The Other Side of Empathy with Adam Quiney

 

Catherine A. Wood  09:57

Adam. Welcome to the podcast.

 

Adam Quiney  09:59

Hello,

 

Catherine A. Wood  10:00

I’m happy to have you here. You know, I was thinking about this conversation today, and I feel like I don’t know you, like I know of you, and I’ve known of you and perhaps you of me for a really long time, but my only time meeting you in person, I was the MC at an event. So I was very much in like MC mode, trying to bring the heart and the like facilitation, and so I don’t really feel like I’ve had an opportunity to get to know you. So I’m looking forward to having that by way of this conversation

 

Adam Quiney  10:36

on sweet did we meet in Victoria too? Did you come out this way

 

Catherine A. Wood  10:40

I did, and you weren’t, you weren’t there the year i i went, Oh, weird. Or if you were, I didn’t, I probably was too scared to approach you.

 

Adam Quiney  10:51

That’s like, so funny. We can go into more of this in a sec. But like, that’s very much like a pattern or a theme in my life, is people either too afraid to approach me or me too afraid to approach people

 

Catherine A. Wood  11:03

amazing. Well, by way of getting us started, I’d love to invite you to share your pronouns and a little bit about your story, because I think we all learn through story.

 

Adam Quiney  11:13

Sure, so my pronouns are, he, him, he, him. I think I think I just have two and my story the sort of salient high level bits are my first career was project software, and then project management, and then I left that to pursue a career in law. I figured out pretty I really liked studying law, it was like super interesting subject to study. And then I figured pretty quickly that as a career, it was not going to be a good fit for me and the biggest there was many warning signs. The biggest ones were probably that, like every interview, or Yeah, every interview I did with a lawyer, none of them seemed very happy. And if I asked them, like, Do you love your job? They’d be like, well, here’s the thing, I’d be like, That’s okay. That’s a the answer in itself, right there. But the other like, big warning was, I was, I was at in a mediation because that was required in small claims court, you are sent to mediation first, because they want to really have the clients work stuff out before they get lawyers involved, which is like the smartest thing in the entire known universe. Way to go, court system for setting that up. But of course, we play the game. And so what happens is the lawyer just shows up to the mediation and then ruins it. And so my job is basically to be there to ruin the mediation. And by that, I mean, like, just say no to whatever was put on the table so that we could go to court and kind of push the envelope and extract value from the other side of the file, the person against my client, and I was in this mediation, and the wise mediators were having me sit quiet so that just the clients could talk to one another. And the people on the other side of the file we’re sharing, like, you know, I really, we’re not trying to do one over on you. We’re not trying to screw you over. We just don’t actually have any more money in our company. And we’re trying to figure an equitable way to sort of, like, you know, meet our obligations and and not go bankrupt. But also, like, we just have to let some drivers go and, and I was sitting there thinking, like, boy, they’re right. And they were saying, like, you know, we don’t want to get lawyers involved, because then they get paid all like, the value that’s available to share with you is gone down the toilet to the lawyers. And I came back after this mediation, and I talked to my principal, the person who was sort of like overseeing my work, and I said, What do I do? And he said to me, it’s really good to be able to put yourself in the heart of the other side to understand what they’re feeling. But ultimately you have to shut that down. You can’t be empathizing with the other side, because that’s going to have you unable to fully, vigorously defend the interests of your client. And so you have to shut that part of you off. And that was a real like, um, maybe, like, a nail in the coffin for that career choice. I’d been on some level. I knew I’d been doing this all my life, and I had about six months of Coach Training under my belt at this point, maybe a year and a half. I can’t remember, and I could tell, like, wow, I’ve been getting better and better and better in my life at shutting that part of me off. But I don’t think that’s what I want to make my life about going forward. And so that was sort of like the starting, maybe the inflection point for, like, the trajectory of my life really starting to shift.

 

Catherine A. Wood  14:32

I know you and I were talking about the book give and take, before we shifted gears. And there’s this example in the book about negotiation and how, how an empath approaches negotiations versus how a taker approaches negotiation. And he talks about this idea that when an empath or a giver approaches negotiation, they look for the win, win, and the taker looks for. The the win lose. And I really kind of hear that in your speaking, like just this, this, knowing that it occurs, like there was just this part of you that wasn’t interested in foregoing some of the parts of you.

