Episode #28 Managing Expectations of Ourselves as Busy Helping Professionals

Hi, this is Welcome to Self ™ Caring for the Human in the Therapist Chair, and I’m your host, Dr. Hayley D Quinn, fellow human, clinical psychologist, supervisor and trainer. Welcome to Self ™ is a place where you can come and learn ways to elevate your own care and compassion. A place to rest, be soothed, and at times maybe gently challenged to think about yourself and your practice. A place to remember that you are human first, choose the helping profession is just one of the roles in your life. My aim is that this is a place of soothing, comfort, nourishment, growth and nurture. A place where you can also welcome your self.

Hi and welcome to another episode. I’d like to take a moment of gratitude for Em who left me a message on social media. Em said,

“Loved your episode with Russell Kolts. Thank you for your podcast and the loveliness you bring to the world of social media and beyond”

Aawww thank you so much Em, that’s such a beautiful comment. I really do appreciate when you take the time to comment and give feedback, it really helps me feel connected to you all and it’s really useful for knowing what you would like to hear about on the podcast or who you would like to hear me interview.

My next guest is the wonderful, Michaela Thomas. Michaela is a Clinical Psychologist, Couples Therapist and author of the book The Lasting Connection – on developing compassion for yourself and your partner.

Michaela specialises in perfectionism, helping stressed busy people find balance over burnout to follow their ambition without drowning in it. She currently runs a group coaching programme for ambitious women called Burn Bright.

It is my pleasure to welcome Michaela on to the podcast and I hope you enjoy this episode and find it helpful.

Michaela Thomas
Thank you very much for having me. I feel like I’m already sort of greeted by a warm image of seeing you and your Self Care Club top there. So it’s going to be great.

Hayley Quinn
Trying to stay warm, it’s cold over here in Australia at the minute. So do you want to start with telling us a little bit about yourself and what your career as a helping professional has looked like?

Michaela Thomas
Sure. So I was born and raised in Sweden. So I sort of lived there and right into my sort of early adulthood and I did my psychologist training there and my CBT training and then I moved across the UK in 2010. I got a job in eyeappt, improving access to psychological therapies. And at the time, I was really passionate about that in the incentive there, you know, initiative, trying to kind of get into primary care psychology. And in order to go across, I had to do another sort of round of CBT training, because obviously, it’s really hard to get your qualifications approved.

But eventually HCPC approved my psychologist qualification. So I am then qualified both as a CBT therapist and a psychologist in this country, I didn’t get to use a fancy doctor’s title. Unfortunately, that’s sort of one of my little impostor syndrome, little shame things showing up sometimes that I can’t say I’m a doctor. Slightly different academic systems. But yeah, so I worked in eyeappt for seven years in London, in two different services. And I had a lovely episode of burnout in each one we can sure we can touch upon that later on. So that meant that after the birth of my first child, I came off maternity leave came back to work and with the intention to just hand in my notice and serve out my notice period, because I already knew that this is not sustainable. This is not a way I can continue to work whilst I also have these priorities or looking after a actually quite poorly child at the time. So that sort of tapping into my values there, I then made a bit of a pivot. I’d already been running my private practice for about three years at that point, but only one day a week. So it’s very small. So I moved into a different role. I was heading up a staff clinic, CBT clinic for staff, healthcare professionals at a major London hospital. So I did that one day a week at the same time as serving out my notice period for eyeappt and I continued to stay there for another year. But again, I felt like the bright mind that I have and triggers myself criticism to say so but I do have quite a bright mind that gets very bored if I don’t get it implement my bright ideas. And I have that as a theme from both working in eyeappt. And in the staff clinic that actually I was just sort of sat there, I had all these ideas, but the wheels were turning too slowly that in the year I was there, even though I was hired to do things like start webinars, podcasts starting to do sort of broader outreach, running workshops for staff, it took a year and I barely did anything, because getting the approval from the powers to be takes so long. So the sort of self practice of refraction grips, I wanted to run all of these things that they were just quite blocked by the system. So eventually, I just felt I want to go somewhere where I can make more impact. So I’ve been growing my private practice more and more. I’d taken on a couple of associates, and since 20, early 2018, was it? Yeah, 2018. I have just been doing fully private practice. So that’s about four and a half years now that I’ve been doing that. And then I’ve had another mat leave, which I’m slowly coming off now. But yeah, I’m very multi hyphenated. So since I feel like most of the things I feel proud of in terms of my career achievements have happened since I took my foot out of public sector health care. So I’ve published a book, I run a, you know, a very well appreciated podcast, I run corporate talks and workshops, I’m a speaker, I run group coaching programmes, I do one to one therapy, I have associates, I do supervision. I even do therapy for psychologists and therapists, which is a bit of a niche in itself. So yeah, I do a lot of things. I’m very multi hyphenated. And sometimes people ask me, what does that mean? Well, it just means that you are an author, hyphen, speaker, hyphen, podcaster, etc. And I’m multi passionate, and that makes me feel like I can thrive in my career.

