Hey everyone, welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host Peter Atia this podcast my website and My Weekly Newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness. And we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen if you enjoyed
This podcast we've created a membership program that brings you far more in-depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of the space to the next level at the end of this episode. I'll explain what those benefits are or if you want to learn more now head over to Peter Atia m.com forward slash subscribe now without further delay. Here's today's episode. I guess this week is Kristin Neff Kristen's an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas here in Austin.
He's the author of the book self-compassion The Proven Power of being kind to yourself. She's widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts on self-compassion being the first one to truly operationally Define and measure this construct basically over the past decade now in addition to her Research into self-compassion. She's also developed an eight-week program to teach self-compassion skills in daily life. She co-created this with her colleague. Dr. Chris germer, it's called the
mindfulness self-compassion MSC. I stumbled upon Kristen's work in my own search for better understanding self-compassion. This is something that came up for me personally is an area that needed enormous Improvement and in doing so I realized I wanted to speak with her reached out to her. And obviously the rest is history in this episode. We talk about her own Journey towards the discovery of self-compassion which somewhat coincided with
Her discovery of mindfulness and you'll see in this podcast. It's actually quite interesting and it takes me until the very end of the podcast to truly appreciate the distinction between mindfulness and a practice of mindfulness and meditation. And so if you're listening to this and you're an astute listener of podcasts where either meditation has been discussed or the concepts of mindfulness have been put forth pay close attention and hopefully you won't make the same mistake I will but basically Kristen arrives at this conclusion.
Ian that you know when she's going through a difficult time in her life, the best approach is to take and compassionate approach to herself and that experience personally then basically shapes the remainder of her professional career and she does a great job here contrasting self-compassion from self esteem and self pity and I think this is a very important thing we get into sort of some of the concerns that people have with self-compassion, you know. Hey, will this reduce my output or my productivity or my competitiveness and I think you'll see
That frankly by the end of this. This is a very nascent feel much of what we talk about here is not hard science. There are a lot of things here that we are speculating on but I think what nobody will speculate on if they've put any of this into practice is that you feel better and ultimately that's probably the metric that matters more than anything else. So with that said, please enjoy my conversation with dr. Kristin Neff. Hey Kristen thing.
You so much for making time today. I know you're super busy and we're going to talk a lot about what it is that keeps. You busy. I've wanted to speak with you for probably about four or five months now since I started to become interested in your work and the broader topic of self compassion, but I think to understand how you came to study it. We have to understand more about you and what it is that sort of brought you on that Journey. So I sort of know little bits of your story, but I
Want to go back a little bit further, maybe even starting in college. What did you study in college and what piqued your curiosity?
Okay, so actually as an undergraduate I was very much into issues of kind of culture and how culture impacts reasoning. I took a three part Series in cultural anthropology and I just fell in love with the topic thinking of how culture and the larger cultural context May influence the way we think about the world and think about morolto.
Topics and so I went to UC Berkeley to study with moral developmental scholar named Elliott real who was just amazing and I was again researching. I was really interested in things like how people balance concerns with autonomy and connectedness. It was a theme actually that's run through my entire research career kind of you think about how big balance concerns with self and other and I started getting interested in that in terms of moral reasoning help people resolve moral conflicts, especially between
Off another I did my dissertation research in India looking at think it was called reasoning about rights and responsibilities in the context of Indian family life. So basically I became interested in how special our gender hierarchy very traditional place like India impacted how people resolve conflicts between their personal needs and their others needs. Some people had said that India is a duty based culture and it's all about meeting the needs of others. Where is he?
United States is a right space culture and it's all about meeting our own needs. I thought well, is that really true mean? What about gender? It seems like it with a lot of gender hierarchy that yes women really need to do their Duty and meet their husbands needs but husbands have a lot of rights. Did you what they want so you can't really separate out power and gender and culture from the way people think about things and by the way, I did find that I found that they emphasize duties for wives and right.
Her husband, but the Indian woman were like, but that's not fair. Well do it because we have to but we don't like it. It's not fair kind of showing the kind of also that we aren't totally dictated to by a culture where individuals who can reason and and decide actually that's not fair. I think that should change while I was in India, I started basically I talked about it a lot in my book. But while I was Indian my life fell apart, basically I had been married and it was kind of a I'll go ahead and say it right here because we're talking
What had happened was? I left my husband for another man, which is something that I was a very moral person. I never ever thought I would be in that situation but it happened. So I left my husband for another man who was supposed to join me in India, and he didn't and basically so the whole thing fell apart and I came back Berkeley and actually when I came back talk about trauma he was he had brain cancer and he died within a year the man. I left my husband for he didn't leave.
His partner her and so basically I was a mess. I was feeling a lot of shame. It was very traumatic. I consider myself a very moral honest person and the fact that I've got myself in that situation kind of was just really upsetting to me that I have allowed myself to get in that situation plus the fact that it really didn't work out so well, right so he didn't come and the guy left my husband for ended up dying of cancer within a year my husband who had been divorced when I got back hated me.
And I was just a basket case basically and so I thought I would learn mindfulness meditation because I had heard that mindfulness was good for stress and Trauma and all the stuff which I was going through. So I started learning about Buddhism as a way to kind of help me through what I was going through.
What kind of support network did you have at this time? So I'm trying to picture this so you how long were you in
India a year? I was in India for a year.
And so you come back and you're in the process of writing your dissertation now, I
assume yes I wrote.
My
dissertation what type of interaction you're having with your girlfriends. Are they consoling you? Do you feel isolated
and I had a very good support network and actually believe it or not. I had actually met the man who was going to be my second husband when I was in India, he came as well which helped it was a very soap opera. Shhhh. Peter was like Days of Our Lives, right? It was kind of descriptive a soap opera all these elements that came together I had support but I knew I really needed.
Something to help me deal with everything. I've been going through and I was almost a spiritual person. My mother had books by like Indian gurus. Deronda says be here now is on my coffee table, which is partly what drew me to India to be totally honest. I also thought that I might find some spiritual awakening their didn't actually happen in India. It happened when I got back but nonetheless, I was always kind of drawn to those alternate ways of thinking about the world. So it's kind of a natural for me to start meditation
and
Drew you to a mindfulness form of meditation. There are other forms, of course and especially being in India, certainly the birthplace of Transcendental Meditation or other things
to be totally honest. It was because this meditation group which was that it not hungry. You could follow the teachings of the Zen master took the haunt. It was right down the street from me. So with kind of happenstance, the one thing that I kind of liked about Buddhism, I didn't know a lot about it, but I knew enough to know that it was more.
Locally grounded the thing about Buddhism is it's more like a science of the mind. It's not a lot of belief systems. You don't believe in reincarnation and you don't have to believe in a God or Gods just basically a way of understanding the mine and because I was a scientist getting my PhD that also drew me and then plus I just been hearing good things about mindfulness meditation, but really thank goodness. It was a tick not Han group because tick not Han is one of the Buddhist teachers that talks a lot about self-compassion.
