Rainforest Mind: Developing Empathy with Special Guest Satya Robyn

It's Rainforest Mind with me, Casper Thomson. Last week, the theme of the podcast was Empathy with My Enemies, and I finished by asking the question, what supports empathy? So when I was thinking about this week's podcast, I wondered, uh, what the best way of addressing that might be, and I decided to bring in a special guest who surely must be an expert in empathy. So today's guest is Satya Robyn. She's a psychotherapist, a professional empathy user, if you like. She's a Buddhist priest. She's a writer. She's written 5 novels and several non-fiction books. And she also happens to be my wife. And I begin our conversation by asking what supports her to be empathic in her practice as a psychotherapist.

Hmm, interesting question. What supports me to be empathic? It's a difficult question to answer because it becomes so instinctive and unconscious, I guess, like driving a car. It's like you've asked me how I— what maneuvers I make to pull a car out of the drive. And what I do know is that when I sit in front of a client, I, I go into a different mode of being where my attention is on the client and any needs that I might have become unnecessary in that space, in that hour. I think that a lot of the things that stop us from being empathic are about our needs. So somebody says something and we want to find out about it because we think it'll help us. Or we want to tell them something that it reminds us of about our own process. So there's a butting in of the ego. There's a "what about me?" kind of thing.

Yeah, wanting to make somebody else's experience about me. Me.

Yeah. Yeah, so the biggest thing I think is just a continual placing of attention back onto the person in front of me, which I'm not conscious of doing now because that's what I do when I do therapy. And it's like a dance because you place your attention on the other person and you also place your attention on the reactions and feelings and thoughts that are coming up in myself in response to whatever that person is saying. So I might be listening and become conscious of an ache in my shoulder which hasn't been there before, and then I can be curious about whether there's anything that's been triggered in me as a result of what the client's saying, or if it's just that my shoulder's happening to ache in that moment.

So that ache might be something from your personal history that's got triggered, though it's telling you about something that's your personal history that's got triggered in response to what the client's saying.

Well, there's 3 options. One is that I have hurt my shoulder. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Freud said. Was it Freud or Jung?

Yeah.

Uh, the second option is that the client's talking about skiing and I had a skiing injury, which is nothing to do with them, which has triggered some ache in my body. But the third option, which is usually the one that is occurring, is that there is something in the client's material that is setting a process off, which leads to my body to respond in a certain way, which gives me more information about that client's process. And at that point I will either notice it and wait a bit longer, or I might offer it to the client.

I might say, "Oh, I don't know if this is anything to do with what you're saying, but as you're talking I'm feeling this feeling in my stomach," or "I'm having a thought of this." Perhaps an ache in the shoulder is harder to imagine or make sense of in that context because it's so abstract, but you know, when you say feeling in your stomach, most of us know what it's like to feel emotions in our stomach.

Mm, yes and no. I think that the bizarre things also have resonance for people.

Oh yeah, I'm just saying for somebody listening from the outside, you know, for me as a psych— it might be easy to understand it as a psychotherapist if I say, oh, I suddenly feel butterflies in my own stomach as a therapist. Is this my stuff always is.

You're saying that I could have given a better example of the physical sensation that arose in me, for clarity's sake. Yeah, no.

Yeah. I'm just saying, when you— this is the trouble with having your spouse as well in the conversation. I wonder, I mean, you know, as a body psychotherapist, I know that an aching shoulder can have lots of different Yeah. Meanings. So I completely understand what you're saying, but I think if you're not used to working in the body, that's a more unusual.

I concur. So yeah, so—

So something about paying attention to the client, but also paying attention to yourself. In relationship to the client.

Yeah, and the big question always when we're in relationship is, as I read in my very first training books when I was training to be a therapist, is this my stuff or is this your stuff? So when something arises, can it be, can it be explained as something that is certainly related to the client's process? Is it something that's just about me, which is maybe I get hungry and that triggers some thoughts in me that have nothing to do with the client, or is it a bit of both? And usually it's a bit of both.

Yeah, my default position now would actually be to say there isn't anything that is only to do with the client's process or your process, even if you get a bit hungry.

Yeah.

I wonder how it would be to say, oh, you know what, I'm suddenly really hungry. Yeah. The therapy internal therapy police would have a you know, that's my— what I call the voice in my head that stopped me making certain interventions, would have a field day with that. But who knows what that— the significance of that is for the relationship.

And from certainly my experience is that the danger, if anything, is that I will ascribe too much of what is happening to the client because my attention is on the client. So there is something about the client's process being magnified in that space rather than my process, even if I am having— I might be having a hideous day, I might feel dreadful before I come into the therapy room, but the conditioning is such that 99% of the time as soon as I sit down everything that I've been struggling with is outside the door. But to think that that's going to happen completely is foolish.

