E11_Mental health in building - kicking it in the butt

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Matt: so Hamish and Julie and anyone else listening to the podcast, I want you to do me a favor. So I want you to both grab your phone for a second

Matt: I want you to open up your favorite podcast platform and now I want you to type in the Mindful Builder podcast. I want you to hit that subscribe button, but we're not finished just yet. Now, see the button that gives us a rating? I want you to click that and I want you to give us a five star rating. The reason why we're doing this is so we can bring you better content and we can actually send this to more people that will sort of authenticate what we're doing and bring better people into our podcasts so we can spread the good message.

Matt: Now Hamish, today's a bit of a different episode and we're about to introduce someone that is going to be a ongoing guest on our podcast.

Hamish: Yeah, look, I'm going to start off by saying there may, I can't guarantee, but there may be some topics that we might discuss today that might be difficult for some people to hear. but, we do encourage you to come back at another time when you might be in a better place to, to listen to this podcast.

Hamish: As Matt said today, we have a very special guest joining us. , I've been friends with this person for over 10 years. She's actually been one of the biggest influences on my journey [00:02:00] in helping me understand my own mental health and my own neurodiversity. Life has thrown its own challenges at her, which has resulted in a bunch of additional university degrees and a new career.

Hamish: Today, it gives me great pleasure to introduce my friend, Julie, the psychologist.

Julie: G'day Hamish. G'day Matt. It's very exciting

Julie: to be doing this with you. Hi.

Hamish: I just want to jump in really quickly and just mention that Julie is actually not my personal psychologist. Julie is just my friend. I thought that it might be a little bit awkward if I actually had my own psychologist on here, And talking about my 10 years of history, but we thought that it'd be amazing to actually have a psychologist join us.

Hamish: I guess just to try and help us understand mental health a little bit better. So Julie, I'm going to throw it over to you can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. So, Hamish and I have been friends for, yeah, well over 10 years and just to reiterate, I'm not his psychologist. It would be super unethical to sit here and talk about some somebody's personal information. But I certainly you know, sometimes it's hard to take my hat off as a personal friend.

Julie: So absolutely. Hamish has been really open to conversations around suggestions to perhaps seek help and see a psychologist and also to, um, explore his own. neurodiversity. So it's been really great. I'm a psychologist in private practice. I work in Melbourne and I've got a real passion for men's mental health.

Julie: I'm incredibly excited to be part of this initiative in terms of Just the fact that you guys are talking really freely and openly about mental health, you cannot underestimate how incredibly important that is. There's a lot of stigma, especially for men around talking about mental health.

Julie: And so from that, Perspective. This, this is vital. The more people that are talking and being open and, and vulnerable the better it is. So I think that this is [00:04:00] incredibly important. I get a little, uh, self conscious talking about myself to be honest, but I'm happy to give it a crack. it.

Matt: In, our industry, but also in the general population. So 42. 9 percent of people aged between 16 and 85 have experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life. One in four workers in the construction field have had high symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Matt: And every year, 190 Australians working in the construction industry take their own lives. This means we're losing a construction worker every second day to suicide. Construction workers are also six times more likely to die from suicide than an accident at work. What are your thoughts on these?

Julie: Yeah, they're really sobering statistics, aren't they, Matt? I mean, it's incredibly important to be talking about. help. And I think really importantly to talking about accessing help before somebody is finding themselves in a place where they're starting to have thoughts about suicide or harming themselves.

Julie: sometimes people have this view that I don't really need to seek help unless I am in a suicidal space. Or if I'm, you know, feeling really terrible from my perspective and my colleagues perspective, we actually want to jump in earlier than that. You know, the earlier that we can access help, put in strategies, work out some ways to support somebody and help them kind of build their own toolkit to be able to manage whatever life is throwing at them.

Julie: is really important. So those statistics are, you know, incredibly sobering and just highlight the importance of, conversations like this. I think. What do you guys think?

Hamish: that you just touched on before Julie about, someone thinking, well, I'm not suicidal, so I don't need help. And I can only talk from my own personal experience and I, I'm pretty happy to talk about it because I know me talking through it has actually helped me I guess, better understand how I work.

