Episode #18 Talking Anger with Dr Russell Kolts.
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.
Hayley:
Hi and welcome to another episode. Let’s take a moment of gratitude for Rebecca, who sent me a lovely message about the podcast. She said,
“Today was a day of very little peace. And your podcast came at just the right moment to help me ground myself and shift my perspective”.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Rebecca. It truly warms my heart to get messages like these and to know the podcast is helpful to you.
Hayley:
I’m excited to introduce my next guest Professor Russell Kolts. Russell is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Eastern Washington University, located near Spokane in Washington, USA. He has authored or co-authored scientific articles on various areas of psychology, and has written several books about CFT and compassion. Including the Compassionate Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger and Open Hearted Life – Transformative Lessons on Compassionate Living from a Clinical Psychologist and a Buddhist nun co-authored with Thubten Chodron, CFT Made Simple and Experiencing Compassion Focus Therapy from the Inside Out, co-authored with Tobin Bell, James Bennett-Levy and Chris Ions. I first had the pleasure of meeting Russell in New York. And I’ve had the good fortune to be able to sit and chat with him on multiple occasions since then. Russell is on my list of humans I like most in the world. So I’m thrilled to welcome my friend and respected colleague to the podcast. And I hope you really enjoyed this episode.
Hayley:
So hi, Russell, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast, I’m so thrilled that we get to meet over in zoom land. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in real life, and hopefully won’t be too long before that can happen again. But welcome to the podcast.
Russell:
Hey, it’s wonderful to see you. Thanks so much for having me. And it’s been way too long since we’ve seen each other in person. So I look forward to that.
Hayley:
Yeah. So could you start Russell by telling us a little bit about yourself? And what led you to a career in helping professionals? Was it something that you’d always wanted to do?
Russell:
Yeah, no, you know, I think, you know, growing up, there are, you know, kids that have this idea of, oh, I want to do this my whole life. And then others not so much. And for many years, when I was a kid, you know, I wanted to be a rock and roll musician. That’s kind of a CFT thing. I think a number of us like that. The difference between me and some of the other folks is that I wasn’t very good at I just sort of learned how to practice guitar productively like two years ago. So that where it really wasn’t in the cards, so I went to college. And you know, I think I was pre-med because I thought being a doctor would be pretty cool. And you know, I was pretty good student. But really what drew me to be a psychologist, if you really, people who really know me know that I’m actually quite a lazy person. And for, you know, when I was in teenage years, you know, I had several jobs. And I go to the jobs that you know, restaurants or whatever. And every day when I when I go to work, I have this like pit in my stomach, like all day, if I like if I had to work in the afternoon, all morning, it was just like, you know, I just wasn’t looking forward to it at all and which wasn’t very inspiring in terms of working, you know. And then when I was in college, you know, I needed to make some money. So I took a job at this home, this inpatient facility for the developmentally disabled. So it had people at various levels of developmental disability including many people who couldn’t take care of themselves at all, gravely disabled, so, um, you know, people that would, you’d have to toilet and bathe and give baths to and stuff and I was an entry level position. So I was doing all that stuff. Now I worked my way up to doing some behavioural programming and some psychology stuff, but a lot of what I did was feeding, changing diapers of, you know, adults who were like, actively fighting me at the time, you know, and stuff like this. And it was the most, sort of, in a lot of ways, the most challenging job I’d ever had. But we, you know, one day I was, I was sort of noticing as I was driving home from that job, that that pit that I’d had in my stomach, for years, whenever I go to work, it was gone. It was gone, it was like, and as I reflected on it I thought, I’m doing something good here. You know, even though it’s really hard, it feels good. You know, because it fit with, I guess my values or, you know, just feeling like I was doing something good for the world. And, and so I’ve just sort of chased that feeling ever since. You know, so that’s, that’s when I decided to go into psychology because I thought, you know, I don’t want to hate my job, I don’t want to dread my job. So the secret of my success is like finding positions that don’t feel like work. You know, the so teaching and doing therapy and writing books about something stuff like CFT, that’s really interesting to me, is really helpful. I apologise. By the way, if you hear odd background noises, my son’s just arrived at home and my dog is groaning at the door for his arrival.
Hayley:
He’s very welcome here. Yeah. So I think I think you make a good point when we find things that we really feel passionate and enjoy. Work is so much easier, isn’t it? Even if it is hard. Because I mean, you say that, you know, stuff that doesn’t feel like work. But I mean, teaching and writing and doing therapy is hard and challenging work?
Russell:
Yeah, I mean, in the sense that it’s effortful.
Hayley:
Yeah,
Russell:
Yeah. But the, I think, yeah, what you’re getting at is when you’re interested, and you’re engaged, and you know, in the language of CFT, when your drive system kicks in, and you’re like, you’re enjoying whatever it is, there’s a cliche, right, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. And you know, it’s a cliche, but you know, I think it’s a cliche, partially because there’s some truth to it.
Hayley:
Yes. Oh, absolutely. I can realt to that. I have designed my work life to fit in with the life I want to live. And I love doing it.
Russell:
Yeah, yeah. And I’m aware that there’s a lot of privilege that goes with that, quite frankly, I feel pretty privileged, in that I can pay attention to that feeling in my gut. And I’ve been able to sculpt a career path that when I get that feeling, it’s like, oh, I hate this. I don’t enjoy this at all. I don’t have very much have that. Right. That’s not something that’s a regular part of my work life. And I know that a lot of people don’t have that privilege. Right. And so I think it’s important to keep in mind, too, that that’s a hard thing to hook up and there’s certainly some luck that’s involved in that, I think,
Hayley:
Absolutely. And for me, it’s about adding that gratitude piece as well to recognising my privilege, and being really grateful that I can make the choices that I’m making in my work.
