Malcolm Stern: 0:46

So welcome to my podcast, Slay Your Dragons with Compassion, which I'm doing in conjunction with my good friends at online events, and we're having a range of conversations with people about how adversity has shaped their lives.

Malcolm Stern: 0:59

We become what we become through what happens in our lives, and we either rise with the challenges or we sink with the challenges, and most of the people I've had on this show are people who've actually had to encounter some difficulties but have found some depth in themselves as a result of that, and so I'm very happy to welcome a very old friend this morning. Tom is very old, but not so old. But Tom, I think we've known each other since our 20s, but a long, long way back. So Tom Kelly, who's a business psychologist, organizational development expert and a coach of some great standing as well, and Tom, you've had a sort of a rich life, and I know you've had a long period of time where you were doing and I don't know if you still are where you were doing Jungian psychoanalysis. You were undergoing Jungian psychoanalysis, so maybe you could start there. What led you towards that prayer?

Tom Kelly: 1:53

Well, it links to the first adversity, you know, which is father, and I lacked direction from him. So you could say I was drawn to wise old Jewish analysts, you know, for guidance. But shall I start with my father? Why not that?

Malcolm Stern: 2:14

seems a great idea.

Tom Kelly: 2:15

Thank you for introducing me to my first ever podcast and the accompanying anxiety. It's funny because, again, the root of the word anxiety in ancient Hebrew means womb and narrow passage, so you know you've put me through a birth canal in doing this. So my father killed himself when I was first arrived in London to train in psychotherapy. But he had had depressions throughout my childhood and, like a lot of people in the Second World War, he was very distant and I can recall shock. You know him coming home from shock treatment, which was very common then, with his tongue hanging out and you know my mother holding him, who was much smaller than him, and so he was always distant emotionally.

Tom Kelly: 3:17

I did feel on some level that I was loved but there was just no connection. It's funny because what comes up is one of the first things I learned when I trained in personal development in London was because I carried a lot of the alienation of the 60s in America was connection. You're not alienated when you feel properly connected to yourself and or another and that was lacking. You know a lot in my childhood, but certainly with him, the thing that he was a cop, an Irish cop, and as a child I was proud of that and he did win a Silver Star in the war, which is two down from the Congressional Medal of Honor. So there was pride there.

Tom Kelly: 4:12

But the lack of direction and you know, I wasn't aspiring to be a policeman and the lack of emotional exchange meant that when I was, you know, of a certain age, wondering what this was all about and who I am and what is it to be a man I mean, he's got a silver star he should be able to help me with what it feels like to be a man. So, yeah, it lent itself, you know, with university, to a a sense of, in the 60s, great alienation about the country I was living in and, uh, about what you know, what it means to be alive, you know um, and I know you've made a big study of that.

Malcolm Stern: 5:04

I know that your, your life, has been very much about exploring the nature of, of who you are, or who one is true, how, and how we navigate this one wild and precious life. Yes, and so I've always been impressed with the confidence you've carried in your work, and you've worked at quite high board level. You've worked with big organisations. You've come a long way from your beginnings, so your dad's killing himself. How old were you then when that happened? You've come a long way from your beginnings, so your dad's killing himself?

Tom Kelly: 5:33

How old were you then? When that happened? I was about 22 or 23. Yeah, and I was at Kweisi Tour in London. Do you remember that? I do. Indeed, there's a little story around that, because I wrote to Eric Fromm before I left America saying, you know, I want to get out of here, and describing my life. And he wrote back and said and I asked him for some guidance about where to train and therapy. And he wrote back and said it sounds like you're on a quest. And he gave me the name of a man and the man directed me to Kwesi Tor in London, which means quest in Latin. So you know it was an auspicious beginning.

Tom Kelly: 6:22

But the other, the first introduction to personal development, came reading Fritz Perls, I think, in and Out of the Garbage Pail, and he said that most adults think of adulthood as a plateau, you know, and then you fall off it, whereas development means lots of things can happen. And I grabbed onto that, you know. I thought, okay, I really happen. And that and I grabbed on to that, you know. I thought, okay, I really want to, you know, develop, to live life fully. Even though I'm not quite sure what it's about, on the other side I did have a very loving mother who was very spiritual, not in the kind of stick your finger down your throat way, but, you know, was always big emphasis on meaning. Sometimes I think my taking up therapy was replacing Catholicism, you know, and in a way, the Jungian emphasis on ultimately connecting to the self is quite, you know, godlike in that sense. Yeah, yeah, I can say more about therapy and father if you want me to continue yeah, I mean I'm.

