Better Thinking #111 – Dr James Kirby on Compassion Focused Therapy

Before we start this episode, a brief announcement. As you know, I am very passionate about acceptance and commitment

therapy

and also run a busy practice in Canberra. We are currently looking for registered psychologists in Australia to join our team. We are also passionate about learning about acts. We provide group and individual supervision and training on events. If this is you, if you are interested, please express your interest at Strategicpsychology.com. this episode is okay, life can be crazy, you feel like you're sinking just trying to find meaning, it's time to think

better

, yeah, think

better

, it's time to tune in, welcome back to think better, my name is Nash Nicholas and my guest today. is Dr James Kirby, Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist at the University of Queensland.

He has a wide range of research interests in

compassion

sciences; However, specific areas of research in which he enjoys the majority of his time are the examination of

compassion

-

focused

therapy

. examining compassion with children. fears, blocks and resistance that people have towards compassion and the development and evaluation of compassion interventions. James also holds a Visiting Fellowship at Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and is an Honorary Fellow of the Compassionate Mind Foundation in the UK. I talk about everything, compassion-

focused

therapy and it's a pleasure for me because it's very related to acceptance and commitment therapy, which is one of my interests, so I know you'll enjoy it and I certainly have the models that Dr.

Kirby bring here now. in our conversation is fantastic and very applicable and I think you'll find it, you know, really enjoyable and you know a lot to learn from today's conversation, so enjoy it, James. Thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about something that's dear to your heart. in my heart because it's very close to the acceptance and commitment therapy work that I am, you know, passionate and I have a great love for uh maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and you know our topic today too oh thank you.

Thank you so much for having me again, it's a real pleasure, yes definitely, there are a lot of parallels between compassion-focused therapy, which is a lot of the work I focus on, and acceptance and commitment therapy, actually, many people. I'm really pushing for a kind of integration of the two, as well as people like Dennis Tersh and so on from the US, yeah, so my work is focused on compassion-focused therapy and how it's applied clinically. helping people, but I'm also interested in kind of a decision-making model for compassionate behavior, so that's outside of the kind of clinical realm, I guess, and more in trying to understand, you know, what are some of the costs and benefits.

We, we weigh pragmatically, um, as we choose to be compassionate, can you describe that for some of our listeners? Obviously, we have doctors who listen to us and also lay people who enjoy the space of psychology. A little bit about what compassion focus therapy is for sure, so compassion focus therapy was developed by a person called Professor Paul Gilbert and he developed it probably in the early '80s, but it's had a maybe slow arc to open up. path. to Australia um, so I think the therapies are still shipped by boat, right? Sometimes when Paul hears it's a new therapy, he says no.

I've been writing about this since the early '80s, which of course I love because uh. It was forming before I was born, so I can always stir them up a bit with that, but what Paul was really interested in was evolutionary models for understanding mental health, so he did his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, which had a very large evolutionary psychology department and so he was really interested in how these evolutionary models could help us understand things like depression and that was his main focus and then working with that evolutionary model and working with those with depression, you know.

He was coming into contact with, often with clients, the real difficulty that people had in using an inner tone of voice that was warm and compassionate or kind, if you will, and then that became the real Genesis of compassion-focused therapy that developed because he asked. You know, the clients that I was seeing, you know, would they be willing to try to talk in this kind of inner tone that is kind and friendly and they wouldn't have a chance and that led them to try to unravel what the concerns were? or concerns would be for them if they started trying this kind of alternative way of relating and then Paul, through the evolutionary model, tried to link that kind of relationship style that is warm and compassionate, you know, the internal physiological systems. the body, which of course ties into the way our brain, will then interact with that physiology which obviously influences what I tend to think and feel about it, so you have this kind of big integrative model that tries to link all of those together. processes. on what gives rise to compassion Focus Therapy Can you talk a little bit about how evolutionary models go some way to explaining this anxiety about being compassionate?

Why can we be so hard on ourselves? How is that beneficial? protective and has been helpful to Dayton, obviously, you know how we approach those in therapy, yes, there are a variety of competing factors that have probably shaped our tendency to adopt, at times, very harsh and self-critical attitudes. uh relating styles um and linking them to pause the model one of the core components of your model is often mentioned in its most simplistic form the three circle model of affect regulation and really this is It's kind of linking emotions with motivations, so he proposes this theory, which is called social mindset theory, and part of this theory is the idea that we have these basic social motives that we are trying to implement in order. interact and make sense and meet our basic needs, so it will be things like avoiding harm but equally pursuing things that are really important to us and it could be things like, you know, finding a house, finding a partner, getting food, etc. ., etc., but equally Another important process is being able to be in a state of satisfaction, and that is why they are known as the three circles of threats, self-protection, avoiding damage to the impulse system, which is about pursuing things that are important and then, um. which we often call the blue circle and then a green circle that is linked to the state of contentment or being comfortable and not wanting anymore, so those three are kind of emotional systems linked to specific motivations and what Paul says.

