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Compassion in a T-Shirt
Bend, Don’t Break: The Power of Psychological Flexibility | Ross G. White
00:53:45
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Dr. Stan Steindl. Welcome to Compassion in a T shirt. Today we're diving into a topic that sits right at the intersection between resilience, well being and compassionate living. Psychological flexibility. Why do some people bend with the winds of life while others feel like they might just break? And how does self compassion help us meet life's pressures, especially the ones we quietly carry inside with courage rather than criticism? These are big questions, and today we have someone uniquely placed to explore all this with us. I'm thrilled to introduce our guest, Professor Ross G. White. Ross is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and author of the Tree that How a Flexible Mind Can Help youp Thrive. His work brings together the science of thriving, the realities of high performance cultures, and the profound value of being able to stay open, grounded and connected when life gets difficult. Ross has spent his career helping people, from elite performers to everyday humans, cultivate the kind of inner flexibility that supports not just coping, but genuine flourishing. In our conversation, Ross and I explore the paradox of high achievement, its rewards, its hidden costs, and what happens when our drive to succeed starts to shape our identity. We unpack the acronym Anchored, Willing, Empowered, and we walk through the central ideas of the Tree that Bends, including how various practices can transform the way we.
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B
Move through the world.
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A
And towards the end, we venture into a topic that's close to my heart. Men, masculinity, psychological flexibility, and compassion. And how shifting these narratives might help men lead fuller, kinder, and more connected lives. And so I bring you Professor Ross G. White. Professor Ross White, welcome to Compassion in a T shirt.
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C
Thank you for the invite, Sam. Great to have the opportunity to talk.
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B
It's wonderful to speak with you. And I wondered whether we could start actually with your book. So, the Tree that Bends, Chapter one. You explore the idea that high performance often comes with a high price, and that might be in sports or arts or maybe even in daily life. I suppose. From your perspective, what are some of these costs or even hidden costs that people tend to overlook? Maybe, but maybe what are the genuine benefits as well that keep us striving so hard?
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C
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the cultures in which we live in are meritocracies. There's certainly something about hard work being rewarded and outcomes being held up as being particularly important achievements. And we do have that urge to strive. And that's important, as you mentioned, in various domains of our lives, whether it be professionally, in our family lives, in our free time, if we've got objectives that we're working towards and we have a Sense of achieving those that feels good for us. We certainly get plaudits for that. And yeah, workplaces, for example, will reinforce particular types of traits. So perfectionism can be a good thing for organizations in the sense that the work is delivered to a very high standard. Obsessiveness can also be reinforced and rewarded because there is that sense that people are keeping their shoulder to the wheel and really having that attention to detail. But of course, too much obsessiveness, too much perfectionism isn't good for us as individuals. And there's almost been this messaging and I guess it could be charted back really to some of those ideas around. Well, if you're not living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space, you know, and the 1990s, no fear t shirts were massive and they had these slogans emblazoned all over them. And yeah, that idea of, well, if you're not performing, you're not cutting it and you really need to be attentive to your performance and this sense that you have to sacrifice your well being at the altar of success. And I'm really troubled by that idea that that's a zero sum game, that you have to sacrifice your well being in order to achieve or succeed. So the book was really an attempt to try to redress the imbalance there and to highlight that it's not a zero sum. We can excel and we can feel well. And I thought psychological flexibility was a great vehicle for helping people to do that.
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B
I've heard you say before, you know, the problem of relent, relentless, relentless, relentless, relentlessness or something. But also maybe perfectionistic perfectionism or something, that there's a, there's a threshold there somewhere that certain striving and having high standards, maybe even or having goals that we're really working towards, aspirations that we want to achieve. That works well and works well in a whole range of contexts. But somewhere there's a kind of threshold and when we cross that, it starts to affect our well being.