Malcolm Stern: 7:35

What I'm struck with is is the sort of like, the, the, the enormous distance between your mother and your father, the influence of a, of a loving, spiritual woman and a tough but also quite damaged yeah well, so you've got this juxtaposition that you had to navigate your way through.

Tom Kelly: 7:58

Yes, fortunately they were solid so I didn't have to go through a divorce. But there's no question mother stuff around wanting to impress her more than my father and my brother, you know, because she was a pretty loving present person. So in psychodrama I remember again in the early days in London working with the good, having someone role, play the good father and putting their hands on my shoulders and saying all you have to do is be yourself and everything else will follow, and that was just so wonderful. You know what I mean.

Malcolm Stern: 8:35

Well, it's interesting because Bessel van der Koog, who wrote your Body, keeps the Score. It's psychodrama, an altered state of consciousness, and it's my main tool. It's what I use most in my work and I do see that what happens is that enormous wisdom and the capacity to inhabit the self of another happens in psychodrama. So the person who put his hands on your shoulder would probably have been channeling some depth of wisdom that actually you needed to hear.

Tom Kelly: 9:03

Yeah, necessarily have had that in everyday life, but he had that yeah, yeah, and it's interesting listening to you because you know you remind me of a number of people, many of whom were Jewish, who were guides, you know, and that was one of the brilliant things about going in the therapeutic direction. You know it was giving you a direction in life which I had lacked. And you know I see many people and some executives who really need that kind of guidance. So I also, you know, given all of that, I cry very easily. You know, particularly when men come close, like in film, you know, it's as if this fractured, distant dimension is suddenly unified. And that sense of reconciliation. And I've been in a lot of men's groups and find them immensely satisfying. And I've had a few very good friends. You know 45, 35 years, you know, so um. So you know I've kind of um, I've worked on my father and in some way it's a blessing. There's also a creative dimension to it. It's a blessing because he didn't give me direction and I had to find my own and I did it.

Tom Kelly: 10:30

You know, with great people very richly, there was always an itch to do some creative writing. And my analyst once said to me when do you most feel like yourself? And the answer that came was when I'm writing and I was doing a very good writing course with Lindsay Clark, who won the Whitbread Award, which was the booker before it became the booker called the Chemical Wedding chemical, as in alchemical and he also wrote. He's written others, but he also did a book on Parzival and it was a very good writing class. But the only thing that interested me was my father's story and I wrote six or seven chapters trying to reimagine his life. I only knew small details, like his father had died of TB and he was at the deathbed. His closest brother died in his teens, a sister died in his teens, the Silver Star. So he saw a lot of death in the World, world war, um, and so I've constructed a novel and I've finished.

Tom Kelly: 11:49

I'm finishing the second draft, um, with you know I have a very good editor and I've gotten good feedback about it, so there's a possibility that it will, you know, be published, but it's, you know it was. Basically the plot is that the son, who fled America partly because of the father and has had this incredibly rich life, has to go back because the father's gone missing and he, in searching for the father, encounters all these unsavory things which he's avoided by, you know, going to the splendors of Europe, but he, you know, he has to face them and eventually, the difference is that father doesn't kill himself, that you know, he meets the father, yeah, so I think what I'm saying is that it's still, it's still around, but it's become, you know, a kind of rich thing to tap into.

Malcolm Stern: 12:51

So I think that's the thing is that these, these key moments in our lives don't. They don't disappear, but it's whether or not they become oppressive or whether we learn to dance with them. Yeah, that's how I see it, and there's something about. I'm just wondering whether you had a sense of the just terrible despair your father must have been in to have taken his own life, and whether you'd seen the build-up to that, or whether that was kept carefully underwrapped. We're talking about an irish cop. It's going to be quite tough, presumably, yeah, and yet there's another side of him which is obviously extremely vulnerable, and I wonder if you got in touch with that and if I see that also in you. Tom, as I think about it, I can see that you've got a very tough side. You can be quite, very, very strong, you can influence key players in the industry and yet, as you say, you cry easily and there's a tender, yeah, yeah, um, I wasn't very aware of it.