Russell:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it helps to, so when you know, periods come up that, you know, are not so great. Like, you know, I think I told you before we started recording. It’s been an interesting couple years, because this is the first time in two years I’ve been back in the classroom. And I’m, you know, I’m a little anxious about getting COVID because we’ve been really careful. But the other side of it is I love my job again. Because being in that room with the students and watching a little light bulbs go on in their eyes as they, as they get it, you know, as they understand something new. It’s just so so reinforcing.
Hayley:
Yeah absolutely. So you started off wanting to be a rock star?
Russell:
Well a rock guitar player? Yeah.
Hayley:
I think you’re very good player.
Russell:
Wow. Oh, my gosh. I appreciate that.
Hayley:
Maybe there’s some CFT influence on the whole music thing, because I’ve recently started singing lessons.
Russell:
Oh, that’s wonderful.
Hayley:
Maybe not so much for my singing teacher, but definitely for me as I’m doing it. Not my strength. So Russell, you’ve been learning and teaching and writing about compassion focused therapy for many years. And I believe you said that you wrote CFT made simple as a way for you to understand the CFT better. By the way, thank you for having it published. For the rest of us. That’s been really helpful. Certainly a book I recommend to lots of people. What have you found I was personally helpful about it?
Russell:
About about CFT? Or? Well, you know, the, for me, I think my experience, quite honestly is very similar to a lot of people when they encounter CFT. One of the things about CFT I think that’s a real strength, particularly in terms of gaining credibility with patients and clients very quickly is that a lot of what we talk about in CFT, is almost instantly relatable to people’s lived experience. So when you start learning about those three systems, and these just various things that you know, shape, how we’re going to turn out that we didn’t choose or design and all that stuff. People related their experiences and go yeah, that’s what it’s like. Right? That’s what it’s like for me. And I think for many of us, we sort of grasped at little bits of this, at different points in our career, we have these sort of little realisations, but I can’t speak for others, but for myself, but I never was able to put it all together, I was never able to articulate it in a way that was cohesive enough, I could I could do much with it. And that’s what Paul Gilbert did. I mean, Paul Gilbert, brought together all these different bodies of science, and all you know, these compassion practices and all of this stuff that just, I think relates. So well, it’s not only a really good description of sort of the the situation we find ourselves in as human beings, but it’s instantly relatable. But people can instantly go oh, yeah, that’s what it’s like, for me. And so it clicks for people. And I think a lot of therapists when we go to a CFT training, pretty quickly we go, this is it. Right? This relates this is, he just put together all the stuff I’ve been grasping at and couldn’t get to, you know. And that was my experience, too. And I remember the first CFT training I went to, I had that experience. And on the plane home, I’d learned all this stuff about you know, evolution, science, and all the different aspects of CFT that you get in those initial trainings, and I’m, we’re flying on the plane. I’m like, so what do I do in the therapy room? How do I use this? And so that’s really what inspired CFT Made Simple. I spent many more years trying to try to organise that in my head, and how do we use the different aspects of therapy to bring compassion into the room? And so I guess, you know, we could spend an hour talking about why I like CFT so much, and why I decided this is what my life, you know, what my professional life is going to be about. But I think that, for me, it’s that relatability and not necessarily quickly, but how powerfully it can help people shift in terms of how they relate to their suffering, and their struggles and the things that are hard in their lives, how powerful it can help them shift from avoidance or self-attacking into a motive that’s about what would be helpful. Right? How can I move forward in a way that fits with the kind of person I want to be, and that helps me engage with my suffering in a helpful way versus making it worse, or, you know, just sort of passively waiting for it to go away, or, you know, avoiding or whatever.
Hayley:
You talk a lot about avoidance when you talk about your own anger, and you’ve been very open about your struggles with anger. And for anyone who hasn’t seen your TED talk. I highly recommend that they watch that because I think you described that really well. Can you share with us how developing a compassionate mind was helpful for you with that?
Russell:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really. I mean, I spent a lot of years just thinking that I was a jerk. You know, I’d notice Oh, thank you.
Hayley:
You’re a beautful human Russell, you really are.
Russell:
I really appreciate that. But, you know, and I like to think some people might agree with you, but I suspect if particularly if you interviewed people from my past, you’d find people that that didn’t. You know, and I’ve never been someone who was over the top ragy or abusive or that sort of stuff. But you know, I’ve had you know, this consistent sort of tendency toward irritability and that’s we all have something right or multiple something’s we all have stuff that we struggle with. And some people for example, on on your average day experience quite a lot of anxiety and that’s just kind of the way their neurological systems are tuned and the way they’re shaped by their experience. And so that’s what they get to work with in their lives. Right. And for me, you know, I’m privileged in that I don’t on a day to day basis, I experience relatively little anxiety, but I’ve got a pretty, pretty low threshold for irritability. Right? And that had been my experience I think one of the things that can be challenging about that is that in contrast to other sorts of threat emotions, where people can see you’re struggling and may naturally respond with a bit of sympathy, irritability and anger, fino typically really is designed to push people away to communicate, I’m dangerous leave me alone, right? So, you know, so people don’t tend to engage with that in ways that are helpful, because they experience you as hostile, or, as you know, not fun to be around. And, and so, I did, for many years, I sort of worked very hard at being a good version of myself. But underneath that there is this sort of experience of, well, I’m just at heart, I’m just kind of an asshole. You know, I had this sense, I think a lot of people maybe can relate to this, you know, sometimes you hear well, you know, they’re they’ve got some rough edges but when you really get to know them, they’re really great and you discover that. I kind of felt like I was the opposite. Right? I could do pretty well. But if you really got to know me, you’d realise, you know, maybe not so great. And what really happened, that CFT was really helpful with is really the not your fault part, the real the part I realised that, you know, actually, I didn’t choose to have this sort of irritable stuff going on. I