 

Adam Quiney  15:20

Yeah. I mean, it sounds very noble, you know, down those lines like, yeah, there was a part of me that wanted to engage with the win, win on some level and and I, I want to just be like a yes to that. I kind of wonder, my belief is that, over time and when our fear is active, what happens is that we naturally move towards, like a more win, lose, zero sum game, kind of divide the pie up, kind of state of mind. And I wonder if it was really that I was like, look like I felt like I wanted that win, win, or if there was just some part of me that had been turned online that felt like the the sort of losing game down the other I’m just, I guess I’m hesitant to give myself all of the credit towards that. And kind of like,

 

Catherine A. Wood  16:09

yeah, no. I mean, I appreciate that. Some noble pie. Well, I know, I know we’re chatting today about the other side of empathy and and I’m excited to dig into what you mean by that. And before we do just to share a little bit of my own noble pie. Yeah, you know when you reached out to me about coming on the show and you wanted to talk about this. I was like, I think I was a little protective. I was like, a little I was feeling a little protective of my audience and and like, what’s this message really about? Like, what’s the, what’s the empowering thread here? What is there for us to learn about the other side of of empathy. And so I feel like I just, I didn’t really understand what you meant by it, so I’m excited to to understand what you mean by it. And and it sounds like it’s been a part of your story and your journey,

 

Adam Quiney  17:15

indeed. Yeah. Where shall we begin?

 

Catherine A. Wood  17:19

Yeah, let’s start there, like, I want to hear the journey,

 

Adam Quiney  17:23

yeah, so I would say, like, I’m a man with a very big heart, and by like, my my natural state would be highly empathic. But growing up, what that led to was an experience of, like, a lot of let down, a lot of heartbreak, a lot of disappointment, a lot of a lot a lot of, like, the we could call it like, the liability of having a big, wide open heart and and I would feel that like myself, but then I’d also feel empathetically, like if I felt it over there, or if someone else was upset or disappointed, or if, like, a friend called me up to play and I was already doing something, then I felt their disappointment, and I would take that on and blah, blah, blah. And I remember, like, Did you by ever, any chance ever see the movie Shirley Valentine? No, I never heard that’s too bad. It’s a really sweet, like, kind of romantic comedy. It’s, I mean, it’s old for me. I think it came out maybe in the 80s. It’s about this woman who she’s in a bad relationship, and she and her husband were going to go away, they get into a fight, and she goes to Greece by herself. And on this journey to Greece, she really, like, discovers herself. And that includes, like, meeting this Greek, this swarthy Greek man who has a boat, and he like, asked if she wants to go for dinner. And she’s like, I don’t, I’m not sure. And he’s like, Oh, it’s okay. I think you are afraid. I try to make fuck with you, but I not try to make fuck with you, don’t worry. And then eventually they make fuck with each other, and it sets her alight. And there’s this scene sort of two thirds of the way through where she’s set to come back, and her husband’s waiting at the airport with flowers, kind of like realizing, like, Boy, I’ve been taking her for granted, and she doesn’t show up. And I was like, you know, a kid of maybe eight years old, while my parents are watching this movie, and that scene destroyed me. I was just devastated, heartbroken. And we could get gay. I became Australian. There we could go down the path of like, well, he deserved it, or he had it coming. And what I think those sort of intellectual like, well, it’s on him. He caused his own heartbreak. Is a way for us to protect ourselves a bit from the empathic response of the heartbreak we feel. Oh, it’s okay that he feels the heartbreak. So I don’t have to take that on board, because it’s justified. But never mind that I felt, I felt this, and this was like a really common experience for me. How am I doing? So far? We on track? Should I continue? Do you want to ask a

 

Catherine A. Wood  19:52

question? Well, I I noticed that I’m curious to hear, like a little bit more of the flavor of your heartbreak. Um. I hear a lot of that. For women, I don’t typically hear it from the them, the male story, you know, like and I share about this on the show a lot like my I came to coaching by way of relationship, heartbreak, of exactly what you share. And for me, it always showed up through the lens of relationships, romantic specifically, just putting my heart on my sleeve, giving, giving, giving, giving, and just routinely not knowing who I was giving to or loving the wrong the wrong people, the wrong fits for me like I wasn’t necessarily self regulated enough to know how to discern between who was for me versus who was not.

 

Adam Quiney  20:54

I think mine occurred maybe before I even got to the point of relationships. And I think a lot of my heart Well, romantic relationships, at least. So I think a lot of the heartbreak I would feel would would just be the devastation of feeling like I’d let my parents down, the devastation of feeling like I’d let my friends down, the devastation of feeling like I wasn’t invited or I wasn’t wanted, or I was too much, or I was rejected or or like I was a disappointment to someone, or I’d left someone feeling disappointed, you know, I’d have a friend, they would move away, and I would be heartbroken and sobbing for days, days, and then I’m checking with myself to see how much of the we, you know, how much of the story to get into, versus the distinguishing So like, if we were to carry this story forward in eighth grade, which is sort of the, probably the height of the onset of puberty, and also here where we where I live, where all the schools, like you move from elementary school to junior high school, so you have all these schools feeding in. And we moved from where I lived and went to, like, a fairly rural school, like kind of farming community, to more of an inner city kind of school. And so I was new kid. Didn’t know anyone there was, like, all of these kids coming together, the height of our hormones. And then on top of all that, I knew how to be around, like the sort of the energy of the kids that I grew up with, but these were city kids, and they had a different way of showing up. And what I was left with was like terror, completely unsure what to do, no idea how to like function in this world and and like just feeling again, heartbroken, devastated, terrified. So I guess the through line, through all of this is, like a lot of emotions, a lot for me to be with in terms of my own emotional content and what I was feeling. So from there, I can talk about the strategy that started to come up. But if you want to hear more of the heartbreak, maybe you can cue me a little bit, just so that I’m not stepping over

 

Catherine A. Wood  22:57

anything. No, no, I appreciate that. And I think that those are such beautiful examples of how we so often kind of find our sense of internal safety versus or based on how we gage other people’s actions, intentions, energy needs. Like, it’s kind of like, Yeah, I think it’s a way that we self abandon.