What he postulates is that the red circle threat self-protection system is a kind of our default operating system. It will always hijack attention because it is much safer for you. You know that prevention is better than cure. That is the key principle of that system. So, evolution is not interested in you being happy. Evolution is interested and life is interested in you staying alive, so this threat system often starts very quickly and there are many studies looking at how bad it tends to be. more dominant than the good um in its simplest form and that's why we have a tendency to generate towards that um and equally, therefore, when we have internal threats, they arise within our own mind or dangers or worries or something happens in our environment. that we didn't want.

So a disappointment, a failure, a setback, we can relate to ourselves from that type of threat-based system that has a lot of anger, so emotions are connected, there are things like anger, anxiety, fear, and so we can relate to We walk away from this system with anger and that inward-directed anger is often known as self-criticism. In a sense, it is much better to see danger where there is none than to not see danger where there is danger because you can make that mistake once. and it could potentially be a fatal error compared to if you make a false positive error and you know you're not harmed, well, it's neither here nor there, because you wouldn't have been harmed either way, having said that you know you can be. self-critical or afraid, you know, anxious, uh, or even feeling, you know, helpless and desperate, you know, moving forward, you know, uh, continuing, so it's a very useful model in the sense that we've observed that to be the case. in evolutionary terms, um, you know, but with the kind of space, you know, more conscious and cognitive where we're really looking at how not to override.

I guess, but I appreciate the protection motif more um uh because it has great value and it continues. have great value in today's society oh you are absolutely right so a lot of people will come and some of the goals may be to get rid of that type of threat system because it has been so dominant which makes it perfect. I feel like you know they want to come and it's like, well, what would you like about therapy? It would be like I would hate to feel angry. I want to get rid of this anxiety. I'm sick of feeling it all the time, but Of course, we can't get rid of it, the idea is that it is telling us something important that there is a danger or concern, so there is something there and it is trying to understand what it is so that we can, maybe, as you mentioned, appreciate it more. or understand him better and then also be able to let him know hey, okay, I've got this or calm ourselves down, whatever it is, so we can deal with the situation or event that kind of set off the alarm, so the idea is You know it's there, it's how we work with it that becomes key and for some people the environments they are raised in can cause that system to become highly sensitive so you know if you're growing up in a family. when there's a lot of unpredictability, um and then, uh, when there's some kind of mishap, there's some punitive parenting practices, maybe hitting or yelling, or it's dangerous, one thing you'd like to do in that situation is be very sensitive to any potential .

Anticipated threat or danger and trying to make sure that you're safe or hidden from that, and then of course that potentially generalizes outside of the family home because this has been developed over many years, they have this highly sensitive threat operating system. that realizes this, uh, you know the danger very, very quickly, but then you're in this kind of hiding state constantly and you don't really have this ability to have this sense of freedom, okay, let's pray and let's go ahead and explore . and so on, and we also have environments outside the home that are highly competitive.

So when you have a very competitive environment, a lot of emphasis is placed on where you are compared to others and that can often make sense. of hyper monitoring again social comparison um and then you know relate Styles if he's dominant with the red circle I'm a loser I'm falling behind I'm not that good and then um that can be uh the critical things that can lead to depression and so on, but It can also lead to that really high anxiety and it can overcompensate with perfectionistic behaviors, so it's a real vicious cycle, it's terrible, yeah, I'm hearing, you know, There's a lot of overlap as well with some of that schema, uh, terminology. of working with, you know, the sensitive, you know, uh, you know, the way or the vulnerable child, um, or the protector, uh, and they all have merit and value in keeping us or you safe.

Obviously I know how to do different tasks, but I also hear some of the examples that we can often hear as therapists and from others are also those really extreme cases where you know there's physical violence or abuse and things like that. but it's actually that competitive side uh uh, in addition to knowing those other, more, um, you know, sharp, uh, scary things that many of us live in on a daily basis, as you know, the competitive nature is there all the time. with or without a difficult family life, that's exactly right. I mean, we don't have to have experience in that type of family of origin, which is just a tragic experience to have to go through.

And adverse childhood experiences are quite common. It's awful. but equally you could have had a wonderful family of origin with a lot of warm memories and you know security and you enjoy, but being in a context that is very hypercompetitive where you know whether or not you get a bonus is based on how many sales you make or um and those kinds of key performance indicators uh over time tend to go up, not down, so it becomes increasingly difficult, and sometimes, to get into that and uh, and often we're, we're counted from a kind of perspective. cultural, um, it's really how hard you try or how much information you put into it that will determine the outcome, um, it relates to that kind of Pursuit of Happiness idea that I just have to keep pushing, pushing, pushing, um, that's easy to do to a certain extent if everything else is taken care of, but if you're juggling competing demands, caring for, say, an elderly parent orhaving to hold down a couple different jobs to pay the rent and So it's very difficult to pursue the things that are most intrinsically rewarding for you as you're trying to make sure that the other people in your life are being taken care of, so The competitive mentality of push, push, push can really undermine one's mental health. and and have really disastrous impacts, so the compassion approach therapy attempts to get out of a dominant competitive mindset and particularly in relation to oneself and shift towards a compassionate motivation.