didn’t design that, I hate it. I don’t want to be that version of me. Yeah. And I can work with this, you know, so instead of sort of hating that irritable version of me, I began to be able to ask, well, what does he need? What’s that about, you know, what would be helpful? There. And that really opened the door to being able to work with, with the anger in really productive ways. And that’s actually what led me to CFT because, as I mentioned, in the TEDx talk you referenced it really hit me when my son was about six months old. And I saw myself modelling the sort of irritability stuff, and you know, it’s tough when you got a six month old, you’ve never been a parent before. And you’ve got two full time, parents working full time, you know, it’s hard. And so that was kind of, I had, I had these spikes of irritability, and I saw myself modelling stuff for my son that I’d struggled with my whole life. And I just didn’t want him to struggle with that. I didn’t want to pass that along to him. And so I started looking for, for, you know, what would help me work with that. And I found my way to Tibetan Buddhism, and spent about three years in really deep Tibetan Buddhist practice, meditating, reading, studying, doing practices several hours every day. And you know, at the end of that period, after about three years, I realised my life had changed in exactly the way I’d hoped it would. And when I reflected on what was most useful, it was the compassion practices. It was the those were the practices from my, and what I’d learned about compassion, and that’s what was transformative to me. And so I started looking, that’s when I started hitting the psychological literature, because I got to a point where it was like, I need to be able to bring this into the therapy room, this was the most helpful thing I’ve ever found for me. I want to be able to use this what I’ve learned to help my clients too. Now I’m no great scientist. I’m really not. I’m kind of a mediocre scientist. But I’m enough of a scientist to be uncomfortable with sort of reaching into a spiritual tradition and plucking out practices and then just plopping it down in the therapy room. But that wasn’t comfortable for me. So that’s when I started looking at, you know, I thought I can’t be the only one who has had this thought about compassion. And I knew a little bit about Kristin Neff ‘s work with self-compassion. She’d been doing that stuff for a few years then. But I was a little more interested in kind of universal compassion. Stuff that reflected the Buddhist practices I’d been doing. And I think it was Jack Kornfield’s book, The Wise Heart, I think Jack referred to Paul Gilbert in that book. And that prompted me to track Paul down and that’s when he shared with me about CFT. And then I flew over to Darby, and, you know, everything really flowed from that. So really, it was the working with anger that led me to CFT.
Hayley:
Your point about at the beginning, when you were saying, you know, anger is one of those emotions that doesn’t tend to draw people to you for support.
Russell:
No, not quite the opposite.
Hayley:
It can bring up a lot of shame can’t it, I mean, spent having not thought you know, maybe I’m just a jerk, maybe I’m just an asshole. That’s not a nice place to be on your own.
Russell:
No, no, it’s deeply painful. When you know you’re struggling. And you can see yourself behaving in these hostile ways. And you can see people avoiding you. You can see people walking on eggshells, you can see people not wanting to engage with you and you know why they’re doing it. And it makes sense to you. It’s deeply painful and I have to say that the TEDx talk. I think it’s the best thing I ever did professionally, I think it’s the best thing I ever did. And the reason is, I have had, I’ve gotten emails from people all over the planet, from people who say things like, Thank you for admitting that you, saying that you struggle with anger. That helped me ask for help, I’m going to see a therapist because, you know, you made it okay, basically, to say, yeah, I struggle with this, and I need help with it.
Hayley:
I think it’s so important, isn’t it, that we do acknowledge our humaneness. We all struggle with different things. We all suffer in different ways. And I think as therapists and particularly to sort of early career therapists, letting them know that actually we haven’t got all the answer’s, we haven’t got it all together. We don’t know how to do everything and be with ourselves in the right way all the time. And that’s okay. It’s part of who we are. And we can kind of work with that, if we’re willing to look at it.
Russell:
Absolutely. And, you know, there’s a sort of sweet spot, I think, you know, I mean, we have to have it together enough, that we don’t make the therapy about us. Yeah, absolutely. Right. And I think we need to be fallible enough that we’re relatable as human beings. Well, you know, that because, you know, if I think, you know, there are some, particularly novice therapists that think if being a therapist means, you know, saying the exact right thing all the time. And not only is that not at all what therapy is about, but you know, if we succeeded at that, it actually would not be a good thing. Because think about you’re a client, right? You’re feeling self-conscious about all this stuff you’re struggling with. And if your therapist is this perfect, infallible model, you can’t relate to that, that doesn’t feel like a human being, that for me, that would just make me feel worse about myself.
Hayley:
That’s what being, you know, well, and kind of grounded is all about, then how am I ever going to achieve that if I’ve got to be perfect all the time?
Russell:
Yeah, yeah. Well, and even if the therapist succeeds, we all know it’s a facade, because everybody struggles, right, everyone has the stuff that’s hard for them. And, you know, maybe we can succeed at convincing people that that’s not the case. But you know, it’s not real. And I do think that maybe this is part of what we see in terms of the, you know, some of the changes in, particularly young people having mental health struggles and stuff. And if you look at depression rates, you know, I don’t I can’t form causal hypotheses about this. But if you look at depression rates, and the significant increases in depression rates and young people, they seem to correspond timeline wise to about the same time that basically cell phones became, smartphones became ubiquitous, everyone had one. And if we look at social media, bombarding people with these sort of idealised images of what a life should be like, and how much fun people are having and how attractive they are, and da da da da, I think it does set people up, you know, for, you know, if I see all my ugly stuff, but all I see when I look at other people is people who seem to have it together and are having great lives. It really does set us up to see all that stuff. We struggle with this something that’s wrong with me.
Hayley:
Absolutely. The Welcome Back Episode for season two, I spoke about my experience of kind of detoxing a bit from using my phone, I went away for a few days with my husband. And thankfully, it’s continued since I’ve got back as well. And the difference I felt, was my anxiety levels of not being on social media so much. It’s fantastic. I’m hoping I can sustain that long term because
Russell:
I think that’s great. What’s the term, doom scrolling?
