Compassion: The Antidote to Shame, Criticism & Trauma | Prof Paul Gilbert OBE

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Professor Paul Gilbert, OVE, founder of Compassion Focused Therapy, joins me today to answer a very powerful and important question. Why are so many of us our own harshest critics? And how might compassion be the antidote? Together we explore how compassion transforms our brains, heals trauma and reshapes relationships. I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, subscribe, like, comment, and watch. Now to learn how you could transform your life, just want to welcome to the podcast professor Paul Gilbert. Thank you for joining us. Paul,

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 00:39

Thank you very much Mariana for inviting me. And this is your 200th podcast and I think it's amazing what you've done. Incredible.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:46

Thank you so much for your kind words. I want to think about what compassion is actually, if someone is tuning into this thinking, maybe this could be something that would help me or my family or my work teams. What is it Paul?

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 01:03

Yeah, it's a wonderful question actually, because there's so many things on the internet now about compassion and it's about kindness and love and all the rest of it. You do not need to worry about that. You really don't need to worry about. You don't need love to be compassionate, I can assure you. So what is it? Now, as a psychologist, we study compassion as a motive. Now, all motives have two parts to them. We call them an algorithm. What that means is there's a stimulus and there's a response. So your body works on an algorithm, so the temperature goes very high, you'll start sweating. If it goes very low, you'll start shivering. All your body needs to assess is the temperature, and then your body will do the rest. Now, it's the same with threat. For example, if your brain detects a threat, your body will stimulate your heart rate and you want to run away whatever.

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If on the other hand you see food, then you don't want to start running away. You want to start salivating preparing to eat. So that's what it means, stimulus and response. What is the stimulus response for compassion, sensitivity to distress and suffering and need. That's the first thing you see. This is suffering. You are tuning into distress and then you work out what is likely to be helpful and they have to match up. You can see somebody in distress and you give 'em do totally the wrong thing. So you need wisdom and courage, and this is very important now. So in our approach, we always highlight the fact you need the two things because if you only have the one, you can get into difficulties. So for example, if you only have sensitivity, but you dunno what to do, when that happens, people tend to turn off from compassion because they find it overwhelming.

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If you know what to do but you're not sensitive, you're not going to do it. I can't care. Well, I could help you, but I don't really care whether to help you or not. So that's the other side of the problem. So these two are very, very important. Now again, compassion is not one thing. For example, when we're working with the guys, the men who are always a bit sniffy about compassion, oh, it's a bit weak, it's a bit soft a bit. So well think about this. If you accept that compassion is about being sensitive to suffering and wanting to do something about it, do you accept? They say yes. Okay, I can accept that. Think of a firefighter. Now, a firefighter will risk their lives for you, but they need to do it wisely. And with courage, you don't want to just rush in there not knowing what they're doing, and that's classic compassion.

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So what's weak or fluffy about that? For psychologists and for therapists, it's not a fire that we're working with. It's somebody's mind that's in great distress. And so we have to be able to tolerate that. We have to be sensitive to that, but we also need to know how to work with it. We can't just say, well, I've got to be nice to you and kind to you. Isn't that great? That's not enough. We need to study. We need to understand. So what would help this person? We need to work with them. What is it that would help you? How can we help you find a thing that would help you? And we also need to know to start with of course, the focus of the distress. So compassion for us is that it's the sensitivity to suffering in self and others with a commitment to do something about it and with wisdom and courage.

