Secret #79: Fierce Compassion with Dr. Dennis Tirch
Recommended Episodes
What if compassion isn’t about being kind or soft, but about becoming stronger and more courageous?
In this episode, Dr. Dennis Tirch challenges common misconceptions about compassion and introduces a more powerful and grounded understanding. Compassion is not about avoiding discomfort or being agreeable. It is about developing the strength to face suffering, set boundaries, and act in alignment with what truly matters.
This conversation explores how compassion relates to fear, threat, and safety, and why it can be so difficult to embody in everyday life. From parenting and relationships to therapy and cultural divides, this episode offers a deeper, more honest look at what it really means to live with compassion.
Highlights:
Why compassion is often misunderstood as weakness
The connection between compassion, courage, and psychological flexibility
How the threat system limits empathy and perspective-taking
Why real compassion includes boundaries and strength
How to train compassion through perspective-taking and awareness
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
01:15 Compassion and human nature
04:11 What compassion really means
07:12 Why compassion is difficult to embody
08:41 Misconceptions about compassion
15:19 Compassion vs appeasement
18:15 Compassion beyond preference
20:02 How to practice compassion
24:37 Training empathy and perspective-taking
28:18 Seeing through another’s eyes
31:14 Why empathy is easier with clients
33:43 Threat system and survival
36:24 Multiple selves and compassion
41:24 Fierce compassion and boundaries
45:00 Compassion as courage
52:53 Compassion and political division
More about Dr. Dennis Tirch
Learn more about The Center for Compassion Focused Therapy
Order these books by Dr. Tirch
Dr. Dennis Tirch is the Founder and CEO of The Center for CFT in New York; President of The Compassionate Mind Foundation, USA; Past-President and Fellow of The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) and an Associate Clinical Professor at Mt. Sinai Medical Center. Dr Tirch is the author of seven books, and numerous chapters and peer reviewed articles. Dr Tirch is also a Dharma Holder and teacher of Zen Buddhism; a Diplomate, Fellow & Certified Consultant for The Academy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and a Founding Fellow and Past President of both the NYC-CBT association & NYC-ACBS.In addition to conducting psychotherapy, Dr. Tirch serves as a mindfulness, wellness and performance coach to leading figures in business, science and policy design. His work has been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.
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[00:00:36] Meet Dr Dennis Tirch
[00:00:36] Emma Waddington: Welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Emma Waddington.
[00:00:40] Chris McCurry: And I'm Chris McCurry, and today we are privileged to have with us Dr. Dennis Tirch. Dennis is the founder of the Center for Compassion Focus Therapy in New York, the first Compassion Focused Therapy Clinical Training Center in the United States. He's one of the world's leading authorities on the science of compassion [00:01:00] and has spent over four decades exploring it, not just as a clinician, but as a com- templative practitioner. He's trained thousands of therapists globally, written seven books, including The Compassionate Mind Guide to Overcoming Anxiety and the Act, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Practitioner's Guide to the Science of Compassion, which is one of my favorite books.
[00:01:24] Chris McCurry: And his work sits right at the intersection of Compassion Focus Therapy, Acceptance of Commitment Therapy, and Buddhist Psychology.
[00:01:32] Chris McCurry: Dennis, welcome to Life Sturdy Little Secrets.
[00:01:36] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Thank you so much, Chris, and thanks Emma. It's a real honor and a privilege and a pleasure to be here with you. I'm really looking forward to exploring some of these ideas together today.
[00:01:48] Chris McCurry: we're really looking forward to it as well.
[00:01:50] Mandela and Bukowski Quotes
[00:01:50] Chris McCurry: wanted to, to start off by actually reading a couple of quotes that you have at the beginning of this book, The Practitioner's Guide. One from Nelson [00:02:00] Mandela and one from one of my favorite poets, Charles Bukowski. So Mandela says, "Our human compassion binds us to one another, not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learned how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future." Wonderful quote there. And then Bukowski from the sublime to the ridiculous, "We're all going to die. All of us. What a circus. That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by And Bukowski died in 94, 10 years before Facebook. And, I would love to know what he might think about TikTok and Facebook and the barrage of trivialities that we're getting in day-to-day life these days and how that has clearly us [00:03:00] more isolated, even though, we're, we all can talk to one another across different continents. There's this, alienation and I think a, a, a lack of compassion. And I'm, I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this, Dennis.