Hayley:
But if you really tune in and pay attention to yourself, as you’re going through whatever platform you’re on, it can be really interesting to notice the levels of anxiety or whatever it is you’re feeling show up, which is my cue to get off it.
Russell:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Hayley:
So Russell, one of the reasons I was keen to get you on the podcast, one because I just love you to bits. And I think you’re a great human and I want to spend time with you.
Russell:
I feel just the same about you.
Hayley:
But it’s not about me. So what I wanted to, you talk about anger, which is an emotion that really we don’t talk about do we?
Russell:
Not so much. Yeah.
Hayley:
And many of us I think, try and avoid it in ourselves, and others like we were talking about before staying away, and yet it is such a normal human emotion. And when working with clients, we may need to deal with our clients anger that shows up in the room. But what I was thinking about as well is that we have to deal with our own anger that either shows up in the room or outside of session, which might be anger ourselves for something we’ve done, or that something that’s been happening, or sometimes anger at our clients.
Russell:
Yeah, if they’ve triggered us in some way. Yeah.
Hayley:
So what I wanted to talk to you about or hear your thoughts on is how do you think we can best work with anger when it shows up both inside and outside the therapy room?
Russell:
Yeah, well, that’s a great question. I’m going to start with inside the therapy room. Because it’s a process that’s really near and dear to my heart. You may know and I want to apologise here, because I’m going to kind of plug one of my own books, and that I feel a bit of a heel doing that. But there’s a reason we wrote it. In one of your countrymen, actually, James Bennett-Levy, is probably the world’s foremost scholar in therapists self-practice, self-reflection work. And James has basically generated his lab has generated a whole lot of data that really attest to the power of therapists self-practice, self-reflection work across a number of therapy models, and how that helps us both in terms of our own mental health, and our efficacy as being therapists. Right. And I think there’s a growing body of data behind that I just want to give major props to James in terms of that. And I really feel like for me, that’s the name of the game in terms of working with our own anger. In therapy, it’s not just about like, what do I do when it shows up? And that’s the first question people ask. What do I do when blank triggers me and I get a rage, and there are all sorts of coping strategies we can talk about with that. But I think the more important piece behind that is what happens behind the scenes, right. And if you’ve got a therapist who is cultivating from a CFT, perspective, and theirs, James has got this wonderful series of books on self-practice, self-reflection for ACT, and for CBT. And for I think there’s one for maybe DBT now, there’s a number of them, and they’re all great. So whatever model you’re practising in, there’s either is one, or maybe soon to come one of these book. In CFT, a major part of that is cultivating our compassionate selves, and working with all of the stuff, you know, that we’ve going on in this compassionate way as it relates to ourselves and as it relates to our clients. And I think that when we do that work, sort of behind the scenes, then when the moment comes where the client is doing, you know, clients do lots of stuff, and the clients doing or saying whatever they’re doing, that, you know, threatens to trigger us in a way that takes us off peace, you know, and it becomes about our anger, rather than what’s going on with the client. You know, if we’ve done that self-reflective work, then we’re a lot more likely to kind of see that for what it is. And to notice it and be able to, respond in a helpful way. And maybe even in a therapeutic way. So to, for example, in the moment with the client to say, you know, I’m noticing things are getting sort of heated here and from your side, but also from my side, and I’m noticing noticing my body start to build up some energy to. What would you think about doing some soothing rhythm breathing right now. I want to continue this conversation, but I want to do it in a way that that’s, that’s helpful, right. And I think when we do that reflective work, are more likely to be able to notice that stuff to relate to it with with kind curiosity and a desire to understand it, rather than to go into threat mode, and judge and label and react. And so I think that’s, that’s the thing, that really kind of helps us stay in the therapist sort of role. Because what we’re really talking about is stuff that takes us out of that role, right? Something gets us mad, and we shift out of that. And when we notice that happening, then we can work with it, helpfully. So that for me is the answer. It’s the self-reflective sort of self-practice kind of practising what we preach in terms of the compassionate mind stuff. And if you’re interested in doing that, again, James has got this series of books that teaches you how to do it and I want to thank that Tobin Bell and Chris Irons and James Bennett-Levy himself, who are the co authors on the CFT book on that. So that’s sort of, that was the inspiration for that and I think, you know, it just helps. And the other thing that helps with the self-practice and self-reflection, by the way, is you realise that it’s hard. When you start working on self-compassion work with your own stuff, all those, you know, fears, blocks and resistances that we think about in relation to our clients stop being theoretical and start like pragmatically really meaning something in your own life as you begin to negotiate it, and work with it and figure out what’s helpful. And that doesn’t mean that, you know, working out your own stuff tells you exactly what your clients are going to be going through. But it gives you a little bit of a heads up, maybe in terms of the nuance and the subtlety around how to work with that stuff.
Hayley:
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said, and and it is a great book. And please don’t feel like you shouldn’t give it a plug.
Russell:
It just seems kind of boris, you know,
Hayley:
In the show notes, we’ll be plugging all your stuff so. It’s totally fine, if people want to people want to know about it, you know, it feels uncomfortable for you. But there’ll be people listening going, oh, that’s fantastic. Where can I get that book. What was that book Russell talks about? So that it’s important that we let people know what’s out there in terms of resources. But I think you know, when we tune in, and we change this relationship with ourselves, and we can be more aware of what’s going on for ourselves, we can stay more present in the room and take care of ourselves at the same time. And your point about when we do these practices for ourselves. It can show us how challenging they can be. It can show us how powerful they can be. And I think that then changes how we present them to our clients. They’re not just sitting there saying try this. It’s really, I think we do that in a different way, when we’re aware of what they actually feel like.