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So it's a little bit of a long definition, but it is important this because this is not really about love. I mean, obviously for people you love, you're going to do it a lot. But we can also do it for people we don't even like. We can actually also recognise we don't really want them to suffer, and if we can help them not suffer, we will. Now, we've done a lot of research on this. Kindness is different. Kindness is really wanting people to feel good. So for example, what we found in our studies was that kindness is about remembering your birthday and being nice to you and supportive and that sort of thing, whereas compassion is when there's suffering. And so what we find is that if you look at people, ask them about kindness, they will become less kind to people they don't like at the moment that you don't like somebody, you're not going to remember their birthday or whatever. But if it's a suffering, like they've got kidney disease and you could help them, there's a much less chance of compassion reducing with somebody you don't like. You still don't want 'em to suffer. So the concept of suffering is very important in compassion in a way that it's not so important for kindness and love is a totally different thing altogether. So courage and wisdom to address suffering, that's compassion.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 05:45

Yeah. Yeah, amazing. I think you might have done this before breaking it down, but it's really, really helpful to think it's not just one thing and actually it's the perfect storm of all of those things that you need to be able to have to be able to engage with it and have it make a difference. Can we imagine for a minute that perhaps in this example, a man has gone to the doctors and is struggling with low mood, maybe with anxiety, and the GP perhaps picks up on the negative self-critical way that this man talks about himself and his experiences. And of course the GP is going to refer to mental health team, but he's aware that the waiting lists along. And maybe he says, actually, I think you should download Professor Paul Gilbert's compassionate Mind book and listen to it whilst you go for walks. So we're getting the compassion stuff going in and we're getting some exercise now I think that would be an excellent bit of social prescribing because of course I've read the book and I know the benefits of moving your body and being more compassionate to yourself and less self-critical. But to this man who was perhaps not expecting that outcome, how can we help him realise that maybe is going to be a really helpful thing to do, Paul?

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 07:12

Well, the first thing is helping 'em recognise that stuff's going off in your mind, which is causing you a lot of pain and suffering. Would you agree that being critical in the way that you are, that's hurtful to you and you don't come away with that getting joy, excitement and enthusiastic to get on with life? The chances are you feel quite the opposite. Now, usually people kind of agree on that, okay, so we can understand that this is whatever's happening to you. It's not making you feel good, you're not able to really function with it. And it's also like physical diseases, isn't it? If you don't sort out this, if your blood sugars have got a problem and you've got diabetes, well then you need to start looking at not eating so much sugar, maybe all that stuff. So helping people recognise that actually self-criticism is not so good.

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Incidentally, self-criticism itself is okay because that's just saying you could have done that better. It's when there's an attacking element to it, there's a sense of you are no good, you should have done better. It's when you get that anger towards the self, that's really what causes the harm. Okay, so we've got him to accept then that actually the way that he's, he's criticising himself is probably quite hurtful. So the next thing is helping them think about, do you want to understand that? So where do you think that's come from? Is that your voice or is that the voice of somebody else where you criticise as a child or bullied or whatever? And try to see if there's an origin to it or if you've been struggling and you are just disappointed because you can't achieve what you want to achieve. And so you have what we call the disappointment experience, and then you attack yourself, I should have done better.

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I should have done this. I'll give you a personal story in a moment. And what you have to see underneath criticism is always grief, sometimes anger, always grief. Why? Because you feel when we criticise ourself underneath that, there's always the feeling we could have been better, and if we were better than we'd be loved more, we'd be wanted more, we'd be admired more, we'd be valued more, we'd be happier, whatever it is. And there's a real sadness that because this isn't going to happen, there's that sense of isolation. So if you look into your self-criticism, you always find a feeling of loneliness in it. There's always a sense of loneliness. When you're focusing and feeling very critical and depressed, you feel lonely. And that's the problem with self-criticism because that's what's underneath criticism, and that's partly what can drive it. Give you an example. My personal example, why grief?

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Cricket, I was a cricketer. I was quite competitive as a cricketer. I used to love playing cricket. I met my wife through cricket. But anyway, as I got older, I became not so good at cricket and I was playing in this team that I really wanted to play with, but I was a weaker member. And I remember on one game it was a really important game. It was a relatively easy catch that I dropped and I became very angry at myself. Why did you drop that catch? I mean, it was such an easy catch. Why did you have to do it in this game? Very important game, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then I thought, oh, that's interesting. So when I came home, I sat and did a little exercise and myself said, okay, so what is it then? What is driving this anger towards yourself?

