Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Fiachra “Figs” O’Sullivan, Founder of Empathi

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Fiachra “Figs” O’Sullivan is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, certified in Emotionally-Focused Therapy, and the founder of Empathi. Figs is a passionate entrepreneur, driven to change lives for the better. He strives to interact with the clients as fellow travelers on life’s journey, allowing them to easily dive deeper into their “stuff” with his down-to-earth philosophy.Figsall has spent years working with frustrated couples at a crossroads in their relationship—they want to make things work but are stuck in what Figs call their “Waltz of Pain”—which is what led him to create Empathi! Inspired by attachment theory, improvisational dance and theater, experiential psychotherapy, and EFT, Empathi provides fun, effective, and simple solutions to help couples stop fighting and snuggle more.Learn more: https://empathi.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-fiachra-figs-osullivan-founder-of-empathi

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Figgs of Sullivan, who's the founder of Empathy. Figgs, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me on your show, Mike. It's an honor to be here.

You are welcome. And of course, I want to hear all about your story. And I want to find out what empathy is because we're spelling it with an I, not a why. And so I love how we have variations of the name. But let's get it started with what's your background? What's your story? And how did you get into this industry? Yeah.

Well, I'm from Ireland originally. And I first moved to America in the 90s, the San Francisco. And in the 90s, America was. giving Ireland one third of all green cards. So it was harder not to get a green card if you were Irish than to get one during this, you know, there was a three year window in the 90s. So I was very lucky. I became, um, what we were then called in the early 90s was a stockbroker. And, uh, I eventually gave up the old financial services, uh, path and dedicated myself to personal development.

And then eventually, I started being the person guiding other people, not just growing myself. And here I am now, like combining the business skills I learned as a financial consultant stockbroker with the ability to help people love each other. So I specialize now in couples therapy and run a couples therapy business called empathy. Nate. So certainly when you made the move from financial services into couples therapy, that was because you had and have the perfect relationship. You've never had an issue. You've never had a fight. Uh-huh. But I love on your website, you've got that you call yourself

and you and your wife wounded healers. That's what people need. You don't, I don't want to go follow someone that's done everything perfectly and never had a hiccup. I want someone that's got some battle scars and been wounded and figured out how to avoid it in the future. Exactly, exactly. And actually, you know, it's interesting is we actually have our own podcast. It's called a Come Here to Me podcast. And we share our own couples counseling sessions, not us as therapists, but us as the clients for that reason. We're trying to like counter shame people, help people understand conflict and relationship is normal. In fact, one of the ways I put it, conflict and relationship is a feature, not a bug.

The reason you get in conflict with each other is because you love each other and you're so important to each other. And that means you're going to scare each other in moments because it looks like you're not meeting each other's needs and you're going to have a hard moment with each other. And the rubber meets the road in relationship with what you do in a difficult moment, right? How do you get back to connection, right? a really good relationship is not focused on being that we're both being good all the time. They're really focused on how we go from bad back to good.

Okay, so let's do a little spot therapy with that statement. So here is my point that I know that I would say I struggle with. I would, if I would have to check the box and say, I always have the best intentions toward my wife. I never want to get frustrated, short snap, but in the moment of maybe things going on around the house and then this comes up, you don't take the time, the moments, like even three seconds. Like if we had something hardwired into us that we cannot say one word in a moment of tenseness, that we literally can't even speak words until there's three seconds. And then that gives you time to just plan that and then, okay, let's take a breath. then all would be good. But how do you make sure that you take those seconds and you focus on that so that the,

what comes out of your mouth is something that's calm, sane, and loving? Yeah. Well, I don't think you will, firstly, right? There's some honesty right there. Yeah, yeah, it's not. So this is really important what you choose to work on. And that's what I mean. Most people are, you notice your question.

It's kind of, everybody's leaning in, how could I be good? How could I be better, right? But here's what I would invite you and others to do and said, right? We have to come to understand and accept and actually celebrate who we are, right? And love matters so much. And does your primary attachment figure, your primary emotional bonding figure, your spouse, your partner, right? They're so important to you when it looks like you're not there for them or it looks like you are not, yeah, or they're not there for you. You're not there for them.

