Transitions: Changing with Life’s Seasons

Disclaimer: The following transcript has been autogenerated and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies resulting from the automated transcription process.

Host (00:01):

Hi there. Welcome to Mental Health Professionals Network podcast series MHPNs aim is to promote and celebrate interdisciplinary collaborative mental health care.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (00:17):

Welcome to Transitions. This is the final episode in the series Transitions brought to you by the Mental Health Professionals Network. And I’m Julianne Whyte, a mental health social worker working in rural New South Wales.

Dr Monica Moore  (00:30):

And I’m Monica Moore, a GP with a special interest in mental health.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (00:34):

Today, Monica and I looking at transitions in relationships and in life in general. And this is a way of wrapping up this series, we’ve looked at a variety of areas in our lives where transitions dominate or just challenge us psychologically, professionally, and personally. So Monica, for this final session today or final episode, just what are some of your musings or thoughts that come to mind for you?

Dr Monica Moore  (01:04):

Well, I was thinking, I wanted to finish on a positive note because some of the issues that we’ve been mussing on have the dark side and it’s like you mentioned in episode five how much reading I do. And it’s true, some people drink alcohol, some people eat chocolate, others watch sports TV for hours on end. And I read that’s how I Distract Distance Dissociate, the Three D’s of Denial of Life. But it does have its positive side. And I was reading Catherine May’s Wintering, which is a book that she’s written to really highlight the concept that we know that in nature there are seasons that all of nature is used to this, the animals, the plants. It’s only humans who believe that we have to live in an eternal summer and to normalise the darkness, to normalise the barrenness of some of the seasons in our lives and to look at how we can make changes in our lives or really look at how we can use our resources to get through those difficult times. And when I was thinking about this and how this last discussion we’re having today is the transitions in our relationships, not just our relationships with other people, but our relationships with ourselves and how we can be aware of that, how we can change things, how we can do better. And yet at the same time recognise that there are some things that are completely out of our control.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (02:51):

Really good points. I really loved it when you brought up about Catherine May’s book Wintering and I’ve used it, I was thinking the other day, I’ve used it with a couple of clients this week and it’s just been remarkable. I remembered as I was talking to this lady about the concept of wintering that it was a few episodes ago that you had actually shared with me this beautiful metaphor of being a lobster. And sometimes when we shed a skin or the lobster sheds his skin, he’s got to find a cave. When he’s a small lobster, he finds a small one appropriate to his size and then he grows the new skin, gets out there in the world and does his thing and then a period of time comes where he needs to shed that skin again. So he finds a bigger cave. And the wintering is very much like going into your cave, being able to be in a safe place whereby we are vulnerable, our skin is showing it’s a bit raw, we don’t quite know how to do it, and we provide ourselves time to grow a new skin.

(03:46):

And the concept of wintering, they’re just such beautiful, beautiful metaphors that actually sometimes do more than just some of the other conversations we can have where people can bring their own picture to mind to help them with whatever problem or difficulty that they’re or just it doesn’t have to be a problem or a difficulty, just some view, a different way of thinking about this time in their lives, which can be challenging. That sense of uncertainty. I dunno what will be when I come out of this period, dunno how I’ll emerge and maybe we need to sit and use concepts and metaphors like the Red Lobster. I just love it so much. And then this concept of wintering and I mentioned it to a lady the other day who was going through a dramatic change. Her children were growing and leaving home, but her husband was still working.

(04:31):

And then she has this sense of who is she now? She used a phrase called relevance deviation syndrome, which I hadn’t heard of before, but I’ve written it down so I wouldn’t forget it. And she said she’s lost that sense of relevance. And I actually said to her that maybe then you need to just use that concept of wintering and just sit back and just let things happen slowly. Just to have a sense of hibernation and not have to come up with a solution and an answer. And your comment of the eternal summer. Always be positive, always come out of something that’s significant with a smile and go, yeah, I can do that. I can cope with that. Yeah, just chuck it at me. Beautiful metaphors. I just love them. I love them. The sharing that you’ve provided over these last, the episodes we’ve had, Monica’s just been delighted and so I appreciate the fact that I must be doing all the drinking and chocolate eating. So you are doing the reflection and book reading. It’s brilliant. I love it. It’s a good,