Hamish: Some of my best psychology sessions have actually been when I've been great. When I've actually gone into my session with [00:06:00] Lisa and I'm thinking to myself, my life's awesome. I don't need to do any of this stuff, because I'm feeling great. But what those sessions actually allow me to do, Is really understand and work get the tools that I need when I'm not feeling great.

Hamish: Now, I reached out to Matt this morning and told him that I'm feeling a bit flat at the moment. My son is sick. He's been off school. I'm probably fighting off what he's got. And what I'm actually finding at the moment is I'm not super motivated to go and exercise. And one of the things that I help regulate my chemicals within my body is actually exercising.

Hamish: It actually makes me feel good. So, knowing this about myself, I probably wouldn't have found that out. about myself if I hadn't actually done that work when I've been feeling good. , so it allows me in these situations where I'm feeling a little bit flat to recognize those signs and then know to put those things back in place that helps me, I guess, lift my mood a little bit.

Julie: I think what I was thinking as you were talking is about part of therapy sometimes or support is around surviving. And then there's another really important part, which is thriving. So it's not just all about symptom reduction and not being in a really bad place.

Julie: working through that's incredibly important. And then that allows some space for actually putting in some foundations or some building blocks so that you can, survive and thrive. And that's, that's, incredibly important to be able to work on. And sometimes you don't have space for, packing up your toolbox and literally like your mental health toolbox.

Julie: You don't have space for that when the focus is actually on surviving or just getting through day to day. So yeah, it's great to hear that. And from a, psychologist point of view, all of that work is great. So I mean, I love my job. I think it's incredible, but um, often say to clients, if I don't go through the muck with you, I don't get to enjoy, you know, the thriving.

Julie: So all of the stuff, whether somebody's wanting to improve and thrive, or whether somebody's trying to survive, it's all [00:08:00] incredibly rewarding and interesting, fascinating work. I love it.

Hamish: our listeners might actually recognize Julie or remember Julie of some of the work that she actually did with us during COVID. So Julie we developed a little mental health toolbox during COVID which is, you still sits on our Instagram page.

Hamish: And during one of the breaks in between lockdowns, when we could actually see each other, we actually had Julie come in to the office to talk to my team about mental health. And one of the things that really resonated with me with what Julie was talking to us about is actually finding. A recipe cause every single person is going to have a different recipe on how they manage their own mental health as I touched on before for me, exercise is a big part of that recipe for me to help me navigate through that, but Matt might love sitting down in front of a fire with his cat and knitting a beanie, whatever your recipe is like that really resonated with me, Julie.

Julie: we sometimes, somehow separate mental health from health in general. it's just an entire system, the whole thing is connected. And so looking at things that generally support you as a system are incredibly important.

Julie: And as you say, everybody's got different things that you know, the thing that lights me up and recharges my batteries is time in nature and camping. And if I don't do that regularly enough, I absolutely can feel that me as a system mental and physical I don't operate as well. If I don't have that regular, and there's other things that we'll probably talk about.

Julie: But yeah, popping together the things that work for you are really important. That that's a fun part of work as well.

Matt: so mental health, it's a bit more of a maintenance thing. It's just like you see your physio, your osteo, your dentist, your optometrist. It's just another tool. Is that correct?

Julie: Yeah, it can be situational. So sometimes people come for a very specific incidents or episode perhaps, and they might come in and we work through symptom reduction [00:10:00] and for other people, it does become part of their mental health or just their their general health strategy. They look around continually having some regular therapy.

Julie: And I've got to stress, it doesn't always have to be a psychologist per se. Like there's lots of different ways that you can support your mental health. And often in psychology, like in your psychology sessions, if that's the way that you go, you start to work out what's actually going to work for you.

Julie: I'm thinking of for example, The thing that we work with often is isolation and social isolation. And so I might work with somebody through the barriers to start to reconnect socially. And then somebody starts to connect, perhaps with a sporting team or a woodworking club or whatever it might be. And they start to have these social connections and then that starts to decrease the need for somebody like me.

Julie: because they're actually connecting, doing the things that we know support, support your brain. So yeah, it can be both, can be both situational and maintenance. Yeah.

Hamish: So Julie, I mean, I, I know your background and I think What I'm about to ask you is quite relevant because no one's life is linear. No one's life is predictable, right? We've always got ups and downs Life always throws shit at us but you haven't always been a psychologist and I know personally that you've gone through some stuff in your life, which has been incredibly challenging and certainly not something that you had planned which has led to you now being a psychologist.

