What does a community psychologist do? (with Shane Puxley)

[00:00:00] Hey mental workers, you're listening to the Mental Work Podcast, your companion to early career psychology. I'm your host, Dr. Bronwyn Milkins, and today we are talking about community psychology, where the focus shifts from the individual to the collective. We'll chat about what it is, what community psychs do, the challenges facing community psychology as a discipline, and opportunities to work in community psychology.

[00:00:29] Bronwyn: Here to help us out is our guest Shane Poxley. Hi Shane.

[00:00:33] Shane: Thanks for having me, Bronwyn.

[00:00:35] Bronwyn: It's such a pleasure to have you on. Shane, could you please tell listeners who you are and what your non psychology passion is?

[00:00:42] Shane: Thanks. I need to note that I'm a long time listener, first time caller. Um, yeah, I've had it recommended to me from peers, so I've dabbled in and out, but it's been a great opportunity to get to know all the different areas you cover. So I'm a Community Psychology Registrar. I'm two thirds of my way through that process, and I took a healthy five year gap between starting that after finishing my degree.

[00:01:09] I think there was, um, something happened at a market in Wuhan that might have got in the way for a while.

[00:01:14] Bronwyn: Oh, Okay. Yes. Yep, that thing.

[00:01:16] Shane: Look, my non psych passion, the serious and earnest answer, is family. You know, my beautiful partner, Belle, my two children, Archie and Matilda. And I can't not mention my best mate, Audrey, my pug. I think that that might be a little bit lopsided, that relationship at the moment. I think we were undisputably best friends until Matilda and I spent quite a lot of time at the beach this summer, and I think some jealousy crept in, um, between the pug and I.

[00:01:44] Bronwyn: old is Audrey?

[00:01:47] Shane: She is four and a half.

[00:01:50] Bronwyn: Oh, what a cutie. And what color is she?

[00:01:52] Shane: She's fawn. Um, and she has these little markings around her eyes that look like, um, upside down swans.

[00:01:58] Bronwyn: What's her personality like?

[00:02:00] Shane: Oh, quirky. Um, she's full of personality.

[00:02:04] Bronwyn: I wish I could interview Audrey, really.

[00:02:06] Shane: Well, I'd invite her in here if she wouldn't have tried to take over the show. Um, and look, pugs don't have a lot going for them, um, health wise, so the fact they have such an endearing personality means that we look out for them and, um, support them maybe from a community lens.

[00:02:21] Bronwyn: That's fortunate for them.

[00:02:23] Shane: Yes. Um, so my, that's my serious and earnest answer, but then I think it's also, I need to talk about how great, uh, 2000s indie music is. And-

[00:02:33] Bronwyn: What's your, what's your favorite?

[00:02:35] Shane: Oh, look Arctic Monkeys were the, the first cab off the rank, but The Strokes are pretty, pretty up there.

[00:02:44] Bronwyn: Yep. Classic. Good stuff.

[00:02:45] Shane: That's it. And, and if any of the listeners are interested, Lizzie Goodman's book Meet Me in the Bathroom from a couple years ago is just this stunning oral history of the New York scene. It's um, the, in terms of non cite passion, it's probably the thing I've talked about most often to my friends and family, and they're probably over it now.

[00:03:02] Bronwyn: Have you seen The Strokes?

[00:03:05] Shane: You know what? I actually have not seen The Strokes. I've watched some of the deep cuts on YouTube, but I've not been in Julian's presence in person.

[00:03:13] Bronwyn: Maybe something to aspire to?

[00:03:16] No, I haven't. But I, um, when I do see bands who I love, so I love, for example, Sufjan Stevens, and I've seen him a few times and it's just been in the presence of like a God. Um, that's the best way I can describe it. It's just really just like, wow, they're so close to me.

[00:03:32] Shane: I saw The National when they were here.

[00:03:34] Bronwyn: I saw The National too!

[00:03:35] Shane: Yeah, wonderful. And I went on my own and stood at the back by myself and it was a really moving experience to just really be present and to to think about the lyrics in a different way than you do when you've just heard the same track a million times.

[00:03:49] Bronwyn: It's so funny. I also saw the national on my own because nobody wanted to see them with me. I feel like National fans. It's like, I'm the only National fan amongst all my friends and like my partner. And they're just like, I don't understand this depressing music. And I'm like, it's beautiful.

[00:04:03] Shane: I ran a group until 8. 30 at night and they were coming on stage at 8. 45 and I bought a ticket last minute off a friend that was offering, another psychologist, so there's a few of us out there that like Matt Burning's cerebral thoughts. And um, yeah, raced across town and walked into the back as the first chords of the first song we're playing and took it all in. It was magical.

[00:04:26] Bronwyn: Yeah, super cool. Great stuff. Okay. We can talk about like, non psychology passions all day, but let's go back to community psychology.

[00:04:33] I said off mic to you that I literally just looked up the statistics for community psychs. I thought, I know that community psych is a small discipline and I thought I would actually look it up. So according to AHPRA's latest report, which was of December, 2023, there are only 51 endorsed community psychologists in Australia and 21 community psychology supervisors, which is, which is so small.