Dr Monica Moore  (05:28):

Well yeah, it speaks to my personality style that I would do something like that and lose myself in a book. But when I’ve been through periods of depression in Catherine May, in her book she talks about announcing to anyone who will listen or perhaps not so much that, but certainly announcing to people who she meets that she had a major breakdown at the age of 17. And that’s normalising the process, feeling depressed of feeling down and out and everything is bleak and everything is grey and everything is cold and there is no joy and there is no hope and there is nothing that you can do. It’s a sense of helplessness. And to normalise it, she says in her book that each time she goes through a wintering, she knows that she’s been through a winter before, that there will be spring. And I think that there’s something that’s really important that when we are talking about our relationship with others and our relationship with ourselves, this relationship with ourselves to allow ourselves to winter, to hibernate, to sit in that space of bleakness at the same time, knowing that from that we can transition into something that is different but is spring is summer, is autumn has good things in it.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (06:53):

And even continuing on that metaphor or that theme too Monica, that sense of a change has happened and we are changed because of the process of change. We may be older or other things have happened, there’s our body’s different, it’s different. Not bad or wrong, it’s just different. And I think helping people or even allowing that processing of we have wintered before we have done this before and to bring some skills or tools, whatever phrase you might need. Often I say to people, you need a new toolkit for this one. The old toolkit needs a few extra things added to it. So what do you think we can add to this one now? Because this is different to the old, we’re adding the experience of the old to this one bit like stacks on again like we talked about last episode.

Dr Monica Moore  (07:41):

Yeah. One of the things that I want to share with you and with everyone, with all our community that we are developing as we are discussing is that concept that depression is painful. It’s not easy to feel depressed, it’s not easy to go through a winter, but it adds insult to injury, it adds suffering. If we are expecting that we should be an eternal summer or an eternal spring. And that’s the reason why I thought I really loved her book because it normalised that experience And isn’t that interesting how it’s when we are going through difficult times that we work out who are our true friends, the lifetime friends or even friends, I love that expression, friends for a reason, for a season or for a lifetime there will be people who will support us through different things. And that again, that’s another transition. Having the expectation that it’s okay sometimes to end relationships, not just romantic relationships, but to end relationships with friends when for one reason or another it’s no longer working us. And how do we do that? It’s very difficult, very difficult.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (08:58):

It’s a really good point you bring up there. And I think that concept of where people fit in our lives, what is the reason? If the reason’s gone, then that friendship or that relationship may need to either find a new reason or a new meaning. If there’s an importance in that. And that is that sense of making and that’s why the wintering and the sense of being able to just slowly take the time to sit in that place of uncertainty or whatever you want to call it, whether we call it depression or just lowered mood or a sense of unsureness and then be able to find do we need, what’s the meaning of this? How has it impacted me? Who is the person I was? Am I still the person moving forward? How do I see myself? And the other thing that comes to mind too with this is our schemas, our core beliefs in life.

(09:47):

Because I think sometimes when we’re going through transitions and I’m only thinking of myself now as a 63 year old mother with a large family, a professional working, I’m studying hopefully one day I might have be an academic, I don’t know, dunno if that’ll sit nicely with me. But there’s the relationships that have changed as our life changes because our focus and our experience, our time changes, we’ve got to then find where are the significant meanings, which are the meaningful relationships with either people or parts of our life? And then how do we then build that sense of anticipation? Maybe we talked the other day about dopamine, that molecule of more, which is that book by Daniel Lieberman. And I’m just thinking that that might be just thinking about how can we develop that sense of awareness or anticipation in something where there’s been a sense of change where perhaps our negative thoughts, those automatic negative thoughts creeping in which are very much a protective brain function.

Dr Monica Moore  (10:52):

When you were talking about that book by Daniel Lieberman and he was talking about dopamine, he was really emphasising that in romantic relationships especially there’s an excitement in the first six months of that relationship and how important it is to recognise that the pool of attraction that we feel towards that person perhaps is not something that is a healthy lifetime goal. People often say you’re always going to marry the wrong person if you are just going to go on that. And what are the qualities, what are the qualities in relationships? I was reading this other book and now I’m going to say, I actually dunno where it comes from. Where they were talking about the qualities of friendship. So any relationship where friendship is a factor because even your romantic relationship has that and that you need to be able to trust that person. You need to be able to know that they won’t lie to you.