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Why have you got so upset about dropping a catch? Yes, it's upsetting. And then I realised that part of what that was about was recognising I'm getting old. I can't keep doing this. I'm losing my ability to play. I'm not going to be able to play for this team very much longer, sooner or later than not going to want me. I'm too old. And realising that actually underneath that was this real sadness of what I was losing and what was happening and the way I couldn't be the way I wanted to be. And that's quite important, particularly for men, of recognising that hitting yourself and bashing yourself and so forth underneath that is a sadness. And working with the sadness that sits underneath your criticism is really one of the ways in which we can heal because then we become compassionate to that sadness, become compassionate to that. In my case, that difficulty and struggling with losing my abilities to see a ball and to be able to run. I used to be able to run and knees started to get arthritic and everything. It was really tricky, a little bit of a tricky period for me that I wouldn't be part of this life anymore. So that's an example I think that might be useful to your guys.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 11:47

It is. And it's also an example of the fact that being compassionate to ourselves is we've got to think about it as a bit of a muscle, haven't we? That we've got to be able to practise it regularly so that it can maybe even if it's not there immediately at the point where we're feeling that difficult emotion, that it can come to us at a point when we are home and we have got a cup of tea and we can be, I've got that image of you being really curious. Why did I have that reaction? What could that be about? And that sounds like a wonderful practise that we could, I think all benefit from and what my experience of being a mother, sometimes in the moment, I do not give my ideal response, but for me, once I've taken a breath and a moment, I'm always conscious to try to repair that rupture and to allow myself to not be a perfect parent. That's not a thing, but I guess to be curious and help them understand about why mommy did shout then actually is because she was a bit stressed. She was driving and you'd turn the music up very loud, and I was a bit worried and a bit scared that we might crash, and I couldn't think clearly and just helping myself understand about my responses, but I think also helping especially young developing minds about my responses, but to be mindful of their own responses and compassionate to them as well. So powerful, Paul.

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 13:18

It's very powerful. And the point is your compassion is to your disappointment, right? Because your compassion, yes, the critical part is not coming to terms with the actually. So if in my case, for example, the compassion would say, yes, it is very sad for you Paul, because this cricket's been very important to you, met your wife through it. Both of you love the game, and this is very sad. And getting old is a sad process, and it is not just coming to terms of the cricket, it's also coming to terms of the reality of ageing. So I was able to have an empathic connection to the sadness. Like the same with you are telling an empathic connection to the sadness the critic called process will stop. You see that gets in the way because you're just hammering yourself and bashing yourself. You're not able to do the healing process, which is coming to terms with whatever pain is sitting underneath.

(: 14:08

So in the case for you, Marianne, that disappointing because you didn't really want to be like that with the children. So yes, that is upsetting, that is disappointing. You didn't want to be like that. So you have the compassion to that disappointment that you're feeling because your emotions got the better of you in that moment, which they often do, don't they? Same for me too. But you were able to bring compassion to that moment. So yes, that is upsetting. I'm disappointed about that. And that allows you then to begin to work with it because people get very shamed. You see, then they shame themselves and I shouldn't have done that. So then they become critical of being critical and it gets out of control.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 14:45

It really does. And you so nicely kind of give us that example actually, that with your cricket, it's okay to be sad about making the right decision. If you'd continued, you might have physically injured yourself, which then would've impacted your whole life actually, not just the cricket. And you were allowed to mourn for that. You were allowed to grieve for that. You were allowed to feel really proud of the vibrant young cricket playing man that you were, but also make that decision to step back from that. Yes.

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 15:17

I mean, I think the point you make is a very important one is to realise that grieving is the part, is the pain. We pay for valuing. If it didn't value it and it wouldn't bother me really. It's like if you lose somebody you love, the more you love that person, the more you're going to grieve that person. So if you don't want to have to feel sadness when you make a mistake or disappointment or whatever, don't value anything. If you don't value anything, it doesn't matter, does it really? It's because it matters to you. It because it matters to you. That's why you get so upset with yourself, and it's recognising, so why does this matter? What sits underneath that? What is my sadness, my grief, my hurt that's sitting underneath my criticism? Otherwise people get locked into the criticism and they can't drop down to that.

