Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey, Slight Changers.
Speaker 2: So it's only January, but if you're like me, you're
Speaker 2: already feeling pretty overwhelmed by twenty twenty five insert melting
Speaker 2: face emoji. Three weeks in and my Slight Change team
Speaker 2: and I have found ourselves ruminating, feeling despondent, and being
Speaker 2: needlessly self critical. And so we decided to look back
Speaker 2: at the archives and create a special compilation episode for you.
Speaker 2: We're sharing our favorite scientific tools for improving our relationship
Speaker 2: with ourselves and our mental health. Today, we're going to
Speaker 2: hear from three psychologists we've had on the show, Ethan
Speaker 2: cross And on the Science of introspection, Madubey Aquinola, who
Speaker 2: specializes in stress research, and Kristin Nef, a pioneer in
Speaker 2: the science of self compassion. We'll start with Ethan, who
Speaker 2: talks about our inner voice, that internal monologue that often
Speaker 2: serves us so well, but sometimes turns negative and starts
Speaker 2: the spiral out of control. Ethan calls this chatter and
Speaker 2: he shares some valuable tips for reining it in. But
Speaker 2: first he explains why having an inner voice at all
Speaker 2: is actually an incredible feature of our minds.
Speaker 3: I like to think about this inner voice as a
Speaker 3: kind of Swiss army knife of the human mind that
Speaker 3: lets us achieve a number of important things. So, at
Speaker 3: the most basic end of the spectrum, your inner voice
Speaker 3: lets you just keep information active in your heads. This
Speaker 3: may not be the most glamorous feature of it, but my,
Speaker 3: oh my, is it an important one. So if you
Speaker 3: go to the grocery store, for example, and you're like me,
Speaker 3: you know, my wife tells me what we need, and
Speaker 3: thirty seconds later, I forget what those things are. I'm
Speaker 3: walking down the grocery all that I'm thinking to myself
Speaker 3: what do I have to order? And I go over
Speaker 3: the list in my head cheez granola fruit. I'm using
Speaker 3: words silently to repeat those items. It's part of our
Speaker 3: working memory system, basic system of the human mind that
Speaker 3: is fundamental to our ability to navigate the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love another one you mentioned in your book,
Speaker 2: which is that our inability to escape our minds is
Speaker 2: also a driver of human ingenuity. It's like the fact
Speaker 2: that we can't escape our minds is giving us this
Speaker 2: fertile soil for creative ideas to come into existence. Right,
Speaker 2: I mean those the thoughts you have in the shower
Speaker 2: and you're taking a walk and you don't even notice it,
Speaker 2: but your mind is drifting off and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden you come up with the new idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think this is the source
Speaker 3: of human innovation, which is why I think we actually
Speaker 3: want to give our elves latitude to let our introspective
Speaker 3: capacities run wild. So you know, it's interesting. There's some
Speaker 3: research which suggests that we spend between one half and
Speaker 3: one third of our waking hours not focused on the present,
Speaker 3: and sometimes those data are used to suggest that there's
Speaker 3: a huge problem, right because we should always be in
Speaker 3: the present, but this ability to travel in time in
Speaker 3: our minds, so to turn our attention in where to
Speaker 3: think about our past and anticipate the future. This lets
Speaker 3: us do a number of remarkable things.
Speaker 2: When does our inner voice become harmful and transform into
Speaker 2: what you call chatter?
Speaker 3: So it becomes harmful when we experience something in our
Speaker 3: life that cuse us to try to use this tool
Speaker 3: that we have to make sense of our feelings, but
Speaker 3: the tool gets jammed up, so something bad happens. We
Speaker 3: turn our attention in word to try to make sense
Speaker 3: of the problem, but we get stuck in a negative
Speaker 3: thought loop. That's what I call chatter. You keep on
Speaker 3: trying to think and work through the problem, but you
Speaker 3: don't make any progress. And there are lots of different
Speaker 3: terms that scientists have used to describe this state. If
Speaker 3: it's chatter about the past, we tend to call that ruminating.
Speaker 3: If it's about the future or present, we call that worrying.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we call it perseverating. But the common idea here
Speaker 3: is you're trying to make sense of a problem with language,
Speaker 3: but you're not making any forward progress. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like the visual is one of a hamster on an
Speaker 3: exercise wheel.
