What Psychologists do and other crises

The one where I started writing about what psychologists do - and ended up exploring existential vulnerability 🤷‍♀️

The plan for this newsletter was to write about what psychologists do, because it's not always clear or commonly known - even to the profession itself.

Google “what do psychologists do?” and you find the following….

Psychologists are educated in the science of how people feel, behave and react. Yes.

They provide help with issues such as anxiety, depression, stress and eating disorders. Hmmmm, yes, but also no. Not all of us.

Psychologists treat ongoing conditions like depression, anxiety or anger and also help those experiencing short-term issues such as bereavement or workplace bullying. True, but I’m a workplace psychologist and I don’t provide any treatment.

Most commonly, psychologists treat patients with therapy; however, they are also trained to work with primary care practitioners in cases where their patients have psychological conditions that require a combination of therapy and medication. Again, some. Maybe most?

But this isn't what I do. I’ve never been a therapist (but I have been to therapy). Not have I been or counsellor (although I have counselled).

Many psychologists are researchers and teachers. Some are globally recognised writers, speakers and podcasters - although we can probably narrow this down to Adam Grant.

Some of us sit somewhere in a difficult-to-define space of educating people to understand their behaviour and live life well. To do this I coach, consult, run workshops, design and assist my team to deliver a regional community leadership program, spend time in stakeholder engagement, produce and host a podcast (but not as often as I’d like), talk on the radio and teach at a university. It’s a mish-mash of gigs, some paid, some not, all that pique my interest, keep me challenged, stretch my abilities and, I hope, help others to fulfil their potential. That is the delicate thread that ties it together. But how to explain that to others? How do I use that as the springboard to what might be next?

The prompt for this essay was an assignment posed to my son and his Year 9 classmates. They were given the task of investigating wellbeing topics related to teens. “What strategies can teenagers implement to manage anxiety?” “What societal pressures do teenagers face to be in an intimate relationship?” “What causes stress in teenagers?”

Word got out that ‘M’s mum is a psychologist’ so the questions came my way. I was keen to help but floundered. ‘Fraud! You’re not a clinical psychologist. This is outside your realm of expertise. You can’t go giving advice on these topics’ The old imposter-speak. I’m sure you know it.

I muddled through. Did my best. The usual equivocation - ‘I’m not an expert in these topics,’ she says.

This cued the existential inquiry. What do I do? If I’m a psychologist but I can’t answer the questions that people expect me to answer (well, maybe I can but I don’t feel ‘expert’ enough to do so) then how do I explain what I do?

I’ve been trying to figure that out.

By 50 you reach a point, professionally, of having a body of experience and knowledge behind you. I have been a registered psychologist for 23 years. I have worked across sectors, organisations, cities, countries.

I present to others, I believe, with a level of credibility, knowledge, experience and expertise.

Yet who am I really? What do I know? What do I do? Does what I do, day-to-day, make me a psychologist? It doesn’t require me to be a psychologist. Am I doing work I shouldn’t be doing? Am I wasting my training and expertise? Should I be doing something else?

Uncertainty is the conscious awareness, or subjective experience of ignorance. It’s what’s called a higher-order metacognition (thinking about your thinking) representing a particular kind of knowledge—an acknowledgment of what one does not know, but also that one does not know. Smithson (1989)

Don’t get too tangled up in that!

I am an experienced psychologist with over 20 years of practice and knowledge. At the same time I cannot, with any certainty, know what I will be doing next month, let alone next year - or whether any of it will require my training and professional status.

My default, when untethered, is to read. I came across this article: Facing the uncertainties of being a person: On the role of existential vulnerability in personal identity How’s that for a title?

My favourite passage is this…

Existential anxiety is the experience of dwelling in groundlessness, or ‘the dizziness of freedom’ that occurs when we recognize the power to choose and the demands and uncertainties it puts on us. We make our most important choices and commitments in situations where circumstances are never unambiguous and never immune to change. However, we feel tempted to believe that we stand on solid ground.

It’s that temptation to believe that we stand on solid ground that brings us unstuck. A desire to know, to be sure, to be clear before we take action or make important decisions, yet we are so often in situations in which clarity is impossible.

We make our most important choices and commitments in situations where circumstances are never unambiguous and never immune to change.

As I write this it occurs to me that I am grappling with exactly the dissonance that I so often work through with coaching clients. I want clarity about who I am, what I do, and what I’ll do next but my circumstances are ambiguous, the surrounding context in flux.

I’m not a psychologist who will sit with individuals in a therapy room, working through issues of anxiety, depression, anger and grief. This week I will teach contemporary leadership concepts to a university MBA cohort and talk to a workplace about the role of purpose in resilience. Next week I’ll immerse myself in ethical, regenerative and social impact business.

The fields that draw me in are often new and exploratory, diverse and hazy. There is no well-trodden path. No clarity. Thinking back over my career, it has always been thus. You’d think I would be used to it by now.

My word for this year was unfurl. It occurs to me that I have been fighting against the very mantra that I knew at some level - conscious, subconscious, unconscious - was necessary for me in 2023. I’ve clamoured for certainty instead of sitting with unpredictability and allowing life’s paths to disentangle themselves as I walk.

Maybe you’re also grappling with a need for direction in situations that defy that possibility? How are you coping with that? What strategies are you employing? Are you also challenging yourself to work through the discomfort of dwelling in groundlessness?

Me?

Well now that I know what I do not know, and I understand the myth of solid ground, I’m going to lean into that uncertainty. I’ll embrace the dizziness of freedom. I might get a little motion sick but freedom takes courage and courage is uncomfortable. As tricky as that is, I reckon I’m up for the challenge.

Onwards and upwards,

The Fun Stuff:

I’m listening to: 1989 (Taylor’s Version). Isn’t everyone?

I’m watching: Our Flag Means Death. Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby as pirates. A comedy romance. Such a joy.

I’m learning: French! Weekly French conversation classes + Duolingo. Trying to recall my seven years of schoolgirl French. Challenging in all the right ways.

I’m reading: Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down. Winner of the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Somehow the author is only 33 yet she writes about teen life in Melbourne in the 80s and 90s like she was there. I recognise it because I was there 😉