 

Adam Quiney  23:27

Yes, yeah, absolutely. Shall I go further? Let’s go. Okay, cool, and just interrupt me, if I’m, if I’m, if you’re watching me, sort of like spin off into the ether. Okay, that sounds good. So for me, I hold, there’s kind of two windows in which I hold what we would call empathy, or being an empath. The first is that we have part of our essential nature is like something very heartfelt, something very connective. So like I, part of who I am as a man is connection. I life love to connect with people. Connect deeply with them. Lot of people have love as their essence. They’re just a natural like, care about people, etc, etc. So we start with that, like internal, essential quality. And then the second part of this thing we call an empath is what I would assert is like a strategy. It’s something we learn. We learn how to use the tool of how we are in the world in order to get a particular result. So, and I’d love to hear any challenges you have as I as I’m like, laying this out Catherine, just so we can, kind of, like, pull it apart, cool. So, if I’m faced with people that are unpredictable and I don’t know how to deal with them, one of the things I’ll learn to do is to like feel very deeply into their emotional center. How is this person showing up? And that way I can get out in front of what they’re going to do. I can start to predict what’s going to happen over there. Ah, there’s there. This person is feeling agitated and angry. Okay, got it? I need to, like, make myself small. I need to maybe deflect the energy onto another kid. I need to, you know, whatever it happens to be. So we learn this strategy to really feel out in front of ourselves, kind of like beyond the border of our own emotional state, we kind of lean forward, and then we can sort of feel that stuff, and then it allows us to stay safe. So that’s I could talk about how I how I learned to do that briefly. Maybe I’ll do that first, and then we’ll come back to this opposite side. What I learned to do was to be very afraid of bullies, and so I, like, felt a lot of their internal state so I could get out in front of it. And then I, in order to become more and more efficient of that, I kind of replicated that internal state. It’s almost like I witnessed this model out there, and then I brought it inside so I could, like, fully exist in it and understand, like, Okay, this is what’s going on with the bully. This is their state. This is what I gotta do to avoid it. Okay, now I can dodge them. Does that make sense so far? Yeah,

 

Catherine A. Wood  26:05

I’m wondering if maybe you can give us an example. Were bullies a common part of your childhood?

 

Adam Quiney  26:11

Yeah, once we moved schools, there was a lot of like kids. I don’t know if they were actually bullies, but I was terrified of them as though they were and so I would watch what they would look for. I would study them effectively, because if I felt them and understood them enough, then I could, kind of like, get out in front of it. I could preemptively avoid it. The irony is that by sitting in that energy enough, that’s who I became. So inadvertently, I became a bully, because the best way to sort of ensure you don’t get attacked is to be the one on the attacking side first and foremost. So that’s a little bit like, kind of how my empathy got twisted by my fear. It wasn’t like I set out to do that, but I like, started to feel out, to reach into things. Started to feel that energy, started to become that energy, and then unknowingly to me, that’s, that’s where I was left.

 

27:02

That

 

Adam Quiney  27:04

all makes sense. Yeah, go ahead.

 

Catherine A. Wood  27:06

I just appreciate you sharing that, because, I mean, I’m connecting some dots over here, and so empathy is certainly part of my essential nature, and I totally didn’t connect with it until, I don’t know, maybe six years into this work, I always saw it as a weakness and and how I my strategy to protect it in childhood was to bring this certitude, this like level of righteousness, like I was just always correct. You know, hard to, hard to argue or or kind of get to me, because I always brought this level of knowing and correctness. And one of my, one of my survival mechanism names, is bra burning. June Cleaver, and I love it. Oh, man, I loved her too. I still love her, but she, you know, she really prevented relationship. So I totally hear how that kind of, like that righteousness, distanced me from from people, but also the thing I most wanted.

