← Compassion in a T-Shirt
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, I'm Dr. Stan Steindl. Welcome back to Compassion in a T Shirt where we explore the science and practice of compassion and how it can transform our lives. Today's conversation is a special one for me. Many years ago I had the privilege of shadowing Dr. Chris Irons at one of his workshops on compassion focused therapy for Shame. And I still remember the depth, clarity and humanity he brought to that work. It left a lasting impression on how I think about self criticism and compassion and how to talk about it and offer it in training. Chris is a clinical psychologist, trainer and author who's been deeply involved in the development of cft. Working closely in the early days with Paul Gilbert. He's co authored and written a number of influential books including the Compassionate Mind workbook, CFT from the Inside out and A Compassionate Mind Approach to Difficult Emotions and has helped bring compassion practices to life through accessible tools including digital and app based approaches. In this conversation we take a slightly different path, less structured, more reflective as we explore what it's actually like to be human with our own minds and how compassion shows up from the inside. And so I bring you Dr. Chris Irons.
- [01:29]
B
Oh mate. On the, on Saturday I woke up really just, I just woke up irritable and, and you know, like cranky and it was quite, it was actually sort of very different to how I'd been the day before, the day before that and I kind of woke up and, and I've got these philosophers busts that I've been meaning to get a plinth, you know plinths for, they're for that in the garden and I bought these, these plinths offline and, and when I got them and I had this on, they had this to do in, on the Saturday morning and, and I had to put them together and there was like hundreds of screws, you know, to screw these pieces together and I was just getting sort of more and more annoyed and frustrated and the occasional swear word coming out and, and whatever. And I mean what do you make of these tricky brains? You know, this, we. These messy, this messy reality of the human experience.
- [02:39]
C
I love that as an example. And there's always something great, isn't there? This sort of wonderful moment in which you're going to be looking at, thinking about and trying to construct these philosophers and at the same time inside you just annoyed and irritated and frustrated and I just feel shitty and I don't know. I think it's really fascinating though, isn't it? Those moments in particular. I love Stan, when I can look back over time, back at myself and sort of, because there is a beautiful irony that sometimes comes up in which I'm working on something to do with compassion, but I'm getting super frustrated, annoyed and pissed off project that I'm working on. Or there's something like this where actually you could just be in this very contemplative mood and really connecting to the different amazing stories and minds that each philosopher brought into the world. And really connected to this in a very expansive way that you're just feeling annoyed and frustrated. And one of the things I love about that though, is exactly this point, I guess, isn't it, that we would talk about in cft, that actually we do have these fundamentally tricky minds that actually the tricky bit to a certain extent for me with this is. Is when we don't notice them. So it's when we're just on automatic pilot and we're just living out. It's like the dog walking us rather than us walking the dog, and it's just dragging us into different locations and different places. And whether it is constructing these beautiful busts of these philosophers or whether it's actually doing something really lovely with your partner, with a friend, with your. With your child. So it could be that the context and the thing that we're actually doing is on the surface, amazing. It's beautiful, it's lovely. But actually we're just not aware that inside of us, for all sorts of different reasons, something has been triggered, mostly our threat system. And that. That started to take us along a different line. And so I think this sort of internal awareness. Can I notice that I'm in whatever version it is of a threat system pattern. It sounds like here you were just woken up in that sense of irritable, frustrated, annoyed. And of course, the lack of awareness is not our fault that that's the case. But I guess for me it's those moments when those days happen and when I don't notice it. And it sort of just starts to play out a bit like dominoes knocking each other. So you start off on one thing and it sort of knocks the next. And then you're doing this thing where you're trying to do all these screws and it's not working. And then you speak to your partner or you speak to a friend, phones, and you're a bit short with them, or you're a little bit frustrated with them. Before you know it, their reaction back to you without you even tracking it is laced a little bit with frustration too. So before you know it, that knocks into the next domino. And that could be that you're seeing a client and without realizing it, you're carrying these things around during the day. Of course, it's not our fault. But what I also love about this bit is the why question in the first place. And I just think it's fascinating. What is it about some days when we wake up and we're just out of sorts? You know, that whole idea that you got out of the wrong side of the bed, like, what is that? Is it that there's something that happened sleep wise? You had a, a dream or a nightmare that played out that you just don't remember, but you're still holding it emotionally? Is it, is it that you had a disruptive sleep and maybe you didn't get enough REM sleep and you have no clue about that, but it's influencing your sense of tiredness, your alertness, your, your emotions. Is it something which is more hormonal that's happening on a, you know, sort of physiological level that again, we have no idea about this, but it's shifting us into a different position. And, and so I think all of this stuff is fascinating, but I think it is that bit, isn't it? Whatever is the cause, Awareness, mindfulness and that sort of interoceptive awareness. You know, the sooner that I can bring that, it doesn't mean that the day is going to be easy or that I'm going to switch out of it, but at least I know something about what's going on inside of me. At least I can maybe warn my friend or, you know, my son. You know, I'm feeling a little bit like this today, you know, so I can try to maybe not get ahead of it, but at least have some sort of sense of directing it. And I guess on that day. Yeah. How long did it take you to kind of notice that that was playing out inside of you?
- [06:58]
B
Yeah, it's so interesting all you say there that, you know, getting out of the wrong side of the bed, that was what it felt like. And I don't know that the why or the sort of, you know, what happened question is even really answerable in that moment, is it? In a way. I just got up and I felt pretty cranky and I sort of, you know, stomped around a bit and did this task. And you, I love what you said. I mean, Aristotle's all about, you know, virtue and values and living, living a good life. And there I was, huffing and puffing, you know, kind of doing his thing. What actually happened, I think, and I Don't know what you would say about this. But the danger was that when awareness did creep in, then I just felt bad about myself. Then, then in comes really a sort of a shame kind of feeling, you know, that I had been, you know, difficult and I had been rude and you know, like, and you know, it hadn't really been necessary and that sort of stuff. So I don't know, what are your thoughts there? I mean this, that, that next layer to it is, is the, the self to self relating, you know, what happens next.
