Kristen

Welcome to the Close the Chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boice a licenced Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice pathways to healing counselling. Through conversations, education, strategies and shared stories. We will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore. And open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode so be sure to subscribe. Welcome back to this week's close the chapter podcast I just finished up such a good interview. I feel jazzed up because it's an interview that I will listen to literally myself multiple times, I will take notes. I will go through suggestions again. It was so good it I don't say that lightly. I highly recommend it asset along share it with others stay open hearted and open minded just because maybe someone has different thoughts, opinions, theories, they're still really good information. So please stay open minded as you're listening to my guest. And he's talking about a passionate about suffering and a liberation from suffering. And he learned this through his work in self compassion. And so Tim Desmond is a psychotherapist, Best Selling Author, distinguished faculty scholar, and the student of Zen master tech, non Han, I hope I'm saying that correctly. Founder of pure collective and co founder of morning sun mindfulness centre, he lives in Santa Cruz, California and teaches mindfulness and self compassion practices to audiences around the world. His publications include self compassion in psychotherapy, the self compassion, skills, workbook, and how to say human in an effed up world, I really enjoyed our conversation. And we talked about the difference between processing and ruminating on something, the energy of grasping or craving something, and how our expectations really try to fill this unmet need. So we think, Oh, if I just lose the weight, if I just get the partner I want, if I just make the money, if I just have the job. If I just have the kids, then I'll be happy. And we talk about how to transform that and how that creates suffering. It's such a good episode, and I'm so glad to share it with all of you. Let me know what you think. You can grab the healing journal, it's totally free at Kristen k r i s t e n, d Boice boice.com. forward slash free resources tag me on social media. If this spoke to you, I just love to hear your feedback at Kristen D Boice. On Instagram and Facebook and Kristen Boice on tic tac still trying to figure that one out. Anyways, I really cannot wait for you to hear this interview. Listen to it multiple times. I know I will. I am so grateful you're here. So here is my amazing conversation with psychotherapist and author Tim Desmond, welcome to the close the chapter podcast I am so grateful. You're joining me for this very important conversation with my special guest, Tim Desmond, welcome to the closer chapter Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I was connecting with Tim just asking a little bit about what he feels passionate about. And what you said, Tim, on really transforming suffering is essentially what you're sharing is what we feel passionate about. So I am so glad you're here to have this important conversation about how to do that through self compassion.

Tim

Yeah, I'm happy to talk.

Kristen

So tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work as a therapist and authoring several books.

Tim

I grew up in Boston, with a single alcoholic mother, we were homeless for a while when I was growing up. I ended up getting into college on a sports scholarship otherwise, I probably wouldn't have been able to go. I found myself in college just with a lot of anger and loneliness and a lot of trauma. And it was early in college, that a political science professor introduced me to the writings of tick not Han, the Buddhist monk. And when I read his teachings about mindfulness and compassion, what I saw was kind of exactly what was missing from my life. It was someone who was trying to make the world better trying to have a really positive impact in the world, through cultivating joy and peace and healing, as opposed to audit the people who are trying to do good in the world seemed really to come at it from a very kind of martyred perspective. And so then when I was reading about sigma Um, it just appealed to me. And what he was teaching was. So clearly everything that was missing in my life. And as 19 year olds do, sometimes when they find something that's really appeals to them, I dove in wholeheartedly. And I would follow tick not Han around on tour, and I would spend time with him at his Centre in Plum Village. And really up until, from that point up until he lost his power to speak, he had a stroke a few years ago, and then he just passed away recently. But we're that whole time, I would spend at least a month and sometimes three months out of the year on retreat with him. And as I was doing that, I would spend time on retreat, and then I would come back and work at a job or do some type of or like grassroots organising type of work, I realised that I needed to find a way to earn money. And I wanted to turn my practice into a career and into a way to help people. And so I went to graduate school in clinical psychology, and became a therapist and my practice right now all of my writing. And all of my practice is really just trying to share the practices that I learned from tech Mohan and how they transformed my life.

Kristen

I love this journey about 19. You found him? How did you find that? Like, how did you even

Tim

stumps actually, when it was assigned reading, I took a class, it was a political science class in peace and world order. And there were a bunch of different readings, and one of them was pieces every step by technolon. So yeah, it was just like, I had a great professor. And when that book got into my hands, it just changed my life.