 

Adam Quiney  28:27

So there’s a flip side, which is the other side that I wanted to speak to. This part might be, I’ll caveat later. I’ll say it first, then we’ll see. Okay, so, so there was an impact I was living in, or like an experience I had that my empathic nature made very challenging to be with, which was like, every time I wanted to do something, there was, like, this risk of heartbreak, there was this risk of disappointing people. And really, if we do anything of consequence, that’s inevitable, because not everyone’s going to be happy about what we choose, even if what we’re choosing is where we’re going to have our birthday party. And so I was presented with a bit of a conundrum, not that I was conscious of, but the conundrum was kind of like, okay, you can do the stuff you want and the stuff you might feel called towards, but the consequence to that is you’re going to feel heartbreak, you’re going to feel let down, you’re going to feel other people’s emotions around it. So what do I do? And the solution I can see now is that what I learned to do was to shut my heart down, to pull inwards, you know. So if we think in the first case, what I’m doing is I’m leaning out beyond the edge, you know, of my own subtle body and starting to feel other people. What I learned to do is to start to pull inwards, away even from my own emotional content. So what’s happening is I have this strategy to avoid having to feel as much as I feel. Mm. Because I feel so deeply, and I’m like, I don’t know how to actually make anything happen in the world, because it hurts when I do it. And so what will I do? I will retract. I will withdraw.

 

Catherine A. Wood  30:11

So I’d love to speak on that for a moment, because we talk about that a lot on the podcast, like this idea that as as empaths, we are deep feelers. And for many of us, in childhood, it wasn’t safe to feel our feelings, because we were raised in these environments where our caretakers didn’t know how to meet and hold our our vast emotionality, and so they tried to fix it or make it better for us, but in doing so, it actually became unsafe to feel those feelings or to name those feelings, so we became more distanced from from them and from feeling like it was okay to be sad or angry or devastated. So I really love you naming that, because I think that that is a really common experience across the board.

 

Adam Quiney  31:07

Totally, yeah. And it can be our parents, our teachers, our guardians and their response to it, or it can be, I mean, there’s a million ways that we learn like these feelings are too much or not, like, not good enough or not what’s desired, or anything. You know, there’s so many different stories we created, but the impact ultimately, is like, I can’t do what I have to do if I also have to feel this. And so then we have, like, a couple stories, you know, or a couple options. One is like, well, I’ll feel this, and I’ll set aside what I have to do. I’ll compromise. And then it then the game in life becomes sort of like, okay, I need to surround myself with just the right sort of people that don’t trigger too much feeling. And then I can do what I have to do. The alt. The other game is sort of like, I gotta do some stuff, and it’s really important. And it matters no matter what. I have to set aside the feelings. So we, because we have these two things at odds with each other, we set aside one of those two things. So that’s what I learned to do. And maybe you can start to see the circle tying itself back to what that moment in law, you know, sitting in that mediation is the Faustian bargain, if you like, was that I learned over time to like, okay, instead of feeling this feeling intellect about it, think about this feeling, put it into your thought process. Huh? That’s interesting. I’m sad. Well, what is sadness? Well, it’s just a chemical, you know, you can do this forever. And as I did that, what it meant was that I was able to do the thing, and I didn’t have to feel the feeling that came along for the ride. And so that’s kind of like a bit of a rewarding thing. Like, yes, I did the thing. I’ve solved this impossible puzzle reward loop, and then repeat. And so none of this, of course, is conscious. Just become unconsciously better and better and better at playing that game, until we get to the point when I start to look for a new career. And law seems like a really good fit. I don’t understand why. It just feels like it would be a really good fit. And it’s sort of like, well, if I’ve been bouncing a ball off of my foot for the last 20 years of my life, just because then soccer is going to be a natural fit for me when I go looking for a sport to play. And this is sort of like akin to that, there’s just a perfect fit for it makes sense the way I’m laying that out, yeah, yeah. So the thing I find so beautiful about this, and then we can kind of see where this leads us, is that my experience, not the reality, but my experience is often that people relate to themselves as like I’m an empath, and therefore I am different from this person over here that’s unfeeling, and it creates an othering. You know, you and I are different. You, I’m I need to be distinct or or special or separate, which, of course, is true. We’re all unique in our own right. But what I find very beautiful about this, this way of looking at things, is that actually we’re two sides of the same coin. We’re people that have huge capacity to feel we just learned and were served by a different set of strategies in our life. On on the one hand, sometimes what was really essential to get here was like we had to learn to feel into our alcoholic father, and so it was really important that we put our feelings over there, outside of ourselves, feel into that person, so that we can understand what’s going on and then come back for other people. We learned like our feelings and everything that we have the capacity to feel is too much, so we learn to retract, and actually our strategies pull us out to these two extremes. But as we start to heal, we kind of come back to a center and start to realize, like, oh, wow, we’re actually the same, same kind of person, just appearing different on the surface, which I think is super cool.

 

Catherine A. Wood  34:49

I think it’s, it’s, you said, super cool. I think it’s so beautiful, right? It’s like this idea that, as an empath. Like, when we’ve done our own work, to become embodied. We can, we can see past the shields or the wounds of other people to really feel into their hearts and their needs. You know, like, for instance, like anger for instance. I never used to be able to be with anger, like I would just shrivel and and I’ve done so much work that now, like when people are angry, like it doesn’t stop me anymore, like I can totally sense past their anger to the heartbreak or the sadness or the grief and it’s, it’s provided so much access to relationship, which I think we can get stopped by if we, if we’re not willing to really like, look at this other side.