No, it's a funny sort of— I mean, it shows something about the artifice of the therapy relationship, doesn't it? That even if you're sort of making yourself in a space where you can receive somebody completely, Mike, inevitably some of that stuff, your own stuff or my own stuff as a practitioner, is going to be sneaking in. Yeah, around the edges.

And without any of our stuff, there wouldn't be a relationship. There wouldn't be a— it wouldn't be real. I'm not, I'm not a blank slate. I'm Satya Robyn, but I'm Satya Robyn as therapist rather than Satya Robyn as friend who wants to talk about her holiday.

Yeah.

So it's real, it's a real relationship, but it is an edited version of of being in relationship with me.

I suppose the most important question for me is what's helpful to the client.

Absolutely, that's always the most—

yeah, it's not me processing, it's not a space for me to process my stuff. Although, as Jung says, when the client's healed, the therapist is healed as well. You know, your stuff, my stuff, is often worked through in those relationships in a different way.

Yeah.

But the key thing is in that one-sided relationship, it's one-sided because the job is to do what's best for the client.

Yeah, yeah, that's the task at hand, is to, is to create a space for the client which is completely unique usually because we don't have those spaces in our lives where they are just for us. I guess the only What's the word? Comparison? The only—

Equivalent?

Equivalent, thank you. The only equivalent I can think of is in a 12-step meeting where you have your space to talk, where you have your space to share and everybody is quiet, or like our Nembutsu circle.

Or being a minister.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Being a minister.

Offering a space to a member of the congregational sangha as a minister, where you put, you know, that there's a sort of equivalence there as well.

Yeah, that there is, uh, there is an open space to go deeper into how it is to be me.

So I wonder how this works in relationships that aren't one-sided in the— or professional in the way that therapy, minister, mentor is.

Empathy.

Yeah, you know, this idea of tuning into somebody, being recognized, being curious about what's going on for them, being curious about what's going on for yourself, wondering whose material it is. Yeah, because the question in a therapy session is what's helpful for the client, but in a friendship it might be Maybe the only difference is the question is, what's helpful for both of us, or what's helpful for me?

Yeah, as you, as you ask that question, the image that comes to my mind is of a dance, and there's something about who's leading the dance and who is being led. Um, I I'm making this up as I go along, so it might not make any sense. I'm thinking about the person leading as the one being the person who has a chance to be, to be, to go into themselves, and the person who's following as the listener, as the responder, as the co, the one who's with the other. And in my friendships I aim to lead and follow in turn roughly in a balanced way, so over time there's space for me to go to dinner and say, "I've had this terrible week, blah blah blah blah blah," and then there's also time for the other person to take up the whole hour of lunch with their own difficulties, that we listen to each other. And, and it's mostly a taking turns, but then there is also those spaces where we're leading at the same time. And I think that those places can be wonderful, where we're really agreeing about something or we're helping each other understand something, and they can also be dangerous where colluding happens. So the other person is going, "Oh, this person's awful," and you're going, "Yeah, they're really awful." Or there's a— and that's also fine within the context of relationship. I think that we as human beings, we like to indulge a little too often in collusion because it makes us feel better.

Yeah, we reminds me what you're saying before you're talking about collusion reminds me of drama workshops that I facilitated or movement workshops where the ultimate aim is that that group is all following and there isn't a leader and you're all following the process and that makes me think of the chanting immersive sessions or that where we do 24 hours or even just a few hours of chanting, where my sense— when I feel most at ease in those settings, and when I think the chanting sounds at its most beautiful, is when I suspect nobody is leading and everybody has the experience of following the group process.

Yeah, that's a really lovely metaphor, and I would go so far as to say that they weren't following the group process but they were following the Buddha. That, that's, uh, that for me, that sits beyond the group process. The group process works well when it's tending in the direction of what the Buddha would want to happen, um, however you want to articulate that. And that when we're chanting there's something that transcends.

Yeah, and what does that mean? What does the Buddha want to happen? Or what's the answer to that question?

What's the answer to what question?

What does the Buddha want to happen?

Yeah, that's interesting. Oh, goodness knows. The Buddha knows.

I mean, in the specificity, it's very difficult.

Well, he doesn't always want us to sound beautiful, does he? Because he also wants us to have little tangles that are the working out of something. So in the chanting that Caspar mentioned, sometimes there is someone who has a very loud voice who dominates the group and who is unaware of that, and that is something that happens in relationships, in groups, in life, that there is someone whose ego is kind of causing problems that they're not aware of, and how does that, how does that get healed?

Yeah, well, I think that's a good question, how does it get healed. And I, my answer to, my own answer to the question, what does the Buddha want, is what's best for everybody. That's the bodhisattva vow, isn't it? Save it. And that's what I was talking about last week, how do you really include everybody?

