October 7, 2025 • 24 mins
In the newest Mental Fitness Conversations episode, produced in partnership with Black Magic Woman, host Mundanara Bayles yams with Dr Clinton Schultz, a proud Gamilaroi man, psychologist and Head of First Nations Strategy at Black Dog Institute.
Clinton speaks openly about his life and the role of culture in shaping his path. He reflects on growing up disconnected from support, navigating systems that didn’t see him and the turning points that helped him realign with culture, lore and spirit. From building a career as a chef to retraining as a psychologist, Clinton’s journey shows the resilience of spirit that comes from culture and community.
At the heart of this yarn is Aboriginal psychology - a way of understanding wellbeing that goes beyond the mind to include spirit, belonging and connection. Clinton explains why psychology must reflect culture and lived experience, and how he works to embed this at Black Dog Institute.
Clinton’s story is raw, wise and deeply hopeful. He reminds us that mental fitness is not about going it alone but about drawing on culture, relationships and the practices that keep us strong across generations.
Resources and links:
Find out more about Gotcha4Life at www.gotcha4life.org and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @gotcha4life and Black Magic Woman on Instagram @blackmagicwomanpodcast.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or follow on your Spotify app and tell your friends and family about us!
Hosted by award-winning Indigenous businesswoman and Gotcha4Life Board Member Mundanara Bayles, and produced in partnership with Black Magic Woman, Mental Fitness Conversations centres First Nations voices in powerful conversations about culture, connection and what truly sustains mental fitness.
Content in this podcast covers topics related to mental health, including suicide which can be confronting and distressing. If you found this content emotionally challenging, please practise self-care. There are support services available 24/7, 13YARN 13 92 76 and Lifeline 13 11 14.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Podcast unite our voices.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Gotcha for Life and Black Magic Woman. Podcast acknowledges the
traditional owners of the land which we recorded this episode.
We also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land from
where you, the listener or viewer are tuning in. We
would like to pay our respects to elders both past
and present. We acknowledged that this land always was and
always will be Aboriginal land. This podcast talks about mental health,
(00:32):
suicide and lived experience. If that brings anything up for you,
please take care while listening and remember you don't need
to worry alone. Welcome to Mental Fitness Conversations, a podcast
about how real people build their mental fitness through connection,
community and simple everyday actions. Brought to you by Gotcha
(00:52):
for Life in partnership with Black Magic Woman.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Here's your host, Monda Narrabels.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Thank you for joining me for this amazing episode. Actually
a partnership series with Gotcha for Life.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
It's a charity where I sit on the board.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It's about imagining or even working towards an Australia where
there are no suicides. A lot of you mob that
are listening might be triggered or feeling a little bit
traumatized by the end of it. There is a national
hotline called One Three Yarn. We'll make sure it's in
the show notes, but I just want to let you
know that some of the yarns may get a little
(01:33):
bit deep, but these are conversations that need to be had,
and I hope that there's something for you that you
can take from it, use it, implement it, or reach
out to us after the show if you.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Do want to have a yarn.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
We're here on the beautiful lands of the Camaagle people,
which is part of the Orination where my family have
been here for over ten generations, probably two thousand generations,
but this is where I call home. They actually got
the absolute pleasure to yarn with a brother, doctor Clinton Schultz,
(02:09):
who I met long, long time ago, but have never
had an opportunity to sit down and have a yarn.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Even with Black Magic Woman.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Going for five years, It's like this was the right
time to be yearning. So brother, can I first say
thank you for taking the time out your busy schedule.
We both live in Queensland, but we get to catch
up here in New South Wales, but thank you for
being part of this partnership series. With Black Magic Women
and got You for life. For people that don't know
(02:36):
your story, do you want to share with listeners your name,
your mob, and a little bit about where you grew up?
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Yeah, for sure, goming into thank you. So my name's Clinton.
I'm a gon Marig millery man myself. So I live
on comber Meria Country. So what most people recognize as
beautiful Gold Coast probably more recognized as the Gray Coast
at present. I swear we have wet seasons up there now,
which is pretty crazy. Yeah, my story is pretty involved
in terms of I guess socialmotional well being, both from
(03:02):
a lived experience perspective through to the work that I
am fortunate enough to be able to do now. And
I guess that all really started, and my story is
well documented and I'm pretty open with it. I think
sharing lived experience really provides others with the opportunities to
learn what has and hasn't worked for others and to
maybe learn something from that and take it on board.
(03:22):
So I guess from when I was about five to fifteen,
I experienced a whole bunch of abuse, psychological, emotional, physical
abuse in the house was a very violent sort of
household I grew up in literally to the point where
my brother and I were literally scared for our lives
quite often, and that obviously caused a whole bunch of
(03:45):
psychological trauma for me, and my way of dealing with that,
I guess, was to turn to drugs and alcohol. So,
you know, I was heavily drinking well before I was fifteen,
probably thirteen, taken a whole bunch of different drugs by
the time I was fifteen. But at the same time
I had responsibilities as well. My mum was trying to
go to university and improve you know, the opportunities for
(04:09):
herself and my little sisters and my little brother at
that stage. So I decided to leave school. Well, school
and I decided to leave each other.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Just wasn't a good match.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
No, it wasn't a good match. But the real, I
guess straw that broke the camel's back was the deputy
principal of the high school that I was at literally
turned around and said to me, I don't know why
we bother. By the time you're eighteen and you're going
to be dead or in jail. And so when your
principal sort of says that to you, you figure, why
am I here, and so I'd had an off I'd
already had about one hundred and sixty days off school
(04:41):
that year and just couldn't handle it anymore, so decided
to take time off. But you know, my mum was
pretty adamant that if I wasn't going to be at school,
I had to be doing something, and so what I
did was I looked after my baby sister, who was
only six months old at the time, during the day
so my mom could go to university and I was
(05:03):
doing a chef apprenticeship at night. So I tried to
keep myself, as I guess, entertained as possible, because if
I wasn't entertained, I was generally in trouble. So while
I was doing that, you know my drug I had
more access to money, I had more access to things,
and I still hadn't dealt with any of my trauma.