Hayley Quinn
That’s fantastic. So you’ve had some diversity in the things you were doing, it sounds like you realise that you needed that more of a sense of autonomy, and being able to actually act on the things that you were thinking about doing rather than sitting around waiting for other people to tell you that you could do those things.

Michaela Thomas
Exactly. And I think that’s, sometimes people say after they’ve been in private practice for a while, that they are now sort of unemployable. They couldn’t go back to being employed. And I think that’s not a nice way of saying that, actually, you’ve now stepped into your leadership, you now stepped into your power, your autonomy. And that wouldn’t mean that you wouldn’t be possible to be employed again, but it just means that you have had enough of systems that are very slow.

That’s probably where I am. I’m not sure I would ever be employed again, because I just love the freedom and the flexibility or what I do.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s not that you’re not employable, it’s that perhaps you wouldn’t want to actually be in those confines of being employed again. And then maybe some people would as well.

Michaela Thomas
You never know. You never know how you pivot and what life brings you.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, so you recently authored the lasting connection to compassion focus book for couples. Congratulations on that. And, and I say recently, but with COVID, like lots of people, I’m at this time warp of like, actually, it probably was quite a while ago now.

Michaela Thomas
It was February 2021.

Hayley Quinn
That’s still fairly recent. And a lot of your work has focused on relationships. So I’m interested to hear about what you’ve noticed about how our work as helping professionals can impact our relationships, and your thoughts on what we can do to nurture and protect the important relationships that we’ve got in our lives. Whilst often working in these very demanding helping professional roles.

Michaela Thomas
It’s a really multi layered question, isn’t it? There’s one aspect is the impact on our own well being I think, from doing the work that we do, you know, facing everything from poverty to suicide to just people struggling, I mean the empathy or compassion fatigue that that may bring, it can be vast, it can be really difficult to spend a full day at work holding space for others, and then come home and feel like I’ve got no space left for anyone else in my family, the ones who I feel are actually closest to my heart. I don’t have the capacity or bandwidth to listen to another person. I think my husband would probably say that if he was here that I would be, you know, telling a lot more about my day than I listen to his day. Because I’ve not had anyone listen to me all day. I’ve just been making space for others. So I think there’s one thing there about the sort of capacity, capacity to care. Capacity to listen capacity to be with sometimes, you know, depends on how extroverted versus introverted you are, where you are on that spectrum, you might feel like you’ve completely drained your batteries at work by providing care and listening for others, you might find that you then have been so lonely all day, as obviously, especially private practitioners are but often people in say, I act would sit alone in GP surgeries and not talk to another colleague for for a couple of days. So it depends on how much you have a need to then reconnect when you come home. Do you feel like I want to talk or I want to be alone? And I guess we’re going to talk about that a lot today that actually comes back to self compassion, having the self awareness to tune inwards and think what do I need to be the kind of partner I want to be? Do I need five minutes to myself before the kids jump on me? Do I need to have, you know, if I work from home, like I do, do I need to have a proper break in or walk around the block, you know, listen to, you know, some music? What do I need before I reconnect with the people who matter the most to me, so that I haven’t completely drained my batteries at work, doing the work that we do? And then I’ve got nothing left to give and then feel like this is not the version of me that I want to be, you know, shouting Mum, I call it sometimes chatty mum comes out when, when I’m out of capacity. And it’s not who I want to be. So there’s that level.

And I think there’s other layers to it as well, which is sort of what does it mean, to be a therapist and live in an intimate relationship with another person, when we have so much knowledge about things that the general public don’t know? You know? Are we supposed to use the same active listening in our relationship that we do at work? Does that then feel like I’m constantly living at work? Or can we allow us the same imperfections, and lack of skills at times, as the general public have, you know, saying the wrong thing, not listening, scrolling on your phone, when your partner is talking? We will all do these things, even though we know better. And that I think can be a trap of self criticism otherwise, that like, well, I know how to do active listening, or I know how to reflect properly, I know how to validate or why am I not mindfully present in this conversation? Because I know better and that cannot be a sort of a, you know, and she’d stick to beating yourself with. So I think that’s another layer to it. But I find that it’s a double edged sword, being a therapist or psychologist or counsellor, whatever it might be that you do, essentially, sort of helping other people. There’s a double edged sword with that, because you do have an awareness that you bring as a richness to that relationship, I certainly would say that my husband is a lot more aware of things like mental load, we are a lot more even an equal than any my friends I see in their relationships, because he’s married to a couples therapist. But he’s also married to a couple therapists. So that is, the downside of that is that, you know, we have very lengthy conversations that he would probably just like, could not ride on a postcard. So sometimes, in arguments, I once even said, have you even read my book? Because I know that obviously, he’s read every chapter to kind of give edit suggestions. And then he goes, “Well have you?” And that’s a very valid point actually when I don’t practice what I preach, when I don’t use my skills, because we as humans all do that we all drift away from acting effectively at times. So again, another big dollop of self compassion for how you can’t act in line with your therapist values and beliefs all the time. And your partner is also not a therapist. So if you get cross that they’re not validating you properly, or like, why did you say that? They’re not therapists, you didn’t marry a therapist, and some, some therapists do marry other therapists. And I don’t know, I would fear for what their Friday night conversations look like to be honest. So yeah, this is sort of my thoughts on the layers, but there’s, there’s so much more depth and that question, I suppose.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, I think, you know, it’s that acknowledging that we’re human first, isn’t it, of course, we’re going to move away from the skills that we know because we are human. And it’s important that we do turn off being a therapist, as well. And actually allow ourselves to just be human. As you were talking as well as thinking about, you know, when you think about capacity, and people who perhaps live alone don’t have partners, don’t have children, and the risk there could be of self isolating because you had such a busy time and that even though you might be a part of you might really want to go and connect with other people. There’s just this sense of like, I just can’t listen to anyone else. So I think there’s real things that we have to be aware of, regardless of our sort of living situation, that can impact so much on the relationships we have with other people.