Russell:
Absolutely. You know, one of the phrases that I occasionally hear some people say, as therapists, that kind of drives me crazy. I don’t actually really like the phrase, you know, it’s kind of cliche, but it’s like, trust the process. And for me, I don’t trust a process until I’ve had some evidence to suggest that I should trust the process. And what that self-reflection work does is it gives you that lived experience, you’re like, oh, yeah, I not only do I sort of intellectually know that this stuff is helpful, because I’ve seen the studies, but I have a window into just how powerful it can be because it was helpful for me.
Hayley:
Absolutely. We were talking about that sort of getting to know ourselves. And if I say how important you think it is, I think I already know the answer.
Russell:
Yes, very important.
Hayley:
This willingness to tolerate the discomfort, of connecting to parts of ourselves that we don’t like or maybe even hate, or feel ashamed of. Can you speak to that a bit about us as practitioners and human beings? And how do you tolerate being with those parts of yourself?
Russell:
Yeah, so well, as you anticipated, I think it’s deeply important. You know, I think that the parts of ourselves that we don’t acknowledge and work with, can end up controlling us. Yeah. Right. Because they, you know, they protrude at inconvenient times. And, and we can structure, you know, huge chunks of our life around avoiding them. So, but I want to, I want to change the language a little bit around the question, because the question is, how important do you think it’d be that we tolerate those or, you know, I wouldn’t use the word tolerate there, I don’t think tolerating is enough. I think having compassion for those, understanding those tricky versions of ourselves, and being able to realise that, you know, for me, my kind of angry, irritable version of me, you know, that’s the part in me that carries a lot of hurt. And that really struggles to not be impulsive. And, you know, he’s not a bad dude he’s had a hard time, that version of me. And, you know, what for me was really helpful was when I stopped hating, like that part of myself and started going well, how do I, asking questions like, what does that version of me need? Right, what is driving the irritability and the anger and just getting really curious about what is helpful, you know, in addressing the struggle or the suffering or the wound or whatever is there, you know, and when I do a good job of that, then, you know, I inhabit that sort of version of myself a little less. You know, so it’s for me It’s not about tolerating it’s, it’s about learning to love the parts of yourself that you’re not proud of learning to care about the parts of yourself that maybe historically, you haven’t wanted other people to see. And recognise that those parts of you, you know, they’re there, there’s a validity to them, they reflect, you know, something about how your brain works and how your history has shaped you. And, you know, there’s a struggle associated to that, but there’s something there’s something real there too. You know, and different therapy modalities have gotten at that, you know, DBT years ago, Marsha Linehan talked about, you know, finding the Kernel of Wisdom in, you know, in the difficult behaviour or in, you know, the, the reactivity and even that is the kind of shift I’m talking about, instead of hating that part of yourself, or the you know, you’re going well, what, what’s that about? And how do I understand that. And, by the way, I think that, for me, is a key to having compassion, not just for the parts of ourselves that we tend to not be comfortable with. But for other people who maybes behaviour or values or whatever it is about them that we find repulsive, or that they push our buttons or you know, the world we live in right now is so politicised and so polarised in terms of all these different factors. It’s really easy, and sometimes pretty comfortable to take different kinds of people or say, oh, I like these people. But I don’t like those people or something wrong with those people, whatever. And it’s because you know, when there are those difference, it’s hard to feel compassion for those folks. So for me compassion in those situations, and just like compassion for the parts of myself I don’t like, it doesn’t start with feeling the compassion. It starts with understanding where they’re at, and how they, how it makes sense that they’re in that place. You know, if someone’s saying, well, I don’t, whatever, I don’t want to, I don’t want to politicise your podcast by using examples. But if someone’s saying, well, I’m not going to do this, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, rather than going well, you don’t care about anybody else, you’re so selfish. What if I go, how does it make sense that they would have that position? You know, what, if I were in their place? How would it make sense that I would have, you know, I would be in that place, you know, and if I can begin to understand that, then in many cases that dismantles some of the judgmental sort of stuff, and makes it possible to begin to feel the compassion. And, you know, for our own, for ourselves, one of the things I talk about a lot, when I’m introducing compassion, it’s just a brief practice called compassion into questions. And I’ll have people, you know, I’ll ask them, bring to mind a time you’ve recently struggled, you know, a time when, you know, maybe you respond in a way you’re ashamed of, or you just had a hard time or you look back, and you kind of cringe and, and then just pause and like, ask yourself, you know, given what I know about me, and my background, and how I was raised, and what I learned and what I didn’t learn, and the things that happened to me, normal and traumatic and all that stuff. Does it make sense that I would struggle with that? Does it make sense that I was struggle with exactly that? And the answer to that question is always yes. Even if we can’t link the dots together, if we don’t know, it’s always yes. Because by definition, our struggles occur in context within which they make sense, which is why I struggle with stuff that you don’t struggle with. And you struggle with stuff probably, that I don’t struggle with. Because all of that shaped by this combination of how our brains were shaped by evolution in this unique, you know, causes and conditions that played out in our lives, social shaping, and everything else. And so once the person has has gone oh, yeah, yeah, you know, of course, it makes sense. I would struggle with that. That’s a powerful shift, right? That’s moving from judgement or avoidance to acceptance. Then the second question is just given this, what would be helpful?
Hayley:
Yeah, I love that. I use that for myself. But I was smiling through part of what you were talking about and I think you explained that so beautifully. And when you’re saying about, I don’t mean tolerates the word. I started smiling to myself, because I was thinking, No, I think when I was kind of coming up with these questions, that’s the part of me that’s not shall we call her the less patient part of me. Yeah. I don’t tolerate the parts of me I don’t like and when I come from the compassionate part of me, it is so much more about how do I understand this part of me that showing up? Yeah. Trying to make send about why this part of me is showing up now. It’s often hand on heart, slowing my breath and asking myself, What is this part of me need? Yeah. So I love that that was brought to my attention through this. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. That was kind of less patient Hayley going, how do you tolerate parts?
Russell:
I tolerate Yeah.
Hayley:
So thank you for that, for me.
