David R - Presence

In this episode, I’m joined by David Russell.

David is my supervisor. Decades in the field. Academic, therapist, teacher. More lived experience than most and not hiding behind it.

This conversation sits inside something deeper than most people want to go.

We go straight into the question that was left.

What does it mean when something is done out of love beyond good and evil.

And it doesn’t stay philosophical for long.

David breaks it down in a way that strips the bullshit out of it. Good and evil as ideas don’t hold much. They don’t carry imagination. They don’t carry depth. They are labels. Morality. Surface level.

We move into something else.

Soul.

Not as a word people throw around. As something that actually happens. In the moment. In connection. In presence.

Not something you learn.
Not something you perform.
Something you allow.

We also go into the danger in this work.

How easy it is to hide behind the identity of therapist, coach, psychologist. To use training as armour. To sit above instead of with.

And how quickly that kills any real connection.

This one hits on something I care about a lot.

Dropping the vertical relationship. Therapist above client. Parent above child. One person holding the power.

And moving it into something more honest. More equal. More human.

Not losing boundaries.
Not losing responsibility.

But actually meeting someone where they are instead of trying to manage them.

There’s also honesty in this.

The pull of ego.
The inflation that comes when someone tells you how good you are.
How easy it is to believe your own bullshit if you don’t check it.

No one is above that.

Not me.
Not him.
Not anyone.

This one slows things down.

Less talking.
More presence.

The question David leaves for the next guest is this.

When have you felt completely helpless and it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to you?

It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME. In Session with a Psychotherapist
Hosted by Chad Taylor. Author of It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME

No tips.
No fixing.
Just real conversations.

WEBSITE

INSTAGRAM 

BOOK SALES: SHOPIFY

GROUPS/COURSES: PATREON

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Chad Taylor, psychotherapist, author of It's You. Oh fuck, it's me. No tips, no fixing, just real conversations. So today I've got David Russell with me. David is actually my supervisor who's got a lot more experience and wisdom in this field than I do. So David, who the fuck are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Very generous to give me that acknowledgement of more wisdom. I've been around longer, that's for sure. So I can say that I've been around longer, and I reckon I've used my lived experience fairly well. I've made my share of mistakes, and I've learnt sometimes from those. Others I've repeated. I'm someone who has, if you like, bumbled along, made use of some good opportunities, chosen things that have worked for me, have been things that have represented who I am, my character. I've gone down that path and it's worked out okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

It's exciting to have you on here. And just I give people the opportunity for a quick business promo, not that you're winding up the business, you're probably more winding it down. But do you just want to let people out there know who you work with and what you do, and maybe a link to your website or any social media you've got?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

No, I'm winding down. I was very busy. I was an academic, I was a professor of psychology at a university. I then began a private practice. So then I was building up clients, but certainly not anymore. I value a little bit of teaching I do with a common cause. We have shared some background in MetaVision Institute, and I'm still doing that, and I really enjoy that opportunity to probably tell people of what's most important to me as a therapist, and that is very much along the lines of using stories, cultural stories, bits of mythology in order to engage the imagination. I've never been a fan of conceptual frameworks.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Which is why I love working with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

So I guess for anyone out there that likes what David's got to say, I'm sure if there's a speaking opportunity for him to speak and teach to a group of people, I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. And I'll put his details in the show notes with this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

The Sydney Jung Society, or in person the Canberra Jung Society. I they actually they still have a forum in which I am present, whereas the Sydney Young Society is all on Zoom.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Not the same. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

So I've got a little uh what do we call it, little ritual that I do on here where the last guest leaves something for the next guest, a statement, a question, just something small. And my last guest was Josh Shay, he was from America. He was uh recovery coach for porn addiction, and he was very articulate in the way he spoke. And when he left this question, I actually thought, fuck who who's coming on next? Because I don't really look. And I don't know if I could even answer this question properly, but then I noticed it was you. So I'm gonna hit you with the question. I'm gonna hit you with the question, and and there's no uh there's no rehearsing here, right? People out there listening. So he his question was what does Frederick Nietzsche mean when he says that which is done out of love takes place beyond good and evil?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Because good and evil as a distinction isn't enough. Our life is much bigger than good and evil. We can't. Whereas if it's if you said the devil and the divine, I could oh, I've got an image of the devil, serpents, you know, the devil. Um the divine, yeah, I've got some images of the divine, Angel Gabriel, and so on, you know, messengers from the divine. Good and evil has no imaginative quality, no psychology there at all. It's a moral stance, and morality leaves us high and dry, especially in the realm of psychology. Psychology of the soul, the study of the soul. The soul is not interested in good and evil.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yes. And it also depends on who's who's telling the story and which leads into the book, right? It's who's telling the story as to who's good and who's evil. If we're in Iran right now, well, America's evil, and if we're in America, Iran's evil, and the truth be known, we're all we're all good and we're all evil.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

That's right. And we're more than that as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

So you've obviously got a nice signed copy of my book because I value you so much in my life. What from my book do you think landed with you?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

