, brought my social work lens to the table, I think, and just wouldn’t quite believe that people could be expected to take on the level of responsibility and trauma that they do day in and day out, in a clinical environment without it.

Lucy: And, so, yeah. Any training in or support around, you know, in social work and psychology, we take supervision for granted. You wouldn’t, you don’t, you don’t practice with that supervision

Caitlin: Yes, yes.

Lucy: and, and yet in the medical model, they’re in this system where, first of all, they’re acculturated and trained in a fix it mindset, like they’re the ones with the answers and their job is to fix people and save them.

Lucy: and then their toolkit is completely siloed, they cordon off all the body parts and one person deals with the blood vessels and another person deals with the heart and somebody else deals with the, the psychology and, none of them want to touch the social, emotional, familial stuff that gets left to the social worker,

Caitlin: All the feely stuff like, Oh yeah,

Lucy: yeah, all the gooey human stuff.

Lucy: Yeah. And so, so they end up with this incredibly siloed toolkit trying to fix a system that is not siloed. You know, we are the sum of our parts and, and all the influences around us. So, I was, I was kind of questioning that going. Going like, well, how does anybody survive in this system where you cut the human apart and cut yourselves apart in the process and then you’re bowed down by the pressures of perfectionism you know, these expectation from themselves as much as the general public that they’ve got all the answers and that, they’ve got a silver bullet who can fix the lifestyle illnesses of our times And the mental health scourge of our times and, you know, all the interacting factors connected to our emotional, social, psychological and spiritual and physical wellbeing.

Lucy: Yeah.

Caitlin: lot. And just as you were talking, I’m just thinking, Oh, my time when I was working in government as a psychologist and yeah, everything you were saying, I felt that and I was just, I, I couldn’t be there anymore. Like I love the team. I love what I was doing. I like the work and everything. But I just.

Lucy: It was that whole, yeah, like you were saying the whole, the system and the, how it’s set up. And I was like, how can we work like this? This isn’t how it, quote unquote should be. And it was too much. So I left, which I don’t know if that’s a great thing either. Like I, I don’t know. Part of me wishes maybe I could have changed something. Yeah. It’s a really vexed question. I, I worry, I must say that, the people who are in you and I share an interest in humanism in work. And I think the people who bring those qualities are the ones who tend to get crushed in the systems that lack humanity. And therefore it becomes this kind of self fulfilling cycle of, of people who are, quote unquote hard enough to cope in those systems and environments.

Lucy: And in fact, when I left the law firm, the managing partner said to me, He said, Oh, we took a risk hiring you. We knew you were soft, but we’re trying to change the culture. And we, we know that to change the culture, we need to hire people who reflect the values that we want to reflect. So I wasn’t offended by that comment.

Lucy: I was like, Oh, cool. But he’s like, how do we keep people like you? And I said, you know, I was still pretty young. I was like, Oh, I’ve got no idea, but I just know that I’m going to die if I stay here.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Lucy: But I think that’s, I don’t think that’s an uncommon story. And I wonder how I wonder what the answers are.

Lucy: And we’re seeing it in healthcare, massively hemorrhaging people out of the system. And we do know that those who, who feel more, are actually a bit, a bit more exposed to psychological distress in the workplace than those who have managed to shut down those parts of themselves or aren’t as naturally inclined to be, you know, as kind of emotionally tuned in, I suppose.

Lucy: Yeah.

Caitlin: Yes. And it’s almost, is it like, what comes first? Is it there? They just maybe naturally they, maybe a bit detached from emotions and that kind of thing. So they thrive in that environment. Or is it like some people just like, they have to put up the walls and that, that kind of, I don’t know, they separate that self from them, like, Oh, it’s a,

Lucy: Well, I have a whole other theory about that, but that’d be another whole other conversation.

Caitlin: love it.

Caitlin: I love it.

Lucy: It’s a societal analysis which you might not have time for.

Caitlin: like this big rabbit hole and yeah.

Lucy: and patriarchy and all that.

Caitlin: Yes. Oh my gosh. I love that. But you’re so right that there’s a whole nother question, isn’t it? How do you keep these people then? And that’s, yeah, like a human resources, question or something, but it’s such a, an important thing to think about. because I’m probably jumping around a little bit, but your work now, you’re working with the Hush Foundation and that’s pretty much the premise of it, isn’t it?

Caitlin: Like, at a broader level.