[00:03:13] Dr. Dennis Tirch: I think those two quotes, they kind of sit in a similar place in my mind and heart in that there is something that's really available to us and sometimes the automaticity of life and the reactivity, the sort of autopilot that we, we can be on occludes that or sort of, it's just not really right there for us.
[00:03:40] Dr. Dennis Tirch: The, the, the connections we have together, the things that matter really matter, really matter very deeply to us in terms of loving awareness, compassion, and, and appreciating life as we have it the time we have here on earth. And I, I, for [00:04:00] me, act really good psychotherapy, compassion focused work, any liberatory like path has a lot to do with coming home to our nature rather than trying to superimpose something, on our nature. Those are just the initial thoughts that you've, you've provoked in my mind there with the, the, reminding me of those quotes.
[00:04:26] What Compassion Really Means
[00:04:26] Chris McCurry: compassion, I think, is, is a, a greatly misunderstood word. Um, and you must ex- experience this a lot in, in your teaching and your writing and the training that you do. What are some common misconceptions about compassion and how do you, how do you define it?
[00:04:44] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Well, there's a way that I could answer that, that would be very consistent with compassion focused therapy theory or act theory. And those are good, it's a good way to answer it, it's not a bad way to answer it, which is to say that, that the definition of [00:05:00] compassion that we use i- involves a sensitivity to the presence of suffering in ourselves and in others, coupled with a dedication Uh, a commitment to do something about that suffering.
[00:05:14] Dr. Dennis Tirch: So it's a blend of awareness and orientation of your consciousness and then a preparedness and a, and a commitment to take action. And there's so much to that definition, like we could do a whole day on those two dimensions of like, of, of a motive of ... But, I actually think it's, it's even deeper and kind of different than that when we use compassion in psych therapy, it, I think there's a quality of being that is really hard to give a name to, a quality of being and doing that is an embodied motive to nurture, to care, to protect, and to sustain life and collaborative relatedness to like ... There's something [00:06:00] that is very close to psychological flexibility, A definition of psychological flexibility from act that's very close to the definition of secure attachment that shows up in the idea of awakening compassion in, in contemplative traditions in the Dharma, and that that bottle embodied state wisdom, strength, courage, commitment, and clear seeing of the necessity of engagement with the world, to, to protect and sustain life, that to me is what, what compassion points to. It's, it's, it's sort of, it's even more than a definition. It's like what the, the symbol of the word stands for.
[00:06:44] Dr. Dennis Tirch: And I think the best I've ever seen in humans and through psychotherapy or coaching or personal growth, the best of us is when we're operating from embodying that state that we, that we could probably ... Compassion comes [00:07:00] pretty close to what that is.
[00:07:02] Is Compassion Just Woke
[00:07:02] Emma Waddington: I was thinking about, embodying that state in a day-to-day and how hard it is,
[00:07:09] Emma Waddington: I actually was talking to my, my sons about compassion last night. I have a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter.
[00:07:18] Emma Waddington: And I asked them, "What do you think is what is compassion?" And my eldest said, "Oh, it's so woke. It's so woke, like it's a bad thing." He then said, "Ah, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:07:32] Emma Waddington: I'm joking." But it stayed with me. It stayed with me because I'm thinking there is something about compassion that as you describe it feels so wonderful and warm and the way we would like to be. You mentioned it's, coming home to our nature, but actually It's rather difficult to embody. And his comment that it's, welcome unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know, he's a teenager, you know, who knows what was happening behind that comment. But the, [00:08:00] there is something about it that feels a little, yeah, perhaps dangerous or not the right thing to do or naive.
[00:08:09] Emma Waddington: I was wondering if you could speak to that part too.
[00:08:12] Submissive Compassion and Threat
[00:08:12] Dr. Dennis Tirch: I think he's right. Actually, I think it's a very legitimate perspective on a number of levels. Like, the first level at which he's right is submissive compassion, or this sort of like a, maybe a, perhaps a misplaced compassion that sounds like it's coming from a place of compassion, but is actually more about trying to appease a potential threat. And one of the things that's really useful in understanding Paul Gilbert's work and the work in the compassion focused therapy community and the evolved psychology of compassion is to recognize ... And this, this for me was a game changer. As a therapist, as a human being, it's just such a game changer to recognize that humans have evolved to be [00:09:00] able to stabilize and ground our experience of distress and threat through the activation of warmth and affiliation and care and attachment. Like when my daughter was, we were Easter egg hunt and sort of something yeah, on Sunday it's not, it's a Eastern Orthodox Easter, I think was Sunday, but it was just a, sort of a cross-cultural mul, non-denominational spring looking for eggs hunt that was taking place in our community, so all the kids are going ... And, she's seven, so she's got her little ears on her head, she's adorable, she's sweet, but it bothered her that the shiny eggs that we had brought, she didn't find any of those, and so she was ... It was incredibly distressing to her in a way that, for a more developed nervous system wouldn't be that distressing.