- [08:16]
C
Yeah, I think that's a great point, isn't it? It's you know, going back to, you know, the sort of arrows, you know, sutra, you know, I kind of love that whole bit in a way of just, you know, what is our response to some of these things, this sort of second or even third arrows maybe Paul would point out, you know, and I think it's fascinating, you know, as far as we know, there's no other animal on this planet that could have that reaction to being cranky. Now I don't know, we would describe, you know, a dog waking up and being cranky or a cat waking up and being cranky on that day. Maybe cats more so than dogs, you know.
- [08:50]
B
Absolutely.
- [08:52]
C
My guess is that there would be a version of course that potentially could be the case where for whatever reason, physiologically, hunger, tiredness, that other animals would have a more sensitivity to threat perception, for example. But as far as we know, there's no animal on this planet that starts sort of playing this out and then at some stage notices and starts being critical with themselves and feeling ashamed. Oh, I'm such a bad dog. You know, I've been so bad to my, you know, to my puppy today. I, you know, I did, you know, none of that stuff is there. And so I think this is the fascinating thing about human, human beings, isn't it? And the reality for us in which we've got this evolved mind which can do stupendously amazing things. But at the same time it's the part of the mind that can look inwards and start having a narrative, a commentary, starts telling stories and those stories for most of us aren't the storyline of I'm amazing. Isn't it brilliant how I put these busts of these different philosophers together and you know, that sort of comment doesn't do that bit, it starts having a sort of self critical bit, you know, you know, you do all this stuff, you know, in sort of compassion, in a T shirt and you teach CFT and you Know, you've got all your clients and use CFT with them but you know, here you are just, you know, beating yourself. You know, that's the kind of thing here, isn't it, that we're spectacularly good at being able to look at ourselves through a critical shame based window. And in those moments of course what seems to happen is, is that we exacerbate whatever the distress was that was going on inside of us. And that storyline of course for some of us will last for a very long time. It's not just that, you know, we get captured in that for you know, 30 seconds or a minute or even five minutes and then we get distracted and we move on. But for some of us, of course we get trapped in that and it's like a deep gorge, you know, it's like the Grand Canyon, like how am I getting out of this? And it's just there. And I guess on an interesting note again on the awareness side of things, how often do we notice though that that is the self to self relating pattern. Again that whole bit about how it's so common for many of us when we get into a self critical or shame based self narrative it's like I don't notice it just like I, I don't really notice when I'm breathing. I don't really notice the, the sensations of the ground underneath me as I'm walking. I mean and they're always there but they're just so familiar that they're just part of the pattern of life and I just don't pay attention to them mostly. So this sort of self, the insidiousness of the self critic and this shame based way and how it's just doing it sort of whispering to you. Now sometimes of course it's so loud and it's so strong and we can become aware of it but I think one of the major problems is a lot of the time it goes under the radar and it's just sort of whispering its message to us and of course it's having a big influence on us. It's further exacerbating threat system. It's probably locking in that sense of frustration, irritation and annoyance. Hard, really really hard. So I think again the lack of awareness of it is, is another issue. But the problem is awareness as you say can keep on going. You know, now I'm aware that I've got this self critical thing and then I can be self critical about the fact that I've got a self critical thing about ah, so this sort of getting caught up into these awareness loops. Which is why again, I think the potency and the power of attention and awareness, training of mindfulness, of being able to slow down and ground ourselves is so important because otherwise it does feel like dominoes knocking each other. We can just go further and further into our threat systems, no fault of our own whatsoever, but get trapped there.
- [12:27]
B
Is that what you meant by the third arrow then? Or when you sort of. Yeah, just, just give us a, an elaboration on, on that parable that you, you alluded to?
- [12:38]
C
Yeah, I think it's a, it's a really useful metaphor, isn't it? And so the, the sort of arrow suture of this sort of first arrow that lands. So like I've never been shot by an arrow, but if an arrow were to land in my shoulder, my guess is it would be really, really painful. And I guess in the sutra that represents the unavoidable pains in life that everyone will go through the second arrow, if we imagine that it sort of lands in that inflamed skin next to where the first arrow landed, that represents the sort of, in a way, understandable but unwise attempts to try to prevent the pain of the first arrow. So these are the things, I guess in therapy language you might call about safety strategies or defenses, things that we try to do to avoid pain. So suppression, avoidance. There's a whole bunch of different things that we try to do, of course, to move away from pain, to modulate pain. And I think those two things are so important, of course you can begin to recognize them in my life so often. But, you know, I was fascinated with the way that Paul Gilbert's mind works, in which, you know, you've got this, you know, suture from 100,000 and odd years ago. And sort of looking at it one day, sort of thinking, you know what, I think I could add an extra arrow that's the third arrow that represents a sense of, of shame or self criticism by being hit by the first two arrows. And I think that is such a fascinating reflection that actually that third arrow, just how often frequent persistence, common, powerful, painful that one is and how much that locks us in. So sometimes I have this sort of sense of shame that it, it's almost like it's bubble that we get locked in and it sort of holds everything that's in threat system and it sort of maintains that and it sort of traps us within that sort of physiological, emotional cycle. And it can be very hard to penetrate from the outside to burst that bubble. And from the inside it almost like it a sort of self heating system, it sort of continues to heat and heat and heat. And so I think that sort of third arrow is such a powerful one. Now for me, it's fascinating in life, but also I think in maybe if we apply it to different therapies. Not saying that there's right therapies or not right therapies, but I think some therapies are very, very good at looking at the first arrow. They're very good at looking at some of the existential pains, the fundamental difficulties of the suffering that we will go through in life. And maybe some therapies don't spend so much time. I think some therapies are very good on the second arrow. Where of course many therapies would be actually where they're looking at defenses, safety strategies, things that we do to try to protect ourselves that have unintended consequences. And then I think that some therapies, of course we're biased, but CFT would be a very clear one, has a very clear model and a fundamental formulation and attention to the third arrow, shame and self criticism. And I guess for cft, it feels to me that all three arrows are really important, that those are all things that I might focus on if I'm helping somebody else, but certainly for myself as well, you know, can I have a look into these things? And I guess again, going back to that morning now you are trying to, you know, deal with constructing these philosophers in front of you. I guess it's interesting again about those three arrows, you know, again, where was your awareness to those. How able were you to sort of look into itself and sort of to notice, you know, whether any one of those arrows was most permanent or where wisdom would take you to if you were able to bring something helpful to yourself at that moment.