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C
Well, that's right. And there are different forms of perfectionism. One, the particularly problematic one is the maladaptive perfectionism where it moves from that perfectionistic striving. If you like to tilt more into this maladaptive preoccupation with needing things to be absolutely perfect and that can actually slow our progress towards the completion of goals. And I'm sure listeners will be aware of that, that that perfectionistic voice that they might struggle with at times can really slow them down and make them hyper critical of the work that they've Been producing to the point that they start to get reluctant to submit it and that does slow things down obviously. So yeah, there's nothing wrong with tenacity, there's nothing wrong with grit, there's nothing wrong with relentlessness. They have their place in particular contexts but if they start to become overused strategies and the only tool in the toolbox. Yeah, being relentlessly relentless will lead to burnout. And we're seeing levels of burnout, Stan, rising. The hope was that Covid might be the great reset and that it would help us reflect a bit more on our patterns of working and might help to bring more balance and blend between work and life. But if anything, we're now working longer hours than we did before the COVID pandemic. And yeah, the rates of burnout are rising.
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B
Maladaptive perfectionism and really shame based self criticism are such close cousins, aren't they? Sometimes. And that's kind of, that's where it really the sort of the rubber hits the road and now wellbeing starts to suffer.
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C
Yeah, and shame and guilt, some of those self conscious emotions, they're, they're very challenging to deal with. And unless we have techniques and strategies and scaffolds in place to help us manage the impact of shame and feelings of guilt, then that can lead to problems in the longer run, particularly around mental health and wellbeing.
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B
You've mentioned psychological flexibility there and I guess the book brings that in as a kind of a framework. How do you see flexibility really helping people navigate this tension between aspirations and achievement and balancing well being? I sometimes see, you know, on the social medias, you know, suggestions to go gently with oneself or to, you know, to lean into really taking care and time and to sort of backing away I guess in some ways from aspirations as a kind of a means of self care. But I suppose is there a way to where psychological flexibility really helps us to navigate those two equally important things, achievement and well being.
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C
Great.
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B
Yeah.
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C
In the book I talk about this idea of strong intention, light attachment and forever grateful to a psychologist colleague of mine, Jennifer Nardosi, who introduced me to that, that term as we were sat in Sierra Leone doing some work around cross cultural mental health for a charity called Commit an Act a number of years ago. But strong intention, light attachment is this idea of we'll be strong in your intention to be true to what it is that matters to you, but be light in getting attached to the notion that there's one particular way to do that. And I think if we can hold in mind and Listeners can hold in mind this idea of strong intention, light attachment that that allows us maybe to carry ourselves lightly, that it allows us to recognize that there are things that matter. But when it comes to the things that matter to you, that's a journey. And there are different paths to our sense of purpose, not one single path. So I hope that that allows us some wiggle room to carry ourselves a bit more lightly. And for the listeners, I think it's helpful just to give them a sense of what psychological flexibility is, because it's a concept I talk a lot about in the book. Psychological flexibility is the ability to be true to what it is that's important to us. Even though difficult thoughts and feelings may show up in pursuit of those things that matter to us. It's essentially about changing the relationship we have with the thoughts and feelings that we can face on a daily basis so that they don't dictate to us. The way I like to describe psychological flexibility where people is it's the idea that we have thoughts and feelings. Those thoughts and feelings don't have us. So we can live our life with thoughts and feelings rather than having to live through those thoughts and feelings. So living with thoughts and feelings as opposed to living through them. And that can often be the case. The thoughts we have about ourselves, the thoughts we have about other people, it's almost like a lens through which we start to perceive the world. So that's that idea of living through our thoughts and. Yeah. Psychological flexibility is about recognizing the stories that our mind might generate about who we are and being open and willing to show up to the emotions that can come with those stories, to be clear on what it is that matters to us in life, and to try to stay present as we move towards what it is that matters to us, bringing those thoughts and feelings along the road with us rather than being blocked by them.
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B
Just a question that's popped to mind. Could you give an example of a sort of a scenario, I suppose, that demonstrates psychological inflexibility and what that same scenario might. How that might play out with more psychological flexibility?