Than a lot of other teachers do others do but that's like a big theme of tick not Han and so the very first night I went the woman leaving the group talked about self-compassion. If I had gone to a transcendental meditation group or some other group that may have been I don't know Shambala or some of this type of meditation. They might not have talked about self-compassion. It may have just been about quieting the Mind still in the mind observing the mind not the group. I went to she talked a lot about self-compassion and it had an immediate impact on me. I mean literally
When I got home the first night, I thought wow. I had never even thought about being actively kind and supportive to myself. I wasn't a particularly harsh self critic, you might think that I was I actually wasn't I was kind of like an average self credit, but I was feeling a lot of Shame about everything. I've gone through in the kind of soap opera that had become my life when I just started being actively kindness afford to myself. I started speaking to myself in a way like, hey Kristen, I know you're hurt.
In this is really hard. It's understandable. There's a lot of reasons for how things unfolded the way they did. You know, I'm here for you. I started really just I did it silently but speaking to myself as if I was speaking to a friend and it really was like finding a super power. I didn't even know I had it was almost immediate impact it had on me now mindfulness meditation took a lot longer to figure out some more subtle practice that I did learn to meditate and I went on many Retreats but self-compassion and
probably because I have fairly secure attachment with my parents. It wasn't very difficult for me to learn. I got it almost immediately, but I did have to practice applying it to my life.
How how do you go to the point where you are able to sort of say to yourself and compassionate ways the things that you're saying without first being aware of what the default voice is. That's probably happening subconsciously is that necessary because to me that's the harder part is
I think we'll discuss later. Most of us have some level and some more than others of being incredibly critical. The real challenge is how subconscious that critical voice is and how we're not aware of it. So we're you even aware at that point of how degrading you could be to yourself or how demeaning you could be.
I think you're right that some of these things are less conscious than others. Like I say, I actually wasn't a particularly harsh self-critic it was
More that I was just lost in the I mean I was feeling shame and so you might say there were self-criticism but it wasn't an entrenched pattern for me.
How are your behaviors because I guess that to me is one of The Tell-Tale signs you come back from India. You're probably at that point mostly sitting in your apartment and much of your work is analyzing data and writing but how did that shame manifest itself as an outward manifestation of whatever the inner voice was saying. Were you in any way depressed or anxious?
Anything like that?
I think I was feeling discombobulated. It's probably the best word I can use to describe it. I didn't get into a deep depression as I had a lot of stuff going on in my life at the same time. So again, I was also starting a new relationship which kind of made it more complicated. It also gave me you might say some support but I've always been psychologically oriented kind of interested in my internal landscape. I could be aware of the feelings of guilt.
Guilt and shame for me. The biggest shameful thing was I've always identified as being a very honest person and the fact that I did that was just it was really hard for me because it just goes against my self concept the fact that I got myself in that situation. I understand it how it could happen, but it was really hard for me. I started noticing these thoughts about my self concept. What does this mean about the type of person I am
And that was really helped by starting Buddhism because Buddhism is all about understanding this sense of self that causes suffering this sense of identification with the separate self. The kind of thoughts of I'm this type of person. I am that type of person did it take a long time to notice that certainly got better as I got more deep into it, especially if you go deeper into meditation, you can start to see even more subtle layers of self judgement, but it wasn't necessary to get there before I could start seeing the benefits.
It's a self compassion. So it deepened over time A lot of people are just blown away by the simple thing of putting your hand on your heart and saying something kind and supportive to yourself because the thing Peter I really believe in part psychology. I've used internal family systems therapy as I used that type of therapy for many years.
That's Dick Schwartz, right
Schwartz's model. We have different parts of ourselves. And I really do believe we have different parts of ourselves.
Can you explain to folks a little bit about what dicks work
is so the idea is we have different.
Parts of ourselves that all kind of play a role and he it's a terrible name. You called it internal family systems. But basically the idea is we are different parts of ourselves that kind of form a family man trapped like a family but it's on the inside and not just outside. And so we have part of ourselves. It may be self-critical maybe feel shame. We also have a part of ourselves that maybe wants to defend against the wounds of the Shaded part of ourselves and maybe he's really angry at others or gets really busy. You know, we have different parts of them a different function the function of all
Parts ultimately is safety. It's kind of survival. That's kind of how these operate. So there's a part that defends our egos a form of survival. There's a part that defends against those feelings of shame but there's also a compassionate part of ourselves. I really believe that all of us have and that compassionate part of ourselves typically gets exercised when we're relating to others people we care about maybe our children are good friends or other people were close to we also have a compassionate
part of ourselves. So I don't think it's the case that you need to totally uncover that all the self critical parts of ourselves before we can activate the self-compassionate part. It's there. We actually already pretty familiar with it as it relates to other people. So I think what happened is I was able to activate that self-compassionate part. I was able to see wow. This really makes a difference. If you take that self-compassion apart and even in word is opposed to outward it almost immediately changes the landscape asked the
Is illogical as well as the mental landscape actually moving from the threat defense mode to the attachment system mode, you're kind of priming your own attachment security when you tap into the compassionate part of yourself. So for me it got better over time. And what more deep over time I was able to uncover more layers more hidden cells full of shame or inadequacy related to my father and all the stories that you unpack in therapy, but it was easier than I thought it was that's the thing that surprised me over my career is actually
Be easier than you might think to help people get in touch with their compassionate self because for many many people that compassion itself is very very well practice is an expert just aimed at others so you don't have to create something totally new that's not there. That's the useful thing about it.
Yeah. I have a friend who in sort of helping me. Think about this. So unlike you I'm probably naturally much more self-critical you sort of describe yourself is probably in the middle kind of normal. I would be in a
Pick level self-critic including actually audibly. I mean I could literally you think I was a crazy person at times because I could literally speak in a voice like this to myself in a incredibly harsh and critical way. So a friend of mine Rick Elias who has been on this podcast and who I consider not just a friend but kind of a life Mentor said, I want you to practice something which is when you're in that moment and you're about to have that discussion with yourself.
And I want you to picture that the same events occurred that are upsetting you but now it wasn't you that did it it was one of your close friends that did it. How would you consoled him? This is interesting. It was for me a process of five months of doing this but for example, I'll give you so there's two things. I do almost every day. I either shoot my bow and arrow or drive my race car simulator. Now, those are two seemingly nonsensical activities.
Unfortunately, they both have become barometers of self-worth so when they don't go well the inner self directed hatred is enormous and it results in anger and Tantrums and outbursts and feelings of total worthlessness when they don't go well, so instead what I started doing and I literally did this every single day for five months is after every single episode of doing one of those activities, which meant every single day I would take my
My phone out and I would speak into the recorder as though it were my friend who had that bad experience and I would say I would use my name. So I'd say hey Peter. I know you just had a really bad day shooting and you couldn't hit the broadside of a barn if your life depended on it, but doesn't mean you're bad. It just means that you had a bad day at archery today, but you're still a great dad and you're going to get another chance to come out here and do this tomorrow and there are probably reasons for it.