Michaela Thomas
It really can. Because there’s also that sense of how other people bring material to us, you know, what do they bring to the conversation with us when they know what we do? I’m sure you’ve experienced this, at some point during your career, of the people wanting a free ride, almost like a bit of free therapy, or people doing the polar opposite, not daring to speak to you or open up to you because of fear of judgement or that you’re going to quote unquote, sort of read their mind. And then we will analyse them, I’m sure this is something that’s happened to most therapists that they’ve gone into, you know, a party of people find out what you do, and they go like, oh, are you like, oh, you’re psychoanalysing me right now. And that it’s a funny joke at a party, but it has a depth to it, which is, I don’t just bring Michaela as a human being to this conversation. I bring that hat and I tried to take it off. But other people might think I’m still wearing it. And that can make it harder for them to talk to me or they get annoyed when they don’t get the ideal response. And obviously, I work a lot with perfectionism as you know. And that means that we might have very unrealistic standards for ourselves and others. And in those conversations with friends, family, partners, they might also have unrealistic expectations of you acting in the ideal way, every single time when they know what you do for a living. And we just don’t, I mean, psychologists flip their lid with our kids, too. I’ve had that, you know, when I ran a compassion focus group once. One of the members in the group I also sort of, because it’s a small town I live in, we also sort of knew each other from from other settings, you know, where our children were, were in sort of, and she once saw me trying to wrangle my child into their pusher. And she’s like, it was so lovely to see you do that, you know, like me, that you would like me? And like, yes, of course, I’m like you.

I sort of touched upon it in the next compassion group that, yes, I do lose my patience. Yes, I do lose my shit, as she’s referred to it as it’s, that’s normal, and even therapists lose their shit.

Hayley Quinn
Absolutely, absolutely human first. So another area you focus on is high achieving, and high striving individuals. And I’m sure many of our listeners can relate to this, I don’t think you’d get through the degree and all the training without, on some level being a high achieving high striving individual. So there’s lots of them in the profession. Where do you see the most impacts in this regard?

Michaela Thomas
Like I said earlier, I do therapy for psychologists and therapists as well, because I love having people sit in that chair and join that journey with me. And we can know all the lingo. But know that that doesn’t mean that you can do all the work as you just actually still need to be guided by someone else to sort of see what you don’t see. And when I do therapy for psychologists, I see that there’s a lot of that sense of fear of doing the wrong thing. You know, the good old impostor syndrome, everyone else is better than I am, I’m going to be found out I don’t know enough, is a huge amount of sort of fear of malpractice.

I’m going to be sued, I’m going to be struck off.

Yeah, there’s a lot of that. It’s obviously sort of the self critical thinking battens that they come into their workplace which also leads them to behaviour, there’s often a sense of over checking their work, maybe being overzealous about risk management.

Sitting with their notes for a million years, I mean, I’m exaggerating, but taking maybe one hour extra per day to do long notes that you could shave off. So there’s a fear of cutting corners, taking shortcuts, there’s a real fear of doing good enough, because good enough feels like it’s substandard. Good enough feels like it’s below average. And that might mean that that leads into a lack of capacity and even burnout that when we constantly go above and beyond, we have a real risk of burning out in the process. The real trick is knowing when and where do I go and above and beyond because it fits with my values to do so. So that I can cut some corners and do good enough everywhere else.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, yeah, I certainly see that in the work I do with other helping professionals is their sense of their notes having to be perfect and overdoing that sort of stuff. And spending a lot of extra time which oftentimes will in crouch on going home and being able to be with family or friends or engaging in social activities or just other extracurricular activities that they’ve got. So it really is quite a common problem, isn’t it?