 

Adam Quiney  35:54

Yeah, well, and did you learn to like? I would imagine, I have to imagine that your own relationship with your own anger really changed radically once you were starting to, like, see a little deeper and so

 

Catherine A. Wood  36:08

refreshing, so refreshing to just be able to vent out what I’m pissed at in 30 seconds and then move on. Yeah,

 

Adam Quiney  36:19

yes. One of the things I find striking is how so this other side of the coin I call an a path, empathy, like I feel all the stuff apathy, I’m an a path. I don’t feel any of the stuff. Is that a word? Is that is now, I mean apathy is a word, right? Yeah, apathetic. But I’ve just called it an A path, because it kind of let us do it. We point it. One of the things I noticed in my work, or have noticed, is that empaths can often not feel what they’re feeling because they’re over there with the other people. And a paths cannot feel what they’re feeling because they’re up here in their head. And so they’re, they’re two interesting strategies. They can both allow us to kind of stay out of the heaviness, maybe, or the the danger, or whatever we want to call it, of our own emotional state. And each side of that coin, either way, we have people that feel big things, we feel in a big way, and that can be a lot to be with internally. It’s a lot to metabolize and to hold that in our nervous system.

 

Catherine A. Wood  37:27

Yeah, uh huh. So I actually would love to I’m just mindful of the time, and I want to hear how this story unfolds. Because I think for those of us who have these, these gifts, right, these, like intellectual gifts, right? You, you self identify as, like the smartest guy in the room. So it can be hard to give that up, right? It can be risky to give that up to, to forego the strategies and reconnect with the heart center, the integrated the embodied center. So can we? Can we segue there?

 

Adam Quiney  38:18

Yeah. Do you have a question to start, like, to open that up.

 

Catherine A. Wood  38:22

Well maybe like, what did it take to give up your strategies?

 

Adam Quiney  38:33

It’s really interesting because what has us change is like a genuine desire for something beyond where we are, like something that’s not currently available with everything that we currently do and be in life, or to feel the kind of bankruptcy of all of our strategies. So either, you know, things kind of suck, or they don’t suck, but they’re just like, it’s not what I want, or I really see something that I want, I want to get over there. The trouble is that if we’re apathetic, we don’t really feel either of that stuff. It just exists intellectually. And so, like, it was really tough for me to to, like, feel anything that made it worth trying to do stuff different, like, it’s almost a perfect strategy, because the more apathetic we become, the less reason there is to change, and the less reason there is to change, the less we will change, and the less we’ll change the state, the safer will stay. Life stays familiar and easy. So for me, a lot of it was like the things that allowed some shift, and then I can talk about the process of shifting, but it was kind of like having people that were really, really skilled and talented, you and I have the same pedigree of training, and like people with a lot of experience and that had gone through this themselves, that were able to, like, really sit with me and. Watch me try to intellect my way out of things, and keep pointing to that as a starting point, and then every time I do that, be like, how is this leaving you feeling? And for the longest time, how it leave me feeling? Was just kind of frustrated and annoyed at them, and they through their support, I started to see that was the ever present experience of my life is that I’d created all these strategies to avoid being disappointed or heartbroken or let down, but my experience of life was one of continual low grade heartbreak, frustration, disappointment, let down and like along for the ride, kind of resentment. It was resentful that people didn’t show up more powerfully, or that life didn’t look better or more more different. And so it took a long while to, like, walk that path. And I think probably the only thing that really allowed me to start to get underneath that was that I was in a year long committed program, you know, if this was sort of like, let’s work with a coach, you know, for a while, and we’ll see how it goes, I probably would have worked with them for three months and then been like, yeah, it’s been great. But, you know, I think I’ve got everything I need, and then I would have moved on, and I never would have gotten underneath this to, like, really at the like, wow, life is like a seven and a half, or maybe a 7.25 across the board. It’s fine. It’s good, it looks nice, and some part of me just could not care whatsoever about it.

 

Catherine A. Wood  41:28

Man, I appreciate your version of the story, because it sounds like you broke it up in your first year of your transformational journey

 

Adam Quiney  41:35

started.

