The earliest ambition I had that I can remember was to be a hairdresser… I vividly remember going to get my hair cut at the salon where my mother got her hair cut, and being totally in love with the hairdresser who was so incredibly glamorous with bright copper red hair in a glossy straight 70’s short style. I desperately wanted to look like her, but came out of the salon with a trim of my curly brown school girl hair. I still do love a glam hairstyle but nowadays even the thought of all that blowdrying leaves my shoulders aching! I did also want to be a doctor from a very young age and remember reading the human anatomy pages of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica ( we were a good middle class Canberra family, the status of having an Encyclopaedia Brittanica set was essential in the academic circles) Later on in my school career I decided to be an actor as well as a doctor, so applied to NIDA and VCA after Yr 12. Luckily they both replied that I should get a job and some life experience, so I went back to Plan A and got in to Med School. During my Uni years I did a lot of stage work, then after my RMO year went straight in to GP so I could work part time and devote myself to my acting career.

The next 25 years or so I worked in a magnificent variety of GP jobs, including sexual health (going to brothels to do STD checks on sex workers, one of my favourite jobs of all time), standard GP locums and permanent PT work, cosmetic dermatology and laser work, home deputising work, bariatric medicine, surgical assisting and even a fun little terrifying job at the races. Alongside this I was working in the acting world and achieved some success on screen and on stage, but ultimately not enough to justify keeping on with it. I fell out of love with acting after a particularly gruelling job where I had to cry all day, sitting on a hard pew in a cold church, from 5 am til evening… the glamorous life lost it’s shine that day.

Bariatric medicine led me to hypnosis, trying to find a fix for all my compulsive overeaters, searching for a solution for this particular maladaptive solution to emotional pain, and whilst really interesting, it didn’t provide me with all the answers so I did a Masters of Counselling. I loved this study, and at the end of my course I did a placement at Family Life ( a NFP focussing on Family Violence). When my supervisor recognised my interest in trauma, she told me that I really should train in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing). Not knowing a thing about it except that my supervisor recommended it, I enrolled in the next course I could. And found my passion in life! It only took me 30 years of searching but now I am the happiest of Larries.

My first EMDR client I recall vividly. She was a bariatric patient, and I had offered her help with her history of treatment resistant depression, stemming from the day she found a relative dead from suicide. We were processing the image of finding the person, and after about 15 minutes of crying she started laughing. Out loud. I was confused and bewildered – this was not in the manual! So I asked her about it. She replied that she hadn’t laughed for 17 years, and she had just spontaneously felt like laughing, so she did. So we laughed together for a minute, and finished the session. Covid lockdowns hit after that session, so we only did the one session of EMDR processing, but I followed up with phone calls and her deep depression had lifted, she was communicating with family and going out for walks with the dog, sleeping well and felt lighter and free of the terrible images she had been plagued with. She was better, and I was hooked.

Since then I have become slightly addicted to EMDR and the results it gives my clients. Every day I work with CPTSD, treatment resistant depression, sometimes rarities like FND or DID, and despite their complexities, when we look for the underlying trauma, the path becomes clear. I work with clients both inpatient and in my private practice, in 1:1 and in groups, in-person and online. For the first time in my working life I feel a great sense of agency, of capability, of usefulness. It only took me 30 years to find my niche, but now I am here, and loving every minute of it. The brilliant reward of seeing someone lose the pain of that memory we are working on, right in front of my eyes, still feels incredible and exciting to me. There is room for creativity in EMDR and I often use imagination and storytelling to help get over stuck points.

In my practice I set my own hours (I do 75 min consultations) and this is so rewarding too, as it suits my natural tendency towards deep conversations, which would often get in the way of a productive day in classic General Practice. Now my curiosity about people is an asset rather than a disadvantage.

The first little while of having my own practice in psychological medicine was quite lonely – it feels like a strange hybrid of GP/Psychiatrist/psychologist…I tell people that I’m a GP who identifies as a therapist. Psychologists are sometimes a little wary, psychiatrists don’t quite know how to relate to me, but clients love it. Finding ASPM was revelatory – other GP’s who share the same interest! Woo hoo!

Practicing psychological medicine within the confines of traditional general Practice is hard work. The time constraints especially can be brutal and so stressful. Managing your own time and roster in your own practice is much more relaxing, but if that’s not possible, then compassion aligned with boundaries is likely to alleviate some stress – you cannot ‘fix’ a MH problem in a 15 min consult. You can establish a relationship, show humanity, outline a short intervention and make another time for more followup. All respectfully and with compassion both for the client and for yourself. Boundaries are both essential and hard to maintain. For the young players, I would suggest rehearsing those simple statements – ‘unfortunately we are out of time today, but I would really like to help you so let’s make another appointment’. And just know that we heal in relationships, that the GP-patient relationship is not measurable but so valuable. In my work at Cabrini I so often hear that “My GP is fantastic, they are such a lovely human” and words to that effect. GP’s are valuable, and are valued, even if you never hear that in the press. And we, as Psychological Medicine GP’s, are an even more special and rarified group. Know your value, know that you do amazing work, know that your clients appreciate you for your unique and special talents.