Lucy: it is. So the mission of the Hush Foundation, so we’re, we’re a small charity that work nationally and internationally. And our mission is to transform healthcare cultures with kindness. and the tools that we use, the primary tools are the arts. So we use music, theatre, Dialogues, and literature and visual arts.

Lucy: so yeah, it’s, I mean, I have to confess sometimes a bit of a tough sell into a very clinical environment, where people are very time poor and, pressured, but what we don’t understand is if we can’t see something and measure it in the, in real time, you know, A plus B doesn’t actually equal C, A plus B equals, you know, C, D, E, and F, over time, then we find it very hard to give credibility to, to those sorts of interventions that are harder to track.

Lucy: And, and yet we know, you know, the science tells us very strongly that, that the human factors make such a massive difference to every element of care to quality and safety for patient outcomes to, you know, medical, medical error, communication, psychological safety at work, wellbeing at work.

Lucy: And staff retention and performance, efficiency. So we say that we haven’t got time to do the, what they call the added extra of the human bit. but in fact, these things don’t take time. They save time and they save lives. Wow.

Caitlin: but it’s that. Something about it. And I don’t know if it’s like an emotional piece that people have with the arts. Like if it’s like a bit of a, a doubt or about their own abilities or something like that, but it feels like a big thing for some people. It reminds me of my, master’s thesis. And it was on basically I, we did, and I didn’t, it was me and my supervisor did an art therapy intervention for burnout for psychologists.

Caitlin: And it was kind of, There was a lot of time. That participants had to,carve out for, it wasn’t a lot of time, but in the world of masters where, you know, it was like jam packed, it was like putting aside two hours a week to do this, intervention for, I think it was like eight weeks or something like that was a lot of time, but it was just so, so worthwhile, but it was a bit of a hard sell.

Caitlin: And so.

Lucy: Yeah, it’s so interesting because we all consume the arts in our lives. we watch movies, endlessly. We listen to music. some of us like to go to the theater or the art gallery or whatever, but we keep it quite separate from our professional lives. what the science tells us is that, connecting with the arts opens up different pathways of our brains, and that enables us to see, hear, feel, think differently.

Lucy: And in a workplace context, it makes an awful lot of sense to open up those different pathways in the brain, but we, we just kind of, in our heads, again, we’ve siloed off those different, Things. And we say, Oh, that’s what we do in our leisure time. That’s a nice, that’s a nice feeling to have, but, but it doesn’t belong in the workplace.

Lucy: Whereas in fact, we could challenge that assumption. and, it’s not just a nice kind of, wellbeing kind of therapy intervention. It’s, it’s got possibilities for, education and for communication pathways around. I mean, we see in. for example, during COVID, you know, there’s been a lot more screen based, interaction and what we, what we don’t understand about what’s lost in the human interaction through the screen based thing is, is the micro body language that we rely on for, for energetic, almost affirmation in a workplace.

Lucy: And so some of the, toxic behaviors and reports of bullying and work cover complaints that are coming through, through just these, toxic behaviors. These missed finessing in our communication styles that we don’t even realize we’ve missed or we’re missing and in a very busy, fast paced environment like a hospital, you’re also missing them if you don’t take the time to just.

Lucy: connect with each other as humans. And then, you know, the evidence tells us, another example here, and I’ve probably digressed a bit from the arts, but it’s, but again, it’s all about these pathways of our brain

Caitlin: of course.

Lucy: under the neurophysiology, the mirror neurons of the interactions that we have at work that we really underestimate because we can’t see them happening.

Lucy: So we don’t know that they’re, you know, happening necessarily unless we understand the but, but the, there’s some research, that tells us that. That if people don’t have those human interactions in that physiological way with, with the spaciousness of a bit of time and presencing. So for example, a warm, kind handover meeting, then they’re more likely to personalize when, when they get, when they get faced with pressure or complexity, they’re more likely to personalize an issue and a problem, like find somebody to point a blame to the boss or the.

Lucy: Or the nurse or the person who, you know, who didn’t speak kindly or whatever. then to understand that the problem it’s a complex problem and the best solution is actually to maintain, cohesion as a team and communication as a team.

Caitlin: That’s fascinating research. And it just. Shows the, the benefits of the arts and, or not even necessarily the arts, but just that the humanness and those little moments of humanity, even like the water cooler conversations or things like that, those little moments where you connect with people.

Caitlin: I think

Lucy: Yeah, well, we’re so acculturated into our brains and our intellect. and that’s only one, that’s only one way that we actually function in the world. It’s the way that we understand best and we see, but, there are many other ways in which way directing and communicating and needing to. Needing to notice and presence and upskill ourselves in.