You might not even know why you didn't shoot poorly. But Bubba Bubba Bubba, I would send texts that message to my therapist every single day as a form of accountability. It really was amazing how much it D escalated me. It was actually very quick. It used to be at the point where driving or shooting poorly could ruin my day and it got to the point where within about three minutes I had forgotten about
it. Yeah. That's the power of
Self-compassion and again, it's because you already had that part develop. It had been one thing if you hadn't had any experience your whole life of how to be compassionate to support up to someone but you've been many many years developing that skill probably with your kids or your friends. So you just needed to access that part of yourself, which you weren't accessing before and that's why founds to get back to kind of in terms of for myself. That's why I was blown away by how useful was
And then so I started getting interested in Buddhism and the whole idea of self concept. What is this thing? We call a self anyway, and it really made a lot of sense to me this way of understanding how the sense of separate self and ego and separation leads to suffering and so I thought well, maybe I want to kind of pivot and I didn't pivot totally away but pivot away from moral reasoning and get into understanding self-concept how the development of our self-concept impact sings. So I did my postdoc
with Susan harder studying self concept development. She was also studying autonomy and connectedness. So it was a natural fit. So I've been studying autonomy and connectedness and moral reasoning and she was studying autonomy and connectedness and relationships your self-concept. Are you other focused. Are you self focused or you both so it's an absolutely natural fit for me to go work with her and do my postdoc, but she was also one of the country's leading self-esteem researchers and she had done research along with others showing that self-esteem.
It's not necessarily a good thing. It's good to like yourself as opposed to hate yourself with the ways we get our self-esteem can be very very problematic. A lot of social comparison is contingent like for you if you shoot the bullseye you feel good about yourself. If you miss it, you hate yourself. I mean that's not very stable. It's very contingent is unstable. So it was when I was finding out more about self-esteem and I was just kind of questioning the whole self-esteem thing. Anyway through my Buddhist practice and what is this thing we call an ego and
That we invest so much and that we have to judge it positively and it can't be negative at all. And then it was just a natural to think. Well, I think self-compassion is a lot more helpful than self-esteem when I was working with Susan. I was developing all my ideas about that and then eventually I came to show that empirically and I got UT Austin
when you sort of take a broad lens at human psychology. When did this idea of self esteem become something that was
Really pushed I mean certainly as long as I can remember as a kid, I mean this is what was talked about all day every day. The table was pounded kids that don't have high self-esteem do drugs and whatever sort of but that couldn't have been the narrative forever. Was there somebody that was a champion for this school of thinking or
was interesting because if you actually look at the founding American psychology William James who was writing early nineteen hundred's 19th century, he wrote about self-esteem and he actually identified contingent self-esteem.
He defined self-esteem as perceptions of competence in domains of importance. In other words being good at those things in life that are important to you. Like you could probably care less if you're bad at hockey if you don't play hockey, but you do care if you're bad at archery because you care about archery. That's kind of the way self-esteem works. We need to be good at those things in life that we value. So he was actually talking about it way back then but then it didn't really take off in Psychology. Then they started going into psychoanalysis and then in the behavior
Them and it was probably people like Rosenberg our blanket on his first name who created the Rosenberg self-esteem scale that was probably one of the big factors creation of good measures of self-esteem because people can say wow when people score higher on the self-esteem scale that are less depressed or less anxious. They're happier. And then that kind of started kicking the ball rolling of noticing it is true people higher self-esteem and better mental health than people with low self-esteem.
But the problems is all the unhealthy ways they get to that high self-esteem like feeling better than others bullying others. We know that the reason kids and Middle School start to bully others is to have high self-esteem because they want to feel good about themselves in
comparison to how do we compare and contrast narcissism with self-esteem or other negative traits could self-esteem by itself doesn't really sound to be negatively valence test, but a lot of those other traits
do this nothing wrong with self-esteem and in
Like there's a pretty strong correlation between self-compassion and self-esteem. If your self-compassionate you all higher self-esteem and you have less self-hate, so they're linked but healthy for my self-esteem is what they call unconditional self-esteem you feel worthy not because you're good at something that you value you feel worthy just because you're a human being and intrinsic sense of self-worth and that's the type of self-esteem that self-compassion gives you if you look at them head-to-head that compare myself.
Passion measure against the self esteem measure, you'll find that it's self compassion that explains stability of self worth over time. In other words doesn't go up and down as much because it's less contingent on outcomes on a good day and on a bad day.
So just make sure I understand that there's some discordance between self esteem and self compassion a person with self-compassion generally has self-esteem, but not everybody with self-esteem has self-compassion.
Yes, exactly.
It's hard to tease them apart. But for instance if you have self-esteem because you're a narcissist. You probably won't have higher self compassion. You don't have lower self compassion either because that would have to say that people who aren't compassionate who hate themselves have hired narcissism. So they completely orthogonal when you put them all together in a regression equation you control for self esteem and self compassion and narcissism is the outcome. It actually came out as zero point zero correlation, totally orthogonal between self-compassion.
Narcissism where self-esteem I forget what it was think was moderate correlation. I'd have to look again. It's not that self-esteem is bad. We want to feel Worthy is really why we feel worthy how we feel worthy this important.
I think viscerally it makes so much sense using like I said the trivial example of do you shoot well or not if your self-worth is dependent on performance, you're doomed to fail at some
point, right? And then when you do fail, what do you do?
And so people criticize themselves thinking it's going to improve their performance. And by the way, it does kind of work. It has to be admitted many people have gotten through med school their law school through harsh of criticism. So it's not like it doesn't work at all, but it works with a lot of negative side effects like a performance anxiety is a big one. So if you have a lot of anxiety because you're slamming yourself, you're beating yourself up next time. You have some big test or something. You really worried about doing well because you know,
So if you don't you've gotten the negative reinforcement of beating yourself up, so it makes you more anxious which actually undermined your performance. It can make you more disconnected from others. If you're really invested in doing better than other people and that can lead the like little interpersonal behaviors that actually aren't good at creating closeness and connection. It kind of works. There's a lot of problems with it and self-compassion works better. What we know in the research is constructive criticism is more effective than harsh criticism only know that
As we know that you still want criticism you want to know where you went wrong and how you could improve it's not like oh, that's fine. If you're a professional Archer saying, oh well just had a bad day. That's not going to help you and that's not going to help you achieve your goals, which means it's actually not ultimately loving if you're a professional Archer you want to do your best because thats related to your happiness and well-being, but what's going to help you do your best constructive criticism says, okay. Well, here's what didn't work and you did it.