Hamish: Are you happy to talk a little bit about that

Julie: yeah, for sure. I think it's um, pretty important that we've, we're all good at like, to be frank, not pretending that we've all got our shit together. You know, that everybody has got some, usually got some kind of stuff going on in the background or history. I was an osteopath prior to becoming a psychologist and I did that for 15 years and had a really lovely clinic in the Eastern suburbs for 10 years, a lovely bunch of stuff.

Julie: Really enjoyed that work, it was heaps of fun. And [00:12:00] then I had my first back operation in 2008, which meant that I, bending and lifting were not really my friend anymore. So I went off and did a couple of other things career wise and did a whole heap of rehab, managed to run those that know me know that I'm not very sporty, but I managed to run a half marathon as part of my rehab.

Julie: And actually it was around that time that I had my first encounter with my own psychologist. That was my first entry into therapy because to be honest losing a career and losing a clinic and losing your identity was a pretty big deal. And I found a fantastic psychologist and he was really great and helped me get back on track.

Julie: He was a significant part of my toolkit. was to start jogging. That was part of what, um, helped me kind of get back on track. And then I actually managed to get back to being an osteopath after doing some solid rehab. And three months after returning to work, I had a second back operation, which was, gotta tell you, not much fun.

Julie: that effectively ended my career as an osteopath. In that period of time I had started to realize that I needed to do something else that perhaps physically I was going to be able to sustain into the long term. And I knew that the things that really light me up is spending time with people.

Julie: I really enjoy the clinical thinking. I like the like the diagnostic thinking. I very much enjoy, How do you put it? Thinking about multiple things at once. So it's not just the person in front of me. They're talking about a particular thing. I'm listening to what they're talking about, but I'm also looking for thinking patterns and themes and general struggles.

Julie: It's kind of hard to put into words. And so I had actually started doing some part time study in psych thinking about that, that's probably where I was going to head, but I wasn't certain that. I was going to have to end my Osteo career and it was pretty interesting because whenever I asked any of my [00:14:00] Osteo, we call them patients Psych, we call them clients.

Julie: Whenever I'd ask any of my Osteo patients, I'm doing some study. What do you think I'm doing? And they go, Oh yeah, psychology. So there was something about already having, interesting conversations with people. And so that's how I ended up studying Psych. I have capacity to do other things, but I thrive, in a very focused situation with one person at one time.

Julie: And I really like, I don't know. People are amazing and fascinating. And often people say to me like, Oh my goodness, how can you listen to that stuff all day? And that is absolutely not how I experienced sitting with people. Uh, It's a completely different type of listening You know, everyone's got a story and understanding people, where they're coming from and what's happening for their, fueling their behavior or their difficulties is oh, it's an absolute privilege.

Julie: It's a cracker of a job. So I feel very lucky. Obviously, I love being an osteopath and that was a very tumultuous time. I had wonderful friends and family around, to support me through that. And that's a little bit about me. And I've got a dog called Boris. I don't know if that's relevant to the situation.

Matt: What type of

Hamish: thing? virus, I think it's very relevant that you bring that up.

Julie: So, Boris is a black German shepherd. And it makes me chuckle because we had to get in a behavioral vet to come and sort of address some behavioral issues with Boris. And she sat us down and she went, so your dog has anxiety and our dog has anxiety and medic, he's medicated. So I find that quite, that makes me chuckle that the psychologist has an anxious dog that's on mental health medication.

Julie: So it's interesting that behaviors and the description of anxiety and dogs, there's quite a few parallels between humans and And animals. Yeah,

Matt: So there's obviously a lot of media talk about mental health and the education starting to get out there. How have you seen the landscape in this industry change over, say, the last 10 years?

Julie: great. That's a really interesting question. I think it's changed a lot. I'm not sure if I've got a sort of slightly biased view, but an example such as this [00:16:00] podcast, for example, that that's a massive difference in terms of there are more and more specifically men and this is really important. I know that there are women in construction industry as well.

Julie: Traditionally, there's a lot of barriers to men talking about their own mental health. there's a lot of stigma around that. And in my experience, I'm finding that, that's becoming less, uh, and things like this are evidence of that. Yeah.