(05:24):
So I guess I started using drugs and alcohol even
more and more, and working in hospitality. Anybody who works
in hospitality knows that it's just a rife environment for
drug and alcohol abuse. In itself. It comes with its
whole own set of of triggers and stresses and challenges.
And that just drives trauma further. So I probably did that,
(05:44):
you know, for fifteen years of my life. To be honest,
it wasn't until I had kids that I sort of
pulled my head in a little bit. But I was
really high functioning, which I guess some people might see
as a blessing, but for me, it was also a
bit of a curse because it meant nobody knew how
traumatized I was and I guess what I was going through,
(06:06):
and that left me feeling really alone. So there was
twice in my life where I just didn't want to
be here anymore. And I'm just really fortunate that the
right people were there at the exact right moments to
kind of pull me through that. I'd seen others that
i'd sort of grown up with that couldn't handle the
things that had happened to them either and had decided
(06:27):
to leave this plane, and you know, some of that
kind of had an impact on me, and I was like, well, yeah,
maybe this isn't worth it. So it was a really
lonely place, and as I said, I'm really grateful that
the right people were there at the right time to
pull me through that and to allow me the opportunity
to sort of give back now. But yeah, that fifteen
(06:48):
years where I was abusing, I managed to finish my
chef's apprenticeship, work in some of the best restaurants in Queensland,
travel half of Europe working as a chef, come back,
go to university, complete my psychology degree, do my honors,
and then go out and start working as a psychologist,
mostly in the space of drug and alcohol recovery, while
I was still abusing. So that's why some people go, yeah,
(07:11):
and you know, you were really high functioning, so that's
kind of a blessing. But for me, it was through
that entire time nobody knew kind of what was going
on for me, and so that meant that I didn't
have to deal with my shit.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
To be honest, no one really.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
There was no real accountability to other people because they
didn't know.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Yeah, and I was purposely keeping people separated from me.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
That's what you do, you isolate yourself.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
I'd experienced so much rejection, that's all I knew. I
didn't know how to accept people in because I felt
so rejected. I'd felt rejected in the home, I'd felt
rejected at school. Was more and more feeling rejected by society.
The more I think, as you know, as young Aboriginal men,
particularly as we start to age in this Western society,
the more we become aware of how much society rejects us.
(07:58):
Everything about us, everything that is I guess put out
in this world about what it is to be an
average man is deficit discourse based. It's all negative based,
and obviously some of that's going to soak in and
it starts to become part of your actual being because
it's all you hear about yourself. So you're kind of
left in this space of either questioning your own identity
and your own sense of self or accepting that all
(08:20):
this retric that you're hearing constantly must be the truth
and absorbing some of that. So, yeah, trying to deal
with all of that was pretty pretty difficult, but yeah,
managed to get through it. And culture was really the
thing that's you allow me to thrive in my life.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's exactly what I was going to ask in terms
of how do you ground yourself in culture to be
able to be the best version of yourself, especially with
your little family, with your little ones.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Yeah, look, I'm a real passionate advocate for the importance
of culture, but not just not just culture, I think law.
You know, I've been fortunate enough to go through our
processes and to understand that side of it and to
understand the power of it and the healing parts of it,
but also the guidance that allows us to live our
life in a positive way. And so I'm really adamant
(09:08):
about helping people these days to figure out how those
two pieces fit together. What are those parts of our
law that have kept us well with self other than
place across forever, and how do we actually apply those
today in a twenty first century. And it takes a
little while to sort of figure it out, but once
you figure it out, those principles can protect you in
anything that you're actually doing. So I'm far more focused
(09:30):
these days on making sure that I'm abiding by by
our lore than I am with Western law, because if
I'm abiden by these ones, I don't really have to
worry about these other ones as much. I mean, the
racism discrimination that exists in there is still going to
always try and throw a spear in you. But you know,
I can far better protect myself if I'm living my
life through these positive principles that are embedded in our
(09:52):
ways of knowing, being and doing.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And I've been following your work for quite some time.