Russell Kolts
Oh, you’re welcome. And you know, I think those little bits matter, to just get curious about, you know, what’s helpful. So for me tolerate. The tricky bit about that is if we’re tolerating something like the implicit communication is that it’s bad. Right? I’m tolerating it. But you know, if I’ve got a splinter in my foot or whatever, and I’m tolerating it, that’s a bad thing. I mean, these tricky parts of ourselves they’re not bad. They’re just tricky.
Hayley:
I don’t really want you here.
Russell:
Yeah.
Hayley:
No, that’s fantastic. In terms of what you find your biggest challenges are of maintaining that compassionate motivation towards yourself.
Russell:
Yeah, what for me, the biggest challenges are just, you know, it’s not, there’s not like a theme to it. But it’s, it’s when, ah, you know, I’m going through life. And it usually happens when I’m really busy, right, I’ve just got a bunch of stuff going on, and my mind is kind of split. So I’m not quite as present to my present moment experience as I could be. And then something happens. And it’s sort of triggering, and then I move very quickly into judgement. You know, so, you know, things like, you know, I’m at the grocery store. And every, we’ve got a mask mandate in Washington state right now. So everyone’s wearing their masks. And when you walk into the store, there’s a sign that says, remember, there’s a mask mandate, please wear a mask. And then you’ve got someone kind of proudly walking through without a mask on, and I’m doing a million things and they want I’m in the queue, you know, getting ready to play and they stand right next to me right behind me. And I’m like, really, right, and I get triggered, and then my mind goes to wherever it goes. So it’s those sorts of things, when I’m really busy. And something triggers, and then the emotion hits. And I kind of go with it for a while. And, and that’s not a bad thing. But you know, the sooner I can sort of recognise what’s happening in my mind, and catch it, you know, versus like, creating a whole narrative about, you know, what a jerk this person is, or whatever, you know, so those are the things that I find challenging, it’s just those, when something catches me that I’m not expecting out of the blue, and it, it hits me, and then I’ve got to kind of readjust. But what happens and this is pretty characteristic of working with anger, is that, you know, as you work with this, over time, you get more and more familiar with the little triggers the little things that tend to tend to set you off. And so you can kind of anticipate them and, you know, so when I go to the store now, it’s like, okay, I’m gonna see this, and this is gonna happen, and, you know, how do I, you know, continue to be the version of me that I want to be? And not, you know, even in the face of this stuff that, you know, truthfully, I kind of disapprove of, you know, but I don’t have to approve of everything. So I don’t know if that answers your question. But it’s, it’s not like there’s one thing, that sort of the big things I feel like I’ve worked with, you know, but it’s those little things that catch me off guard. I don’t anticipate that kind of throw me.
Hayley:
Yeah, no, I think you answered it well, and I think it’s just that sort of importance of acknowledging that this stuff isn’t we learn it, and then we know how to do it all on, it’s all fine. I think, you know, yeah, the challenges and the maintaining that motivation can be hard. I mean, I sort of think, you know, when we get very busy or we’re tired, or unwell, or life is particularly more stressful than normal, perhaps are times when it makes sense that we’re going to struggle with this more. And if we can be aware of that then again, it can help us be more compassionate to ourselves.
Russell:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And to remember to not get caught up in this trap of expecting that we’d be there you know, I mean, you kind of got out I think it’s very easy to get this idea that at some point the journey will be over. At some point I’m just not going to have to worry about anger anymore. I will have conquered it and I will be a cool cucumber for the rest of my life. And you know, whatever it is I’ll be over it I’ll stop missing that loved one who died or you know, and you know, I don’t actually think that’s how it works.
Hayley:
Oh me neither.
Russell:
You know, I’ve kind of resolved myself that part of my life is going to be involving for the rest of my life working with irritability, working with that stuff. And I do really well for a while. But you know, I think getting older, is a real good laboratory for learning to do that stuff. Because right when I get it all dialled in, then a part of my body starts aching that didn’t used to ache. I’ve got another little irritation that tests me a little more. And so. And I think it’s, you know, it would be easy to get really upset about that and go, oh, it’s so unfair that I have to deal with this. Well, we all have stuff. Right, that we have to struggle with. And I think once we accept that, yeah, this is this is one of my things that I’m just going to have to pay attention to. And the more intentional we can be about that, I think the better we do.
Hayley:
Absolutely, totally agree. I think this is an ongoing learning throughout our lives, with ups and downs. Times when we can feel like yeah, I really nailed the compassion piece for myself today. Or actually in this hour, or actually, in this minute.
Russell:
Yeah, absolutely.
Hayley:
You know oops, there we go. We’ll reflect back on that one. Yeah,
Russell:
And to not and to not see the slip ups as failings or as like evidence that, oh, I can’t do it or whatever. It’s just, yeah, there’s some parts of life that are kind of hard. And that we’re going to keep working with. And, you know, that’s what it’s about.
Hayley:
Well, I think it’s always really helpful when talking with people, if you get them to sort of list out all the difficult things they’ve been dealing with, when they come in with that sense of I miht be working with supervisees, or I run a group for other helping professionals as well. People, like I’m just not feeling great, or you know, it’s not, it’s not going so well, or I’m struggling, but I don’t know why. And then when you actually list out all the things that are going on this moment of like, oh of course today would be difficult.