Kristen

It sounds like it. And so folks that are coming from traumatic childhoods, you said a word that really I find most of us struggle with is accessing joy. They'll really heavy, really hard. There's a lens of which just kind of your nervous system feels this oppressed feeling, kind of you use the word suffering. How do we even begin to access when we feel that heaviness and we feel that burden and we feel pain, and emotionally spent? How do we even access begin to access joy?

Tim

I think that Western psychology, this is one of the places that Western psychology White's people in the wrong direction. In my experience, I think that when someone has a lot of pain, we often frame it. Like before, it's possible for you to experience joy and happiness, you need to somehow completely move on from the pain in your past. And what I learned from Pigma on is not only is that not true, but it really cuts off so much of your capacity to heal. When you don't realise the way that you know, Han would describe it is that the practice of transforming suffering, the practice of healing has two sides. The one side is embracing our pain, embracing our suffering with compassion, and the other side is cultivating joy, and they meet each other. And you can't do one without the other. I think the really clear thing that every Western therapist knows is if you just try to focus on what's good in your life, and just try to focus on the positive and ignore your trauma. It doesn't go away, it pops up in lots of different ways. So we understand what it looks like if you just try to focus on the positive and you ignore your trauma. If you just focus on your trauma, and ignore what's beautiful in your life, what happens is that you become exhausted, and that the time that you spend trying to work with your trauma becomes less healing, and more just kind of rumination is kind of going over it over and over again and identifying with it, and you just get like less and less energy. And the reason for that the way that Tico Han would describe it is that experiences of joy are like the fuel that we need, in order to have enough energy to actually embrace our suffering. In Western psychology, we often don't have a clear distinction about when is someone processing something? And when are they just ruminating? You know what I mean? Like sort of like you're working on it, are you ruminating or are you really processing it? In Buddhist psychology? The clear distinction is the presence of compassion, that if you are in touch with your pain and your trauma, and at the same time, you're in touch with the energy of compassion that you are bringing the energy of love and compassion to your pain, then that is processing that's healing. If instead you're bringing up your pain and your trauma, there's no compassion that's there, because you're exhausted, then actually, that strengthens the whole, that your pain and your trauma has on you, and you identify with it more deeply, and it becomes actually a bigger part of you. And what take Mahan would say is, when you're too exhausted, to get in touch with to bring love and compassion to the parts of you that are suffering, then we absolutely need to shift our focus away from our pain and our trauma, and to shift our focus toward what's beautiful in our lives, and to practice cultivating joy. So there are two core practices in Buddhist psychology for cultivating joy. And the first one I like to call enjoying your non toothache and enjoying your non toothache. Basically, the idea is, if you had a toothache right now, you'd be saying to yourself, Man, if my tooth didn't hurt, I'd be so happy. If only this pain were gone, I would feel so great. And right now you don't have a toothache. But we forget that that is a condition for happy. The way that I like to frame it is that in every moment of life, there are infinite reasons to suffer and infinite reasons to be happy. And what it comes down to in this practice is what are we focusing on? Where is our attention going. So if we were going to make a list of everything that you could be upset about right now, I don't think that we'd ever run out of ideas. But if we were to make a list of everything that you could be happy about right now are grateful for. We also wouldn't run out of ideas. I mean, especially if we realise that just like your non toothache is one of them is a condition supporting your wellness. And so the idea is, for me, it doesn't work to try to make myself feel grateful. But instead, just to notice, just to pay attention to, these are the things in my life that are making my life more beautiful right now, like seeing like, okay, that tree outside my window, makes my life a little more beautiful than if it weren't there, the temperature in the room is comfortable is supporting my comfort, just the chair that I'm sitting in. So it's bringing our attention to the conditions that are supporting us, and learning how to have that type of intentional sort of intentionality. That's the first practice. And the second practice is letting go of our ideas of what we need to be happy, though. So take not Han would say, if you know what happiness looks like, then you'll never be happy. What he means by that is that if you have a picture in your head of like, okay, I'm going to have a partner, and I'm going to have this kind of fulfilling job. And I'm going to have this kind of house and this much of my savings. And that's what fulfilment is going to be like, your life will never match that your life is never going to match an expectation created in your mind. And all that that expectation is doing is kind of robbing you of the ability to see the conditions that are present the infinite conditions that are supporting your existence right now that are already here. And so it's this practice of letting go of what I think I would need in order to be in touch with what is supporting me now.