Caitlin: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it’s so, so important. I’ve really been really enjoying reading your book. I think it’s an excellent concept, but tell me all about that and how the idea came about.

Lucy: Yeah. Thanks Caitlin. So my book is called beyond the stethoscope and it’s a collection of doctors stories around themes of reclaiming hope, heart and healing in medicine. And so, as I said earlier, I was watching my beautiful husband who just has such a passion for his work. And loves his patients, and his community really suffering with burnout and, and really losing that part of himself that, that brought him to medicine in the first place.

Lucy: The part that loves connecting with people and that has deep respect for them and their, and, and the role that he plays as a intimate kind of partner in their health and wellbeing. And so he became more and more kind of, shamed and stressed by, by his own kind of, emotional shutdown.

Lucy: Anyway, I was watching this happen, and I was also, you know, in the old days, we had physical magazines on the breakfast table, not the, not the Internet, email overload of, e news. And I was reading some of his magazines because he never got around to reading them. And, And there were quite a few stories repeating on psychological distress, emotional distress, burnout.

Lucy: and there was a big beyond blue study at that time that was showing, that doctors had something like three times the national rate of suicide. and it just shocked me and I just suddenly had this kind of epiphany that I could be living with a statistic and I didn’t know what to do about it.

Lucy: Like I could sort of see him sinking in front of my eyes. And feeling very trapped by this, training that he had in this system that he was trying to operate in with this insatiable demand from our community. and a real acculturation around not having any boundaries because everybody needed you and you were supposed to be there for everybody.

Lucy: And especially in a rural context, it was

Caitlin: Yeah. And that adds to it. Doesn’t it? That was a rural aspect is

Lucy: Yeah, that’s right. So, I was really, frankly, I was frightened and I was not quite sure how to support him. and so probably cause I am quite intellectual. I decided to go and talk to other doctors and, research, you know, how they, you know, how they, How they were surviving in the system and, see if there were some themes that could be helpful to others.

Lucy: So I started interviewing doctors and,I ended up traveling around Australia and New Zealand and even met with a couple of international doctors to, yeah, I basically placed those themes in front of them and said, I want to know more about how you maintain your hope, how you maintain your heart.

Lucy: And how you manage healing both ways. So you’re not giving yourself completely, that you’re not sort of supporting other people’s pain. Health and wellbeing at the expense of your own. so it wasn’t like a, a clinical, academic exercise. It was much more heart-based exercise and I was really just deeply speaking to people.

Lucy: and as I wrestled with the themes that were coming out, originally I thought it was gonna be a bit of a analysis of what, of the themes that were emerging, but in the end, I ended up presenting the stories as, first person. You know, I did edit the interviews, but, first person accounts in their own voice.

Lucy: And I pretty much took myself out of the narrative because I suddenly realized like they were so beautiful. They were so heartfelt. They were so inspiring. and there was so much richness in it. I thought, who am I to? Decide what I think is relevant here. Like it felt like they felt like works of art that I needed to just curate and hang in the gallery of my book and let people come at them from wherever they were coming from.

Lucy: Like not assume that people were coming to the book, feeling broken or feeling anything in particular, and then that way they can hear what they need to hear in any given moment for where they’re at in their own situation and their own context and their own life.

Caitlin: That’s so beautiful, because I was, when I was reading, I was curious to know, because you could have, taken the more academic route and done, like a qualitative analysis and done, that thing. But I think. It’s beautiful how it is a first person account and narrative and the words are so powerful.

Caitlin: Like I was reading it and I was nodding along to so many of the things people, the doctors were saying it really resonated with what I’m going through, what I have been going through about. The system and it feeling like I can’t exist as a human. but then like, how can I do my best work, particularly, as a psychologist, like in social work, you’re working with a human and the relationship is so important.

Caitlin: And like, how can I not bring that into my work and how am I expected to be a robot? And it was, it was really difficult. Yeah,

Lucy: saying that. I’m glad that that was your experience. Cause I want people to trust their own intelligence and their own instincts. and I feel really strongly about that. My business name is collective wisdom and a lot of the publishers and a couple of, People who I consulted around how to produce the book kept on saying, why don’t you write 10 steps to how I saved my husband from burnout or, 10 steps to how to avoid burnout and I’m, I’m like, the market is flooded with people pretending that they’ve got the 10 steps, but nothing is that simple.