- [16:11]
B
Yeah, love it. I think to riff off your idea of shame as a bubble that sort of holds us in threat. The way I was thinking about it was that it sort of became a double bind too, in a way that I felt like the one thing that might get me out of it was some sort of steps towards reconnection. You know, how can I approach, you know, my other half and sort of, I don't know, maybe even kind of repair a bit. What I, what some of the. I mean, I wasn't terrible, let me just say that. But you know, I'm suddenly having a shame experience again. But you know, like to approach and reconnect. But the shame, like that was what I needed, but the shame prevented me from doing it. And I Think that was the, that was where the wisdom and kind of the courage, like you've said this to me before, you know that courage is often the key and that probably was the thing there, that just that courage, that willingness to, despite some of those very painful feelings, trying to step towards another and reach out and open ourselves up and reconnect.
- [17:29]
C
Yeah, I think there's some really interesting ideas that. One of the things that I really love and appreciate about Paul's work and really thinking about it in the natural flow of these types of personal experiences here is again thinking about, let's say, the different qualities of your compassionate self. So you know, if we take that compassion can be talked about as an antidote to shame, but compassion in itself is, can be many things and there can be many qualities and components of it. But I guess those three major ones that we often talk about of CFT and the compassion itself, you know, wisdom, sort of strength or courage, that groundedness aspect and the sort of care and commitment. It's sort of interesting for me, like what's the combination of those that we need at any given time? Because whilst all three are useful, I see them sometimes a bit like. Do you remember on the old stereo is the graphic equalizer so you could turn up the bass or you could turn up the treble up and down. The sort of idea that sometimes I feel that depending on what's going on inside of me, what's happening in my threat system, the, the type of shame that I'm experiencing, which of those components do I really need to be able to, to be with now? I think on one level there's a. There's a sense for me that wisdom in the sense of being able to notice and to be able to understand this is what's going on for me is essential. If I miss all of this stuff, if I don't notice this is what I'm experiencing. If you didn't notice that you're experiencing shame or that self critical self, you're not going to do anything about it. And maybe you're lucky that you get bounced out of it later on in the day or maybe you get captured with it. But you're not the one walking the dog at the moment, you're not the one steering the ship. It's just your system is playing out one way or another. And either you're lucky that you have a good day in the end or you'll get stuck in this all day. So I think there's sort of wisdom to look in was to notice, to Understand, I know this is a familiar pattern, this is something that I've experienced before and I know that I'm feeling self critical, I know that I'm feeling ashamed and I think the bit there then I kind of feel that really needs to support that is that sense of inner groundedness, strength and courage. Because of course in noticing that and how painful shame is, often it just then can overwhelm me and it's so distressing that I want to look away from it or I just get further into a self critical dialogue. So I think that groundedness, the strength I can tolerate it, I can use maybe some of my breathing, I can use my posture just to be in the presence of it. And then still holding on to that wisdom part, what do I need? You know, and that's where you begin to weave in, I think that sort of caring commitment piece like what do I need here? And I think that question is a really interesting one because it depends. You know, I've always loved the idea of the many faces of shame, you know, going off the book of Nathanson from many decades ago, the many faces of shame and this whole idea that shame shows up as, you know, in lots of different ways. And so sometimes of course it's more like an internal shame aspect that we're really holding. I'm sort of trapped in my own self critical self dialogue. I'm no good, I'm useless, I can't even put these figures together and all this kind of stuff. Sometimes of course it's external shame and it's more a sense that something's happened and I'm living negatively in, in your mind or my friend's mind or who mind it is. So that sort of bit again about which aspect of shame is playing out, what, what is shame trying to do here? What does it try to tell me here? You know, can I sort of feel into that and then begin to think about what do I need? Because I think sometimes the need is external. But to do that external piece of that time to go to your partner, say that's going to take certain qualities and skills to be able to do. But I think sometimes it's not necessarily about going to somebody else. Maybe there's an internal process that I need here that is more self compassion based, for example. So I always like that idea, the many faces of shame and, and if we can do in that moment having enough sensitivity and wisdom to know what version of shame is this, what might I need here for this struggle that I'm having at the moment
- [21:27]
B
as you Speak about it. I think, you know, it probably was more internal shame. And I think the connection there is back to anger. And that anger is a bad feeling that I shouldn't have, and that traces way back. And, you know, so the self criticism kicks in and the internal shame is sort of about the anger. I wonder whether in terms of the. The external side of it or the other focus side of it, it might have more just been kind of like a guilty feeling that I'd sort of done. I'd sort of created a bit of an unpleasant day so far. And so that was more a sort of. I didn't get that. I didn't kind of actually get any really super negative feedback from anyone. And so I wasn't having that external shame so much, but feeling a bit guilty maybe about the what. How I'd conducted myself.
- [22:28]
C
Yeah. And I think it's again, just as you go back here, it's just picking out the nuances of this. I mean, one of the things that you touched on there about, you know, sort of anger and anger being somehow a bad emotion or something that shouldn't be permitted or experienced. I mean, I. I don't know if it really works, but I had this sort of metaphor that I sometimes try to use when it, you know, sort of thinking about shame, and it sort of comes off the back of an experience. So I was at this amazing hotel overlooking the ocean, you know, so it was just a stunning, stunning, stunning, stunning space. And, you know, there was great music on in the background, and I was having a glass of wine, and it was just a really lovely. A really lovely time. You know, one of those moments you just capture in your mind, and it was beautiful. And as I was looking through the menu and thinking about what to order, you know, when you sort of see the next table that gets served food and you have that kind of bit like, I'm having that, and it was this amazing seafood pasta. Like, it just looked amazing. Straight away, menu down, I'm having that. And so, you know, 20 minutes later, here, this amazing plate is served to me. And it looked beautiful and it smelled beautiful. And I took my first taste and all I could taste was salt. And I think when we have shame, particularly very high levels of shame, it's like having too much salt on food, as in, you can't taste any of the other flavors underneath the salt or you just taste its salt. So I know that the seafood would taste amazing. I know that there was amazing tomato sauce to the pasta. I know that even, you know, whatever the Delicate flavors that the chef had gone into. I couldn't taste any of those because the only flavor was salt. And I think potent shame, very high levels of shame is like that. It sort of salts the earth, so to speak, of the rest of your experience, your sense of you, your sense of your emotion. So in that moment you were having a shame based experience and about emotion and emotion, anger that you didn't choose to have, that evolved of course to try to help us and support us, to protect us, to push back into the world. But you were having the shame based experience. And of course the problem there is that it sort of coats itself around anger and again creates that bubble, you know, this time a salty bubble around anger. And that makes it ever so difficult then to be dealing with in a emotionally helpful way or regulating that initial experience. And so I think this sort of idea where my shame is very, very high. So a bit of shame is fine, as we know, you know, all emotions. It's not that there's bad emotions of good emotions. A bit of salt is really lovely. That can actually be great. You know, it's a useful thing. A bit of shame is useful because it gives us important signals about ourselves and about our actions and about what's happening in the world and certain boundaries in between what's okay and what's not okay. But as soon as you put too much shame into the mix, as too, as soon as you put too much salt on things, that's the thing that starts to be the most prominent bit. So I think that's why working with shame becomes so powerful for me. Because if we can reduce that, if we can bring it down. Yeah, okay, anger isn't pleasant sometimes or that frustration, but it's far easier just to deal with your frustration and whatever that is and just the experience of it and do some healthy emotion regulation stuff. Easy to do that when shame is not involved. When shame gets involved in that. In my experience personally, but also clinically, it just makes things so much more difficult.