I'm in many ways listening Just being human means you know you're a part of this. space and you know if you're lucky enough to be able to use that terminology, you know we have parents that allow us to use some stereotypes, you know that mom, mom is a lawyer and your dad is a doctor, you know the context in relational frameworks uh, you know it's good. , you know that the doctor is good, the lawyer is good, right, and you know that other vocations are bad, that they are lower in comparison because of the amount of money they bring home, but in an environment where we apply good and bad , create, you know, a space of just being born into a family, you can, you know, have pressure, even if mom and dad are very supportive, um, and, and, you know, encouraging, you know the journey of a child, uh, of anyway, the mind will shut down. and play those tricks and say how can I maintain a higher level of survival and that's what I potentially need to maintain mom and dad's approval and the only way to do that is to beat them, you know, or achieve, you know, their level.

I think they, uh, you know, want me to aspire to um and hence that harshness, um, can you talk to me and I hope I've gotten that? I hope I got it, that's right in your mind too, um, can you talk to us? a little bit about the resistance that people have towards you, you know this, you know, the strange concept of being kind and compassionate and understanding yourself, yes, no, absolutely, so Paul when I was starting to use this kind of approach of compassion and I think that's probably a good point to make as well.

Paul deliberately called it a compassion focus because the idea is that we will use scientifically supported interventions, but we try to do them with perhaps this compassionate motivation as the kind of key driver of how we engage. with that process, so it could be exposure, for example, we would definitely be doing exposure, but as we do it, we might orient ourselves in a way that's focused on compassion, same thing with mindfulness, etc., all those core practices What do we see, excuse me. through therapies, you know, if they are supported and the science indicates that this is actually a key ingredient for change, that will be part of the compassion-focused therapy approach, James, if I could chime in, could you talk to us?

How would that look different when you're oriented from a compassion perspective, let's use exposure as an intervention, how does exposure with compassion look different or what are the added elements that you would bring to the table for clients, yes, absolutely, one of the First things to do then is know how you connect with the client and work with them through that initial kind of therapeutic relationship building connection, etc., if we are going to use this part of the compassion-centered approach. This will be psychoeducational, so talking about fear and how you can associate and that it's not your fault that you didn't choose to fear fear and that it's just part of the design of the Human Being, it's just built in. um and part of that is trying to create um kind of a shameless experience for the client around the origins of whatever fear or phobia that may be if it's the case of exposure and part of that is trying to help. the person doesn't feel ashamed knowing that they have to seek therapy for this or that there's something wrong with them for having um maybe this really intense fear so part of it is that no one chooses to have these humans this is what happens is part of the human experience and, of course, that's not your fault, so the next part is moving on to being okay, well, one of the ways we could help with this is through this process of, you know, exposure It's an interesting word.

It is not like this? I don't care for the term exposure, but I was listening to people talk about different ways of referring to that exposure process and I heard someone say well, with kids you forgot the person's name, with kids they like to use courage. . quests I just thought it sounded like a much cooler name for exposition and courage. Search um it sounded like an adventure, something fun, something I'd like to do, whereas if I was in therapy with a client, a therapist would say, oh, let's do exposure, I'd say, wait, what the heck, what's exposure? , exposing feels like you have this nakedness or vulnerability, um, whereas a quest for courage sounds like it's Indiana Jones and it also creates intention, creates, you know what?

Am I possibly going to need to present this space? Do you know why I'm doing this? And you know, in many ways, it's a quest where we're trying to discover and be curious about what's going on. you know, I think I think adults can benefit as much as children from that kind of language because you know we're all, you know, tangled, tangled beings tied to language, uh, I love it, I'm obviously feeling that for Sure, thanks to your colleague, whoever it was, was something I saw on Twitter and all these different names were mentioned and that one really resonated with me, and I suspect you already know many others, but there are probably other wonderful ways.

We could call this kind of learning process, you know, different ways that we connect with whatever stimulus or thing that scares us, but then the next part is after we go through all that. of creating a compassionate mind as we go through that and so a type of compassionate mind requires a number of different things, but the general principle is to try to connect our bodies and remember this type of compassionate mind that that type has of the core characteristics of wisdom and the wisdom part is this idea that you know it's not your fault that we're experiencing this, but you're trying to find ways to be useful to yourself, then a strength part and that's that strength that comes from the core of the body and the body posture work that we might do and then the engaged part that is, you know, I'm going to try to engage with what's difficult, to help achieve a life that's meaningful to me. .