[00:05:00] Um, so could you please provide us with an overview of what community psychology is? Because listeners may not have even heard of it, um, and how it differs from other branches of psychology.

[00:05:10] Shane: Yeah, well, first and foremost, we are psychologists, you know. I'm not quite endorsed as a community psychologist, so hopefully we can have that at 52 by the end of the year. but first and foremost, we're psychologists. The first five years of our training map almost entirely onto any other stream of psychology. We do a clinic placement, we understand distress in the same way that any other Australian psychologist might.

[00:05:36] Community psychology is the applied psychology of working with communities, and also sections of communities. So, it's working with individuals in the context of community when we do individual work.

[00:05:48] It looks at distress through an ecological lens, so not just, you know, What's going on intrapersonally, but also what's happening in that person's network. You know, what's their school experience like? What's their wider community look like? What's the the predominant socio cultural factors happening at that time in that place?

[00:06:06] It's prevention focused and strengths based. And so, Comm Psychs is overtly political. We don't hide from the challenges of power structures in our, in our culture. And it critically considers empowerment, not just from a notion of us as, um, people that have power in our community. Also, is it up to us to give people power, to empower, or is it just, do we need to be better listeners?

[00:06:33] So, it's something that came out of the cultural change in the 1960s, and we're here talking about 2000s Indie music, which couldn't, couldn't, couldn't exist if it wasn't for the Beatles, and the Stones, and the Kinks, and these wonderful 60s acts. Comm Psychs like that too, this, this moment of change, the civil rights, the second wave of feminism. Comm Psychs decided that well, maybe the predominant Western individualistic way of doing things could be reviewed.

[00:07:00] Building on the 60s, we had the 70s in Central America and the liberation movement. Liberation theology, liberation psychology. And there was a discussion from giants like Martine Barreau who talked about, is it right for psychology to stay value neutral in times of intense conflict and injustice?

[00:07:20] Bronwyn: Wow, such a good question for our current times as well.

[00:07:23] Shane: Absolutely, absolutely. It's probably worth reflecting, are the predominant norms that we work within, are they universal? Or contextual to different communities and knowledge systems?

[00:07:35] Bronwyn: Mm. There's so much that community psychology can give us, and you know what, it's like, I really resonate with everything you're saying. I'm like, this is great stuff, like, I love this approach, and I guess like, I'm wondering how you came to this approach?

[00:07:53] Shane: I was corrupted by social workers.

[00:07:55] Bronwyn: Well, you know what, because what I was going to say is like, this sounds very social work adjacent.

[00:07:59] Shane: Yeah, and so I was already a fair way down the path. I wanted to be a neuropsych. I thought neuropsychology sounded pretty cool. You know, it sounded pretty smart to be a neuropsych, coming from a, you know, a small town and I didn't really understand what university was like. So I made these decisions as a 16 year old, 17 year old, of what I wanted to do and I went through the first four years of an excellent course guided towards being a neuropsychologist and my honours year was really hard, and I'm sure many of your listeners are either at that stage now or coming out of that stage but it's a really tough year.

[00:08:33] Bronwyn: It is. I honestly, it was such a tough year. I honestly, it's really, really, really, really tough. Yeah. So completely empathize with that.

[00:08:40] Shane: Yeah, so I had this experience towards the end of that year where I was wondering, well, what do I do next? I knew that it was time to take a short break and one of my final exams, I was sitting there procrastinating, applying for jobs, and I took a job as a community mental health practitioner, working evenings with homeless youth. And I stayed there for a few years, and I really just, it really fit my value system, speaking with social workers. But first and foremost, I wanted to be a psychologist. I wanted to finish what I started, and I love being a psychologist, and that's pretty much all I've ever wanted to do.

[00:09:18] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:09:19] Shane: And, you know, one of your early episodes, you spoke about your experience where you, uh, what works for you is focusing on smaller details and sometimes the big pictures harder to, to take in. I think I have the opposite trait.

[00:09:35] Bronwyn: Oh, interesting.

[00:09:36] Shane: I quite like looking at the whole and, considering all the factors that... the causes of the causes. And in those years between my honours years and my master, the five years I took off between honours and masters, I went and sat at the back of lecture theatres every year at the, um, APS Careers Expo and just took in what courses are on offer, what fits my interest, what fits my passion, and I just sat up straight in my chair whenever Community Psychology was presented. It just felt like a really good fit for my interests and my values.

[00:10:10] Bronwyn: Because I, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing is that I think one of the main distinctions between community psych and say other areas of psych like clinical psych is, so clinical psych, the distress lies within, so the pathology lies within the individual, but for community psych, it's like the distress is, and I'm doing like a circle action, but it's, it's within the systems and it's, it's social, it's, it's communal, it's familial, it's not within the individual, it's influenced by these, these environmental, social factors.