- [25:49]
B
Yes, it really, it hooks us a bit or it creates this salty bubble which is. It does it sort of. And it's distasteful in a way, I suppose, and overpowering and hard to really connect with any of the other kind of possible emotions that might be there or let alone, let alone connecting with the compassionate part of ourselves. So what's that piece then you've mentioned? Awareness, I guess, which is a bit of an entry point into something. But as you say, it's so difficult. But what do we do then with Trying to bring the compassionate mind online.
- [26:32]
C
I think it's a really interesting piece, isn't it? Stan of I know there are moments which are relatively easy for me to be able to get into contact with my compassionate mind and bring compassion to myself or to others. And I think for a lot of us those moments exist. We're feeling fairly calm, we're with people that we really like or I don't know, life is relatively easy at that time. There's little stress, there's little difficulty. Threat system isn't really firing. Now of course sometimes we still need to cultivate in those moments and it can be helpful to help people to practice so that they have that. But I guess I'm always fascinated about how do we walk the pathway from a sort of deep shame based threat mind and find and locate this compassionate mind in the dark, I guess, you know, so it's one thing when it's light and you know, you can see your directional, you know, on your phone you've got your, you know, you've got your Google maps and you can see. But if it's dark and you don't have your mind, like how do we learn to find this? How do we learn in the difficult times when we're suffering and you're caught up in shame or anger or sadness or whatever it might be. And so, you know, I guess that image for me of that pathway of walking towards, you know, and can I do it frequently enough so that even in some of my darkest moments there is a little bit of a light on, I can still see roughly the direction. So I think it takes practice. I think it's that whole bit about, you know, we, you know, we're not starting people off swimming in, you know, in the ocean with big waves splashing. Like can we start to learn how to do this at times when we're feeling relatively grounded and things are okay? And then can we start learning how to bring this at times where maybe threat system is a little bit lower And I'm purposefully stepping from threat mind, compassionate mind and a bit like a muscle, it's like I'm strengthening that process. Like I, I'm. By practicing it on a regular basis. I'm training my mind to switch from the, the physiology of a threat mind and body and beginning to learn those stepping stones for how to move towards my compassionate mind. Now is that process the same for every single person? I don't know. I don't think so. I think one of the fascinating things for me research wise is I don't think we know yet what are the stepping stones. So we have this idea from one side of the screen to the next. This is threat mind and this is compassionate minds. We know that getting compassion mind is really helpful for us. How we get along there, the stepping stones, so to speak. Well, we've got some ideas. So I guess we would say mindfulness, some regulation of threat system through the soothing system, maybe soothing with and breathing or something similar. And there may be some version of, I guess in a CFT like way, trying to connect with my compassionate self, trying to connect with the image of my compassionate other, some way in which I can access wisdom, strength, caring, commitment. But I think a research question for me is if we were to take a lot of the cmt, the compassionate mind training practices, and we were to think about what order do those have to come in to be the most helpful for people. I guess in my mind and standard wise we've got, you know, mindfulness, or some version of mindfulness would come first, maybe some body posture and soothing rhythm breathing work and you know, sort of scaling up towards, say, the compassionate self. But I'm also fascinated about is that going to be the same for most people? You probably remember that Elaine Beaumont and I in our Compassionate mind workbook, we came up with this idea of the compassionate ladder and this whole idea about when it comes to compassionate mind training, not all compassionate mind trainings are as easy for each of us as they are for other people. So some people might find soothing rhythm breathing the easiest practice to do or compassionate self so easy. But actually what they find really, really hard is doing the image of the compassionate other. So this idea that the ladder could represent stepping stones or not even stepping stones, rungs of the ladder, if I stick with the right analogy now, so, so rungs of the ladder going upwards but once highest up might be the most difficult for us. But we sort of learn where it's a little bit easier and we start building up. And then if we hit and we go further off the ground a little bit, like we would try to do an exposure work if somebody is scared of ice, you know, we try to get them off the ground up these rungs of the ladder. But if they get too overwhelmed, too anxious, I guess the whole idea that we're trying to do is to bring them back down a rung of a ladder until they can tolerate their anxiety and stay there again and kind of teach you that you okay, it's all right. And then after a while you can go back up the ladder and you can get further and further up until of course, these things feel comfortable. And so in compassionate mind training, I'm fascinated about that. You know, where on the ladder are these different practices for different people? Is that something in which we should still try to start, regardless of whether you find it easy or very, very hard or distressing with something like mindfulness and attention training and then sort of move up in the steppings up the steps of the ladder in this way? Or actually for some people, if they find something like the compassionate self the easiest to do even without really explicit mindfulness training, would that be their pathway from threat mind towards a compassionate mind? Is that the better way for them to do it? And so I think we have these sort of questions in a way that they're sort of, as far as I know, we don't have any data yet to share show that. My guess is a couple of things. A, it will depend on level of psychological distress. It depends on what we're carrying in the first place. And that will have an impact on some of these things. And of course, by note that means of course your level of shame or your level of your struggle with attachment insecurity or whatever it is. I think there's, there's going to be some individual differences along the way, whether it's diagnostically based, level of distress based, level of symptomology based. But also this idea of the individual difference is more on things like shame and insecure attachment. So actually I, I'm involved with the study at the moment because I have been fascinated about this is that if we give people, get people to take compassion of mind trainings and if we ask them just basic questions, you know, how easy did you find this? How useful did you find this? Do we get similar ratings for both of those two questions across or the major compassionate mind trainings, or do we find that some are easier to do but they feel less useful? Or in contrast, some are harder to do but they're, that they have more bang for the buck, so to speak. But also to look at things like if you have high levels of external shame, would that make doing the compassionate other easier or harder? If you have, let's say more of an anxious attachment style in which you have a sense that you're conscious of other people and whether they like you, whether they're going to be available, whether they're going to be present, whether they love you. So if you have a higher concern around that, and that's your sort of orientation, attachment wise, would that make doing the compassionate other easier? Because in a way, here's this ideal figure that in a way meets your attachment needs. This is kind of what you want, something that's going to be there for you, kind, caring, consistent, available. Or actually is it going to be harder? Because in a way it taps into some of your underlying concerns about other people and other people's minds towards you. So we're just doing this study at the moment and collecting data and I think it'll be really fascinating just to see if we can learn more about how some of the individual differences that all of us carry might start to inform us as clinicians, but just as general human beings about some of these practices and where we might want to start with some people and where we might want to build in different versions or orders of some of these practices.
