Do you experience pain daily? Maybe you were born with a chronic illness? Perhaps you have never found a therapist who understood what living with chronic pain was like. This episode is for you!
In today’s episode Melanie lets you in on what it is like for someone who manages a chronic illness or chronic pain to seek and engage in therapy. Where we discuss why lived experience is so powerful, Melanie shares who falls into this category and what misconceptions society has about those with chronic illness/pain.
Our latest episode is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major podcast platforms. And guess what? The transcript is available below for your reading pleasure. Happy listening!
To find out more about Melanie Foulkes head to her website – https://melaniefoulkes.com/
SAM SELLERS:
[00:01] Hello and welcome to Inside the Therapy Room, I’m your host Sam Sellers. I’m a registered therapist, a wife and fur mama, and I am passionate about breaking down the barriers and stigma that is attached to therapy. I want to begin by honouring and acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land we live and work on. Today Mel is in Malanbara Yidinji Country and Sam is on Gundungurra Land. We pay our respects to the elders’ past, present, and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, and cultures of our first nations people. We must always remember that the land below our feet is, was and always will be Aboriginal Land.
[00:55] Today we are chatting to Melanie Foulkes, who is a counselor with lived experience of autism, ADHD, chronic illness, and chronic pain. Her private practice offers trauma-informed online counseling that supports individuals living with chronic illness and disability. Aiming to meet clients with compassion acceptance and accessibility, tune in to hear her share about working with those who have chronic pain or illness, talk about who fits into this category, the impact COVID has had on the community, and what it’s like inside her virtual therapy room. But don’t forget there’s one myth that she would love to smash. Make sure you stick around to hear about that. We hope you enjoy joining us inside the therapy room.
[01:44] Welcome Melanie, how you going?
MELANIE FOULKES:
I’m doing well, thank you. It’s so nice to talk to you.
SAM SELLERS:
[01:49] Amazing. It’s so good. I feel like we’ve been Instagram following one another for a little while. It’s nice to finally be slightly in person, virtually in person, I guess.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Yeah, that’s right.
SAM SELLERS:
Amazing. So, for everybody who is listening slash watching, or if you are reading, Melanie is a counsellor who works fully online. Whereabouts are you based?
MELANIE FOULKES:
So, I’m based just outside of Cairns in Gordon Vale.
SAM SELLERS:
[02:17] Amazing. Gosh, it would be warm up there, I would be expecting.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Yeah, it’s pretty much hot all year round.
SAM SELLERS:
You guys get winter?
MELANIE FOULKES:
We have had a nice little bit of a cool patch this year, which has been good.
SAM SELLERS:
[02:32] I’m not sure I could live up there. I lived in Brisbane for about six months and that was as hot as I could handle. I am a winter snuggle into a blanket type of person. So, I’m not sure how you do it.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Aircon.
SAM SELLERS:
Yeah, good point. Aircon. So, Melanie works with chronic illness and chronic pain, correct?
MELANIE FOULKES:
Yeah.
SAM SELLERS:
And you work completely online, which I’m assuming probably helps with some accessibility stuff.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[03:02] Absolutely. So, fully online or over the phone, depending on what clients need.
SAM SELLERS:
[03:10] Amazing. And you work from a lived experience point of view, correct?
MELANIE FOULKES:
[03:15] Yeah. So, I’ve got a Master of Counselling from Monash university. Prior to that, I did education and worked as a primary school teacher. And during my Masters, I became chronically ill. And when I went to find work, I couldn’t find work in the area I wanted. And so that that’s what led me to private practice.
SAM SELLERS:
Amazing. What a beautiful natural transition that sort of just like, came out of something that probably was painful, pun not intended, to be honest, but you know, a really painful and probably a really confusing time trying to find work and things like that to be able to then sort of transition into that space, to be supporting the very thing that you’ve been experiencing yourself.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Yeah.
SAM SELLERS:
[04:04] I think lived experience is personally one of a beautiful way to work. It’s part of the way that I work as well. I think it allows us to connect with the people in our rooms or virtual rooms on a different level. I think there is a soul connection that happens there when there’s lived experience and mutual experience. So, that’s great.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[04:26] I see clients relax, when they are explaining their experience to me and I go, “oh, I know what that’s like because X, Y, Z”, and they just relax. And suddenly you’ve built a much closer therapeutic alliance just through that shared experience.
SAM SELLERS:
Absolutely. I totally agree.
MELANIE FOULKES:
So, much power in that.