Michaela Thomas
It really is. And I can’t quite understand where I read this because it’s something I’ve sort of learned about 15 years ago, but it stuck with me, because it was relevant to my own journey as well. And I learned once that psychologists have two very common schemes, and that is self sacrifice and perfectionism, that, like you said, a lot of people listening would recognise that in themselves. And as long as there’s almost like you have to be if we think about the UK system of getting into doctoral training, you know, the amount of preparation to do the interviews, they almost like you have to be perfect or you won’t make it. So then that says being perfect is then a protective mechanism against failure. And it’s almost like a protective mechanism that ensures that you get what you want. This is why it’s, again, a double edged sword, because it’s giving you success, it’s got you places that you thought you wouldn’t get to otherwise, but it’s costing you an arm and a leg in the process. It’s very highly associated with exhaustion of digue, burnout. And it’s also then opens up the all the different kinds of mental health difficulties that can come associated with perfectionism, which is where I go when I work with it in therapy, and not where I go when I work with it in coaching. But perfectionism is an umbrella that hold space for anxiety, depression, OCD, stress, and then you have everything that’s also somatically, associated like everything, from IBS to acne, to pelvic floor dysfunction, there is just so much that sits under this umbrella term, and that’s why I love it. That’s why I want to work with it, because it’s deeply misunderstood as, yeah, the thing you say in your job interview that I’m a bit of a perfectionist as if that’s gonna serve you really well. And in the public health care sector, it is certainly priced as you know, once, you know, one of my guests on the podcast once said, “perfectionism is the only addiction you get praised for”. And it kind of makes sense. That’s certainly what led to my episodes of burnout that I was going above and beyond with everything, being sort of the quote, unquote, “good girl”, you know, I was really stuck in a good girl conditioning, you know, I need to be good and everything. And I was being you know, people were saying, oh, Michaela doesn’t need any management, she manages herself, she doesn’t ever need to be told to work harder. So I think you’d have to really sort of think about how you tap into the good traits of conscientiousness and being ambitious, hard working, but letting those serve you rather than them actually burying you.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, I think you know, I think from a CFT perspective, thinking about threat based drive, is it all from coming from this place of fear and threat? Or like you say, is it something you can embrace in terms of this is actually something I want to achieve? Because it fits with my values? It brings me a sense of joy, I feel intellectually stimulated by it, it’s something I want to be doing, or is it something I actually must perform? Because otherwise I might lose my job, or they’ll think I’m a crappy therapist, or whatever, or the fear kind of shows up?

Michaela Thomas
Absolutely. And I find that one of the most potent things I do is showing those three circles models out of Paul Gilbert’s work, and looking at yeah, but they often say that, hey, I got lots of drive. And I was like, where’s it coming from?

Well who said that, you know, and what happens if you do get to that place? I really love the aspect of the drive system where we look at the sort of savouring afterwards that, you know, this says the pursuit of the achievement, that is often the focus for the perfectionist. And if you think about it, professional perfectionistic therapists might be like her doing that next training, like, hey, I’ve got the next qualification. But how good do you feel afterwards? And then you go into the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, the next. And savouring it’s obviously a beautiful mindfulness skill. But I often use that with perfectionistic people, because there’s no pleasure, there’s no reward, there’s no sense of vitality, there’s no joy. And that becomes very hollow and empty. So sometimes you can actually see that when they think that they’ve got a really big drive system they’ve got a really small one, actually, and they’ve got a really big threat system. So they might think that I achieved lots of things, but there’s no joy, there’s no reward. So that’s often where I do my work around play, as well sort of finding more joy and being a bit more. I don’t know in the moment with it and savouring and achievement and celebrating your wicked wins before you go into the next thing. I often say like celebrating your successes without second guesses, because often we can get off and be like maybe that wasn’t very good. If I did that. Anyone could do that. Well, you’ve got a doctorate? Yeah, but so do the other 40 people in my cohort, and then use it to diminish your qualifications and your achievements.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, certainly a time for the self critic to raise its head, isn’t it at the end of, of an achievement. And I think you’re right, people don’t often stop even, to reflect even if it’s coming from a place of values and vitality. I just don’t think it’s really encouraged that we stop and reflect typically, as women, reflect and celebrate our achievements, and actually be really intentional about well, I’ve done this now and I’m going to celebrate it and give it some space before I move on to the next thing.