Russell:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, the pandemic is a perfect laboratory, for people to struggle, you know, because, I mean, if we look at those, the three systems, you know, that Paul kind of articulated in CFT, right, we’ve got drive, which is the stuff that the goals and the things we particularly the things we like to do that are reinforcing and make our lives you know, give little bursts of dopamine, a little burst of happiness, and then safeness and soothing, which is really sort of mediated through affiliation, and connection. Well, that’s, you know, the pandemic is threatening in terms of being worried about getting sick or losing people. But it also for me, you know, cut off about three fourths of what I enjoy doing, in terms of opportunity for reinforcement, you know, so I love live music. You know, I’ve spent hundreds of dollars in the last year on concert tickets that I ended didn’t end up going to, because the COVID numbers were too high, and we’re playing it pretty careful. And so does it make sense that life is gonna be a lot harder, when you’re not doing the things that make your life fun? Yeah, and your opportunities for connection, you know, just the ability to go out to lunch with colleagues or connect with people in different ways. You know, the pandemic for many of us has cut that stuff down to. So the stuff that helps live, you know, that are really helpful for building lives that are rewarding and kind of more resilient to the stressors, when you cut off a lot of that stuff. You know, it makes the hard parts of life a lot more difficult to deal with. And so when that happens, I think we need to be really curious and intentional, about finding other ways to build, like, beautiful moments in our life, you know, to, to have moments of soothing moments of connection and in ways that maybe we didn’t before because we didn’t have to, we didn’t have to maybe be innovative about it before, because we could just do the things. But now we can’t do all the things. So we need to think about, okay, how do I meet that need for myself? How do I how do I do that in a way that you know, fits with the kind of current context I’m living in?
Hayley:
Absolutely. So this might be a little tricky to sum up in one thing. But what would one piece of advice be that you would give to our listeners?
Russell:
You know, I think I think we just kind of found our way there just now. The advice I would give would be to get really curious about the things in your life that are helpful and to be intentional about building those things into your life. And you know, there’s a lot if you if you go online or you listen to podcasts like this, or, you know you go to therapy, we’ll encounter a lot of good advice, right? And there’s okay, there’s meditation, and there’s yoga, and there’s exercise, and there’s all the different things that we can do that potentially are helpful. And I think it’s good to try out a lot of those, you know, but I think it’s, it’s more important to not get rigid about, well, I need to do this, because this is what those people say, is helpful. And instead, try the things. But also reflect on your own Paul Gilbert has this term intuitive wisdom, like reflecting on? What do I know, if I reflect on my life? What do I know? That’s helpful for me, in those periods of my life, when I did a good job struggling with difficulties, or when I was really thriving and doing well? What were the factors that were present? What was I doing? You know, how did I spend my time, and it’s sort of, you know, build a lifelong practice of sort of noticing the things that help us, help me feel soothed, help me be the version of me that I want to be for my family and my friends, and my students, my colleagues and my clients, the things that, you know, add little moments of fun, or beauty, or soothing into my life, and continually elaborate on that kind of list. And then to intentionally build those experiences into our everyday lives. You know, I think we can do that. So, so instead of being really reactive, like when things go wrong, and okay, what am I going to do about that. That it’s a continuous practice of building a really meaningful, you know, life worth living. And one of the things that kind of inconvenient about doing this, when we get really curious about this stuff, that’s helpful. Sometimes what we find is not what we want to find. So for example, I’m a born again, exerciser, I get up in the morning at 5:45 every morning, and I work out hard for like 30 or 45 minutes doing like mostly like high intensity interval training, stuff like that. Because I’ve discovered that if I bust my butt, and work out in the morning for 30 to 45 minutes, I’m in so much of a better emotional place the rest of the day. And if I don’t do that, you know, if I reflect on the last three or four years, on, you know, every once in a while, I’ll just have a day where I’m a wreck, where my emotions are all over the place. And that’s just a struggle to get through the day. And on every one of those days. It was a day I didn’t work out. Right. That’s my medicine. And I gotta tell you, you know, I know a lot of people who are like, I love my workout, I gotta go workout, I look forward to it. I hate it. Let me tell you at 5:45 the last friggin thing I want to do when I get out of bed is to exercise. But I get up and I do it. Because paying attention to my life has taught me that that investment will pay off 100 fold, as in terms of how my day plays out. And you know, physical benefits aside, I’m a better version of me when I’ve done that. Another example for me, you know, if you asked me before, you know, what would be your perfect way of having a working life? I’d say, well, my perfect way would be if everyone just left me alone, let me do my stuff. And I could just sit in my little private practice office on my own and write a book and do my stuff and put it out there. I’d be happy as a clam. Turns out that’s not true. Right. I think that I think that that’s what I want, I feel that but I’ve you know, I because I’m in academia, I get the luxury of getting a sabbatical every once in a while. So every once in a while to you know, get University will give me three or six months to do exactly that. And I’ve done it. And what I find is that if I just do that, if I stay in my room and write and do those things, just what I think would be perfect. I drift in the direction of depression, my mood gradually erodes. And so if you look at my books, like half, half of the words in those books were written sitting in coffee shops. Yeah, I started going to coffee shops and writing and just being around people. And that was enough that kept me, you know, afloat. But so, I guess my point here is that when we start paying attention to what is helpful and building that stuff in our lives, sometimes that’s about doing stuff that’s really fun and really engaging that we really want to do. And sometimes it’s about finding ways to do stuff that actually maybe we wouldn’t prefer or we don’t feel like doing but we know it’ll pay dividends in our lives. We know it’ll help us, you know, be a better versions of us. So I think that’s the advice I would give.
Hayley:
I think that’s fantastic. I am a coffee shop writer I relate to what you’re saying there, I often think I’d like to just lock myself away and it’s not a good place for me to be and all power to you for the exercise, because my wisdom often tells me that I need to be doing that more. And it’s a process for me, because that’s the one area for me I really struggle with in terms of my own self care, and I think even when we were together in Edinburgh, I was talking to you. And that’s how long ago I was talking to you about it, then and I’m still working on it.
Russell:
Yeah, my workouts have been my best mindfulness teacher, in terms of like being able to observe the mental chatter without reacting to it. Because every morning, my alarm goes off at 545. And every morning, my brain start saying, I don’t want to work out today. Come on, I do this every day, it wouldn’t be a big deal. I could just take one day off. It’s not a big deal at all right? I could just go back to sleep, I could do it. And I’m thinking that, and I’m getting up and I’m putting on my shorts. And I’m getting out of bed and I’m walking downstairs and the mental chatter is going on the whole time. And I don’t even I just I let it, but my body is doing the things. So that’s the only thing that works for me. But that’s really it, I realised, you know, I can, I don’t have to respond.
