459 SelfWork: Kyle Kittleson On Being Gay, Managing Depression, and Learning Empathy
The SelfWork Podcast
Margaret Robinson Rutherford PhD
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Meeting Kyle Kittleson was an incredibly refreshing experience.
Why? Because he lives and breathes his passion for bettering the world. Whether it's through his work with animals (he's an animal trainer), his dedication to children's learning about animals on his very popular YouTube channel, BaBa Blast. Or his hosting of the incredibly informative MedCircle.com, where he interviews therapists and doctors and all kinds of people about mental health. About that, he says, "To help other struggle less through proper education has been a privilege."
As a child, he formed a club that he called the "Save the World" club. He says now, "Saving the world might be a stretch. However, changing the world – changing the world for better – is absolutely doable."
Along the way, he dealt with his own depression as a nine year-old, his knowledge that he was gay and wishing he could be anything else but that, and his mother's early death. Yet the relationships he formed with the animals he loved helped him balance those struggles with his hope that he could form lasting, empathic relationships with others.
This is his story of doing just that.
Vital Links:
Kyle's book Wear a Wetsuit at Work: How You Can Become a Marine Mammal Trainer
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My book entitled Perfectly Hidden Depression is available here! Its message is specifically for those with a struggle with strong perfectionism which acts to mask underlying emotional pain. But the many self-help techniques described can be used by everyone who chooses to begin to address emotions long hidden away that are clouding and sabotaging your current life.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is self-work, and I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. |
| 0:10.3 | At self-work, we discuss psychological and emotional issues and what you can do about them, |
| 0:15.7 | whether that's learning self-acceptance, taking action, or seeking therapy or treatment. |
| 0:21.3 | Eight years ago, I extended the walls of my practice to reach those of you who might already be |
| 0:26.1 | knowledgeable about mental health treatment, but also to those of you who might say you'd never |
| 0:31.3 | darken the door of a therapist. And yet, you are here. I'll answer your questions while I invite |
| 0:37.1 | you to take a few minutes for your own self-work. And I go, I don't think I'm very empathic, Dr. Romney. So he goes, well, work on it if you want. I go, I want. She goes, here's how to work on it. And I worked on it. And I didn't work on it for a week. I worked on it for |
| 0:54.2 | like a year and a half. And I'm always still working on it. But I made this intentional effort to |
| 0:59.6 | practice empathy for a year and a half. Welcome to this week's edition of self-work. |
| 1:08.4 | There's some people you meet that you're just never going to forget. And Kyle |
| 1:12.6 | Kittleson is one of those people. He's actually the on-camera host for MedCircle.com, and he's |
| 1:18.7 | wonderful. He educates millions of people on the important topic of mental health. And he's a really |
| 1:24.0 | great interviewer himself because he's such a good listener. |
| 1:29.9 | He was diagnosed with depression at the age of nine. |
| 1:35.3 | And so keeping his mental state positive has been a lifelong challenge for him. And he loves to learn about the ways to do it. |
| 1:38.8 | And he says to help others struggle less through proper education has been a privilege. |
| 1:47.3 | He talks a lot about that, that he feels so grateful and so privileged. He's worked with animals all his life, and I'm quoting him, |
| 1:52.3 | to see a boy from the Make a Wish Foundation, smile at a dolphin, or to educate a family from |
| 1:57.7 | Ohio on how they can help our earth clean in order to protect our wildlife |
| 2:01.7 | populations is truly a passion. He says, I feel like I'm saving the world just a little bit with |
| 2:07.6 | each of those experiences. And then he says, saving the world might be a stretch. However, changing |
| 2:13.1 | the world, changing the world for better, is absolutely doable. |
... |
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