Professor Paul Gilbert OBE joins Dr Marianne Trent on The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast to share powerful lessons on compassion, shame, failure and success in psychology. In this special 200th episode, Paul reflects on his career, the creation of Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), and what psychologists at every stage: aspiring, trainee and qualified can learn about resilience, self-kindness, and staying grounded in challenging times

Discover how compassion underpins effective therapy, how to integrate theory and practice, and why failure is a necessary step towards growth. Paul also explores trauma, leadership in psychology, and the importance of building compassionate communities within services and society.

Whether you’re preparing for DClinPsy interviews, working as an assistant psychologist, or established in clinical practice, this episode is packed with wisdom and practical insights to support both your professional development and personal wellbeing.

Resources mentioned: 📚 📲

• The Compassionate Mind Book: https://amzn.to/3W7PJ7g
• The Compassion Project Book - Dr Julian Abel: https://amzn.to/3VyPCSf
• Paul's website, The Compassionate Mind Foundation: https://www.compassionatemind.co.uk

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Professor Paul Gilbert, OBE, is one of the most influential psychologists of our time, and today I have the absolute privilege of speaking with him. In this episode, he shares lessons from a lifetime of work on compassion, shame, failure, and success, and what they mean for us right now as psychologists and for the next generation of psychologists too. I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, and if you like this content, subscribe, comment, share, do all those good things, and I hope you love it as much as I do. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am thrilled to be joined today by our guest, professor Paul Gilbert, OBE. Welcome, Paul.

Well, thank you so much, Marianne, for inviting me.

Well, thank you for saying yes. I know you're a very busy man, and I thought firstly today I'd really love to talk to you about a psychology career, and during this episode, celebrating 200 episodes of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I'd really love to, I guess firstly, thank you because I discovered your book, the Compassionate Mind, the Big Yellowy Orange one in 2018 after my dad had died. But I had this sliding doors moment where I could have discovered it sooner. So at that stage, I was in my doctorate for clinical psychology, and there was a number of books on a sideboard, a gathering we'd had, and one of my cohort had said, does anyone want to borrow any of these books? And I know that's an author's worst nightmare that these books are all being shared around and we get no royalties. And I looked at it and I saw the size of it.

I have to say Paul, and I was like, no, no, that, no thanks. But actually when I then had the time to listen to it in 2018 when I think I needed it most, I was like, what if I had picked that up in 2010? How might that have helped me to go through training more compassionately to be pregnant and to birth my children and kind of have them when they were younger and support me in my relationships and in grief and all of that stuff? And I just wanted to say thank you for what you do for me, but also the world really, and the psychology community because it really matters. So thank you.

How wonderful is that? Okay, I think I'll stop at this point. That's just wonderful.

But even this podcast has been so informed by you and your work, I thought, well, if we could have a compassionate voice guiding people through their career, and I was in the position when I was 22, 23, I would say I was working in Milton Keen's Council doing some work with physically disabled adults. I didn't know any clinical psychologists at the time, and obviously the internet was around, but it was very different. And podcasts weren't really a thing at all, I think at that stage. And I thought, what if people have the competencies and the capabilities to develop into a really great HCPC psych one day, but they can't currently get in the room to be having those conversations or to be able to expand their knowledge or to tune into the mighty Paul Gilbert. So that's why the podcast was born, to be able to kind of level the playing field a little bit, but also to up the compassion in this career.

Well, that's wonderful and congratulations on 200. That's amazing. That's an amazing amount of work and effort.

Thank you. Yeah, it is. And it's 200 weeks. So it's been a weekly podcast because I fear that if I ever, I had a week off, I wouldn't want to go back because I'd realise how nice it is to have a little bit more time. But I'm passionate about it, and I'm passionate about the people who listen to it and who value it. Let's think a little bit about you and your career. Paul, tell us about you and what brought you to where we are now.

Well, it's a slightly interesting career because originally I always wanted to be a psychologist in the sixties, but in those days they said, oh no, psychology is not much of a career for you. And I was studying economics. They said, no, that'll be much better for you. So I did do that. I got a degree in economics, but while I was going through, I was also reading psychology books and thinking, no, I want to do that. And in those days, you could do changeover courses. And so I did a changeover course. What that meant is that they would take people with other degrees and then you could do an MSC in psychology, which experimental psychology, fast track it. So it was a very intense course. So I went down to Sussex in 73, 74 and did the MSC down there. Now it turned out I wasn't very good at neurophysiology, so I failed my neurophysiology and had to stay there for another year, so I needed some money.