SAM SELLERS:
[04:49] I think I find that I see the same thing and I think it’s largely about not having to educate your therapist about all the facets that might come for you. It might be medical terminology or things like that. And not having to sit down and go, “okay, this is what I’m feeling, and this is what I’m experiencing, but now I need to explain it all to you as well”. So, it’s sort of, it’s one less thing that they need to worry about in that space that’s ideally supposed to be a safe ease about it. So, webinar, you have a webinar to teach mental health professionals, correct?
MELANIE FOULKES:
[05:25] Yes, that’s correct. So, I’ve been working on it for quite a while now. The path of making a webinar with chronic illness, about chronic illness is not smooth.
SAM SELLERS:
I would imagine it wouldn’t be.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[05:38] But the webinar is called chronic illness, five things your clients want you to know. So, it is from my lived experience, my observations, my reading online, my research, it is the five most common things I hear from clients, what they need from their mental health professionals around the chronic illness experience. So, really looking forward to launching that and supporting therapists to become chronic conditionally competent in that area.
SAM SELLERS:
[06:11] Perfect. I think it’s important. I think it’s happening a lot in different spaces. It’s very much happening in the neurodivergent space to be neuro-affirming. I think it’s just as important to be accessible, to be affirming of those who are in a chronic illness or pain space or a disability space or something like that. So, I think it’s so needed. I think it’s going to be great, hopefully. I think it lands in lots of people’s inboxes because I think, which probably leads to a great transition, of what chronic pain or illness even looks like for people, because I’m sensing that perhaps there might be a great need to distinguish between chronic and terminal, that those are not the same thing. I think for some people, the chronic has the same connotation. So, there’s probably a need to distinguish between that as well, but it’s probably a great lead in. So, tell us a little bit about who might be, who have chronic pain or illness or what does that look like?
MELANIE FOULKES:
[07:13] Yeah. So, I guess the broad spectrum is from, I guess, I hate to use the words mild, but I will use it because it captures what I’m trying to say. So, from a milder diagnosis or more mild range of symptoms, whether that’s chronic fatigue, whether that’s musculoskeletal pain, back pain, neck pain, endometriosis, or whether it’s the other end where you’ve got people who are housebound and they can’t get out of the house without mobility devices, or they’re completely bed bound. So, I have clients from both ends of the spectrum and I find that on this end of the spectrum where people are bed bound, they lose the ability to talk upon occasion, they require 24/7 care. The strategies you would normally use in therapy have to be adapted, otherwise they become very inaccessible and harmful to clients.
[08:19] And so, there’s a lot of range within that chronic illness space. So, people might have myalgia encephalomyelitis, ME-CFS, mast cell activation syndrome, hypermobility. Gosh, I’m just trying to think of all the other things that people sometimes come to me for. Some people may have problems with endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis. So, it’s any of those chronic illnesses, which often come in clusters, unfortunately. People often present quite burnt out from managing their chronic illness. They often present with a sense of maybe not being understood by some of the people in their life. They may present not realizing that what they’re going through is grief and loss. And yeah, I did a post a while ago on Instagram about the grief and loss and just sitting down and writing for myself, some of the things that I’ve lost in the process was really like, “oh, wow, who I am is no longer the same”, and having to kind of like rewrite that story for yourself and doing that with clients. So, yeah. Did I catch what you were hoping for?
SAM SELLERS:
[09:36] Absolutely. And I think it’s interesting because I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, I have insulin resistance, I have nerve damage in my lower back, so I have chronic lower back pain. And I think that people, often I struggled, in even labeling it as chronic pain. I think it’s things like diabetes or the things that tend to happen to a lot of people, some of those sort of higher end needs are not happening to a whole bunch of people around you, it might be rarer. But you know, there’s stacks of people with diabetes, there’s stacks of people with endometriosis diagnosed or undiagnosed, but it is, I know for myself when I was diagnosed with PCOS, that the word chronic illness was just like, it felt a bit weird. It wasn’t something that I was like “that surely that has to be reserved for something more serious”.