The organization that you're working for your heading up now
the First Nation Strategy at Black Dog Institute. Tell me
how you got involved with the institute and just some of.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
The work that you do there.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Yeah, for sure. So I guess I've been involved in
academia for I don't know, fifteen years or something now,
and i'd kind of gone through most of the universities
in Southeast Queensland and swore I was never going back
to academia, and then this opportunity came up at Black
Dog Institute, where it was actually Leilani Darwin had rung
me up and said, look, brother, I think there's a
really good opportunity for you to do something different here
(10:30):
and I can promise you it won't be the same
experiences that you've had in academia previously. And I went, yep,
no worries, So went along, took the opportunity to see
what it was all about. And it's been really refreshing
to work at an organization that is willing to actually
reflect on where it's at rather than to try and
bullshit about where it's at. Yeah, so they've been quite
(10:52):
open to me coming in and saying, look, this is
the work we need to do because this is where
you are on your journey right now, and these are
the things that we need to do before I'm even
going to feel confident in bringing other blackfellows in here
and building the team that we can do the work
moving forward. And I think that was a bit of
a shock for them at.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
First, but a reality check.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Yeah. But as I said, it's been really refreshing to
be in an organization that has accepted that, because that
was my first experience of that. Every other organization I've
ever gone into has asked me to come in to
do a job, and the job has never actually been the.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Job set up properly.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Yeah, it'll be come in and develop aboriginal health programs,
and then all they want me to do is talk
about CTG and deficit based stats, and well, that's got
nothing to do with health. That's all ill health. So
call your course aboriginal ill health if that's what you
want to do, let's not call it aboriginal health. So
coming in now having a lot more freedom to really
focus on social motion wellbeing as a concept and I
(11:49):
guess the holistic concept of that and mental health being
a part of that and looking at how do we
actually apply that within policy practice moving forward?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And have you got now a big team a lot
of black fellows.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yet, Yeah, we've got quite a big team because we
actually house the Aboriginal to show on the Lived Experience
Center for Suicide at Black Dog. They've been on an
awesome journey. They started in house with us at BDI,
but by September thirty this year, it'll be called ILEX,
so the Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Center is actually moving
(12:24):
to its own standalone entity organization. So having had the
opportunity to help guide them through that process and go
from just being a little in the house team to
now establishing their own charity has been a deadly thing
to be part of. And I think that's really shown
how willing Black Dog's been to truly be a partner,
(12:45):
to not try and pretend that it's the expert in
this space, but to go, hey, we've got the opportunity
and resources, how can we actually use these to help
with your self determination as an entity? And so, yeah,
that's been really rewarding, but it means that half my
team's actually leaving. Then we'll really focus in on our
research and trying to really establish a heavy research presence
(13:06):
of socialmotion well being, particularly in I guess the trauma
and suicide prevention spaces.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I was watching a video of you, my brother, and
you're talking about Abershal psychology, which is not the same
as Western psychology. Can you share with our listeners what
do you mean by it's not the same?
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Yeah, for sure. So when I learned this really early
in my psych sort of journey, I was at university
undertaking psych and it was the first year and I
was sitting there going, this has absolutely no relation to
me or to the mob that I want to work with,
And so I kind of set my mind then to
looking at well, how do I shift that. How do
(13:44):
we broaden the understanding of what psychology actually could be
and make it more practical to people from a whole
bunch of diverse backgrounds. At the moment, it's white as right,
and so that kind of needs to be shifted and changed.
You know, we live in such a multi national country
now multicultural society, that if we don't shift the way
(14:05):
that we allow ourselves to do things, And if we
don't start embracing all the wonderful information that can be
gathered and gained and we can all learn from from diversity,
from embracing diversity, then nothing we're doing is actually going
to fit the population that we're actually trying to serve.
So I guess the big difference is is that I
guess you know, from an aboriginal psychologist perspective, everything's more
(14:29):
about spirit than it is about what's going on just
cognitive or emotionally or within my memories. So it's funny
because the word psychology, if you actually break it down,
it actually, you know, psyche is actually spirit, it's not
the mind. So the field itself, I think sometimes has
stepped away from what it originally was, so we're kind
of trying to drag it back to what it is.
(14:49):
And that's really about understanding the things that are most
important to us and what keeps our spirits strong. And
we know that those things are like connection to culture,
connection to family, connection to law and community, and obviously
physical health and mental health are important, but I think
that there's other facets of our overall well being that
at times a far more influential on our overall experience
(15:15):
than just our mental experience. And so for me, that's
what aboriginal psychology is really about. How do we first
acknowledge that these other parts of ourself are real and
that we can't constantly try and compartmentalize them, And we
have to acknowledge that we're one being, and we're a
connected being, and what happens to any part of us
(15:35):
happens to all, and what happens within our connections happens
to us as well, and vice versa. So we first
have to accept that, and that then allows us to
then look at Okay, well, how do we then harness
the power that can exist in those connections to keep
us strong and deadly moving forward?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
And I was just going to ask a little bit
more of a like personal question now in terms of
looking after your own mental health and building your mental fitness.
And that's what we talk about. It got you for life,
for the programs that we run, building your mental muscles.
What do you do to build your mental fitness? What
do you do to look after your mental health?
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Yes, I do some crazy stuff and then I'll probably
do some more practical, ordinary stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
So well, I.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Heard I heard that you have an injury Warrior, Jim,
you obviously have an outlet in terms of hardcore physical activity.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Yeah. So I guess physical activity is always one way
that I've maintained I guess my mental well being. It's
something that works for me. It may not work for everybody.
Doing some level of exercise. I think is important for everybody.
We know that it helps release a whole bunch of
what we'd recognize as the happy chemicals, So it does
help us to feel good. I probably do in excess
of what most people feel is normal. So I've done
(16:47):
a whole bunch of crazy stuff over the last sort
of ten years. Yeah, I did a Ninja Warrior for
a few years, did the show.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And what was that like?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Look, I was more into the competition than I was
the production stead, to be honest. So it was a
lot of hard work for a very period of You know,
it wasn't even that for me because I actually tore
my bicep tend and before I went out, and so
I basically had to just dive into the water because
my arm was hanging off so stop. But my whole
(17:18):
family was there and so I couldn't just pull out.