Yeah, in that.

And groups have different ways of solving that, as I mentioned last week. One way of which is to get rid of the person with the loud—

yeah—

voice. But from the Buddha's point of view, the best solution is the one that allows everybody to heal.

Yeah.

So that the egoic— the obvious ego of the loud voice— learns to be softer and more in tune with the group. But the egos of the people going, who the— is this making all that racket? Also learns to loosen and be more accepting and create more space.

Yeah, yeah. And we do have someone who has a wonderfully out-of-tune voice, and over the years I've really come to appreciate their voice, which at the beginning really grated on me because they weren't singing in tune and that was, you know, ruining the harmonies of the rest of the group. But now I can smile and and there's space for that. I can welcome that in, which I guess relates back to empathy, is that it's difficult to be empathetic towards anything that we are unable to, unable to entertain within ourselves.

Go on.

That if we are listening to someone talking about their jealousy, and we hate the idea of being jealous, it's very difficult to really understand how it is to be that person.

Yeah, so if you hate the idea of not having a good singing voice, or you can't imagine—

yeah—

singing loudly if you were out of tune, then it's hard to stand it in somebody else.

Yeah, or to welcome it, you know. Yeah, it's hard to stand it, never mind welcoming it. Yeah, so another part of empathy is, for me, is continually welcoming more and more of ourselves in, to entertain more and more of ourselves, which is like Rumi's poem, The Guest House.

Yeah.

That we don't just acknowledge that we are jealous, we say, 'Come in, come and have some food, sit down, tell me how you're feeling.' And it also makes me think of a sort of a thought that's been floating around for me for a while.

I don't know whether it's true or not, but it sort of arrived as a theory, which is that what is really best for me is best for everybody, and vice versa. What is best for any one individual is best for the whole community.

Yeah, even if they don't think so to start with. So I think often when when we do start to listen to ourselves more, our own needs, our own limitations, we might start saying to other people, 'I'm not actually able to do this for you anymore,' and they don't like that. But in the long run, what happens is they don't have to receive something tainted anymore, because it will be tainted with our resentment, So you're talking about collusion again, or not quite, maybe? Ah, no, I don't think so. Well, there is maybe a sort of a collusion that we don't— we don't— if somebody's offering us something and we kind of know they don't really want to, there may be a collusion in that we— or a denial in that we don't really want to see that.

And also if we're offering something something and then resenting it, usually in my experience of doing that, it's usually because I'm trying to please somebody, which is often about collusion as well. Yeah, in that I'm—

I can't quite link the word collusion.

So for me, collusion is something about cooperating with an unconscious or conscious belief that I don't believe, that part— another part of me doesn't believe to true. So what's an example of that?

So, so there's two parts that are kind of arguing, but you, you just ignore, and one is wiser than the other. Yeah.

And it might be, well, the classic example is offering, you know, drugs to an addict.

Yeah, yeah. So it's like the game we kind of play. So we play a game with ourself, and we also play a game with other people that we, we say, well, I'm going to offer you this, cuz I know it makes you happy and I know that you know I kind of don't really want to do it, but I know that you want it and so let's just do it this way.

Yeah.

And the other person's like, I kind of know that you don't want to do it, but you've not said you don't want to do it, so I'm going to carry on taking it, whatever it is.

And when you've both got low capacity for change, then maybe that's okay, you know, maybe it's okay to go around that cycle a few times or many, many times. While you build up the sort of, um, the head of steam that allows you to go, okay, now I'm going to step into something different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that what you just suggested is when you do that, that in the long term it is for good. Yeah, for everybody, not just the people, not just the person who's saying, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. It's also good for the person that's not receiving it. It makes me think of, you know, the, the, what surrounds an alcoholic, the rescuing and, and, and—

But there is also something subtle here, I think, that there's two ways of approaching that, 'Oh, I'm going to stop offering this,' or, 'I'm going to stop engaging in this dysfunctional behavior.' because I can suddenly see that it's unhelpful to me. One possible way of doing that is that when you work up a head of steam, you get upset with yourself and you get upset with the other person, and you just kind of swing to the opposite extreme and go into a different place of denial, or, you know, which might feel like it's the right thing for you because it is creating space.

It makes you safe.

Yeah, because it makes you safe. But the— but there's, for me, there's a sort of subtlety that says, well, is there a way of making you safe that also doesn't harm the other person?

Yeah, sometimes there is, sometimes no.

And I guess I'm just kind of working through that, what that question of is what's best for me, what's best for everybody. I think, well, what's best probably is, but what's good might not be.

I don't know. I think that often when we change our behavior, we harm other people because we're doing something unskillfully.

Yeah.

And that's just inevitable. That is unfortunate. And so I think it's, as you say, it's more complicated than what's best for me is best for everyone, because sometimes other people get hurt.