[10:37] But you’re right. The overwhelming pain and anxiety and grief, and fear and all those emotions that come along with it, just compound it and make it so much of a bigger thing than just something that is to do with a cycle or to do with insulin production and things like that. So, I think it’s great for more people to be able to realize, “Hey, I didn’t realize that it fell under the category of chronic pain or chronic Illness”, you know? So, I think that that’s a great gamut. I also think surely you must be good at tongue twisters because rattling off those names. Oh my goodness. I was very impressed. Even remembering them.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[11:34] Yeah, I spend a lot of time trying to understand the experiences that my clients have gone through. So, if a client presents that intake, I have an online form, so it’s savable, they can add details as they feel able, but also, they’re welcome to just tell me in the first session. So, you’ve got that flexibility. But if I have the information to hand, I’ll do some research and try and have at least a basic knowledge. If I can read some lived experience, whether it’s some medium blogs, whether it’s following a few Instagram accounts of people who are sharing their lived experience of said illness or said condition just so that I can try and capture some of the nuances of what it’s like to have that experience in life.
SAM SELLERS:
[12:24] This is a bit of a left field question, but it just came to me whether perhaps have you seen more prevalence of perhaps long COVID and things like that, that has come up that’s affecting fatigue and breathing and things like that?
MELANIE FOULKES:
[12:40] So, because I follow the ME-CFS community online and I’m quite involved there, they’ve gathered in the long COVID people and said like, “you belong with us, we care about you. Please stop rest pace”. And I’ve even seen kind of in my own city posts on chronic illness forums and posts online about people struggling with these symptoms and then struggling to get help. Because we’re in a city where there’s no specialists for long COVID, there’s no specialists for energy impairments. And it’s very misunderstood. You know, if we think about the NDIS and how challenging it can be, if you’ve got an energy impairment to get support, even though it is a genuine disability.
SAM SELLERS:
A brutal system.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[13:30] Yes. I have heard and read a lot more about long COVID. I’m hoping that the research we’re seeing and the boost in funding will have knock on effects with other kind of conditions in the same autoimmune category as long COVID. But I’m also seeing lots of people hurt, being hurt by the NICE guidelines from the UK came out in 2021 and they no longer recommend graded exercise therapy in the case of chronic fatigue syndrome and ME. And because it’s got a very similar symptomology to long COVID, it’s not recommended in long COVID either. However, in Australia, we don’t have updated guidelines. And so, people with long COVID are being told just exercise. And they then experience post-exertional malaise, which can look like a flare of autoimmune symptoms, sore throat, aching legs, muscles, even losing the ability to talk and move. And then that you can get into that cycle of rolling [Inaudible] and it makes your severity increase. And you can do less and less over time.
[14:44] So, the ME community and chronic fatigue syndrome community have been like, “please stop, rest, pace if you’ve got long COVID”. Sorry, that was my autistic info.
SAM SELLERS:
No, that’s fine.
MELANIE FOULKES:
I shouldn’t apologize.
SAM SELLERS:
[15:00] You know, it must be difficult, not just with long COVID, but with some of the other conditions where there may not be a lot of research, there may not be a lot of understanding. And obviously we are very much seeing that with long COVID now, because it is very new and there isn’t a lot of research and information and recommendations and things like that for that. So, it would be difficult for the person themselves, but also you are working with them in terms of there’s so much unknown and unknown, it creates a lot of fear for a lot of people.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[15:34] Yeah. And I’ll just flag it right now. So, if anyone who’s listening is a therapist and you’ve got clients or you’re interested in working with people who have long COVID or ME-CFS, Emerge Australia have partnered with ThinkGP for two hours of professional development that you can get certificates for. And it is the latest research. It is people with lived experience have shared and made sure it was the right kind of information. And that’s up to date. So, if you’re looking at doing PD, that’s where I’d go for PD in that area.
SAM SELLERS:
[16:12] Amazing. Great recommendation. I might even do it to be honest.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Oh no, seriously. It’s so worth it. It’s free.
SAM SELLERS:
Absolutely. And I think any therapist who is passing up the opportunity to learn on a, particularly an area that there is so much unknown about not only the condition itself, but how it is being manifested and presented and dealt with emotionally. It’s bonkers, who passes that up? So, so one of the things that I got you to think about in anticipation is what are some of the things that you might want people to know about either being somebody who has chronic pain or illness seeking therapy, or people who might not understand what it is like for somebody who is chronically ill to have therapy.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[17:01] Yeah. So, one of the things that I’ve found in working with clients, so maybe people with chronic illness can relate to this and maybe people listening who want to work with people with chronic illness, this could be helpful, is the question of how you are is actually really hard to answer. And so, because you’re always weighing up, do they want an honest answer? Because the honest answer could be quite brutal in terms of like, “I haven’t left bed all week”, “I’ve been saving up my spoons for X, Y, Z.” So, something I’ve noted in my own practice is if you come to see me, I’m going to try my best to ask you a different question at the start of the session.
