Speaker 1: What do we think is going to work for a
Speaker 1: kid or a friend. If you say you're a stupid loser,
Speaker 1: I hate you, How helpful is that really going to be?
Speaker 1: And yet so now we think that's going to be
Speaker 1: good for us. You know, it's the exact same effect.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Back on the show is one of our favorites. Kristin Neff.
Speaker 2: She is currently an Associate professor in Human Development at
Speaker 2: the University of Texas at Austin. While doing her postdoctoral work,
Speaker 2: she decided to conduct research on self compassion, a central
Speaker 2: construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not been
Speaker 2: examined empirically. In addition to her pioneering research in self compassion,
Speaker 2: she has developed an eight week program to teach self
Speaker 2: compassion skills. The program is called Mindful Self Compassion. Today,
Speaker 2: Eric and Kristen discuss her new book, Mindful Self Compassion
Speaker 2: for Burnout Tools to help you heal and recharge when
Speaker 2: you're wrung out by stress.
Speaker 3: Hi Kristin, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, glad to be here again.
Speaker 3: Yes, I believe this is the third time, though I'm
Speaker 3: not entirely sure, but I believe that is correct. But
Speaker 3: your work on self compassion is so important that it's
Speaker 3: something I'm happy to keep featuring. We're going to be
Speaker 3: discussing in a new book that you have though, which
Speaker 3: is called Mindful Self Compassion for Burnout Tools to help
Speaker 3: you heal and recharge when you're wrung out by stress.
Speaker 3: But before we get into that, let's start like we
Speaker 3: always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a
Speaker 3: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 3: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 3: And the grandchild stops and they think about it for
Speaker 3: a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I suppose actually my response to that may
Speaker 1: have altered somewhat. I mean, because the obvious response is
Speaker 1: to feed the wolf of kindness, and you know, to
Speaker 1: try to promote kindness, to practice kindness, to practice peace.
Speaker 1: But I think it's also important to feed the so
Speaker 1: called bad wolf, and to kind of reframe the bad
Speaker 1: wolf not as a bad wolf, but as a part
Speaker 1: of us that, for whatever reason, hasn't gotten the love
Speaker 1: it needs or doesn't feel safe, which is why it
Speaker 1: often growls so loudly, or you know, barks or what
Speaker 1: do wolves do? House, that's it, they howl so loudly.
Speaker 1: So I think you primarily focus on cultivating the good habits.
Speaker 1: But you don't want to judge or shun or like
Speaker 1: isolate those parts of yourself that you think are bad
Speaker 1: or unworthy, because then they just kind of go deeper
Speaker 1: in the recesses of your psyche. So I think all
Speaker 1: of our internal parts, we want to feed them understanding
Speaker 1: and safety and care with the idea that we want
Speaker 1: to behave or operate from those parts of ourselves that
Speaker 1: are in line with our values. Yep.
Speaker 3: I guess castigating or casting off any part of ourselves
Speaker 3: is not really to be acting in self compassion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean so. Dick Schwartz, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've had him on the founder of internal family systems,
Speaker 1: you know, talks about no bad parts. I do think
Speaker 1: it's a really important perspective. It's not really a bad wolf.
Speaker 1: It's a wolf. It's a scared wolf, and the reason
Speaker 1: it's acting bad or mean or hateful is because part
Speaker 1: of its scared. And so I think to the extent
Speaker 1: that we can offer that sense of safety to all
Speaker 1: parts of ourselves, that sense of acceptance, and of course
Speaker 1: accepting ourselves is not the same as accepting our behavior.
Speaker 1: So we don't want to act like the bad wolf.
Speaker 1: We don't want to make that other people's problem. We
Speaker 1: don't want to again act in a way that's contrary
Speaker 1: to our values. But the impulses, the thoughts and feelings
Speaker 1: that come up, you know, we don't choose to have them.
Speaker 1: That wolf is often formed when we're very young as
Speaker 1: a way just to try to make us feel safe.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a child may think, okay, the only action I
Speaker 1: know how to take us to tantrum. So in some ways,
Speaker 1: that bad wolf might represent this young part of us.
Speaker 1: It didn't know any other way to respond. So it's
Speaker 1: a good parable. But it's also important that we don't
Speaker 1: shun or ostracize any parts of ourselves.
Speaker 3: So listeners, what resonated for you while listening to that?
Speaker 3: What came up for you when thinking about how you
Speaker 3: could be feeding your good wolf this month? When I
Speaker 3: think about feeding my good wolf, I've been thinking a
Speaker 3: lot about relationships. Relationships really shape the quality of our
Speaker 3: lives in profound ways. When they're healthy, they bring joy
Speaker 3: and fulfillment, but when they're struggling, the impact can be
Speaker 3: deeply unsettling. It's a common struggle, but one that often
Speaker 3: goes unaddressed. The good news, there are concrete skills we
Speaker 3: can learn to improve our relationships. Relationships are this month's
Speaker 3: theme and our weekly Bite of Wisdom for a Wiser,
Speaker 3: Happier You newsletter, and I'd love to send them your way.
Speaker 3: Every week we send a menu of a few small
Speaker 3: exercises you can put into practice to feed your good wolf,
Speaker 3: along with the reflection and a related podcast episode on
Speaker 3: the topic. If you want to go deeper, just head
Speaker 3: to Goodwolf dot me slash relationships. If you think you'd
Speaker 3: benefit from these useful reminders and small bite size exercises
Speaker 3: to help you feed your good wolf, I'd love to
Speaker 3: send them to you for free. Just head over to
Speaker 3: Goodwolf dot me, slash relationships and I'll send them your way.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about this latest book, which is applying
Speaker 3: the research that you've been doing for a long time
Speaker 3: and writing on for a long time around self compassion,
Speaker 3: applying it to burnout. Yea, why is that the direction
Speaker 3: that you chose to take this book?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, well, it's really just come up for me
Speaker 1: a lot in the last five years or so. It
Speaker 1: actually started when a woman actually from a children's hospital
Speaker 1: here in Austin had taken our full mindful self compassion
Speaker 1: program and loved it and said, by the way, this
Speaker 1: was pre pandemic. And she said, you know, the doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses and cares at my children's hospital in the pairs,
Speaker 1: they are so exhausted, they're overwhelmed. It's such a stressful job.
Speaker 1: Can you figure out any way to teach them that
Speaker 1: will fit with their overwhelmed schedules? You know that doesn't
Speaker 1: require meditating. That's kind of easy on the spot practices
Speaker 1: they can do to help support themselves given all the
Speaker 1: stress are in. And so we did. We created something
Speaker 1: called the Self Compassion for Healthcare Communities program. We did
Speaker 1: research on it, and one of the main findings of
Speaker 1: the research was, first of all, not only did it
Speaker 1: increase self compassion, not only did it increase the sense
Speaker 1: of wellbeing, it increased a sense of compassion for others,
Speaker 1: compassion satisfaction. In other words, you know, these people could
Speaker 1: start getting satisfaction about caring for the children. Or when
Speaker 1: you're so stressed and you get burned out, We'll come
Speaker 1: back to this, you stop caring as much because you
Speaker 1: feel so overloaded and so overwhelmed. You kind of have
Speaker 1: to shut down as a natural reaction. All the stress
Speaker 1: and we found that it did actually reduce the three
Speaker 1: core symptoms of burnout. And then the pandemic hit right
Speaker 1: and so before it was like, oh, these poor doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses at the hospital, they're so burned out. And
Speaker 1: then it was like, Okay, my source of income is
Speaker 1: totally changed. I usually made most of my income from
Speaker 1: like doing in personal workshops. Okay, that's off the table.