My kids had been sitting there literally for twelve hours
waiting for me to come out. So I was like,
I'm going out anyway. But yeah, I do ultra marathons,
and you know, went with Joshi Kremer and a bunch
of the other boys and girls a couple of years
ago to do Everest Base Camp, And so I'm always
(17:39):
kind of looking for things that are physical but are
going to push me mentally, Like I hate running, for instance,
Like I really don't enjoy running, but I actually enjoy
the the head from it, to be honest, Like I
enjoy that process of how far can I push myself
until literally my legs are going to give way and
I'm going to fall down on the ground. That's I
(17:59):
guess some of the physical stuff I do some of
the other I really try and engage nature as much
as possible. Like people have probably heard me say a
few times in different places that I spend more of
my free time talking with dead people and trees than
I actually do with living people or reading books that
were want beautiful trees. And that works for me, you know,
Like I've been fortunate enough to be able to learn
(18:22):
how to sit down and allow myself to let go
of the ego and just accept myself as a part
of nature and therefore to learn from nature. And I've
had some of the most important lessons in my life
from just sitting and observing and listening to what's going
on around me. And yeah, so that means sometimes I
do sit there and I ask questions of our ancestors,
and I allow myself to just sit there and wait
(18:43):
till I hear the answers that I need to hear.
I'll sit there and I'll just you know, sit with
a really old forest tree that's been around for hundreds
of years, longer than I'm ever going to have the
opportunity to be on this planet, and just ask it
about questions about life. What is it to live like?
What is it to experience life in its fullest through
(19:04):
anything that can be thrown at us. Because some of
those trees they've sat with, you know, they've been here
for four hundred, five hundred years. They've seen things that
I'm never going to experience, but they're still standing strong.
And I think the trick is letting go of the ego.
I think as human beings, at times, we've allowed ourselves
to be fooled into believing we're more than rather than
just part of and that's switched off a part of
(19:27):
our inateability to connect with.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
All I keep thinking about now is I live on
Cabbycobby Country, and I'll be honest with your brother, in
the last two years of living on two acres, I've
probably touched that grass three times.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And people don't realize.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
And I say this to everyone, you don't need to
go back to country, which for some of us it's
financially not possible to go back to country. But just
taking your shoes off and putting your feet into mother
Earth and recharging your batteries can actually happen in your backyard.
You don't have to go back, you know. I'm in
(20:06):
Kobikby Country. I'm from Rentfern, my dad's from such a
queens and it's just not possible for me to get
in the car and drive ten hours.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Yeah, for sure. It's the same for me, you know,
like my mom originally from downsort of Tamworth, Gunnada, Manilla area,
Like it's eight hour drive, twelve hours with my kids
in the car. So I don't get to go back
to my immediate part of country as often as i'd
like to. But what I have been able to learn
over time, you know, I've been really fortunate to sit
down with a lot of our old healers and law
(20:32):
people around the country and to actually understand how I
guess those that connection and that energy passes through all
of country, Like it doesn't matter where I stand. If
I'm standing, you know, in the dirt, every grain of
that dirt connects to the next grain and eventually it
all leads back to my country. Same as if I'm
on the beach at Burly Heads, Like if I'm in
(20:54):
the water there, well, that water flows all the way
down to wherever the rivers may be flowing out into
the ocean somewhere else. So connection exists everywhere. Again, sometimes
we don't all ourselves to look for what is available.
We get so stuck on what isn't available, what don't
I have? What have I lost? Rather than what is available?
And how can I use that?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Interesting about talking about what's available what I've lost, Because
I was just going to ask you about some of
the challenges within working in the mental health space and
with systems and people that don't quite get it yet.
What are some of the challenges I think that you're
facing today.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
The biggest challenge is feeling like the constant advice that
you're giving is not being taken or not being taken
seriously anyway.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
It's one of the issues I've had for a long
time is we're always asked to be on advisory committees.
We're always asked to give up our knowledge, to give
up our experiences, and we're told that it's for the
betterment of us, that it's going to help improve systems, processes, policies, etc.
For us. But my personal experience has been that we
give far more than what we actually see change come
(22:02):
from in that so I'm a lot more guarded I
think these days, who in where I choose to give.
But at the same time, I do believe that getting
changes within systems and within policy is our best opportunity
to make broad change that can impact as many people
as possible. So I spend a lot of my time
now engaging with politicians because I feel I've got thick
(22:23):
skin and I've got the coping mechanisms in place to
deal with some of the rubbish that can at times
come with that. But two, I do believe that if
I can infiltrate if I can get through even to
its one minister within that cabinet and then they have
a talk to somebody else that that's probably my best
opportunity to get widespread change, more so than when I'm
(22:46):
just working one on one with people.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule
here in Sydney to jump on the podcast. If there's
one words of wisdom, last something to leave with our listeners,
what would it be when it comes to yeah, social
emotional wellbeing.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Don't be afraid to go on your learning journey. I
think that's the biggest issue we have at the moment,
is that we're convinced by others that we shouldn't or
that we don't have the right to, or all this
other stuff that gets in the way of us just
doing what we actually innately know is best for us,
and that's just continue our journey. And it doesn't matter
where you're on that The first steps the hardest part.