Speaker 2: We fall prey to this illusion when we're actively repeating
Speaker 2: those loops in our mind, that we are actually making
Speaker 2: progress because just merely indulging in that topic, right, like
Speaker 2: staying in that space. I think it fools our brains
Speaker 2: into thinking, ah, I am in fact advancing because look
Speaker 2: at how much airtime this topic is getting in my mind.
Speaker 1: And then only maybe.
Speaker 2: Hours later, do you realize, oh crap, I'm in exactly
Speaker 2: the same position that I was in at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Well, and think about how much experience you have succeeding
Speaker 3: in the usage of this tool. Like most of the time,
Speaker 3: this tool, this ability to use language to think analytically
Speaker 3: about a problem, it serves you really really will. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is undoubtedly why you have been able to achieve
Speaker 3: the things that you have accomplished in your life. And
Speaker 3: the same is true for so many other people. So
Speaker 3: you've got this tool that often works really really well.
Speaker 3: It should work here it's not working. I'm not a
Speaker 3: I don't give up. I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Can you say more about how that inner monologue
Speaker 2: can lead us astray in these moments or what the
Speaker 2: negative consequences can be?
Speaker 3: Yeah, happy to So, first, chatter consumes our attention to
Speaker 3: the point where we have very little left over to
Speaker 3: focus on other things. And so the example I like
Speaker 3: to give people is to think about a time when
Speaker 3: you're worried about something, you're ruminating, and you sit down,
Speaker 3: you try to read a couple of pages in a
Speaker 3: book or a magazine, and you read the pages. You
Speaker 3: are sure, like under oath, you would swear that the
Speaker 3: information has passed your gaze, but you don't remember anything
Speaker 3: that you have read. It is an incredibly common experience,
Speaker 3: and the idea is very very simple. We only have
Speaker 3: so much attention. If all of it is being consumed
Speaker 3: by your chatter, that means not much is left over
Speaker 3: to do your job. Not a good thing. We also
Speaker 3: know that chatter can undo our habits. And the way
Speaker 3: this works is like what is a habit? A habit
Speaker 3: is a complex set of behaviors that are strung together
Speaker 3: through repeated practice. So when I get up on stage
Speaker 3: to give a presentation, I've given hundreds and hundreds of talks.
Speaker 3: I've learned to do things without thinking, like to move
Speaker 3: my hands in particular ways, and vary my vocal tone,
Speaker 3: and smile and look at different people in the audience.
Speaker 3: If I start to worry about what I'm doing, oh
Speaker 3: my god, am I giving a good presentation? What happens
Speaker 3: is I zoom in on all the individual behaviors. Am
Speaker 3: I smiling enough?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Am I using the stage appropriately? And once you start
Speaker 3: doing that, the whole script explodes, the behavior explodes. You
Speaker 3: don't do well. And we saw this happen on the
Speaker 3: grandest stage in the Olympics, when Simone Biles dropped out
Speaker 3: because of what she called the twisties. The twisties are
Speaker 3: another name for chatter. Sometimes they're called the yips and
Speaker 3: and if you think about Simone's situation, I think it
Speaker 3: really highlights just how toxic this can be. Here you
Speaker 3: have someone who is on the peak. You know, she's
Speaker 3: at the peak of her career, on the grandest stage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she appropriate best in human history as well.
Speaker 3: Best in human history, and she has to drop out
Speaker 3: appropriately because it was dangerous. And so that's what chatter
Speaker 3: can do to us when it comes to our individual performance.
Speaker 3: If we shift to the second domain, we know that
Speaker 3: chatter undermines our relationships. It can create friction, and there
Speaker 3: are a couple of ways that works too. One thing
Speaker 3: that that chatter can do is it can push other
Speaker 3: people who care about us away. And here are the ideas.
Speaker 3: You've got a problem and you're motivated to share it
Speaker 3: with other people for a variety of reasons. You want
Speaker 3: to get support. But what happens is you talk to
Speaker 3: the other person about the problem, and then you keep
Speaker 3: talking about it over and over and over again. And
Speaker 3: for most of us, there's only so much we can
Speaker 3: listen to before we ourselves start to get brought down.