Kristen

Okay, so this is powerful. I just had conversations with two men in particular, that were saying, I have everything, I have a good relationship, I have a good job. I have a good family. Like they were saying all these things are good, but I'm not happy. So how do you find joy? What you're saying, your expectations around what you think you'll be happy with? Like, yeah, bye. They don't even know like, what they're, they just know I shouldn't feel like this because I have all these things to be grateful for, but yet I do.

Tim

So the practice that I learned from clicking on, it's about coming back to this moment, and first like letting go of the striping. My guess is that if there anything like so many of us in our culture, they never take a moment to stop striving for what needs to come next, in order to just be present with what's already here. And the idea of letting go of that rushing, letting go of that craving letting go of that striving. And so first it's just like okay, well let's See what happens, then term is nowhere to go, nothing to do. Let's see what happens. Let's see if you can even tolerate, to get into the space of nowhere to go and nothing to do. And because it's in that space of, we stop chasing what's supposed to come next. And we're just here, that we start to be able to appreciate what's here with us. And so even in our healing journey, it's important to take a break from that, because we can take our healing or our self growth, and treated in the same kind of striving, almost careerist way. And the importance of breaks from that, to be nourished by the present moment, by everything that's already here, and to rest in that. And that gives us energy to come back to the pain that we do need to go back and face. If we face it exhausted, we can't do much transformation. Okay, so

Kristen

let me throw this out there. You're not on social media. Is that right? Okay. This is one of my theories. And let's see what you think. I think social media takes us out of the present moment, takes us into comparison of what we think happiness would be like, like you said, if I just had this partner, if I just had this house, if I just had it fill in the blank, I would be happy. How much do you think social media plays into suffering?

Tim

There was just this study that came out, I think, just this past week, they've been doing a lot more research in social media with kids, there was just a study that came out with adults, which was like incremental reduction in time on social media had a measurable improvement in people's happiness. And I think that it's like this whole idea of like, just cutting back a little bit, the more that science tells us, cutting back a little bit good cutting back more is better. It really lets you know, like, Okay, well, this thing is probably not a great influence in my life. And I think so let's say someone so my wife uses social media. And I know that a lot of people use it as a way to stay in touch with people. If we go to check in, if we can pay attention to the way that Tim Mahan would describe it is the energy of grasping, or the energy of craving inside of ourselves. And just notice when craving is activated, in Buddhist psychology we talk about there's sort of like, there are really two states like physiological states in your body. And this matches a lot of what we talk about in neuroscience and just biology in general, there's one state, which is craving and aversion. So craving and aversion always exist together, when you're craving an ice cream, then you have aversion to your non ice cream state. Just like when you're having aversion to a spider, you're really craving like a freedom from spiders and getting away from them. So it's this idea of like, I need things a certain way. And when those aren't present, then it's a general experience of kind of an acceptance or like an openness to the way that things are in this moment. And that's kind of like our rest and digest. That's like our ability to know where to go, nothing to do our ability to be here. And I think that in our healing journey that's often missing for a lot of us.

Kristen

That is you said so many things. Okay, there's so many questions I have. First of all, if someone has a lot of shame from childhood, like, I don't matter, you know, cares about me, I'm not lovable. I'm not important enough. I'm defective. I'm an idiot, I'm ugly. I mean, whatever that belief is, okay. And it's almost like a torture. So when you try to pull up self compassion, that I'm not lovable. Let's just take that one, for example, is so intense, and so deep, and it's hard for them to access this self compassion, how it'll help somebody when that shame wants to, in that belief feel so intense to access, self compassion.