So we imagined what it would be like to have, you know, an orientation towards life shaped by those three qualities and we built it up a little bit and then we exposed this compassionate mind and therefore the idea that there is then, as you go through the exposure, if that exposure has not happened, you know that you are going through it and you are working on it if after the process a person reflects on their exposure and their style of relationship with themselves. still very textured by self-criticism there may be this type of critical language oh look, he only made 40 of your hierarchy that's rubbish what's wrong with you someone else would be higher up?

I bet the therapist thinks you're weak, you know this? These kinds of things can happen if you haven't potentially addressed that internal relationship style as you do tasks that have some kind of outcomes associated with them, whereas what we would expect is that with this compassionate mind you went through that and if it wasn't okay being able to validate the pain that went away with that, but also being able to then, you know, cheer yourself up and notice yourself and remind yourself, hey, look what you've done, look what you were able to do. do and then encourage to try again um uh Maybe not right away, but encourage again to commit if you want to the action in many ways.

I'm hearing that there is almost a parenting style or approach that it comes from. seeing that part within yourself and or maybe not in nurturing a relationship is better language. I think there's an understanding or an observation that there's a part of you and you know how someone can relate to those parts, you know if it's the critical part that could actually be the protector that says, hurry up, you know, move on, you know, yeah, they're going to leave you behind, you're, you're pathetic, you know everyone else is, it's better and faster and you know your therapist is, you know, wasting time on you, whatever that is, you know that's kind of of um uh, presenting that, you know, in a sense, how we relate to that, seeing that and then also.

I guess analyzing that, you know, looking at the modality of the mode where it comes from or the intention and relating to it as you say. I think from a place of wisdom and strength and maybe even a commitment to learning from it rather than doing it. to get something absolutely right, I mean, it's amazing because, you know, and this kind of links with your first questions about fears and resistances, um, as we start to bring that, you know, fears and resistance come up immediately. , things like you know they won. Wouldn't it be compassion if I were compassionate to myself, wouldn't it just be me?

I left my standards. I won't be motivated. I won't try hard enough for this kind of thing to come up, but still, if you were to. use a different example and ask them, you know, if it was someone very close to you, like a friend that you cared about, who was going through the same process of using the exposition example and was trying to do it and then had an experience that It didn't go so well and they were upset, what would you say to them? Well, how would you feel about them? And almost immediately they'll say things like, "Oh my God, you did so well." I mean, this is very difficult and look how. stressed you're getting there you're trying this is just fantastic um and you're like okay so that's what you offered there that's fantastic how do you feel doing that with yourself and they're like oh no, no way? the world and it's kind of like, well, what makes you want to tell them that?

Oh, you know, you know, I'm just trying to help them, so I thought, how does it feel to offer you that same kind of oh no, no? you know, they know the wisdom of how to help someone else encourage, you know, encourage them, you know, my son is six and a half years old and every time he tries something new and recently he's been pushing the limits by riding his bike when he he falls like he's not yelling at him and yelling at him and telling him that he's failed and that he's an idiot um you get close okay you get close hey you're okay you look at him um you change your tone of voice subtly and all this um subtle changes in close eye contact uh , gentleness in the voice, you know, all of these are trying to not only make the other person feel safe, but also encourage them to try again something that they just learned, it's dangerous, to do it again and try again.

So you can tone it down a little bit, but then you pick up the energy and think you're doing great. I think you can do it again, you know? And then they leave and the idea is that you know compassion wants to encourage you to do it. Try it, but try to do it in a way that's helpful rather than degrading or making you feel lousy, so a lot of people really identify with or rely a lot on this kind of fear-based impulse and What we're suggesting is largely the aspect. from the competition, but what we suggest is another way that we believe will be more helpful and encouraging in the long run to help you thrive and that's more from an ecological basis. uh, drive what you're striving for, um, however, even knowing that things are dangerous and that's why you're doing it with the therapist together collaboratively because it's something that really still creates a lot of pain, it's interesting because We Often, in our you know, our educational systems are set up in many ways this way, the factory degrades, says, says something, there are inadvertent messages instead of asking students to complete tasks and keep giving feedback on the fact that they are great. attached to it immediately goes out and sets up a different space, you know, I remember we actually did our master's some time ago and there was I think it was a semester, but they, they, the school changed the focus and they said we're not going to grade , that's going to be pass, fail, oh yeah, uh, the cohesion that emerged in terms of the group, you know, we immediately set up a study group, so we all got together and sat around the Redwood Round Table, right?