- [34:30]
B
Amazing.
- [34:31]
C
Amazing.
- [34:33]
B
Yes, the sort of, the skill, the compassionate mind CMT skills and the importance of practice and repetition in a way and starting small and building up with the threat system and so on. Had an image of myself now being able to walk from my bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night when it was dark because I've, I've found the path. Exactly. And so that's, that's really interesting.
- [34:58]
A
But this other, this, this other big piece there around.
- [35:02]
B
Yes. The, the different skills, how people approach them, are they easy or difficult? Are they useful or less than useful? Is, is there a way to tailor it, I suppose for any particular individual? Do people find some easier or more useful than others? Or do some people find all of them more or less easy and, and others find all of them more or less easy? And it's sort of, it's, it's sort of an empirical question, some sort of dismantling study or something to understand the, the different, different steps along the, along the path. I have always loved that compassionate ladder. I think that's really helpful and it's sort of reassuring in a way that we can just go and notch down the ladder again and get back to something that feels really well, both comfortable and useful. What's the latest with cmt for example, and neurodiversity? I suppose has there been sort of recent stuff there that, that, that speaks to these sorts of questions of individual differences?
- [36:11]
C
I think it's against. Done. It's, it's. I guess there's a couple of bits, number one, just before I come on to that. I think you're. That image of, of you walking to, from your bed to the bathroom in the night is making me smile now. But I like that because it is a Great version of this, which, because you've done that many times, even in that sort of tired state where you're not fully awake and the lights are on, you've walked it enough to know how to get there. And, and for me that is a, it's a great analogy, a great comparison really. Like how do we become more familiar with that route when it's dark? So I think I, I love that as a, a way of scaling this. I, you know, I, I, I think where we're getting to with this sort of sense of individual differences is fascinating for me. And I think we're just at the starting point now. I know, gosh, it would have been about 20 years ago. Paul was involved in a study with some colleagues in which, you know, you'll know this, where getting people to practice compassion focused imagery that a lot of the folks had basically an increase in heart rate variability. So essentially it seemed to stimulate their parasympathetic nervous system, kind of as we might predict in the model. But there were some folk which had the opposite physiological reaction, had a more threat based in a way, sympathetic nervous response to doing compassion focused imagery. And of course, when they dug down into the data, those folk tended to have high levels of shame and insecure attachment. So there have been some of these studies that have nodded towards there being individual differences and the importance of that, of course, because if we know that, of course it changes the way that we would do practices with people. It changes the way that we do psychoeducation about this. It would change the way that I would validate somebody, have empathy. Because you can hold that in mind that we know that at first it can flare you up a little bit. Just like it's a little bit like if you go to the gym for the first time in a year, you know, and you lift some weights the next morning. Probably many of you have had this experience where your muscles hurt. They, I mean, they really hurt. Now if you didn't know that, that's okay. If you didn't know that, actually that's just a normal reaction to muscles lifting weights and doing something new. You might think that going to the gym is a bad thing for you, you know, oh my God, it hurts so much. But now once, you know, once you have wisdom, it's okay. So what I'll just do, allow my body to rest, I'll go back, I'll make sure next time I maybe lift a little less. And I just take my time to get my body accustomed to this. So wisdom and understanding here are so important, because otherwise, of course, people can try some of these practices hoping that they're going to be helpful. They have a huge threat system experience where it's very unpleasant and they think, oh no, this isn't the right thing for me. Whereas actually maybe for us we'll be saying, no, no, it's okay. The fact that you had a threat system response shows us that you're in the right place. It shows us that this is where we need to be focusing on. Because if this essentially secure attachment signal is flaring up your physiology and it's triggering a threat system response, that actually is unpleasant for you. But it shows us that this is where we need to be working on. Because this attachment signal wasn't designed initially through evolution to trigger your threat system. It was actually designed to down regulate your threat system. It's not your fault. Through your learning experiences, people and your attachment relationships have textured you in such a way in which kindness, care, warmth, affection, now trigger threat system. That's good for us to know. It's a bit like that example, you know, that Paul always uses that, you know, if you go to the, you go to hospital because you've broken your right arm and you're in agony and the, the doctor's there and they start to come and examine your right arm and they start gently touching it just to see where the break is and you start screaming out and shouting and swearing, clearly in a lot of pain. You know, the idea that at that moment, the compassionate doctor, seeing your pain, seeing a distress, thinks, you know what, let me leave that right arm alone, let me put a cast on the left arm. I mean, Paul's point here is you've got to go where the pain is. So threat system triggering, if you do compassionate mind training exercises, whether it's mindfulness, soothing rhythm, breathing, calm place, imagery, compassionate, other, compassionate self, if that triggers your threat system, that's like gold dust for us, is telling us we're in the right place. The skill of course, is helping somebody in that moment.