Speaker 3: And so that's one of the ways that that chatter
Speaker 3: can alienate us from others lead us to feel socially
Speaker 3: rejected and alone. These are not not healthy states.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we need some hope, Ethan. You got to
Speaker 2: help us out here, all right. I'd love to do
Speaker 2: a deep dive in some of the strategies we can
Speaker 2: use for better managing our chatter.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'll tell you about two of my favorites, which
Speaker 3: also happen to be two tools that I use myself
Speaker 3: if I experienced shadow. They're my first lines of defense.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: The first one is maybe counterintuitive to folks. What it
Speaker 3: involves doing is trying to coach yourself through a problem
Speaker 3: using your own name or the second person pronound you. So,
Speaker 3: if I'm really upset about something and spinning, all right, Ethan,
Speaker 3: here's what you're going to do. Here's how you're going
Speaker 3: to manage the situation. I'm basically talking to myself like
Speaker 3: I would speak to another person, right, the second person
Speaker 3: pronound you. This is a part of speech that we
Speaker 3: almost exclusively use when we think about and refer to
Speaker 3: other people. That shifts your perspective. It puts you into
Speaker 3: this different mode of thinking about your problems. It's like
Speaker 3: you're giving advice to your best fri and when you're
Speaker 3: in that mode of advice giving, you come up with
Speaker 3: much better solutions to your problems. So that's a really
Speaker 3: simple thing that people can do to switch their perspectives.
Speaker 3: And that's the first thing that I'll do. Another distancing
Speaker 3: tool that is really easy and works for many situations
Speaker 3: is something that we call temporal distancing, or thinking about
Speaker 3: how you're going to feel about something that's causing you
Speaker 3: chatter right now? How are you going to feel about
Speaker 3: this a week from now, or a month from now
Speaker 3: or a year from now. Right, You could stretch out
Speaker 3: the time window as much as you want. What engaging
Speaker 3: in that little mental time travel exercise does for us
Speaker 3: is it often makes clear that whatever we're dealing with,
Speaker 3: as awful as it is, it will eventually fade, because
Speaker 3: most of the trials and tribulations we experience do eventually
Speaker 3: fade with time, and that gives us hope, which is
Speaker 3: really useful for managing chatter. This is actually what I
Speaker 3: do when I wake up on occasion two am and
Speaker 3: am grippe, Oh my god, why did I send that email?
Speaker 3: And what are they going to think?
Speaker 4: Did they read?
Speaker 3: So I will just remind myself Ethan, You're going to
Speaker 3: feel better about this in six hours.
Speaker 2: I'm hearing you say that, and I'm thinking to myself that,
Speaker 2: in my most anxious moments, if you had asked me,
Speaker 2: how are you going to feel about this in six months,
Speaker 2: or five years, or ten years, I would have said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to feel exactly the same damn way, Ethan.
Speaker 2: And so what's occurring to me in this moment is
Speaker 2: that potentially another healthful thought experiment is to think about
Speaker 2: past experiences where we felt a certain way and we're
Speaker 2: absolutely convinced that that was going to be a immutable
Speaker 2: state of the world, but looking back, we now know
Speaker 2: we no longer feel that same way about it today.
Speaker 2: I'm just remembering how there was this thing that I
Speaker 2: was worrying about in my early twenties, and I was
Speaker 2: imposing a lot of negativity of my brother, who was
Speaker 2: on the receiving end of all this anxiety to your
Speaker 2: earlier point, and I remember him saying, I promise you,
Speaker 2: this is not going to be a topic you're worried
Speaker 2: about in ten years. And I was absolutely resolute in
Speaker 2: my convictions that it was going to be something that
Speaker 2: I continue to worry about and you know, older brother,
Speaker 2: wiser than me.
Speaker 1: He's right.
Speaker 2: I no longer am worried about this issue, and I
Speaker 2: keep that in my mind often as a personal anecdote
Speaker 2: of how I engaged in bad cognitive forecasting. I was
Speaker 2: wrong about myself and my own ability to be able
Speaker 2: to move on from certain challenges or anxieties. And I
Speaker 2: think it's helpful, potentially helpful for listeners to identify. You know,
Speaker 2: there's the Spanish flu, which is like the global thing,
Speaker 2: but you know, we all have some element of narcissism
Speaker 2: in us that leads us to want to know that actually.
Speaker 1: Narcissm is the wrong word here.
Speaker 2: I think we can feel sometimes like society might be
Speaker 2: able to deal with this, but I maya won't be
Speaker 2: able to because I'm not as cognitively strong as other people.