You know? all these conceptualized cases, you know, studies that we needed to do and share all our resources and everyone was raising each other and so on, it was absolutely beautiful to see, you know. It was a big difference from the competition based one and unfortunately it came back. I don't know what they're doing today, but he came back and you know. I remember we all scratched our heads and said, yeah, yeah, you know. We learned a lot that semester and our competence must have increased, you know, because we were much more engaged, you know, we were no longer under threat and trying to study, we were actually encouraged and we enjoyed it a lot more and that's what I guess that's what What you're saying here, is that you know, even if you're learning a skill or you know yourself, it doesn't have to be a cracking of the whip, it doesn't have to be a competition-based space. you might know one of support kindness compassion you know curiosity uh and you know that theResearch backs that up and says there's something really good, you know the long term is coming and I guess the long term is the key here because, I'm pretty sure we could go and crack the whip and get people to do a Super Why. um, but there's a difference between external performance in terms of you know how many widgets you made versus how do you identify yourself internally?

That's right, yeah, I mean, I mean the example you gave just before, it was fantastic about how you can pull these external levers and it can immediately change the way we start to see others and support each other, and yes You have that kind of safe and encouraging environment that is provided to you. One of the automatic things you'll start to see is cooperation and connection just starts to flow, which is obviously what we're trying to do. Internally for clients too, sometimes it's about figuring out where these rules come from, you know how long these rules have been around, you know, and often in CFT it's a case of, you know the rules there, so I'm not a failure. , you know that, but as Paul would discuss, the fear of failure is like a mid-level fear in CFT, so it goes down to a deeper level again, so what would the fear of failure be, you know what? would be the worry there and then the worry behind it that's usually connected to this idea that well, people don't want to be around someone who's a failure, so there's an underlying sense of fear that I'm going to be disconnected from others. and people won't want to be with me, which is a core fear for many, but that idea is like an evolutionary model of rejection that you know, yeah, rejected, oh, I'm alone and therefore, you know I can be attacked.

I have no one to support me, uh, absolutely, so like a lonely monkey, monkeys are dead monkeys, humans are hypersocial, we need people from the moment we are born to the moment we leave the world and the idea of nomadic tribes and movement, you know it and it is dark at night, if you were lost you would hope that someone would remember you and not forget you and come look for you because otherwise it could be that you meet a very dangerous and terrible situation, for What the idea of ​​not being connected is a core of fear, particularly for mammals and humans, and the idea is that in the school context or in super competitive environments, making mistakes is almost stigmatized, you know that you can't make a mistake. , so you see this in a class. environment all the time as you know, I'm a constituency at uq and um, our courses, uh, at postgraduate still have qualifications attached to them, but a lot of the work is competency based, where you take them to practice skills and, uh, each other. . but there is a huge fear of practicing those skills in front of each other for fear of what happens if I make a mistake.

You know you're going to think I'm not a good therapist or you know your question of why they took me to that. the program I'll be exposed space that's perfect um I mean I remember experiencing that myself you know I went through that process too um you know who's watching me do this or who I'm paired with or is it the teacher that's watching me but the idea is that often when someone realizes a mistake, you know, and we're judged for the mistake, we're kind of disconnected from what they were trying to do and the process and often the kind of story they have at the time. making mistakes is that you just have to try harder, which is related to the more you know, and it's not very clear what you mean by harder etc., whereas you really want people to have this.

Kind of a freedom to move around when they learn these things, giving them the opportunity to play with these concepts and strategies that we're providing so that they can start to understand how they work and how they play out, you know, in AI designs. Well, they've tested whether or not we preprogram them before we put rules in them or we don't give them any real programming and let them just play and make mistakes and then let them into the system. What works with AI programming? better ones and those where they simply allow them to play and learn all the dynamics by themselves.

It's more successful once it's built into the systems and sometimes I feel like we lose that as humans a lot of the time, even as a parent, as you know. We can be so critical of ourselves for constantly getting it right and it's like we lose the joy that comes with being a parent and connecting with kids knowing that we don't have to have the right answer about how to parent, uh, you know that every second of every day. because they'll just burn you, um, I love that question about, you know, how long has that rule been around? talk about their childhood, you know they'll realize it happened very early and you know it creates that conversation of a functional analysis around you, you know how that came about, why that came about, you know what.

Were you trying to make it at the time? You know, and really how it was reinforced and therefore adopted. You know, because he ended up being the ruler. You know, a rule. And so we tend to live by that. I love it. that those particular types of phrases and questions, you know, I think really reveal a lot to clients, yeah, it starts a, you know, a very curious thought, um, um, uh, or you know a line of thought and you know, I guess that that place of curiosity is also quite compassionate and I'm, yes, even after talking to you, a lot of this, whether it's parenting, is not about trying to locate a certain outcome, but more about how can you acting towards that, whether it's We, as clinicians, how can I be with my clients or potentially even how can I be with myself in a session and obviously following up with the client on how they can be with their?

You know, rules, thoughts, you know, beliefs, fears, judgments, etc., you know, no. exactly what you just summarized is exactly what we're looking for from a kind of compassion-centered lens, it's starting to recognize that there you know we can take so much responsibility for A lot of what's happened to us is that they're not really things about that you had control, like you know that you did not ask to be born, there are many births. Lottery involved, you know you weren't asked to be born right now. time in this particular region and with all these things happening, we can still take a lot of responsibility for where we are in a given context and that part of shamelessness that Paul really tries to emphasize and attack.