Speaker 1: How am I going to make a living? My son,
Speaker 1: you know, in special needs classes, can't go to school anymore,
Speaker 1: and so as to do it from home. And so
Speaker 1: I became one of those people, along with I think
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone else on the planet, that started feeling
Speaker 1: the intense stress that was exacerbated by the pandemic. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be honest, I definitely teetered on the
Speaker 1: edge of burnout. Just some moments. I felt like I
Speaker 1: didn't even want to get out of bed. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, how am I going to put one foot
Speaker 1: in front of the other. But I have myself compassion practice,
Speaker 1: so I really applied it to myself during those times.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just for myself. I supported myself. I
Speaker 1: allowed myself to feel and my feelings. I had a
Speaker 1: way to hold the stress and kindness and warmth and
Speaker 1: support so that it wasn't so overwhelming, and so I
Speaker 1: didn't go into full on clinical burnout. And so toward
Speaker 1: the end of the pandemic, I thought, you know, we've
Speaker 1: created all these great tools and self compassion practices in
Speaker 1: the Mindful Self Compassion program, why don't we write a
Speaker 1: book applying that specifically to people who are burnt out?
Speaker 1: Because again, for a while we mainly talked about our
Speaker 1: healthcare workers, of course, who are especially burned out because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. But it's way beyond that. I mean, stress,
Speaker 1: chronic stress. It just seems like it's getting more and
Speaker 1: more intense all the time, you know, in the workplace,
Speaker 1: even just like stressed out by the uncertainty of whether
Speaker 1: it's politics or global stability, there's just so much chronic stress.
Speaker 1: I thought that this book would be helpful, and I
Speaker 1: have to say, I think it is. I think we
Speaker 1: managed to write something that's easy to read. It's not
Speaker 1: like an academic tone. No, it's a short it's easy.
Speaker 1: It's kind of entertaining the way we tell the stories,
Speaker 1: but it's really practical. I mean, every single chapter has
Speaker 1: a tool that you can use. You don't have to
Speaker 1: like make extra time in your day to practice it
Speaker 1: every day. You can do it on the spot, in
Speaker 1: the moment. And these practices, again, I know they work
Speaker 1: not only for my research, but really for my own life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've been pretty open in the past. You and
Speaker 3: I have discussed the challenges of parenting your son, and
Speaker 3: it sounds like he went from having autism to OCD
Speaker 3: on top of it, and you say he started having
Speaker 3: real mental health issues. So in addition to the income,
Speaker 3: you've got this going on, yes, with your child. We're specifically,
Speaker 3: we're a couple of the things that you did. I
Speaker 3: assume they're the tools that are in this book, but
Speaker 3: that you found particularly helpful for you out of the
Speaker 3: full suite of tools that are there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So probably the tool I use most often because
Speaker 1: it's the easiest and it's in me idiot is touch,
Speaker 1: you know, because it just goes straight to your physiology,
Speaker 1: your your nervous system active, you know, probably activates the
Speaker 1: vegas nerve parasympathetic nervous system. Just putting your hands on
Speaker 1: your heart or touching yourself in some way. It does
Speaker 1: a few things. One we have research shows and for instance,
Speaker 1: lowers cortisol levels because as infants, we're designed to interpret
Speaker 1: touch is a signal of oh it's okay, save someone's
Speaker 1: here for me. So that's part of it, you know,
Speaker 1: changing your physiology. But it also like literally gives you
Speaker 1: that sense of I got myself, I'm here for myself.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you fill your own touch, and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, yeah, that's right. Normally we're lost in
Speaker 1: our thoughts and we're lost in the problem, but putting
Speaker 1: our hands on our body brings us back to ourself
Speaker 1: in the present moment, and so that would probably be
Speaker 1: the most common way did it. But often just the
Speaker 1: same words of you know, mindfulness, I know this is
Speaker 1: hard for you, common humanity. You know you aren't alone,
Speaker 1: and the pandemic that was very clear. You certainly aren't
Speaker 1: alone because all human beings are going through this right
Speaker 1: right now. And then words of kindness, you know, what
Speaker 1: do you need? Actually asking myself what do I need,
Speaker 1: even though I couldn't necessarily give it to myself, like
Speaker 1: I need for this, I need to not have to
Speaker 1: wear a mask, or I need for things to be different. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you can't give yourself everything you need but just simply
Speaker 1: asking the question remind you that hey, my needs are
Speaker 1: important too, especially because of that situation I, you know,
Speaker 1: so focused on getting my son's needs met and just
Speaker 1: doing everything I needed to do, just saying, hey, Kristen,
Speaker 1: what do you need right now? And even if it
Speaker 1: was simply like, oh, I need a glass of water,
Speaker 1: I've forgotten to have a glass of water all day.
Speaker 1: So little act like that makes a difference in just
Speaker 1: reminding ourselves more worthy of care. So that's probably the
Speaker 1: main thing I do. And then the thing about self compassion.
Speaker 1: If you look what the word is and the Latin
Speaker 1: passion is to suffer, come is with So it's really
Speaker 1: how do you show up for suffering? Right? It's very
Speaker 1: specific what do you do when suffering is present? And
Speaker 1: normally we try to or we try to solve the
Speaker 1: problem immediately, We try to fix it, we try or
Speaker 1: sometimes we just avoid it, pretend it's not there. Now.
Speaker 1: If we had a friend, we had to be a
Speaker 1: good friend to someone else who's suffering, usually we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm here for you, tell me about it. If we listen,
Speaker 1: we kind of make the space. We allow our friend
Speaker 1: to be upset. We don't try to shut them down.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we do try to solve their problem, but often
Speaker 1: they'll say, hey, you just listen to me first. I
Speaker 1: just need to express myself. So that's really what we
Speaker 1: do with ourselves is showing up for ourselves, allowing ourselves
Speaker 1: to feel what we're feeling. And yes, we do try
Speaker 1: to fix our problems, but not immediately. First, we just
Speaker 1: kind of allow ourselves to feel the pain this is hard.
Speaker 1: We kind of give ourselves emotional support. We make sure
Speaker 1: we don't judge and blame ourselves for what we're feeling.
Speaker 1: That's what I call tender self compassion. And then fear
Speaker 1: self compassion is more about taking the actions that might
Speaker 1: help us. And we do need both. And so I
Speaker 1: can tell you just it really save my butt. Not
Speaker 1: going to lie. It really made a huge difference.
Speaker 3: So we'll come back to fear self compassion in a
Speaker 3: few moments. Normally, when we think of burnout, we think
Speaker 3: about having to change the circumstances of what's happening around us,
Speaker 3: whether that be to take better care of ourselves, to
Speaker 3: say no to things. There's a variety of different things,
Speaker 3: and like I said, that's going to fall under sort
Speaker 3: of fierce self compassion that we'll get to here shortly.