So I went and worked as a night nurse in the psychiatric and acute unit in Brighton. And that was interesting because in those days we used to have all the young people coming down from London and taking loads of drugs on Brighton Beach and then ending up as our guests sort of lost it a bit. So it was very interesting. I learned through an awful lot during that year on acute psychiatry. I always wanted to be a clinician, so I studied very hard neurophysiology and managed to pass obviously, and then set off. And I started off in Birmingham, but then went to Edinburgh. I went to an Edinburgh MRC unit, and that was good for me because I was on an acute ward. Again, we used to take people from all over Scotland with chronic depression. And so I had a little office on the ward and the prof, Ashraf, who was the professor of psychiatry, lovely man, he's long passed away now, said, look, the best way to understand depression is to go and talk to depressed people, and you've got lots of them here.

So I used to do that. I used to go onto the warden, go around and chat to people and learn a lot about stories. And part of the themes that came out of that was obviously the history of abuse. That was one thing, genetic vulnerability was another thing. And also the sense of defeat and entrapment and lostness shunned through those people's experience. And for those of you who know my research, that became a big issue of looking at issues of feelings of social defeat and entrapment and so on. And it's been a big series of studies on that now. So they got a PhD, and oh, by the way, while I was in Brighton, the one year I met my beloved, I used to play cricket for the university, and she used to skip the score. So that was nice, wasn't it really? And we've been together ever since.

So we totaled off to Edinburgh. And the thing about Enbr was because it was an MRC unit, they were all doing these studies on drugs and everything. If you didn't understand neurophysiology, you didn't have any friends at lunchtime. So I'd have all these psychiatrists say, oh, depression is all to do with these receptors in the brain. And I said, yes, that's important, but could they all be created by psychological and social processes? So my first book was called Depression from Psychology to Brain State in 19 80, 84, and that was really arguing the ways in which psychological and social processes can have major impacts on the brain. And in 75, Martin Soloman came out with his book and helplessness showing these massive changes in physiology when people are confronted with uncontrollable stresses. And that's really quite important. As you know, we have a biopsy psychosocial process that when you're working with depressed patients, they feel really ill.

I mean, physiologically, they're not well then that doesn't mean to say they have an endogenous illness, but they're really not well. And the sleep cycles off. The circadian rhythms off dopamine systems have pretty much collapsed for some of the severe depression. So it's always important to keep in mind that you're not just dealing with negative schemas or beliefs or whatever, but actually dealing with somebody whose brain and body have been affected by the depression, and therefore you're going to need a therapy that's going to have some kind of physiological effect. So that was always in my mind, really. So then I was decided I wanted to be a researcher. I was going to go to Stanford, and my beloved and I got married on the basis of that. We were living together in 2000, and that was fine. And they said in Edinburgh, they said, oh, no stem, do the clinical training.

I said, no, I go to Stanford, don't you do? But when I was just about to go, I had a letter to say there'd been a complication with the department. The department was on some kind of investigation, so they couldn't honour the job. Nowadays, of course, I'd sue them, but in those days, I just sort of wandered off with my tail between my legs. But luckily I managed to get a place on a clinical course in Norridge. So in 1978, we headed down to Norridge and I started to train as a clinical psychologist with what was then the BPS diploma. And so that's how I got into clinical psychology by various routes. The interesting thing about economics was economics was always about building models. So you had to, in the first year, you'd understand some unemployment and the terms of trade and how the money supply works, and then second year you'd start to see how economies work and so on.

When I got to psychology, it was odd because you'd have a course on motivation, a course on child development. There was no integrated thinking at all. And when I said to people that were talking to me, it was training me, I said, well, what about integrated model of the mind? How does these things all work together? And they looked in their beer and said, oh no, that's too complicated. Ta no, we don't do that. We just study these different bits. We're very scientific. We are going to study language, we study language. We don't think about how language affects motivation. So I thought, well, in order for us to have models about how and why people become mentally mental health difficulties or what we can do, we need to understand how the mind works as a system. So you need to understand. So when you look at compassion focused therapy, which we'll talk about a little bit later, you'll find that really it's rooted in all the basic psychological sciences.

