William Pullen – Overcoming Meltdown, Empathy Running, & the Power of Practicing the Pause – EP116
Season 3
Episode 116

William Pullen – Overcoming Meltdown, Empathy Running, & the Power of Practicing the Pause – EP116

William Pullen is a psychotherapist and lives in London and developed a specific type of psychotherapy which is a fusion of running and psychotherapy. I connected with William after seeing his TEDx talk earlier this year and wanted to learn more about how this can help you get more than 1% Better. Using Integrative Psychotherapy, William aims to facilitate wholeness between the feeling, behavioural, cognitive, and physiological levels of functioning – in other words the whole person. This is done in part through looking at aspects of the self that you may be unaware of and making them conscious.  A full summary of our broad ranging conversation includes:
  • William hitting a low point in his career working in TV and Advertising
  • Feeling disconnected in this world that was superficial
  • The Fast life style was too much and it led to a meltdown
  • Depression and sitting at home turning 40!
  • Starting out running and taking incremental movement
  • Ambitions early in life – always wanting to work with young people
  • A nicer kinder William and a more aggressive ego driven William
  • Sport and the ability to move is hotwired into people for healing
  • Trigger points leading to the meltdown – the warning signs were there!
  • A toxic relationship forcing many changes of shape and form!
  • Love and the struggle that comes with it!
  • The cultural change and how it’s impacted love!
  • The survivor mentality and learning how to look after yourself
  • The goal and driving force to the lifestyle
  • Managing to control urges and using running
  • Creating a running therapy program
  • Empathy Runs emerging from couple counselling training
  • The Empathy Muscle – making space for someone else’s opinion
  • Agreeing to share the stage of life with others is at the heart of Empathy
  • Relationship Counselling and learning how to create a dialogue to escape the tit for tat game
  • Active listening & Empathy
How to do an Empathy Run?
  • Find someone you trust and like
  • Arrange to meet
  • Decide who goes first & who listens
  • At the end the listener repeats back what they heard!
  • Giving someone the freedom to talk about whatever they want to talk about!
  • And swap roles
  • Running helps you get into a narrative flow
  • There is no sense that you are trying to resolve something – it’s never the job of the listener to solve or resolve things!
  • There are no expectations – that’s key!
  • The importance of pausing – 0.4 seconds is the normal gap!
  • How to develop the pause – and the challenge of doing it!
  • Practicing the Pause!
  • Feedback on Empathy Runs!
  • Writing a Book – the story about this!
  • Approaching Penguin and a program combined with this
  • Living a more authentic life and writing a book about this – being uncomfortable about authenticity as writing about it!
  • Authenticity & Authentometer!!
Book –Run for your life – https://amzn.to/2FzJEts Book – DRT - https://amzn.to/2X2k770 TEDx Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq6393AreD4 Website – http://dynamicrunningtherapy.co.uk/ Instagram -   https://www.instagram.com/williampullen/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/pullentherapy

Follow Rob of the Green