Michaela Thomas
Absolutely, and then allowing yourself to be proud. I think pride is a challenging emotion for a lot of us because we can feel that that’s tapping into sort of being boastful, being too big for your boots that triggers those difficult thoughts and feelings showing up for that. And, you know, I have been talking to people who are very bright, very, like I said, high achieving, but I see that in the couples as well, that, you know, they are both burning bright, in one way or another. But then they are doing it to the point where they’re burning out. And it’s a very tricky sort of fine balancing act of tapping into utilising your potential and living a life that feels really full, and very, sort of, I guess, yeah, colourful, it’s almost like there’s lots of things shining and radiating out from you and this sounds very metaphorical. But that’s sort of the feeling I get when I work with both individuals who are high striving, and I want to see them in the couple’s relationship, they have a need to burn bright to shine bright. And when you dull that light, they feel unsatisfied in life, their sales field, you know, marital satisfaction goes down, because it’s like, I’m not happy in myself, I’m not content, I’m not fulfilled. So then my relationship will struggle too.

Hayley Quinn
And I think really saying just before we hit record that whilst all of this is around couples, this also applies to friendships as well. This same stuff can impact on any of the relationships that we have in our lives as well. You’ve touched on compassion, we’ve started sort of talking about that. You’re a business woman, you have a young family, and no doubt many other roles as we all do in our lives. So how has compassion helped you both professionally and personally? I know I’ve spoken a lot about my experience with it, and how helpful it’s been. How has that been helpful for you?

Michaela Thomas
It’s been hugely helpful, I would say life changing.

Because in Sweden, as a trainee psychologist, you have to have 50 hours of therapy. So I’ve already had psychodynamic therapy and CBT therapy for myself as part of the training. But I’m not sure I’ve had more therapy than anyone who actually comes to my way to be honest. But I found that much like we know the research around self criticism and shame not being fully actually tapped into when you work with CBT. And don’t get me wrong I’m a CBT therapist, as well as an act therapist as a CBT therapist, as a behavioural couples therapist, you know, much like the other high striving people, I collect all the qualifications, don’t I? But I found that coming into compassion focussed therapy, or compassionate mind training, it felt like coming home, it felt like there was finally a place where I can understand without having to question everything, you don’t have to find the evidence for and against the thought. You just have to go like, well, no wonder you feel that way. No wonder that thought shows up, and soothing and comforting. And actually, in some ways loving my inner critic has opened a lot more doors for me so that I can kind of get the balancing act right between the burn right and the burnout. So now I feel like I am successful in a way that I can really savour I can really enjoy the things I’ve done over the last three years I feel immensely proud of in a way that I didn’t 10 years ago. So I think coming into compassion refract practice in so many different ways. I’ve even gone on, you know retreats in Thailand with Chris Irons. I’ve gone to compassionate mind training courses. I’ve had just so many different ways that I’ve thought about it and practiced it and I really resonated with what you and Mary Welford were talking about in a previous episode around the community of being with other people who are non judgmental and say that makes sense. So I find that compassion has taught me to navigate my relationships better so that I moved away from relationships which were toxic for me, and not just couples relationships, but tuning into like minded people who actually continue to feed my new belief that I am worthwhile.

I am lovable, that I am good enough, when I’m with people who feel that even if I drift away from practices like the stuff we do, it doesn’t matter, because I know that I am enough simply by being in their presence.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah. That’s beautiful. It makes such a huge difference, doesn’t it? I mean, I’ve spoken many times about the difference it’s made in my life. And in so many ways, I mean, we could talk all morning for you. But evening for me, we could talk for hours about the sort of benefits of that. You touched on compassionate mind training. How do you think that can assist us in all our relationships we have in our lives, including that one we have with ourselves that is the longest relationship we’ll ever have the one with ourselves?