And that's why I think psychologists and particularly like them because we don't root it in cognitive systems or motivational systems, you need to think about all of those. So if you look at the standard psychology textbook, which you would've done in your undergraduate days, there is a whole literature on motives and how motives work. There's a whole literature on emotions, and there's a whole literature on cognitive processes, problem solving mind, all that stuff. The problem is when people turn up, clinical psychologists turn up for training, they've kind of forgotten all that. And so they're just trying to work in a model, A CBT model or a DBT model or the KGB model, whatever it is. They're trying to fit all these complicated processes into a single model, and they simply won't fit. And that's why we are not as forward, I believe, in our psychological therapies as we could be.

Now, a lot of the models are getting much more beginning to understand that you need interventions that are going to have physiological effects and social effects and so on and so on. But I think if you are aspiring psychologist, bring your psychological science to what you're doing, don't get trapped up in one of these schools of therapy. They're very useful and they have a lot of things to say about interventions and so on. But always stay a psychologist. Don't label yourself or think of yourself as a CBT therapist or a psychodynamic therapist or emotion-focused therapy or a body-based therapist. All of those approaches have fantastic wisdoms for intervention. But when it comes to thinking about what are we dealing with here, how are bodies and minds working, then you are the best position. You are the best profession because you are the one that has studied the mind. You are the one that's studying motivations and emotions and so forth. And so you can bring your own wisdoms into what you're doing. So we're very keen on that, that psychologists don't sort of get caught up in just being this type of therapist or that type of therapist, be a psychologist that learns how to use those interventions, but put it within a conceptually scientific model of the mind.

Amazing. That's so interesting and so helpful. Could you give us almost like a practical example of what that might look like? If someone finds themselves in a ward round and they're thinking, I don't feel like there's a very psychological conversation happening about this person or this kind of set of circumstances that we're talking about, how could someone use their psychological underpinnings and insights to just have a different conversation in that room, Paul?

Yeah. Well, it depends. You see, for example, if you are working with somebody, if you're an acute unit, you're hearing with somebody who's hearing voices, you say, well, from a psychological point of view, we need to understand is there trauma in this person's background? We need to understand the, are there certain triggers of these voices? And if we listen to these voices, are they telling us something about motivations or underlying fears? So the great thing about a psychologist is you think psychologically, I mean, it may sound obvious, but actually it isn't. And when you're in the ward round where other people are thinking about medications or symptom profiles or the regulation of symptoms, whatever you are thinking of the person living with a mind in their context and their history, all of that is really part of what makes that person have the experience that they're having.

And that sometimes with people who have very severe mental health problems, unprocessed trauma is really quite important. And it was quite late, I think it was only in the eighties actually, that people started to recognise that a lot of these mental health problems that we work with, they're sitting on a sea of trauma. And if you don't deal with that trauma, then they're going to have relapse after relapse after relapse. So thinking psychologically as a psychologist, that's what you're bringing to your ward round. You are there think as a psychologist, the psychiatrist is thinking in terms of drugs or whatever. And some of the good ones will also think in terms of psychology, of course. But you are there to really talk about, do we know about this? Do we know anything about their background? Do we know what their triggers are? Do we know how they deal with their triggers? Do we know how we can help them cope with the triggers? Do we know how we can help 'em if they're hearing voices, hostile voices, have we been able to teach them ways in which they can learn to work with those voices? And so on and so on. So you're bringing your psychological knowledge into the water and

Absolutely. And I guess just trying to really help bring forward that idea of a formulation, actually. And I think that can be so helpful. And I'll often think about longitudinal formulation or just what has been, if we're weaving in compassion, what has been their experience of how they've been spoken to and how they might then have internalised how they should speak to themselves and how it's okay to treat other people. So interesting.

I mean, the classic position, sorry to interrupt, the classic position, I think it's not what's wrong with you, what's happened to you? So psychologists, that's what's happened to you, how have you, as opposed to what's wrong with you?