 

Catherine A. Wood  41:38

I don’t think mine happened until maybe, like my fourth and it wasn’t because of coaching. I think it was because of real life. I think I just realized in my romantic relationship that I was no longer committed to being right and righteous. Because while it felt great, you know, you said the feedback loop, while it felt great in the moment, it left me feeling disconnected and alone. Yeah,

 

Adam Quiney  42:05

yeah. For me, my the way my life looked was like I was good at parties. You know? I could talk to everyone and I was glib and charming no one ever it was always super lonely, never alone. Always alone, always lonely. I I had many acquaintances, not very many, if any. Like, deep friendships, great like, always dated people that I liked and loved a great deal, no intimacy. So there are these like, dichotomies that I I had to sort of like I was very good at. You know, it’s sort of like that lawyer. I’d be like, Do you love your job? And they go, Well, here’s the thing. You’d be like, Is your life really amazing at them? And I’d be like, well, here’s the thing, well, what about like, friendships? Well, here’s the thing, I have lots and lots of people, and then there’d always be a cherry sort of on the top, which would be like, and I’m okay with that. Yeah, I have a lot of coin, not too many deep friends, but I’m okay with that, because then I can stay at home and work on my own stuff. So there was like this, this sort of closing of the circuits that I could never see beyond it. And if I, when I started to look beyond it, or be stood for, to look beyond it, I’d start to be like, but I’d actually kind of like more friends. I actually kind of like more intimacy in my relationship. Actually kind of like to go to a party and like, feel connected, and like, I’m meeting people, you know, all of those sort of things. That’s an ongoing journey that’s been 15 years and it’s still going.

 

Catherine A. Wood  43:27

I love that, just like that theme of being willing to put down the qualifiers, uh huh, just say what there is for you to say, and put down the qualifiers justifying for the status quo.

 

Adam Quiney  43:39

Totally, yeah, stop making it okay. Let it be as it is. Yeah,

 

Catherine A. Wood  43:48

I love that, right? It’s like, I think that’s really kind of the first step to shifting is accepting acceptance, right? Accepting what is,

 

Adam Quiney  44:00

yeah, turning off our emotional center is like an incredible way to adapt. It’s very adaptive, because then we stop caring, and if we stop caring, there’s no need to change. But the trouble is, you don’t stop feeling. You just diminish your capacity to feel what you’re feeling. So the feelings are still there, churning around. And so it’s sort of like a TV that’s just constantly playing, like the volume’s still there. It’s still showing up in our life. And so when we start to stop telling ourselves it’s okay, or qualifying, or whatever, and just listen to the signal and hear what’s coming through, magic starts to happen. But it takes a while, because at first things start to feel crappy, or they feel whatever we don’t want to feel. Usually, I was

 

Catherine A. Wood  44:48

listening to this podcast on the wheel of emotion, and they were talking about how, you know, many people are confronted by people’s anger or sadness, but at least. They’re angry and sad. They’re still in the ring with you. They’re still fighting for something. And it’s really like that, that experience of resignation that we should be a lot more worried about, yeah,

 

Adam Quiney  45:12

and and resignation doesn’t I find our collective belief about resignation is it’s like a big sigh, but it tends often to be especially for people that skew the way I do our resignation tends to sound very empowered. Yeah, I don’t have very many, I don’t have that many people that I do that much stuff with, but like, I’m actually okay with that, because it means that I can come home and work on my hobbies, and I love my hobbies. Like we find a way to be okay with the thing, even though we’re resigned that it couldn’t be any different, and that also is very hard to get underneath, because we start, we have to be willing to again, right? We have to be willing to stop, stop letting it be okay, feel what’s actually there. Yeah,

 

45:55

totally, yeah.

 

Adam Quiney  45:58

There’s something I’d love to share. You know, in this distinction of a path versus Empath that I find, which is a paths, because they draw inwards, they don’t feel as much as a strategy. And so what happens is they end up with a lot of false negatives. Someone will be like, upset, and they’re like, Oh, it’s fine. There’s nothing here that we need to work with. They diminish it internally, and so consequently, they’re also diminishing it externally. So there’s this state of false negatives that person was really upset when you did that. No, they weren’t upset. Or, you know, whatever. Oh, there’s some emotional content that needs to be addressed. That’s fine. Step over it. When people’s strategy is to lean out over the edge, past their own emotional center, they can lose sight of what they’re feeling, and consequently, they can project outwards and end up with false positives and false positive it’s not to say that sometimes empaths are really like, I am really feeling sadness for this person, this person’s sad, and they’re not aware of it. There’s also times when the empath is actually feeling their own sadness and they’re unaware of it. And so it’s interesting, because I think there’s a belief like, one is better than the other. They’re just two different adaptive strategies. And the more we can start to see things through that light, the less othering happens, and then the more we can start to heal with each other. Instead of like, I’m over here doing my work, but you need to do your work, we can start to see like, oh, wow, this person is doing the other version of what I’ve learned to do. Okay, got it? There’s something like, maybe I can see something for myself, like, maybe I’m unwilling to show up the way that they are willing to show up. You know, vice versa, etc, etc.