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There's something that's matched matters to you, that's hurt you, that you've lost or you've damaged or whatever, that you didn't intend to. And I mean, the point that you make is a good one, like arguments if you get angry and then you're disappointed because you've been angry and you're worried about that. Again, recognising that the anger usually comes from position of fear or hurt or something, or sense that people aren't listening to you or some kind of conflict. So always be in touch with the pain that sits underneath the critical process. And sometimes you can track that back to things that have happened into charter, where you've been criticised and so on and so on.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 16:43

Yeah, absolutely. And we've touched upon shame and criticism, and I wonder if we can think a little bit about shame and how we could use something else differently. I'm guessing compassion is going to be the answer, but someone at my gym, to give a practical example, we have to name our heart rate monitors to take part in this particular class. Mine is named Marianne. That might not surprise you, but you could name it whatever you wanted to. And at my gym, someone has called theirs wide load, and when I spoke to them about that, I was like, why have you named yours that? And he said, well, and kind of bbd the belly and was like, I've got to motivate myself. But every time the instructor has to refer to this person, it's called out, shouted on a microphone, white load. And I just wonder whether there's a kinder way that might be less shaming, less critical, that might help any of us towards whatever our goals are, whether they might be fitness, diet, exercise, just general wellbeing. What's your take on that, Paul?

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 17:52

Yes, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, the thing with shame, there are two types of shame. One, we call external shame, internal shame. So external shame is where you're worried about what other people would think about you. So you may or may not have a negative view of yourself, but you are worried that other people will, if you don't change or don't get the right body shape or whatever it is that they will. And sometimes by using things like wide load, you're kind of saying to the audience, you don't need to shame me because I'm doing it myself, right? I understand, I understand. I've got to weight issue. So you don't need to shame you for it. So that's a self defensive position position. So the concern about how we exist in the mind of the other is a very major concern for humans.

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But then we also have what we call internal shame where even if people are being supportive to you, you still criticise and shame yourself because you feel you're not good enough. And that's often sometimes linked to perfectionism and all that sort of thing. So the key thing then is recognising are you primarily worried about what other people think or are you really just attacking yourself? And again, the key with shame and shaming is to recognise that it is not going to help you. You do not come out of a shaming experience feeling enjoyed, encouraged, okay, I'm going to do whatever. It's always a head down experience. I mean, you might try to improve because you're worried about shame. So we call that fear-based motivation. And the psychologists, we know fear-based motivation is not such a good thing. It's important sometimes, but generally speaking, the way we treat ourselves, it's not so good.

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So it's finding the ways in which you make a decision about what your values are. I actually do want to lose weight. It'd be good for me. And yes, I'd like to look. That's good. And then following it for a personal valuing point of view, I want to do this because I want to do it, not because I'm ashamed. The shame is a fear base, whereas making a decision, I'd like to do this because of the benefits to me. Now, they're not going to be totally separate. They will obviously fuse together. You can have both of them. But the key thing with shame is deciding what it is you feel ashamed about and then making decisions about how you can improve, but do it compassionately. Encourage yourself, okay, let's try. This has been very difficult. I feel distressed. I got issues with my weight, so be compassionate to that distress.

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Okay, I'm going to try a little bit and if I make mistakes, I'm going to have another go. So we work with people who are overweight and they'll try a little bit and then maybe they slip back. So you need compassion to the slip back. You need compassion. When things have got tricky and you can't let it go a bit, and you had too many pizzas, stand back and say, okay, so rather than beating myself up about that, I need to be compassionate, support myself and get back to what I want achieve because my critic will push me away. If I criticise myself, I'll just eat more pizzas. So what I need to do is, okay, that wasn't so good, easy, all those pieces. So I'm going to get myself back into a position where I can now follow my values. And that means being compassionate.