And there's a very big shift. And I think even when we look at individual families, the same parents, the same house even that children have been born into can still lead to very different outcomes for that child because of course, time has changed those parents, time has changed the world in between those siblings being born. I think I was a very different parent for my first baby than I was for my second, just because of life circumstances. And I dunno the way that I felt about the world. And my dad was very well, very healthy when I was pregnant with my eldest, but by the time my second came along, he'd been diagnosed with cancer. So my kind of hope and availability was very different for both of those babies. And so I think sometimes just thinking about context and what has been that child's experience, but what has been their family's experience can be really helpful as well.

Very much so, very much. And also children are themselves. Anna Freud would say babies are themselves, right? They're not all clowns, they're not all exact clowns. They all have different personalities, different needs. They relate in different ways. Very active children relate to passive mothers, very different to shy children, for example. So you're absolutely right about that. I mean, it's very important. The individual difference is extremely important in clinical psychology.

It really is. It really is. And I want to thank you for something you said earlier as well, which was really important. Giving permission for scratching those itches that you are interested in, that's really important. Even if you've been told, no, this would be better for you, you should do this. But giving us a permission to come back to it, but also role modelling that actually even when we get to become clinical psychologists, we may well have failed things along the way. I certainly failed my first attempt at a probability module when I was at university. You failed your first attempt at the Biophysiology, I think you said it doesn't mean that you should give up, does it? It's okay to have another go.

I got really good at it because I had a whole year just to do it.

So it might almost be that post-traumatic growth about what happens when we give ourselves more time and have another go in a more focused way.

I think that's a really crucial point, isn't it? The secret of success is the ability to fail. We often used to say that to the clients, but no, you've got to help me succeed. No, I'm going to help you fail. If you can fail, you'll keep going when you fail and you'll get better. So that's a very important point you make, Marianne.

Yeah, it really is. And absolutely, and I think especially when we're told what actually first, I only decided to become a clinical psychologist in the very end weeks of my undergraduate degree. And I dunno what it says about me that this was what piqued my interest was that I was told from a clinical psychologist standing on a stage, it's a really hard career. I wouldn't recommend you try. It's not a great narrative, is it? I was

Like, it's true.

And actually, I'm so glad I did try because I genuinely love what I do. I love the variety of my work, and I don't get that sense in the same way of, oh, I've got do that thing, or I've got to do that session. I get to do this. I genuinely feel that's how I feel about my work. And I know not everyone feels like that about their jobs and their occupation. So I feel really fortunate that I do.

Yes, it is a great point. I mean, the fact that you might not always enjoy it doesn't mean to say that you don't want to do it, right? These different types of positive emotion isn't there. One of which is about the positive emotion we get from doing meaningful things. So changing your baby's nappies and things that might not be so pleasant, but it's meaningful. We do things not because they're pleasant, but because they're meaningful. They give us a sense of purpose and so on. So that's a very important point you make, that if we're just, yes, it is a very hard career. And I think sometimes when you're faced with all the tragedies of life day in, day out, it can get a bit tricky at times, but it's meaningful. You wouldn't give it up. You still want to do that.

And with that in mind, you've alluded to what's happening in the world at the moment. It feels challenging as a mother, it feels challenging as just a human, it feels challenging as a clinical psychologist. And with the rise of AI as well, it is just a difficult just time. And maybe you have more years and more wisdom than me than has it always felt like we're living in the most difficult time right now? Or is this especially challenging?

No, no, no. It's not especially challenging in CFT, life is full of suffering. Life is very challenging. I mean, it wasn't so long ago we had the plague and something like half of the population was killed off. So we've always been confronted with diseases and violence, wars and so on. Poverty. Obviously, a lot of humans have lived in intense poverty for many thousands of years. And as you know, we've lived in terrorist states mostly because with the evolution of agriculture, we got the development of the aggressive male and the dominant of the elites. So you look at the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Romans, all of them, they were all terror states. They would just persecute 30% of the population in Rome were slaves. If you look at the reign of Henry viii, thousands of people were hung in London for crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread.

We forget all this because we've gone through, we're going through periods where things are getting a lot better. Medicine is just some miracle stuff. Now, starvation is not common in Europe at least. I mean, it's been used as a weapon of war, obviously, which is horrible. So because things have been really good that we look at these things, oh my God, everything's getting worse. It's nothing like it was a few hundred years ago. So that's important to see that on the whole, humans are improving. The key area that we have to improve is not our technologies and our medicines. So we do need to improve that. It's our minds and how we choose our leaders as it is at the moment. Leadership is the most damaging of all human things. The leaders that are getting to businesses of power, particularly these narcissistic and psychopathic, and we have to understand how do they get voted in?