SAM SELLERS:
[17:50] Amazing. I hate that question “How are you?” I think like you said, you’re just like, “you don’t actually want to know that, maybe ask me something a little bit more specific that you actually want to know.” So, I think that’s great.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[18:04] So, questions I’ll ask are things like “what’s been happening this week? Is there anything you’d like to talk about yet? How have things been going? Is there anything you want to update me on?” is kind of my way of starting the session. I personally worked with a counselor who used to ask, “what would you like to get done today?” And I liked that as well. And that can be tailored particularly to someone who you know is going to come to session with their agenda.
SAM SELLERS:
It’s got purpose. Let’s get shoot done.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[18:37] So, think about the first question you ask the client, and can it be a little more creative than how are you? And in that way, demonstrate a deeper empathy for the people you’re working with.
SAM SELLERS:
Amazing. I think there is a great lead. Tell us about the spoon’s theory. You mentioned it and I love the spoons theory. So, give it to all our listeners as to what that is.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[19:05] Look, I can’t give you the deep and dark history, but essentially it is a theory that people with chronic illnesses and others use to talk about energy. So, someone you might say the average human has 10 spoons a day to use up on showering, going to work, having a social life, et cetera, chores at home. But someone with chronic illness might start the day with five or two. And so, people with chronic illnesses might be like, “okay, so I can have a shower, which takes one spoon, or I could have a conversation with my partner, which takes one spoon. And then I’ve only got one left for the day. What am I going to do with that?” So yeah, I use it kind of colloquially as a like, “I don’t have enough spoons to do that” or like “I’ve used my spoons for the day.” I guess it’s just another way to communicate with people around you how you are going with your energy levels, kind of quick check-in.
SAM SELLERS:
[20:16] I think it’s a great theory and I think it’s great because it can be applied to anybody regardless of obviously, we’re talking about it specifically for those who have chronic illness or pain, but I think broadly it can be used for everybody. I think we all have our own energy tanks and different things require a different amount of spoon. You know, cooking dinner for one person might take one spoon, but it might take four for somebody else because the standing and the moving and the amount of fatigue that that causes is much greater. So, I think quite largely we need to manage our energy better. And I don’t tend to use the word spoon, but I do sort of use the term energy quite loosely and go, “I don’t have enough energy for that today.” And it’s not about the other person, it’s not about it being a personal rejecting that them or anything like that, it’s about good self-care and boundaries and understanding where your limits are and things like that. So, I think it’s a great theory and I think it probably applies to everybody, but more so for those who, like you said, have a limited number of spoons for each day. It’s a wonderful analogy.
[21:31] What’s one more thing that you want people to know?
MELANIE FOULKES:
[21:34] My other thing, and this comes up time and time again in therapy, and I don’t think people with chronic illnesses and therapists maybe know that it’s always just so common, is wearing masks is an accessibility consideration. And so, there are many people with chronic illnesses and disabilities who are still wearing masks, either to protect themselves or because they know how disabling it is to get long COVID, other post-viral illnesses. So, if you’re a person with chronic illness seeking therapy and masking is important to you, perhaps look for a therapist that is still masking or is willing to offer telehealth. So, video or phone sessions. If you’re a therapist and you’re working with chronically ill people, offer this accessibility either by, if you see a client present with a mask, wear one, or offering them the accessibility of therapy online.
[22:43] Yeah, I know it’s kind of most people are super over it at this stage, but for those of us who are in the vulnerable category, we’re still wearing masks because we do not want to get sick.
SAM SELLERS:
[22:55] No, absolutely. So, in terms of the therapy room, obviously we are inside the therapy room. That’s what this space is designed for. Both of us literally are in our therapy rooms, yours online, mine virtual and in person. Both with beautiful Indigenous art behind us.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Yes.
SAM SELLERS:
So, tell us what it might be like inside the therapy room. Is there something unique about it? Like you said, there are some who might have the inability to talk. What does that look like for you as a therapist and for them as clients?
MELANIE FOULKES:
[23:35] Yeah. So, I’ll go through kind of like from finding my intake process to like what it might look like in regular therapy. If that’s something people are wanting to do. So, people will find me via website, Instagram. People with chronic illness often hangout on Instagram. It’s a safe place, and there are lots of amazing advocates and accounts around chronic illness. So, when you when you book a session with me, you can either book a 15 minute to just get to know me. I offer that because as someone who has had their own lived experience of working with medical professionals who gaslight you and treat you poorly, it just makes a difference to meet your therapist on a no obligation basis. So, that’s one of the options.