Speaker 3: But in what way does self compassion, the tender side
Speaker 3: of it, help with burnout? How does that actually help
Speaker 3: with the specific thing of burnout.
Speaker 1: So you may think of burnout as the inability to
Speaker 1: cope with the stressors we're experiencing. It overloads the system.
Speaker 1: And so when we're overloaded, when we feel we don't
Speaker 1: have the resources to cope with all the stress we're experiencing,
Speaker 1: christ Fel, we get exhausted, kind of start to shut down.
Speaker 1: We also start to care a little bit less because ironically,
Speaker 1: when you care about a person in your family, caring
Speaker 1: about your work, the more you carry, the more sensitive
Speaker 1: you are to the fact that you can't accomplish what
Speaker 1: you want to accomplish. So we kind of shut down naturally,
Speaker 1: and then we usually start to blame ourselves. We feel
Speaker 1: like there's something wrong with us because I should be
Speaker 1: able to cope, and that leads to feelings have incompetence,
Speaker 1: like oh, I'm just worthless. And also because especially in
Speaker 1: Western society, we judge our self worth so related to
Speaker 1: our productivity that we aren't productive anymore because again we're
Speaker 1: just overwhelmed and beyond our capacity to cope. Then we
Speaker 1: also feel badly about ourselves. So self compassion helps in
Speaker 1: so many ways. One of the things it does when
Speaker 1: we allow ourselves just to say, I feel so overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: this is so hard, I feel scared, I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, and we kind of bring space and
Speaker 1: warmth to those feelings. What that does is instead of
Speaker 1: those feelings like overwhelmingness, like I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do and this is too much, it's like you aren't
Speaker 1: just the difficult thoughts and emotions. You're also like this warm,
Speaker 1: compassionate awareness that's observing the fact that you've got all
Speaker 1: these difficult thoughts and emotions. You become bigger. It's almost
Speaker 1: like you expand your sense of self. There's more room
Speaker 1: for these difficult thoughts and emotions to be there, which
Speaker 1: means it less likely to overwhelm us. By making ourselves bigger,
Speaker 1: instead of just being locked into the difficult thoughts and emotions,
Speaker 1: we're like the compassion that can hold these difficult emotions.
Speaker 1: When we're bigger, we're less likely to get overwhelmed. So
Speaker 1: that's one way it works, especially for coping. It also
Speaker 1: means that it keeps our hearts open. Right, when we
Speaker 1: keep our hearts open to ourselves, we don't have to
Speaker 1: shut down to cope. When we care for ourselves. That
Speaker 1: also means we can still care about our work. We
Speaker 1: don't have to shut down just to survive. And really importantly,
Speaker 1: we're understanding to ourselves. We say, hey, you know, anyone
Speaker 1: in this circumstance would be overwhelmed. You're doing the best
Speaker 1: you can. It's okay to be imperfect. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you can't get it all right, and you know, just
Speaker 1: do the most you can right now and just take
Speaker 1: it step by step. I know I definitely did that
Speaker 1: in the pandemic. Was like, I'm just going to do
Speaker 1: the best I can today and I'm not going to
Speaker 1: ask any more from myself and good enough is good enough,
Speaker 1: you know. So really it's a perfect antidote to burn
Speaker 1: out because it reduces feelings of exhaustion. They call it depersonalization,
Speaker 1: which is like the fancy psychological term for not carrying
Speaker 1: as much. You're kind of shutting down, going numb, and
Speaker 1: then feelings of incompetence.
Speaker 3: So you've been on a couple times before, and all
Speaker 3: encourage listeners to go to those episodes for more in
Speaker 3: depth on what we're about to cover. But I do
Speaker 3: feel like it's always worth spending a couple minutes here,
Speaker 3: and maybe you can just do the couple minute tour.
Speaker 3: But in general, most of our objection when we hear
Speaker 3: this idea of being compassionate to ourselves is that it's
Speaker 3: going to somehow make us weaker or more indulgent, or
Speaker 3: less motivated or selfish. And you've done a tremendous amount
Speaker 3: of research that shows that isn't true. But give us
Speaker 3: the highlights of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I can take the one by one so
Speaker 1: it doesn't make you weaker. The research overwhelmingly shows that
Speaker 1: makes you stronger. Because when you when you show up
Speaker 1: for yourself when things are tough, i e. When you're
Speaker 1: suffering in some way you know you're stressed or you're
Speaker 1: feeling overwhelmed, you're going to be stronger if you support yourself.
Speaker 1: Then if you recap yourself by calling yourself names or
Speaker 1: shaming yourself, I mean, that's kind of in some ways
Speaker 1: a no brainer. I know we think that to be
Speaker 1: tough is to be mean, but to be tough is
Speaker 1: to be supportive. Now that doesn't mean like papering over it.
Speaker 1: There's a problem that's not kind I mean giving it
Speaker 1: to yourself, straight and honest, but with kindness and support.
Speaker 1: A lot of research supporting that. The idea that it's selfish,
Speaker 1: the burnout work is such a good counter to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, actually, if you're going to give to others
Speaker 1: and your givings just one way, you only give compassion
Speaker 1: to others and you ignore your own needs, or you
Speaker 1: just ignore yourself, or you don't think you're worthy of
Speaker 1: getting your needs met, your cut will run dry, guaranteed eventually,
Speaker 1: you know. So compassion needs to feel inward as well
Speaker 1: as that word, in order to keep resourcing yourself so
Speaker 1: you don't burn out. But probably the biggest one is
Speaker 1: this idea that it's going to make me lazy or
Speaker 1: indulgent or unmotivated. The research shows that's the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: So often what happens is when we start like judging
Speaker 1: ourselves for not achieving or thinking that you know, we
Speaker 1: should do this, we should be the other way. If
Speaker 1: we fail or we make a mistake, Often what happens
Speaker 1: does it creates anxiety like, oh, you know, I'm a failure.
Speaker 1: Maybe I shouldn't try so hard because I'm going to fail,
Speaker 1: or or what happens is we make a mistake, we're
Speaker 1: just consumed with feelings of inadequacy and we can't learn
Speaker 1: from the situation. You know. It's a truism. We learn
Speaker 1: from our failures. And so the research shows very clearly
Speaker 1: is when you have self compassion, you can acknowledge when
Speaker 1: you've made a mistake. You can make the hard decisions,
Speaker 1: ones that maybe don't feel as good but are better
Speaker 1: for you in the long run. You can learn, you
Speaker 1: can grow, and you work harder and try harder, and
Speaker 1: you have less fear of failure in life anxiety. So
Speaker 1: it improves motivation. It makes us take more responsibility and
Speaker 1: choose the difficult path over the easiest path. But we
Speaker 1: will ask ourselves, is this really what's good for me?
Speaker 1: Or is it maybe just what society tells me? Sometimes
Speaker 1: maybe you are going to change what you're doing if
Speaker 1: it's not truly you, it's just what your parents, so
Speaker 1: you should do right, you know, And when we're authentic
Speaker 1: in that way, self compassion allows us to be authentic
Speaker 1: or more motivated. There's lots of research that shows up.