[00:10:40] Shane: Yeah, well, and it's also a bit of both. So, as I said, first and foremost, we're general psychologists who have then specialized in an area. So, absolutely, there's times when the distress lies within the individual. It might be biochemical...

[00:10:55] Bronwyn: Yeah, totally.

[00:10:56] Shane: But I suspect the vast, well, I don't want to speak in terms of majorities or absolute concepts, but my view and the view of this field is that there's also relational factors, environmental factors, cultural factors, financial factors, you know, what's the impact of neoliberalism and turning the mental health, um, treatment sector into a marketplace? Like, what, what impact is that having on people to emphasize their, Lack of capacity to get funding. You know, these are the bigger questions in terms of what do we do as a, as a culture.

[00:11:32] And I think about better access changes. I was frustrated like anyone when that 20 sessions went down to 10. I was also frustrated because that funding could have feasibly been rerouted into prevention efforts. The housing crisis. The, these big moral questions of our age, well, they are also linked to distress. And if there was a mature public conversation about how we conceptualize distress and how that might have shifted since the Howard era, I think that's also a worthwhile discussion. You know, the Howard era is when Medicare first came in for our discipline. Well, do we still look at it the same or have we maybe learned from some of Michael Marmot's, Sir Michael Marmot's research around social determinants of health and could we start embedding some of those in a really... and I notice here, I've gone down a political rabbit hole, and I think that's the remit of, that's the remit of community psychologists, to think about the political.

[00:12:32] Bronwyn: I was interested to know, like, did you find doing your Masters of Community Psych that you were similarly, and I don't mean this, I don't mean the word lefty in a, um, in a pejorative sense, but were you amongst similarly minded folks?

[00:12:47] Shane: Oh, I'm an unwashed, inner city, latte sipping lefty.

[00:12:50] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:12:51] Shane: And, and I probably was around people with, that was, had, um, similar mindsets. I had this experience, um... a personal experience at the first community psychology conference I attended, where five or six years earlier, I'd been a furniture removalist carrying these heavy desks made out of some sort of old beautiful tree up into these old Melbourne University beautiful rooms like, you know, old money, old power. And we had a conference there and I was sitting in the same room where I probably hoiked that desk up a bunch of stairs to get it there and just hearing everyone's presentations and I thought these are my people. That was a really wonderful experience. And it still is, it still is.

[00:13:41] Bronwyn: So you really have that sense of belonging and community amongst community psychologists.

[00:13:45] Shane: Absolutely, it'd be hypocritical if we didn't, wouldn't

[00:13:47] Bronwyn: Yeah, it kind of would. It would be, um, like, it'd just be like the insidious underbelly of community psychology. We all hate each other. So, yeah.

[00:13:58] Shane: Oh, that's for an off the record conversation. No, there's nothing there, joking,

[00:14:03] Bronwyn: Yeah. But that's really awesome that it resonated well with you. And I've done a few, maybe one or two episodes, one where I've spoken with Sarah about integrating your kind of advocacy identity as a psychologist. And the reason why I've had to do that episode is because I think a lot of psychologists are quite nervous about, um, being political, being, um, having advocacy, having things that they're passionate about politically and socially. And I just wonder how you deal with this. Like, do you feel comfortable integrating the two together? Mm.

[00:14:34] Shane: It's a really good question, and I think it depends on the setting. So, I think if I was to be overtly pretty, um, if I was to be overtly political in a psychotherapy space, I think that's probably pushing my luck in terms of self disclosure. It's, it's, it's asking the person in front of me to, to see me with a lens that I think might distract from, from the work. So, I am quite conservative still when it comes to self disclosure.

[00:15:04] I think that It's interesting when you look at how different community psychologists curate their social media presence. Uh, one of the first images I saw when I was interested in community psychology was a community psychologist sitting in a kayak protesting climate change, and wearing activism quite loud and proud as part of their identity as a psychologist. And I look at the Extinction Rebellion psychologist movement in the UK, and so there's some incredibly forthright and brave people that are actively minded in this field.

[00:15:41] Coming back to your question, I, I just try to pick the right setting for those discussions. It's It's about what the client needs from me, not necessarily, but that's my, my view. I think that those first five years of training in a really traditional, um, psychological science setting has still a big part of my practice.

[00:16:04] Bronwyn: No, totally. That makes sense. So it sounds like you believe that you need to have a rationale for disclosure and keeping that space in therapy focused on the client and their needs.

[00:16:15] Shane: Yeah, and I suppose that it would depend on the type of work you find yourself drawn to. So maybe that discussion around equity and access is more about the type of work you do holistically rather than a moment to moment flag waving activism experience.

[00:16:36] Bronwyn: Yeah. Okay. So we've talked about How you bring yourself to sessions. And we've chatted a little bit about what drew you to community psychology as a practice. Can you tell us a little bit about the placements that you did while studying your master in community psychology? I'm interested in what might differ between community psych placements and other discipline placements.

[00:17:01] Shane: And look, this might be a little bit of a disappointing answer because I'm not sure it did a whole lot. I think it was the emphasis of what happened in the placement rather than the placement itself.