You. You as who you are, straight talking, in touch with your lived experience. You gave credit to those influences in your life that changed things, helped you change yourself in ways that are very important to you, caught your imagination, in other words. And so you honor them in your book very much. And uh I admire that, and I admire the the distinctions you make. So it's not just about the 12 steps being if you follow them, you'll be alright. No, it's a beginning point, it's how we live them out and how we how we work with the inner life that might be prompted by the 12 steps. So there's a big distinction there between guidelines and which is what you make, and then our lived experience and how we open ourselves to the lived experience and how we work with it through it. That matters heaps.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

And that's why I love having you on here. It's really special for me to have you on here because I've been on a few podcasts as a guest over the last week or two as well. And a lot of it is almost could you give, could you give the listeners out there five tips on dealing with a narcissistic partner, all these sorts of things? And I'm that's not really how I work. How do I deal with anything? Really, I wipe the window enough until it becomes a mirror. How do I deal when whenever I'm triggered? And this comes straight out of the AA book. Whenever I'm triggered, whenever I'm disturbed, the problem lies with me, no matter what the topic. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

That's right. And in the AA tradition, too, I love that's that sense of where it came from, which was only when you feel hopeless and helpless, you are able to look outside of yourself. That we can't just look within ourselves intellectually. Um body-mind, that dynamic unity of body-mind has to feel like I've got to give up. I've got to give up on what I held, what I was relying on, what I trusted, because it didn't work. So what am I going to do now? It's that disposition of feeling helpless that's the beginning of the journey to self-knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Yes, and we both have a passion for Carl Jung, me and you both, and and my mentor Ted, that I talk about in the book. And, you know, what I was thinking when you were saying that was the afternoon, the morning can only dream of what the afternoon brings.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

It really is a journey. And I suppose I I'd ask you a question personally, and observing being a doctor of psychology and working as a supervisor. Where do you think therapists, psychologists, people in this sort of field, where do you think we can hide behind identity, or where do you think we can hide behind thinking we've got it all together and that we are at the top of the food chain? Because I think I see that a lot.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

It's very easy to hide behind it because, as you said, you know so many people who actually do it. It's uh it's like a suit of armor. The training and the professionalism can create this armor-plated defense against intimacy, which you raise in your book. Vulnerability. Again, you mention that in your book. You learn these skills and you learn a certain way of being present to your client. And in fact, even the word client suggests that it's a almost like a negotiation that's taking place, buyer and seller. And there's no soul work there, you know, psychology, the study of the psyche, the study of the soul, the openness of the soul, soul making as a verb. That's not worked with in the training of psychotherapists or psychologists, counselors. That's a whole different kettle of fish. We need skills, we need to learn about professionalism, but we can't, we don't want to use them as some suit of armor to distance ourselves, protect ourselves from soul making. That the work only works, I reckon, when we're able to make soul, which is a verb, you know, it happens in the moment, for a moment or two, in a therapeutic session. It's not something you put on beforehand and take off afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

I love that. I really love what you just said there because in my own way, maybe not using the word soul, I have my own way of speaking, but that really resonated with me because I don't like using the word client. I just say now when a new person comes in to see me or to meet with me, to spend some time with me, I like to say. The first thing I do is let them know, hey, just letting you know, I'm in that chair pretty regularly. Like I'm in that chair once a week in my personal therapy. I have two supervisors on top of that. I almost try and remove the vertical relationship status, which I know you do well, even from a place of being a supervisor. Remove the vertical status of the relationship and almost try and bring it back to a horizontal relationship. I do that with my children as well and with my parenting and my partner. So there's an authority there that I have over my daughter in a way, but I need to use it wisely, and I've also got to be uh conscious. It comes back to consciousness and mindfulness that I don't want to walk in the door and start straight on her. Where's your homework? Where's this, where's that? It's how is your day? Like, tell me about what's going on for you. And I don't always do that well. No, and she at her age she doesn't always want to have that conversation either. But I think removing the relationships from vertical to horizontal can change a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

And another way of looking at that, Chad, is to feel her presence and to be aware of your own presence so that you dwell for a moment just in being present. No, put the interrogation in the background. That we do not spend those precious moments of just being with the presence of the person, allow them to dwell themselves in their body and mind, and we do the same. Then a different sort of conversation takes place. We don't do that boom, you know, of two people trying to get somewhere when we're both carrying all the baggage of the previous half day or day or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Would you say that your humanness sometimes you struggle with that as well? Like often, often, often, yeah, for sure.

unknown 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Have you got any small examples without turning this into a therapy session? Because we're on it's just me, you, and the rest of the world here, David. Just remember that.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Very hard not to be seduced when someone says, Oh, you know, I've heard so much about you. You've got so much experience. Thank you for your wisdom. You can't help but feel a bit inflated. Problems, problems. If you don't start walking back from that very quickly, it gets worse.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

I love to hear that. Ted used to say to me, today's rooster is tomorrow's feather duster. And I really love that. All right, we're at that time where we're gonna leave. You're going to leave, hopefully. One sentence, question, statement for the next guest. No teaching, just something I can hit him with after their intro.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

When have they found that they felt helpless and that it eventually turned out the best for them?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

All right. Whoever's coming on next, when have you found that you felt helpless and it's eventually turned out the best for you? I'm gonna leave it there. Thanks, David. Thanks, Chad.