(23:27):
So always look for what is it that I already
have available to me now to just take that first
step and that allow me to then get a little
further along the journey and to figure out, you know
who or what else do I need to continue on
that journey.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Deadly well, thank you.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I'm just really happy that we've been able to get
your amazing insight and knowledge and experiences into this amazing
podcast partnership, and I can't wait to work with you
in the near future.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Absolutely really appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Thanks for tuning in to mental fitness conversations. Keep building
your emotional muscles with the free Mental Fitness Gym app,
packed with tools, tips, and everyday actions to support your
mental fitness. Download it from the App Store or Google
play Store, or visit the Mentalfitnessgym dot org. If anything
in this episode brought something up for you, you don't have
(24:23):
to worry alone. Reach out to a trusted friend or
family member and know that support is available. You can
contact Lifeline on one three, double one, one four or
one three yarn at one three nine, two seven six
for free and confidential support for Aboriginal and torrostrad Islander people.
If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a rating, share
(24:44):
it with someone in your village, or drop us a message.
We'd love to hear what you think, and don't forget
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Podcast unite our voices.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Gotcha for Life and Black Magic Woman. Podcast acknowledges the
traditional owners of the land which we recorded this episode.
We also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land from
where you, the listener or viewer are tuning in. We
would like to pay our respects to elders both past
and present. We acknowledged that this land always was and
always will be Aboriginal land. This podcast talks about mental health,
(00:32):
suicide and lived experience. If that brings anything up for you,
please take care while listening and remember you don't need
to worry alone. Welcome to Mental Fitness Conversations, a podcast
about how real people build their mental fitness through connection,
community and simple everyday actions. Brought to you by Gotcha
(00:52):
for Life in partnership with Black Magic Woman.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Here's your host, Monda Narrabels.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Thank you for joining me for this amazing episode. Actually
a partnership series with Gotcha for Life.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
It's a charity where I sit on the board.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It's about imagining or even working towards an Australia where
there are no suicides. A lot of you mob that
are listening might be triggered or feeling a little bit
traumatized by the end of it. There is a national
hotline called One Three Yarn. We'll make sure it's in
the show notes, but I just want to let you
know that some of the yarns may get a little
(01:33):
bit deep, but these are conversations that need to be had,
and I hope that there's something for you that you
can take from it, use it, implement it, or reach
out to us after the show if you.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Do want to have a yarn.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
We're here on the beautiful lands of the Camaagle people,
which is part of the Orination where my family have
been here for over ten generations, probably two thousand generations,
but this is where I call home. They actually got
the absolute pleasure to yarn with a brother, doctor Clinton Schultz,
(02:09):
who I met long, long time ago, but have never
had an opportunity to sit down and have a yarn.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Even with Black Magic Woman.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Going for five years, It's like this was the right
time to be yearning. So brother, can I first say
thank you for taking the time out your busy schedule.
We both live in Queensland, but we get to catch
up here in New South Wales, but thank you for
being part of this partnership series. With Black Magic Women
and got You for life. For people that don't know
(02:36):
your story, do you want to share with listeners your name,
your mob, and a little bit about where you grew up?
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Yeah, for sure, goming into thank you. So my name's Clinton.
I'm a gon Marig millery man myself. So I live
on comber Meria Country. So what most people recognize as
beautiful Gold Coast probably more recognized as the Gray Coast
at present. I swear we have wet seasons up there now,
which is pretty crazy. Yeah, my story is pretty involved
in terms of I guess socialmotional well being, both from
(03:02):
a lived experience perspective through to the work that I
am fortunate enough to be able to do now. And
I guess that all really started, and my story is
well documented and I'm pretty open with it. I think
sharing lived experience really provides others with the opportunities to
learn what has and hasn't worked for others and to
maybe learn something from that and take it on board.
(03:22):
So I guess from when I was about five to fifteen,
I experienced a whole bunch of abuse, psychological, emotional, physical
abuse in the house was a very violent sort of
household I grew up in literally to the point where
my brother and I were literally scared for our lives
quite often, and that obviously caused a whole bunch of
(03:45):
psychological trauma for me, and my way of dealing with that,
I guess, was to turn to drugs and alcohol. So,
you know, I was heavily drinking well before I was fifteen,
probably thirteen, taken a whole bunch of different drugs by
the time I was fifteen. But at the same time
I had responsibilities as well. My mum was trying to
go to university and improve you know, the opportunities for
(04:09):
herself and my little sisters and my little brother at
that stage. So I decided to leave school. Well, school
and I decided to leave each other.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Just wasn't a good match.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
No, it wasn't a good match. But the real, I
guess straw that broke the camel's back was the deputy
principal of the high school that I was at literally
turned around and said to me, I don't know why
we bother. By the time you're eighteen and you're going
to be dead or in jail. And so when your
principal sort of says that to you, you figure, why
am I here, and so I'd had an off I'd
already had about one hundred and sixty days off school
(04:41):
that year and just couldn't handle it anymore, so decided
to take time off. But you know, my mum was
pretty adamant that if I wasn't going to be at school,
I had to be doing something, and so what I
did was I looked after my baby sister, who was
only six months old at the time, during the day
so my mom could go to university and I was
(05:03):
doing a chef apprenticeship at night. So I tried to
keep myself, as I guess, entertained as possible, because if
I wasn't entertained, I was generally in trouble. So while
I was doing that, you know my drug I had
more access to money, I had more access to things,
and I still hadn't dealt with any of my trauma.
(05:24):
So I guess I started using drugs and alcohol even
more and more, and working in hospitality. Anybody who works
in hospitality knows that it's just a rife environment for
drug and alcohol abuse. In itself. It comes with its
whole own set of of triggers and stresses and challenges.