 

Catherine A. Wood  47:38

I really appreciate that distinction. And I almost hear that there’s a little bit of a nuanced one. And I’m sure there’s nuance for both nuance, but with the empath like I actually have it that there’s a distinction between being a wounded or an or unregulated versus being embodied or, I mean, to to be a prosperous one, right? Like my ability to both hold your own emotion while being able to sense other people’s and discern the difference between the two. And actually, I’d love to share this with you, because on my MCC journey, we’re both master certified coaches, right? So, you know, the thing I loved about becoming an MCC was like, what was the breakthrough that was my way? And for me, it’s this very conversation. It’s this idea that I could bring those parts of me that was sensing other people’s emotions into the coaching conversation in a way that I never thought I was allowed to, and being able to name it like, hey, like I’m I’m sensing some grief in the space, like, Is that mine or yours? Is there something there for you, and not being attached and not being like, unregulated by it? You know, it’s not like I was taken out by the grief. I was just present to it and could speak it,

 

Adam Quiney  49:05

yeah, and, oh, go ahead, please. No, it was just such a gift

 

Catherine A. Wood  49:08

to, like, really connect with that part of me that I had been completely disembodied from.

 

Adam Quiney  49:17

And that question, though, or that maybe it’s a qualifier that you put in is, like, the crux of it, where you were, like, Is that mine or yours? Like, I’m not attached to it, and like, just the generosity of that. And I remember, like, part of my journey, I think this happened prior to my MCC work, but like, was sort of at first, people like, Well, what do you feel? And I was like nothing. I don’t feel anything. Have you been listening for the last five years? But I started, I’d have to start to like feel and frankly, it would feel like making stuff up at first, because you know when you’re learning to taste wine on your palate, as an example. You’re like, I don’t know why I taste tobacco. And then you’re learning through that process, like, to discern the different flavors that are there. And this is the same way I feel like the journey has been for me to, like, feel what’s in that space. And it can become very playful, like, we can be like, Hey, someone will say something like, oh, I don’t have any fear. I’m never afraid. Be like, okay, that’s really interesting, because I notice I don’t believe you. And what do you make of that? And the the nuance there is, like, not, what do you make? Not, What do you make of the fact that you’re wrong because I don’t believe you. But what do you make of the fact that you’re saying one thing, and over here, what’s happening is that I have a sense of not believing you. Is that because I’m crazy? Is that? Is there something in space? Like, what do you think about that? And it allows us to, like, like you said, like, to be really regulated and whole and complete in our in our capacity to be really feeling people, and then just offer it up like a gift, and then release it. If they’re, like, I think it’s totally yours. Like, all right, cool. I’ll take that on. It might

 

Catherine A. Wood  50:59

be fun. I feel like we’re getting into some coaching, some coaching Yoda work here. Yes, indeed, right? It’s like the tools we have as coaches to access different parts of our clients and ourselves, yeah,

 

Adam Quiney  51:14

and the trust. Because I would imagine, for me as an a path, as someone who veered that way, my my it was very important that I not feel stuff right. That was a survival strategy for other people who veered towards whatever we want to call the strategy of over empathizing. We’ll call it so that it’s clear it’s sort of like a bit unregulated. It’s very important that they feel that they’re right about what they’re feeling. So on both sides of the fence, we can get very when we’re unregulated, attached to, like, what we are feeling or what we’re not feeling. And when we become clean, we can kind of, like, just take a swing, just offer it up, like a gift, and then like, release it. And that allows a lot more playfulness. Starts to become much more improvisational.

 

Catherine A. Wood  52:00

So let’s talk about this. And I’m, I’m, I’m wanting to just get this in because it just feels important. So this idea of being an apath and tending that way, like, how do you how do you check that part of you, like, what are the signs that you’re veering towards a path, and how do you re pivot? Or what, yeah, like, because I’m just imagining so many of our listeners are really going to resonate with this and want to know what to do with it, right? Like, if they’re constantly in their heads or scared of their emotions and and have this tendency that you do, how can they interrupt it? Or course correct? Yeah,

 

Adam Quiney  52:47

usually the thing that’s the lower the volume of the feeling, the better. Meaning, like, if you’re filled with rage, that’s a lot to feel, but a small amount of frustration is easier to feel. So it’s sort of like our strategies end up becoming like a management, a management of our bandwidth, through our pipeline. We throttle our emotional content. So rather than feel a lot of rage or a lot of anger or a lot of grief all at once, my strategy unconsciously ends up leading to me feeling a little bit of something forever all the time. So I find people that have like that veer this direction. One of our access points can be sort of like low grade frustration, or like tolerance, or like disappointment. Those can start to give us ways in and so when the when I start to get present to like, my frustration, my impatience, my like, ah, bad feeling. That’s usually a good point where it’s sort of, like, really valuable for me to slow down and be like, what if, like, I need to actually tend to some feelings. Need to slow down. Like, what am I actually feeling and and I do this, knowing that the immediate first response is going to be something like, I don’t have time, or, what a waste of time, or that’s not going to achieve anything. And then the immediate second response is sort of like, Fine, I’ll take care of this anyhow. And then an attempt to check the box off, which is sort of like going back to the head get stuff done. And so those are my, like, diagnostic tools. You know? They’re like, hey, it’s real right now, it’s here. And then the hard part of the work is, like, being willing to actually, like, create the time and do this in the face of that resistance, because our resistance is very, very clever and it’s very well reasoned and it’s always justified in the moment. I really don’t have time to feel sad right now. Yeah, but I’m not going to be able to, like, write a very effective email and put out three podcast episodes if what’s really here for me is a bunch of grief, like, I got to get at that first. So that’s I find, like, a really great way is, like, look for the low grade frustration, disappointment. You know what? That experience is for you start to get better and better at checking in with that and then make the time to really sit down, breathe and ask yourself what you’re feeling and be with it. That starts to set us free.