How do they get supported? Because it's the leaders that are actually causing so many difficulties. And it's also in the AI industries and the fossil industries, all of these individuals, if they lack a compassion focus, then they're callous and they will cause mayhem. So it's not so much the process of change in control of that process of change, which is the real kind of worry, I think. And it is a bit of a worry, but I'm not pessimistic because I think there are sufficient numbers of people in the world who have a genuine compassion. Most people want to be compassionate. And if we can get the right leadership, then I think we can move the world to a more compassionate place. And we could talk about that. We're doing a lot of work on that. So the key thing is don't lose hope. Yes, things are tricky and all kinds of conflicts going on and so on and so on.

But our movement on diseases is getting better. We just had COVID and we evolved this amazing vaccine that actually saved millions that would never have happened in any other part of history, but we're getting the technologies. And yes, the pharmaceutical companies were profits here, didn't give the vaccines to the developing countries and so on. But the key thing is that we can do it if we choose to do it. There are people now working in AI about how do you create a moral basis for ai? And that's really important because ai, if we don't, then AI will be problematic. So I think there are really good people in the world as well, and I always look to them rather than the not so good people. So yes, I'm kind of hopeful in the long term, but yes, life is suffering and no doubt there'll be more suffering ahead.

And that's a really helpful reminder. Thank you. And I think that's one I'll keep drawing on for sure. Yeah, I think when we're looking at what we can achieve within our career, and it's fair to say you've achieved a great deal and are still striving to achieve more, but when you're at the early part of a career, perhaps even still just considering becoming a psychologist, how do you not burn out when you see the challenges before you with apparently mental health being worse than it ever has been, certainly in the uk and the level of dissatisfaction and poverty and trauma, how do you feel enough just as a drop in that ocean?

Yes. Don't be narcissistic. Basically, that's what it was. A friend of mine who we talked about this a few years ago, because if you're doing that, you're just assuming you've got, or you should have more power than you. There's a wonderful story. It's a feminist story actually. It's a lovely story. So this guy and his girlfriend are walking along the beach and there's been a massive storm, and all of these starfish are thrown up onto the beach. There's thousands and thousands of them, and as she's walking along, she's picking one up and throwing it back. And the guy says, so what are you doing that for? I mean, there's thousands of them. And she said, because it matters to the one I throw back.

So the point is, don't focus on the big picture. If you do that, you'll get overwhelmed. That's just, you can't do that. What you can do is to focus on you, what you can do, what your values are, what your intentions are, how you will try to create a better in the world that you can operate within. So you bring that, but you don't expect that you have got the power to produce a lot of changes, then you will get overwhelmed. Now the other side of that is that we also worry for our children. And so what we then realise is that part of the anxiety is not for us, it's for our children and our grandchildren. And that's compassionate. How can I protect them from the potential horrors ahead? And that's a different issue of thinking about how we can do that. So it's an important point, this don't get overwhelmed by the problems because you're not going to be able to do that. But what you can do is to focus on what you can do and bring compassion to whatever you're doing. And also thinking about what is your anxiety, or probably your anxiety is mostly about your children and your grandchildren and your friends. And therefore it's thinking about what would help me cope with the worries that I have about them.

That is such important advice. And even thinking about people working in perhaps NHS services that have got long waiting list, it's actually that starfish example is really powerful. So yeah, there might be multiple years wait to get into this service, but actually I can do this assessment and do it really, really well, or the person that I finally picked up off that waiting list that matters because this person matters. And I almost can't be too consumed with everything else that's waiting and all the people that I don't feel like I can help right now.

Yes, I think that's really, really important. Focus on what you can do, not what you can't. And the other thing is that it's very easy to get caught up in anger, to get very angry in the, because I've seen how the underfunding of government after government, the callousness of government in relationship to health is just appalling. We're working with a group called Compassion and Politics, and they're working with the young politicians and some of the young on both sides of the house actually are beginning to talk about we do need to have a more compassionate solutions to the problems that we're facing. The older folks my age, folks that are a pain in the ass, but the younger ones are really getting the message that we need a much more compassionate society. It can't all be about chequebooks and accounts and money and the health service. An example of extraordinary callousness at the level of politics, extraordinary callousness is shocking, really. But there we are. People keep voting for them, but you can't get too caught up in personal because then it just makes you very angry.