Tim

So the way that sigma en talks about compassion is, when we talk about that, sort of the other side of healing, like embracing our suffering with love. The main image that took our humble use is we want to learn how to hold our pain, like a crying baby. Now we know that sometimes when you're holding a crying baby, it's like, ah, would you just stop? There's like that kind of way that we can be. But the most comforting way that we can hold a crying baby, like the image he's going for, is the idea of being able to hold a baby in which it's kind of like it's okay. Let your cry and I'm here for you, I don't need you to stop, but you are safe, it has both acceptance and care in it. A lot of times when we're relating to people, we feel like, if we accept them, then we don't really care. Or if we really care that we want them to change. And this metaphor, this image of holding a crying baby, with acceptance, it's like, it's okay, you're crying, and care, it's like, it's okay. And I'm here for you, if I can do anything. So the hope is that we can hold our anger and Our fear and our grief in that way. But sometimes, instead of being like a sweet little baby, our pain is more like a little monster that's trying to bite our face off. And so it's hard to respond with love and care, when the pain that we're in touch with is like, I hate you, what we need to do there. And this takes a lot of practice is like any living thing, something that's aggressive like that, is trying to protect something, and it just wants to be safe. And if we can kind of respond in a way that's like, the way that I like to think about it is like responding to a child, that's having a tantrum. And it's like being able to say like, okay, so I see that you're really upset. And you're afraid of saying, What are you trying to protect here, I can be here for you, I can support you just let me know what you're trying to protect. And it's learning how to creatively to see through, it's like when our pain takes the form of aggressiveness toward ourselves, or judgement toward ourselves, it's being able to see what is the need? Or what is the wish that's underneath it, to be able to understand, like, what are you trying to protect? Like, why do you feel the need for that to sort of to be aggressive in that moment, in order to be able to respond with compassion, because if I can see that you're just scared, then I can feel that kind of error for you and desire for you to be safe. And sometimes it's like we've learned, or we've had experiences, that type of self hatred, that type of self criticism, it comes in a few different ways. Often, it's a part of ourselves that lived through an experience, most likely, if I'm treated badly, especially if I'm treated badly when I'm young, I need to come up with a reason why I come up with a story about why did that happen. And normally, most logical thing for a kid to decide is not that there's something wrong with my caregivers, or there's something that they're incapable of doing. It's like, I deserve this. This is how I'm supposed to be treated. And one of the ways that that feels empowering for a kid is if I could be better than my caregiver would treat me better. And so really, when we internalise that part of our healing is about letting go of any hope to get our parents to treat us better, or to be able to somehow be good enough that people will always understand us, or will always care for us. And it's like, Nope, they won't, no matter how good you are, lots of people have their own suffering. And that's just how it is. And so letting go of that hope of like somehow being good enough to always receive love and care and acceptance from others, and realising that when people treat us badly, that is an expression of their suffering. And there's grief there, because it's the loss of the hope that I could somehow be so good that everyone will love me and care for me and respond positive or even accept me. And so that can be deep down. And then the other part is like sometimes there are other messages as other types of protection that these self critical voices are trying to express to us. And so the way that techno Han would talk about it is that understanding always leads to love, that if we understand a person or a part of ourselves deeply enough, then we'll be able to see that reaction or consequence of that understanding is love. And really what understanding something means is ultimately understanding that it is trying to avoid suffering and find some type of safety or meet its needs. And that just every living thing is motivated by trying to avoid suffering and to meet its needs for its whatever it needs for that thing. And if you can see that this part of me is trying to avoid suffering. rang, it doesn't know what it's doing. I mean, the other part of it is like that we're all motivated by trying to avoid suffering and find wellness. But none of us know how to do that in every new situation. And so if we can see, in Buddhist psychology, we talked about all the manifestations of mind. They're made out of Buddha nature, and they're conditioned with ignorance. So they're made out of Buddha nature in the sense that all that they want is to avoid suffering and to find happiness. That's true for every single celled organism, and every mouse and dog and every part of ourselves. And they're all conditioned by ignorance, our attempts to do that often don't work out. And that's just like what it is to be a living thing. And so really, if we get experienced that as beautiful, if we can experience that as like, if that inspires loving on us, so just like that idea of, we're all trying to find happiness and don't know how, and that self critical voice in us is trying to protect something and doesn't know how, and we can respond better with love.

Kristen

So good. There's so many points to this, I just want to like write it all down. So if you're listening, take notes, and you'll probably want to go back and listen to this many times. Every time you say something like another question pops up. What I'm seeing right now at teens, is this idea that if I'm not thin enough, if my face isn't chiselled enough, if I don't look snatched, or however you want to frame it, I don't look a certain way, then I don't have worse and value. Nobody will want me this all or nothing thinking we're wrong, good and bad. Yeah, walk me through. How do we address that, with younger folks that are now really immersed in this feeling not enough in comparison,

Tim

I think that we need to get a little more comfortable with kind of rebellion and kind of anti authority sentiments. And we need to kind of pull that from teens, because they're wired for it. And really sort of set ourselves up as like in the sense of like, joining with the team kind of against this sentiment, this sort of like broad sentiment of how they're being condition, and then realise that actually, you have the freedom to let that tell you what to do or not. And there's a lot of people making a lot of money off of creating a culture in which we feel like only the top 10th of a percent deserve any love at all, do you want to live in that world? And if you don't, then don't just deny that bad is true. And the easiest way to deny that that is true is that everyone deserves love. And you can live out there

Kristen

loves that. I think that I'm seeing more and more stuff. How do you define suffering? Maybe just so we're all on the same page? Like he defined that?