This way this didn't work. Why don't we try this way? I believe in you. You got my support I'm here for you that type of constructive voice is actually more effective. Yes, a coach to says your crap. You better do better. It kind of works doesn't work as well as constructive criticism and we know that
because obviously that's one of the concerns that anybody would have going down this path of self compassion. If somebody had spoken to me when I was in high school or college and said look we're going to work on you not beating yourself up I would have
I said no way. I'm not willing to give up my Edge in exchange for feeling better in the
moment. Right which is ironic because it actually doesn't give you an edge. It actually is not nearly as effective. It gives you more of an edge. If you have constructive criticism, then destructive criticism and again study after study shows that
yeah, so walk me through some of the social psychological experiments that can test that hypothesis
research has come out of UC Berkeley.
Which shows a lot of research shows that self-compassion is not only more effective than self-criticism which kind of occurs naturally but also is more effective than self-esteem as a motivator. So just as an example of one type of study they had UC Berkeley undergraduates. They had them all fail a vocabulary test. I took like the hardest items from the SAT. They had the students take the task and everyone failed because it was a really hard test. They split up the students.
The three groups one group, they gave instructions to be self-compassionate about the failure. It was really hard test. Try not to beat yourself up about it. Just don't try to be kind and supportive to yourself about failing this test the other group. They gave us self-esteem instruction. They said don't worry about it. You got into Berkeley, you know, you're smart kind of give them a self-esteem boost and the other group they didn't give any instructions which meant they were probably self-critical they didn't encourage the students to be self-critical that be kind of unethical. They just didn't
say anything what they did is they said you're going to take the test again, you've got some free time to study for the exam that has materials. They can study for the vocabulary test. Just kind of let us know when you're done and you're ready to take the exam and what they found was that people who were told to be self-compassionate about the failure studied longer and harder than the other two groups and how long people study was related to how well they did on the next exam.
I mean,
Would be another interesting group as a fourth group would be a group that was berated and told you crap. Yeah, like you guys got into Berkeley and you still flunk this test. Yeah fedak. I'd be curious to know if that was positive or negative in terms of reinforcing additional
study. Yeah, I guess it's kind of unethical to do that. If you very hard to do a thing like that. You can actually insult subjects in it experiment like that because it's considered psychologically damaging. Let's
pause for a moment on that.
The IRB won't let you say to an undergraduate something like that. Whereas think about what was done 40 and 50 years ago with some of the famous psychology experiments down at Stanford.
That's why they've changed our p and actually Peter. Do you know what you have to use as an insult the feedback you use is you did average that's considered an insult. If you tell people their score was average is considered an insult. There's lots of research like that the basically so what happens is when your self-compassionate about a failure first of all, it allows you
Learn more from the failure. I mean, it's such a truism failure is our best teacher. But if you're full of Shame and you're just really mad at yourself, you don't have to have the presence of mind to look objectively and say, where did I go wrong? How could I do better next time but self-compassion support actually does give you that presence of mind to be able to learn from your experiences and so self compassion leads to what they call growth mindset where you actually learn from your mistakes as opposed to fixed mindset, which means you just think you're stupid or smart.
One of the other
how soon in a child's development can these patterns be set?
We don't have a lot of data with kids partly. That's because we don't have a good way to measure self-compassion and children. There are a few scales actually just came out the scale for you that can be used for younger kids at brand-new. It came out like last year. It has been used much. We don't have a lot of data on this but I suspect
But about age seven or eight once kids have learned about friendship and they have a Peugeot would call to a thinking you understand reciprocity the understand concepts of fairness and just and kind of that back and forth. They could take the perspective of another to be self-compassionate. You have to take the perspective of another toward yourself. And also by the way, self-criticism doesn't really kick in until later on in development partly because of that because children are just kind of like happy in there.
Of a positivity bias and they tend to think they're great unless their parents tell them the exact opposite kind of called One Way thinking that all one or the other I would assume to a thinking would have to kick in which would be about age seven or eight. So there are some good books out there. You can find them on my website. If you want to get the reference to kind of teach kids when they learn about friendship. They should also be their own best friend learn about what it means to be a good friend. They should also learn to be a good friend to themselves and I
That's probably the best time to start introducing these Concepts and then adolescence when you start getting metacognition and you get more abstract thinking it's even more appropriate because that's when really the self concept formation starts kicking in what kind of person am I and then you can start having conversations with teenagers. They actually do understand issues. Like do you really want your sense of self-worth to be contingent on being pretty enough or having people like you or being smart enough?
If they have enough abstract thinking skills to be able to understand something like
self-compassion now some would argue that we're sort of in the midst of a social experiment for which the outcome might not be known for decades, which is a group of kids that are growing up in a world where comparison is at a level that you are. I couldn't imagine you and I grew up so I'll speak for myself, but I didn't have a clue outside of my neighborhood there was
Thing I mean even looking at the TV was very abstract. Not like I knew anybody that lived out of the borough of the city that I lived in and you barely watch TV. There was no way to sense what was happening. And of course today that couldn't be further from the truth. So you spoke earlier about ego being so entwined in self comparison rate in comparison to others that you would argue that we are in an environment today. Where the potential for
That comparison that ranking is so high. So it would seem to me that self-compassion is more important today than potentially it ever has been
I hear what you're saying. I think it certainly is frightening on the other hand. I don't know a lot about it. My son. Does it use social media? I don't use social media. I'm like a dinosaur toy. My book has a Facebook account, but I don't so it's a whole other world and I know I'm not really part of it. My son's not part of it either but I do from friends who have teenage kids. I do hear this.
On the other hand, it seems like that. The younger generation is more open-minded than past Generations that it may be because they've got the ability to know so many different stories like in some ways when we were growing up probably a little older than you but still it's like there's a few sitcoms on everyone watched all in the family or Mash or whatever. It was probably dating myself. You're probably like seven those came out but nonetheless there were certain sitcoms that everyone wash and that was kind of unique
Frame of reference shared frames of reference at least in cultures like the United States, but now people think can get the point of view of a so many diverse points of view depending on what they like what they're interested in. I haven't seen any data. Well, that's not quite true. There is some data showing that suicide rates are up and stresses up. I just don't know. I think the jury's out. I think the jury is out. I think in some ways social media can be used for it.
Insist. If you're part of the LBGTQ Community you have access to people like you in a way that you wouldn't have had 20 years ago. And that sense social media could be a positive thing can make you feel less isolated and more connected to others on the other hand. If you're just looking to Instagram and followers, maybe not so I think I just don't know what to think about it. It's scary though. I admit it's really scary. We don't know
that's missing point. Now you mentioned your son does not use social media your son has autism.
correct yes he's how old now
he is 18 and by the way he just got his driver's license I can't even tell you how proud he is and how proud I am of him that he just got his driver's license it is like Independence is just around the corner he's a sophomore in high school he was delayed because we homeschool them we started a little bit back so that he can catch up academically but yeah he's doing really well really well
you probably start to figure out that something is not exactly quote-unquote normal when your son is two or three years
old I knew earlier because I was trained as a developmental psychologist and they knew something was up but there's a myth that autistic children don't make eye contact they make eye contact a little less frequently but a lot of them make a lot of eye contact especially with their parents and I literally used to joke with his father haha least we know it's that autism look at that eye contact
But then it turned out it was autism. He's actually an extroverted. There are extroverted autists. He's an extroverted artist.
