Speaker 1: Life is a mixture of joys and sorrows of getting
Speaker 1: what you want and not getting what you want. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Tony Bernhard. It's her
Speaker 1: second appearance on The One You Feed podcast. Tony is
Speaker 1: a former law professor at the University of California, a
Speaker 1: practicing Buddhist for over twenty five years, and the author
Speaker 1: of many books, including the one we discussed today, How
Speaker 1: to Be Sick Your Pocket Companion. Hi, Tony, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: to be here. Yeah, it's such a pleasure to have
Speaker 1: you back on the show. You were on a number
Speaker 1: of episodes ago. I can't even imagine how many ago,
Speaker 1: but several years ago, so it's wonderful to have you back.
Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about your book, How to
Speaker 1: Be Sick Pocket Companion. We'll get to that in just
Speaker 1: a moment. We're gonna start, like we always do, with
Speaker 1: the Parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandmother who's
Speaker 1: talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandmother and she said, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. I love the parable,
Speaker 1: And it actually comes right out of many of the
Speaker 1: teachings from the Buddha that I've been studying for maybe
Speaker 1: thirty years, because he talks about habits of the mind
Speaker 1: and how you really become the one you feed, and
Speaker 1: that if you are always reacting in anger, you become
Speaker 1: an angry person, and if you act out of kindness,
Speaker 1: you become a kind person. And the beauty of this
Speaker 1: eric is that if you're feeding the wrong wolf, you
Speaker 1: can start to feed the other one. I think it
Speaker 1: was Seneca who said, you know, treat every day like
Speaker 1: the first day of your life, something like that. And
Speaker 1: so one of the beauties of our mental states is
Speaker 1: that they're changeable, and we can change the way we
Speaker 1: think and the way we act and the way we speak.
Speaker 1: And people should try this. Every time you're kind to somebody,
Speaker 1: it's easier to be kind the next time. You're basically
Speaker 1: becoming what you feed. And so I love that parable.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great interpretation. I want to ask
Speaker 1: you a couple of questions about that, though, because I
Speaker 1: think this is a nuance and we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: this nuance a lot in your book. But you know,
Speaker 1: we start to talk about these things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear and in some cases their action states
Speaker 1: and and sometimes they're feeling states right. And you know,
Speaker 1: part of what I think that we want to get
Speaker 1: better at in our lives is allowing ourselves to sort
Speaker 1: of feel what we feel, but not feed it. And
Speaker 1: so do you have any thoughts on you know, how
Speaker 1: do we allow ourselves to have the emotions that we're
Speaker 1: having but not feed them. So if we're if we
Speaker 1: are feeling let's say self pity, right, there's some self
Speaker 1: pity going on. It's not an emotion we want to
Speaker 1: feed and grow. We don't want to repress any emotion
Speaker 1: and force it away. And so I'm always interested in
Speaker 1: this nuanced area. Well, it is nuanced because if you're
Speaker 1: feeling angry or greedy, or full of what I call
Speaker 1: don't want mind, which is something certainly I experienced during
Speaker 1: the day, if you try to push it away an aversion,
Speaker 1: it often just gets stronger. I don't know which of
Speaker 1: his books it's in, but you know the Vietnamese zen
Speaker 1: monk tick. Not Han always says, uh, take care of
Speaker 1: your anger, take care of your greed. And I never
Speaker 1: understood what that meant, but now I see that you
Speaker 1: have to let it be and arouse self compassion for
Speaker 1: the pain that it's causing you. And I often recommend
Speaker 1: that people speak to themselves silently about specifically the painful
Speaker 1: emotions they're experiencing. I'm so frustrated that I have to
Speaker 1: stay home all day and it's almost been a year
Speaker 1: and I'm really lonely. When you let that into your heart,
Speaker 1: that's when change can begin to happen. Because all emotions,
Speaker 1: all thoughts, are impermanent, and so if you're feeling angry,
Speaker 1: there's no need to say, Okay, well, then I'm an
Speaker 1: angry person. I'm a lonely person. That's why I'm always
Speaker 1: going to be because I permanence. It's a universal law
Speaker 1: recognized in all spiritual traditions. And so have compassion for
Speaker 1: those painful feelings. And when you express that kind of compassion,
Speaker 1: you're telling yourself you care about your suffering, and right
Speaker 1: then they will soften, and then you can begin to
Speaker 1: change your response to the world and to other people
Speaker 1: and start to set the intention to be kinder and
Speaker 1: to be more patient, whether it's with yourself or others.