Tim

I mean, just very vaguely, like the absence of well being

Kristen

perfect. Okay, we all suffer in some way. Is that just part of being a human? I'm just seeing more and more of the teens. I mean, we have the highest suicide rate in history with teens. And so we're in a real pivotal moment, how do we start teaching people to have self compassion at a young age? If you're a parent, even how do you begin to practice it yourself? And then how do you change the Generate net change, but help me assure the generations into more self compassion?

Tim

I think that some parents do this. Don't hide your suffering from your kids. It's like, it's about like you need to model. Okay, first of all, if you want your kid to never experience insecurities, then you shouldn't have had a kid, you should have a non human child, because every human child is going to experience insecurities. And if you want your kid to know what to do, when they're feeling insecure, then you have to model you have to show them like when I feel insecure, I feel insecure in these situations, and this is what I do. And I don't always have the right answer. And I frame it as like, and I'm still trying to learn. These are the ways that I'm seeking more support more learning, more guidance in my life about how to do this, you're trying to do is set up in your kid and acknowledgement that everybody, everyone has all the feelings. They're not the only one. And if you try to only show them your stability, then really you're making them have to deal with their suffering alone. And so everyone has all the feelings. We all sometimes know how to respond skillfully to our suffering and sometimes don't. But then we want to model these are things that are worth continuing to learn about and skills that are worth developing.

Kristen

Let's just pull an example out let's say I'm having a I tried to do this my whole life like really Model self compassion. Do I do it? Well all the time, of course not. But I try to do the best I can. So let's take an example of let's say, I am feeling I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling grief over. I lost my mom, earlier this year over that. And what I've done is they've walked in, I've been crying, and I'm like, it's okay to cry. It's okay to have feelings. How are you feeling? So they're not caretaking me through it? Right. They're not slipping them into the parent role, where they feel like they have to take care of me, they can certainly offer compassion and kindness and empathy. And I'm saying, I just need to get this out. Like, it's a grief burst, I need to get it out came unexpectedly. And that's okay. And that's an example of how I've done it. Just like I acknowledge, like, it's okay for me to have my feelings degree first offering myself tenderness. How do you show self compassion? Would that be an example of me showing self compassion?

Tim

Absolutely. And then I think that maybe, like later in the day, when I'm more capable of talking about it, go back and just be like, hey, so sometimes it feels awkward or weird to sort of walk in and somebody's crying. It's just that thing of like, we don't always know what to do when someone's sad. And one I would love is, if it was okay, that, as you know, I lost my mom this year. And it's important for me to feel sad about that, because that's just like, what happens when you love someone, if I never felt sad about it, that would be awful. So I'm gonna feel sad about this. And I'm gonna agree that and I would just love that to, for you to know that that's okay. If you come in and I'm crying, that one, you know that you're okay. And that there's like nothing that's like a danger or a threat to you. You don't need to make me feel better, that it's just like, I'm sad that I lost my mom. And that's just part of life. And that's like a good thing for me to be doing right now.

Kristen

And I think the beautiful part about is they've said, it's good for me to see like that, mom, it's helpful for me to see that.

Tim

Yeah, that's them recognising them importance there. And I think that there is like a different thing. So kids, and actually, this kind of comes back to one of the first things that we talked about, if you are expressing your emotions, in a way, that is like healing and beneficial. If you're processing your emotions, and you know, I don't want to really talk about it, now, we can talk about it soon, then that's really good for your kids. If you're out of control, if you're sort of swept away by your emotions, I think that's kind of like this, like mere enemy that maybe a lot of us, if we grew up with parents who are out of control of their emotions, then we kind of associate seeing emotion with seeing someone who is out of control. And so the idea is, as much as we can, our kids might also see us like, it's certainly possible that your kids are going to see you lose it. Sometimes we do need to come back and re attune and kind of like repair when that happens. But one of my favourite ideas from Western psychology, so so much of my practice is comes from Buddhism, but one of my favourite ideas from attachment theory is the idea that relationships are built, not by avoiding harming the relationship, but by Miss attunement, and then repair. Right and that the strength of our relationship comes from how many times have we repaired it. And so it's okay, for conflict. It's okay for distance and division to happen. And then we come back and repair, whether it's like, here I am grieving in a healthy way. And then I can kind of model that, or here I am just completely freaked out. And then I can go back and be like, I know that was scary. Let's repair,

Kristen

analogue repair. That's the one thing our parents didn't know how to do. Most parents don't speak for everybody. But most parents did not have a clue on how to repair. They just didn't get the skill set. So what has been your biggest challenge to access self compassion? Like, personally, what has been the biggest hurdle would you say?