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C
Yeah. Great. So whenever I was writing the Tree that Bends, there were a lot of thoughts in my mind about am I going to be able to contribute anything novel, interesting, engaging, that people might want to read? And there were a lot of concerns about other books that were out there, people I respect and really admire for the style of writing that they have adopted. So I'm going to name check some people here. Right. Because I think that's important. Ross Harris Australian act practitioner and trainer. The Happiness Trap. Great book, great book. I'm also thinking here about the like of James Clear and Atomic Habits. Just a beautiful book in terms of the way the messages are explained and how it builds and the practical utility, the stuff people can take away and use in everyday life. So it would be easy for me to be very daunted and feeling that I'm just not cut out for that and to question my own capabilities and competencies around contributing something helpful and interesting. So, yeah, there were times in that process of getting the idea together for the book that the inflexibility did show up those narratives about, well, who are you to think that you could contribute something new and interesting and engaging? And the inflexibility piece would have me being really cowtied by those stories my mind was generating. The emotions, the fear, the sense of worry that might show up about, oh, if you were to do that and it didn't land well with people or you stepped on somebody's toes by not describing a concept particularly well. Yeah, that sort of fear worry could have shut me down, but it would have led to me living life small. It would have cut me off from something I'm very passionate about, about explaining psychological concepts in plain language, helping to cascade that knowledge down to general readership. I stand for 17 years I've been writing academic papers for academic journals, which is great and important for developing the science, but it's not really getting the message out in the way that I want to. So I want to engage with the public. So the flexibility piece is. Ross, recognize that this is important, that perhaps it's important enough for you to have those doubts, those concerns, those fears and those anxieties. You're going to have that in life anyway. Why not have it doing something that really matters to you, that you think is going to make a difference for other people. So inflexibility. Okay, I'll shut this down, I'll close the laptop and I'll move on. Versus the hey, take a deep breath. Let's get grounded. Let's be open and explore those emotions and how they're showing up for me in this moment. Where is the fear? Where is the anxiety? It's in my tummy. It's like butterflies, right? Can't stop the butterflies, but I can help them fly in formation and then let's move forward, committing to taking the actions I need to do to write the book.
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B
You can hear the seesaw of intention and attachment when there's the psychological inflexibility. It sort of Lightens intention and strong attachment, whereas the psychological flexibility and the seesaw shifts now where we're strengthening that sense of intention and the things that are driving that and just start to hold a bit more lightly to both the path, but also the outcome. And the psychological flexibility says, well, maybe this or it could be this or let's see that. Or it just sort of opens up really the possibilities.
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C
Exactly that and the attack. Yeah, you allude to this idea, which is important, about the risk of becoming too attached. So as I commit to take that valued action about writing the book, there were certainly times during that process where I could see it was taking a lot off me. It was a greedy process. And yeah, being able to remind myself, strong intention, light attachment, step back as well. And bizarrely, whenever you step back, you get greater clarity. I talk about some of the sentences in that book felt like a life sentence, literally, because it took so long, like the minute focus on a particular line and I could sit for half an hour looking the cursor on the computer, being a blinking alert to the fact that I wasn't making progress. Right. And when I actually got up and took the dog for a walk as I walked along, the answer would come, the clarity would come right as I stepped away sometimes. That's whenever the clarity came. So, yeah, strong intention, light attachment. Hold things lightly too. Don't get too drawn in because it will, I think, drain you. That's the risk.
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B
I mean, Russ Harris is a tough one to have as a comparison, I think. Doesn't his thing on the front of his book, it says, you know, over a million copies sold or something. So his book is very, very, very successful and effective as well. But that's what the mind does. It creates these comparisons that can be.
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C
Very difficult just to say. Stan, I'm grateful for us because I did share a copy of the book with him before it went to print, and he was kind enough to provide an endorsement for the book, which was lovely. And he wrote me a lovely email and it was just really nice to know somebody that you'd admired, had read the material and thought a lot about it and had some lovely warm words. So, yeah, grateful to us. Yeah.
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B
And, you know, the book is really, you know, that's your voice, isn't it, and your, Your take and your sort of integration of different things and, and wanting to present that, I suppose, to the, to the reader as something. Something that might be helpful, actually. Chapter three anchored, I suppose, so that. That's where you start to move into the, the. The tin tax of it all and that it really emphasizes values as that anchoring, stabilizing force. So how, how do you help people discover what really anchors them or you know, perhaps even rather than what they've just been conditioned to value or what society has kind of suggested to them?