Michaela Thomas
Yes, it’s a very long complicated one, isn’t it? Because you can’t get away from yourself or wherever, wherever you go, there you are. And I find that was probably one of my biggest epiphanies, when it came to how I act in my intimate relationships, is actually it’s me, I can work on me, you can’t make your partner change. Even if you go to couples therapy, you can’t make them change, you can only work on you and hope that that has a positive ripple effect or creating a more compassionate climate in your relationships, so that they will want to change to, but you can’t make anyone else change. So you can work inwards. So I found it really fascinating to look at the three flows of compassion when I worked with couples. And you know, coming from a dinner conversation with Paul Gilbert, many years ago, I realised that this has not been tapped into enough, and I want to explore this. So obviously, it makes sense that in a relationship, you would benefit from compassion flowing out to your partner, though, I think most people would realise that, that it’s being kind, caring, making space, being patient, listening, all of these things being kind of caring for them outwards. But it’s also about the other two aspects of compassion. It’s not just a caring commitment, it’s also the clarity and the wisdom, the insight, understanding yourself, understanding your triggers, understanding how your past history has shaped you up to this point, the ghost in the machine, if you made that you take with you into this current relationship, and doing the same for your partner, so understanding yourself and understanding them. And I was once asked on a bus, on a bus on the way to compassion retreat in Thailand, was really sleep deprived and really jet lagged. And I was asked by a fellow psychologist, so you know what’s the trick to it? They were like it was the night like, what is the meaning of love? But how do you have good relationships, and I was so tired. And what came out of my mouth was, well, basically, if you can own your own shit, you can tolerate this, you’ve got a pretty good start. And I think it’s actually more profound than I intended it to be. Because if you are able to be with yourself and tolerate all that you are and understand that and accept that and work on that. And in doing the same with your partner’s stuff, then you do have a pretty good start for a lasting connection. So that takes courage I think it’s not just the sort of caring commitment, it’s also the courage to say no at times to move away from partners who are treating you badly or stand up for yourself. The fierceness, the fear, self compassion, I think, is crucial in relationships as well. So I’ve kind of danced around a little bit back and forth with compassion for myself, because I didn’t sleep well, last night, I had a baby. But I want to come back to the three flows of compassion there as well, because it’s not just the flowing outwards. It’s not just a compassion for yourself in that lifelong relationship you have with yourself. But the middle float there as well. The receiving compassion flowing in is the one that I was most fascinated by when I work with couples, because there are so many blocks there, especially for high striving, busy people who feel maybe kind of hooked on this idea that I don’t deserve love, care and attention. It can be really hard to appreciate and receive that coming in. And you might feel like nobody listens to me I’m never cared for and you might have just kind of put up a big block there. So all the three flows of compassion as well as thinking about the sort of the clarity, the courage and the caring commitment.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, absolutely. And that you know, the flow of compassion from others. I think I often hear people say or self compassion is the hardest. And in my own experience and experience of talking with other people and working with other people. I think the compassion from others can be the really really tricky one. And it does seem to get overlooked. Obviously, compassion can be a lot easier for most people.

We can build that self compassion, which can be very tricky to do. And then the flow from others can be the one that is kind of left on the table.

Michaela Thomas
It’s one of those things that’s really hard.

Hayley Quinn
Another interview I did with Sarah Rees recently, we talked about this same thing. You know, it can be so surprising for people how difficult that is to actually receive compassion from other people.

Michaela Thomas
Especially when you are a caring professional, because that’s not what you do. Day to day, you have to have compassion flowing out, you don’t receive, I mean, occasionally, your clients or your patient, or your service user might say something kind to you, and you’re like, oh, thank you. But it’s not supposed to be compassion flowing in. It’s not supposed to be about you at that moment. And that is self sacrifice or selflessness, I think that shows that actually, I don’t know how to do this. It’s one of our foreign languages. Especially if we think about the trajectory that people have had into becoming a caring, professional. There’s obviously a lot of, I don’t know, fears and beliefs and lived experiences that might have made people choose that career path. So I think if anyone is listening, and you’re quite high striving and high achieving, and you also feel that it’s hard for you to accept help in your relationships. I will say that, look at that, look at those blocks, look at easing those fears. What is showing up for you, when someone asks, do you want a cup of tea? And you’re like no, no, no, no, it’s fine. I grabbed myself one later, you know, we don’t have to dive into the deep end, we can just go, actually, oh, yes, please, that would be lovely. Thank you. You know, actually just accepting a very small act of kindness day to day and practising, they’re taking compassionate action, not just being kind to yourself saying, oh, I’ll take a break and go make myself a cup of tea. This is an act of self compassion, how lovely. But actually allowing other people to care for you, is really hard. It triggers a lot of caring professionals.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah. And I think as well, being mindful of any judgement, we think it’s going to come from others. What will other people think if I actually start putting myself first in this situation? Because like you say, we give compassion out, you know, this is our job. And yet, it’s so important. I mean, I really believe, you know, we can care for others best when we care for ourselves first, you know, we have to take care of ourselves. Regardless of what work we’re doing.

Michaela Thomas
Hence, the self care club thing on your top that is sort of, to remind ourselves, that actually is really important that you know, it’s about capacity, again, I have much better capacity and bandwidth to show up as the therapist, the friend, the partner, the mother, I want to be when I have when I’ve talked myself up, and I’ve looked after myself, and you kind of mentioned that earlier, you know, being a business woman and young children, it’s even more important than I find that compassion, focussed therapy and compassionate mind training has helped me not only with the downregulating, you know, sort of calming my nervous system, but also with the upregulating, I find that that is sometimes missed when we think about compassion focused work that we think is gonna just be the nicey, nice and fluffy, but actually, it up regulates me as well, so I can get shit done. Because sometimes it’s about having the courage to do something that’s really difficult and challenging. And being a business owner, I constantly have to do that. I have to make CEO decisions, I have to tell my team what to do. I have to decide, do I pivot into this?

So actually find them the courage to take action. I find it’s really helpful as well, coming from CFT.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we’ve sort of touched on this already. But you know, taking care of ourselves in all different domains in life isn’t the easiest thing, even when we know what we should do. Even when, like me, you wear a sweatshirt that tells you to eat , hydrate, exercise, sleep. My little jumper reminder. But we know what is helpful. We know the things that would be good for us to be doing. And we know it’s not easy to do that. So what do you find in your biggest challenges in terms of taking care of yourself? And what do you find most helpful in trying to navigate that?