So what did you notice and when the diagnosis finally came how did you start to process that and how did your training in self-compassion serve
you I started noticing because he was delayed in language development actually delayed pointing is one of the biggest indicators of some sort of delay and he was just using the echolalia just repeating of the words.
of the repetitive behaviors and but he was very social I had the stereotype that autistic kids they weren't loving they weren't affectionate they didn't make eye contact which wasn't him at all but then once I realized that a lot of artists are extroverted and social I realize oh yeah he's got it and then I'm had the official diagnosis it was devastating it was devastating the first feeling quite honestly is one of disappointment or just has to be kind of own this isn't what I imagine being a parent would be like I imagined
something different he's long in-depth philosophical conversations about life that she was starting to finally have it took a lot longer than I thought it would he wasn't potty trained until he was five which is really really hard you would tantrum a lot well past the terrible twos and so I was disappointed I was overwhelmed it wasn't the plan I had signed up for and so my self compassion and my mindfulness practice both together and they really can't be separated mindfulness is
A necessary ingredient of self-compassion the day after he got his diagnosis. I went on a Meditation Retreat and I just sat there on my cushion and I cried what I did was I allowed every single emotion to come up you're supposed to feel disappointed because I love my son more than anything else in the world. I didn't say okay this emotions allowed and that emotion isn't allowed. I just let any emotion. I had to come up feelings of grief feelings of disappointment feelings of fear.
And Not only was I allowed myself to be with them without suppressing them or fighting them. The thing that made the biggest difference for me is I actively gave myself support because of them. This is really hard Kristen. I know you're disappointed. I know you're frightened. It's going to be okay. I'm here for you. I'm so sorry this you're having struggling but care about you. I treated myself just like I would treat a good friend who had a similar situation what?
Found an over and over again the more I could give my self compassion for my son's autism the better parent. I was damned and the more I could accept him the more I could accept my own difficult feelings about his autism the more I could actually accept his autism. Whereas if I had fought them and suppress them or said I'm not supposed to feel this way, or I can allow myself to feel this way. I think it would have created a tension that would have actually made it more difficult to accept him for who he was
and when you were going through this process,
Did your husband mirror you in that practice or did he sort of have his own way of doing this? So you were kind of in this journey of you are supporting him and he was may be delayed in what was that Dynamic like
a bit of both he had kind of his own way of dealing with things. He's much more of a doer and did both this book called the Horse boy and he thought of how can I make this into an adventure? That's kind of his way of dealing with things if life throws you lemons how
Going to make lemonade which is a little different than my way of doing it. And so he made this whole adventure and we took her son to Mongolia and he wrote a best-selling book and a documentary about it and you really tried to look on the positive side of it this really value to that as well a different approach than what I took my it's kind of more like, how do I hold the pain with love and here's was like, yeah, I think is lying in his book when life gives you lemons why stop at lemonade make a margarita very much his way of dealing with the
things and by the way, we aren't together anymore. Just so you know, we split up about nine years ago.
There was a point in that documentary by the
way, as you did see
it. Yes. Yes. I did. It's very powerful. It's at least represented in the documentary that Rowan basically didn't make a sound maybe I'm misremembering this but it was only when he first encountered the horse that he sort of came to life. Am I remembering that correctly?
It was the first time he did it.
Complete sentence. So we for you repeat words might be like to do you like back then might be bottle or water or muffin or something like that. You would repeat the words, but it's the first time when he got in Betsy, I actually wasn't there when it happened. So I'm assuming it's true. You said he's a nice horse Betsy's actually female that he's a nice horse for some use on the back of the horse and I did see a change. So there's some research that suggests on horses. It's actually they think it may have to do with
The cerebellum because when you continually have to find and we find your balance, it influences the cerebellum which helps brain integration and one of the things that's happening with autism is a lack of brain integration because overgrowth of white matter you probably know this about autism lack of adequate pruning. It's hard to get cross brain communication and autistic kids, which is one of the reasons you get kind of hyper specialization and fixations. There's really good scientific reason to think why things like being on a horse
Finding the refined in the balance would help crossbeam communication which might allow for things like language and also was just a lot of fun basically learn to speak on Horseback. It was pretty amazing remind me how old Rowan
was when you guys did this trip to
about five to five and
six and you obviously alluded to kind of these outbursts, right? I mean children with autism obviously can have remarkable
outbursts. Yeah, they get overwhelmed. My son likes to tell me autistic children. They don't tan.
Jim because they're trying to get their way they do it just because they get overwhelmed and it's just a natural reaction, but they don't do it to manipulate. So it's interesting which I think is very true. So where
does self-compassion come into trauma you alluded to it? Very briefly up front. But there's also some literature for formal diagnosis of PTSD isn't there
well in terms of self-compassion, yes, it's not so much that self-compassion aids in the diagnosis of PTSD.
Is a lot of research actually on self-compassion and Trauma. So this kind of two parts to that research one is it people The Early Childhood trauma? So sexual emotional physical abuse and actually hinders the ability to be self compassion as an adult and that's mainly because of the attachment system. So if you have secure attachment, it means you think your kind of valuable you're worthy and your needs are worth being met. If you have secure attachment with your parents and your parents treated you like you were worthy and they met your needs.
He's consistently then when you're an adult these easier to think that I'm worthy and I'm going to meet my needs because I'm worthy of having my needs met if you have insecure attachment, then you may not think that your needs are worthy being met and if your parents were actually harshly critical or actually abusive what can happen is the system that supposed to make you feel safe. The attachment system gets fused with feelings of fear, because these people who are your only source of safety and comfort in life are also terrifying you
And then so it happens is everything gets kind of jumbled up and mixed in and for some people actually it can be frightening to give themselves compassion. Paul. Gilbert talks about this he calls it fear of self-compassion because basically when you're activating the attachment system, which is supposed to make you feel safe. It actually makes you unsafe and so some people may start opening their hearts with self-compassion. They have memories traumatic memories come up or like just as voice in their head saying your crap, you're worthless or maybe some memories of kind of
Some sort of abuse it's harder to be self-compassionate if you have a trauma history, but having said that self-compassion is one of the best ways to deal with Early Childhood trauma because what you're doing is you're like we parenting yourself. So maybe the program is okay, you're worthless. You aren't worthy of care. But if you actually intentionally give yourself compassion for those feelings, which are so hard. Well, it's really hard to feel that. I'm worthless these feelings of Shame. They're really difficult.
Cold, how can I learn to relate to the pain of the trauma with some kindness with not like cognitive behavioral therapy where you work directly with rewriting those negative schemas. I mean that's also useful it has its role for sure. What you really doing is learning how to hold the pain any pain with this kind supportive stance. And so when you do that, there's actually some research showing you can get what they call earned secure attachment as an adult. You can actually learn to have a security.