Speaker 3: When you say a lot of research you mean, a
Speaker 3: lot of research in the social psychology space. We hear
Speaker 3: about replication crisis and these underpowered studies, and this is
Speaker 3: a lot of research you and the people who've come
Speaker 3: after you have done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I can't even keep up the literature.
Speaker 1: If you just do a Google scholar search of things
Speaker 1: with self compassion in the title, I think there's like
Speaker 1: eight thousand right now. I mean, dozens of studies come
Speaker 1: out every day. So definitely this is not based on
Speaker 1: one clever study. We have a lot of research confirming
Speaker 1: this andvarious ways with self report scales, through training, through
Speaker 1: experimental manipulations. Pretty solid stuff. And you think about it,
Speaker 1: of course, like makes it so obvious. Of course, if
Speaker 1: you support yourself, you're going to do better. Then if
Speaker 1: you slam yourself. I mean, what do we think is
Speaker 1: going to work for a kid or a friend if
Speaker 1: you say you're a stupid loser, I hate you. How
Speaker 1: helpful is that really going to be? And yes, so
Speaker 1: now we think that's going to be good for us.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the exact same effect.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think the point that you made in
Speaker 3: the midst of all that that is so important is
Speaker 3: there is absolutely a way to hold ourselves accountable to
Speaker 3: certain standards. Yes, to be honest with ourselves and when
Speaker 3: we haven't lived up to who we want to be
Speaker 3: or and the situations we want to be, And there's
Speaker 3: a way to do that that's kind and not you know, awful.
Speaker 3: And I'm working on a book and I was writing
Speaker 3: a chapter. I was thinking about this idea a little bit,
Speaker 3: and it was interesting because I realized where I learned
Speaker 3: my particularly harsh internal voice, which has gotten so much
Speaker 3: better over the life fifteen years, but was my father.
Speaker 3: And I remembered. I flashed back to playing golf and
Speaker 3: the things he would say to himself when he missed
Speaker 3: a shot, and the same things to me. And it
Speaker 3: did not make me a better golfer. It made me terrify,
Speaker 3: is what It made me. Right, It made me not
Speaker 3: want to play, It made me afraid, I mean, all
Speaker 3: those things. And so it's very clear how I see
Speaker 3: what his intention was. He was a old school military
Speaker 3: type person. That was how he talked to himself. But
Speaker 3: at least in my case, it absolutely was a thing
Speaker 3: that sort of backfired anything that I was subjected to
Speaker 3: that much criticism from him, and thus then myself I
Speaker 3: just simply didn't do anymore if I could avoid it.
Speaker 1: It used to be the parenting philosophy, you know, spare
Speaker 1: the rod, spoil the child. And I think that's in
Speaker 1: general switch not for everyone. But we do have to
Speaker 1: have compassion for where that comes from, whether it's in
Speaker 1: our parents or ourselves, because when we feel threatened, just
Speaker 1: as a species, you know, we go into fight, flight
Speaker 1: or freeze mode. The criticism is the fight mode. There's
Speaker 1: a part of us that thinks if I just mean
Speaker 1: enough for you know, strong enough or intense enough, I'll
Speaker 1: be able to control the situation, so be able to
Speaker 1: force myself to get it right, or be able to
Speaker 1: force my son to have that good gull string. It's
Speaker 1: a distortive view, it's an immature view, it's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, but it's also very natural. The sympathetic nervous
Speaker 1: system only knows, ah, you know, that's kind of it's
Speaker 1: a form of and so that's what it does, and
Speaker 1: it comes up, and you know, we don't have to
Speaker 1: judge ourselves or other people for having it. It really
Speaker 1: comes from a place of fear. And so I think
Speaker 1: safety is absolutely the core of self compassion. It's not
Speaker 1: even so much being nice to yourself. So if you
Speaker 1: look at the three components of self compassion, which are mindfulness,
Speaker 1: a sense of common humanity, and kindness and support, they
Speaker 1: really established safety. Mindfulness gives us safety when we know
Speaker 1: we are more than just these difficult thoughts and feelings.
Speaker 1: That gives this is a sense of like more perspective
Speaker 1: and safety. We know we aren't alone. For human beings,
Speaker 1: feeling alone and isolated is like the scariest feeling we
Speaker 1: can possibly have. So remember, hey, we're human, you know
Speaker 1: we aren't alone. It happens my son, for instance, he
Speaker 1: just left his suitcase on the train, left his medication
Speaker 1: in it, and the way he talked himself through it
Speaker 1: is I know this happens to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It's not just me. You could just see when he
Speaker 1: said that to himself, you know, he started feeling safer
Speaker 1: and calmer, and then the kindness and support again, remembering
Speaker 1: thought like, yeah, okay, maybe we did bess up or
Speaker 1: make a mistake. Yeah, we don't want to keep on
Speaker 1: leaving our suitcases on trains. It's not fun, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're a bad person. You know, kind of
Speaker 1: be an understanding, warm and that carrying attitude is going
Speaker 1: to be more likely to help people learn from it.
Speaker 1: So again with my son, this actually really happened just
Speaker 1: like three days ago. I said, well, this is how
Speaker 1: we learned. This is a really good learning opportunity. One thing,
Speaker 1: maybe from now we can keep her medication in our backpack,
Speaker 1: be carrying your body and like, actually, he said, well
Speaker 1: I heard about these air tags, so I bought him
Speaker 1: some air tags to put in his suitcase. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a mundane example, but if I had
Speaker 1: been like, oh, you're a stupid idiot and he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm such a stupid idiot, he might still be just
Speaker 1: in that place. And now it's like, okay, next time,
Speaker 1: I'll put my medicine in my backpack and I'll get
Speaker 1: some air tags and I'll maybe do like a little checklist.
Speaker 1: This is how we learn and grow from our mistakes
Speaker 1: and failures. But so much easier when we feel safe
Speaker 1: than as opposed to when we feel threatened.
Speaker 3: So a lot of people, and I think I was
Speaker 3: this way when I was first really exposed to a
Speaker 3: lot of this research. We'll say, I hear what you're
Speaker 3: saying about the research, and you know, I've been really
Speaker 3: hard on myself and that's gotten me where I am.
Speaker 3: How do you respond to that? What are your thoughts
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 1: Well, it is true. I mean it does kind of work,
Speaker 1: just like harsh corporal punishment for children kind of works.
Speaker 1: Kind of you might say, try it and true method
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. So it does kind of work,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't work as well as support feeling supported
Speaker 1: from a sense of safety. We actually taken more information
Speaker 1: when we feel safe or less anxious, which allows us
Speaker 1: to take in more information, or less self focus, which
Speaker 1: allows us to take it more information, so that we learned.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you know, and it does kind of work,
Speaker 1: and it'd be sleep to deny it because there are
Speaker 1: many a person who got their law degree by beating
Speaker 1: themselves up. But would they have gotten done better, maybe
Speaker 1: been less stressed, maybe had lower cortisol levels that they
Speaker 1: had taken this more supportive method. The research shows that
Speaker 1: quite clearly it's more effective.