Tim

It's when my pain when the pain in me is like a little monster, it's like when it's hard for me to understand. So I would say that when the suffering in me takes the form of criticising others, people, perfectionism for myself, when the suffering in me takes the form a lot of things in that realm. I'd say perfectionism is a hard one too. So it's slowing down enough to really be able to see through the form that it's taking, and to see that it really is suffering that's in need of love. So I think that for a lot of years, I spent a lot of time on retreat, and then my son was born. And then when my son was just like about a year and a half, almost to my wife was diagnosed with cancer. I wrote about this in my most recent book, and then we went through three years of her getting sicker and sicker, and she passed away. And then being a single parent for a few years, there was not any time for me to go on retreat, to really that have a moment for myself. And so finding ways to slow down enough to be able to be present for everything that's coming up for me, I think has been kind of challenging at the in this stage in my life, and I still am like, working on finding ways to integrate, slowing down, letting go, and just coming home into my life.

Kristen

Yes, I have all the empathy for that experience in your life. And that's makes so much sense, the slowing down is so tough, what has been the most helpful practice that you can share that you've done in your life that you could teach us or share with us,

Tim

after saying all of this, I would say that the thing that I would encourage everyone to do, is to take at least a day, but if you could take longer than longer to unplug, and just listen to yourself, and just come back to the present moment. And pay attention to all the craving and aversion and all the self talk and just listen to your own mind. And practice learning how to respond with love to all the different things that pop up in your mind in the course of the day. And if you can take a weekend and do that if you can take a week, that's better. And I would say that in my life, the most transformative pieces have been around taking an extended period of time to focus inwardly. A lot of people have a lot of tools and know things, but they just don't have the time and space to really apply it in a deep way.

Kristen

Thank you so much. This has been so helpful. For people that want to grab your books, where can they find it? Where can they find out more about you if they want to learn more.

Tim

So you can just look for my name in the internet, Tim Desmond, my books are probably anywhere that you buy books. At right now I run a company project called Pure collective, and you can find pure collective online. So it's a place to find what we do is we identify people who are really great at providing love and empathy for people who are suffering, just people in the general population. And we train them to be peer counsellors. And so the idea is that you can find people who are great listeners who are great at empathy, for about 30 bucks an hour, and you can have live sessions over the phone or over the Internet. And so it's just trying to make that kind of relational support as available as possible. So you can also, if you're looking for just a little bit of extra empathy in between therapy sessions, or whatever, then you can check out I love

Kristen

that so much. I have so a question. My last question is, what are some of the most empathic things you can communicate to somebody like what are like I don't even know what to say, I don't even know what to say when someone's hurting. I don't know what to say when someone's upset suffering sad. What is something they could say? I know they need it, feel it and integrate it in. But

Tim

yeah, that's so say, just so you're saying there. So I'd say the first thing to do is to pay attention in your own body, and just let go of the aversion to their suffering, and let go of your craving to fix anything. And just come back to this moment. And just like this is okay. All you need to do, this is what I try to do as a therapist. Your only job is to love this person, exactly in what they're feeling in this moment. You don't need to say anything, can you find a part of yourself that can love and accept them, without meeting them to change at all with what they're going through. And if you can find that part, then just listen to it. And whatever you say, when that's active in you is the right thing to say.

Kristen

Beautiful, thank you so much. Thank you for your heart, your energy and your work that you're putting out in the world. I appreciate your time and your wisdom here today. So everybody go get Tim's books. And thank you for being with us today.

Tim

Thanks, Kristen. Have a good day.

Kristen

Thanks you too. Thank you so much for listening to the close the chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps, along with motivation, inspiration and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you Enjoy this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week and share it with a friend or family member.

Kristen

For more information about how to get connected visit Kristen k r i s t e n d Boice b o ice.com. Thanks and have a great day.