(11:51):

You need to be able to enjoy their company. There needs to be genuine affection and delight in their company. There needs to be a sense of reliability that when they say they’ll turn up, they’ll turn up when they say they’ll complete a chore, they’ll complete a chore or whatever it is that they say. And there needs to be a mutual respect where you respect that even though you don’t have the same opinions, you may do things differently that you respect the other person. You speak to them respectfully, you treat them respectfully. And it’s that are we doing this with ourselves? Are we doing this with others? And when Martino and I were talking about the transitions in the transgender space in episode four, we were talking about the reaction not just within the family to the announcement of that individual, but also in that wider sort of sphere, the school work, if that was where it was happening, extended family members, friends, and how even in our culture there are messages that we’re getting about what it’s okay to do and what it’s not okay to do and those sorts of things that we all need to be aware of and to tease it out to see what are we going to believe in and what are we not going to believe in because you go, well, that’s a cultural expectation, but it’s not really how I can have a meaningful life and be true to myself.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (13:24):

Aren’t they challenging situations, aren’t they? Sometimes you just as I’m listening to you talking very much sense of we don’t always have answers and we don’t always have a way of responding. I’m just thinking professionally here or even personally sometimes we just, we don’t need to fill that space with words. Sometimes it’s a sense of allowing a silence too, isn’t it? To just allow that expression of if somebody’s giving you a thought or saying something just to be allowing a silence to exist so that we can, that sense of someone announcing to you some major transition like what you were saying with your discussion and sorry, I haven’t related back to that conversation with you and Martina, but that was just so powerful. These were things I had not encountered in my own practice and even personally, but you just really reflect very deeply on the pain at multiple stages of somebody’s journey through, I even don’t like the word journey actually, but as they transition through their own growth and development, just the need to share and connect with others that have a meaningful relationship with you and we actually have a sense of expectation as to how it may go.

(14:43):

I think sometimes the most appropriate thing to do is maybe embrace a little silence, isn’t it? Rather than, and allow things to have a sense of maybe mentalizing or some kindness in the silence or tell me what’s your view on silence as a therapeutic tool?

Dr Monica Moore  (14:58):

I find that silence is great for getting people to feel both really comfortable and really uncomfortable and both personally and professionally.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (15:15):

Yeah, well I ran a supervision session yesterday. I’ve got a couple of social work students and some paramedics that work at the moment on placement, which is just such a thrill. But I said that and I said that to them. I said, silence is a very much a therapeutic tool. We use it personally and professionally, two to three seconds, not minutes, that’d be terrible. Two to three seconds is therapeutic and safe and comfortable. Anything more than seven changes the power in the relationship and actually becomes uncomfortable for both. So to be mindful of time and we actually practice then one second, two seconds and three seconds of silence. With that sense we started off with then those phrases, I’m curious, I’ve noticed I’m wondering which of those beautiful opening sentences in a narrative approach. So really curious, what you’ve just said to me is really quite powerful and meaningful and I’m wondering what you might be feeling right now and then allowing a three second silence after that while you use that leaning in or those nonverbal skills that we use in that both private and professional space where we lean in, we look gently on the other, we allow a moment for them to reflect and offer something back.

(16:28):

And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, three seconds, that sounds good. I can do four seconds. And then we talked about power in silence and when does it become uncomfortable and shifts the power in the relationship. So it was a really good supervision session with some students. It was lovely. And the paramedics, it was interesting. They hadn’t thought about silence as something that was therapeutic. They felt that that was not something that they had practiced as a skillset. Hopefully they’re going home with a new tool.