Yeah, and also, who's saying that we don't know which part of us is when we're actually in the process, it can very— you could very easily use that argument to make a selfish choice.

Another way of saying it would be, what's best for God is best for everybody.

Yeah.

And that— or Buddha— what's best for Buddha is best for everybody. And that, uh, lost it.

Okay.

Yeah, what's best for Buddha is best for everybody, and it's difficult to know what that is a lot of the time. Yeah, but what the Buddha wants is for everybody to grow.

Yeah, well, for me, this comes back around to empathy again, particularly because the Buddha that we are both most often in relationship with is Amitābha, who's in Pure Land Buddhism at least exemplifies acceptance, which to me acceptance comes through empathy.

Acceptance comes through empathy, yes, I agree.

Yeah, so perhaps all we can offer—

and empathy comes through acceptance—

yeah, is making a space for people to be themselves.

Yeah, and that includes is finding ways of being ourselves, ourselves, I think. That it's important to model that, and that's something that I've learnt running this temple over the past 4 years, is that it's really important for me to embody being a human being with limitations.

Yeah, so there's something here about— I'm thinking now of the Gieser Psycho Model of Therapy with this sense of, yeah, that actually it isn't the therapist's job to be unlimitedly empathic. Yeah, yeah, hopefully most Yeah, yeah, 90% or whatever. But the, but the therapist's job is to trust that there is a ground of being that, or Buddha or God, that accepts both the therapist and the client in their limited states. And that actually the source of empathy, or the, the power of empathy, is that ground of being, or that benign process in the universe that isn't owned by the therapist. And even can't be completely manifested by the therapist.

I agree, I agree. And that when we are struggling to have empathy towards our clients, which does happen sometimes, not very often, but because of our own personal history or whatever, and also because some clients bring parts which are difficult to feel fond of.

Yeah.

That's why they're there, really. Which we all have, those parts, that it helps me to remember that the Buddha accepts that part, that the Buddha can feel fond towards—

the cosmic Buddha, as Jyotirakshya would say.

Yeah.

So we're not talking about the person who lived 2,500 years ago, and because I know that you've said before that you don't think he was perfectly— that he had his own limitations.

I'm writing about that morning, literally half an hour ago.

Well, there you go. But there is— go on, you say it in your words.

Well, I think the cosmic Buddha always appears through people, as most of it shines through, and then there's some people bits. But that's a whole other podcast.

Yeah, we'll have to get you back on.

But yeah, there is—

oh good—

there is something that is exciting is able to accept my clients when I can't. And that I know— if I know that in me, then the client will also somehow know that.

Yeah.

So I have faith.

So this makes me think of the question that I opened with, which is what supports you in your empathy as a therapist. And we've talked about how empathy works, and we've talked about kind of— give you— you started by saying giving attention to myself and my client, which is sort of the technique of empathy, if you like. But it sounds like what supports empathy is almost a religious experience, or is a religious experience.

Yeah, I think it was that before I— when I was atheist, it was the same. So I just didn't— I didn't speak about it or think about it in that way, but I think always been something a bit beyond me that is of service in a particular way. In that particular hour, I become of service to the client, but my, my main boss is Buddha. You know, that's the—

so a person-centered therapist might say, trust the process.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, trust the process. Absolutely. Yeah. The The process is the Buddha.

What an interesting assertion.

I said that, I don't know if it's true or not.

No, I don't think we've got time to unpick it today.

But, um, yeah, it's a privilege. It's a— it is a— it's an endless process of discovery.

And I suppose from my own side, I would just share that what supports me to be empathic, particularly. And, and as you say, that I have two experiences of empathy. One is the unconscious empathy, like driving a car where I don't know that I'm doing it, and the person experiences empathy, but I'm just completely in the flow of being natural. And the other is where I'm consciously going, okay, I need to give myself a bit of a nudge here understand or to make space for the other person.

I need to put the hazard lights on, or I need to do a tricky maneuver that brings me back into consciousness.

Something that's stretching me.

Yeah.

And what supports both of those is the experience I have had of being received by one, other real people's empathy, and my own empathy as I go through that process of acceptance, but two, to, though perhaps more profoundly, an experience of being accepted by the Buddha, the Divine, the ground of being. And then a memory of that experience that reminds me that even whether I feel it or not in this moment, I trust that it is true, that it is possible for something to receive me, that I can be received by something, or that I am being received by something even if I'm not, even if my felt sense of that isn't active. Yeah. And that is faith. That's, that's entrustment. And that allows me somehow to offer more of that to my clients, my friends.

Yeah, we always finish with faith.

Yeah. Thanks very much.

Thank you for having me. Sorry about the little argument.

I'll edit that out. And thanks for listening, everybody.