It's going to be threatening. You're going to be reactive. and your intelligent brain, right? Your diplomat will not be online within that three seconds. You will react implicitly or explicitly. You will hurt your spouse's feelings. They will react implicitly or explicitly, and you will get stuck in a system and a cycle with each other

where you're both hurting and you're both hurting each other. But again, the punchline, the most important point, that's only happening because you love each other. the sooner you can see that we are stuck, and I'm emphasizing we, capital, W, capital E, together, because we're so important to each other, it totally makes sense. We just experienced each other in these last five minutes, 10 minutes, five hours, five days, like there was no way back to each other. That's actually the first point you need to get to in relationship,

because from there, you're no longer a threat to each other. were just two people that are hurting because being disconnected is awful for both of us. Yep. And, you know, it makes me think, too, that once you see the mistake, misstep, and know how to fix that, then you know how to potentially, you know, hone and train your approach for the next time it comes up because it will come up. And then it becomes like muscle memory. Exactly, exactly, right? To practice, it's a practice. That's again, you know what I'm saying? Like, my wife and I are I was trying to help people. It's not like you do something one time.

We resolve an issue and then we, you know, we wash our hands and we're done now, right? Check the box. Good thing. That's over. Exactly. Like, you know, I always say like, I love you. Everybody knows I love you is not a one and done conversation, right? When you met your spouse, you didn't say, hey, eventually you told them, I love you.

And then you said, look, you got that now. I told you, you know it. We don't have to speak of this again. Yeah. Right. Like, it would be crazy if someone said that to you, right? Now, you're going to tell each other over and over again, and hopefully it'll be alive. It'll still have aliveness in it when you tell each other over and over again.

Well, good news, bad news. Conflict resolution is something that is an over and over conversation as well. It's just not a one and done thing. You're going to keep fighting with each other because you love each other. We just want to make the pain you cause in those fights as small as possible. And then we want to be able to repair on the back end of those fights. That's what's most important. Yes.

So now is there a significance to the way you're spelling empathy with an eye? Yeah, there is a really huge significance, which I'm imagining many of your listeners would understand. I tried to buy Empathy.com with a Y on the end. And it was taken. Yeah, well, yeah. And who knows? I could have been talking to Elon Musk for all I know, because I was not entertaining, selling it to me. And I was scared to find out what the number would have been anyway.

And so I, you know, again, living in San Francisco like I did at the time, I don't live there now. But I am, I did what all good San Francisco Silicon Valley people do is they find some like Tommy rig. Tommy, it's Jerry Rigg. That's what you call it. Yeah. You're in America. I just like, you know, I found a new silly way to spell empathy. So I, now I am empathy.

Well, thank you. Thank you. I like it. it. Well, and probably you can even have some little, you know, here's a little coaching session for you. You could probably have something to do with I. You know, there's no I in empathy, except in our business name because, you know, we have to look at the other person. So somehow there can be a twist that way. But empathy really is important in what you're doing because it takes the emphasis off of you and puts it on to the other person. Well, that is true. And by the way, and I, thank you, right, there is an actual, you know, real, you know, fundamental core principle why it's called empathy too. Right. But, but so here's the thing. Everybody like you just described, Mike, is familiar with what I, what you just described is like what I call one way empathy. One person is hurting. And they tell the other, their partner, spouse, neighbor. And the neighbor feels inside of them, the person. pain that, you know, that this other person shared with them, right? But what we're trying to do

is something even more special than that is we're trying to create empathy squared. And here's what I mean by empathy squared. When, you know, two people that love each other get into an argument or a fight, they're both hurting. So we don't want to actually create just one way empathy from one spouse to the other, we want to create two-way empathy at exactly the same time, that they both get, oh, wow, look how we are both hurting in this disconnection. Now, that literally up-levels people's brains, calms, their limbic systems, their nervous systems, and now they can have access to having, you know, compassion and hold each other and hug each other and like have fun, go out that night, listen to Barry Y, like candles, you know,

dancing into the wee hours of the morning. I love it. In fact, you know, empathy squared could potentially be empathy 10x because when, you know, you have it going both directions like that, it's going to be more than one plus one equals two. It's going to give you so much more, you know, like that circular in infinity feedback. So I think that makes a whole lot of sense. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. And that's what we focus the most on. It's kind of a weird thing for people at first, right, that the hardest step is get to a place that we help, you know, when I'm working with a couple or someone on my team is working with a couple. We're trying to get them to go from two separate stories of what's happening to one story of what's happening between them when they get into difficult moments with each other. And within that one shared story, both people actually make sense. And the system that they're creating. is the problem, not either of them.