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C
Yeah, it's a great point. And just for the listener. In the book, I use the anatomy and functioning of a tree as a central metaphor. Hence the tree that bends. So it's from a Tanzanian proverb, the tree that bends does not break, or the wind does not break the tree that bends. So the tree was a very central metaphor. And I used the anatomy of the tree to represent three important components of psychological flexibility. And we're starting with being anchored, which is the roots of the tree which keep it grounded. But then the trunk of the tree represents the second element of a flexible mind. Being willing. Willing if you like to lean into the swarms of life, willing to be open to the emotions that show up at difficult times. And then finally, the crown of the tree, the branches and the leaves represent the being empowered element of psychological flexibility. So the crown of the tree is the powerhouse of the tree. That's where photosynthesis happens. That's where the tree creates the fuel it needs to grow and to develop. Likewise, we need to be empowered by our sense of purpose and our personal values so that we can take pragmatic action in line with our purpose and our values. So yes, the roots, the trunk, the crown, anchored, willing, empowered. And that's represented by the acronym awe, just to help people remember it. Anchored, willing, empowered, represent those three components. So listeners, if you're interested in psychological flexibility, the book will be helpful. But if you're also interested in trees, you're going to learn a lot about trees as well.
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B
So for those who like both, it's a, it's a double, double dose. Perfect for me.
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C
Exactly. Yeah. So being anchored is about recognizing that we have this capacity to mentally time travel. The human mind is blessed in its capacity to think in abstract symbolic ways. So we have a sense of our present moment. But we can also go back and reflect on past experiences, which is incredibly helpful for us learning so that we can maybe do things potentially better the next time. But that can bring with it some issues because we can remember. We can also ruminate, ruminate over things that didn't go as well. And we can also recall traumatic episodes from our histories. So that means that we can, if you like, get dragged back into the past. Our awareness can get co opted without our consent. Sometimes to be dragged back into those past memories, intrusive, difficult memories. But we also have this capacity to be zipped into the future. So that's useful and helpful so that we can plan and prepare and we can purposefully use the present moment to think about, well, how am I going to work towards the achievement of that goal? Which is great, but that brings with it problems as well, because we can also generate catastrophic thoughts about what might go wrong in the future. And that's worry. Worry is future oriented in that way. And the science is quite clear that about 49% of the time. 49%. So nearly half the time during our waking hours, we aren't actually thinking about what is happening around us. We're either thinking about the past or the future. That's a lot of experience that we're missing out on. So being anchored is about helping people to be here now, literally be in this time, this place, so that you can savor the richness of what the present moment and the opportunities that it affords brings. And that's where mindfulness can be incredibly helpful as a way of developing awareness and also some insight around our lived experience of the present moment. And I like to think about a mindful disposition being a bit like a compass needle coming to a bearing. It's an orientation. It's how we are in this moment. But compasses need the bearings on the compass as well for us to think about, okay, in this present moment, which choices do I want to make now? Right. So I like to think about values as being like the bearings on that compass. They help guide us in the decisions and the choices that we might want to make. And I like to think about values as being adverbs. So in English, adverbs tend to end in ly. So you can do something compassionately, assertively, decisively. Okay. So I like that way of thinking about values because it brings them much more into the present moment, because that's literally how you and I can interact now compassionately with each other, assertively, potentially, if time's getting a bit tighter. Right. So there's something about being clear on what our values are so they can influence how we are in this moment, the qualities that we're bringing through, and how we choose to behave.
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B
I recently spoke with Jenna Lejeune about values. She has that metaphor of the truffle dog or something for values. And what do you. How do you help people really identify the values that the ly words that are really sort of important to them, although I guess it depends on context, too. And that's the importance of the here and now or the present moment and the choices and the values and so on. But, yeah, what, what are some of the ways that people would discover what their values really are?
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C
Stan?
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It.