Dr Monica Moore  (16:54):

It sounds like they are. Absolutely. So yeah. So the power of silence in both ways. When we were thinking about that, I was thinking the opposite of silence is chatter. And again, that’s another book. It’s by Ethan Cross and he talks about how our self-talk really influences how we both perceive and respond to the world. But he was using it more as a tool that when we use the first person, I’m feeling depressed, I’m feeling scared, I’m feeling angry and I’m feeling angry about this, that the more we use the first person, the more we immerse ourselves in that experience. And we can’t know how Matt, who you were discussing things in episode three, he was talking about mentalizing that ability to like a drone hover above your experience and see what’s happening and therefore get that wider perspective that it’s actually important for us to talk to ourselves either in the second person or the third person.

(17:59):

And I often catch myself doing that and hadn’t realised I was doing it like, Monica, put your big girl pants on time to put your big girl pants on and do this. And yes, you can tell how nervous you are because you’re getting the Ps and the bees mixed up and all that kind of stuff, but it’s very important. Calm down Monica, just take it easy. Settle Gretel. And so it’s that ability to speak in the second person that allows us to get a little bit of distance. And when you do it in the third person as a narrative, Monica’s having a little bit of problem calming down at the moment. Monica is having problems because, and you get even that sort higher perspective of recognising why is Monica having problems because she’s thinking this, she’s feeling this, she’s connecting it to that previous experience.

(18:53):

She’s doing all of that. If you journal in the third person, you feel a lot more calm and there’s a lot more opening that occurs than if you journal in the first person. And this is what the research Ethan Cross was talking about is doing all these experiments with students about, and not just with students but with other people as well, about how speaking to ourselves in first, second and third person helps and hinders if we are having something that we really, really enjoy, write about it in the first person. Okay, how interesting. You want to immerse yourself in it.

(19:39):

And so it’s also that he was talking about invisible support and the invisible support. If someone is not ready to do any mentalizing, if they’re just wanting you to validate their emotional experience, how dreadful things are for them, how bleak the situation is, and they’re not ready to do any of the practical solution solving that perhaps as a GP, that’s my default. Let me fix it for you. So it’s something that I really have to be aware of that if you are someone who’s around that you can do invisible support. Invisible support looks like if you’re a family member, you can do the chores. If you are a friend, you can talk about people generally find, so I remember when I had small children and they wouldn’t sleep. And I remember going to nursing mothers meetings and how lovely it was when the leader said, most people find sleep deprivation to be a sublime form of torture. And I went,

(20:49):

yes, that’s very true. And I’m trying not to take it personally and I’m trying to survive here, but no wonder I feel so crap and just generalising it and normalising it for me. And another form of invisible support would be if you was, what happens in supervision groups? We learn so much from our peers, but I also learn from the people that I work with in my work patients who will tell me about their life experience and I’ll go, yeah, or it’ll lead me to think or read or seek supervision. And so all I have this concept of always learning. And when I think about in our supervision when we are listening to someone else’s problem and they’re discussing how they’re struggling with it, and then perhaps a supervisor will offer some hints about how to do it or some of the other members of the group.

(21:46):

And I’m silently sitting there kind of going, oh great, that’s great. The spotlight is not on me. I’m not having to talk about this particular problem or disaster that I’ve created, but that’s going to be really helpful for me to get out of this conundrum that I find myself in. So even inviting conversation about you had this problem, how did you solve it in the presence of someone who’s currently having a difficulty can be a really helpful thing. So when we are thinking about our relationships, some of them can be really, really helpful and others not so helpful, others can be a bit toxic. And how do you tell the difference between, I know that I’m going into murky territory here, but how do you tell the difference between someone who is not just unpleasant to be with but is actually toxic for you?

Ms Julianne Whyte  (22:41):

Yeah. Isn’t that an interesting, that’s where you do that self-reflection, isn’t it? As to when you’re looking at that feeling that is generated and even when I’m talking to other people, just tuning into a sense of is this okay? Does it fit in with my values? Why am I investing energy in this relationship when I leave it with a sense of it doesn’t sit well, it doesn’t feel well, it tends to, if I’m with someone that feels quite toxic, you have a physical reaction to it. So I think it’s tuning into that reaction and thinking what is it that triggered in yourself? What feeling thought at previous experience that has been triggered here? Very conscious that with the variety of counselling sessions and the people that present to with such a varied issues and problems that they want to talk about or have some help with, and some people do trigger you and some situations do trigger you. And I think it’s being really mindful of our own personal triggers. But if you’re in a relationship that’s important and there’s a trigger, that’s where you do that values clarification, I think Monica, whereby you go, how important is this relationship? And not just surrounding yourself that positive psychology, but I’ve just been always positive, but going, is this something I want to invest time and energy and understanding into? Or do I need to step back from something for a while and view it in the light of perhaps my own change, my own different needs?