[00:17:10] So, I did three placements, one of them at the university clinic running groups, individual psychotherapy like any clinical psychologist would have done as well.

[00:17:23] I was part of a larger cohort at the Western Bulldogs Football Club in their Sons of the West Men's Health Program. So we had this opportunity to do some preventative work for people that were attending to be part of a wider community to learn about their health from a holistic lens. That one also included me really doing a deep dive on gender equity principles and working closely with a community psychologist supervisor. And so it wasn't that the placement itself differed from what another psychologist might do. The type of supervision I was receiving took me to a place of considering what we were doing from a community psychology lens.

[00:18:04] And the other one I did was through a forensic disability service that I was working at at the time and I think that looking at community psychology principles and its interaction with the forensic sector is a really interesting theoretical exercise and can be sometimes a tough practice point to to notice the, the predominant funding models. The type of language and the type of support needs for people that... maybe we need larger systemic change in that space. But it feels a little bit outside our scope.

[00:18:39] Bronwyn: How do you cope with seeing injustices in your work? So what you just described just then, you can see something that might need systemic change. How do you cope emotionally with doing work knowing that there needs to be change in other areas?

[00:18:56] Shane: Well, particularly at the start of my career with great difficulty. I'm pretty sensitive. I suspect a lot of us are. Um, we talked earlier about how perhaps looking at the, the moment to moment details is one of your great strengths, and I'd like to think that it's one of my strengths to think about the causes of the causes, but sometimes that takes you to a place of despair and hopelessness.

[00:19:22] So, I think that some of the basics around bringing it back to your sphere of control and influence, and then noticing there's always things that you're going to be concerned about. And try to make small changes, whether it's a donation to a not for profit, or going to a protest on the weekend, or having that difficult conversation with your family and friends.

[00:19:42] Your sphere of influence is limited, and I suppose that's one of the great challenges of, you know, of this work is best practice might be to pursue a project that has a larger remit and more scope of influence. And there's not always a funding appetite for that or a readiness for that.

[00:20:02] So on a personal level with, with great difficulty and with really good supervision from, um, from Monica that I'm working with at the moment in my community psychology, uh, registrar program, I think that those sessions every fortnight are quite sustaining when I can bring the messiness and the feelings.

[00:20:21] Bronwyn: It sounds like supervision does provide a different focus, so I think one thing that I'm potentially picking up is that, for example, I work with a lot of folks from the queer community, and something that might get a sentence in supervision is like, Oh, yes, of course, considering the minority stress model, but then we don't discuss and, you know, really chat about that and how minority stress might be influencing them. It goes back to, I guess, the, the, the sources of distress inside of them. And I, it sounds like in community psych supervision, you're almost given permission to explore those areas.

[00:21:00] Shane: Yeah, absolutely. And in our practice in general, I think, and I guess it's not getting stuck in those things we can't control. It's sort of noticing, um, okay, well, what's going on in the news is having an impact, and then bringing it back to what we can change, and then perhaps community psychology sets that, that sphere of influence wider than someone who's more intra personally focused might.

[00:21:24] Bronwyn: Okay. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And I'm so glad that you have a supportive supervisor who you can chat about this stuff to, um, having that emotional support is incredibly important.

[00:21:34] I just want to take us to a different question, which is, what do most people get wrong about community psychology?

[00:21:40] So, what's, what's a misconception that people might have about it?

[00:21:43] Shane: What's that? They might say, what, what is community psychology?

[00:21:48] I mean, one of the main misconceptions people have is that they don't know that it exists. I suppose the query that it depends on if it's happening in a professional setting or at a bar is, what's the point? We're a discipline or as a wider psychology discipline that's changed significantly since Medicare has become part of our practice. And I, I don't know the stats like you spoke about earlier in terms of the 51 current community psychologists. I wonder what that would have looked like 20 years ago. I, I wonder, What the proportion? Yeah, what, what? What would the proportion of psychologists that pursue a clinical training model have looked like if Medicare wasn't a two tiered system?

[00:22:30] So there's these sort of factors that are sculpting our discipline. They're sort of external factors in some ways, and so I guess that's where the conversation fairly quickly goes.

[00:22:42] Bronwyn: So, what is that? What's the point?

[00:22:45] Shane: What's the point? And my point is that, well, to have a counterbalance of community psychology, having a critical lens on psychology as a whole and being curious and having historical context about some of the ills that psychology's either accidentally walked into or probably carelessly walked into around comparing everyone to a certain norm or some of the more sinister things that occurred at Guantanamo Bay, you know, so community psychology is hopefully a counterbalance for these things, a space to discuss the discipline from a, from a longer lens rather than being in the weeds.

[00:23:23] Bronwyn: Absolutely, and I think that's a great point to having the discipline. But let's talk about the elephant in the room then, which is that the last master's course for community psychology in Australia actually closed last year in 2023. In your opinion, will community psychology just die out in Australia, or is there still a role for community psychologists?