And I think when I was recruited to an eight a post, it was probably the anger and the indignance and the unfairness of it that actually drove me to be a really, really effective, efficient clinician. So in my first week, I'd been chatting to a member of staff and I said, oh, how have you been finding it? The transition? It was kind of a modelled service. And the clinician had said, oh, I've been here about a year and I've seen one client so far. And I was like, what? Sorry, one client. And the clinician said, yeah, you can't get the therapy rooms. And I said, oh, but I've been recruited to do a 50%. And the clinician had said, yeah, that won't happen because you can't get the rooms. And I was like, well, I'll show you. And so I was working four days at the time and I ended up being a peripatetic clinician.

I was in that base only for half a day a week when I would just do admin. But I found myself clinic rooms all over the rest of the trust ultimately ended up seeing clients in a private room, in a library, in a health centre, in a community, walk-in centre, in a mental health inpatient unit where they had a spare room. And I saw those clients and I got that waiting list down. So sometimes that can be helpful to activate our sense of drive, but it did ultimately lead to me, I think, burning out of that role because if you're the only one that feels like you are doing those things and doing the work and seeing the things, I find it hard to continue that drive without just feeling a little bit sad. Paul.

Yes, and I mean, the key issue I think there is why do other people feel disempowered to be able to do that? And we live in a society which subordinates people, they don't question authority, they don't fight back against because capitalist societies and all of these, it's some people call it patriarchy and all them that it teaches people to be subordinate, don't question, whereas somebody like you and the whole reason you've got a podcast, all that is immense energy to kind of try to make a difference. So it's a very special kind of energy that, but not everybody has that. And so it is about how do we inspire other people who might be more fragile, who might be more shy, who might be more anxious about, oh no, we can't do that. How do we inspire them to be able to take the risks and have a go?

I think it's really important. I mean, we had to dictate, when I was in the NHS, I dunno, about 20 years ago, we all had to cut our budgets and all these managers came around and said, well, look, you've got partly a research and partly clinical department, so we need to cut the budget, so we're going to take your secretary away. I said, what are you talking about? And they said, well, we just don't have any, we've got to cut the thing. I said, are you serious? Are you going to take my secretary away? So you'll pay me 40 pounds an hour to type a letter twice as slowly as my secretary could do it for five or whatever. I mean, it's ludicrous. They're just mad. All this payment by results we used used to run groups, we used to run community groups and we'd bring in a group and we'd do some work with 'em for about 10 weeks particularly.

And then we'd have another 10 come in and the ones that had been treated would partner up with the other ones. And so we developed this fantastic community of people and I'd keep an eye on them. And if anybody was needed a little bit more help, we would see that. And so then the payment by results came in, says, we can't do that. What do you mean I can't do that? Well, it's not an effective therapy. What do you mean it's not an effective, we're keeping people out of hospital, right? We're keeping people well, we're developing communities that is mutually supportive, but it's not in the nice guidelines, is it? What are you talking about? I've can't do that. You've got to do recognise psychological therapies, just madness. So I used to get so annoyed talking to them about actually people are supported in their communities when people feel valued and there are people paying attention to them and so on. And Jillian Abel has done some fantastic, he's got a wonderful book called The Compassion Project, which he was a physician doing at the end of life, and he's done some wonderful work about how you create compassionate communities that break into loneliness and have people talking together and de shame and so on and so on. But yeah, I mean the NHS is nuts, basically. Absolutely nuts.

Yeah, wonderful people and fantastic skills. The management and the funding of it is just nuts.

They really are. I feel very privileged to have met the people I've met along my journey and either to keep them physically in my life or in my phone at the end of the phone. But also it's what we learn about people that just stays with us. I think during our journey in psychology, it's such a privilege that I get to meet these people that we get to have an impact on each other, and then I get to carry their wisdom with me as I will carry yours with me in going forwards. We are really lucky.