[00:09:52] Dr. Dennis Tirch: But the idea of social comparison or threat or fairness or equity or, or whether she'd had a chance or whether she'd failed at [00:10:00] something like this wonderful little nervous system was so flooded with so many multifarious interpretations of why this was a total catastrophe that she hadn't found the eggs that she thought she ought to find. But the one thing that really got me from it, was it would've been very easy to hear and maybe dismiss if I were like a curmudgeonly grumpy version of myself or if I, if I'd never, had been around kids and I don't have to be a parent to be around kids or have a heart, obviously, but I could, I could imagine a version of myself would be, "Oh, without kids being entitled, she wants what she wants or grumpy, grumpy, grumpy." But then I heard her say, "Those were the eggs from my family. Those were the eggs that were special for us, and I couldn't even find one, and when I held her and she felt close and she felt like she was connected to her family, to, to provision of care, to safeness, to love, that things were going to be all right, you could see the way her [00:11:00] parasympathetic engagement increased, her rest and digest and tendon befriend nervous system was there. She became calmer, safer, more playful. She rode the waves of that distress, and that's how we learn to deal with distress. That's how we learn to, to down-regulate our nervous system. And then as adults, hopefully you know, when we feel frightened or disappointed or, or scared or sad, we're able to find courage, find groundedness, find stability through our experience a warmth and feeling loving and loved or caring and cared for. And then that's just baked in. That's just baked into our repertoires. It's baked into who we are. It's baked into how we operate in the world. And sometimes when people are talking about compassion or even acting from a place of compassion or empathy, [00:12:00] that's not really what's happening. They're saying that they're operating from
[00:12:04] Dr. Dennis Tirch: I was kind of surprised there's this, there's this. Elon Musk and Gad sad and some people had thrown around this term that, like, empathy was, misplaced empathy is what they really auto said, but was toxic for societies when people, like ... And, and Paul Gilbert and a number of people in the CFT community were outraged. They're like, "This is an example of these right-wing people who are all saying empathy is bad. They're saying empathy is bad. They're saying compassion is bad. They're evil." Then you might think that, and that's okay. I'm you know, maybe you don't like those guys or you do, and it's absolutely singularly unimportant to me, like, for this conversation.
[00:12:45] Dr. Dennis Tirch: But what shocked me about that response is I've been listening for 20 years to the very same people say, compassion can be submissive, compassion can be a strategy to appease aggressors. Compassion can be [00:13:00] not real compassion." And, and empathy often can be misplaced. And heard Paul say things like, who would, would you rather have a non empathic torture or an empathic torture?
[00:13:10] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Well, the empathy doesn't mean you're actually caring. Empathy is your ability to hold someone else's mind in your mind and anticipate their needs. And I thought, could it be that even we the CFT community, even us in the ACT community, even those of us who are progressive or liberal or what, even we can sort of be a have our vision kind of blurred by our own political affiliations, by our own tribalism, and I think we all know the answer to that, so that doesn't mean that Elon Musk is right or wrong, but what it means is that when your son says compassion can be woke, what I hear in that is that he's noticing that people can use what they call, they can attach the label of compassion or empathy [00:14:00] to lots of different things that are actually moves that involve defenses or experiential avoidance or fears, and that real compassion is accessing something, something kind of different, like not just quantitatively different, but qualitatively different, like a, a very courageous, strong, loving part of us that is ready to face whatever life deals with us because we're all going die. What a circus, we can love one another. We can hold our difficult feelings in the service of something really magical, which is to take care of each other. That's, that's so, so good on your son. He's got a good idea there.
[00:14:49] Emma Waddington: Yes, he does. I probably won't tell him what we discussed about it because he's, he's loves to be a contrarian as his good adolescent brain is is [00:15:00] sort of doing for us all.
[00:15:01] Emma Waddington: but he has, yeah, he has some fabulous insights. I often quote him in our conversations because I'll bring it up just to see his perspective, because absolutely what you're saying is so true.
[00:15:12] Emma Waddington: We are so, so human. And often, I do love Adolescent, but often they remind us of how human we are.