[00:23:45] Shane: It won't die. I'm really confident in that. It'll evolve. There's no fewer than six current working groups, working towards what does this look like in the future. I've personally found it tough to get too involved. Unfortunately, the course closed the week my son Archie was born, and his early weeks were more complicated than we might have hoped. Yeah, so I had this experience of, getting these emails and seeing the distress and trying to offer the support I could, but these early months of trying to sort of gather our thoughts, where do we want to take this? I haven't been as active as I'd like to be on going.

[00:24:23] I think that we've got some models abroad where community psychology, isn't necessarily an endorsed area of practice. We look at the SCRA model in the US or the the British Psychological Society model where psychologists aren't necessarily trained as community psychologists. They might have an endorsement in another area or be a general psychologist. But then they're part of the college in their professional, um, part of their professional college. So they can practice in a community psychology way, rather than necessarily training the whole way through.

[00:24:58] So, we spoke earlier about the community of community psychologists, and we've got plenty of models in our field on how to address large scale problems like this, and I suspect we'll be using the tools that we've all built to do that.

[00:25:13] It was interesting, after the 2018 APS conference, I was having a coffee with a community psychologist who was there. And she was stunned just how many psychologists from other areas of practice were presenting topics that historically would have lived within community psychology. They sort of societal wide things, the Me Too movement, these sort of zeitgeist topics that were occurring at that conference and that's, what, six years ago now? And so, how good's that? Maybe, maybe community psychology thrives as a collaborative piece with other interesting- interested parties. I think it's remarkable how much more socially aware psychology has become in the past 10 years, and that probably reflects wider society. We've got footballers speaking out on social issues, so why shouldn't psychologists?

[00:26:02] And I think that it's important that the, the, research, the practice, the oral traditions of community psychology supplement psychology as a whole as we move forward, and so it might not necessarily be that it's a hoarding knowledge in one place... I think for your listeners that are interested in community psychology, they might be surprised how many of the journal articles are open source, because it's not a, it's not a part of the practice. Yeah, well, it's not a part of the practice that would hoard knowledge and put it over here. It's about equity. It's about access.

[00:26:36] So I think when it comes to changes like this, it's important that we adapt and acknowledge that psychology as a discipline is so much more outward facing than it was when probably both of us started our training, and that's a pretty cool thing.

[00:26:50] Bronwyn: I think it is pretty cool. It's like, okay, so for what I'm hearing from you is that you don't believe that it will die out, like it will live on. It's lived on for decades and it will continue to live on through passing down knowledge and that psychologists are becoming more aware of social factors.

[00:27:06] Shane: More emboldened?

[00:27:07] Bronwyn: Emboldened. That's a good word. Yes. Okay. I agree. Yeah. Um, but as you're talking as well, I still feel like, I don't know if you share this feeling. I feel sad that the master's program has closed. I'm like, for me, that represents a massive, narrowing of, of what we, what we value. And I think that's really sad. And I just wondered if that, if you shared that perspective or maybe have a different framing of it.

[00:27:31] Shane: I think that I've been through a grief process, like I'm sure my peers have in terms of, well, that was a really simple, direct, linear way to become a community psychologist. And perhaps there's a hiatus before that option returns, or perhaps it will look different. I'm not sure how it will live on and whether that's through, you know, like if you think about community psychology as a, as an activist, as a politically driven space, it's maybe living within institutions isn't a super comfortable home.

[00:28:07] So, you know, I'm really intrigued. Yeah, I'm just intrigued. I'm more interested on where it goes next rather than, uh, sad. I think that I was, I was definitely bummed out initially, but I think, well, there's a bunch of people that are passionate about this topic that are well versed in how to address topics on a large scale, and I'm really interested to see what happens next.

[00:28:34] Bronwyn: Yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting reframe. And as you were saying that, I was thinking, that's a really good point. Like for example, if people want to get trained in narrative therapy, it doesn't sit within an institution necessarily, it sits within an organization where you can go get narrative therapy training, same for family therapy, same for psychoanalytic psychotherapy. You can still get into these traditions and practice from those lens, but it doesn't necessarily fit within a university institution.

[00:29:01] Shane: Yeah, I would agree. And I've, as I said, I've been less involved in the discussions to date, and I'm really interested to see where it heads next. It's one of those family seasons where I've had to sort of look after my own first.

[00:29:14] Bronwyn: No, of course. Very understandable. I'm also interested to see where it goes in the future. Yeah. I just think it's so important. Community psychology is so important. It's such a great lens. Um, it's so important for us. Like you said, I feel like your point about offering, uh, like I'm going to paraphrase your words. I think it was like offering like a, a counterpoint or like balancing of other psychology of use. Like that's incredibly important.

[00:29:38] Shane: Yeah, you know, we don't want groupthink. But it's not coming from a place of agitation. I think sometimes it's misinterpreted. Some community psychologists might actually call themselves critical psychologists. Their viewpoint is first and foremost, let's drill down on the discipline and what's working and what's not. Are we skewing towards offering people that can afford it more access to our services than thinking about various knowledge systems and, you know, how can we flatten that power structure. And I think that as a counterbalance we can offer that, but it's a collaborative counterbalance. It's, I think we can be invited into the tent as well.