Michaela Thomas
Is definitely when I make self care or self compassion practice perfectionistic and I’ll give you an example. So it doesn’t become lofty. You know, the headspace app, they have gamified it with a run streak. And so the way every single day you meditate in a row, you get a run streak. And I realised this, you know, years and years ago when I first started using it that I was really triggered by when my run streak was broken. And then I would drift away from the app for a long time. And I’m like, oh, no. And this is sort of watching yourself from the outside is. So obviously, a lovely skill that we have, as therapists, we have to kind of do parallel processing, processing ourselves as at the same time, it’s a process. The client are no human in front of us. So I can sort of watch myself on the outside and go, oh, Michaela, it’s not necessarily so helpful for you to be bothered by the perfectionistic, kind of like a broken my run streak, the all or nothing pattern that shows up for me. So I find that I have to find practices that I can allow to be imperfect. My perfect self care doesn’t exist, because I am a mother of two young children. So if I was going to do self care perfectly, I would floss twice a day, you know, I would eat only nutritious foods, I would start my day with compassion under the duvet every single day, which I did this morning. But it’s not always possible, I would go for lovely walks, I would move my body every day, and I would do the stuff that’s on your sweatshirt, right? But when we do it perfectly, it’s almost like the underpinning motivation has then changed from a caring kind motivation to a stretch driven one again. So I often talk about that, you know, both with couples and individuals, and therapists, that actually you have to look at the motivation, you know, if there is a passionate unkindness behind these choices, is no longer self care, it’s no longer self compassion. So for me, what’s been most helpful is finding little sort of small shifts, or, in the words of James Clear, atomic habits, like the small shifts I can make, that have the biggest impact. So a one minute breathing, you know, literally just standing over the cot, deep breathing into my belly and saying, “this is really hard”. And that is a practice I can take with me everywhere. It doesn’t have to be, you know, a half an hour seated meditation, it can just be this is really hard. And what’s going to be helpful, I love those words from Russell Colts are what’s going to be helpful rather than harmful for me to do right now. And for me, that’s been a much more tangible, accessible practice of compassion. And I kind of came into that with the birth of my first child when it was no longer possible for me to take myself off the retreat for the weekend, because that’s lovely, but actually had to do something that was, you know, hitting home in my reality then sitting with a screaming, poorly child, on my chest and go, I can just breathe through this. This is really hard.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah. Yeah. I think one of my favourite is the sort of hand on heart, just slowing it down like that as a quick hack during the day. Like you say, it’s finding isn’t it that the small things we can do, rather than having to have this thing of like, I, you know, I need to do myself care. It’s on the to do list, it’s a yet another thing that I might not achieve. It’s like, finding things, how can I use my breath? How can I just be aware? How can I say something kind to myself at a time when I might be struggling with something?

Michaela Thomas
And not letting it be dogmatic. I mean, I am a functional behaviourist. That’s how we’re trained in Sweden, we are much more behavioural than than CBT in the UK is much more cognitive. So I feel like I have a contextualism to it. And so for instance, last night, I had really poor sleep, and I woke up and obviously, we’re recording from eight in the morning. And then you thinking, what is the self compassionate choice here? Is it to send you messages kind of asked for, you know, to rearrange? What’s the self compassionate thing here is it as the actually, it will be good enough, I can show up and talk to you having nurturing conversation that people will take some sort of value out of, even when I’ve not shown up as my quote unquote, perfect self. Like you never gonna get that sort of perfect score of, I’ve slept enough, I’ve eaten enough, I’m hydrated enough. Because you’re human, like, you’re not going to have that and especially as a mother of young children, there is very rarely like my idol, compassionate, self present. And I’ve learned to cope with that because my first child didn’t sleep through the night for four years. And you know, in that time, I wrote a book and you know, it’s okay. Remember most of what I wrote in it, but you know it’s okay and we can’t we have to look at the function of that well functional deserve for me to show up and, you know, honour our arrangement versus rearranging it. And it can’t be that self care or self compassion is then always a never, I never get I never should work in the evenings because that’s you know, that’s, that’s not healthy, or I should always rearrange after a bad night’s sleep, and that becomes perfectionistic in itself. If we apply our principles around compassion in a dogmatic way, I find.

Hayley Quinn
One of my very favourite sayings is don’t shit all over yourself.

Michaela Thomas
I love that one.

Hayley Quinn
When that starts to show up. I should do this. I should do that. So oh, hang on a minute. And back to that question of what’s motivating this? And is it helpful or harmful? So what would one piece of advice be that you would share with our listeners?