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And it's interestingly enough, it's quite important for that. If you've got a lot of guys listening, in the case of sport, actually there's some really interesting stuff in football. For example, if you're playing football and somebody makes a mistake and misses the goal, it's really important that all the team members around that person support him, say, it's okay. It's going to be okay. And getting back so that he can relax or she can relax quickly to get into the game. Because if they feel isolated, if they feel the whole team is looking at them negatively and judging them, they stay anxious, they stay, they're not able to perform in the way that you need them to perform on the field. So everybody has a collective responsibility. If one of the players has made a mistake to get their confidence back as quickly as you can, and that means not criticising them or isolating them on the field, but really going up to them and say, look, that's very disappointing for you.

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Yes, that was upsetting that you missed the goal and so on and so on, but okay, you're a good player. Just get yourself back into the zone and you're going to be great. So very, very important to understand that when we're disappointed, yeah, it's upsetting and so forth, but how do we get ourselves back into the zone of taking action to move towards our goals? If you keep beating up yourself, you're just move further away from them. Whereas if you say, okay, this is what I need to do. I need to be compassionate to myself right now, I want to get back to doing what I want to do, which is maybe to lose weight or whatever. So the ability to deal with setbacks, the ability to fail and get back, fail and come back, that's really what a compassionate position is.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 22:40

Yeah, thank you. And it is helpful as a mother of two young footballing children, I've got a 9-year-old and a 12-year-old to think about that actually. You do see on the pitch when people are disappointed with themselves and when they feel like they might have let themselves or the team

Jingle Guy (: 22:56

Down.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 22:58

Yeah, I really liked that. And I remember, I think it was in the 2021 Euros, which I think essentially were called the 2020 Euros, but took place in 2021 because of the whole COVID Anns shenanigans. And there was such disappointment when penalty takers for England didn't get them, and it actually turned into racism. I dunno if you remember the incident that I'm talking about. And I remember I was asked to talk on the radio actually and in the media about how we can be compassionate whilst also being disappointed. And I think that is such a powerful idea because yes, we can be disappointed in ourselves, others, but we don't need to be mean with it. We don't need to other people in that experience that we can just say, I am really disappointed with how that turned out.

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 23:52

That's right, because unintentional, you always remember that disappointment is always unintentional. I mean, nobody wakes up in the morning and then they think, I'm going to play football today, but you know what? I'm going to miss the goal and screw it all up. Yeah, that'd be fun. A fancier loss this week. Nobody does that. Nobody does that. So these things are always unintentional. They're just errors that are unintentional. And we also say to people with mental health problems, always remember that things like anxiety and depression and paranoia, you never, never choose them. You don't want them. They're unintentional, okay? They're not your fault at all. Okay? Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, you know what? My life's going very well, and I feel so confident I need to go on one of those courses to learn how to have panic attacks and scare the shit out of yourself.

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You know what I mean? I've got to go and find out how to be suicidally depressed, so happy there's something missing in my life. I've got to practise suicidal. No one does that. No one does that. What we do do, however, is we need to practise how to be supportive and kind to ourselves and compassionate to ourselves and encouraging and empathic to ourselves. Now, that is a practise that is less common. The threat system is very easy. The hostile aspects of the mind are very easy to stimulate. You don't need to practise those. The ones you do need to practise are the ones of what happens when things get difficult for you. How do you deal with the struggles of life in a way that is encouraging, supportive, and moves you forward? So very important. Otherwise, we blame ourselves for getting anxious or blame ourselves for blaming the self for all kinds of things. That's not your fault. That's one of the big problems with people with mental health difficulties.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 25:41

And I'm a woman who stands before you and before the audience. As someone who has been able to curate a more compassionate view of myself and to be less critical and less shaming, and it's your book, the Compassionate Mind, that really helped me to start that process. Could you tell us a bit about a few of your books, please, Paul?