[00:30:20] Bronwyn: Absolutely. Shane, how does community psychology relate to some of society's biggest challenges? So, for example, the ongoing impacts of colonialization, climate change, cost of living crisis, housing, how does it relate to those?

[00:30:35] Shane: Great question, and first of all, I'd redirect the listener to look up Community Toolbox. Just Google Community Toolbox, and it's through the University of Kansas, and that's a really great "How to" tool when we think about these big issues that feel so outside of our scope and our control, well, there's been a lot of work done in terms of where to start and taking that first steps off on the hardest.

[00:31:01] So, Comm Psych has uniquely placed with these big questions, gauging the readiness for change is key. And we know that that's important in individual work. We know the stages of change model, um, Prosker and DiClemente's stages of change model, and thinking about motivational interviewing, and whenever we set our goals too far ahead of where someone's at, we create resistance rather than change, and that's the same on a group levels, and so the most influential paper across my practice is Edwards and colleagues from 2000 who look at group readiness. They adopt that individual stages of change model to a group readiness model. And if you think about climate change, the urgency of this issue is mismatched with the community's willingness or the perhaps the corporate or governmental willingness to put those change steps in place.

[00:31:58] So how do we meet people where they're at? How do we help them to take that next step? And if you look at Community Psychology's mapping through that Edwards paper, and it's adopted into some great models in that Community Toolbox website, where you can go back and look at the implementation science of "Where's this problem at"? Is there no awareness? Is there some awareness? Have we started some efforts? Are they working or not? That, I think that's a really interesting place to start and it's been very useful for my practice.

[00:32:31] Bronwyn: No, that's wonderful. I love how you're speaking to the how, how of these societal challenges and bringing that back to psychological models, but applying it to the group. I think that's really awesome because all psychologists will know about the stages of change model and it's yet been like, okay, why is there this mismatch between the urgency, for example, of climate change and then the apparent lack of action, um, or inaction from government to assist it. Um, and yeah, like making sense of that psychologically, it's just, it's, it's really, um, what's the word I'm looking for? I find it quite, reassuring. I think that's it. Yeah. Like reassure. I like understanding things. And so I like being able to have a model and a framework for this like huge discrepancy because I'm like why, why would you not do something? It's so urgent.

[00:33:19] Shane: Well, that's right. And if we put that pressure on someone who didn't seem like they were ready to take that pressure on, then they're going to push us away. And If we can, if we can, and it's an interesting sort of ethical discussion within the field, because if you look at the Extinction Rebellion psychologist movement in the UK, they're saying, hey, the urgency, we, we can't necessarily work from an incremental change model. The urgency is here, it's now, it's a climate emergency, and let's protest, and they're saying, let that be known through civic disobedience.

[00:33:52] And so that's a really interesting sort of pushing our role as activists to the nth degree. And I love that there's people doing that. I wonder about the model of change and just meeting people where they're at, again, corporations and governments where they're at, and inviting us into the tent and pushing it that one step forwards and creating change in incremental ways like we might in our individual practice.

[00:34:15] Bronwyn: Do you happen to know if community psychologists, work as consultants to government or work in social spheres or social policy?

[00:34:22] Shane: Absolutely. Yeah, that's, that's often the bread and butter. Often at local government level, it seems. I think it's, you know, when you think about government policy and our influence, I had this experience in um, early July 2020, I'm in the inner west of Melbourne and I share a postcode with six large public housing blocks, and they were locked down a week or two before the rest of the city was and there was government messaging around this is a vertical cruise ship it's unsafe and it was very paternalistic about this sort of saviour complex of like we're going to shut people down and when you think about the socio economic status of... of those residences and the cross cultural needs of those residences, perhaps the urgency of COVID and the fear led to such a paternalistic top down approach, but within a couple of days, we had Margaret Symons, the journalist from The Guardian, speaking with women on the inside who had a leadership role in those communities. They were looked at as the leaders of that community, and once their voices were elevated, it was easier to understand how he could support people and I think that while that wasn't done from a community psychology lens, it's a great example of community psychologists can help identify who the existing leaders are, rather than coming in from an expert model and saying, do this, this, and this. We'll sit there, we'll be, um, what's the saying about two eyes, two ears, and one mouth, and use them to that ratio? That, that, that's, that's what a community psychologist would try to do, is to just sit tight and identify or support, um, the notice the existing leaders in the space.

[00:36:09] And if we had an ear of government to say, well, maybe, maybe talk to the people on the inside and, and get their perspective. A lot of things happened in those months and um, years. I'm sure if there was a more methodical, slower approach, they'd be done differently, but again, that urgency piece sometimes finds it hard to meet people where they're at.

[00:36:31] Bronwyn: So if our knowledge is needed, then community psychologists can offer that knowledge, which comes from the research base, but they don't necessarily need to stand up and be like, Hello, I'm an expert, expert here, expert over here. Let me tell you what's up.