Lucy: And I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got 10 steps because it’s different journey for everybody. And I’m just not interested in, like selling something that’s a fallacy because it’s exactly a mirror of what we do in healthcare and medicine, which is that we say that we’ve got a drug and we can fix you and people don’t have to take any personal authority or responsibility.

Lucy: And, that’s not real and I don’t want to be part of

Caitlin: not real. Wow. Good on you for doing that. Cause I know exactly what you’re talking about. what you mean in terms of, yeah. Like the, 10 step, procedure to eradicate your anxiety immediately and like, all of those.

Lucy: It sells well because we’re all anxious and we’re all feeling out of control and I could have made a lot more money if I’d done that, but I’m, that’s just, I’m just not, that’s not how I can work.

Caitlin: No,

Lucy: I could have made a lot more money if I’d stayed a lawyer too.

Caitlin: Yeah, that’s so true. Oh, but your soul would have been crushed. Or if you stayed in the corporate, yeah. We’ll even still, but that just speaks to like the, on some level, the whole society and we’ve got that sickness in us like that things can just be fixed immediately.

Caitlin: Like it’s just. But we take, yeah, but by taking, I don’t know, it’s not a fully formed idea, but there’s something there about they’re asking you to do what is in some way making people quite unwell, and what the doctors are saying as well, there was some quote, I can’t exactly remember, but it was something about, someone falling away from wholeness and something about the training made them fall away from wholeness.

Caitlin: And it’s a little bit like that, isn’t it? Stripping away what makes us human and trying to make us fit into this, I don’t know,

Lucy: yeah, that was Rachel Naomi Remond who’s written a beautiful book called Kitchen Table Wisdom that quote

Caitlin: Oh, yeah. So

Lucy: can tell you stories of falling away from wholeness is what she said. But, Yeah, but also, as you know, I did a TED talk last year on, enoughness enough is enough.

Lucy: And again, it speaks to this theme, which is we’re in this relentless growth oriented culture where we constantly striving for our personal development and our professional development and our career development and our financial development and our.you know, we constantly sort of accumulating wealth and skills and knowledge.

Lucy: And when are we ever going to, it’s the same kind of extractiveness that we’re bringing to our planet. Like we’re extracting resources endlessly from our planet and plundering our planet thinking that it’s never going to end. And we’re doing the same to our bodies and our souls and ourselves. And really, I think that wellbeing and peace, and connectivity is going to come from surrender and simplicity.

Lucy: I’m not good at doing it myself. Let me just say, like, I’m completely relentlessly trying to professionally develop myself and I love having nice things around me. So, you know, I work hard and, I like having money, but, but nonetheless, I, somewhere in my soul and my spiritual development, I do believe deeply and would like to work more closely.

Lucy: Alongside this knowledge and this understanding that, simplicity and surrender are the path to peace and wellness and love and connection.

Caitlin: love that, simplicity. And like, you’re so powerful, you’re enough, it really, it struck a chord with me, because Even after finishing like my master’s, I’m like, I need to do more. I need to do this. then I’ll be able to prove that I’m a knowledgeable person, or then I’ll have the answers.

Caitlin: And I think at one stage, my supervisor, said she’s like, Caitlin, you were enough. And I never said I wasn’t enough, but that was the underlying thing. And I thought, wow, yeah.

Lucy: Yeah. It’s the voice of our culture. Yeah.

Caitlin: definitely. But what was that like doing a TED talk or TEDx

Lucy: it was really scary. Like I am a very experienced public speaker. I’ve been, I was a debater at school and I did public speaking in my You know, all my life I’ve done a lot and I actually really love it. it’s one of my kind of happy places, ridiculously enough. I had like a English teacher, at school who said to me once, she said, you’re far more powerful orally than you are in the written word, which was quite profound because I love writing as well.

Lucy: So I was like, Oh, how do I find more ways of doing more of that? Except for the fact that I actually love listening to people. And so when I stand up on a stage, I just want to hear everybody else’s stories and perspectives. So that’s not really conjunct to being a public speaker, but, I’m a facilitator now, but anyway, I, back to your question.

Lucy: Sorry. I digress. it was probably the most nerve wracking piece of public speaking I’ve ever had to do. And it was a couple of things. It was because of the TEDx formula. So it’s quite orchestrated and you’ve got to follow the rules and you’ve got to submit your idea to the international body to make sure that it’s unique.

Lucy: And nobody’s talked about it before in that same format.Secondly, it was a topic that I did not feel ironically expert in because that was the topic, but I felt like a fraud standing up and talking about, you know, being enough because I feel like that I have the complete opposite thing going on in my psyche.