Any given moment is crucial to try to shift the person to a more playful orientation, it doesn't mean that he is viewing his distress in a dismissive way, not at all, but the idea is if you can start to shame the person you know . We are getting them out of a mindset that is really structured by competitiveness, whereas when they see me as inferior or superior, I prefer a compassionate and reassuring attitude where mistakes are just part of the journey and we can't stop. those things happen, but wouldn't it be great if you were less scared or when they happened because you could support yourself in a way that could validate you and encourage you to continue to pursue or pivot or do whatever it is that allows you to live a life of meaning? , so drawing on a lot of attachment theory is something fundamental for Paul, so of course it's an evolutionary model, so you know, part of it is trying to create within the person their own safe haven so that can calm her down and help her compose herself and ground herself when, you know, the thing hits the fan, and at the same time give them this secure base so they can take on something. which you know is challenging, a little scary, a little risky, but it's something you want to explore and seek, so you have the freedom or the opportunity to feel safe and what we mean by safe is you.

I have that kind of feeling that I can go out and explore knowing that if it doesn't go well you can come back as that inner refuge or if you can't necessarily do it yourself, you have people around you. willing to resort instead of what we tend, many of us tend to do is like, you know, repress the mask and hide, is that shame, the most process of The Upfront, you know, the earlier stages of compassion. Focus therapy. you know from a place where you know that you are not responsible for all of these aspects, you know that you could be responsible for some of your actions, certainly, but that also has to be considered within the context and you also know that within the environment and obviously, depending on age, etc., etc., but all the other things around you, um, you know, are completely out of your control, you know, and you know that includes, you know, automatic thoughts, there's a continuous stream of thoughts that they are going to emerge. critical um and maybe it was said from somewhere or maybe it was, you know, built into the system through language proficiency and things like that, but uh, uh, you know, we're trying not to be in debt with, you know, being responsible for how everything has changed. or even who we are as human beings or what happened to us, you know sometimes we can, you know, clients can feel like you know what's happened to them, you know it because of them exactly, so yeah, that process of what we find is when you go through that D shaming, the client's energy really increases when trying trainers, yeah, and I want to try something different or I want to do something that makes amends or repairs, there's an immediate responsibility that we almost take on right after them.

I've been shamed, whereas if you shame someone, often what happens is the person gets defensive or they justify what they did, yeah, but you know this was happening or something, or they'll try to humiliate the person. person. Oh yeah. but you're just in your first days as a therapist, right? Know? If you inadvertently embarrassed your client, you could receive that response. So the idea is that once we get past that kind of you know, try to get to wherever. We can help the client feel embarrassed by his experience. Normally what follows is an immediate type of desire.

Well, I want it to change and that is the language related to the responsibility of speaking. I mean, sometimes we use simple examples. As you know, if you come back and you go to a parking lot and you park your car and someone hits it and someone hits it, you know it's not your fault but they hit it, you parked it in the lines and all that, but it sure is still your responsibility, You know, get the car out of there, prepare it, do whatever it takes, so you can get it home, so you know that there are a lot of things that happen in life that are definitely not our fault, but we still take them. responsibility for um and sometimes we make a choking joke about this topic in therapy groups, so we might say something like you know, you know, we take responsibility for hygiene and we spend a lot of time even practicing and developing with the children the potty training skills. etc., someone felt like they had to do things like go to the bathroom.

You know, just because you have to go to the pool doesn't mean you're a bad person. You know, it's just part of what we do. about how to learn to work with it in a way that you know is going to be okay and not cause harm and it's the same with these other ways, other parts about how our human experience, like our mind, so how do we work with it? our mind and, tragically, a lot of people, as you know, Nash, come to therapy, not knowing much about how their mind works and, again, not because it's their fault, because it's just not part of the curriculum, you know, it's just you know. the idea is that I should be able to turn my mind off whenever I want and of course just not work like that and you know, that's not the clients fault, tragically it's me who went into psychology myself, I wasn't aware. you know that's how the mind works, so unless you're in our field and in our space, often this kind of understanding of how the mind works and how the mind works when it's around other Minds, it just doesn't work. it's common knowledge, just choosing From what you said and I hope I understood correctly and in no way am I suggesting that this is how therapy works, but in a sense there may be times when if we cultivate the red circle um, you know , the protective um space there, it becomes an impetus to say well, if not I necessarily have to put all my efforts into suppressing this, holding this down, taking responsibility for these things, um, it kind of frees me from the shackles. . of that to a certain extent and it starts to move into the Blue Zone, yeah, yeah, of saying, you know, you know what, what can I do, you know how can I push some of this forward and you know some of my values, you know that too. appreciating what some of the protector drivers were and so on um uh and I hope to capture this so that you know a little bit well, where does the satisfaction come from, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, it's the great one, that's the green circle, right, um yeah, no, it's hitting um no and you're capturing doing that cool I mean, part of it is if you're constantly and I think this is similar to acting like you're monitoringwe set up a The environment you know really considers these things and not in terms of oh yeah, you know we used this color scheme and it's like no, no, on every level.