(24:16):

Look, we went through a really difficult time, David and I when we moved into a quite remarkable, what we didn’t think was a great transitional period of our time, but obviously everyone around us found it quite challenging. And it was when we went from three children to four children, then we had a big gap for a couple of years, or a big gap for us was like three years. And then we had our fifth little one. We found that all our friends that we had had, we had a huge network of friends and were very involved in the footy and in a rural community. We really got very immersed in the community. And then it was interesting that within about 12 months of bringing our little fifth baby home, that the invitations out to barbecues and parties and picnics and outings stopped. We became and felt quite isolated.

(25:00):

And I also felt that I didn’t have a lot in common with some of the people that were previously in our group of friends and we were looking for different friends or a different network of people, a different community around us that actually shared a different set of, or maybe we always had the same values, but then were being expressed differently because our personal situation had changed. And it took us a few years to adapt to this new view of us as perhaps difficult to have. You invite the whites over and you get half the basketball team or you get the football team and how do we feed them? How do we put up with them? And we had some noisy kids and sometimes they had some challenging behaviours, but it must’ve been hard for our friends as well. They would’ve then when I mentalized that it would’ve been difficult to think, oh, we’re doing this thing.

(25:47):

We better not tell Julian and David, they’ll bring all those bloody kids and we can’t feed them. So it took us years to understand that that was actually okay. And that concept of the reason season lifetime friends, they’re still lifetime friends and we are now reengaged with them that all our children are left home, they’ve always been there, but the season and the reason wasn’t right for both. So I think it’s sitting down when we have that sense of being with people that have some challenging behaviours or thoughts that challenge us is as we mature too. It’s a very much a cognitive approach I gather too. And you can’t do when you’re in the middle of that experience of change, obviously sometimes our cognition and that how the limbic system becomes activated when there’s a stressful circumstance. So therefore we are less capable of engaging in our more frontal lobe cognitive resources.

(26:36):

So therefore understanding that that we are reactive, maybe taking some time out and viewing it, the light of all circumstances. So I know that I don’t relate, I don’t disclose. I think that’s an important thing too often in the professional setting. I’m in a very small rural community, so it’s important not to do too much disclosure around my children and my family because it’s very identifiable in a small community. Actually something’s really interesting here. Am I going to do another disclosure? I’ve got a lot of children that I see in my practice in some of the primary schools, and my youngest has just started a teaching role in one of the public schools. And I’ll get people coming and I say, so who teaches you? Oh, Mr. White. And they go, oh, he’s so lovely. I said, Jesse is a very lovely person. Do you know him? I said, well, yeah, I really know him very well.

Dr Monica Moore  (27:26):

Yeah, yeah. And I call it taking the balcony view, but when you’re talking about how friendships change over time, and you were talking about as your family increased and you had more children and therefore more chaos and let’s be honest about this, there would’ve been more chaos. And which of your friends were more or less comfortable with the level of chaos? It’s funny, I am not comfortable with a higher level of chaos. And so to maintain our friendship, I would’ve changed the venue. I would’ve said, they don’t come to my place. Let’s go to a park. Let’s go and do something else. But that’s me. I’m very direct and I’m problem solving. I want to maintain the friendship, but I want to solve the problem because I’ve got a problem. And in ownership of the problem, who owns the problem?

(28:18):

I think that that’s where we can get into a bit of trouble when we don’t actually communicate our needs clearly, and we don’t invite other people to communicate their needs clearly, or for some reason they feel like they can’t communicate that need. But I think of you and David with your kids and sort of the transition that occurred as you didn’t get as many invitations to join the parties and the groups. It’s sad. And yet at the same time, and I really feel for you and you talk about not disclosing, but at the same time I think it’s when we disclose that of ourselves and when we’re vulnerable and we say, this is a normal human experience. We’re not blaming anyone, we’re not having a go, but we are just saying this is what it’s like to be human. And someone can hear it and go, yeah, I’ve noticed that in my life as well.