But the key point you're making is don't get caught up in all that. Do what you can. Of course you do what you can, but if you get too caught up in it, then you will get burnt out because it does make you very angry, quite understandably, on behalf of the thing. But that anger in the end is a bit of a poison and it is bad. So it's recognising, look, I'll do what I can do and I'll do my best, and that's it. I can't do any of that. And being able to come to terms with this should happen, that should happen, that should happen. If you get into all of that, then it just winds you up. So I always remember when I was young and they just qualified and I was working in an acute unit. I've always worked in the heavy end of the thing as it were.

And so I was beginning to see a lot of clients with quite severe abuse and goodness knows what. So I went to my supervisor, who was a lovely lady. She was psychodynamic. She passed away some years ago now, and in those days you used to be able to smoke. And she used to love smoking these French cigarettes. Car was, the room was full, was full of smoke. And so I went to her and I said, kitty, because that was her name. I said, look, I've got all these clients coming through now that I'm qualified, I'm being sent these referrals and they're really complicated and I dunno what I'm doing half the time, surely they can see somebody else. And she said, well, who? I said, well, I don't know. There must be somebody. She said, no, there's only me and you where only psychologists in the service in my list of full.

I said, oh no. What am I going to do? I said, there must be. Somebody asked, said, she said to me, smoking these cigarettes. Well, she said, I suppose we'd all be much better off if Freud was still here, but unfortunately he's dead, so we're going to have to manage without him. And she said, look, the only thing you can do, you can be the best six month qualified psychologist you can be. That's all you can be. You cannot be any more than that. You cannot give any more than that. In 20 years. You probably know a bit more than you do today, but right now you don't know 20 years. You don't have 20 years experience. And that's try to be the best you can in this moment. That's it. There's nothing else. Okay? Don't get caught up with anything else of the shoulds and I oughts and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Just be what you can be. That's it. And if the world around you is burning, well, there's nothing you can do about that. And so it was really good. She was lovely to me and really helped me on my way and helped me to just ground myself in the doable and appreciate what I can do rather than always thinking what I can't do. And if only because when you were a young therapist, you have all these thoughts, or maybe if Beck was in the room or Freud was in the room or whoever, maybe they'd see my incompetence and they'd wonder, how the hell did I get to be a clinical psych? All of those thoughts are coming to your head when you're new to the profession. I don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time. That's all natural. It's okay, don't worry about it. Just come bring yourself back to the moment. Okay? So maybe in 20 years, 30 years, I'll be better than I am now, but I'll have to wait.

Absolutely. And what a golden way to finish this 200th episode of the podcast. What wise and compassionate words, actually. So I want to really thank you for your time. If people are interested in hearing more about our conversation, more generically about compassion, they can tune into our episode, which is coming up very soon. Thank you again for your time in talking to my aspiring, our aspiring psych audience, Paul.

Yes. So that's great. So always try your best. Of course, you always try your best, but that's it. There is no more. So the shoulds and the oughts, and I just be clear that if you tried your best, that's good.

Okay. Thank you so much for your time, Paul.

Thank you.

Oh, what an absolute pleasure. What a privilege. I think my chat with Professor Paul will stay with me for forever probably. You can hear it in my voice, you can see it if you're watching me on video. I loved that chat and it meant a lot to me. Even reflecting on it now, it's emotional. I loved it. And I think if we all could take some learning from Professor Paul, we'd be kinder on ourselves. The world would be a better place. I would love your thoughts on this. Please do let me know in the comments either on YouTube or if you're listening on Spotify or wherever you are accessing this content. Let me know how it resonated for you. Let me know how it connected with you on what stage of career you are at. What will you take from this? What will be your take home message?

I would love to know, and why not listen to or read his books. I especially recommend The Compassionate Mind. That's even wonderful place to start. If you rate this content, please do subscribe to the channel. Please do follow the show wherever you listen to it. It really is the kindest thing you can do for any creator you rate. And in doing so, in building this audience, it helps me to get amazing guests like Professor Paul Gilbert. This is our 200th episode celebration. Thank you. Whether you are brand new to the channel or whether you've listened right since the start, it means a great deal. I love doing what I do. I wouldn't still be doing it if I didn't, but I love to hear from you too. Please do come and connect with me on my socials where I'm Dr. Marianne Trent, everywhere, and share this episode far and wide because it just deserves to shine. And to thank Paul for his time in speaking with us.

If you this podcast, Dr.