[24:27] People can book either a phone appointment or a telehealth appointment. So, for me now, I’m using Zoom as my platform. And then if it’s on the phone, I’ll call them up. I provide an intake, which is considerable in size.
SAM SELLERS:
I would imagine it would need to be though.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[24:47] Yeah, I encourage people to fill out as much as they feel comfortable. And then anything that’s left blank, we can fill in the details as they feel comfortable as we move along in therapy. It also gives me an opportunity, like I said before, a little bit of research if there’s a condition that they’re presenting with that I don’t know much about, and I’d really like to understand it so I can grasp the nuance of what they’ve been going through. So, first session is a bit of a bit about me and my own lived experience as relevant to the client. I know that lived experience is quite a contested space, and counsellors are taught to hold back their lived experience, to not project onto clients.
SAM SELLERS:
Stuff the self-disclosure down.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Yes, stuff that self-disclosure down.
SAM SELLERS:
“Stuff it down.”
MELANIE FOULKES:
[25:44] Yeah, yeah. My approach is if the client brings something up that I may want to have a bit of self-disclosure around, share my experience. I say, “do you mind if I share something?” And clients have the option. They can say yes or no. And I try and keep it relevant to what’s happening, possibly to demonstrate empathy and I understand where they’re coming from. And maybe to talk about how I may have walked through something, not because I expect someone else to do the same, but it may give them ideas about how they might walk through a similar circumstance.
SAM SELLERS:
[26:28] I think self-disclosure is one of those things that I completely understand that if it is used all the time, or the misuse of it can be incredibly damaging for clients in the space and rupture that therapeutic alliance that we all talk about as wanting. But I personally, I’ve found my therapist because of his lived experience. That’s what I wanted. I think most people want somebody who is going to understand them and not just go off a literature that they might’ve read or a video they watched or a training they did. It’s an understanding on a whole other level. And I think we always say, “to be seen is to be understood”, and we talk about representation as well in media and things like that, and I think when we can see things we go, “oh, I’m so not alone here. This is not just me. I’m not the only person experiencing this.” And I think there is that just a deep breath that happens for someone internally to go, “this is not just me.”
[27:48] And so, I think the self-disclosure lived experience debate that therapists tend to have I think if it’s kept relevant and there is a purpose for it, that is to help the client, not to turn the spotlight onto you. I think it can do a world of a world of good. So, lived experience.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[28:12] Yeah. Something else that is a little different is that after our discussion and after the session, I will be taking notes throughout and collecting ideas of resources that I might want to share with the client. And then within 48 hours plus I’ll send an email to the client, or I have an online space where they can log in. It depends on preference. If they give me permission to email their notes to them, but other people might prefer it behind password. So, they get a copy of what we talked about, in brief they get a copy of any resources or links to stuff that I think they might find helpful, any growth work we have discussed for them to have a go at.
[28:58] And I think that is very helpful, particularly in this space because you know, memory is a challenge. There’s a cognitive impairment that can come with fatigue and other symptoms. So, knowing that your therapist has got you and that they’re going to follow up with you with what you talked about so that you can go away, think about it, but there’s no expectation to read your notes unless you want to, unless it’s something you want to engage with, but it’s something I offer to every client.
SAM SELLERS:
[29:30] Great. I love that. That’s not something that I do, although I do have particularly couples who will say, “can you email me that homework? Because I will forget by the time, I get home.” Because a lot happens in a session, and it can be overwhelming to remember all of that. So, I think on surface it sounds very logistical and so admin-y, but I think the term that you said that like, they know that I’ve got them. And I think that that sort of, it’s like a holding almost, is a beautiful thing disguised in admin really. That’s great. I love that. Officeworks would love that.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[30:16] And it works two ways because it’s more motivating to do your client notes because you’re continuing to serve them by doing the notes.
SAM SELLERS:
Yeah, absolutely.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[30:24] So, it works. It works. I always let clients decide how often and if they want to come back. So, the option is there. I don’t lock people in. Some people see me every week. Some people see me fortnightly, monthly, or just occasionally just go, “Hey, let’s have a chat and catch up and see where we’re up to.” My style is very conversational, very relaxed because my experience of therapists has sometimes been cold, and you don’t really know what they’re thinking or doing. Clinical. I try not to be like that. So, that’s kind of what it looks like inside my rooms.