Speaker 2: And so I think it can be helpful to just
Speaker 2: find even one instance, one case study from your own
Speaker 2: life where you did actually exit a state of mental
Speaker 2: chatter successfully and think differently about it so that you
Speaker 2: can hold on to because it helps me in present
Speaker 2: day moments where I'm like, no, I'm still gonna be
Speaker 2: worried about this thing now in ten years, and I'm
Speaker 2: like eh, you're wrong about this, at least once.
Speaker 3: You've actually touched on something that is. I think another
Speaker 3: message of hope for listeners, which is there's a lot
Speaker 3: of research which shows that as we get older, we
Speaker 3: actually get happier barring negative health conditions. And one of
Speaker 3: the explanations for why that happens is we're learning how
Speaker 3: to regulate ourselves better. And part of how that works
Speaker 3: is we're learning from our experiences. And I think this
Speaker 3: is exactly what you've described. When you're younger, you don't
Speaker 3: have the same quantity of experiences. You don't know that
Speaker 3: you're not going to be worried about this ten years
Speaker 3: later because you may not have been around for that long.
Speaker 3: And so I think we accrue that wisdom with age.
Speaker 3: And what's exciting about some of these tools is they
Speaker 3: have the potential to give us that insight without having
Speaker 3: to wait to be forty sixty, seventy years old, right,
Speaker 3: So we can have the insight that, oh, wait, it
Speaker 3: will get better with time without having to wait the
Speaker 3: whole stretch of time for that to happen. So it's
Speaker 3: a really valuable exercise for folks to think about.
Speaker 2: That was psychologist Ethan Cross. I'll be talking to Ethan
Speaker 2: again about his latest book, which is all about how
Speaker 2: to better manage our emotions. Make sure to follow a
Speaker 2: slight change of plans on your favorite podcast app so
Speaker 2: you can catch that episode when it comes out next month.
Speaker 2: After the break, we'll hear from Madupey Aquinola on how
Speaker 2: we can work with our stress rather than against it.
Speaker 2: Madupay Aquinola is a psychologist who's an expert on something
Speaker 2: that most of us try to limit as much as possible, stress,
Speaker 2: but a different perspective. She wants us to make stress
Speaker 2: our friend because our body's stress response is actually a
Speaker 2: kind of superpower on a physiological level. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us what happens to us when we experience stress?
Speaker 4: So when we experience stress, our sympathetic nervous system gets activated.
Speaker 4: It's that part of our body that tells us do
Speaker 4: you need to fight or do you need to flee
Speaker 4: this situation? And when that happens, we get adrenaline, we
Speaker 4: get dopamine, we get cortisol, all of the resources we
Speaker 4: need physiologically to move to act to do what we
Speaker 4: need to do. This process is a very adaptive one,
Speaker 4: so that when you're done with the stressor ideally your
Speaker 4: body wants to go back to its resting state where
Speaker 4: you know, those hormones decrease, that adrenaline decreased, you get
Speaker 4: back to resting and relaxing and all that. That is
Speaker 4: a normal physiological response to an acute dresser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love your sharing that because stress obviously gets
Speaker 2: a really bad rep but it's not just this random
Speaker 2: bad thing that our bodies experience. It exists in part
Speaker 2: because it is highly adaptive and there are many situations
Speaker 2: in which an active stress response helps us do what
Speaker 2: needs to be done. So, in other words, you mentioned cortisol, dopamine, adrenaline.
Speaker 2: How do those translate into increased performance increased acuity? Just
Speaker 2: help me build that bridge.
Speaker 4: So essentially, your body is being taxed and your heart
Speaker 4: rate is increasing because again you're getting ready. That cortisol
Speaker 4: is giving you the energy that you need to be attentive,
Speaker 4: to be focused to approach the situation. And when you
Speaker 4: have increased cortisol, you are attentive to threats, often in
Speaker 4: a good way. You're like waiting for what's happening. You're
Speaker 4: able to remember things in a different way, and so
Speaker 4: we need to remember when our bodies are acting. It's
Speaker 4: telling us you've got this, now, let's use this. But
Speaker 4: one of the problems is when we can be overactivated
Speaker 4: and too attentive to threat and those levels of the dopamine,
Speaker 4: the cordis the adrenaline all that are staying elevated kind
Speaker 4: of chronically, and that is what leads to disease and
Speaker 4: all of these problems that we want to avoid physiologically.