Matt: mental health issues were attention seeking. But it's until you start to learn and you start to understand, you start to understand. all have issues that you start, I mean, when you see it firsthand what it actually can do, it can really change your opinion on it very, very, very fast.

Julie: like, there's a throwaway saying, which is, you know, when we, we know better, we do better. And so we all come across information for the first time at some time. I mean, I've, I've learned so much since studying psych and, so much more to learn.

Julie: I absolutely came in with them, you know, inherent. biases or beliefs that I had prior to, gaining more knowledge. And that doesn't make you or me a bad person. It just means that , we gain more knowledge as we learn about a particular area. Yeah.

Hamish: In my experience with my own Mental health. I know when I first started seeing my psychologist and in fact, Julie, you played a big part in recommending that psychologist to me. And I have been saying Lisa for well over 10 years now. So thank you for that. years ago in the construction industry, that was not something that we were open to talking about what I'm noticing now.

Hamish: I talk about it, I'm by no means virtue signaling like, and I don't want people to think that, you know, I, I'm expecting people to come to me and tell me how good a job they are, or thank you for sharing or anything like that, what it does for me.

Hamish: personally is when I talk about it, it actually shares what I'm feeling inside and actually reduces that level of anxiety that I [00:18:00] feel in my chest. Even just reaching out to Matt this morning and saying, Hey, you know what? I'm actually feeling a bit flat. Like I actually get a bit emotional talking about this because

Hamish: means a lot to me, but Matt immediately messaged me and said, Please call me because I know you need to talk. And I just said, look, man, I really appreciate that. But I, you know, I'm with my son at the moment, so I can't talk about it. Like I can't talk, but it just means so much to me that you've called out and, um, I wasn't expecting to cry. I'm sorry.

Hamish: it just means so much to know that I've got support around me all the time and that I can lean in on my friends. So thanks, Matt.

Julie: Yeah.

Matt: That's fine, but you created this support network, you're the one that did this yourself, like you're the one that, that reached out, you're the one that put these people around you. So you should be so proud of that.

Matt: you want a second, do you want a second?

Hamish: No, you know what? I'm good. I'm not going to apologize for that. Right. Cause I definitely feel the fields and I actually think it's important. I might be perceived as someone in the industry has got my shit together. But I, I've got times like everybody else where I struggle.

Hamish: And for me having the support of my psychologist, my family and friends like Julie and Matt is so important. I had a conversation with someone this morning who reached out to me who was having a really. Really rough time and I know for a fact that he's going to reach out for help today and I'm so sure that he's going to be able to find some guidance with reaching out and talking to a professional and he is going to get his shit together.

Hamish: So if anyone can learn anything from my own battles with my own anxiety is like talking means so much and it helps so much.

Matt: I think there's one thing though that you said, like you don't need to be sorry, like this is okay. I don't understand people apologizing for feeling this way because it's not like they've chosen to feel like this. I think it's really, really important that we, we touch on that topic.

Matt: It's nothing that you've done wrong.

Julie: hundred percent agree. there literally are some male [00:20:00] biases generally around talking around emotions and feelings for some men. And sometimes, well I like to always throw in a little bit of science, but one of the things that we know is that, There's some really solid research around what what we call labeling emotions will do for a difficult emotion And so if you're able what you just did then Hamish Which is touch on what you're feeling and label it what we know is that that decreases the length of time that you'll experience a negative emotion and the intensity of the emotion.

Julie: And so it seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? That you would kind of go, well, if I just don't talk about it, or I don't think about it, or I just don't go near it, it'll go away. Actually the opposite is true. So sometimes when we're working in therapy, we, we actually start to talk about language.

Julie: Cause often we're just kind of equipped with, I know how to say I'm sad. I'm mad. we don't have a lot of language around it. So sometimes learning language is really important, but then learning how to be able to go near an emotion to be able to express it, it increases the duration and the intensity that that's a solid science.

Julie: I'm always happy to pop the research into the show notes afterward. Talking about it is absolutely vital.

Hamish: so, I love listening to the Imperfects podcast and there was actually piece in one of the episodes, which talks about that quite specifically and basically saying not I am sad, but I'm feeling sad I am angry. I'm feeling angry. So it kind of puts a separation between labeling yourself as that thing, but you're actually feeling that thing rather than being that thing.

Hamish: And I thought that was really interesting.