Lucy: and having enough, like I had just built this magnificent, beautiful new house and I was standing up on a stage in my community. talking about having enough and I’m like, Oh my God, I’m the doctor’s wife. Who’s got this lovely house. Like, how can I, how can I stand up here and go, well, you know, we’ve got enough.

Lucy: It’s, it felt very, like a very entitled privileged perspective. So I was really frightened about speaking about it from that perspective. that they originally, the organizers originally asked me to speak, about leadership. cause that’s been my, career background. And, It’s the work I’m probably most known for locally, but I didn’t want to, because again, I’m really challenging these notions of kind of, the growth oriented hierarchical being more, being better, you know, being better than, or driving ourselves to lead something or lead people, or I’m not dismissing, you know, the world of course needs leaders.

Lucy: And I’m quite passionate about a particularly grounded version of leadership, but I just didn’t feel like I wanted to stand on a stage and, bang on about it. So I said to them, nah, I don’t want to do that. Sorry, I’m not your person. And they go, well, what, what are you grappling with at the moment? What do you want to talk about?

Lucy: And I’m like, well, I’m grappling with being enough and having enough and doing enough. And they were like, okay, talk about that. So I’m going, okay. And then, you know, after you’ve said, yes, you actually have to do it. And then the other thing that was really hard was that it’s a 10 minute format

Lucy: You have to learn it off by heart and like, you know, I’m an experienced speaker. So I’m used to using notes and looking up and engaging with the audience, but I’ve never ever learned anything by heart. And so it felt almost robotic because I, because I get so much energy from the audience and I interact and I kind of go with the flow and I feel into.

Lucy: what’s been said before me and what might be going on in the moment. And so to do something like wrote like that was really, really hard. yeah, I was so nervous. There’s just something about like being told that you’re asked to do a TED talk, even though it was just a little local one. it was really a very scary prospect.

Caitlin: yeah, it sounds, but even like you said, like, with the rules and all of that, that sounds just in itself, yeah,

Lucy: Yeah.

Caitlin: frightening,

Lucy: Yeah. And you’ve got to go into that kind of who am I to think I’ve got anything to add to it. Like the world is so full of voices and noise and opinions at the moment. Like really, does it really need mine as well? then I had friends who just went, yeah, cause you’re wrestling with stuff that we’re all wrestling with and you’re good at putting words together and other people need to hear that they’re not alone.

Lucy: I was like, okay, okay. I get that. I can do that. Yeah.

Caitlin: it, but in terms that you were wrestling with something like that, I think when we’re in that, That moment and that psychological turmoil or whatever you want to call it, it gives it a different type of energy and I think it’s so incredible to be able to speak from the heart like that and people can hear that as well and connects on a different level.

Caitlin: I think it’s so excellent. circling back to your book, what was a theme that you noticed?

Caitlin: what would been the takeaway message that you would say

Lucy: were a couple, probably I reckon the doctors who I spoke to were, healers, vocationally, and they intuitively knew that a primary healing toolkit is deep listening. And the stories that they told me about the path of profound medicine in the act of deep listening, was really like, it blew me away.

Lucy: so some of them were working, for example, in, integrative medicine or dual modalities. So, you know, I had, I interviewed a Chinese medical practitioner who was also a mainstream GP, naturopath who was also a mainstream GP. So people who have sort of. thought outside the box in terms of their toolkit and their clinical practice, or, you know, quite a number of them had a spiritual, kind of bench, or understanding or lens.

Lucy: some of them understood more about the, Psychology of medicine and how that impacts the physiology, and brought that quite strongly to their practice. So they were sort of thinking outside the box kind of people who were attracted to my, my theme words. but universally what I heard was, No matter what your modality, the common tool, and probably the most powerful intervention was the listening piece.

Lucy: And I found that really profound because, you know, there’s increasing science about the placebo effect, and what that actually, achieves very practically speaking. And it just made me wonder, you know, we think, you know, we think that our So the naturopath thinks that their dietary interventions are the thing, or the doctor thinks that their pills are the thing or the, you know, whoever it is, whoever’s, whatever modality they’ve got.

Lucy: but actually a large part of the healing just comes from somebody feeling heard and seen and held and, And then when you can actually be honest about that in an exchange about what’s going on, you know, it takes that sort of power and the control away from one person who’s the authority and the power broker and the other person who’s the recipient and it equalizes the healing relationship.