 

Catherine A. Wood  55:11

I have a client who she’ll oftentimes on calls, bust out her emotions wheel. And hearing you made me think of that and I and I really appreciate that reminder, right, like looking for the low grade emotions or the low grade cues that were feeling something a little off kilter or outside of the realm of normal. Yeah,

 

Adam Quiney  55:36

yeah. I really like that metaphor of the sommelier drinking wine, because no one comes onto this planet and it’s like this tastes like tobacco and strawberry and and so most of us who have learned as a strategy to to tamp our emotions and withdraw from them, we just don’t have a developed palette. And so starting to learn to distinguish, to discern what we’re feeling in the moment is highly valuable. It trains our our ability to like, just know ourselves better, to be more in tune with ourselves. And I actually have a super easy resource that people can get, if I can share that please. Yeah, it’s called a grok deck, G, R, O, K, my teacher suggested to it to me, and it’s, it’s two decks. You can buy them on Amazon. It’s very, very simple. One Deck is a deck of something like 60 cards, and it’s just a bunch of needs. I need space, I need consideration, I need acknowledgement, and the other deck is just a bunch of feelings. I feel sad, I feel emotional, I feel whatever. And that sounds so simple as to be stupid, but it’s so valuable, because we can sit down and just look through this deck and start to be like, which of these Am I feeling in this moment? And what that does is it builds up our emotional vocabulary. We start to develop a deeper sense of ourselves and our ability to discern that so valuable, so incredibly valuable.

 

Catherine A. Wood  56:59

I love that I mean, and I love the simplicity of it, because, yeah, it really is simple, you know, like every time I can just say I’m so pissed and allow myself to feel it like, oftentimes that’s all it takes to move through it. Yeah,

 

Adam Quiney  57:16

yeah, it’s the hardest part. Because as soon as we name something, we’re touching it a little bit closer. And the way all of this stuff stays rooted is that our strategy is designed to avoid having to touch it. So anytime we’re like, oh, there it is. Yeah, I’m freaking angry right now and then. It doesn’t necessarily solve everything, but it does a great deal. It creates some space and like, oh, oh, no wonder. All right, things are making more sense. Okay, maybe my next action is a little different.

 

Catherine A. Wood  57:44

Now, totally. This has been lovely. It’s been really connecting, talking to you, and I really do feel like I got to know you by way of this conversation. Hopefully it was mutual.

 

Adam Quiney  58:03

I’m Yeah, over here, I’m super stoked your podcast exists. Kat, like, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard for people to feel and I’ll just share very quickly, like, I was down in Ohio doing a bunch of work with like, like real men, and I’m saying that playfully, but like construction workers and like guys that can do stuff with their hands that I cannot, and our work tended into emotions, not because we sought to go there, but because, as we started to look at like, what’s the breakdown on the team? What has to be addressed. That’s what was there. Was like, men that cared a great deal about the work that they were doing and were finding themselves stymied, and then we’re left in this experience, like, I’m really angry that we can’t do what we’re trying to do, but I don’t have any place for that anger to go, and then sitting in resignation and so, like, I’m super stoked that you’re in these conversations because it’s so valuable and it’s ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. It’s not relegated to like any subset of our population. Everyone benefits from this kind of

 

Catherine A. Wood  59:11

work. Thanks for that. Well, as we wrap today, I love to ask this of all my guests, and I always get unique answers. What’s made the difference for you in becoming a prosperous and Beth?

 

Adam Quiney  59:28

Well, having a coach for sure, like I don’t, I don’t know how. I’m plenty smart, but none of this work is really through the intellect. And you know, I’m going through a process right now with my coach, where I was like, but does this even make a difference? And she’s like, my experience is this makes the most difference, and just lovingly inviting me further into the same process we’re describing right now. So that’s made a huge difference. The second thing has been releasing my attachment to results and trusting that I’m really. Liable to create them, which I super am very reliable to create results. I’m not so reliable to, like, fill my emotions. And I think those are, like, the two biggest things. And I will put a button on this one and say 1/3 thing is, like, commitment to continuing the journey. So not doing it like for six months. I’m going to really work on emotions. Then I’ll be finished. But rather, just like relating to it as a mountain with no top, I’m just going to

 

Catherine A. Wood  1:00:23

climb it. Thanks for pitching me coming on the show. This is such a delight. It’s

 

Adam Quiney  1:00:32

really good to spend time together. Thanks.