[00:15:23] Dr. Dennis Tirch: I do wanna
[00:15:24] Compassion Beyond Politics
[00:15:24] Dr. Dennis Tirch: just really briefly, and just to throw this in here for, because, 'cause I know that some of the things I said on purpose could be activating for the largely, left-leaning cohort that, that will be listening to us. Obviously the term woke is a little bit charged, and obviously even the names of people I'm using, like, what Elon Musk or whatever it's, but I think that's kind of important, that we can hold all of it.
[00:15:47] Dr. Dennis Tirch: We can hold our, varied responses, but I just didn't wanna let that go by without at least acknowledging that,
[00:15:53] Chris McCurry: well, sure. And it, it would be unprincipled
[00:15:59] Chris McCurry: to, [00:16:00] uh, To start excluding certain people. I mean, it, it's like anybody who does a loving kindness meditation
[00:16:05] Chris McCurry: and might be seniving kindness out to Elon Musk or,
[00:16:10] Chris McCurry: somebody, you know, uh, But we do it because that is the kind of energy we want to put out into the world and we want to walk around with every day.
[00:16:25] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Yeah, I remember Ramdas saying that in, in this, I'm, I'm dating myself, but in the eighties and nineties, Ramdas talking about having Casper Weinberger, who was this sort of, like, right wing American politician, and he'd have it on his altar. It was like the Buddha, Jesus, neem, Caroli Baba, Casper Weinberg. And then later in his life, even Donald Trump, he would sort of say like, "Well, these are my teachers. They're teaching me how to
[00:16:50] Emma Waddington: Wow.
[00:16:51] Dr. Dennis Tirch: loving." And for some people, that might be Donald Trump who's like this sort of evil incarnate that they how can I look at this person and hold them with loving [00:17:00] awareness? And for others, it might be Kiir Starer, or it might be Vladimir Putin or whoever it is or or Mele in Argentina, but it's easy to be compassionate for people that you like or dislike. Real compassion, I think, transcends those personal preferences and gets to something deeper. Not 'cause it's right or 'cause it's pretty or it's how you should be, but because it's a, it's, it's, it's a superpower. Accesses a part of your mind. They call it Bodhi, as you guys know in, in the dharma, the, the, the the inherent the inherently arising altruistic aspiration for the liberation and suffering of all beings, all parts of ourselves, the parts of ourselves we don't like, the people we don't like, to wish all of those beings and aspects of who we are to come into a place of grace and awakening so that we can all rise together. I mean, it's just a beautiful thing.
[00:17:58] Chris McCurry: It's like, my [00:18:00] wife really likes Julian of Norwick the mystic and and Juliet of Norwolk said that know, in the end, even the devil will be saved.
[00:18:09] Dr. Dennis Tirch: It's Got my
[00:18:10] Chris McCurry: But I think that, that speaks to what you were talking about, the embodied nature of compassion, which kind of gets past labels and even definitions and words themselves.
[00:18:24] How to Practice Compassion
[00:18:24] Chris McCurry: so how do we manifest that? How do we, how do we live that without getting too hung up on
[00:18:29] Chris McCurry: verbiage?
[00:18:30] Dr. Dennis Tirch: You know what I it gets into the, it's a very behaviorist kind of question in a good way. It gets into the how, not just the what, but the how. And I think we have a lot, a lot of good technology and wisdom about how. And so, like, we know that when our minds are organized by compassion, that we will, have better functioning across, like, all of our [00:19:00] systems, your immune system functioning, heart rate variability levels of depression, levels of pro-social engagement, but also, like, psychological flexibility, decision making, the ability to overcome anxiety.
[00:19:13] Dr. Dennis Tirch: When we train up that capacity that we can call compassion some really great things happen. And I think there's one of the things I really like about Compassion Focused act and, and the sort of blending of act technologies and compassion focused technologies is that we can work from the ground up or from the sky down, meaning you can have an image of a compassionate being and have a clarity of authorship of what you value and what matters to you and how you understand that compassion. And you can use practices that have been adapted from Ana Buddhism and other world religions that are empirically validated that involve imagery and rehearsing being the version of yourself that you [00:20:00] most wish to be so that you're practicing embodying that quality. And when people's minds and, and bodies are, like, embodying caregiving, care receiving algorithms and compassion, all those good qualities show up, all those desirable things like decision making and flexibility, that's great.