Tom Kelly: 13:46

In fact, I was mostly irritated with him. It's only in later years and I wrote a whole chapter about the suicide which won't be in the novel, and you know, and and can begin to connect to it, you know, in terms of my own levels of despair, but the answer is no, I wasn't, since I was a selfish kid. You know that sort of thing.

Malcolm Stern: 14:10

And you know we're not expecting to see something that's so enormous happen to our parents, to these people who we've seen as godlike from an early age, and then they've dethroned themselves. Yeah, yeah, from an earlier name. Dethrone themselves, yeah, yeah, so it led you. It sounds like your father's been very much. What led you on a journey towards yourself as well. Totally and and um and where, where. Where are you now with that? How is? How is your your journey? Where is your journey taking you now?

Tom Kelly: 14:37

um, I. There was a point where I said, um, the Jungian analysis is very expensive and I said, well, it cost me £100,000 to connect to the divine, but it was worth it. You know, I have a place where I can go within. That feels totally okay and timeless. And you know, I could go there more often. And the paradox of life is how you orient that with your, when you're triggered or in ordinary life. But yeah, I mean I'm, I'm pretty satisfied, I'm with a very nice, uh woman. Um, yeah, so it's, it's good.

Malcolm Stern: 15:21

Yeah, I've seen that as well. I've watched. You know we've known each other for many decades and I've watched you go through sort of like a whole range of different relationships. Yes, that was the next verse of tea. Yeah absolutely.

Malcolm Stern: 15:34

But actually it feels like there's, it's almost like you've done the work. Yeah, Now you've got to the place where presumably there isn't the great drama and the sort of like you know the madness we have when we're young in relationships, but there's a sense of. I think what happens is when we see good relationships as we age, I think we see deep companionship, Exactly, and the capacity to be ourselves with each other. Yeah, Tell us a little bit about your current relationship with each other.

Tom Kelly: 16:04

Yeah, tell us a little bit about your, your current relationship. Well, thank god, at this age you just couldn't, I couldn't handle the drama. But you know, we met on a workshop in spiritual development. She's a londoner and she has done a lot of work on herself and she processes well. That's, you know, the key that we can get through issues very quickly, and of a similar age, so we're not overworking or overambitious.

Tom Kelly: 16:30

But shall I mention the adversity around divorce? It's divorce and failure in relationships. And when you're from the early 20s, a kind of specialist in communication and psychology, and your relationships aren't working, you know, it's like it felt terribly embarrassing. And then there's the romantic pursuit which I, I think with the jungians, you are projecting your soul onto the other, your own unclaimed soul, and if you claimed it it would be much more normal and less dramatic. Then the other one is uh, well, I'm a therapist, so I can handle her complexity, you know I can. I know that one, I can make it work. Uh, which never, which never worked. So then the effect is of course depression, um, and for me the, the shadow is triggered, and that for me would take, you know, the irish potato famine, the uh sort of Irish imagery the stupid, drunken, unmotivated, unsuccessful Irishman.

Tom Kelly: 17:50

But fortunately, in working, you know, in analysis, etc, as you accept, that a transformation occurs.

Tom Kelly: 17:59

I remember once saying it all feels like treacle, and sitting with it and, and you know it, feeling a shift, um, you know a sense of of being, um, and I really respect Jung's uh point, which is the shadow is closer to the self, as in, you know, the deeper, you know, source of life, whatever you want to call it, than any aspect of the ego. So, and you know, my partner encourages me now, but even then, when I was alone, it's staying in that low place. There is a couple of funny things related to it, which is that I went in. One of the reasons I went into analysis was apart from, you know, personal growth and spiritual search was to keep my marriage, which failed to make it work. And at one point, a few years into the analysis, my analyst admitted that his wife left him and and it was like I'm paying all this money and your, your marriage is breaking up. But it was important to accept him and accept that moment, you know, in in its uh murkiness, you know, you know in its murkiness.

Malcolm Stern: 19:23

you know I was quite courageous of him to share that with you because I know most analysts don't do that.

Tom Kelly: 19:28

Exactly, yeah, and he didn't share lots, but he did that. And the other funny one regarding I mean it's sad but it's funny is that I was wondering if a relationship was dying and a woman who you know from Skiros, and I went to a couple's therapist and it was. She was very, very able, 50 year old therapist. And again, the question is is our relationship dead? And we went and knocked on the door one week and she had dropped dead. The therapist had dropped it, wow. And so there was a simple message you know it had died as a relationship.