Speaker 4: So that's kind of the stress cycle.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now you've given us the lay of the
Speaker 2: land on the basics of stress. Yes, one fascinating thing
Speaker 2: your research focuses on is that how we think about
Speaker 2: our own stress, our mindset, and our attitude towards stress
Speaker 2: can actually change its impact on us. Yes, can you
Speaker 2: first walk us through the two types of mindsets that
Speaker 2: we can have towards stress.
Speaker 4: So the two types of mindsets are a mindset that
Speaker 4: stress is enhancing, it can help us in terms of
Speaker 4: our performance, our growth, our learning. The second piece is
Speaker 4: that stress is debilitating, harms us in terms of our
Speaker 4: health and vitality and our performance and our growth in
Speaker 4: our learning. And it's often your mindset about stress that
Speaker 4: can influence the extent to which it can have harmful
Speaker 4: or helpful effects. So when we have more of a
Speaker 4: stress is enhancing mindset that leads to better outcomes.
Speaker 1: I love this research.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you can give me a couple of
Speaker 2: examples of how introducing this mindset shift was actually able
Speaker 2: to help performance in different contexts.
Speaker 4: So in one study, we had people just watch a
Speaker 4: video showing the many ways in which stress can be enhancing.
Speaker 4: You can imagine things like that stressful moment in a
Speaker 4: soccer game and somebody makes the goal. We can each
Speaker 4: think of times when we have risen to the occasion.
Speaker 4: When we show people these videos and then have them
Speaker 4: engage in a creative task, we find that they're more creative.
Speaker 4: We find that they are more attentive to positive things
Speaker 4: in the environment versus negative things in the vironment. On
Speaker 4: the flip side, tell people or show them videos of
Speaker 4: when stress can be debilitating and see the opposite, they're
Speaker 4: less creative and also generally more negative mood, more attentive
Speaker 4: to threats. So that's some of the research we've done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the most fascinating insights is that
Speaker 2: our underlying physiology can change when we adopt a stress
Speaker 2: is enhancing mindset. So it's not just that I think
Speaker 2: more positive thoughts. It actually can affect our physiological response
Speaker 2: to stress at this underlying level.
Speaker 4: I think that that's absolutely right, that when you have
Speaker 4: an enhancing mindset, it can affect your body's response to stress.
Speaker 4: There has been research showing that the walls of your
Speaker 4: blood vessels, rather than constricting, they're more likely to dilate
Speaker 4: with a stress is enhancing mindset and the importance of
Speaker 4: the mind body connection is something I think we often forget.
Speaker 4: And you know, our dominant model and narrative is that
Speaker 4: we should deny, reduce and avoid stress, and that is
Speaker 4: not always the case. Every single person I know can
Speaker 4: tell of the time where their stress helps them. So instead,
Speaker 4: in this research we talk a lot about how can
Speaker 4: you acknowledge your stress, welcome your stress, and use it
Speaker 4: in a way that will be beneficial because it is
Speaker 4: designed to help you. Now, it's important to say, I'm
Speaker 4: not saying run towards stress, like you shouldn't like find
Speaker 4: more stressors. No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying
Speaker 4: it's not always a bad thing. It's actually designed to
Speaker 4: help you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you talk about dating your stress, Yes, you know
Speaker 2: slight change listeners. We're simply asking for a first date. Okay,
Speaker 2: you can decide if you want to do a second
Speaker 2: or a third, but just go on that first date.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Get to know your stress a little better and brace
Speaker 1: it and.
Speaker 4: Be kind to it. Open the door for it, you know,
Speaker 4: let it in, welcome it, see how it feels. That's
Speaker 4: what we need to do a lot more of.
Speaker 2: Are there situations where applying a stress is enhancing mind
Speaker 2: set doesn't make sense because I can see a situation
Speaker 2: where if we apply this mindset too liberally, we might
Speaker 2: end up tolerating certain stressful situations that we really should
Speaker 2: try and avoid. So, for example, a highly toxic relationship
Speaker 2: at work or in your personal life, that's a situation
Speaker 2: where you're kind of you really think, okay, we need
Speaker 2: to change the situation. I need to get out of
Speaker 2: this situation, versus using a mindset shift in order to
Speaker 2: better adapt to it.