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C
It also depends on the roles, which speaks to your point about context. So I would do a lot of work with high performance athletes, rugby players, footballers, track athletes, and that's a real passion of mine. And we often separate out the values that they might have to foreground as a competitor versus off the track or off the pitch, as a person. And that's quite important because the values that they bring to the fore in a competitive environment can be markedly different to the values that are going to be important for them when they're in the kitchen or in the living room back home interacting with loved ones or on the school run and dropping the kids off. Right. That's quite a different scenario to trying to score a try in the last minute of a game. And so separating out roles and then exploring values can be really important. An exercise that I often use, which is really widely used in the ACT world acceptance and commitment therapy, is the birthday exercise. So encouraging someone to think about one of those significant birthdays that end in a zero, and it needs to be in the future, right. So it's not so immediate. There's time, if you like, between now and that birthday. So it's an imagery exercise. I encourage the person to imagine a venue that they're very comfortable in. Restaurants could be a hotel, a venue that they've been to and they've enjoyed. And people are gathered, friends, family, work colleagues, team members. And it's come to that point in the night where someone's stepping forward with the microphone to say a few words about who you are, how you are in the world, the difference that you bring. And it's someone you trust, right. You're glad it's them and they start speaking. What would you hope that that person would say about who you are, about how you are in the world with yourself, with other people? So that can be a nice weigh in. Right, that's the qualities piece that I mentioned. That's the kind of adverbs and that can help explore values. Another technique, though, is a card sort exercise. So I have a deck of cards with 40 different values on them and I ask people to sort them into three piles. Not important to how I want to live my life. May be important and absolutely kneeled on. Yeah, this stuff matters to me. So at the end of that card sort process, I just Say, well, can we set aside the ones that aren't important or may be important just for the focus of our conversation now? And we spread those cards out and I then ask them, oh, are any of those cards there? Because other people might be influencing you to prioritize those values? Sometimes people might say, yeah, these three or four. I can see that that was something that was really drilled into me during my schooling, or perhaps they attended church and that was very much influencing their perspective. And values need to be freely chosen by the person as opposed to being something that they think they ought to. To prioritize. So we maybe set those aside. I then ask, are there any of those values that you've identified as being really important that you feel quite distant from at the moment that you're maybe not getting as much opportunity to engage with and it's just a beautiful conversation to then explore? Well, are there ways that we can help find to reconnect with that value? So there are loads of different techniques. And finally, Stan, the other pieces that as soon as somebody starts talking to me about something that they're upset about or distressed by, for me, straight away, that's a window of opportunity to understand, well, what's important enough for that person to be feeling that upset and that discomfort and that distress. What is it that sits on the other side of that that might be of value, might be important. So there are two sides of the one coin. They're inextricably linked that if we didn't value something, then we wouldn't worry about it. So if we're worried about something, then there's something close by that matters to us. So I can use that to generate some thoughts and hypotheses that I can share with the client. Well, you know, it sounds like this argument with your partner has really upset you. I guess that's maybe an indication of how much you might value the relationship and your role within the relationship. Is that right? So you can try that out just to get a better understanding, you know, of doing things collaboratively in the relationship. And that's maybe where the breakdown has happened and that's where the upset is coming.
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B
It's great to have the sort of, the different ways in. I suppose the first exercise, the birthday exercise, helps people just to connect with their own sense of earth and putting it into words via this idea of someone, you know, describing them in. In the future and who they've been. The second one offers them a bunch of words or what, or sort of a vocabulary to consider and then sort. And you Know, that's a really great way to get the thinking processes started. And then the third example is just as a therapist listening well such that when you're hearing, maybe even just really difficult times like trouble in a relationship, that you can start to help offer little ideas about what, what the values behind all that might be. In, in chapter four, you discuss willingness. And, and I was talking to Robin Wasler recently about working via ACT with, with trauma and, and her, she, she talked about willingness too. And, and sort of opening up to discomfort, maybe. Ra. So just give us a sense of that piece then that next piece in the AWE acronym. The willingness side.