Lucy: And then, from a self sustainability perspective, which was a key thing that I was talking, I was looking at, of course, taking the pressure off, being the one with all the answers and needing to fix and giving the power back to the patient. Becomes healing both ways. It empowers and enables and activates the innate healing potential of the human in the patient.

Lucy: And it also gives back the flourishing and the thriving and the wellbeing to the practitioner who, who can take the pressure off themselves in needing to have all the answers, in complex things that don’t necessarily have answers, but the answers are kind of a collaborative partnership thing. So yeah.

Lucy: That would be the very big one. And the other bit I think that, that struck me as a wellbeing tool was, allowing themselves to feel and to be human,

Caitlin: Oh, so many threads that, that when you were talking, I was just like, yes, yes, yes. Yes. That’s so profound. And I, that’s so fascinating becausewhat’s going to happen then with, GPs and like this under so much stress and pressure to see so many people and,

Caitlin: But then what happens then if the healing thing is the deep listening, where does that leave people if

Lucy: Yeah.

Caitlin: practitioners don’t have time to do that?

Lucy: Well, the tragedy is the system is deeply incentivized against it. So particularly in general practice, the ones who make the most money are the ones who churn through patients and that churn and burn kind of scripted flick style of medicine, which doesn’t do anybody any good, but it makes the doctor more money.

Lucy: So the ones who get the complex patients, have to deal with the mental health issues or the lifestyle illnesses that are much, you know, less easy to move through quickly. they literally, quite literally, because we own the medical clinic now, they literally make half as much money.

Lucy: so it is completely disincentivized. and then of course the, the forms of medicine that are more about that, that whole human. whole life trajectory, story, disincentivized in and of themselves, which is of course the generalists. So general practice is effectively second class citizenship in, in the medical world.

Lucy: And they make about a third of, or a quarter of the specialists. And, and yet they’re doing this incredibly complex nuanced medicine, which is, is kind of like the hard end of the stick, and completely unrewarded for it. So now they can’t recruit to general practice. So sorry, I went on a bit of a side rant there, but, but.

Lucy: I, I don’t know the answer to that question, except that I know that there’s a huge amount being lost in the fact that we completely dismiss and underestimate and don’t know how to measure the impact of the more nuanced interventions. And therefore we don’t know how to value them.

Caitlin: there’s something in that isn’t there. And I. Grapple with that as well. And it was something when I was doing my training and, you know, it’s very clinical,very evidence gold standard baseno room for anything else, no room for the therapist and all, but then coming out of it and realizing, well.

Caitlin: There are different modalities that allow, more of the human in it,

Lucy: Yeah, it’s, it’s so tricky and it’s, and it has its place, of course, like we want to know that, that what we’re receiving is, has got ethics wrapped around it and evidence wrapped around it and science wrapped around it, of course. so we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but it would be just so great if we could find ways to be a little bit more nuanced in our understanding.

Lucy: And one of the traps with that system, of course, is that we think we’re being objective in the ways in which we collect the data and the science. But even, even the methodology. And the acculturation that informs and funds the research is, is actually not objective. So if we can just get a bit real with ourselves about what we actually are crediting and hanging our hats on, and why, and also when you’re in a system, That is so heavily dependent upon, a clinical evidence base, then it takes 20 years for new science to adapt into the system because people have spent their PhDs and their careers creating the evidence base.

Lucy: They’re not about to shift when there’s an emergent alternative perspective arising that’s equally, palpably clear, but it’s, treating on the toes of somebody who’s. built their whole career and ego around a particular set of knowledge, and they’re not about to switch and change their perspective in a hurry.

Lucy: and whole professions, of course, that shut down to new science because, because it serves them to not, to not hear the new, and also, you know, tragically and, but understandably in a capitalist system, the pieces of evidence that make people money are the pieces of evidence that rise to the surface.

Lucy: And if there’s an intervention that’s. That doesn’t make somebody money, like listening.

Caitlin: like listening, like long term psychotherapy.

Lucy: yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s good. Yeah. It’s different.

Caitlin: It, it is, but, oh, I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s just so complicated. It’s so complex, isn’t it? But I think that we need to have more conversations like this and your work is, just so important. I

Lucy: Yeah. I just feel like, on a personal level, you know, I’ve been a kind of a change agent all my life and wanted to fix and change systems and people and thought that I might have got the answers. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that that’s a bit of a naive and somewhat arrogant Controlling perspective.

Lucy: And, my personal journey has been around realizing that I have to be the change rather than, expecting that I’ve got all the answers to help everybody else change and the systems change, you know, fix those damn broken systems. we just all have to take responsibility for the blindnesses that we have in ourselves first.