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 26:05

Yeah. So The Compassionate Mind is a book that I wrote. I think it took about four or five years to write. There's an interesting story about that actually, which I can tell you again about the importance of compassion. So I think it was about 19, 2007 or something like that. So just more or less finishing the book. And I knew it was too big, as you say, it was too big, very big. And so I wanted to cut it down, but the publisher was saying, no, we've got a print run. The copy editors all set up the book's, okay, it's a bit big.

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And they said, we know you. If we ask you to cut it down, you'll take another, okay. But unfortunately, father was dying of lung cancer, so I had to put the book to one side and go down and be with him at the end. And that was tricky because seeing somebody die of lung cancer is horrible. They basically choked to death. So I was there for all that. We couldn't get him into hospice, so we cared for him. So there we are. That was quite upsetting. So then I came back to vy, all these emails say, where's the book website? Okay, I'll send the book.

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Went to send the book, and of course got all these signs saying, bounce, bounce, bounce. I thought, okay, maybe it's too big. I'll break it up into chapters. So break it up into chapters and again, bounce back. And at that point, I had a rage attack, an absolute rage attack, and I used every word you can imagine, and it was a bit like John, please, with a car, and threatened to smash my computer with a baseball bat and bloody hell, and so on and so on. And I was screaming. And then I had to get a work gun in my car. And then I suddenly remember my wife was there in the house, and I thought, oh no, she would've heard all of that. And then the critic turns up because the critic loves it. The critic loves it when you've screwed it. And there it is.

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Oh, so you've just written the book on the compassionate mind about mind regulation. You're a total fake you. You're a fucking useless piece of shit, aren't you? All that stuff. And I was in a real estate, and it was almost because I've done a lot of compassion in mind training almost in the car. It was like another person said, Paul, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. You had a terrible time with your father. You're in a state of grief. It was awful to see him die the way that he did. And you've worked so hard on this book and everything. It's not your fault. It's not your fault, but just slow down. And that's what I did. So I slowed down, and then I just allowed myself to have a cry, and I took my phone out and put my wife and apologise.

(: 28:36

So the key point about when you practise compassion, it won't always stop you from losing it. You might. But if you can learn to always turn towards it, it will always help you Look, this is a point of suffering. It's very painful, it's very difficult, but just let's just slow the whole thing down and see what we can do to repair, and so on and so on. So it was a very powerful experience for me because I was really raging, I mean like a mad thing. And also it helped me understand that these rage attacks can be so painful and so out of control that if you don't have some way of actually downregulating, it's very difficult for people. So we do quite a lot of work actually in ccft, but helping people with rages and so on and so on. But that was a personal experience, that compassion is there for the dark side. It's there for the suffering, it's there for the difficulties. It's not there to, oh, let's be nice and kind to each other. That's great, okay, do all that. But compassion is there when it's really bad and really helps you define the courage and the wisdom just to settle and not blame yourself and realise this is a great terrible point of suffering for you. That's why you're raging. So that's another personal example.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 29:52

Yeah, thank you. And it's a really powerful example, but I think gives us all permission to be human. We've got these feeling states, and sometimes we're going to use them. They may not show up in a way that looks pretty or makes us feel like good about ourselves at the time, but it is how we make sense of that and how we recognise that actually these feeling states are communications. They crop up for a reason, like you said, not just for a jolly, they crop up. They're trying to tell us something about ourselves.

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 30:24

Yes, yes, absolutely. Right? And you need compassion for the suffering, right? That's the thing. And the greater the suffering, the greater the pain, the greater the anger, whatever it is, the more you need it.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 30:36

Yeah, absolutely. Where would be a good place for people to learn more about you, about your books, about your work? Is your website the best place for that, Paul?