Tom Kelly: 20:14

So, um, and then, in terms of imagery, the union thing is is fascinating that I had a dream. This is so. I'm facing the shadow, you know, of the wise therapist and it's a naked Irish street kid and he's holding it looks like the entrance to a gate entrance, but it's actually the wing of a butterfly, a very big butterfly, which may be a gate entrance, or it's actually a butterfly and he's pulling it back and I'm meant to go in there and it's a place of transformation you know, and you know that just spoke volumes to me.

Tom Kelly: 21:00

You know that just spoke volumes to me. And another one that was very powerful was of holding this is when I was doing a lot of consulting that would have been after a divorce and paying for, you know, four dependents. So I'm holding a bowl in a dream and it's of very thick, oily, filthy coins, and the coins morph, they move to the other side of the bowl and they morph into the communion wafer in church, so the Eucharist, and then they go back to the thick ugly coins, you know, and it's like the combination of the grit and the dirt with the sacred and that you know that just says a lot to me that feels a bit like the hero's journey to morph the, you know, the grit and the dirt with the fantastic potential we have as human beings.

Tom Kelly: 22:05

Exactly exactly.

Malcolm Stern: 22:09

We're talking about the world of dreams and the education and the acting on the dreams. Rather than letting them be a moving picture show that takes place in our heads, they're actually instruction manuals on how to go forwards.

Tom Kelly: 22:36

Tell us a bit about your experience of that, because you've had a lot of experience. It felt very unconventional to be conventional, and so I was wearing a three-piece suit and I remember writing to my mother and saying, mom, I'm wearing a three-piece suit and I'm having three-course meals. You know, I had never done that before, but I had a dream that someone was handing me just a tweed jacket that was very relaxed and easy, and what it was doing was the psyche was saying it isn't always, you know, it isn't just about being on the street in the marketplace. There's another side of you. You know, that's a little bit well. It's definitely introverted, more inward directed, philosophical, et cetera. And yeah, so that. And then another one, a very big one, was that my son's nanny, who lives in the village, in a dream was handing me this lovely robe so that I could go to sleep. And again it was, you know the psyche encouraging go to sleep. And again it was, you know the psyche encouraging that going inward.

Tom Kelly: 23:51

You know, I can mention a lot of dreams, like I used to work in Paris a lot with Danone and in the dream I couldn't get into the Paris underground and the analysts rightly pointed out that at that point I wasn't getting into my own underground, I wasn't going deep enough in myself. And a similar one was I used to work in Barcelona and there was a Gaudi-esque building in a dream, but it was black on the outside. Building in a dream, but it was black on the outside and some ambitious guy that I knew was at the door and it was as if he couldn't get in. But I went in and it was a bit like the Irish kid pulling the entrance to the gate back and it was just a place of transformation, of being you know, that sort of thing.

Malcolm Stern: 24:47

So yeah, yes.

Tom Kelly: 24:52

I do have one, are you?

Malcolm Stern: 24:53

still in the process. Go ahead. Sorry, are you still in therapy these days?

Tom Kelly: 24:58

No, no, only occasionally, maybe once or twice a year, if something comes up. Yeah, yeah, it truly but it's just.

Malcolm Stern: 25:10

Is that because you feel like you've done that part of your journey?

Tom Kelly: 25:12

Yeah, there's not a great need, but it's also. It's such a luxury therapy, I think. Well, you know, because it went beyond necessity. But I'm sure you've experienced it hundreds and hundreds of times when you're in a good group, like a men's group or a group that has, you know, somehow gone through lots of layers, the richness it's like, it's like church it's, you know, as a boy, it's, it's a better version of church. You know, I trained with a guy named john heider, uh, at esalen, who was one of the best group leaders I ever met and and the groups were incredibly powerful, and he once said this is better than contemporary drama. You know, you'll rarely enjoy a play after this. You know, that's you know after psychodramas and all that.

Malcolm Stern: 26:04

It's just yeah, I remember somebody came to one of my courses in spain said, um, her feedback was it was like watching two oscar-winning dramas every day. There is something exactly about the psychodrama process yeah, yeah and it gets real as well. I think that's we can't hide in that process very easily.

Tom Kelly: 26:24

Exactly so we're both very lucky.

Malcolm Stern: 26:27

In the same way, we can't hide in relationships.

Tom Kelly: 26:29

That's true.