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C
Yeah, willingness really relates to the willingness to recognize that our minds can be story generating machines and a willingness to show up to the emotions that come with those stories. And we are subject to a lot of media these days. And I like to think about our minds almost being like a media outlet or a news broadcaster. So if we think about BBC or CNN or Fox News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, abc. Right, yeah. So they will have their editorial policies on what stories get broadcast. Some will try to be a bit more objective than others. Some will have a political leaning, if you like. Right. And our minds are similar in the sense that they are subject to bias. Okay. They're not necessarily objective arbitrators of our lived experience. There will be bias in the stories that are mind generate. So yeah, hopefully that's helpful for people using that analogy, that metaphor to recognize that. Well, we have to be discerning digesters of what it is. The stories that are bubbling up, see the story rather than getting swept away by the story. And I even use what I call the roving reporter exercise. So you could imagine that you're a reporter on the scene of your thought, standing with your microphone to your mouth, looking into camera. It's now 9:40am in the morning. I'm recognizing that I'm getting a rumble in my tummy. I might need to get a cup of coffee and a biscuit after this podcast. Back to you in the studio. Now that's a very trivial example, but it's kind of shifting the relationship we have with the stories our mind generates. I like reporters. The reporters have to report the story. They don't get caught up in the story. That doesn't fly too well. Right. They need to report the news rather than be the news. Likewise, reporters need to be able to let go of the story that they've been reporting so that they can also move on to the next story. If I was pitching up at all of These different locations on different days in different contexts, saying the same thing to camera, that wouldn't really work too well. I wouldn't be in the job very long. And I think that captures the ability to let go of some of the stories. I'm not saying that's easy, but using little techniques like this can help us to just hold some of those stories lightly and. Yeah. Willing then to show up to the emotions that come with them. Because often we're taught that we need to suppress emotions, that they're an inconvenience, that they're an indulgence, that they should be controlled, that they should be mastered. Oh, every time I hear that phrase, master your emotions, do you know, it's kind of like, hey, you can out tough your emotions. And that concerns me because emotions serve important functions. And if you're too busy trying to master it or fight it, you're not necessarily getting to the message that might sit at the core of it. So willingness is another way.
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B
Yes, the willingness and the reporter metaphor. The reporter, I guess, is the objective observer of things. And there are also other things going on in that scene. For example, the eyewitness, who's sort of the reporter's interviewing, I suppose, and the eyewitness has a very different experience of that moment and is caught up in it, and it's very personal for them and so on and so forth. And. And there's parts of the mind that feel a bit like that as well, maybe. And so trying to step into that observing, objective, neutral, sort of discerning, caring reporter mode.
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C
Yeah. Getting to the storied nature of our thoughts. And too often we get caught up. The thought is a fact, and that can feel very heavy, and that can weigh us down. So getting back to recognizing and noticing the story and observing it, as you say, is helpful.
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B
Your chapter on empowerment then highlights, I guess, action guided by the values, perhaps, or in the moment rather than some of these stories, really, I guess, is perhaps how I might interpret how you're describing it. So. So what's this bit? How does empowerment differ from the. The high performance or even perfectionistic or unrelenting push, you know, that so many people find themselves in or even just kind of get used to?
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C
Yeah. The empowerment element, in addition to bringing through some of that work on values, is also about purpose. And I define purpose as engaging in something that is at once meaningful to yourself and has implications for others beyond yourself. So purpose is meaningful to you and of consequence to those beyond you. And there's a lot of focus. If you like on find your purpose, find your why. And that, I think, can lead to a lot of frustration. People can be left thinking, well, why can't I find my why? Why can't I find my purpose? It's almost like you walk out the front door and trip over something and, oh, there's my purpose. Yeah, we are to be discovered. And there it is, complete and ready to rock. I'll just pick it up and go, and. And for me, it's not about finding your purpose. It's forming your purpose. And I talk about this in the book. Forming is this idea that actually the seeds of our purpose are there and the things that light us up, that bring vitality, excitement, enthusiasm. And when we feel that, I think we need to cultivate that. We need to recognize that we have to invest in that and grow it. And so purpose, for me, I think, is a key element of being empowered. And your question about, well, yeah, okay, you've got a sense of purpose. You've got your personal values. You know, how you want to be in the world, and how do you almost take care of yourself and protect yourself from going hell for leather and burning out and everything else, falling by the wayside in pursuit of growing this purpose or being true to your personal values? And, you know, I almost think about values as being like, you know, racehorses can wear blinkers, right? And the blinkers are about helping keep the racehorse's eyes focused on the. The finish line, if you like, keeping them looking ahead. And there's a risk sometimes with our values that we can get our values blinkers on. And we start to think, I have to behave in line with these values all of the time. And if I don't, then I'm a bad person. And that's where that kind of sense of shame can come in. You know, I'm doing a bad thing if I'm not being true to my sense of purpose all of the time. And yeah, I like to say to clients, yeah, those blinkers can be helpful in context. They can help racehorses do the race. But you wouldn't want the racehorse wearing those blinkers in the stable, right? It would be banging its head off walls and not able to see its food or where its drink is. So you need to take those blinkers off and you need to take care of yourself so that you can go again. And I like this concept of workability. Do you know, is it going to be workable for us to just be relentlessly relentless about being true to our sense of purpose and our personal values? There will absolutely be a time and a place for that. But we also need to take care of ourselves too. And that really is where the second part of the book focuses on this idea of the get, threat and reset motivational modes and trying to blend our activity across those three modes. So get is about striving, the threat is about surviving and the reset mode is about reviving and then modern life. Arguably our GET and threat are highly activated. We're really focused on trying to strive to achieve and we're in GET mode and then if we risk falling short of that, we can easily flip into threat mode and our reset mode can be the pure relative. So the book really does focus on the importance of helping people to get more into reset mode. And that's where things like compassion, gratitude and also wonder experiences can be really helpful. Yeah.