[31:06] I also offer short appointments for people who find a longer appointment too much. And then the shorter appointment is at a reduced rate because you’re paying for less of my time.
SAM SELLERS:
[31:17] Yeah, absolutely. But I think that that flexibility is needed probably in this space much more than others, particularly when you do have things like energy levels and fatigue and tiredness and illness and pain, that pain can be a huge level of distraction, particularly if they’re sitting in a chair for a long period of time, even just something as simple as that can be difficult. So, I think that flexibility is great. I think that’s wonderful. So, one last thing before we start to wrap things up, what is one myth? I’m going to ask this to everybody. What is one myth that you would love to smash into pieces?
MELANIE FOULKES:
[32:00] I would love to smash the myth that chronically ill people are not welcome in the disability community because you are welcome. If you want to identify as disabled and use mobility aids and use assistive technology because you’re chronically ill and learn from your disabled elders and people with disabilities who have this lived experience and breadth of knowledge to share, you are so welcome as a chronically ill person. And so, I particularly appreciate Carly Finlay’s thoughts on this and her reflections on it. And yeah, it was the thing that came to mind when I read the question about smashing the myths. So, yeah.
SAM SELLERS:
[32:51] I’m all about smashing the myths. Obviously, part of the reason that I wanted to develop this podcast was to try and break down that barrier of what therapy is like, because I think it still has a stigma attached to it. I think it still has an air of, “Oh, what happens in there?” And really, it’s not all that big of a deal, you know? So, most of my sessions with people are just, we’re just sitting here having a chat. So, I think smashing myths is great. So, I love that. You are welcome.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[33:26] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
SAM SELLERS:
[33:29] I think that’s great. Well, thank you so much. This was great. This is not a space that I know a whole lot about. Obviously like I said, I have PCOS and chronic back pain, but I would never generally sort of identify myself as somebody who has chronic pain or illness. It’s not ever come up for me. But I think more and more it is starting to present into our rooms and into our client bases. And so, I think it is an area that perhaps people need to upskill on, and I think it’s probably also an area that some people don’t even know they fit into also, or don’t even know that perhaps there are people who specialize in this area.
[34:17] I think automatically you think chronically ill, and you think of medical professionals, and you’ve got GPs and specialists and surgeons and physios, and rehabs and all of that sort of thing. And we forget that the body impacts the mind as well and the soul and the spirit, and all of that’s got to be dealt with as well with somebody. So, I think hopefully people will find their way into the space that needs to hold them. So, thank you for working in the space. I think it’s a needed space. And thank you for bringing lived experience in because I think it’s powerful. So, I know that it’s a contentious issue, but as somebody who uses her lived experience with my specialty, which will be coming in another episode. But you know, I think lived experience is powerful. So, thank you for not just working from a book, I think.
MELANIE FOULKES:
My pleasure.
SAM SELLERS:
It’s needed, it’s needed in this. So, I think that’s wonderful.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[35:22] And one last fact before we go. So, according to the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data collection, three quarters of Australians live with a chronic illness.
SAM SELLERS:
That is huge.
MELANIE FOULKES:
[35:36] That is huge, and that means they’re in your therapy room. If you’re a therapist, they are in your rooms and it’s essential that invest in understanding what it’s like to be a person with that lived experience.
SAM SELLERS:
[35:52] Yeah. And I think if therapists become aware and become trained in ways to be affirming and accessible for chronic illness, people will feel open to be able to share that, because there’s every chance that you have a client in your therapy room at the moment who hasn’t shared with you a medical diagnosis or something that they’re living with because they don’t want the effort of educating someone. And so, I think the more we can educate ourselves, the more clients are going to feel comfortable to share openly about medical diagnoses and pain that they’re living with. And then your whole approach can change because then you are working with their whole self, something’s not being missed. So, working with the whole self is the most important thing. So, well, thank you. It’s been a great chat. I’ve loved it.
MELANIE FOULKES:
My pleasure.
SAM SELLERS:
I’m hoping that people can get some good stuff out of it. And don’t forget about Melanie’s webinar. If you are a training mental health professional, or you are studying, or you are just working in the helping space, it probably will. I’m not going to say might, it will be very helpful.
MELANIE FOULKES:
I agree.
SAM SELLERS:
Amazing. Thank you, Melanie.
MELANIE FOULKES:
Thank you.
SAM SELLERS: We hope you enjoyed joining us Inside the Therapy Room. Thanks for listening.