Speaker 3: The other thing I've seen in this is just in
Speaker 3: people I've coached and people I've known and talked to,
Speaker 3: is that it also seems like although it does work
Speaker 3: in certain people, it stops working. Yes, and I see
Speaker 3: this in people usually in their forties, where it's like
Speaker 3: it worked for a while, but now everything is just
Speaker 3: either having really trouble being motivated, having real problems with
Speaker 3: anxiety and depression and other things. So, yes, it did work,
Speaker 3: but there was a cost. There's a guy I don't
Speaker 3: know if you know, doctor Aziz Gazipura, but he wrote
Speaker 3: a book called on My Own Side, which minds similar territory,
Speaker 3: which is a great phrase, you be on your own side,
Speaker 3: And I think he makes an analogy in it to
Speaker 3: like burning dirty fuel in an engine. Yes, it will burn,
Speaker 3: but eventually the engine is going to get gunked up,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of what I've seen also is yes,
Speaker 3: I think that's the case with me. Yes, it did
Speaker 3: work for a time. Well maybe not. I was a
Speaker 3: homeless heroin addict at twenty four. Maybe it never worked
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it can go.
Speaker 3: I may need to rethink that one.
Speaker 1: And if you're burnt out, harsh self criticism absolutely contributes
Speaker 1: to burnout and makes you more anxious. You're more in
Speaker 1: that fight flight or freeze mode. Elevates your stress levels.
Speaker 1: It makes you more self focused, and when you're burnt out,
Speaker 1: you aren't working that's a whole point that you're exhausted.
Speaker 1: If you can't get out of bed, then you aren't
Speaker 1: producing like you used to. So in the long run
Speaker 1: it's definitely counterproductive. Even in the short run it's counterproductive.
Speaker 3: So you say in the book that fighting burnout makes
Speaker 3: it worse, and you're talking about resistance in general being futile. Yes,
Speaker 3: say more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is a basic psychological principle. And again
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research that we know that supports this.
Speaker 1: So when a particular thought has arisen, or have a
Speaker 1: certain feeling, or you know, in a situation like I
Speaker 1: feel exhausted, and we have to accept that this is
Speaker 1: the reality right now. If we say this shouldn't be
Speaker 1: in this reality, something's wrong with me for having this reality,
Speaker 1: or we ignore this reality. In other words, unless we
Speaker 1: accept the reality that this is how it is right now,
Speaker 1: we don't have that sense of balance and equanimity. We
Speaker 1: need to make changes in the future. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like racism. You know, if you fight racism, but you
Speaker 1: do it by saying, well, there's no racism, how are
Speaker 1: you going to change it? So you kind of have
Speaker 1: to accept the present moment in order to make changes
Speaker 1: in the future. And so that's really how it works psychologically.
Speaker 1: We don't like to feel difficult, painful emotions. We don't
Speaker 1: like to feel stressed, we don't like to feel anxiety,
Speaker 1: we don't like to feel exhaustion. So we fight it
Speaker 1: and we try to make it go away, and we
Speaker 1: stress ourselves out because it's not going away, and then
Speaker 1: it just exacerbates it. We go into this downward spiral.
Speaker 1: So if we can accept the fact that at this
Speaker 1: moment it sucks, you don't want to say that it
Speaker 1: doesn't suck. It does suck. It sucks to be burnt out,
Speaker 1: you know the way to put it. It's not fun,
Speaker 1: it's not good for you, for anyone else, it's not enjoyable.
Speaker 1: It is a problem. We don't want to pretend that
Speaker 1: it's not, you know. But then when you kind of
Speaker 1: opened that like oh wow, this sucks, and you kind
Speaker 1: of give it some more space, so again you aren't
Speaker 1: just the feelings of being burnt out, but you're also
Speaker 1: this compassionate presence that says, oh, that's really hard, you know,
Speaker 1: and like, what can I do to help? We feel this? Naturally,
Speaker 1: when we have compassion for someone else, we aren't identified
Speaker 1: with their problems, and that's what gives us the space
Speaker 1: to be bigger and just to focus on getting this
Speaker 1: kind of fount of kindness and warmth and support. So
Speaker 1: when we do that for ourselves, it's like we entry
Speaker 1: you might say, this bigger perspective, our bigger self, and
Speaker 1: this allows us not to be so overwhelmed. But if
Speaker 1: we resist it, if we pretend it's not there, we
Speaker 1: fight against it. It's almost like it's like if you
Speaker 1: make a really tight fist and you fight the tight
Speaker 1: fist by making your fist tighter, it just makes it worse.
Speaker 1: But if you just open your hand, you know, you
Speaker 1: can kind of feel you open to the pain or
Speaker 1: whatever's here, that it is still there, but you aren't
Speaker 1: making it worse. And you also have a lot more
Speaker 1: degrees of freedom, so to speak, to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what might I do to help myself in this situation.
Speaker 3: You talk about approaching emotions with a strong back and
Speaker 3: a soft front. Yeah, explain that.
Speaker 1: Not to steal that line. It's a famous line of
Speaker 1: Joan Halifax. He's a wonderful Buddhist teacher. Actually, So again,
Speaker 1: some people think that compassion is just about being soft,
Speaker 1: like being soft and squishy and oh that's I'm so sorry,
Speaker 1: that's so hard. Yeah, we might say that that's so hard,
Speaker 1: But there's also certain like thing about having your own back.
Speaker 1: When you have your own back, it's like there's a
Speaker 1: strength there, there's a stability there, like I'm here for you.
Speaker 1: I will do whatever I need to do to make
Speaker 1: sure you're safe, you know, protect you if you need to,
Speaker 1: or provide for your needs, drawing boundaries for instance, you
Speaker 1: know if other people are trying to harm you. A
Speaker 1: part of having this strong back standing up for yourself,
Speaker 1: speaking up. So the soft front is, you might say,
Speaker 1: the tender self compassion of accepting the pain, accepting our
Speaker 1: difficult emotions, accepting ourselves unconditionally. And the strong back is
Speaker 1: like standing up for what's right, which might mean, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe some of our behaviors are not working out so well,
Speaker 1: maybe we need to think about doing something differently because
Speaker 1: it's not in align with with my values. Things like that.
Speaker 1: The strong back may say you need to get up
Speaker 1: off the couch. You know. That's really the interplay of
Speaker 1: the fears and the tender, the strength and the acceptance.
Speaker 1: It's like yin and young you know, if you have
Speaker 1: just one or the other, it's not going to work.
Speaker 1: We really need both to be there simultaneously. If you're
Speaker 1: just hard toward others or yourself, you aren't very helpful.
Speaker 1: But if you're just soft and squishy, you aren't helpful either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes me think a little bit of some
Speaker 3: research from Ethan Cross at the University of Michigan wrote
Speaker 3: a book called Chatter But Yes. Later in the book
Speaker 3: he talks about something I don't remember exactly what he
Speaker 3: calls it, but he was talking about venting to other
Speaker 3: people and whether it's helpful or not. And the research
Speaker 3: that they did seem to show that truly healing conversations
Speaker 3: have two elements. One element is the one that we
Speaker 3: traditionally think of, which is just listen to the person
Speaker 3: and don't try and solve their problem, validate what they're feeling,
Speaker 3: be clear that you support them, that you're on their side,
Speaker 3: don't try and fix it like do that, but that
Speaker 3: the most healing conversations also then can go on and
Speaker 3: sometimes can show the person who's suffering some perspective that
Speaker 3: maybe they're not seeing. And I think we end up
Speaker 3: very often in what we want from others and what
Speaker 3: we give others. In one of those two camps, we're
Speaker 3: either all like, hey, you know, I know what you're feeling.
