Exploring intersecting identities with Matthew Vaughan

So I guess one of the first things that I'm just going to say while it's on my mind, I guess, is that sense of, you know, how do I make sense of some of those experiences now? That was the core wasn't it um and i think that my so working classes is one of those words i also don't really tend to use for myself and i think it's funny because that it's exactly that same thing of missing cornerstones or missing milestones because it was just me and my mum think and actually there were some things that felt like they fitted there were some things that felt like they were very much I guess like when I look back on it you know experiences that were very much working working class or which fit with that or like the relationship between you know when I go to school and like there'd be all of these other kids who would have like all of this stuff and they'd have all the new things and I don't have any of that or going around to like friends houses who would have like you know it would be very put together and you know everything would be like shoes off and everything's really really tidy and you know our house would be like all over the place with like three dogs and like two birds and like single mum like trying to hold all of this down together like they were very very different but at the same time I feel like I had a lot of privileges because like my mum was really well she was fantastic and she did work tried her best and she was she did have a better income than i guess other people would have because she was a teacher and she did kind of like encourage a lot of those values around creative curiosity um which meant and i was protected against from the stress of a lot of that too um around the financial worries so in that sense it feels a little bit different and i guess my wider family they would more they were probably more into that position of middle class there as well although they would probably they would probably debate me saying that but financially they were a lot more secure than against me and my mum um

your answer is is just really helpful in kind of understanding your sort of process in understanding it i wonder um sort of leading on from that like how helpful you do think clinical psychology models have been in doing that or not

So I remember one of the things I was going to say now.

So how it shaped me now, I guess, as a clinical psychologist and as a person and my reflections on that, as I think probably my experience growing up was like, I need to get on with people and I need to be able to do that.

through being brown and kind of probably feeling like a little bit on the outside i probably work quite hard um to try and build relationships with people and to try and be good at that maybe not always great but to try and understand other people's perspectives and that is absolutely something which i think is i could not separate from like my experience of i guess feeling more isolated when i was growing up you know how keen i am now to like maintain relationships and build relationships not in a not in a way that's really tricky but trying to understand different people's perspectives i think that that's woven through those early experiences how well clinical psychology would fit with that and how well different models could do doing some of the disentangling you know a five five piece isn't going to cut it is it like a five piece formulation isn't really going to be i don't think it would have the depth of feeling and of meaning probably to do some of that separation and I think that you maybe you know you could fit in bits around this it'll probably come down to like isolation and you know you're predisposing but actually in your predisposing fact that's going to be relatively brief um and how that relates to all of the other factors would then probably be quite tricky I would feel to to pull out in a meaningful way I think that I have done some sessions of cat previously and that felt like it was quite good so cognitive um analytic therapy and that felt like as part of that you're kind of doing your your timeline and your history at the start of the sessions like that is the the biggest priority is thinking about those early experiences in a lot more space i guess than you would usually have within a different kind of therapy And I think that that allows itself and lends itself more to thinking about the connections between lots of those different experiences and I guess who you are in your, I mean, they call it your reciprocal roles or relationship roles, you know, how you interact with others.

I think that that lends itself quite nicely but ultimately if I were to be in a position where I needed mental health support I think the likelihood is that unless I'd gone through making sense of this on my own I probably would not be asked and the clinician support in me would probably be very unlikely I would think to to tease a lot of those nuances out.

I think it's through the fortune of like my mum being very empathetic and very emotionally intelligent and aware and reflective that's meant that I have become more like that.

Potentially through the experience as well as kind of encouraged it to do that or had the space to be able to to digest what those experiences have meant to me through privileges that I've had but actually I think like if i showed up in a different setting with more difficult life experiences going on early in my early life and i hadn't been able to do a lot of this reflection my assumption would be that probably a good few practitioners would not necessarily feel competent or would miss asking some of these questions in a way that I probably would appreciate.

It's very good to be able to talk about this and I enjoy being able to talk about it and make sense of

it.

I'm not sure if this is kind of linked to where you were going anyway because one of the things that I just jotted down was around the social graces model and how when you're on, well certainly for me when I was on my... journey into clinical psychology i feel like that gets sort of thrown at you and i guess i just wondered what your thoughts were on it and like whether it is helpful in sort of understanding our own identity or like unpicking other people's identities

i i like it i do like it i know i mean i know there's um kind of mixed some mixed feelings about it.

And I think sometimes maybe people who are more familiar with these conversations can feel like maybe it feels quite reductive.

And it is reductive.

It absolutely is reductive.

You know, like I'm talking about all of this stuff.

Well, like class and ethnicity, treating them separate things there, you know, you can't do that.

And you wouldn't get to the depth of experience in a meaningful way unless you appreciated the intersectionality of those different experiences.

And so when I'm thinking about the social graces model, I would never think about it in a way where you are not thinking about it from an intersectional lens.

I think that the only way that the model works and is useful is appreciating the way that it can tease out the intersectionalities between those different identities and how they cluster to make up the person that you see in front of you.

So in that sense, I quite liked it.

i do i do remember the experience of feeling quite frustrated um in teaching a lot of times where we'd be talking about it and and i'd be sat there like twitching like i'm you know i'm talking about this or we're hearing about this and i'm like this is my lived experience that i've you know been through and i've worked through it and i've you know been coming to understand all of this but i think the probably sometimes feeling a bit frustrated that other people aren't in that same position with thinking about some of these factors and how it all links together.

But that also probably sits with my impatience as well, to be fair.

But I think it's a useful tool for supporting people to start thinking about those conversations and the differences.

Well, there's two things actually within the social graces.