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 30:45

Yes, I think so. If you're new to compassion, come to the websites W dot compassionate mind one word.co.uk, so you can certainly come and see, and this practise is there for you. And the other thing to remember is when you practise compassion, they are stimulating brain systems. You are actually practising developing brain systems, and we now know that if you practise, you literally will change circuits in your brain. Now, people often ask me, well, how do you know? Well, we know partly from research, but look, I can give you a very quick demonstration. If you're laying in bed, for example, and you suddenly bring to mind to worry to mind, and you start worrying about that, what you'll find is your heart rate would've gone up slightly. So your worry will be affecting your cardiovascular system. And if it is anxiety, your muscles tend to get floppy and loose.

(: 31:37

Whereas if it's anger, muscles tighten up. So anger can be linked to headaches, particularly at the back of the neck and that sort of thing. So what you're focusing your mind on has a big impact on your body. And we always sometimes use a sexual example. It's so easy that if you're fantasising something sexual, you only use that fantasy. You only use that fantasy because you want to stimulate things in your body. Now, if it doesn't stimulate things in your body, the fantasy is no good to you, and so you can literally move blood flow and hormones around your body with your mind. You can do that. It's amazing when you think about it. Your mind will change the flow of hormones and blood flow according to what you're fantasising, but it's safe for compassion. If you practise compassion, you'll be stimulating circuits in your body and your brain. That will strengthen over time. And over time, those circuits will be available to you so that it will allow you to start switching into compassion and calming down, just like I said in the car, had been practising for a while, so they automatically came on for me when I was in a state of distress. But compassion is not just about being kind and nice to ourselves, that's all to the good, but it actually changes your brain and your body. You can change your brain and your body, and over time, that will really help you.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 33:00

Yeah, I don't need to see a scan of my brain, Paul. I know that since learning about your book and your work and really practising that daily since 2018, that my brain is different.

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I'm just wired differently and I'm a better human for my experiences. I think grief and trauma is awful, isn't it? Because it makes you ultimately often a better person. But sometimes you'd be like, I'd settle for being a slightly shittier person. I was and not have gone through all of this, but thank you for holding my hand. The book is big. I listen to it as an audio book, and I love it, and I might well listen to it again, having met you again in person today. But thank you for doing what you do, and please to anyone who's listening or watching this, please do either pick up a copy or download an audiobook of the Compassionate Mind because I honestly believe it might just change your life and the life of those around you. Paul, thank you so much for your time.

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 34:03

That's a pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me, Marianne, and all what you're doing, getting all this information out there because that's so important for people that they have available. The information is available to them. Otherwise, it's all locked up in academic bookshelves or something. So you're doing a fabulous job.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 34:20

Thank you. And thank you for being so accessible and so generous with your time. It's really appreciated.

Prof. Paul Gilbert (: 34:25

Great.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 34:25

Thank you so much to the incredible professor, Paul Gilbert, OBE, for sharing his time. So kindly with us for not one but two episodes. If you haven't watched the previous episode, there's a bit more of a kind of psychology vibe. It's our 200th episode celebration of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. But even if you are not working in the psychology or mental health field, there's still so much to learn there, so I will make sure that I link that in the description and in the up next on YouTube. If you found this content helpful, please do set the comments ablaze. Let me know. Let me know what your take home message is from it. Let me know if you could spot the bits where I almost cried because I was just so moved from connecting with Paul and what we were talking about following the show, subscribing, liking, commenting, sharing it with your friends, getting busy in the comments really is the way to help this channel and this podcast grow, which helps me to attract brilliant, brilliant guests like Professor Paul Gilbert, OBE.

(: 35:36

Hope you found it as inspiring as I have. What a privilege that I get to do this that is not lost on me in these conversations. Well, they will stay with me forever. I genuinely think this is going to be two episodes that I'm going to be watching back so regularly as my, I guess, just regular dose of compassion for myself to act as a top up. I would love to know if you do the same, please do check out Paul's website and please do check out his books. I really love The Compassionate Mind. I think that's a great place to start, whether you read it or listen to it. If you're looking to become a psychologist,

Jingle Guy (: 36:20

Then with this podcast psychologist.