And that just drives trauma further. So I probably did that,
(05:44):
you know, for fifteen years of my life. To be honest,
it wasn't until I had kids that I sort of
pulled my head in a little bit. But I was
really high functioning, which I guess some people might see
as a blessing, but for me, it was also a
bit of a curse because it meant nobody knew how
traumatized I was and I guess what I was going through,
(06:06):
and that left me feeling really alone. So there was
twice in my life where I just didn't want to
be here anymore. And I'm just really fortunate that the
right people were there at the exact right moments to
kind of pull me through that. I'd seen others that
i'd sort of grown up with that couldn't handle the
things that had happened to them either and had decided
(06:27):
to leave this plane, and you know, some of that
kind of had an impact on me, and I was like, well, yeah,
maybe this isn't worth it. So it was a really
lonely place, and as I said, I'm really grateful that
the right people were there at the right time to
pull me through that and to allow me the opportunity
to sort of give back now. But yeah, that fifteen
(06:48):
years where I was abusing, I managed to finish my
chef's apprenticeship, work in some of the best restaurants in Queensland,
travel half of Europe working as a chef, come back,
go to university, complete my psychology degree, do my honors,
and then go out and start working as a psychologist,
mostly in the space of drug and alcohol recovery, while
I was still abusing. So that's why some people go, yeah,
(07:11):
and you know, you were really high functioning, so that's
kind of a blessing. But for me, it was through
that entire time nobody knew kind of what was going
on for me, and so that meant that I didn't
have to deal with my shit.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
To be honest, no one really.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
There was no real accountability to other people because they
didn't know.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Yeah, and I was purposely keeping people separated from me.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
That's what you do, you isolate yourself.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
I'd experienced so much rejection, that's all I knew. I
didn't know how to accept people in because I felt
so rejected. I'd felt rejected in the home, I'd felt
rejected at school. Was more and more feeling rejected by society.
The more I think, as you know, as young Aboriginal men,
particularly as we start to age in this Western society,
the more we become aware of how much society rejects us.
(07:58):
Everything about us, everything that is I guess put out
in this world about what it is to be an
average man is deficit discourse based. It's all negative based,
and obviously some of that's going to soak in and
it starts to become part of your actual being because
it's all you hear about yourself. So you're kind of
left in this space of either questioning your own identity
and your own sense of self or accepting that all
(08:20):
this retric that you're hearing constantly must be the truth
and absorbing some of that. So, yeah, trying to deal
with all of that was pretty pretty difficult, but yeah,
managed to get through it. And culture was really the
thing that's you allow me to thrive in my life.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
That's exactly what I was going to ask in terms
of how do you ground yourself in culture to be
able to be the best version of yourself, especially with
your little family, with your little ones.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Yeah, look, I'm a real passionate advocate for the importance
of culture, but not just not just culture, I think law.
You know, I've been fortunate enough to go through our
processes and to understand that side of it and to
understand the power of it and the healing parts of it,
but also the guidance that allows us to live our
life in a positive way. And so I'm really adamant
(09:08):
about helping people these days to figure out how those
two pieces fit together. What are those parts of our
law that have kept us well with self other than
place across forever, and how do we actually apply those
today in a twenty first century. And it takes a
little while to sort of figure it out, but once
you figure it out, those principles can protect you in
anything that you're actually doing. So I'm far more focused
(09:30):
these days on making sure that I'm abiding by by
our lore than I am with Western law, because if
I'm abiden by these ones, I don't really have to
worry about these other ones as much. I mean, the
racism discrimination that exists in there is still going to
always try and throw a spear in you. But you know,
I can far better protect myself if I'm living my
life through these positive principles that are embedded in our
(09:52):
ways of knowing, being and doing.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
And I've been following your work for quite some time.
The organization that you're working for your heading up now
the First Nation Strategy at Black Dog Institute. Tell me
how you got involved with the institute and just some of.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
The work that you do there.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Yeah, for sure. So I guess I've been involved in
academia for I don't know, fifteen years or something now,
and i'd kind of gone through most of the universities
in Southeast Queensland and swore I was never going back
to academia, and then this opportunity came up at Black
Dog Institute, where it was actually Leilani Darwin had rung
me up and said, look, brother, I think there's a
really good opportunity for you to do something different here
(10:30):
and I can promise you it won't be the same
experiences that you've had in academia previously. And I went, yep,
no worries, So went along, took the opportunity to see
what it was all about. And it's been really refreshing
to work at an organization that is willing to actually
reflect on where it's at rather than to try and
bullshit about where it's at. Yeah, so they've been quite
(10:52):
open to me coming in and saying, look, this is
the work we need to do because this is where
you are on your journey right now, and these are
the things that we need to do before I'm even
going to feel confident in bringing other blackfellows in here
and building the team that we can do the work
moving forward. And I think that was a bit of
a shock for them at.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
First, but a reality check.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Yeah. But as I said, it's been really refreshing to
be in an organization that has accepted that, because that
was my first experience of that. Every other organization I've
ever gone into has asked me to come in to
do a job, and the job has never actually been the.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Job set up properly.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Yeah, it'll be come in and develop aboriginal health programs,
and then all they want me to do is talk
about CTG and deficit based stats, and well, that's got
nothing to do with health. That's all ill health. So
call your course aboriginal ill health if that's what you
want to do, let's not call it aboriginal health. So
coming in now having a lot more freedom to really
focus on social motion wellbeing as a concept and I
(11:49):
guess the holistic concept of that and mental health being
a part of that and looking at how do we
actually apply that within policy practice moving forward?