[00:36:44] Shane: Well, that's the thing. That model can, again, not be the right fit. Particularly, I'm someone who's white, uh, straight, um, have layers of privilege in my life, and if I was to go into a community and take on the expert model, it might not, it's likely not the right fit. It's about being present and noticing which voices can be elevated, and I think of Christopher Son and Garth Stevens writing on decolonizing psychology. And they talk about it from a place of, well, reclaiming the archives, centering marginalized voices, and working in an intersectional way. And that centering of marginalized voices, I think that just because we have a master's degree and a way that we can speak, it doesn't mean that we're the most, uh, important voice that needs to be heard. It's actually taking a backseat most of the time and, and supporting people that have the existing knowledge, and that's that strength based, um, approach that we try to practice from within.

[00:37:50] Bronwyn: Yeah. So not assuming that other people are deficient and that you have the right answers to come in, assuming that they have strengths, which have helped them survive and continue to survive.

[00:38:01] Shane: Yeah and if you think about the literature around disaster recovery, that plays out constantly. The more people, you know, swan in and have a saviour mentality, the more they get told, in creative ways, where to go.

[00:38:15] Bronwyn: Yeah. They do. Yeah. It repeats and repeats itself.

[00:38:20] That's really interesting. I'm so glad that we have that approach. Do you ever look at other psychologists and you're like, they could do a bit of community psychology lens here. Like, do you ever get judgy? I guess it's a personal question.

[00:38:33] Shane: No, not really. No, and, and look, I'm so lucky in my practice that I've always been in multidisciplinary teams, so there's always an ally in the room that's a social worker, or a youth worker, or... I think that any good multidisciplinary team has those discussions openly, and if there's a psychological safe space, then let's talk about the discrepancies in the "Why". And my time in the forensic sector, It's definitely worth thinking about how we could look at larger scale change in terms of maybe building less prisons and funding more treatment programs. There's a time and a place to have that discussion.

[00:39:14] Moment to moment, as I said, the field is shifting. And I think that there's so much more in common with psychologists, whether you're community endorsed, or health endorsed, or counselling endorsed. There's so much more in common than there is different.

[00:39:33] Bronwyn: That's what I'm hearing overall. It's, yeah, there's a lot of commonalities and overlap, which is, which is great. And then there's also this perspective that community psychology brings, which is so important as well.

[00:39:45] Shane: We always want to stand on the shoulder of giants, so how do we, how do we notice what's gone before, but then that connective piece is still the most useful.

[00:39:55] Bronwyn: So Shane, where are you now with your career and where do you see yourself headed in the future?

[00:40:01] Shane: Now my, my work week looks like two days in a psychotherapy setting. I really community oriented private practice. It's, um, really great that there's a real connection there. I have an opportunity every month to run a group reflective practice with the other psychologists there. And, again, realize in those moments you overt what you think is your own private experience and realize that most people have the same anxieties and interests and fears as the next person.

[00:40:34] So I have two days in that setting and three days in a childhood trauma setting where I do a lot of work groups. I reflective practice groups for youth workers primarily in out of home care, social workers in case management roles, and it's a real opportunity to drill in and out from that ecological lens. I sometimes have a referral from an individual young person that's had some trauma and neglect in their past and I can do some work with them, but then I'll also work with their family, their residential care placement if they're in out of home care, their school, their football club. You know, I think that those three days are really valuable. Um, a real opportunity to use community psychology principles.

[00:41:17] But if I'm honest with you, Bronwyn, I'm craving long, slow, boring, introverted project work. That's where I want my career to go at some point. I'd love 40 to 50 percent of my week doing treatment, and then an opportunity to really look at some large scale projects and get lost in the, get lost in the, in the details.

[00:41:36] Bronwyn: Sounds good to me. Um, is there any passion projects that you wish you could work on, on the introverted side of things?

[00:41:41] Shane: It changes, day to day, and I'm in that, that phase of having two small children in the house, and sometimes I dream up progr- projects at three in the morning when I'm feeding my boy, and uh, by the time I've gone back to sleep for a couple hours, I'm not as interested as I was at that time, so I'm just sort of noticing the only the personal season I'm in, and once everything is a little bit more, uh, routine based, I'll start to think about what those large scale projects are, but... yeah, I mean, whether that's in sport, whether that's in the out of home care sector, whether that's forensic disability, these are things that I've got experience and expertise in, but I don't know is the long and short answer.

[00:42:26] I just know that I'm learning more about myself from a introversion perspective, and I miss the pandemic aspects of, um, which I know is a bit, you know, of course, it was a terrible time for many people. In my little bubble with my dog and my partner, it was a beautiful time to sort of reset, and to read lots of books, and to listen to music, and make pancakes and, that was a time where I was really productive and switched on and doing, doing client facing work five days a week. I don't think that that's my long term, um, future.