- [40:30]
B
Now I think this is, this is fears of compassion. Really? Is that what we're sort of starting to think about here?
- [40:40]
C
Yes. And I think then the fears of compassion are fascinating because on what level are we looking at that? So of course we've got the, you know, fears, blocks and resistances as we talk about in cft, we've got questionnaires to measure this stuff, as you know, and I think all of that is really, really useful. But a lot of those, of course, we're having to capture psychologically informed ideas about the fears, blocks and resistances. But I guess what we're maybe also looking at here is that there might be physiological or there are physiological blocks to some of this. And of course, by knowing that, can that help us? Is there a way in the future that we might actually be able to be more creative by using technology to be able to understand people's physiology in such a way to understand that this is what's happening? You know, as they're doing this practice, they're, they're having a classically conditioned threat system response to essentially signals of kindness, care, warmth and affection. And so if that's the case, I could literally show somebody, look, this is what's happening. It's not your fault whatsoever. But actually what we can do here, because we've got research showing it, is if we slowly keep on doing this, we can retrain your physiology so that it doesn't have that threat system response. So I think what is the level at which we get a block to people being able to engage in these practices is fascinating. And going back to your, your question about neurodiversity. Yes, at the moment we don't know. So I'm involved in another study that should be starting sometime soon, ish, in which we're going to get a group of people with a diagnosis of ADHD to take compassionate mind trainings, the standard ones, without changing them and find their reaction. So we want to be able to look in and see like, is it as. In comparison to people who don't have a diagnosis, is it as effective? Do people find them as easy and as useful to use as people who don't have a diagnosis? Or would people find certain aspects of them, whether it's the, the length of them, the wordiness of them, the whatever it might be, can we begin to learn if that's the case, what would need to be adapted? So I think that would be, you know, it's going to be interesting just to find out. I, I was having a wonderful talk, you know, Dr. Lexi Rose, one of my colleagues at Balance Minds, wonderful psychologist and fantastic compassion focused therapist. And she was talking to me in supervision recently about how she's been increasingly intrigued and interested in the idea of the menstrual cycle. And if we were to be able to do a research study looking at the menstruation cycle and almost tracking on each day or at certain parts of the menstrual cycle, would during compassionate mind trainings be as easy and as useful to access across different phases of the cycle? As far as I know, nobody's done this. So we've got data here that we could gather and try to understand that maybe at certain parts of your cycle it is harder to do this type of practice, or it is a bit easier to do this type of thing. And that that would be on a physiological, hormonal level that we could start to try to tune in and understand something about the blocks to doing compassion practices. Now, look, we might not find anything at all, but I think it's on this kind of level standard, I'm really fascinated. Like what, what level can we start looking at? Some of the fears, blocks resistance is the difficulties, the inhibitors of people engaging in either compassionate mind training or even in accessing their compassionate mind. I guess there's a lot of exciting stuff to look into.
- [44:29]
B
Are these sort of qualitative studies ideas that you're talking about there? Or would there be, you know, sort of like a comparison group or even using the psychophysiology to measure things along the way?
- [44:42]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately qualitative stuff would be amazing. But, you know, I'm a quant guy initially with these types of things to see if we can just go across a large enough population, gather enough people and just to see is there an effect, is there something here that we can detect that would give us something to be looking at. And then, of course, what do we then do? What can we then understand? So I think then maybe going into a physiological level, can we begin to look at some of this on a different level? So that would be my inclination. But I think the qualitative stuff, of course, would be fascinating too. I mean, I think they would complement each other wonderfully well. But I think the exciting thing for me is it feels like we've. We've done so much amazing work in CFT. Of course, it's not just CFT, kind of the global compassion research. It's amazing over 20, 25 years how much has been learned and accomplished and discovered. But within the CFT community and just even thinking about this small slice of compassionate mind training, it feels like we're on the border here. We're on the forefront now of some wonderful studies that can start to give us more of an understanding of, in a way of a sort of nuanced picture, really thinking about what might we have to do for folk who are neurodiverse? How would we change what we might standardly do? What would we do if we know that somebody's got exceptionally high levels of external shame? Do we have a bit of an idea, because we've done research on this, that maybe it's more helpful to start off, off here rather than starting off here. For example, if you do have a very strong avoidant attachment style, of course it's not your fault. But again, do we have some data and some ideas that we can formulate and then think about, about what we might try to do to adapt things or to change the order of things that might meet your needs in the most helpful way. And I think that level of specificity, not that we'll ever have a sort of a one on one correlation, but I guess just knowing more about that I think is going to be a wonderful thing. If we're able to detect some of these things in the research, does that
- [46:50]
B
then become also something that therapists might do? You know, in the room with someone that something in the inquiry? I suppose we try a practice or developing a skill or imagery or whatever it might be. And then afterwards there's a, like, what would be some great questions to ask someone to actually sort of see if for that person we can have a bit of an idea of what bits work, what bits are harder, where we should lean in, where we should lean out.