Speaker 3: It's so hard. It's so hard, or we end up
Speaker 3: trying to solve people's problems. Yeah, and it just makes
Speaker 3: me think of what you're saying here about this sort
Speaker 3: of strong back, soft from or fearcey and tender self compassion,
Speaker 3: that there are elements of both that are ultimately most helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting they really do fit together. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like with my friends, I bet friends tell
Speaker 1: me I sometimes give advice. I know I'm not supposed to,
Speaker 1: but if you're just asked me, would you like some advice,
Speaker 1: and then I tell them, then they know It's like
Speaker 1: it's not invalidating, right with giving advice? People just want
Speaker 1: to be heard? Is it someone invalidates their emotions? But
Speaker 1: if you ask once they're clear it's coming from a
Speaker 1: place of support, not of trying to control or not judgment,
Speaker 1: then it's so much more effective. Can kind of say,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with ourselves when we try to
Speaker 1: fix things immediately, there's a way in which we're somehow
Speaker 1: thinking that means that we're bad or we're wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: or that there's something that this situation is unacceptable. When
Speaker 1: we make that very clear, I'm unconditionally worthy, whether or
Speaker 1: not I've just screwed up. I'm here for myself, regardless
Speaker 1: of how difficult this moment is. Plus. But if there's
Speaker 1: anything I can do to help change my behavior or
Speaker 1: do something differently, I'm open to it. Kyle Rogers, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard the securious paradox is the more I accept myself,
Speaker 1: the more I can change.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the soft front actually helps us have a strong back.
Speaker 1: They aren't in contradiction. They work together. They enhance one another.
Speaker 3: In the chapter about dealing with the difficult emotions of burnout,
Speaker 3: you talk about the five stages of acceptance. Can you
Speaker 3: walk us through what those five are?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So there are five stages of working with difficult emotions,
Speaker 1: and they aren't as linear as I'm going to make
Speaker 1: them out to be, but I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: them in order. Or The first and most natural response
Speaker 1: to a difficult emotion is resistance. We don't like it,
Speaker 1: we don't want it here, we want to push it away.
Speaker 1: It's as if someone comes to your door and you
Speaker 1: don't like is come come there, and it's like, go away.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to. I want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: But then we when we open up a little bit
Speaker 1: more to the experience of the emotion, we can actually
Speaker 1: explore what's there. It's like peeking through the people you know,
Speaker 1: like who's there? Since you know, maybe we don't like it,
Speaker 1: but at least we're a little curious. We aren't full
Speaker 1: in full on resistant mode. Even though who's there. Don't
Speaker 1: like that person, it might still be some negative reaction
Speaker 1: to it. And then there's some some tolerating So okay,
Speaker 1: we've identified what's here. We want use mindfulness to do that.
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, okay, this experience is here. I
Speaker 1: don't like it, but I guess I can deal with that.
Speaker 1: It'd be like letting the person you don't like into
Speaker 1: your foyer. You can come into the foye, but don't
Speaker 1: come into the house. Shit right, stay there. But it's okay,
Speaker 1: but not so sure about it. And then we start
Speaker 1: to feel a little safe and that this is self
Speaker 1: compassion really facilitates this. We can be let go of
Speaker 1: resistance a little bit more. All these stages are in
Speaker 1: some ways letting go of resistance versus total resistance, and
Speaker 1: then we explore, we let go enough to least figure
Speaker 1: out what's here, and then we kind of tolerate, and
Speaker 1: then we can actually allow ourselves to feel what we feel,
Speaker 1: so we give up most of our resistance. We kind
Speaker 1: of okay, this is what I'm feeling. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to fight it. I'm going to be with it as
Speaker 1: it is. It's kind of letting the person into the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead, wander around the house. That's okay. You know,
Speaker 1: you can even use the bathroom if you want. No,
Speaker 1: you know, you're kind of really given up your resistance.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the final stage is what's called befriending. And
Speaker 1: this is where we realize that there's usually some learning
Speaker 1: gift of learning in the difficult emotion. So almost every
Speaker 1: difficult emotion can be used as an opportunity to let
Speaker 1: us know, well, where are our wounds that might need healing,
Speaker 1: where are our triggers? Perhaps that might let us know
Speaker 1: there's some stuff we need to work on. Where might
Speaker 1: we be resisting and where could we let go a
Speaker 1: little bit more? What lesson might I learn from this?
Speaker 1: It would help me do something differently in the future,
Speaker 1: and that kind of comes at the very end. But
Speaker 1: the reason it's important to know what goes in stages
Speaker 1: is some people think the moment they have a difficult
Speaker 1: emotion or different experience, you're supposed to go straight to
Speaker 1: the Okay, what's the silver lighting? What can I learn
Speaker 1: from this? Or it's you know, like roomy, just let
Speaker 1: the emotion sweep through your house. Yeah, you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: want to do that. It's okay, just let them into
Speaker 1: the foyer for a while if that's all you can handle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Not only is that not what we sometimes want to
Speaker 3: do or should do, we just can't write. And that's
Speaker 3: what I love about this. There's a Asumlant Kid quote
Speaker 3: that I use fairly often where she talks about letting
Speaker 3: go and she says that letting go is a spiraling
Speaker 3: and winding process. And I love that idea. And that's
Speaker 3: why I loved these stages, because my experience is we
Speaker 3: don't tend to go from really not wanting something to
Speaker 3: be there to allowing or befriending instantly. It's a process,
Speaker 3: and this can show stages along the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the other thing it does is the part
Speaker 1: of us that's feeling the difficult emotion, and maybe this
Speaker 1: is a young, wounded part of us. If we immediately
Speaker 1: just say okay, give up, don't resist anymore and befriend
Speaker 1: or you know, just allow yourself to feel it, that
Speaker 1: part of us may feel invalidated. Yeah, and so there's
Speaker 1: something about saying, take your time, go slowly. Let's that
Speaker 1: part of us know that okay, it's accepted, it can
Speaker 1: feel safe, it's okay, it doesn't have to like change
Speaker 1: on a dime. And that can also help the letting
Speaker 1: go process unfold a little more smoothly if there's not
Speaker 1: the pressure to have to like let go all at once.
Speaker 3: You talk about something called the paradox of self compassion,
Speaker 3: which is we give ourselves self compassion not to feel better,
Speaker 3: but because we feel bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's related to what we've been talking about
Speaker 1: in terms of resistance. So often when we give ourselves
Speaker 1: compassion and support and kindness, we do tend to feel better.