I like, yeah, the fact that we have these types of curtains that are a little bit more. wavy and the fact that we could have shutters that go down or down to reduce the temperature, um or you know the lighting, which are all on a dimmer switch and so on, etc. it's an Instagram because you know it means you know, I think you know that adds um you know every little bit counts and and and and you know that's I mean we definitely know that as parents and you know that as humans actually. Um, so, yeah, you're trying to create a safe environment.

I remember reading a really powerful cross-cultural psychology book. I have forgotten the name. I can't believe the author escaped me, but they talked about it. Organizing the Rwandan genocide in the United States sent a lot of mental health professionals to help, you know, everyone process the intense traumatic experience of that genocide. You know, a lot of people died and members of their families died and some terrible things were being done right. trying to help with the post-genocide experience, they sent all these psychologists to help and it got to a point where their head of health in the Rwandan government brushed aside the American contingency and simply said, "We don't need your help anymore we have to send you back home um and they say why is that and they say, well, you're making things worse, you're taking people into these rooms with nothing on them and they can't see outside and it's kind of like a fluorescent room, while they What we do when we talk about things we sit outside with other people and often sing or something to process difficulties or pain in the past and what you're doing is completely different than how we would process, you know, pain hurts in that kind of, ya you know, tragedy scale and it's like we can be so quick to impose, this is how we do things, uh, forgetting maybe the context of where the person is coming from um and how we can make some subtle variations in our external environment so that they feel safer um and in a room that has no windows or vegetation, nothing, you know, it's not particularly pleasant, it reminds me of the TV show Severance, you know you walk into Severance, they have an inside and outside world and in this world The interior is all sterile and white, um, it's almost as if even from an evolutionary perspective they talk about that culture, um, you know, with the The example of Rwanda has something that is that you know the clinical and Stark you know that that's going to create a really big red circle and then it's like you know we're going to try to process this right, you know it's actually going to be horrible, you know it's actually counterproductive and it can make things worse, you know, just from that perspective, So what was happening to them?

And yes, it is very true. I remember talking to a cross-cultural psychologist and in therapy she said that. you know, often speaking in a second language can be helpful because it can provide this kind of um in therapy can provide a little bit of distance they can talk maybe more openly about the difficulty because it's no longer entangled in, say, cultural tradition, maybe applications and So there is a freedom that can become in speaking in English and in therapy, but at the same time it also has a big drawback because there are times when they cannot fully describe what they are feeling and what is happening.

They will be on the tip of her tongue and she says: I only tell them in those moments. Say it as if you were speaking your native language, so use your native language and say out loud what you are experiencing. She says. the way they express it, you can pick up through all of them verbally what they feel and want to say and it comes out a lot more and you've given them space to be able to do that and that's it. kind of a recognition of seeing it again in them and giving them the opportunity to invite them to express it that way in a safe environment and then allowing them to say how you feel now or what happened then and um and she often says those moments are very emotionally powerful. .

Absolutely powerful stuff. Powerful things. James. I'm, I'm, uh, uh. I am aware that you also have a book that you have written because I would love for you to know how to learn, learn more and me. I'm sure there are plenty of other people you know who are also listening to this and would like to know more. Can you tell us a little about the book? How did it come about? Is it about choosing compassion? Why is it important and how does it work? um maybe you can tell us a little bit about your book, what you cover and also you know where we can go out and find it to find out more oh no thank you yeah I started writing this book right before. to covert so the publishers contacted me and said if I would be interested in writing a book about compassion and um uh I sat down and had a cup of coffee and got excited about the idea of ​​the big blue circle and said, well, let's do it. and then a week later he whitewashed his and, it took me about two and a half years during that process to write it, you know, I just have to thank my wife because I'd be under the stairs trying to pick this apart at night. um and she had a handful with the kids um and I'm just a red circle trying to sound out words, but the book itself um Christopher doesn't explain what we mean by compassion, like what compassion is uh and you know Define it as a sensitivity to suffering, uh, in yourself, but also in others, um, and then with a commitment to try the best we can to alleviate or prevent the suffering, so then I unpack it, you know, uh, uh, where this kind of you know.