Malcolm Stern: 26:30

I think that's true, but also there's the whole thing of hiding in relationships. I think we confront ourselves in relationships and it feels like you've managed to, at this stage in your life, create an environment where you're at peace.

Tom Kelly: 26:44

Yes, and that's really a good point. One of the key things is that she checks out what, what, the growth in herself around an issue before pointing a finger at me, which makes it so much easier. So we're both closer to ourselves as we engage.

Malcolm Stern: 27:05

Yeah, so she's done the work, or doing the work herself as well.

Tom Kelly: 27:10

Oh yeah, yeah, she's done a lot of work on herself. Yeah, I have one more if you've got time.

Malcolm Stern: 27:18

One more, yeah, go ahead.

Tom Kelly: 27:20

Yeah, of course. Yeah, shall I go there? Do that one? Yeah, fire away, okay.

Tom Kelly: 27:45

So I can't identify this person's being or gender identity was obliterated by an illness. You know there's nothing about, you know, a choice transgender choice or anything like that. And there was a few serious operations that really affected their sexuality and this person didn't fully recover. So that was 19. And over 10 years, you know, had some very difficult times, not able to work, was a very attractive kind of jubilant person not attracting the right people, and was hospitalized a few times. And that's the hardest, I think one of the hardest things I've ever gone through. There's been real improvement literally in the last few months.

Tom Kelly: 28:46

And the metaphor I would use is of a circle that you know our lives are a circle and mine, fortunately, is, you know, pretty fulfilled circle, but metaphorically I'm kind of often swimming around the top of the circle, but this person's suffering brought me right to the bottom of the circle. A similar metaphor is, I remember, around you know, one of the worst times I went to the analyst that I see and said you know, and said you know, this is all. The whole life thing is just utter, you know, farce, even all this personal growth stuff. It's trying to make something that's essentially crap bearable, you know, and like any good analyst, he said what's it feel like Stay with the feeling. And within literally 40 seconds it turned into the bliss of being. You know, the utter gift of being.

Tom Kelly: 29:58

And metaphorically it was as if I was at 27 minutes past the hour but I thought there was an abyss below me. Past the hour, but I thought there was an abyss below me and I'd let myself go into the abyss. And you get into the hole again. So that is yeah, in a way that's the biggest adversity, because it's someone outside yourself. And it's interesting because you remind me. And it's interesting because you remind me you asked me about my father and I didn't have compassion for him much, but with this person, you know, like completely absorbed in their well-being, more so than yourself, but in working on it and thank God you know there's improvements. So, yeah, it's an interesting journey we're all on.

Malcolm Stern: 30:53

It is, and it's very tough to watch someone who you're very close to suffering and it's like if you have true empathy and if you're a decent therapist, you can have true empathy. You're going to feel their suffering in you as well.

Tom Kelly: 31:05

Absolutely, and that's what your book was essentially about. Yeah, that's right, it was and it was.

Malcolm Stern: 31:12

It was the book was educational for me. In writing it, I was educated what I was writing. Of course, I look forward to reading what you've written your your novel as well, john, so that's um thank you, it feels like it's going to be a good analysis of that too.

Malcolm Stern: 31:27

Yeah, so we're coming close to the end of our podcast and the question I always ask by the way great first podcast, I think you've got a few to run here as well, so that's good news, thanks. I always ask the same question at the end of the podcast, which is what's the particular dragon you've had to slay in order to become who you are? What's the particular obstacle you've had to overcome, and it doesn't have to be fantastically profound.

Tom Kelly: 31:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I would say it's fear, and that could be fear of death ultimately. So I think there's an echo of birth, even coming into a situation like this where there's anxiety and it's like it's if you really look at it, it's a fear that everything will fall apart. Um, but then otherwise I have positive associations with dragons, cause it's usually the unconscious Um and uh, and that's always really rich to engage with, you know.

Malcolm Stern: 32:29

So uh, yeah it's fear, it's fear yeah thank you, tom, that's yeah, that's great. I was listening to um uh, desert island discs recently with laurie anderson was a really impressive interview she got and she said one of the things that she and her husband, lou Lou Reed, had. They had three practices. One was not to ever allow fear to overwhelm them. The other is to keep tenderness. I can't remember the third. Wow, okay, you're not going to give in to fear. Yeah, so that's a distinct challenge.

Tom Kelly: 33:01

Melting fear is such an important thing. Thank you very much, tom. Absolute pleasure, exactly Okay.