Attachment schema through self-compassion. Maybe your parents didn't meet your needs consistently, but you can learn to meet your own needs consistently when you're frightened or you need help or you need support in some way. It is harder the roads bumpy and it usually really helps of a good therapist help you unpack all of this and once people can do it is lots of research, especially with compassion focused therapy created by Paul Gilbert, which is specifically designed for people with early trauma that Miss different ways. You have to approach it and the way
It is little different as to go slower and things are a little different but it actually is remarkably effective and you can get people who are able to heal early trauma through self compassion. And so This research showing this if you look at trauma, that's not cause for Early Childhood for instance. There's a lot of work with combat veterans. So combat veterans movement to Iraq or Afghanistan who experienced a lot of combat trauma what they found is those veterans who are more self-compassionate for themselves about what they'd experienced. They were less likely to develop post-traumatic.
Distress syndrome and so in a way post-traumatic stress syndrome is when you know, the trauma kind of almost gets locked in your body and you keep re experiencing the trauma because you can't process it and so self compassion towards the trauma helps you process it so it doesn't get kind of might say locked into place to post traumatic stress syndrome,
which really makes so much sense. When you look at the incredible success that the organization Maps has had in testing MDMA
In people with PTSD because MDMA is the ultimate compassion molecule. So it basically takes a slight amount of compassion you might have in it just amplifies it tremendously and that's presumably why people in as few as two or three sessions can have otherwise debilitating PTSD
rectified. I think there's only one study that did show that MDMA increase self compassion, but there isn't a lot. I think there's a huge
judge will see starting to huge boom already looking at psychedelics MDMA mushrooms, because what they do is they give you an experience of basically loved and connected us and I think as you say one of the reasons probably that it works is by increasing both self compassion and a sense of connectedness that you are actually go hand in hand. I wouldn't be surprised if we find that that's kind of the active ingredient of how it works is through increased self-compassion increase mindfulness and increase connectors.
The three components of self-compassion are self-kindness mindfulness and common Humanity or kind of this sense of connectedness. And the three really do go hand in hand. They operate the system.
What's the relationship between those and physical health?
So there is an emerging literature that shows that self-compassion is linked to better physical health. It's kind of a small to medium correlation. Maybe if I think like there's a meta-analysis that found point to 8.30 so significant
not mind-blowing but still there with physical symptoms at least self-reports of like colds aches pains physical symptoms. A lot of research actually fuchsias here was one of the big research in this area and she finds that it's linked to better physical health is also research showing. This is probably why it's things that physical health is that operates through the nervous system so self-compassion and this is done either looking at self report of self Compassion or by like enhancing the self-compassionate mood you can have people think of something to do.
With and right to themselves a paragraph being mindful kind of accepting of what's Happening remembering that they aren't alone common humanity and being kind to themselves. Like they would be to a friend the induce the three components of self-compassion. What we find is first of all, it reduces sympathetic activity things like inflammation things like a cortisol levels and also increases heart rate variability, which is the main marker we have of parasympathetic activity, and it's probably by changing the nervous system.
Reaction that it influences physical health because of course what your body's doing? How are you active? It is is linked to how healthy you are. Also immune function is linked to better immune function.
It actually seems to me like I wouldn't be surprised if a greater body of literature emerges from this because I think it sounds so cliche to say that the mind and the body are related but they are they clearly are and I think anybody who's tried to help people.
In one of those dimensions and not been able to help the other is pretty aware of that focus. And certainly I interviewed Bob sapolsky some time ago. And I think his work and stress is just so interesting and stress is really to me kind of just one other piece of this Vector. So I'm excited to hear that we're becoming more aware of this because obviously the lens I kind of come at all these things through is longevity and Longevity isn't just living longer. It's living better and that for
For me, I think was the turning point in coming to accept the value of this was even if figuring out a way to become more self compassionate didn't make you live one day longer.
It increases telomere length also, but even if it didn't the
impact it would have on the quality of your life alone would be worth it and I think in the final analysis quality of life matters more than length of life, and there's no reason you.
Can't strive for both the old joke about lifelong caloric restriction is it will increase your lifespan and you'll know it or something to that effect. It'll feel like it you'll live longer and it'll sure feel like it because you're so miserable. So to me that's kind of a big part of it. I want to kind of go back to tease out a little bit more of the Nuance in this because one could easily misconstrue self-compassion for self-pity. How do you distinguish
these we need the three components of self-compassion just self-kindness.
- or self-love it could be a self-focus state that I'm just pour me and I feel sorry for myself. What's the difference between pity and compassion? How do you know and what's the difference between when someone pities you or someone has compassion for you if you think about it, we like one and we don't like the other.
Well, that's a good question. I mean pity feels condescending I suppose
exactly the separation you looking down is the separation compassion is had been there man.
It's shared and that is the whole difference between compassion and pity and that's why in my measurement and my concert for self-compassion. We need to include the sense of common Humanity a name it common Humanity. I actually wanted to call it interdependence or interbeing. It's kind of like going beyond the separate self. But I knew that that would be kind of a hard time for most people get their head around but that's really what it's pointing to when you have self-compassion you recognize
That everyone's in perfect. Everyone needs an imperfect life suffering failure hardship. This is part of the shared Human Condition. And also if you really good deeply enough with it. You also realize that what I experience is not separated from what you experience. It's all part of these interdependent causes and conditions co-arising in the idea that you can really separate yourself out of the larger hole in some ways is an illusion. You don't have to go that deep blue with it, but that's ultimately where it's pointing. But if you
Didn't have that sense of connectedness in the experience of suffering. It may turn into self-pity. That's why that part has to be there also mindfulness. So self-pity isn't very mindful self-pity tends to exaggerate it tends to catastrophize poor me. This is like the worst thing ever and a very self-focused mindfulness kind of has more Equanimity. It's more of a balanced state of mind and see things as they are it is this the little things we do see importance just like say carry on that type of thing. I'm not going
To focus on the fact that this is hard. I'm just going to pretend it's not there that doesn't help then the other hand catastrophizing doesn't help either and the mindfulness component partly comes from the inherent perspective that comes from self compassion. Ironically is interesting to think about this but because we are used to give you compassion to others whenever we give ourselves compassion, there's like an inherent sense of perspective there because we're treating ourselves as we would treat another we are.
Lost in our drama, like stepping outside of ourselves and that perspective which actually leads is felt exactly the same as mindfulness, but they're very related. It actually gives us more perspective and balanced in terms of how we relate to our own situation for my point of view all three need to be there to be self-compassionate and actually psychometrically if you look at psychometric analyses the self-compassion scale, they all operate as a system and all three change simultaneously, so they really do
You operate a system.
Now, one of the things that anybody who starts to practice this becomes aware of is when you fall short of it, depending on how harsh a Critic you are in the first place. You can easily fall into a pattern of
self-judgment right beating yourself up for beating yourself up.