Speaker 1: So do you have thoughts on that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I do think that our minds are so complicated
Speaker 4: and we will trick ourselves into believing a stressful situation
Speaker 4: is a good one when it's not. So that's when
Speaker 4: the idea, Remember I talked about demands resources. One resource
Speaker 4: is external support, your friends helping you and seeing when
Speaker 4: something is harmful versus helpful for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's helpful to clarify that this is
Speaker 2: a mindset that's almost best to adopt when you're in
Speaker 2: situations where you can't avoid the stress, so you can't
Speaker 2: control whether that situation exists or not, and so adopting
Speaker 2: a more positive mindset might be one of the few
Speaker 2: resources at hand.
Speaker 4: That's absolutely right. And the challenge with the dominant narrative
Speaker 4: about reducing or avoiding stress is that there are times
Speaker 4: where we cannot do that. You can't, it's not possible.
Speaker 4: So that's why it's important to understand how the stress
Speaker 4: that you're experiencing or how your body's response can be helpful.
Speaker 1: How do we learn to cultivate this mindset?
Speaker 4: So a piece of this goes back to that, how
Speaker 4: do I think of my stress differently? When my heart
Speaker 4: is beating, I'm normally thinking to myself, this is bad.
Speaker 4: But if you can remind yourself that my heart beating
Speaker 4: is telling me, like I'm excited about something, there's something
Speaker 4: here that I care about. This is something that I
Speaker 4: want to do. Well in this is something that I
Speaker 4: can do well in. Then that reframes that heartbeat not
Speaker 4: as a bad thing, but as your body preparing to act.
Speaker 2: There have been so many times in my life, whether
Speaker 2: when I was, you know, a child playing the violin,
Speaker 2: or whether it's going into an interviews for a slight
Speaker 2: change of plans, I get a little spooked if I'm
Speaker 2: not nervous, because that means maybe I don't care as
Speaker 2: much as I used to, and so I've actually I
Speaker 2: see stress as being a very affirming signal because it
Speaker 2: shows me that I really care about the outcome, and
Speaker 2: it justifies the unpleasantness of some of those feelings.
Speaker 4: And that's a beautiful way of approaching it. That we
Speaker 4: are typically stressed because there is an underlying reason why
Speaker 4: we care about the situation. And if we can continue
Speaker 4: to ask ourselves why why why, then that puts a
Speaker 4: whole different lens around why you're stressed and changes your approach.
Speaker 2: Our next and final guest is psychologist Kristin Nef. Kristen's
Speaker 2: an expert in self compassion, which she defines as treating
Speaker 2: yourself with the same warmth, kindness, and care that you
Speaker 2: would show to a friend. I'd never been totally bought
Speaker 2: into the idea of self compassion, but Kristin helped me
Speaker 2: see the resent in a new light. Okay, so you know, Kristin,
Speaker 2: I will confess that when I first encountered this work
Speaker 2: years ago, I was a little skeptical. And to be clear,
Speaker 2: it's not because I don't need more self compassion. I've
Speaker 2: always been an intensely self critical person. It's more that
Speaker 2: I just have had specific concerns, and I'm wondering if
Speaker 2: right now we can engage in a quick mythbusting session
Speaker 2: in case there are listeners out there who share some
Speaker 2: of the same skepticism I used to have. I want
Speaker 2: to bring them on this journey with me towards really
Speaker 2: embracing the research and really understanding the value. So one
Speaker 2: concern that I've had is that it seems like promoting
Speaker 2: self compassion can cause people to let themselves off the
Speaker 2: hook for their bad behaviors. And you know, I look
Speaker 2: around and I see a lot of people who are
Speaker 2: not taking accountability for their actions. Right, it seems like
Speaker 2: they could benefit from a bit more internal criticism and
Speaker 2: so and of course, for myself, right, I've benefited from
Speaker 2: self criticism a lot. And so don't we need people
Speaker 2: to be more self critical so that they can be
Speaker 2: better to others?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So self compassion, this kind of unconditional acceptance and
Speaker 5: kindness is toward our worthless people. As human beings. We
Speaker 5: need to accept ourselves, but we can't accept all our behavior,
Speaker 5: especially if it's harming self or others, because if your
Speaker 5: behaviors cause harm to yourself or others is not compassionate.
Speaker 5: So what we do with self compassion is we accept
Speaker 5: ourselves as flawed human beings who've made a mistake and
Speaker 5: that sense of safety. First of all, we don't blame
Speaker 5: others as much. Often, if we slam ourselves with shame
Speaker 5: for admitting we've done something wrong, our little brains are
Speaker 5: going to try as hard as they can to avoid
Speaker 5: taking responsibility and to blame someone else that they can.