Lucy: And then I think the rest will flow. and it probably again, comes back to that enoughness piece. If we can be really honest with ourselves about the extent to which our egos and our acculturation are driving out the ways in which we show up in our relationships and in our teams and in our work.

Lucy: if we dare to, and if we care to, because it’s courageous work, and then we, then we don’t exhaust ourselves with the masking and with the not being ourselves. And, and then, and then maybe we can be part of systems that are more honest and Pro social as in, you know, for the greater good, not just for the individual good.

Lucy: I, I still, I think I’m going to go to my grave holding on to perhaps a naive optimism and hope that, the world might turn one day towards collective wellbeing rather than individualism.

Caitlin: Well, we need that. We need the dreamers and it’s so difficult and we’re up against systems and institutions and there’s so much money tied to it.

Lucy: I there was a part in there when you were talking about the idea for the book and that it was when your husband was talking to you and I think you were in bed and he was telling you about his day and maybe a sliding door moment potentially where you could have rolled over and gone back to bed, back to sleep and not listen, but then you did, you did the craziest thing or like that.

Caitlin: Uncomfy thing and listened and thought, Oh my gosh, just, I’m going to do something about it. So tell me about that and sliding door moments for you.

Lucy: Yeah, well, I think he was just kind of really despairing about the model that he’d been trained in that, that had, that was so limited when he was presented with people who were so unwell, psychologically and mentally and, and therefore, you know, a whole lot of physical symptoms and he was starting to see, in that particular example, there was a patient who had come to him, for, I think it was, medication for depression. And he realized that she’d been put on,you know, weight loss medication and hormone replacement. And she had all these other things that had been kind of stopped, gapped with one drug that had then caused the symptoms of the next. thing, which then got stock gapped with another drug.

Lucy: And he just realized that there was this kind of, again, this not holistic view of, of her whole health and wellbeing. And so she ended up with this vast quantity of medications that she was on and she kept on getting symptoms from each of those. And they were just trying to patch it. And he just felt so despairing.

Lucy: He was like, I just feel like I’m complicit in this. actually breaking people rather than, than supporting them to, thrive and be well with us with probably a lifestyle intervention in the first place would have been, more appropriate than a drug. And, so he was really despairing and I, and he was like, I don’t know if I can do this anymore.

Lucy: And I just had this moment of like, Oh my God. The system needs people like you, like people like you leave, like the open hearted person who can actually see the big picture about what’s going on and who can give people hope and help them find their own power. in a much more sustainable way, then that’s, Surely that’s what the system needs.

Lucy: And I just had this kind of like, I don’t know, tiger moment where I was like, no, like you’re onto something. This is true. Like, this is what the patients want. The patients don’t want to be treated like idiots who can’t support their own wellbeing. they want to be empowered to like, you’re onto it.

Lucy: Let’s do something together.

Caitlin: Yeah. Together. Oh, how

Lucy: moment. And,

Caitlin: If I said,

Lucy: like, we do now, we work together a lot. We, we do presentations together and he’s gotten really involved in social prescribing, which is all about pretty much the thing that he was instinctively onto back in that conversation, which is reconnecting people with things that they’re joyous about with, with social connection, with physical movement or with creativity or whatever brings them joy, like connecting people back into living live.

Lucy: And then the symptoms fall away, like he’s got so many examples and stories from his clinical practice of people who have cured their fibromyalgia or their arthritis or their depression or their anxieties through just reconnecting with what brings them joy.

Caitlin: That’s so, so, so big tell me about the dance as well. Because he, your husband Richard’s a dance, was he a dancer before or there was, what’s the

Lucy: Yeah, no, not really. No, not at all. He’s, I mean, he would have been, but he was a boy growing up in seventies Australia. So, he’s definitely, he’s absolutely got dance in his body. But, His sisters were the ballerinas and he was the one who got put in tutus and lipstick to be their little toy as a child.

Lucy: And then, probably never danced again until, maybe a bit of nightclubbing in, in the nineties. but yeah, it all came about because he, his sister was running the fun run in our local community and need, they needed somebody to. fill time between, bringing in the results and, and keeping people present.

Lucy: So she got Richard to stand up and run some silly dance things with people. And our kids were starting to become teenagers themselves at that time. And they’re like, Oh my God, dad, you are so embarrassing. Your dance moves are awful. And, one of Richard’s patients was a dance instructor, Sarah Cook, and, she was running dance classes for children and teenagers.