(29:12):

And it normalises. And it also allows us to then say, well, what do I need to do about it? And when I was talking about toxicity, I was actually talking about there’s some members of my family who are actually quite toxic. And yet because they’re family, there’s the cultural expectation that we’d have good relationships and that we’ll all be close and that I’ll have good memories of them, those ones who’ve already died and all of that kind of thing. And when I do my work, I think it’s one of the gifts that I have to contribute, that I don’t have that expectation that when people talk about their close relationships, that I don’t always expect that because you have that role in society that you are actually going to be the idealised version of that. That in fact that that person may not be beneficial to the person that I’m working with or talking to. And that’s, I think something in terms of relationships. Relationships are so important. Humans are social animals. We do not survive in isolation. And we thrive when we surround ourselves with our tribe, with the people who really have our best interests at heart and who we can engage with in a way that we can contribute. But we have to be aware of the fact that sometimes we have to moderate our relationships with some other people.

(30:43):

Have you had to do that? I mean to deliberately step back and take that distant view and go, even though characteristic and don’t go, you don’t have to go into detail. You live in a rural community, but have you noticed that or have you sort of had conversations with that in a clinical way?

Ms Julianne Whyte  (31:00):

Look, interesting. The first thing that came to mind as you’re talking is that David, my husband, has had to retire medically retire. So he is only couldn’t go back to work. And he was under 60 and he’s tribe was his work, his mates were all at work. He had previously mates in the footy club, he can no longer attend. So he’s had this health transition and now a significant life transition and work transition and that sense of where his friendship group was at work and his mates were at work. And so when you retire before the expected time, there is a whole sense of, well, who do I hang out with? Everybody I know if I drop into their workplace, I’m a nuisance. I’m in the way when they’re ready to do things. If you’ve got some chronic health issues, then you are often too tired at night and don’t want to be going out late at night or the cold affects you or other things impact you or the heat vice versa, or being at some sporting event reminds you of what you could no longer do.

(32:06):

So there’s that sense of losing that connection with the previous life that you had versus the new one that you have to emerge and feel comfortable in and find a new group, a new tribe to hang out with. And I’ve worked with quite a few men that have gone through these sort of transitional stages either with work or with chronic health issues. And it can be, and I’m not saying it’s just unique to men, it will obviously happen to women and all people. It’s a very human experience. But then where do we find that comfortable, the new habits that we need to form around where we socialise, where we get that, I just like your phrase too, the invisible support, where that comes from and how we seek it out without becoming a pest or, and all the new skills we’ve got to learn as we move into that new stage of life, how we learn to become this person.

(33:03):

It’s interesting too because David, people say, oh, so why aren’t you working? It’s almost like, well, you must be one of those rich folk. And he’ll go, no, I had to medically retire. So you’ve got to go into the medical story. And he’s not always comfortable with that. And he’s had to learn how to say, well, look, I’m not comfortable talking about that right now. And they go, oh, wow, as people step back a bit. So it’s tricky. I’ve become really comfortable with using the word tricky. I don’t have an answer for some things. They’re just really tricky.

Dr Monica Moore  (33:29):

So tricky. And when I’m thinking about all the things that we’ve talked about in our conversations as we need to sort of end this episode as well with a certain degree of sadness on my part, may I say that we talk about such tricky things that sounds sometimes like we’re being very glib. Certainly when I’ve listened to them again, I wonder. But I’m hoping that from what we’ve discussed that we can get this sense of transitions are normal, transitions are what we do every day. It’s small transitions, it’s big transitions. And there are so many things that we can learn from each other, not just from our friends and from our family or professionals, but also work also the wider community blogs and groups online, and even the people that we have dealings with in terms of baristas, people who we get our food from in the shops.