Yep. And it's a shift in perspective. Exactly. So yeah, it all starts with a shift in perspective. And then the craft of my work, right? Because I do think of it as an art form. It may sound cheesy, right? I'm just like Stephen Spielberg makes movies.

I make emotionally transformational experiences, right? I don't just explain. I love it. Obviously, I'm on this podcast because I like. explaining things, but explaining things isn't enough, right? We have to make that perspective shift a living, breathing experience that changes the people's biology in that second, in that moment, they are completely softened. I compare it to, you know, the moment in the six ends that you can tell there's a ghost in the room because everything shifts. There's just this drop, right? You start

to see the breath, right? It's that same kind of. but it drops us into this kind of deep sadness and love for each other that it were hurting so much. And people aren't going to want to try and get there. Most of people's lives are spent doing everything they can to get away from that fertile ground where connection can really happen. So yeah, it takes usually a third party to drag them down into the pain that they're both feeling so that they can connect deepest with each other. I love it. Now, I know one of the teachings that you work with is EFT and from a financial services perspective, it's not electronic funds transfer. So what do you use EFT for? How does it work?

Yeah, you know, it's funny. There's a lot of EFTs, right? There's also this thing called emotional freedom technique, which is this like tapping thing, but that's not it, right? We do emotionally focus couples therapy and emotionally focused individual therapy. And it's the gold standard of how to work with couples. It's the most evidence-based research couples therapy method. it's the only couples therapy method that has the highest ratings from the American Psychological Association and it's based on these most solid researched area of all of psychology, which is attachment theory. And in short, attachment theory is just we all need to be emotionally bonded from the cradle

to the grave. It's just not optional, right? And so we combined an attachment theory with systems theory, which is what we were just talking about. Like conflict is never just one person. both people are creating this, you know, negative feeling positive feedback loop. And so, you know, EFT, we just, we videotape our work, we perfect it, we all share our work. We like, it's just a huge community of couples therapists that are committed to getting better and better and better and better,

helping couples actually love each other after they've kind of lost their way. Because in reality, it would seem to me, like, once you get the foundation, things in place, then some of these other tools and techniques will help enhance it, but it's not a substitute for doing the work. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, you, yeah, there's no, you know, that kids book, we're going on a bear hunt. Oh, no, we can't go over it, we can't go under it, we can't go around it, we have to go through it. That's, that's what emotionally focused couples therapy is.

Let's go find someone that knows what they're doing, that have walked through the river that it looks to you like you're better off trying to go over, around it, under it. Like, let's, like an example of going over, under it, around it. Why don't we all practice not saying anything for three seconds, right? That would be an attempt to go over, under, or around it, right? When actually, no, we're going to actually have to go right through the middle of this, because we're both actually hurting because we love each other so much. And we're going to dare to feel that.

And it's going to look like we're risking drowning. But luckily, you're not alone. We're in a boat. That figs fella that looks like an Irish Shrek, right? He's actually going to make sure we don't drown. and he's done this thousands of times and he'll get us to the other side of this river. I love it. Well, let's wrap up with talking about what your website and tools and support to your clients

looks like if someone is interested in getting couples therapy, how does that work? Yeah, yeah. So thank you. So it's Empathy.com, Empathy with an eye on the end, not a Y in the end. And yeah, we have, you know, obviously our main offering is couples counseling and individual counseling and coaching for couples and individuals. And then we also have a free podcast, right, to come here to me podcast. We created an app for couples. We've had 20,000 couples go through that app. We have videos and articles. We just love helping people love each other and from, you know,

bespoke one couple at a time services to a free stuff. You can find it at Empathy.com. Well, I love it, Figgs. It's been a real pleasure talking with you and learning about your craft. And I appreciate all that you do for couples. And thank you for coming on the show today. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Mike. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.