Lucy: And so they were laughing about his, his daggy dance moves and how, what a bad job he was doing, of embarrassing his children in public. And then she’s like, she’s like, we should start an adult dance class. And he’s like, Oh my God, I would love that. Let’s do that. So they started a little mob and they ended up doing flash mobs around town.

Lucy: And then on one occasion there was like an ABC journalist in the supermarket where they were doing a flash mob and she recorded the flash mob and she got Richard doing a backspin in the supermarket. And, and then it went on social media and everyone was going, Oh, who’s the bloke in the mullet we doing a backspin and somebody else goes, that’s my GP.

Lucy: And so, so social media kind of went off cause they thought it was so kind of out there and unusual that a doctor would be doing a backspin in the local supermarket in a mullet wig. And of course he loved it. He was like, Oh my God, this is fun. So they, anyway, it went from strength to strength, this story and his patients started coming in and going, Oh, I’ve heard that you’ve been dancing.

Lucy: It looks so much fun. I used to dance. I’d love to do that again. Can I, you know, when are you going to start up the next class? And so he and Sarah Cook got together and they were like, okay, let’s like make this a real thing. So they started up another class called silver tops for people who were mobility impaired and older.

Lucy: and they just have been flooded with luck, with people coming back to dance and that’s where some of these amazing stories have come from of people reclaiming their well being and, and of course in the process, Richard’s managed to reconnect with his own joy and reclaim his own well being. So it’s like a personal story of social prescribing.

Lucy: And, and then it has become, as he says, probably the most powerful public health intervention he’s ever been part of. So. He’s now a spokesperson for social prescribing in our region. he also now uses dance for education in, in, healthcare. And he’s kind of like, they, they have him working all around Australia, dancing for them to, to, anchor the education because of course, he doesn’t want to have fun while they’re doing their work

Caitlin: That’s the thing. Like the fun element. Like it’s. Honestly, like fun is such an important thing and it’s missing so often. I think that’s what drew me to copywriting. I was like, I can have fun for like, you know, the first time I’ve like, I can just do whatever I want and be silly on social media and like, whatever.

Caitlin: I think, yeah, it was so exciting. I’m so happy for,your husband that he found that.

Lucy: Yeah. So we don’t, we don’t need to go to a doctor to get our social prescribing. We can just social prescribe for ourselves. Just go and have fun.

Caitlin: But it’s so exciting. I I’d love to, Oh yeah, no, I definitely love to chat to him about that and creativity and what he’s noticed and yeah,

Lucy: I

Caitlin: fantastic.

Caitlin: Hi healers, this is editor Caitlin here. I interviewed Lucy before I figured out how I was going to work, the fun questions, which I now call the rapid fire questions. before that I was asking guests what the most boring fact about them is, but I think I prefer the absurd fact that it’s probably easy to answer I thought I’d leave in this boring fact question for Lucy. So it’s a bit different to what I usually do, but here it goes.

Caitlin: Now, I have been asking guests what the most boring fact is about them. So I’m super curious to hear how you, you answer.

Lucy: Well, that’s a very funny question. you did give it to me in advance. Thank goodness. Cause I would have been very thrown, but I was thinking about it and I was thinking for somebody who’s natural inclination and impulse is to be a bit of a rebel and quite adventurous. I’m actually very middle, like I’m middle aged, I’m middle height, I’m middle weight.

Lucy: I thought I was going to run away, you know, to the circus or marry a French painter, or, you know, I thought I was going to have this wildlife and I’m married to a doctor and I live in the country. so I think I’m just kind of middle really.

Caitlin: Well, I love that. That would make I’m amazing. Like a big deal. Copy for an about page, I really like that.

Lucy: Thanks. I might

Caitlin: That’s just a little,

Lucy: next guideline.

Caitlin: that’s just a little thing with my copywriter hat on. Oh, I’ve loved our conversation today. but is there anything like you wish that I would have asked you?

Lucy: think we’ve had a great far ranging conversation and I’m very grateful for the opportunity to share this shared passion that we have. And I think that, It’s really, really important and really powerful. And I hope that lots of people jump on board with your mission. Caitlin, it’s a great conversation that you’re starting for people.

Lucy: And yeah, we, we are not alone in caring about, the health of the healers and, and creativity as, as a fundamental piece of that.

Caitlin: No, thank you so much. I think you’re doing wonderful work and I can’t wait to follow along with what you do as well.

Lucy: beautiful. Thank you.

Caitlin: it’s been a treat. Thank you so much.

Caitlin: so much.

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