Speaker 5: And by the way, research shows that self compassion lessons shame,
Speaker 5: which is a sense of I am bad, but not
Speaker 5: necessarily guilt, which is I did something bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and reading your scholarship, I found this distinction very
Speaker 2: helpful because you talk about the difference between guilt and shame,
Speaker 2: and you say, look, being critical of our behaviors is healthy.
Speaker 1: It is good.
Speaker 2: It provides learning opportunities, It allows us to be better people,
Speaker 2: allows us to reflect on who we are and what
Speaker 2: we want from ourselves moving forward. But criticism aimed at ourselves,
Speaker 2: at our being as a whole, is not healthy because,
Speaker 2: as you said, and I've definitely fallen into this camp
Speaker 2: in the past, you don't want to internalize I made
Speaker 2: a mistake, as I am a mistake, right, I am bad.
Speaker 5: Exactly when you do that, it actually shuts down your
Speaker 5: ability to learn from your mistakes because you're so consumed
Speaker 5: by the thoughts of inadequacy or shame. Our sense of
Speaker 5: self kind of gets totally absorbed by the shame. It's
Speaker 5: like we disappear. There's no one home to be able
Speaker 5: to try to correct the behavior. You need the safety
Speaker 5: of self acceptance to be able to criticize your behavior
Speaker 5: and learn from it.
Speaker 2: So another myth that I love you to bust is
Speaker 2: that self compassion is demotivating. And this one's personal. So
Speaker 2: my husband, Jimmy, he loves playing competitive squash. Okay, he's
Speaker 2: obsessed with squash, he's obsessed with getting better, and he's
Speaker 2: so self motivated, But he really berates himself when he
Speaker 2: has a poor performance, and as someone who really loves him,
Speaker 2: I hate seeing him in this self vurration mode. Like
Speaker 2: it's pretty painful after a tournament or after some competition
Speaker 2: for him to be like, oh God, why did I
Speaker 2: do that? Or you know, I messed up or I
Speaker 2: didn't play my best. But what I tell him to
Speaker 2: stop the self criticism to curve it a bit. His
Speaker 2: counter argument is that he doesn't want to lose that
Speaker 2: part of himself because it means he might have less
Speaker 2: motivation to work hard during his next practice session. And so, yeah,
Speaker 2: give me a good argument with my husband.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I'll give you the argument. Then I'll give
Speaker 5: you the data. Because this one is also very very clear,
Speaker 5: is it self Compassion is a more effective motivator than
Speaker 5: self criticism. So self criticism does kind of work. Clearly,
Speaker 5: it works gets people through med school. It probably motivates
Speaker 5: your husband. But the motivation comes from fear I have
Speaker 5: to do better or else I'll slam myself, and that's motivating.
Speaker 5: No one wants to feel like they're a bad person
Speaker 5: or a loser, So that does provide some motivational power,
Speaker 5: but it also has some maladaptive side effects, which is
Speaker 5: first of all, performance anxiety. Right, So we want some
Speaker 5: anxiety to feel like, Okay, it's important that I work.
Speaker 5: But performance anxiety, which is kind of fear of if
Speaker 5: I mess up, I'm going to be a loser or
Speaker 5: I'm going to shame myself that actually stands in the
Speaker 5: way of our ability to do our best. It also
Speaker 5: undermines our self confidence. But this is really key, It
Speaker 5: undermines our ability to learn. It's very similar to what
Speaker 5: we were just talking about. If you shame yourself for losing,
Speaker 5: I'm a loser, I'm a bad person. You aren't going
Speaker 5: to be as able to say, Okay, just because I
Speaker 5: lost doesn't mean I'm a loser. What can I do
Speaker 5: better next time? And so self compassion is very strongly
Speaker 5: linked to a learning goal orientation as opposed to what's
Speaker 5: called performance goals, which is my success or failure defiance
Speaker 5: my work as a person. There's a new study that
Speaker 5: isn't even published yet. It just got accepted a few
Speaker 5: days ago. Hot Off the Presses, who I Love Hot
Speaker 5: Off the Presses? Slight Change listeners, listen up. So you
Speaker 5: know I work at University of Texas at Austin, and
Speaker 5: I had a dissertation student at the time. He was
Speaker 5: an ex basketball player who for her dissertation decided to
Speaker 5: formalize a self compassion training for NC DOUBLEA athletes. So
Speaker 5: we did a study with several high end NCUBLEA sports teams,
Speaker 5: all different sports, and we taught them self compassion over
Speaker 5: about four weeks. We actually didn't call it self compassion
Speaker 5: because we knew that was standing in the way. We
Speaker 5: called it inner resilience training, and we taught them how
Speaker 5: to be warm and supportive and kind to themselves when
Speaker 5: they were having trouble in their training routine or if
Speaker 5: they lost in their sport. And what we found is
Speaker 5: not only did it help players' mental health, it improved
Speaker 5: their performance, both self rated and coach rated performance, because again,
Speaker 5: when it's okay to make a mistake or to lose,
Speaker 5: you're more able to learn from the loss or the
Speaker 5: mistake and improve it next time.