- [47:23]
C
Yeah, look, you know, I guess as, you know, like I always start with self, you know, and that kind of, you know, is the inside out way. So I think even for us, like how many of us have, let's say, explored our own attachment styles? Now some of us do, but you know, there's, I'm sure we can include it in the, in the links. You know, there's some wonderful websites in which you can, you can log on, give some of your details and fill out, you know, one of the standard attachment theory questionnaires. So the experiences of close relationship scale. And what it does is gives you across these two dimensions of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. It will plot for you roughly where you sit in a sort of, you know, more on the secure side, more on the anxious side, more on the avoidant side and so on. So it gives you a visual representation of this. And then the interesting thing is that you can go back and do this again in six months time or a year's time and you can begin to see how have I changed over this time. It can allow you to look at your attachment relationship to your partner in comparison to your parents or your friends. So again you can get this sort of picture of understanding oneself. Now why is that useful? Well, I guess for me it partly fits into wisdom again, doesn't it? It's Back to that, you know, core components of the compassion itself. If I can understand something about myself and I can appreciate and step back from shame and sort of say, okay, so when it comes to romantic relationships, I do tend to have a more anxious way of being. And, and how would that play through in terms of how I might interact with my partner if I'm not careful because my threat system is pushing me to be a certain way? And then of course, the compassionate mind and the compassionate self can look in on this and begin to think about what am I looking out for? How could I tolerate not doing what my threat system wants to do? What would be another way for me to settle some of my concerns here and to feel a little bit more secure in my attachment relationships with, you know, a romantic partner. And so if I'm thinking about that for myself, if I can use me as the starting point, looking at my own level of shame, for example, external to internal, my own self critic, and begin to use, whether it's questionnaires to start with or, you know, and then go deeper into understanding it, my attachment system. And by looking at that and then engaging my compassionate mind, thinking, okay, what can I start learning by doing some of this stuff myself? If I can then take some of this research and learn that actually when we stretch it out across hundreds of people, this is what we tend to notice on average. Then of course, as a clinician sitting in a room with somebody and I've done an assessment with them, maybe I've used one of those measures again of the attachment system and we can see that this person's leaning more on the avoidant side. Okay, but at that stage, of course, then I have got questions that I can be asking somebody to help me and them understand where this has come from, how it works for them, begin to bring in the de shaming whole bit. It's not, not your fault at all. Your threat system has had to adapt to the world. But of course, at that moment, then I'm more confident that I kind of have a direction of travel that is more nuanced than just a generic one about some of the stepping stones that might be most likely to be helpful for that person so they don't immediately hit up against a big wall of distressing resistance. Because we just weren't aware that by starting compassionate mind training, for example, in this place is going to be much, much harder. You know, again, going back to physical health analogies, you know, if you know that you're, you've got back pain, well, that can guide you then when you go to the gym to think about which of the exercises that are healthy for me to do to start with and actually which are the ones that are going to cause more problems to start with, you know, so having wisdom to then guide you to change what you do in the gym, that's what a good physio would do, it's what a good personal trainer would do for you. And so I would see my role as being similar there. I've got this kind of knowledge in my head now because I've read the research, I look to myself, I've, you know, understood something to do with this and I've got some idea now about, for this person, this is where I'm going to start and this is where I'm going to aim to get to. And I'm going to do it roughly in this order because I've got a little bit of a map, a guide to this.
- [51:36]
B
Yeah, it's really sort of, you know, kind of supercharging the, the formulation, I suppose, in a way, you know, like having the, an evidence informed and also the bringing the assessment of the individual in both into the formulation and, and creating something that, that feels much more individualized and we're able to move about, I suppose, in the approach that it. In a way that hopefully is most helpful. You know, I.
- [52:07]
C
Sorry, I was just going to say I think it links, you know, like now. So like, you know, if you've got a smartwatch, you know, you can get an app which tells you your preparedness to train on that day to do physical health training. So it's measuring your physiology, however accurate that is, and people would debate or not. But if you look at the app, then it might say, you know, today given your physiological profile, given your sleep, given your whatever, actually this is what you should be aiming to do. I do wonder in the future whether wearables and technology might also give us a bit of a guide, if we've done research on it, to sort of see that on these types of days there might be different types of practices that would be helpful. For example, we already know that when you do mindfulness practice, depending on the mindfulness practice, that that stimulates your brain and your body in different ways than if you do compassion practices. We put. We've got that data, but would it be possible that on any given day that if I've had a really poor sleep and my heart rate variability is really, really low and I'm more, you know, let's say sympathetically dominated, that actually that There might be a set of practices that might be evidence based, more useful on those days to settle my physiology. Maybe, maybe. I don't know, but I think it's that kind of area that we could start to look at that is just interesting to see where we might be able to get to. Yeah.
- [53:29]
B
I mean, just reflecting on my. On my Saturday, I guess, before I let you go in a moment, but I. I think too that, you know, sort of context and what's happening around us, it sort of is big, isn't it? And I do, I've just been obviously pondering myself as well as I've been listening to you, and I think that. I think that all that's happening in the world and the bombardment of news and the sort of. There's a lot of kind of threatening stuff there. And I think it. Yeah, I feel like that might have been part of what got a bit on top of me, you know, overnight and in the morning. And so I see what you mean, you know, like context matters and how we're feeling generally matters, but it might actually inform, if we can sort of have that awareness and, and be proactive. It might inform with, with some specificity just what practice could be, you know, most helpful for me right now in this moment, with this context, in this physiology. It. It sort of, yeah. Holds a lot of promise. Yeah.
- [54:35]
C
I mean, I, I love that whole idea that that whisker wisdom can be described as knowledge plus experience. And, and in that sense, you know, as you know, CFT is a biopsychosocial model. Of course, we've been talking a little bit more here about sort of things that I might carry inside of me at the moment. So that might be, you know, physiological processes that are going on. It could be my sort of sense of internal shame. So it might be things that I'm carrying. But of course, some of those things started off on the outside, or certainly they were interactive from the outside. But I think what you're touching on there is really, really important that in that sort of internal to external triggers bit that we would talk about in cft, that locating that as a starting point, you know, so sometimes, as you say, noticing internally that I've got out of bed on the wrong side of the bed, that I'm feeling a bit irritable, I'm feeling into my throat, I just feel out of sync. That's a really, really useful wisdom to know that. Because then, of course, as we've talked about, we could take stepping stones. But the other bit, of course, is always Checking in. Is there something that's been happening in my environment, in my context, externally to me, that might help me to understand this? So for example, I think you're right. Have I been engaged in lots of news at the moment and actually consuming quite a lot. And actually, gosh, it's so heavy what's going on around the world and what's that been doing subtly or not. So to my threat system, what about the weather? You know, am I feeling a bit heavy because I don't know, in the northern hemisphere, winter has felt like it's gone on forever and ever or you know, at the moment for me, where I live, there's this huge amount of drilling. There's a house that's being built across the way and basically the drilling starts from 8am in the morning and it's just really loud now. You get used to it. But actually what's that doing to me on a sort of day to day level is that sort of sensitizing me and causing a background trigger to my threat system that I'm not necessarily consciously aware of? Unless I ask myself the question, what's been happening recently on the outside of me that could help me to understand why I'm feeling what I'm feeling. And so again, it's not like I can stop the drilling. I mean, I'd like to, but I can't. But at least if I know that I can carry that awareness in a helpful, compassionate way to how I'm going to be with me and also maybe how I'm going to be with other people, people. And so maybe similar to you on that Saturday, that awareness that actually there have been things that are going on external at the moment that I am carrying some of this stuff that I don't know for sure if it's contributed, but it might have. And so can I just go kindly with myself, can I just hold that that might be the case. And so I think anything that helps to give us a extra wisdom that allows us to know something or at least suspect something, that wisdom then of course can be translated into compassionate action. The, the lacking of wisdom is never our fault. But at the same time, without understanding that I'm missing something important, I'm missing something important about what's shaping me and influencing me and, and it can be then a block to me being able to bring compassion because I'm just not aware. So I think that awareness and wisdom piece, going back to what we were talking about earlier, when we can have it, it could be such a powerful thing. But I guess it's having those questions again, isn't it? Having some, just very small questions sometimes just little prompts that we can ask ourselves. And of course we do in therapy all the time that we're asking clients and getting them to think about these things. But again, starting with ourselves. How often am I asking myself, has there been anything that's been happening outside of me recently that would help me to understand something about my threat system? Is there anything that I've been carrying internally the way my mind's been ruminating, memories that I've been going over, ruminations I've been having self criticism or even just I've been sleeping poorly or I've had a really bad cold, you know, all of those things are happening inside of me. But of course they're going to shape my threat system sensitivity. You know, which version of me might come into the world and which version of me might be a bit annoyed as I'm trying to construct these boss of these philosophers. Really annoyed with all this.