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And have you got now a big team a lot
of black fellows.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yet, Yeah, we've got quite a big team because we
actually house the Aboriginal to show on the Lived Experience
Center for Suicide at Black Dog. They've been on an
awesome journey. They started in house with us at BDI,
but by September thirty this year, it'll be called ILEX,
so the Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Center is actually moving
(12:24):
to its own standalone entity organization. So having had the
opportunity to help guide them through that process and go
from just being a little in the house team to
now establishing their own charity has been a deadly thing
to be part of. And I think that's really shown
how willing Black Dog's been to truly be a partner,
(12:45):
to not try and pretend that it's the expert in
this space, but to go, hey, we've got the opportunity
and resources, how can we actually use these to help
with your self determination as an entity? And so, yeah,
that's been really rewarding, but it means that half my
team's actually leaving. Then we'll really focus in on our
research and trying to really establish a heavy research presence
(13:06):
of socialmotion well being, particularly in I guess the trauma
and suicide prevention spaces.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I was watching a video of you, my brother, and
you're talking about Abershal psychology, which is not the same
as Western psychology. Can you share with our listeners what
do you mean by it's not the same?
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Yeah, for sure. So when I learned this really early
in my psych sort of journey, I was at university
undertaking psych and it was the first year and I
was sitting there going, this has absolutely no relation to
me or to the mob that I want to work with,
And so I kind of set my mind then to
looking at well, how do I shift that. How do
(13:44):
we broaden the understanding of what psychology actually could be
and make it more practical to people from a whole
bunch of diverse backgrounds. At the moment, it's white as right,
and so that kind of needs to be shifted and changed.
You know, we live in such a multi national country
now multicultural society, that if we don't shift the way
(14:05):
that we allow ourselves to do things, And if we
don't start embracing all the wonderful information that can be
gathered and gained and we can all learn from from diversity,
from embracing diversity, then nothing we're doing is actually going
to fit the population that we're actually trying to serve.
So I guess the big difference is is that I
guess you know, from an aboriginal psychologist perspective, everything's more
(14:29):
about spirit than it is about what's going on just
cognitive or emotionally or within my memories. So it's funny
because the word psychology, if you actually break it down,
it actually, you know, psyche is actually spirit, it's not
the mind. So the field itself, I think sometimes has
stepped away from what it originally was, so we're kind
of trying to drag it back to what it is.
(14:49):
And that's really about understanding the things that are most
important to us and what keeps our spirits strong. And
we know that those things are like connection to culture,
connection to family, connection to law and community, and obviously
physical health and mental health are important, but I think
that there's other facets of our overall well being that
at times a far more influential on our overall experience
(15:15):
than just our mental experience. And so for me, that's
what aboriginal psychology is really about. How do we first
acknowledge that these other parts of ourself are real and
that we can't constantly try and compartmentalize them, And we
have to acknowledge that we're one being, and we're a
connected being, and what happens to any part of us
(15:35):
happens to all, and what happens within our connections happens
to us as well, and vice versa. So we first
have to accept that, and that then allows us to
then look at Okay, well, how do we then harness
the power that can exist in those connections to keep
us strong and deadly moving forward?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
And I was just going to ask a little bit
more of a like personal question now in terms of
looking after your own mental health and building your mental fitness.
And that's what we talk about. It got you for life,
for the programs that we run, building your mental muscles.
What do you do to build your mental fitness? What
do you do to look after your mental health?
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Yes, I do some crazy stuff and then I'll probably
do some more practical, ordinary stuff as well.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
So well, I.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Heard I heard that you have an injury Warrior, Jim,
you obviously have an outlet in terms of hardcore physical activity.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Yeah. So I guess physical activity is always one way
that I've maintained I guess my mental well being. It's
something that works for me. It may not work for everybody.
Doing some level of exercise. I think is important for everybody.
We know that it helps release a whole bunch of
what we'd recognize as the happy chemicals, So it does
help us to feel good. I probably do in excess
of what most people feel is normal. So I've done
(16:47):
a whole bunch of crazy stuff over the last sort
of ten years. Yeah, I did a Ninja Warrior for
a few years, did the show.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And what was that like?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Look, I was more into the competition than I was
the production stead, to be honest. So it was a
lot of hard work for a very period of You know,
it wasn't even that for me because I actually tore
my bicep tend and before I went out, and so
I basically had to just dive into the water because
my arm was hanging off so stop. But my whole
(17:18):
family was there and so I couldn't just pull out.
My kids had been sitting there literally for twelve hours
waiting for me to come out. So I was like,
I'm going out anyway. But yeah, I do ultra marathons,
and you know, went with Joshi Kremer and a bunch
of the other boys and girls a couple of years
ago to do Everest Base Camp, And so I'm always
(17:39):
kind of looking for things that are physical but are
going to push me mentally, Like I hate running, for instance,
Like I really don't enjoy running, but I actually enjoy
the the head from it, to be honest, Like I
enjoy that process of how far can I push myself
until literally my legs are going to give way and
I'm going to fall down on the ground. That's I
(17:59):
guess some of the physical stuff I do some of
the other I really try and engage nature as much
as possible. Like people have probably heard me say a
few times in different places that I spend more of
my free time talking with dead people and trees than
I actually do with living people or reading books that
were want beautiful trees. And that works for me, you know,
Like I've been fortunate enough to be able to learn
(18:22):
how to sit down and allow myself to let go
of the ego and just accept myself as a part
of nature and therefore to learn from nature. And I've
had some of the most important lessons in my life
from just sitting and observing and listening to what's going
on around me. And yeah, so that means sometimes I
do sit there and I ask questions of our ancestors,
and I allow myself to just sit there and wait
(18:43):
till I hear the answers that I need to hear.