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B
Yes, I, I sort of feel like I might recognize get threatened reset in a, in a, sort of. A lot of the, the viewers and listeners of, of this compassion in the T shirt will, will know about threat drive and soothing, I suppose the Paul Gilbert version of it.
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C
But you've, and can I say, can I say I very much borrowed that framework. So that is precisely what that has been built on and I'm grateful to Paul and I do acknowledge Paul in the book for that foundational work that really helped me to bring that work into the book. So it's beautiful. I think it's so important.
- [42:19]
B
Yeah. And you have a nice turn of phrase I think in the book. Like you've, you've worked hard I think, to word things in ways that help people to well, both understand but also remember them, you know, and, and things like the anchoring, the, the willingness and, and the empowerment and, and kind of like moving towards awe I suppose is the idea there, you know, being able to be in the present moment, in the here and now and, and kind of understanding one's values to bring awareness to one, to the stories that we, we might tell ourselves and then kind of be with the thoughts and feelings that are there, forming purpose and trying to take action around purpose and so on. And, and then this get threatened, reset, you know, but just being aware that as Paul says, you know, we have tricky brains or whatever and, and so I think for when we're in that really maladaptive perfectionistic thing and there's shame based self criticism at play and, and where you know, kind of over, sort of over preparing or we're procrastinating all those different things that can happen. It's, it's often somewhere in the, the get and the threat, isn't it? There's sort of something there, a threat based drive that, that kind of is, is behind a lot of that. And, and tell us about the reset piece a little bit more then. How do you really present that?
- [43:49]
C
Yeah. And again now the tree metaphor comes back in and it's the functioning of a tree. Now if you think about a tree in spring and summer, they're really active, they're photosynthesizing, they're going after the sun's energy, they're full bloom, they're growing, they're developing. So trees, they're striving, they have their get mode in spring and summer. Trees also have their threat modes. They need to respond to dangers that they encounter and infestation from bugs or fungi can kill a tree. So they need to invest energy in protecting themselves. And they do that, for example, through the SAP. And there can be a pesticide element within the SAP that can protect the tree. So trees have their threat node, which is about surviving. Trees also though have reset mode in autumn and in winter. So in the northern hemisphere, the trees are bare here and the sun's energy isn't strong enough for them to photosynthesize. So they drop their leaves. Indeed, if they were to hold on to their leaves in the winter, snow could gather on those leaves and break the branches. So it's also functional for the leaves to drop. So trees go dormant in winter and in autumn, and that's an opportunity for reviving. That's the reset mode for the tree. If I was to take an oak tree sapling, a young oak tree indoors, it would not thrive, it would die because it wouldn't get the environmental signals it needs to shut down to go into reset. So the moral of that story is, well, if you're always on that getting threat, it's not going to be conducive for thriving in the long term. So again, I think the tree metaphor is helpful in that way. And in the book I talk about there being two main types of reset. One are momentary moves and then the other are bold moves. And as their name suggests, momentary moves are more transient, faster, quicker reset opportunities that you can engage and use that can bring about a shift and get you into that reset mode relatively quickly. And those momentary moods are about using self transcendent emotions. And there are three of them. Wonder, connecting with something more vast than ourselves. And nature can be great for that. Gratitude about expressing thanks to someone or something other than yourself that you've reason to be grateful for. And Then compassion, compassion towards others, but also self compassion. So those are the momentary moves. Bold moves are longer term commitments, potentially counterintuitive actions and decisions and choices we might make. So an example of a bold move for a reset might be taking a career break or committing to a period of travel or deciding to leave a role or indeed to start a new endeavor, a new initiative. So those are the bold moves, if you like, that help us to realign with our sense of purpose so that we can go again. So hopefully that gives you a bit of an overview about the reset mode.