Speaker 1: You know, we stopped judging ourselves or shaming ourselves, and
Speaker 1: it feels good to feel supported in this way. What
Speaker 1: can happen with practicing self compassion is we start to
Speaker 1: use self compassion as a hidden form of resistance. Like
Speaker 1: let's say I'm feeling worried about something coming up in
Speaker 1: the future, and in the past I gave myself some compassion.
Speaker 1: It's okay to be worried. I'm here for you, and
Speaker 1: I started worrying a little less. What can happen after
Speaker 1: a whiles with them, we start to give ourselves compassion
Speaker 1: to get rid of the worry instead of supporting ourselves
Speaker 1: because we're worried. And whenever we start using something as
Speaker 1: a form of resistance, a hidden or not, it doesn't
Speaker 1: work right. That's the resistance is feudile idea. What we
Speaker 1: resist persist and grow stronger. And this is established psychological principle.
Speaker 1: And by the way, not oh, sometimes we can compartmentalize temporary,
Speaker 1: but eventually we have to open to it otherwise it's
Speaker 1: going to come back to haunt us. So if we
Speaker 1: just ask ourselves, why am I giving myself compassion? Is
Speaker 1: it to get rid of my pain or is it
Speaker 1: simply to show up for myself to be on my
Speaker 1: side as I'm experiencing pain, And it's the second we're after.
Speaker 1: And then ironically, yes, of course we're going to do
Speaker 1: what we can to get rid of our pain. We're
Speaker 1: going to try to make steps to be healthy and well,
Speaker 1: we're going to ask ourselves what we need. First, we
Speaker 1: have to accept ourselves in our situation with an open
Speaker 1: heart before we can take those next steps of trying
Speaker 1: to make healthy change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this always strikes me as a form of mental
Speaker 3: and emotional judo. Yes, that goes on because it's the
Speaker 3: idea of like people say, well, just if you just
Speaker 3: allow your feelings, then that's the thing to do. And
Speaker 3: so we'll allow our feelings and the reason is to
Speaker 3: get them to go away, at least that's the reason
Speaker 3: I'm doing it, right, I'm like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 3: allow you so you get out of here. And it's
Speaker 3: sort of this idea where like, of course there's a
Speaker 3: part of us that does want that, and that's what
Speaker 3: we're aiming at. And yet, to your point, if that's
Speaker 3: the whole purpose, then it may not work as well.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like the whole debate around meditation practice
Speaker 3: that's been around forever, like, well, if you're not practicing
Speaker 3: to get somewhere, then why are you doing it? And yet,
Speaker 3: if you're doing it to get somewhere, it suddenly becomes
Speaker 3: a whole lot less effective, and so, like I said,
Speaker 3: it's this sort of subtle judo I feel like we
Speaker 3: have to do inside ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sometimes the way work with that as I say
Speaker 1: things to myself, especially those because remember it's parts of
Speaker 1: us that are having these difficult emotions right Often these
Speaker 1: are young parts of ourselves, wounded parts of ourselves, scared
Speaker 1: parts of ourselves. What happens is we resist feeling them
Speaker 1: and want to shove those emotions away immediately. Those young
Speaker 1: parts of us often feel invalidated or shut down or
Speaker 1: not accepted. So sometimes I say to myself, I will
Speaker 1: not abandon you. Really interesting the reaction inside your system
Speaker 1: when you say to yourself I will not abandon you.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, you can feel what you feel, I
Speaker 1: won't abandon you. And then once there's that sense of safety, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be abandoned, then those parts start
Speaker 1: to feel safe and then they start to let go
Speaker 1: a little more readily. But the bottom line is I've
Speaker 1: actually told myself, even if you never ever change, I
Speaker 1: still love you. And then it's like, WHOA, that's a
Speaker 1: big one. Really, yeah, are you sure it's not contingent
Speaker 1: on maybe even making progrests. Nope, when you give yourself
Speaker 1: that sort of unconditional bottom line acceptance, you know inevitably
Speaker 1: you can't you can't do it as a form of manipulation,
Speaker 1: but inevitably that sense of safety and love helps us
Speaker 1: release and let go of those things that aren't serving
Speaker 1: us anymore.
Speaker 3: So maybe what we can do with our remaining time
Speaker 3: here is to try and to talk about a couple
Speaker 3: of the tools that are in this book. So, if
Speaker 3: somebody has listened to all of this believes now that
Speaker 3: self compassion is a way they would like to try
Speaker 3: and approach themselves and their lives, where do they start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's actually pretty easy to start. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of things you could do almost immediately, even without
Speaker 1: reading the book. One is the good news about self
Speaker 1: compassion is most of us have a template for what
Speaker 1: compassion and support looks like. Right, maybe we have a
Speaker 1: good friend that we were compassionate with, or we have
Speaker 1: an animal, or you know someone in our life we
Speaker 1: care about. We know what that looks like, what would
Speaker 1: be supportive, what is helpful? Or maybe we've had someone
Speaker 1: like that in our life. A teacher or a grandparent
Speaker 1: who's been compassionate and supportive, or even if you haven't,
Speaker 1: even if you have been lucky enough to have that
Speaker 1: in your life, there's like movie figures like Obi wan
Speaker 1: Kenobi or some of these, you know, we have these
Speaker 1: like images from literature and film about what a really caring,
Speaker 1: compassionate person looks like. So we don't have to invent
Speaker 1: the wheel. So what you can do. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: burnt out and you want to be more supportive to yourself.
Speaker 1: You can either ask what would I say to someone
Speaker 1: I really cared about who was burnt out and wanted
Speaker 1: to be there for them? Or what would maybe a
Speaker 1: really good friend say to me? Or what would this
Speaker 1: like fictional character that I, you know, if maybe finally
Speaker 1: drawing to say to me right now? And then so
Speaker 1: we have the template. We don't have to invent the template.
Speaker 1: We just need to kind of adopt it. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not gonna lie does it can feel
Speaker 1: a little awkward at first. It feels like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: being phony, I'm not really feeling it, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to feel it right away.
Speaker 1: Intention is driving the train here. It kind of leads
Speaker 1: the locomotive. You set your intention to be kinder and
Speaker 1: more supportive towards yourself. You try to, you know, put
Speaker 1: yourself in that position, do the perspective taking, and then
Speaker 1: eventually the feelings come later. It's really all about cultivating
Speaker 1: good will for yourself, not good feelings. The good feelings.
Speaker 1: We can't really control whether or not we feel it,
Speaker 1: but we can cultivate our intention to be more supportive
Speaker 1: and kinder to ourselves.