I'll sit there and I'll just you know, sit with
a really old forest tree that's been around for hundreds
of years, longer than I'm ever going to have the
opportunity to be on this planet, and just ask it
about questions about life. What is it to live like?
What is it to experience life in its fullest through
(19:04):
anything that can be thrown at us. Because some of
those trees they've sat with, you know, they've been here
for four hundred, five hundred years. They've seen things that
I'm never going to experience, but they're still standing strong.
And I think the trick is letting go of the ego.
I think as human beings, at times, we've allowed ourselves
to be fooled into believing we're more than rather than
just part of and that's switched off a part of
(19:27):
our inateability to connect with.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
All I keep thinking about now is I live on
Cabbycobby Country, and I'll be honest with your brother, in
the last two years of living on two acres, I've
probably touched that grass three times.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And people don't realize.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
And I say this to everyone, you don't need to
go back to country, which for some of us it's
financially not possible to go back to country. But just
taking your shoes off and putting your feet into mother
Earth and recharging your batteries can actually happen in your backyard.
You don't have to go back, you know. I'm in
(20:06):
Kobikby Country. I'm from Rentfern, my dad's from such a
queens and it's just not possible for me to get
in the car and drive ten hours.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Yeah, for sure. It's the same for me, you know,
like my mom originally from downsort of Tamworth, Gunnada, Manilla area,
Like it's eight hour drive, twelve hours with my kids
in the car. So I don't get to go back
to my immediate part of country as often as i'd
like to. But what I have been able to learn
over time, you know, I've been really fortunate to sit
down with a lot of our old healers and law
(20:32):
people around the country and to actually understand how I
guess those that connection and that energy passes through all
of country, Like it doesn't matter where I stand. If
I'm standing, you know, in the dirt, every grain of
that dirt connects to the next grain and eventually it
all leads back to my country. Same as if I'm
on the beach at Burly Heads, Like if I'm in
(20:54):
the water there, well, that water flows all the way
down to wherever the rivers may be flowing out into
the ocean somewhere else. So connection exists everywhere. Again, sometimes
we don't all ourselves to look for what is available.
We get so stuck on what isn't available, what don't
I have? What have I lost? Rather than what is available?
And how can I use that?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Interesting about talking about what's available what I've lost, Because
I was just going to ask you about some of
the challenges within working in the mental health space and
with systems and people that don't quite get it yet.
What are some of the challenges I think that you're
facing today.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
The biggest challenge is feeling like the constant advice that
you're giving is not being taken or not being taken
seriously anyway.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
It's one of the issues I've had for a long
time is we're always asked to be on advisory committees.
We're always asked to give up our knowledge, to give
up our experiences, and we're told that it's for the
betterment of us, that it's going to help improve systems, processes, policies, etc.
For us. But my personal experience has been that we
give far more than what we actually see change come
(22:02):
from in that so I'm a lot more guarded I
think these days, who in where I choose to give.
But at the same time, I do believe that getting
changes within systems and within policy is our best opportunity
to make broad change that can impact as many people
as possible. So I spend a lot of my time
now engaging with politicians because I feel I've got thick
(22:23):
skin and I've got the coping mechanisms in place to
deal with some of the rubbish that can at times
come with that. But two, I do believe that if
I can infiltrate if I can get through even to
its one minister within that cabinet and then they have
a talk to somebody else that that's probably my best
opportunity to get widespread change, more so than when I'm
(22:46):
just working one on one with people.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule
here in Sydney to jump on the podcast. If there's
one words of wisdom, last something to leave with our listeners,
what would it be when it comes to yeah, social
emotional wellbeing.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Don't be afraid to go on your learning journey. I
think that's the biggest issue we have at the moment,
is that we're convinced by others that we shouldn't or
that we don't have the right to, or all this
other stuff that gets in the way of us just
doing what we actually innately know is best for us,
and that's just continue our journey. And it doesn't matter
where you're on that The first steps the hardest part.
(23:27):
So always look for what is it that I already
have available to me now to just take that first
step and that allow me to then get a little
further along the journey and to figure out, you know
who or what else do I need to continue on
that journey.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Deadly well, thank you.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I'm just really happy that we've been able to get
your amazing insight and knowledge and experiences into this amazing
podcast partnership, and I can't wait to work with you
in the near future.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Absolutely really appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Thanks for tuning in to mental fitness conversations. Keep building
your emotional muscles with the free Mental Fitness Gym app,
packed with tools, tips, and everyday actions to support your
mental fitness. Download it from the App Store or Google
play Store, or visit the Mentalfitnessgym dot org. If anything
in this episode brought something up for you, you don't have
(24:23):
to worry alone. Reach out to a trusted friend or
family member and know that support is available. You can
contact Lifeline on one three, double one, one four or
one three yarn at one three nine, two seven six
for free and confidential support for Aboriginal and torrostrad Islander people.
If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a rating, share
(24:44):
it with someone in your village, or drop us a message.
We'd love to hear what you think, and don't forget
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