[00:20:18] Dr. Dennis Tirch: We, we know that from the literature even on the neuroscience of the neurobiology of attachment. And, sometimes you can work not from the sky down, but from the ground up and, and you can identify these are the processes and competencies of a compassionate mind. As far as what we have seen, they are very akin to the processes you see in psychological flexibility. So part of what we do early on in working with clients whether they're clients who lifelong history of depression or whether they're clients who are coaching for performance as elite athletes, is we look at, given somebody's personal history, given their attachment history, where are the hooks, where [00:21:00] are the patterns of avoidance and over control? what needs to be liberated, what needs to be cultivated?
[00:21:05] Dr. Dennis Tirch: And then going through, like, your ability to contact the present moment with sensitivity to what is required to suffering, the ability to diffuse from categorical evaluation of judgmental thinking so you can come from a more non-judgmental place, the ability to tolerate difficult states of mind, your capacity for empathy and sympathy for self and other.
[00:21:25] Dr. Dennis Tirch: So you can actually identify with someone what their strengths and weaknesses are and how they can cultivate all those different bits. So it's, it's a little bit like working with a personal trainer. You can look at your over- let's say you're a footballer soccer player whatever, your language about it, you can learn the game, you can learn the skill, you can practice the game and you get better at it, or you could also work on passing, work on shooting, work on dribbling, and you can then go even more granular, "This is my range of motion, this is my mobility, this is my strength, this is my endurance, this is my flexibility." and cultivate all those [00:22:00] qualities. So I think compassion focused therapy and compassion focused act, we want to be able to go from like an overall gestalt, like embodying of it that you entrain to then looking at each of the different competencies, training up all those competencies, and then playing the game, which could be exposure and response prevention, it could be going on a job interview, it could be showing up and going to a parent teacher conference or, whatever life is really asking of you. So there are really specific, not abstract at all places where the rubber hits the road where we can actually reliably and repeatedly help people to cultivate compassion and overcome their fears and anxieties.
[00:22:40] Chris McCurry: I'm sure that went by very quickly for some of our listeners. If, if you could if you could pick one of those capacities and maybe dig a little deeper into how you would train that up, um, what, what would be a great example?
[00:22:56] Training Empathy and Perspective
[00:22:56] Dr. Dennis Tirch: I think the one I like most [00:23:00] in, in response to that question, but what I really lean into a lot as a clinician and as a supervisor, as trainer, coach, is, is in fact empathy. I, and I don't mean compassion overall. I don't mean the embodied motive to care and giving receive care. And I don't mean sympathy or like affective of empathy. I mean something closer to those of us in the act world in contextual behavior science, close, closer to theory of mind, you can, if, if you're a lay person, you might Google these ideas or do we call it didactic framing in, in this sort of radical behaviorist tribe we're a part uh, and, and it's, it's theory of mind, didactic framing, mentalization. There's similar ideas, but what it basically means is how can I view the world through the eyes of Chris or Emma? How can I imagine what it would be like to be them and use this fascinating, parallel processing, pattern recognition oriented of [00:24:00] human human mental behavior, mental life, where we can build a working model so that we can see through the eyes of another person. And one of the reasons I really like to work with that and in train it is you can do it lots of ways. You can ask people questions like, "Well, if you were me and I were you, what would it be like? What would you, what would it be like? Like we won't actually do this right now 'cause it's, but if I, if I had said, "Well, hey, Chris, imagine you are Dennis and I'm Chris and I ask you that question about which one of the, of the capacities or competencies you'd like to talk about, what would be going through your mind if you were me, and it's such an extraordinary exchange, whether it's in a psychotherapy moment or a coaching moment or even when we do contemplative like imagery practices. And that's so much what, 'cause it was like 20 years before ever becoming a therapist, I was practicing those kind of Buddhist [00:25:00] exercises, just quirks of my upbringing. And, when you're imagining what it's like to be the Bodhi Safa of compassion, or you're imagining what it's like to see the world through, through the eyes of velo, this which means, the one who hears the cries of the world, what would that be like? Or if you're imagining like, "Oh, I've said something rude to my spouse." well, I'm right. I had to say that. Oh, I was angry. They weren't, they were an hour late and we had a place to go, so I was grumpy, like, hmm, what would it be like to be them? What would it be like to feel that, to hear that? So there's so many different ways and so many different exercises and practices for multiple exemplar training, which is nerd speak for, like, learning something lots of different ways in different settings so you really get it. And I think when people get that flexible perspective taking thing and they can adopt perspectives, it also allows them to [00:26:00] cultivate that real wise mind, like Buddhist's eye view on themselves, like abiding, calm abiding in the natural state of like their Buddha nature, their awakened nature. So now my flexible perspective can be on my awareness itself.