Speaker 1: So yes, I love all this research, Kristen.
Speaker 2: Another concern that I'd had when it came to engaging
Speaker 2: with the self compassion work or trying out these interventions
Speaker 2: is that it just kind of felt self centered or
Speaker 2: selfish or narcissistic.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was like, what am I doing here? Sitting here
Speaker 2: trying to love myself? Like I just yeah, convince me
Speaker 2: that this is not just the most extreme form of narcissism.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, absolutely. The reason it's not selfish or narcissistic
Speaker 5: is because it's not like we only have five units
Speaker 5: of compassion and if we give three to ourselves, we
Speaker 5: only have two left over for other people. It actually
Speaker 5: doesn't work this way. Then the research is very clear,
Speaker 5: the more self compassion we give ourselves, in other words,
Speaker 5: the more we fill our own cup, the more compassion
Speaker 5: we have available to give to others. Right, So, there's
Speaker 5: a couple of studies that show this one is burnout.
Speaker 5: You know, this burnout such a problem. We know, whether
Speaker 5: you're a special needs parent or you're a healthcare worker,
Speaker 5: if you're more self compassionate, you're less likely to burn
Speaker 5: out or experience fatigue giving compassion to others. And then
Speaker 5: the other evidence we have that self compassion isn't selfish
Speaker 5: is that in relationships, our partners say that we're more giving,
Speaker 5: we're less selfish, we're less controlling in the relationship if
Speaker 5: we have self compassion. And again, it's really about resourcing yourself.
Speaker 5: When you can resource yourself, you actually have more to
Speaker 5: give to others and you aren't so self focused because
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, Okay, maybe I made a mistake or
Speaker 5: maybe this is a little difficult, and you give yourself
Speaker 5: what you need to get through that, and that actually
Speaker 5: gives you the emotional energy you need to care for
Speaker 5: us others. Shame and self criticism is an incredibly self
Speaker 5: focused state. You know, who are you thinking about when
Speaker 5: you're beating yourself up? Not other people?
Speaker 2: A good point to Chee. I think this is such
Speaker 2: a critical point that you're making about us not having
Speaker 2: finite compassion resources, because I think we do think of
Speaker 2: it as a trade off instinctively. Oh, if I'm really
Speaker 2: compassionate towards myself, then I have fewer resources to give
Speaker 2: to others. Or if I'm really compassionate towards others, I
Speaker 2: don't have the resources to give that same compassion to myself. Yes,
Speaker 2: And what you're telling me is that we shouldn't see
Speaker 2: it as a limited resource. We actually can tap into
Speaker 2: a lot and it can be a virtuous cycle where
Speaker 2: the more we invest compassion ourselves, the more the more
Speaker 2: we have to give to others.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, it's additive. It's not a zero sum game.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Hey, thanks so much for listening. You can
Speaker 2: find links to the full versions of the episodes featuring Ethan,
Speaker 2: Madupe and Kristen in the show notes. If you enjoyed
Speaker 2: the special compilation episode, let us know. We're always eager
Speaker 2: to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram
Speaker 2: at doctor Maya Shunker. We'll be back in your feed
Speaker 2: with a new episode on February tenth.
Speaker 1: See you then.
Speaker 2: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 2: produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 2: our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
Speaker 2: our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Lubin, and our sound
Speaker 2: engineer Erica Wong. Scara wrote our delightful theme song and
Speaker 2: Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of
Speaker 2: Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks
Speaker 2: to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks
Speaker 2: to Jimmy Lee.