[00:43:06] Bronwyn: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. The pandemic, terrible, did provide an opportunity to be able to reflect on how we are making our days and living our lives and what really matters to us and the kind of people that we would like to be day to day, um, which is, which is, uh, a wonderful opportunity.

[00:43:25] Shane: And from a community psychology perspective, the vast majority of the first six months of that Master's is doing self reflective exercises. You've got to work out who you are and what you care about and your own positionality in relation to others. That's a really crucial part of being a community psychologist, and I think that's probably something I'd recommend to the listeners in terms of whether you're going down a Comm Psych path or not, doing some values work and checking in about what's important to you, it makes it a whole lot easier.

[00:43:55] If I'd have kept blindly going down the neuropsych or clinical psych path, I wouldn't be as fulfilled in my career. I love that work and I have some great colleagues that I learn from every day. It wasn't quite the right fit for me.

[00:44:09] Bronwyn: no, I would echo that and I completely support that. I did. Um, it's an ongoing process, but I remember a few years ago and I've still got the documents, but I just started writing a word doc about I think I titled it, assumptions I have about clients. And I was just dumping like, all the things that are important to me. Because one of the things that's really important to me is non hierarchy, and I think that speaks to me as a neurodivergent person. I just don't recognize hierarchy, um, and so I wanted to bring that into my practice as well. So for me it's like, I know, I do some things in particular areas which may be of help to my clients. But I do not think that I am better than them.

[00:44:46] And that really helped clarify how I relate to my clients. And so, the long term clients that I have had, many of them have commented about how I speak to them as though I, I truly respect them and their knowledge and their strengths and that they have not received that from other professionals. And yeah, just the clarity of, of that self reflection is, is really wonderful. So yeah, I would highly recommend that to listeners as well. It's, it's really beneficial.

[00:45:11] Shane: Yeah, it's a great opportunity just to check in on what you care about. And I suspect a lot of people that struggle to offer that flat power structure are still working out who they are themselves and sometimes that insecurity can be something that we maybe overcompensate for and it's certainly something that I try to notice lightly and with curiosity.

[00:45:33] Bronwyn: Absolutely, yeah. Curiosity is always nicer than self judgement and berating yourself.

[00:45:39] So, Shane, lastly, is there any other advice you would give to early career psychologists who are interested in practising from a community psychology lens?

[00:45:48] Shane: Google the Community Toolbox. Have a look at the APS Community Psychology page. Google don't necessarily need to become a member, but have a look at the resources that are available there. Some of the abstracts from conferences and the, the links to different journal articles. If you're interested in... my professional crush is Professor Isaac Pilleltensky from the University of Miami. He was previously an Australian based, um, community psychologist. He's Argentinian.

[00:46:19] Bronwyn: Okay, I'm going to ask you how to spell it so I can put it in the show notes.

[00:46:22] Shane: So it's P R I L L E L T E N SKY.

[00:46:32] Bronwyn: Okay, Isaac. Oh God, he's got some, is those tattoos? Okay. No, there's just text. Okay.

[00:46:38] Shane: Um.

[00:46:38] Bronwyn: Former Dean, School of Education, Human Development. Former. Okay. Yep. Cool. I'll put, do you have a favorite? Oh, he has lots of books. Do you have, oh, he's got a community psychology book.

[00:46:47] Okay. I'll just pop the link to him.

[00:46:49] Shane: I wouldn't... yeah, so he's got a great blog, um, Professor Isaac has a great blog, and he talks about "mattering", and it looks at that theory of mattering from lots of different angles, and the New York Times did an article on it recently. So that's probably a really good access point for people that are interested in community psychology in the real world, and particularly in the workplace, people happy at work when they feel like they matter, when they feel valued, but more specifically than feeling valued, they want their leaders to know why they're valued, what specific thing do they bring to the team that others might not.

[00:47:26] If we can offer people that in the workplace, well, that's community psychology in action and Professor Isaac's blog is excellent and he's a pretty frequent podcast guest, so you'd be able to find him on your Spotify as well.

[00:47:39] Bronwyn: Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much for introducing us to him and his work. That'd be really interesting. And I'll put all those links in the show notes and if listeners want to learn more about you or get in touch, where can they find you?

[00:47:52] Shane: Google my name. I'm the only Shane Puxley in the world that I'm aware of. So, I've got LinkedIn and Twitter. I'm not particularly active, but I'll reply to any, any messages or connection. Um, there'll be information about how to work with me, from an individual therapy perspective and also just, um, yeah, just reach out.

[00:48:13] Bronwyn: Yeah, wonderful. Well, Shane, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure to speak with you and learn about community psychology and your reflections on this space and where it's headed in the future.

[00:48:26] And listeners, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you don't want to miss other episodes, do press follow on your podcast listening app, and that means that you'll get new episodes as they drop. If you loved this episode or any of our previous ones, do leave a five star rating and review on your podcast app or iTunes or Spotify. It genuinely does help get the podcast into more ears. That's a wrap. Thanks for listening to Mental Work. Have a good one and catch you next time. Bye.