- [58:43]
B
Yeah. Yes. I feel like you've sort of taken us a little bit around the, the circle of competencies, of compassionate engagement there. You know, the sensitivity, the sympathy, the stress tolerance, the empathy, the non judgment, the care for well being. That that's almost kind of, you know, in the background of just what you've been describing there, but directed towards the self. And you know, it's nice actually it's helpful because I often sort of. Yeah, just sort of ponder the idea of self empathy in a way. But that's what you sort of partly at least talking about there. And that really informs us. Hey Chris, you've got so many wonderful practical offerings. You've got the Compassionate Mind workbook, you've got the Self Compassion app, you've got Compassionate Mind Approach to Difficult Emotions and other books. Thank you for all of those wonderful contributions. What's happening next for you? Anything in the pipeline?
- [59:48]
C
I guess a number of things like obviously we've just been talking about some of the research stuff I'm really, really interested in, you know, all things to do with compassion and compassion focused therapy. I guess at the moment almost as you said, this sort of component analysis or deconstructing. Can we, can we take parts of such a central aspect of CFT like compassionate mind training and just see what that's like? Can we learn more about it? You know, there's another study that I was involved in a few years ago that hopefully we'll be writing up of, going all the way back to Paul's initial bit on compassionate voice tones and what difference that might make to the helpfulness of your thoughts or the content of your thoughts. So even just on looking at those studies, can we find a difference what happens when people change the. Either the emotional, the motive content before they use the same languaging, you know, so just these small studies, trying to look at the original model, trying to learn more about how some of these things work. So doing some of that stuff, certainly trying to think a little bit more about how some of these programs like the Self Compassion app or some of the online sort of self guided compassionate mind training courses that I've developed. Can we see again, can we use those as a relatively low level version of an intervention for certain people? I guess for me, Stan, it's always interesting. At what stage does self help, whether it's bibliotherapy, you know, so say reading one of your wonderful books or reading the Compassionate Mind workbook, you know, or do it, you know, those types of things. I think that's helpful for some people. But do we understand the range of which people are most likely to benefit from, say bibliotherapy, say the Self Compassion app? Again, can we learn more about who is that helpful for? Because we've got some great data as you know, on showing that if you take the 28, you know, sessions that from start to finish this brings significant changes in psychological variables that we would hope it to. But again, when is that less helpful for certain people? What might be some of the features that we would actually need? Maybe an app. But then you need another human being, like a therapist. I'm fascinated in, you know, say some of the work that Ken Goss and Kate Lucas done in which when is it most helpful that actually you need a group to support the development of your compassionate mind and the helpfulness of compassion focused therapy rather than individual work. So I guess I'm kind of interested in those types of studies. Can we learn more about what is the, what is the mixture that we might need and can we begin to understand what's most helpful for different groups of people? So definitely on that stuff. And then yeah, I guess it's time going on. Just what are the ways that we can spread this model more? I guess a bit like you're doing here with compassionate T shirts. How can we spread this more? How can we give more people an opportunity to access these, these wonderful ideas that Paul Gilbert and others have developed, you know, how can we spread this more? So that's probably the main aim for me at the moment. How can we get these out there so that more and more people can become aware of them and hopefully can benefit from them?
- [62:56]
B
We sort of know to a sort of significant degree that the CFT and CMT help. The next bit is to just sort of calibrate the mixture. I like that idea. But then also, yeah, getting it out there and having it sort of. Of accessible to people.
- [63:17]
C
Exactly.
- [63:18]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [63:19]
C
Because, I mean, therapy is amazing, isn't it? But therapy is always going to be limited in terms of how many people can access it, how many, you know, how many psychologists are trained in CFT or therapists are training. So there's going to be limitations. So are there other ways that we can begin to spread this? Can we be creative in the way that we spread it? Whether it's, you know, books, apps, therapy, but also helping people to engage with this in a variety of other ways, you know, so again, colleagues I know who are beginning to, you know, have been doing for a long time integrating CMT ideas into their yoga practices as yoga teachers, you know. So again, would that be a way of spreading these ideas to many people who love engaging in yoga? So again, just this whole bit about, you know, different ways in different ways to get fit. You know, you can run, you can cycle, you can row, you can swim. You know, there's different ways of getting the CFT ideas to, to be accessible and to help people. I'm fascinated in that.
- [64:16]
B
Well, I realized that at the start of our conversation today, I Forgot to say, Dr. Chris Irons, welcome to Compassion in a T Shirt.
- [64:26]
C
Thank you so much, Stan. It's been a real pleasure being here with you today, having this conversation.
- [64:33]
B
Well, and yes, just to finish with Dr. Chris Irons, thank you for speaking with me on Compassion in a T Shirt.
- [64:42]
C
My pleasure.