It's the double Bang Yeah. So what advice do you have for folks who want to begin this practice to pull themselves out of that
spiral? Well, I think it's really helpful to know.
Why we criticize ourselves we criticize ourselves because we care. The reason we criticize ourselves is because we want to be well we want to do our best we want to be safe. We want people to love us to support us because we're afraid that if we don't do well maybe we're going to harm other people are going to harm ourselves that things are going to happen to us. If we don't do well and good things are going to happen to us. We believe if we do do well so it all comes from the basic sense of safety.
T we don't need to beat ourselves up for being ourselves up you deaf compassion for the reasons. We've beat herself up which comes to the very natural desire to be safe. And once you recognize that it's like okay, that's just me trying to be safe. Well, actually there's a more effective way to help myself feel safe. And that is by giving myself compassion for what's just happened when we teach people especially self-compassionate motivation. You want to help people move from motivating themselves.
Criticism to a more kind of constructive criticism or compassionate motivation. If you leave out that step of having compassion and even gratitude to our inner critic for trying to keep ourselves safe. It actually doesn't work. And I think why that is is because that part of ourselves is self critical part is really scared for his life in many ways. It's like from that point of view. It's like life will end if I fail or life will end if I make this mistake well Eiffel and if I'm not a good Archer
Every no it's not really rational part of ourselves. It's just like an emotional reaction. And so if we just skip over that part of the hey shut up. I don't want to listen to you. I want to listen to my compassionate part that part of us gets even more scared life's can add you are listen to me. Listen. Listen listen life is going to end like it shouts even louder if we don't listen to it, but if we listen to it and say hey, okay. I see worried you worried about my safety. Thank you so much. I hear you. Trust me. I'll do everything I can to keep myself safe.
Once you do that then it's much easier for the more compassionate part of ourselves to try to motivate a change get also wants to keep us safe also wants to do our best also wants us to change unhealthy behaviors, but does it not because it's afraid that will be an adequate but just because it cares it's a much more effective and sustainable voice of motivation.
I think that's a really interesting point. I'm glad you brought it up because I don't think I've appreciated that Nuance you do have to
acknowledge again. This may be comes back to maybe not so much dick Schwartz's model, but other models of essentially us having wounded children within us adaptive children within us functional adults Etc. You can't ignore anyone's voice
inside. That's right. The idea is just integration. We want the integration and we want to learn part of what your inner critic is telling you may be useful, but you just want to clean what's useful and what's useful is probably about where did
Go wrong. What could you do better next time? It's not useful to say you're worthless or you're a bad person. Then what are you going to do with that? Right? It's not helpful, but you don't want to shut down that voice at all, but you don't want to dominating things either because it's a very one-sided very kind of immature not very wise part of yourself. That just is freaking out. Basically,
I have no doubt that there is a very strong correlation between and it would really be a reciprocal correlation or
inverse correlation between high levels of self-compassion and low levels of maladaptive behaviors such as addictions. Why wouldn't dispute that for a second. What I'm curious about is how much is causative. In other words. Is there any evidence that we could use self compassion as an intervention to treat at least partially maladaptive behaviors gambling substance addiction things like
that. I wish there were more
On self-compassion and addiction there is a little bit of intervention research. I believe actually trying to think is there a randomized controlled trial with addiction as outcome with the intervention there may not be I think it's more cross-sectional research that shows are negatively correlated. And of course, we don't know causality in that case. There are some research showing that one of the things when a a is successful. It appears that one of the reasons it may be
ASL is because it increases self-compassion by the way, I think it depends what group you belong to you. I've had people who've gone through a a that said it was all about shame. Another state was all about self-compassion. So I think it really varies depending on what group you go to I would be willing to bet money that you would find that I don't think we're quite there yet. And in terms of the two way causality for instance, if you're really addicted it may make it harder for you to be self-compassionate when you come off the substance. It may be easier to be more self-compassionate. So all these
Things are always kind of bi-directional
and how easy is this. I mean I think is we sort of think and look to the future of using self compassion as an intervention. So if you think about the easiest interventions or drugs, here's a pill the treatment group gets a placebo pill the intervention group gets an active pill. All you've to do is take this one pill once a day and we'll figure out if it lowered your blood pressure your cholesterol. Well when you start to get into now, we're going to test whether mindfulness-based meditation is
Beneficial or self-compassion is beneficial. It becomes more complicated. How challenging is it for my clinical research standpoint to package the practice that you've spent the better part of 20 years refining in yourself writing about but then taking it into a clinical setting with a group of subjects and being able to Blind them being able to randomize them and then blind researchers who are going to measure outcomes based on obviously the differences in behaviors
we have
Developed the mindful self-compassion training program which actually isn't designed for clinical populations, but can be adapted for clinical populations. And there's also compassion focused therapy, which is similar that is designed for clinical populations. And there have been randomized controlled Trials of both what the waitlist control which isn't as good as an active control where you put people in peer support you might get similar findings and actually expect you might get similar findings from peer support.
Group, it's actually not that difficult. I think we definitely have the tools in place right now to do the research. I'm not doing that research because I'm more focused on developing the interventions. I really hope people do also I don't think it has to be Reinventing the wheel I think adding some explicit self-compassion to pre-existing intervention that we know work is probably the way to go. There's more than just self-compassion self-compassion isn't everything. I think including mindfulness interventions. I have to say personally my feeling is although my
Phyllis training naturally increases self-compassion. It makes it stronger. If you make it explicitly if you give people explicit tools they can use to practice self compassion. That's not meditation because when you're like in the supermarket and you have some thought or something happens, you're not going to sit down and meditate in that moment, but you can put your hand on your heart and say something supportive to yourself. It's very portable is very scalable. And also the research shows that doesn't require meditation to learn it, which is also
Makes it more accessible to a lot more people. I love meditation but it's just a lot of people are going to meditate that's just reality. The self-compassion is easier. It's more portable is more scalable. I personally think if we started looking at those adding explicit self-compassion into these interventions strengthen it I suspect you'd find it does we're not quite there yet.
I think you're right. By the way, I think that's exactly the way to go about doing it is you take interventions that are already known to have some efficacy and you layer this on because I think is
Her story explains. This is a relatively straightforward intervention to teach somebody and the results can happen quite quickly. I mean if someone who's is Harsh a self critic as I am can in a period of months with a little bit of daily practice with something tangible because it's tangible to practice. I'm quite excited about it in the sense that I think there's a pretty big opportunity there. I want to go just into this the mindfulness component a little bit because you've made this point now several times which is
is look mindfulness is not a necessary component of
self-compassion. It is a necessary component of self-compassion.
Oh it is. Okay. So I misunderstood maybe I misunderstood I thought a mindfulness-based meditation practice is what I really mean is that necessary.
You don't need to meditate to be mindful. So meditation is probably the most tried-and-true way to increase mindfulness most mindfulness training programs base their techniques on meditation, but being mindful is just kind of being aware.