[00:26:17] Dr. Dennis Tirch: What is it like to be aware if I was just pure awareness looking at my awareness, what would that be like? I think that there's so much you can do with ... I mean, there's, there's like six to 12 of these different competencies, so there's different ways of slicing and dicing them, but that one is my go-to. when my back is up against the wall in a session or something or in my personal life, it's like slow down, slow your breathing, feel your feet beneath you, connect with physical sensation, shift your perspective, see the world from this different point of view, and so much just arrives.
[00:26:51] Dr. Dennis Tirch: It's crazy.
[00:26:53] Chris McCurry: I mean, th- th- that's been a lot of my work with kids and parents, just trying to get to, to [00:27:00] do the mentalizing and that, which I think it was interpersonal mindfulness where it's like, how, how is this person thinking, feeling right now, not ... And, and that gets us out of that threat system where all I can think about is what I need in the moment, but kind of bridging that gap and just even attempting to do that, I think, in a way, kind of just breaks the spell of one's, s- stirred up emotions and and drives and needs and to be able to say, "Okay, I'm gonna bridge this gap and find out, what this other person is all about at this moment, and hold that stuff of mind lightly so that I can do that. [00:28:00] [00:29:00] [00:30:00] [00:31:00] [00:32:00] [00:33:00] [00:34:00] [00:35:00] [00:36:00] [00:37:00] [00:38:00] that's, that's your history.
[00:38:12] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Yeah. So, so it's, now then it's a new situation. So how can I really realize what the situation affords and getting just back to trying to stick the landing on this for for us all Emma, like just being nice is not actually what is, is is appropriate all the time. We need all those capacities.
[00:38:37] Dr. Dennis Tirch: And I think the thing is to, like, have those parts of ourselves, but not let those parts have us. They don't drive the bus. They're not in charge. And, and so to be like, like a shapeshifter from a place of wisdom and groundedness, and that, that's why we're coming home to that nature, that awakened nature, it's almost like you're returning to a place of repose or rest [00:39:00] just the way, like, an Olympic diver might be right before they dive. They don't ground themselves and, and then take a nap, they, like, calm, strong, stable, prepared, and that's a foundation for action, whatever that action is.
[00:39:17] Fierce Compassion and Boundaries
[00:39:17] Emma Waddington: And it speaks to this idea of the fierce compassion,
[00:39:21] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Yes.
[00:39:22] Emma Waddington: I seem to be talking about Brene Brown a lot, but she talks about compassion splam dunk and this idea that, from compassion can, we, the most compassionate humans are also very good at setting boundaries, saying no, um, understanding the limitation of the other.
[00:39:41] Emma Waddington: you Know, if I think of when I'm compassionate with my child, sometimes that includes saying, "Nah, this is too much for you. I'm gonna have to say no," because I know that they can't handle another, late night to sort of hang out with friends or they really do need [00:40:00] to sit down and do some work because they'll feel better if they do well.
[00:40:05] Emma Waddington: But those moments are hard. There's no, warm, fuzzy feelings, real, kumbaya. it's fierce in that, we have to set a limit coming from that place of deep understanding, um, of the other human, that place of empathy, even when it doesn't feel good. It's not a, a moment of, yeah, deep connection or, or loving.
[00:40:28] Emma Waddington: It's a connection to that understanding of where this other person can get to, needs to get to, and perhaps needs your help getting to.
[00:40:42] Dr. Dennis Tirch: There's a generosity in that. I think real generosity in what you're describing, Emma, because your own ... I would imagine that you have a desire to be loved, and to be a good parent. And one of the ways we can tell if we're good to people around us is whether [00:41:00] they think that we're good to them they actually have a say in whether we're good to them. And with parenting, it's an incredible act of generosity to say, I am going to do something. I'm going to set a limit, which, you might not like me as much." I, I'll say that even to the 7-year-old, sometimes she'll be, like, angry at me. She'll say, "You're the worst daddy in the world."