Julie: Yeah. It's a really important point as opposed to like fusing with the feeling and that being all of you, the feeling sits there and these things pass, but it's a really helpful way to not overly identify with that and that being, being all that you are. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: if I'm,

Matt: someone and I, I'm not feeling great, but I don't know who to [00:22:00] talk to, where do I start? like you're in Hamish's situation where you don't have your support network around you, do, where do we start? What does that person do?

Julie: Yeah, so there are a number of ways to start. One would be a gp. Your GP is a really good place to start, and that's really helpful if you've got a, a regular GP that knows you. And that can be, if somebody's perhaps wanting to go down the path of getting a mental health care plan and then getting a referral to a psychologist, which you can do, you don't have to, you absolutely can attend a psychologist privately.

Matt: can you, just explain what a mental health plan is as well, please? If that's

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. So mental health care plan. What that does is in conjunction with your GP, you're assessed for your need for some services or psychological services. So a GP will ask you a series of questions and do an assessment and then make a decision as to whether psychology might be helpful for you.

Julie: A mental health care plan then allows you to access up to 10 Medicare rebated sessions in a year. And so that can be a really helpful way to help subsidize some of the cost of, of psychology. Cause that would probably talk about barriers later. There are some services that do bulk bill.

Julie: They're not a lot of services around that bulk bill. But generally it's helpful to have the mental health care plan in place so that you can access the the Medicare rebates. It's a really nice system in terms of it means that from where I sit, we've got a GP involved. We've got, for example your psychologist involved and you, because everyone needs a team.

Julie: So having the GP involved as well is really helpful. If somebody's starts to go particularly unwell and we might need to access other services, we can talk to the GP and help sort of organize that. Does that explain the mental health care plan? Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, what I was trying to get out there is that it does for those and maybe specifically say apprentices [00:24:00] or a single parent that just doesn't have access to finances that there are things to help in Victoria. I know the government about they invest about just over 200 million into this.

Matt: So, every other state's different as well, but I just wanted to let people know that if your finance is a barrier, there are methods out there that can really, really help. I know when I've seen one in the past, I went down that path, like utilize the services around you.

Hamish: Julie we obviously had a global pandemic recently with COVID.

Hamish: Now, I'm always quite a glass half full person when it comes to things like this We're all meeting online now, tick, you know, we're all valuing our time with our family, tick, but one of the other things I think it's sort of brought to the forefront of a lot of people's minds is actually mental health off the back of this global pandemic how have you seen I guess the relationship between people and, seeking mental help change before COVID and now after

Julie: most definitely that increased the demand for services for sure. I think the biggest thing that came out of COVID for a lot of us as psychs is we knew that social connections were a protective factor for people's mental health and general health. Actually seeing that in action has really highlighted to me how important it is.

Julie: So we would always assess , people's factors around what's happening in their backgrounds. Now that's a really intense focus of mine when we're talking to people organizing or assessing what their social connections are and making sure that we really spend some time on that.

Julie: sometimes people think that we're going to talk some really fancy psychology stuff or something like this or some really high level stuff. And it's literally, hang on a minute, let's actually look at the basic building blocks of what we know, what the research shows helps people thrive and survive.

Julie: and attend to that. And so I'm not sure if that's answered your question, but most definitely more people are accessing it. And it [00:26:00] really, really highlighted to us as psychs that social connections are vital. And sometimes there's big barriers for people accessing social connections. And so we spend some work around that.

Julie: It might be, some social anxiety, like fear of being around other people. Yeah.

Hamish: if we can kind of relate this back to the construction industry, and I guess that in sort of, institutionalized thing within the industry of men not talking, like, that is in itself a sense of isolation, like, we think that we need to burden that all those problems On ourselves , that it's unfair if we go and talk to our partner, it's unfair if we go and talk to our friend, it's unfair if we go and, you know, share the fact that, that client hasn't paid us for the last two weeks and now we're running out of money, like, I think it's, it's super important to understand that how important those social connections are.

Hamish: And sharing that problem with someone.

Matt: Does anyone know where this whole men can't talk, be emotional thing has actually come from? Because from my childhood upbringing, like, my parents have always invited me to be open with my, thoughts. like, I just wanted to understand a little bit more like why, men have to hide this

Julie: First of all, Matt, good on your family. that's a really wonderful way to experience growing up because I think certainly we've seen a change in the way that people um, speak to their children or many people speak to their children now in terms of actually acknowledging their emotions.