Speaker 3: You talk about something called backdraft when we start practicing
Speaker 3: self compassion.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so maybe you do speak to yourself like you
Speaker 1: would speak to your good friend, and you say, I'm
Speaker 1: here for you, I care about you, you know what
Speaker 1: do you need, and instead of feeling compassion or feeling safe,
Speaker 1: you feel agitated, You feel scared or maybe even angry
Speaker 1: it's actually very very common, or you feel even worse
Speaker 1: than you did before. So usually that's back draft. It's
Speaker 1: a firefighting term, and firefighting it means, you know, when
Speaker 1: you open the doors of a house on fire, the
Speaker 1: fresh air rushes in, ignites the flames, and the flames
Speaker 1: rush out. That's why firefighters don't just open the doors
Speaker 1: of a house on fire. Well, and actually something similar
Speaker 1: can happen with us if our whole life the way
Speaker 1: we've dealt with our pain and our frustration or our fears
Speaker 1: by shutting down, numbing ourselves out, closing our hearts, we
Speaker 1: open the doors of our hearts and like the fresh air,
Speaker 1: the care and consider rushes in, and often the old
Speaker 1: pain just rushes out. It's like seize the light of
Speaker 1: day and comes out in a whoosh. And so we
Speaker 1: feel it as the anger or the fear we actually,
Speaker 1: you know, we feel worse, or sometimes it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of like contrast, you're kind to yourself and you
Speaker 1: immediately remember how, like all my parents weren't kind to me,
Speaker 1: or this person wasn't kind to me. It's actually all
Speaker 1: part of the healing process. It's a natural phenomena. There's
Speaker 1: nothing to worry about. It doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: It means you're doing it right. But it does mean
Speaker 1: you need to go a little more slowly. It means
Speaker 1: maybe just maybe you're flinging open the doors of your
Speaker 1: heart a little too quickly. You need to like have
Speaker 1: those picks that the firefighters used, like poke holes. In
Speaker 1: other words, you know, maybe just give yourself a little
Speaker 1: bit of compassion for a few minutes and then stop,
Speaker 1: or give yourself compassion, maybe not mental compassion. Maybe putting
Speaker 1: your hands on your heart and saying I will never
Speaker 1: abandon you is way too much. You know, it can't
Speaker 1: be good. But yeah, that's pretty intense stuff, right, Maybe
Speaker 1: something like well maybe I'll just have a cup of tea,
Speaker 1: especially if you're British, you can have a cup of
Speaker 1: tea or you know, take a walk or do something
Speaker 1: else to just again validate so your needs are important,
Speaker 1: that you're worthy of care and consideration. But this may
Speaker 1: be a little intense and maybe a little more behavioral
Speaker 1: or just kind of feeling your feet on the floor,
Speaker 1: something like that. Grounding yourself, stabilizing yourself. Backdraft usually does
Speaker 1: get better over time. It is more intense with people
Speaker 1: with the trauma history, just something to be aware of.
Speaker 1: It can absolutely be work with, but it may you
Speaker 1: may need to go a little slower. We have a
Speaker 1: saying walk slowly, go farther, so it's not like a
Speaker 1: sprint to have your heart wide open, you know, just
Speaker 1: little bits at a time. As you feel more comfortable,
Speaker 1: as you get more used to it, and you can
Speaker 1: also have compassion for your backdraft because it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's tough, you know right, hurts to give myself kindness
Speaker 1: If you had a friend who said that to you
Speaker 1: big oh sorry, you know so.
Speaker 3: Listener and thinking about that and all the other great
Speaker 3: wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to isolate
Speaker 3: just one top insider gem that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would it be? Remember, little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 3: a lot. Profound change comes as a result of tiny actions,
Speaker 3: not huge efforts. I mentioned earlier that I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about relationships and how to improve the quality of them
Speaker 3: because they're the quarnerstone of our well being. Thriving connections
Speaker 3: light up our world, while strained ones can dim even
Speaker 3: the brightest days. Too often we face relationship hurdles alone,
Speaker 3: feeling lost and powerless. But here's the key. Building strong
Speaker 3: relationships isn't just about chance. It's about mastering specific, learnable skills.
Speaker 3: And here's a quick exercise you can do to improve
Speaker 3: your relationships. Establish small daily or weeklyals that foster connections,
Speaker 3: such as shared meals or walks. Every small effort to
Speaker 3: connect with a friend or family member can lead to
Speaker 3: a deeper or more meaningful relationship. For example, Chris and
Speaker 3: I have a weekly ongoing social night commitment where one
Speaker 3: week night every week we get together and do something
Speaker 3: and having it scheduled just keeps us connected. So if
Speaker 3: you found this helpful, this tip came from this week's newsletter,
Speaker 3: and you can sign up for free and get more
Speaker 3: just like it at Goodwolf dot me slash relationships. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think both those things, this idea of extending goodwill
Speaker 3: not necessarily good feelings and backdraft are useful because I
Speaker 3: do know a lot of people this is challenging, right
Speaker 3: They don't believe it at first, or it feels really false,
Speaker 3: or it doesn't feel natural. And that idea of recognizing that,
Speaker 3: like I love the way you said it, that the
Speaker 3: it's the intention that's driving the locomotive. It's the intention
Speaker 3: to continue to show up for myself in the best
Speaker 3: way that I can.
Speaker 1: If you think about what self compassion is, in many ways,
Speaker 1: it's a perspective shift. Normally we are in the perspective
Speaker 1: of the sense of self that needs compassion, that's flawed,
Speaker 1: is imperfect, or that's struggling or scared or has some
Speaker 1: pain in some way. What you're doing when you give
Speaker 1: yourself compassion, as you're switching into the perspective of the
Speaker 1: person giving compassion. Most of us, again are used to
Speaker 1: this part of ourselves. We're used to giving it to others, right,
Speaker 1: But this is also a really important part of ourself
Speaker 1: has always been there, and this part is less limited,
Speaker 1: It struggles less, it's more competent, it's wiser, it's calmer,
Speaker 1: it's more peaceful, it's more loving. So you might say,
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're loosening our sense of identity
Speaker 1: with the normal, everyday sense of self, and we're just
Speaker 1: adopting consciously this identity that comes up naturally when we're
Speaker 1: there for a dog or a cat or our children.
Speaker 1: But we have to do it a little more intentionally
Speaker 1: to it inhabit that par part of ourselves toward ourselves.
Speaker 1: But again, it's not rocket science. It's a part of us.
Speaker 1: Most of us have known, you know, for a long time.
Speaker 1: We just have to remember to make that little switch.
Speaker 1: It's a big switch. I'm not gonna lie, it's a
Speaker 1: big switch.
Speaker 3: I noticed that you talk about like talking to ourselves
Speaker 3: as we might talk to a good friend or a
Speaker 3: small child or an animal we cared about. I never
Speaker 3: hear you say talk to yourself like you would your mother.
Speaker 1: It's a joke. It's a joke for some people. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: I don't also say your spouse, your partner either, because
Speaker 1: sometimes people are too close. And that's actually the reason
Speaker 1: why we say a good friend, because usually you aren't
Speaker 1: identified with your friend's pain. If your friend loses their job,
Speaker 1: you aren't scared by it, right, right, and so you
Speaker 1: can just be your most compassionate self. But if your
Speaker 1: child loses their job or your partner, you know, when
Speaker 1: we're too close, then our sense of self gets triggered
Speaker 1: and the fear can come in. And then when we're afraid,
Speaker 1: we often use these strategies that form when we are young,
Speaker 1: which are like fight or scream or hide or shame,
Speaker 1: which aren't as effective.
Speaker 3: Well, Kristen, thank you so much. It's been such a
Speaker 3: pleasure to talk with you again. Thank you for coming
Speaker 3: back on and sharing your work with us.
Speaker 1: It's been my pleasure. Thank you for the good work
Speaker 1: you do.
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