Whenever you're aware that you're suffering you're being mindful of your suffering, especially when you're aware in a certain way when you're aware not like freaking out aware. But you're we're like, okay. This is what's happening. So mindfulness itself. You can't have self compassion without some degree of mindfulness, but our research shows we did a randomized controlled trial the mindful self-compassion program and we found that practice was linked to gain some self compassion, but it didn't matter whether that practice was sitting down and doing self compassion meditation.
Ian's the program has many or it was just simple things like taking the self-compassion break in the middle of your day. You notice your suffering giving yourself kindness and support like you showed a good friend. It didn't matter how you practiced. So meditation isn't necessary but mindfulness is you can also learn mindfulness without meditation. It's just a little tricky because it's mindfulness is kind of vague and Abstract it's hard to get your hands around it. So meditation helps.
Do you think an analogy to make this point would be that having
Long legs is necessary for walking up a hill one way to do that is just to walk up a hill and other way to do it is actually go to the gym every day lift weights and walk up the hill where the actual mindfulness meditation is the going to the gym. It's doing the very concentrated focused exercise. Technically. You don't have to do it to still do well, but you're in the long run maybe going to do better.
Yeah, so we don't know we don't have data in the long run. What's better. I mean meditation we know.
It's tried and true. It can change your neural Pathways meditation is good. I believe meditation. I'm a meditator. I think it's a little unfortunate that so much emphasis has been placed on meditation because not everyone's going to meditate not everyone wants to meditate. Some people don't have time to meditate. It doesn't appeal to them again. I do think self-compassion is more scalable. You can have someone so for instance. We just did a training program for health care workers working at a
Took Hospital six weeks of training one hour a week stunt lunch, very minimal training. We did not give them any homework. They had to do outside of the class because they didn't have time. There are you know stressed out Healthcare professionals. We didn't give them any meditation but we said on the job whenever you notice you're stressed or sad or have something difficult happens. We give them certain practices they could use to do with it. We did give some informal mindfulness practices like feel the soles of your feet and come back to the
Present moment we did things like the self-compassion break put your hand on your heart and help people develop phrases that work for them to remind them of the three components of self-compassion and they got a lot out of it. They didn't have to meditate after we taught the program. A lot of them said actually maybe I'll take the full program learn how to meditate. You know what I mean? So, yeah, so maybe they'll go on to meditate after learning some self-compassionate. Actually, there's some research that shows that helps you stick with the meditation practice if you have self compassion then
Patients heart but I don't think it's the only way forward and I do think I just think unfortunately in our culture there's a way in which it seems kind of foreign to people. I think there's a lot of blocks the meditation that aren't there with
self-compassion but it's obviously stuck for you. You've gone on several Retreats. It sounds
like yeah 40 recruits. I don't go to recruit has nearly as much as I used to first of all the pandemic and just my life getting so busy, but it still meditate. Yeah.
What is it for you that has kept meditation is sort of part of your daily routine.
Well, the meditation the reason is useful because what meditation basically is. It's just it's a really focused time. You aren't doing anything else you're kind of reducing sensory input. I'm actually usually meditate in bed. It's not quite as good as doing it on the cushion, but it's still pretty good and it's kind of more doable for me. Right? So I'll do early in the morning or late at night.
You don't fall asleep doing
Sometimes to do but sometimes I don't like if I do it when I'm really awake, I wake up at 3:00 in the morning. Let's say my mind's racing then it's a really good time to do it and it actually will help me fall asleep. I'll be honest is the quality of the meditation is not quite as good as when I sit on my cushion, but at least I do it where sometimes I just find I don't have time. Yeah. So meditation is helpful. First of all, because what happens when you meditate is you get to certain brain State basically, what happens is your default mode Network.
Wyatt and so your brain State changes and it's easier for you to see clearly it's easier for you to pay attention this less chatter on the brain and that's very helpful. Yeah. So meditation is great, but I just don't want people to think that unless they meditate they can't learn this skill. So for instance there was one study that just had people kind of like you is that a texting themselves kindness. They wrote a compassionate letter to themselves the three components mindfulness common humanity and kindness. What's a day for?
Days one week and it reduce depression for three months and increased happiness for six months. That's doable anyone could do that. You don't have to learn how to meditate to do that and it still helps you
does your son have a practice around this. It sounds like he's quite aware.
He's finally coming around to self compassion, but he fought it tooth and nail for years. I mean just really recently like the last few months. He's come around to it. He used to say don't give me that self-compassion stuff. Mommy is he didn't want to accept the pain he wanted.
To fight the pain you don't want to accept imperfection. He was like just clinging onto that nail, you know to he wanted the pain to go away. He didn't want imperfection to be there. He was like full-on resistance, but he could articulate it and I would kind of think. Okay. Well, good luck with that one. What can I do? Like, you can try to fight the pain and fortunately, I know it's not going to help but people have to come to that conclusion themselves, but now finally he's starting to see the value of being kind to him.
Off and see the value of this kind of understanding that yeah, he's got accept imperfection. He said to me the other day. He said imperfection is like spicy food, you know, if everything was perfect. All our meals would be Bland, you know, we need some variety. We need some spice to our life that he came up with that himself.
That's kind of
amazing. Yeah it is and he's finally getting there. He's 18 now and he's really getting cut into the next level of self-reflection and stuff. So he's a little behind but he's definitely getting there.
You have a workbook that's based on your book.
Correct? The mindful self-compassion workbook is basically the mindful self-compassion program, which I co-developed with Chris Comer we met back in 2008, we're partners and we've created this program. We've got the center for mindful self-compassion. We have teacher training. We have adaptations its own thing Chris and I was totally us together that created this program and the workbook is the eight-week program in workbook format.
Basically, take yourself through the program.
Yeah, I mean to me that seems like a really logical place for somebody to start if listening to this podcast has got them interested in at least peaked some amount of curiosity around this idea. It's a very structured way to go through this. It's not the way I did it but I've looked through the book and I thought boy this is a really nice way to be guided through something. I would certainly make a plug for that. You can just get it on Amazon. It's easy.
It's
like $10. Yeah, if you want to actually train in self-compassion, it's an empirically supported program. There are randomized controlled trials is very carefully sequenced. We find the program over years and years and years and what worked and what didn't work. I'm pretty confident in the efficacy of the program. But if you want like more personal stories than you could probably go my first book self-compassion or Chris gummer's book The mindfulness half the self-compassion some people don't like workbooks a like more like the stories.
And so that would be my free book.
Well Kristen. This has been a really interesting discussion and I'm really a huge believer in this in this work that you're doing and you've also lived at to you've had these ups and downs and these challenges that have I think kind of allowed you to sort of roll with things that
are had a lot to be self-compassionate about that's for sure. Well,
I look forward to meeting you in person at some point when this pandemic rolls over and again, thanks so much for your time today. Thank you is lovely.
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