Julie: So, Buddy, I can see you're really disappointed about not being able to, you know, play with your mates. That is disappointing as opposed to, you know, come on mate, let's get better. We'll go and get an ice cream or, don't worry about it. Get on with it. That's a way of helping somebody younger to label their emotions rather than squash them away and move on where it comes from.

Julie: I think, historically Men have been seen as breadwinners can be perceptions of it being perceived as a weakness, talking around emotions. I think generally, these weren't really conversations that, I mean, I'm, you know, in my [00:28:00] 50s these weren't conversations that certainly my parents were skilled at having, because they weren't conversations that they had ever been taught how to have.

Hamish: thankfully, I see that changing. I have a fantastic relationship with my parents. I do want to tell them that I love them very much. But like, I was just told to get on with it, you know, stop crying and get on with it.

Hamish: You know, and I don't blame I don't blame my parents for those conversations. I think it's just totally generational. Now it's how I parent my kids is different. think it's fantastic that we can be having these conversations with our kids and I see my kids. And how they respond to certain situations now where they tell me I am feeling sad, or I am upset, or I am angry, they're actually able to communicate how they're feeling, rather than cracking the shits and just running off and being little shits.

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. Matt, you were asking about, people accessing mental health. So, for example um, men and women, these are broad generalizations. They're, they're based in research, but sometimes I want to make it really clear that no thing fits every single time. So sometimes they're broad generalizations.

Julie: One of the things that we know about men often struggle to express and define their mental health challenges. And so, Women on average tend to internalize what's happening for them. So the feelings are internal men tend to on average externalize. So sometimes somebody might seem angry or there might be some anger outbursts.

Julie: we've tend to find that men will tend to self medicate more regularly and there might be some risky behaviors or other behaviors that if we don't know what we're looking for. We might just kind of go, Oh, that dude's just got anger issues and that's actually not what's happening. So depression very often can present as what somebody might go, Oh, that person's just really angry.

Julie: And in fact, what's sitting under there is depression, for example. So, sometimes that's a barrier because it's not noticed or the person who's experiencing it just goes, you know, Oh, I experienced anger regularly cause things, you know, really get up my nose and they're not aware that.

Julie: that's potentially [00:30:00] what's going on underneath there. That's one thing that happens.

Matt: And, and depression is not the only mental health issue. There's multiple, isn't there? Do you just want to list a few so people are understanding of what other conditions might be out there?

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. So the two most commonly experienced conditions are anxiety and depression. And in fact, anxiety is more common than depression. That's the highest right of mental health concern. We've got things like post traumatic stress disorder.

Julie: OCD oh gosh, a number of conditions and I think that might be helpful down the track to kind of talk a little bit about how some of them present, yeah, it would be

Matt: I think it'd be really cool to, especially between depression, anxiety, and sort of pick those two apart, considering the two sort of most common ones in society that especially, and not saying that women don't have these issues, but considering our industry is made up of 98 percent of men on the tools, think it'd be really important to unpack that for them and just give people the confidence to, to understand it more and not so they can label it themselves.

Matt: But just have an understanding so they might identify it.

Julie: Yeah, it's really helpful to, um, be able to notice things in yourself and things within others. yeah, we can absolutely talk about that down the track.

Hamish: that Me responding how I responded earlier on in this podcast can demonstrate to men that it is okay to feel these feelings sometimes, and that it's totally okay to cry, and that you're no less of a man if you do cry. I mean, I certainly don't feel Like, I'm any less of a person or that, I still can't show up and do my job or, I'm not going to show up and be good husband or a father because, every now and then I do get emotional about something and, have a cry.

Hamish: if people are going to take anything away from that is that I actually feel incredibly comfortable doing it. And, you know, for that then allow someone else to, take the step and. work through some of their own problems, then happy days.

Hamish: We are going to get [00:32:00] Julie back on as a regular guest. Today is about introducing everybody to Julie so they get to know her a little bit better. And we're actually hoping to maybe talk about a couple of topics on a regular basis with Julie. Now, this shouldn't be seen as a substitute for getting professional help, but maybe as introduction of how seeing a psychologist or seeing someone, a therapist or anything like that can actually help you better navigate your way through life, just in general.