The construction came about because it is simple on the surface but becomes complex very quickly. You know that we are compassionate to some but not to others. A big fear that you mentioned before is that if I am compassionate to these others, I lose a lot of my resources and if we give this group all of these resources well then I don't have them and I might need them because I'm going to go through hard times at some point such time um so these can be fears and blockers of compassionate behaviors between people and between groups, so I look at those kinds of things, but then I look at how compassion develops within the family and how those experiences and the family can act as great promoters of compassion, but they can also act as great promoters of compassion. creating people so that they start to see compassion in a fear-oriented way, they may start to be afraid of it, uh, for very valid reasons, and then talk about compassion programs and how they can help cultivate compassion and how people can have difficulties with self-compassion and that takes up the first half or two-thirds of the book and then I start looking at Compassion Across Cultures and how compassion can collapse pretty quickly.

It's interesting that we are going to have great compassion for a person who is suffering, but as soon as that number increases to two, our level of compassion drops a little bit, so the higher the number, it's almost paradoxical, the higher the number. of suffering, the less our compassion becomes and there are a couple of theories about why that is the case, one of the most important is this term called pseudoinefficacy, which refers to this idea that well, with a person I have a sense of effectiveness of being helpful, but if it's too helpful, I can't be that much more helpful to two people than one and because of that kind of discrepancy, my compassion towards both of them has diminished and then of course, if you scale that up to Millions, Do you know what I could do to help?

That came to mind in at least from a logical perspective you immediately know that when you have one you can do something about it and I can be very action oriented jump into the blue um like where you know if it's big enough um you know we could be daunting and you know what I can achieve and and paroxysm you know here we are in a world where we are actually trying to do more of that, but that is maybe because we are more secure the fact that now you know because My children are safe and well and I don't have than worrying about the individual.

Now I can look at the group. You know more and more, but I'm sure if I lived even in Rwanda today or if you know Sierra. Leone or where it might be and you know those that you know in many different countries in the world uh I think I would be very still focused on that um it would be much more difficult to be um you know, looking at myself in a broader community, yeah, no, it It gets complicated very, very quickly, and that's nobody's fault, it's just that it's very complicated, yeah, and you can get the book, um, online or in one, you know, all the good bookstores.

You can go check it out there if you want to get a printout from the store, but yeah, if you just typed, choose compassion on Google, but I can also send you a link to Nash and I definitely will. Make sure we put it as part of the blurb on um on our website online as well. Very sorry. I should probably cut you off there. You should probably say the book isn't. This is really a training book on how to become a compassion-focused therapist, nor is it a self-help book, the book is really about trying to unravel what we mean by compassion, although there are a couple of chapters in which I do.

Focus a lot on mental health and, um, I'll walk you through a couple of little exercises, but they're very minor within the book just to clear that up, no, no, thank you, look, I appreciate that space, I think there's, ya You know. Value in all kinds of books, but that space is certainly one I lean a lot more into. I find that understanding something from a philosophical level is much more complicated and tends to be integrated and has much more application. In my mind, you know, so yeah, trying to become a therapist. I think that you, you, you, you're a human being first and you're understanding these things, uh, and obviously with our training we help how to apply them, but the understanding is is and the nuances around it, so, you know. today's conversation is very important, the question I asked a moment ago is, where online can people find you?

Is there a specific place? or it is also quite broad. But. Yeah, you could look on Booktopia Amazon Book Depository, all those places will have them, I mean you can go to the publisher's website, which is a uqp, dot com.u. I want to save, we will be. Able to find it now, obviously you're also a full professor of Clinical Psychology at uh uq um uh, guys, do you have a place? So let's give them a quick plug while we're there because I think I interviewed them. I also know some of your colleagues, I'm doing a great job, oh, I've noticed on your podcast, uh, Matt Sanders, Alan Pegner and the like, there's something fantastic, uh, uh, I actually feel very lucky to be able to talk with you. to these experts and get their ideas oh that's ridiculous no lovely lovely thank you so much uh so much how can people get in touch if they would like to find out more through the School of Psychology?

Yeah, absolutely, I mean, type my name into Google James Kirby should come up uh type in school psychology if you wanted I'm also on Twitter um although Twitter seems to be a funny world uh right now I'm on Twitter uh on James and Kirby and I tweet all the time. time and tweet lots of different things all connected to compassion so you can also message me there but it's very easy to find brilliant brilliant James thank you so much. I really appreciate you knowing to have the opportunity to talk to you and I also appreciate you taking the time and giving us a good 101.

I will definitely be purchasing a copy of your book too, it's something I think you know it deserves. a lot of attention to read and then and then analyze, you know, there's so much complexity, I know we've only talked very briefly, you know, scratch the surface, there's a lot more there, so I can get my hands on it. in a copy and uh yeah, thank you so much for your time today oh no, thank you so much, this podcast was amazing, please support it by going to iTunes and posting a review, subscribe, share it through social media and tell others. a conversation it is listeners like you who make this possible and that is why we bring in these guests to come out and share their knowledge and resources and lastly if you are a psychologist and you want to go out and be part of a larger team , develop your expertise and embark on exciting work, visit Strategicpsychology.com, advance your careers and contact us.

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