(34:39):

We can learn something from others, but we can also have connection from others that helps help us through these transitions. And our relationship with ourselves is really important as well, that as we transition, we are changing. And how do we accept that those things and how do we develop that new relationship with ourselves as we accept ourselves through those changes and that sense of identity. I was telling you about how my identity is changing. I used to have an identity, which because my mom was such a good sewer, and so I have a sewing machine and an overlock, and I have attempted to make clothes for myself all through my life and been a miserable failure at it. And it’s just been so frustrating. And so I have finally, as a result of my Swedish death cleaning, and yes, it’s another book, look that up. It resulted in me getting

Ms Julianne Whyte  (35:34):

Highly recommend to be read.

Dr Monica Moore  (35:37):

I’ve gotten rid of my fabrics, my patterns and my identity. I am not a sewer of my own clothes. It’s never going to happen. And so that’s that thing, and to maintain a bit of a sense of humour perhaps, and recognising, I think when we know ourselves, I’m very focused on identity and recognising ourselves and understanding ourselves. And so I really love the four tenancy construct of Gretchen Rubin where she talks about how we respond to inner and outer expectations and recognising that the more we understand ourselves, the easier it is for us to create a life that’s really adapting and also really worth living and meaningful and rich and full of happiness and joy. So an example of which is discovering you as a friend, and we are planning to get together and I’m planning to travel and do a road trip and include you on the schedule. So that’s going to be really wonderful. We’re going to have a wonderful time together.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (36:40):

It will be a delight. Absolute delight. And Monica, the series that we’ve done I think has from a personal perspective and also clinically because so many of the insights, the metaphors, the tools that we’ve discussed together have really been able, I’ve been able to integrate an awful lot of things into my thinking, a different view on the world. What I love about our relationship that we’ve developed over these easy 12 months is that you and I wouldn’t normally as even as health professionals, I don’t think I’ve had such a wonderful, open, valued discussion with a GP around how I view things and it’s different but the same. And it’s that respectful relationship that I think we could emulate.

Dr Monica Moore  (37:27):

I totally agree. Sorry. It’s one of those things, not just about meeting another human being, but also the delight in discovering the phases of grief and learning so much from you about how to be present with someone and how to see things from the systemic perspective, which is something as a GP that I keep having to be reminded of. And also the delight in sharing our experiences as parents and as grandparents and all of those sorts of things that we’ve been able to joke about and discuss when we’ve been both recording, but also planning for these sessions. It’s just been a true delight. So thank you. It’s just been wonderful.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (38:12):

And same Monica, I really echo those sentiments and so that’s why we really, really encourage all the listeners to put some feedback. Tell us what you would, if you’d like another series, we can come back with some other things that might really inspire and excite other people. Also to continue your relationship with Monica and myself,

Dr Monica Moore  (38:33):

I’d love another excuse to do reading.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (38:35):

Oh my God, how wonderful. I love it. I’ve written everything you’ve suggested down and I’m buying today The Wintering. I really love that one. I’m going to get the chatter book. It’s just exciting. Really lovely. And Alain de Botton, I really actually like saying his name and I’m really going to look at some of these things and go back and look at the role of dopamine in relationships as well. So lots of things. Oh, and another thing you mentioned too was the Tiny Victories podcast, and I’ve got a very, very dear close family member going in for some major surgery today, and when I leave here today, I’m going to actually buy her own little pack to send her care pack. I think it’s a transition for us too, because this is the end of this series. So this is a chance for us to say farewell, and this is our final episode in the series Transitions. So this is goodbye from me, Julianne Whyte, a mental health social worker, working in a small rural village or community in New South Wales, and my friend Monica Moore.

Dr Monica Moore  (39:34):

And yes, goodbye from me. I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to learn from you and to really expand my thinking and my presence as you and I have discussed things. And as I imagine that everyone who listens to the podcast, we’d really love to listen and to hear your feedback. So you can click on the link in the show notes. We’d love to have your ideas. I’d love to have an excuse to have more discussions with Julianne and other clinicians that we can learn from because we learn from each other. And so your feedback is so important for us to continue our learning and for us as a community to expand our learning and our support for each other. So we really appreciate you clicking on the link and giving us your feedback. I’m Monica Moore, a GP with a special interest in mental health.

Ms Julianne Whyte  (40:29):

Thanks, Monica.

Host (40:32):

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