Hamish: I

Matt: I think it's just about awareness. Like just having these discussions and making like normalizing them that it's okay to talk about this so people can be more aware of these sorts of things. Do you

Julie: Matt, you raised a really important word, which is normalized. So, you know, if somebody was having any other kind of health related symptoms, you wouldn't kind of hesitate to go, Hey mate, I noticed that, X or Y is happening for you. Have you had that checked out? You know, in my dreams. where we land is that mental health is literally included in that conversation.

Julie: Hey mate, I noticed that X or Y is happening for you. do you want to get that checked out? And it'd be no different to noticing something else in yourself or in somebody else and making a choice that, yeah, let's go and go and work out what's happening and what might be able to be done.

Matt: we get there?

Julie: I think in one of the glorious parts of my work is I get to see people changing in thoughts and, and behaviors. And I absolutely love it when it comes to a point where you know, it's time to discharge somebody from therapy because they feel if that's their choice, they felt that they're at a space where they'd like to self manage.

Julie: And part of their self managing is just, you know, Oh, yeah. My mental health is just, , the same as cleaning my teeth. It's just, it just is, it's part of what I do and I just get on with these things. So, [00:34:00] you know, they've worked out that they must have regular contact with people. It might be exercise, it might be camping, it might be woodworking.

Julie: It might be, you know, whatever those things are, but it's just normal. It's very normal to just go, Oh yeah, I noticed I'm dipping a little. I'm going to do X, Y, or Z because I've worked out that these are the things that work.

Matt: And I think it's fair to say one session won't fix the problem.

Julie: No, that's absolutely fair, isn't it? Yep. I often say to people, you know, you don't clean your teeth once and expect them to stay clean. Like it's a throwaway line, isn't it? But a one off is not going to work. Absolutely.

Hamish: I know we get 10 sessions on our mental health plan quite often, , that's not the end of it, right? That's just, partway towards understanding your own mental health.

Hamish: I know a friend of mine said to me one day, Oh, I've got my last session with my psych today. And I said, Oh, what do you mean? And he said, it's my last session on my mental health plan. And I'm like, okay. don't know if it quite works like that, but hopefully that is the case for you.

Hamish: But yeah, don't think that 10 sessions, bang, it's, it's done.

Julie: You raise a really good point, actually, in that, sometimes because the mental health care plan provides those 10 rebates for the year, some people come in with the perception that I should be better, whatever that is, but I should be better after 10. And therefore there's something wrong with me that I've not been able to get better in 10.

Julie: And that's absolutely not what the program is about. It's that these rebates, there are 10 that are provided for you. Now, some people. Might come in and use less than 10 sessions, and absolutely, some people require more than 10 sessions. The 10 just happens to be an arbitrary number that the government provide in terms of a mental health care rebate.

Julie: But yeah, absolutely, it leaves some people thinking, oh, you know, what's wrong with me? I need more than 10. the number is not related to outcomes , or need.

Hamish: Julie, thank you so much for coming on. I know this is going to be [00:36:00] really valuable. To our listeners, I feel incredibly grateful that you're giving up your time to come on and chat with us and hopefully make some small contribution to the construction industry and in helping it becoming a little bit more aware and a better place for us to go to work.

Julie: Well, thanks for having me. I think if, from today, one person goes out and thinks about, accessing help or, or starts to think a little bit differently around accessing mental health services, then, you know, that's a job well done. Yeah.

Matt: And Haim, I just want to thank you for sharing your experience. I think it's something that looping back to it is so important that if Hamish can do this on a podcast and open up like he has, I think it's really important that we all should be able to open up and that it's okay. It's totally okay not to be feeling great.

Matt: And. Put your pride aside or whatever. I think if we can seek some help it's really, really important. That's half the reason we're doing this podcast. I mean, what we want to, we really want to improve our industry, not only from a standard of construction, but also to be treated as professionals, but also the mental health side of things.

Matt: I think that's something that I know I'm passionate about. I know Hamish is passionate and passionate about, and Julie, I'm sure it's something you're definitely passionate about. It's your career. So, Thank you all for tuning in again. Please hit that subscribe button, give us a five star rating.

Matt: It really, really help us out so we can continue to bring more awesome content and have a good day guys.

Hamish: Well, thank you.