Michaela Thomas
Gosh, I was thinking about this, I haven’t prepared any of this beforehand. As I said to you before we started recording that I, I’ve learned that I show up in my best way, when I don’t over prepare this, this one on one tips may be, it’s actually just allowing yourself to tap into what really matters to you, and what version of you you feel comfortable with being as a therapist, as a friend, as a partner? Actually, what do you need to continue to step back into that version of you? Not an ideal perfect version of you, but a version of you that you feel like actually, this is where I feel that there’s less chafing? I feel like the clothes fit, if you see what I mean? Like there’s, I don’t have to be like that, constantly. It’s not quite right. But that feels kind of nice. How do you step into that version of you where it’s like, this is probably my most natural, relaxed self? What do you need, on a day to day basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a yearly basis? What choices do you need to make? And even as some of them will be hard choices? How can you make sure that you keep coming back to that, when you gently drift away? How can you gently return to that? There probably is not as sort of click baity as I would like to make it. But the world is complex, and humans are complex, it’s hard to feel like, here’s the one tip that you do. Yeah, just keep tuning into who you actually think that you are, that feels most comfortable to you, not the person you think you are that, like, looks really good. And this is these are the values I think I should have. There should only be yourself, don’t get caught up in masturbation. But actually, how do I keep tuning back into that I know the version of me that I enjoy. It is often at the end of the day when you know, sort of like I’ve been lit on fire here. I’ve been passionate, I loved what I’ve done at this moment. That version of me is the same when I go into my role as a mother, my role as a wife, my role as a friend, it want to know this kind of coming back to shining bright and know when I’ve been shining bright. That’s the me I’m most proud of. And that’s the me that often disappears when I’m overwhelmed, out of capacity or burnt out.

Hayley Quinn
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So this is a question I asked all of my guests. If you could meet your 80 year old self, what do you think your future self would say to you?

Michaela Thomas
Like I said, I didn’t prepare the questions, I looked at them again, before we started recording. And I thought oh goodness, this is really deep, I could go into a therapy mode here. And just, it’s really deep. But I think she would say two things. One will be about how I approach life in terms of achievements, she probably would say, slow down, you know, you’ve, you’ve got this slow down, I can see you, you are working so hard towards these things, and you will get there just slow down, you know, enjoy the ride a bit more just, you know, take down, take it down to a sustainable pace. And that’s probably the message that I keep telling myself the most often, the message I need to hear that I don’t always want to listen to. And I think she also would say you are more beautiful than you think you are inside and out. When I get caught up in sort of comparisonitis or not enoughness all of these things that my inner critic will say to me, because I’ve realised that when I look at pictures for me 10 years ago, or actually you were a lot more beautiful than you thought you were like all the hangups you had along the writing. You know, and I was wondering when you come to at and you speak to your 38 year old self, you must think that you’re a beautiful radiant human being and you are enough as you are. Yeah, that’s probably what she would say to me, because I say I think that she would be sort of like a really kick ass strong woman who’s done a lot and seen a lot and like, yeah, just doesn’t suffer fools gladly. That’s how I want to be.

And then looking back with a soft, nurturing wisdom, that sort of having the courage but also the caring commitment or looking back and saying, look, it’s okay. You’ve done enough. You are enough. You have enough.

Hayley Quinn
Yes, I think that’s really beautiful. So finally, if people want to find out more about you or get in touch, where can they engage with you and your work? And I’ll put links in the show notes as well.

Michaela Thomas
So the easiest thing is my website, thethomasconnection.co.uk.. You can also connect with me on social media sites. So I’m on Instagram under thethomasconnection. You can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook. Basically, if you Google The Thomas Connection, you will find stuff you obviously got my book, The Lasting Connection, and my podcast, Pause Purpose Play. And that’s a great way to sort of hear more about my work. And I wanted also mentioned that I’m really passionate about working with healthcare professionals. And I’m starting my group coaching programme, which will be specifically also for psychologists and therapists, called Burn Bright. So that’s coming soon as well. So anyone who wants to just have a chat with me, just go to the website, see what I do there or drop me a message on social media.

Hayley Quinn
Fantastic and thank you so much for joining me after your poor night’s sleep and giving so generously of your time and your wisdom. It’s been really lovely to chat with you.

Michaela Thomas
Thank you for having me. It’s been great to talk to you and very deep, lovely questions.

Thank you for sharing this time with me today, I hope your time here was helpful and supportive. If there has been something in this episode that you have found helpful, I invite you to share it with another person you think might benefit. I’d also love it if you would like to leave a review wherever you tune in. Reviews really help to increase awareness of podcasts, meaning I can spread helpful information more widely. All reviews are welcome and much appreciated as I know they take time out of your day. If you’d like to be notified when the next episode airs, please use the link in the show notes to join my mailing list. Music and editing by Nyssa Ray, thanks Nyssa. I wish you all well in your relationship with Your Self and may you go well and go gently.

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