[00:41:20] Dr. Dennis Tirch: And I'll say, "That's my job today. Today is my job, is to do something that makes you say, I'm the worst daddy in the world, so thank you very much. Now I know I did my job." And she's like, "Ah." says, I didn't like it, but to just say to, just 'cause I just feel really compelled to mention this, like, Bo particularly Paul Gilbert and particularly Bob Lehe in my own life were people who really helped me to accept aspects of my own personality that I thought made me a bad person, my own anger, my own fierce compassion, my own passion around things. [00:42:00] Like, especially Paul, the idea that it's not about being nice, it's not about being soft, it's not about being indulgent, it's about evoking something which is very, very strong and allows you to stand for what matters most. that, there's so many ... We talked, we were talking earlier about the, what is the dirty little secret. Like, it's been such a long time that I've been attempting rather with, with mixed results at best to express that for me, in my work, the real gift of compassion is courage. The real gift of compassion is that your fears, your anxiety, your social, your social threats can be grounded and stabilized because there is something more important going on, something worth standing up for. And the strength of that, that comes from that for us all to me that kind of [00:43:00] gets lost in the, well, self-compassion will let you be kind to yourself and then you'll be less self-critical. It'll help you to accept your self-critical nature because you'll accept yourself. That's great. I, you need that, but it's part of the story of compassion, and that's why I don't lean into the self-compassion term.
[00:43:19] Dr. Dennis Tirch: It's not ideological. It's not 'cause like, I studied CFT more than MSC or, FBI and the KGB and all the alphabet soup. It's because, working with anxiety, patients and clients with anxiety problems, I've just seen people be so liberated by finding compassionate courage. So it was like you were saying earlier a little bit, Chris, like, it takes, It takes courage to be compassionate, but also takes compassion to feel courage, to not just regulate or accept your anxiety, but to move like where, what Rockman described when he talked about fearlessness. There's a big difference for me between fearlessness and regulating anxiety. There's a big difference between [00:44:00] fear and anxiety. Like, if you can actually ... Like when I worked with, like, veterans and, like, the nurses and trauma surgeons who had to deal with actual fear still persist, like, that's a really cool outcome from therapy or coaching I, mean, look, I'll, I'll take, like, more more tolerable anxiety. Yay, that's good. Psychological flexibility, hooray, but if you're actually able to be afraid and still keep going with, like, some measure of joy in your heart, that's a cool thing.
[00:44:35] Chris McCurry: That does make me think of parenting.
[00:44:40] Emma Waddington: After I finished my PhD, I went and did a 10-day silent retreat with Stephen Bachelor, who was also on our podcast, another, fabulous human. And, during this sort of silent retreat, oh my goodness, the emotions, it was actually one of the hardest things I've ever done.
[00:44:57] Emma Waddington: I didn't realize that being silent was so, so [00:45:00] very hard. But I remember the teacher, she was a beautiful human. She said to me, wait till you parent. That's the biggest dharma." And absolutely, my goodness, we have to navigate so many emotions.
[00:45:13] Emma Waddington: And this piece around fierce compassion is one of the hardest parts, actually, I read recently about this idea of ruinous empathy, idea that, when we are kind, we're not in fact being kind, if really what the best thing for, for our relationship, for our children, for ourselves is to set a limit just to say no, then that's what being truly kind is, truly empathic, truly compassionate and it often gets confused, hence coming back to the beginning of our conversation, my son saying it's so woke in a way that, isn't honest.
[00:45:54] Emma Waddington: Not that he wasn't being honest, is a way that when we're truly,
[00:45:57] Emma Waddington: when we're compassionate, we can be dishonest. We're [00:46:00] not really caring about the other person. We're just making life easier for ourselves or, the empathy is really about us, perhaps, not wanting to upset someone else.
[00:46:11] Emma Waddington: Exactly what you said. It's so hard. I loved what you said about the generous, being a, a sort of generous parent or doing the good job sometime is the outcome is our kid says, "I hate you. You're the worst parent in the world." I must say girls are particularly good at that. I've got a little girl and she does that really well.
[00:46:30] Emma Waddington: My sons haven't said it quite as much. I've had it written on the wall. I've had it written in my book. Great reminders that I've said a limit, but yes,
[00:46:42] Dr. Dennis Tirch: And up to a point, that's a sign that they're socially safe, that they feel safe being able to say that with you, right? I, I know you guys are aware of this. I mean, at a certain point, it can be an indicator of something worse, like if someone's
[00:46:56] Dr. Dennis Tirch: acting out violently, so I don't mean it
[00:46:58] Dr. Dennis Tirch: always means that.