Hayley:
Yeah. I think right there is the difference between willingness and motivation? Yeah, yeah. Willing, even though you don’t want to?
Russell:
Yeah, you just do it. I finish the workout. I feel great.
Hayley:
So this is a question I ask all my guests. If you could meet your 80 year-old-self? What do you think he would say to you?
Russell:
I think he would say thank you for working out every day. I can, because I can still do stuff. Right? That’s what I hope. I hope I he’d say that.
Hayley:
Absolutely, I think he would. I’m going to take this as inspiration. If I can Russell, I’m going to take that from you as inspiration for me to go for a walk after we finish on the podcast today.
Russell:
That’s what I hope. I mean, you know, there are two ways that can go right. I think either he would give me advice and say, you know, it would have been nice if you’ve done a little more of this. Right. But I think this question is actually a really powerful question, Hayley. This question you’re asking, because when we think about that, I think it encourages us to really delve deep into, what are the parts of my life that I don’t have that I’m not doing that my future self would thank me for doing if I had done and it gives us an opportunity to build those things into our life, into our lives. So I think that for me, I do try to think about that, what would my 80-year-old self need for me? How could I do that future version of me a favour? And I think, you know, the answer to that is everything we’re talking about, you know, how do I build opportunities for connection in my life? And how do I take care of my body? And how do I do these different things, so that that version of me has a chance at being, you know, healthy and functional and happy and reflecting back on a meaningful life, versus reflecting back on a series of regrets and lost possibilities? You know, so I think asking that question, I think it’s a wonderful question. And, you know, I think we need to take advice from our 80-year-old selves.
Hayley:
For sure. So finally, if people want to find out more about you, or where they can engage with you and your work, how might they do that? And we’ll put some stuff in the show notes as well, including plugging all your books.
Russell:
Thank you. So the one thing that’s nice about my name, is it’s kind of a weird name. K O L T S is a very unusual name. And as far as I know, I’m the only Russell with two s’s two L’s Russell Kolts like on the planet right now who’s alive. So I’m very easily Googleble. So if you want to find out what I’m up to Google is a good way of doing it. I have a website. But it, you know, I built the website myself years ago, and I think the platform I built it on is outdated. So I don’t know if it, it’s so terrible. I don’t know if it’s working anymore. So I think I’m gonna I’m gonna have to get a web designer or something. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re an inexpensive web designer, I’d love to hear from you. People can email me just russellkolts@hotmail.com Although I feel I have mixed feelings about social media. One of the things, the bright spots that has come out of social media for me when CFT Made Simple, when my book CFT Made Simple came out. I created a Facebook page, and I just thought this would be a way to promote the book. And I’d every few days I put out a quote from the book with an image. And I stole actually that idea from actually some ACT folks I knew who were where there was one person that was putting out an image every week, and the other person was putting a quote from their book. And I said, well, I’ll just put those together. And I’ll do that. Yeah, it’s completely not original. But I started doing that. And people started joining the page. And now so we’ve got this CFT Made Simple Facebook page that has well over 5000 members. And it’s not even really my page anymore, you know, it’s turned into a CFT community page. And I think that’s probably actually the best way to keep track of my stuff, as well as a lot of the things that are happening in the CFT. Community, a lot of the trainings and things like that get posted there. People will post clinical questions, things like this. It’s very important if treatment providers are posting clinical questions that they keep in mind that this this is a public space. So in addition to clinicians being on that page, there are a lot of clients and just people who are interested in CFT. So I always tell people, if you’re posting a question about how do you work with such and such a client, you should assume that the client you’re thinking about is reading your post, right? So that we maintain confidentiality very strictly, but I think it’s a wonderful place for people to come together. So that’s, that’s a good place to check out. And the compassionate mind foundation lists serve. Actually, there’s tonnes of great content that comes out on there. And it’s one of those things with a lot of professional organisation listservs you get a lot of kind of chatter from the membership. But you often the people who are the core people in the community who write the books and develop the trainings, they don’t participate very much, you know. And the CFT listserv is different in that Paul Gilbert, right is who if you get a chance to learn from Paul Gilbert, you take that opportunity. Yeah, right. He’s so generous and willing to share his knowledge. And so to have this sort of figure who basically created the whole thing, as an active participant in this listserv, sharing resources, answering questions, things like that. I couldn’t recommend that more highly, too. Sometimes there’s so much stuff content coming off the listserv that I don’t get through a fair bit of it. But I think that’s pretty good, too. But the easiest way to find me is to Google me and email me or through the Facebook page.
Hayley:
That’s fantastic and we’ll put stuff in the show notes. And just talking about Paul, as we’ve mentioned him a few times I have an episode, I think it’s Episode Four with a lovely chat with Paul Gilbert, so for anybody that hasn’t listened, that’s worth going back and having listened to as well. But Russell, thank you so much. I mean, it is always such a pleasure for me to have time to sit down and talk with you. So thank you so much. It’s so so lovely to see you. And I really hope that at some point in the not too distant future, the CFT community can get back together in person. And all get back together again.
Russell:
That would be great. And Hayley, it’s been such a pleasure to chat with you. And I can’t wait to hang out with you in person. Yeah,
Hayley:
Maybe we need to attract you to come over to Australia at some point as well.
Russell:
Name the day. I would love to come to Australia.
Hayley:
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Russell.
Russell:
Oh, you’re so welcome. Thanks again for inviting me.
Hayley:
Thank you.
Hayley:
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’d like to leave a review wherever you tune in. Reviews really helped 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 yourself. And may you go well and go gently.
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Disclaimer
This transcript may not be an exact representation of the audio