- [47:15]
B
Yeah, that's beautiful. It's sort of, it almost feels a little bit like compassion and to, I guess self compassion is somewhat behind all of it because it takes a lot of wisdom and strength and courage and care and, and you know, to, to actually bring psychological flexibility into, into one's life. And, and as you say, some of the momentary and bold moves that one might make really, you know, they take a lot of wherewithal and, and, and that, that courage, peace and so on to do the things. It's that classic. Self compassion isn't necessarily always going to feel good. It's about trying to work towards doing things that are good for us in a sense. You've started to speak certainly online I've noticed you talking about the pressures men face, I guess around performance and achievement and emotional constraints, I guess that can sometimes feel imposed. How do ideas like psychological flexibility and, and self compassion, how, how do they land with men? And, and how does, how do they sort of help men, you know, kind of move beyond some of the, the social presses, pressures, the, the, the norms of masculinity and so on that can often inhibition men.
- [48:50]
C
Yeah, I think for men self compassion can be particularly difficult and there's a bit of a chain of associations that you can almost spot, you know that compassion equals soft, soft equals weakness, weakness equals failure. These are the kinds of lines of association that have built up in our language that can make men wary and reluctant and indeed women reluctant to perhaps engage with self compassion. So yeah, there's work that needs to be done around. Well, self compassion is not weak. It's not passive, it's not giving in, it's not self indulgent. Self compassion isn't the absence of strength, it is strength turned inwards towards oneself. So I think helping people to understand that. So self compassion is not the absence of strength, it is strength turned inwards towards oneself. And it's this act of courageous willingness to take care of yourself so you can take care of Others or take care of business. And once people start to understand it as an investment in themselves, then they can, I think, get much more on board with it. But, yeah, we are swimming against the tide of socialization around, you know, don't be soft, don't be weak, dry your eyes. Do you know that kind of messaging that many of us grew up with? So, yeah, it's important really to help bring around that shift and understanding about what self compassion is.
- [50:50]
B
Yes, A colleague of mine here, Hayley Quinn, who I will be interviewing soon, her tagline is when you thrive, your business will too sort of thing. And I suppose that's the. The little connection there that we're trying to convey is that self compassion is a strength and helps you to actually improve on performance. And it's a motivator and it helps with, you know, kind of really being able to identify what it is you want to do and how to do it and whether you will do it and commit to it and so on. So it actually promotes kind of thriving and flourishing even in our business or our sport or whatever it might be.
- [51:32]
C
And very quickly, psychological flexibility, in terms of trying to help people understand it and see the value of it, people understand the benefits of physical flexibility, being malleable to prevent injury or promote rehab to stay fit and well, and psychological flexibility is very much analogous experience, but it's about, well, being malleable, being flexible in relation to our thoughts and our feelings. And I think understanding the value of physical flexibility helps then be a bridge to how people can then get on board with. Okay, yeah, psychological flexibility, I get the idea here and I can see it.
- [52:15]
B
Might be important and that's why it's such a beautiful metaphor. That is the title of your book and also the theme that runs through it. You know, the tree that bends, you know, the tree that bends is able to, you know, withstand the winds and the storms around it. And just as psychological flexibility helps us to, you know, kind of cope with life's challenges, that the inevitable challenges that will be there and bringing that self compassion in, I guess that sort of helps to fertilize the roots and, you know, kind of whatever it is. I'm trying to think of how to expand that metaphor quickly because I know you need to go and so. But I really appreciate that and all that conversation and, and I appreciate you coming and speaking with me. I recommend everyone check you out on. I think it's Instagram mainly. I'm not sure if there are other things you are on as well, but your social media is, is very, very helpful and, and, and entertaining.
- [53:19]
C
Thank you. Yeah, I'm @rossgwhite on Instagram and people can follow me as well on LinkedIn. So, yeah, if you search for me around Strive to thrive the name of my psychology consultancy, that should help people find me.
- [53:35]
B
I'll have all that in the description. So, Professor Ross Weiss, thank you very much for speaking with me on Compassion in a T shirt.
- [53:43]
C
It's been a pleasure. Thank you.