[00:46:59] Breaking the Hate Loop
[00:46:59] Dr. Dennis Tirch: [00:47:00] One thing, it's like a little thought exercise, I'd love to sneak in, which, 'cause we've been kind of touching on politics slightly in this incredibly contentious age. So this is just, like, little thought exercise that popped into my mind the other day, and, like, I guess about, whatever, eight years ago, there were a few interviews that I did, which were some of the, like, more like, larger scale things, like for the Washington Post or, like, NPRI. I don't do that typically, but they got, somebody got it in their head that I could talk about people having political disagreements and getting along with each other, even when they had, like, it was for the holidays, like, going home for the holidays and you don't want to hate your family, like, how can you all get along? So it was, like, a couple of those that happened. And I harken to them sometimes because I find the whole thing so heartbreaking, the way people are driven apart from each other over these, for legitimate concerns they have. But a little exercise I did with a friend, I was trying to connect with them around holidays, and it was imagine someone who is [00:48:00] you, you consider to be your political adversary, and imagine it, imagine this is a person who, one of the reasons they're your political adversary is because they've learned to hate another group of people. They've learned to dehumanize and hate. Whoever this is, there's somebody who you, you like them, you love them, but you know that they hate this other group of people based on who they are. hate is such a scary thing in evolutionary terms 'cause it's it's actually, 'cause we know is like, closer to disgust than anger. It's about expiration, it's about removal, it's about destruction of the other, and identifying as someone who's totally in opposition to the other. So I kind of invited this friend to just imagine a political adversary that ... And the reason they didn't like them was because that person hated someone. [00:49:00] And then think about the times when you hate someone, or you hate a group of people. Like, we don't like to admit that that ever goes through our minds and hearts, but there's an awful lot of hating others these days that's becoming increasingly socially acceptable. you might be hearing this from one political orientation and saying, "Yes, Dennis is talking about them, those folks who hate people based on their identity." But I think the real challenge is is to look into our own hearts and say, "When am I doing that? When am I hating someone based on their identity?" And if we can curb that in ourselves, what a gift we're giving the world to just what? ...............We don't have to change our political beliefs, we don't have to change our political allegiances, but if we can move past hating based on identity and open our hearts to, like, the necessity [00:50:00] for the alleviation of suffering for all beings, cooperation and liberation for all beings, it's a challenging thing, but when I do that, it helps me to be able to, like, exist better, to be better.
[00:50:18] Dr. Dennis Tirch: There's a more of an ableness to be, to have more of an open heart, to be more loving, to be less dominated by hate or anger. So that's a little, I don't know, we're talking, some people will listen. If that was one thing that I could add to the conversation, I think that I would feel I'd sleep a tiny bit better tonight.
[00:50:38] Chris McCurry: Yeah. No, I think that's great. And I, I think by doing that, it sort of takes away that urge to be right and to impose our views on this person that is so hateful that we hate that.
[00:50:54] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Yeah, it's a loop then.
[00:50:55] Chris McCurry: Yeah, it's a loop. And somebody's gotta break that loop.
[00:50:59] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Hmm.
[00:50:59] Chris McCurry: [00:51:00] Wow.
[00:51:00] Closing Gratitude and Wrap Up
[00:51:00] Chris McCurry: Well, in the interest of time final thoughts? I mean, this, this has been marvelous and I mean, we could, we could continue and get into values and context sensitivity and all kinds of great topics that we've just barely touched on here, but you should wrap up.
[00:51:19] Dr. Dennis Tirch: For me, I, I'd just say there's, I just feel like a couple multilayered, multiple layers of gratitude about this discussion because we, we, we're a part of a shared community, but one of the, one of the really cool things about what you're doing here is it allows for conversations, real human conversations between us like, and by extension, the people who are listening are, are, are as much of a part of this conversation as the three of us. And that's, like, a really beautiful and special thing. And I feel like more connected to the two of you and to our shared work and to our community in psychology and in, healing professions and to your listeners who I've [00:52:00] never met. So what, what a, what a magic spell you've created with this ritual, like that we can actually increase how close we are to one another.
[00:52:09] Dr. Dennis Tirch: And, and that's that's that was kind of just what I needed today, so thank you very much for that.
[00:52:16] Chris McCurry: Well, thank you. This has been a real privilege. I've admired your work for many, many years now, and I'm very gratified to hear you say that.
[00:52:24] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Oh, well,
[00:52:24] Dr. Dennis Tirch: right back at you.
[00:52:26] Emma Waddington: What a fantastic conversation and what an honor to get to have that and sort of inch us a little closer to perhaps being a little bit more compassionate in whatever way it feels right today.
[00:52:39] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for having me, and I, and I hope that we can continue to be connected down the road. You
[00:52:46] Dr. Dennis Tirch: Thanks so much. That's really cool.
[00:52:47] Emma Waddington: Thank, Thank,
[00:52:48] Emma Waddington: you,
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