Speaker 1: It's something I feel like I'm always exploring on this show.
Speaker 1: Sort of finding that middle ground between indulging and repressing emotion,
Speaker 1: you know, allowing them to have the space they need,
Speaker 1: and yet not inflaming them or encouraging them. Yes, when
Speaker 1: you repress, you really are intensifying the emotion because it's
Speaker 1: still there. So there's an opening of the heart when
Speaker 1: you allow yourself to feel compassion for the pain and
Speaker 1: instead of what often happens is self blame, which multiplies
Speaker 1: your suffering. So you may be feeling angry about what's
Speaker 1: happening in the world right now, and then you say
Speaker 1: I shouldn't feel angry, and you get mad at yourself
Speaker 1: for feeling angry. Well, you've just doubled your suffering, right,
Speaker 1: And we're going to explore that idea a lot in
Speaker 1: this interview. I want to sort of set the stage
Speaker 1: a little bit here for the conversation with you. You've
Speaker 1: written a number of books, but the last several have
Speaker 1: really been in the vein of dealing with chronic pain
Speaker 1: and illness. That's a condition that you have in your
Speaker 1: own life. So I'm wondering if you could just tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about your own story, just to
Speaker 1: set the stage. My story is eerily similar to what's
Speaker 1: going on in the world right now. Twenty years ago
Speaker 1: this May, I came down with a pretty serious viral infection.
Speaker 1: But the doctors said, it's a viral infection. You just
Speaker 1: have to wait for it to go away. Antibiotics don't
Speaker 1: work on viruses. And the acute symptoms went away, the
Speaker 1: sore throat and the cough and the fever, but it
Speaker 1: left me feeling. I call it the flu without the fever.
Speaker 1: I have flu like symptoms, and so if people would
Speaker 1: just recall how you feel when you have the flu.
Speaker 1: You may be able to get out of bed for
Speaker 1: a while and do a few things, but then you're
Speaker 1: back in bed, and so I have not a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. There's a limited number of things I can do.
Speaker 1: My books I've written from the bed. I'm sitting on
Speaker 1: my bed right now. I just pull my laptop over
Speaker 1: on days when I can, and I write. One reason
Speaker 1: I say it's eerily similar is that there's a term
Speaker 1: out there called long haulers, and they're a lot of people,
Speaker 1: pretty high percentage, maybe thirty eyes. The last I read
Speaker 1: people who get COVID and then six months later are
Speaker 1: still feeling fatigue or flu like symptoms and so they
Speaker 1: think that what happens is that the immune system simply
Speaker 1: doesn't return to normal. It reads you as sick, and
Speaker 1: so it's just fighting this perpetual battle against a virus that,
Speaker 1: in my case is probably no longer in my body.
Speaker 1: So that's my life. I'm pretty much house bound, try
Speaker 1: to go for short walks when I can with my dog.
Speaker 1: And it's been twenty years and I had to give
Speaker 1: up my profession. But about ten years ago I started
Speaker 1: writing books, kind of bringing together what I'd learned from
Speaker 1: Buddhist practice and my own experience to try to help
Speaker 1: people live a life of purpose and even enjoy at
Speaker 1: times despite chronic pain. When I say chronic illness, I'm
Speaker 1: including chronic pain. A lot of people with chronic pain.
Speaker 1: I've learned that there are people in their teens and
Speaker 1: twenties who suffer from chronic pain. You know, this is
Speaker 1: part of being human, is having bodily troubles at times,
Speaker 1: sometimes chronic Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And
Speaker 1: I remember from our first interview we talked about something
Speaker 1: and it is stuck with me ever since, and I
Speaker 1: found it to be really a valuable thing in dealing
Speaker 1: with pain in my own life, and I get back pain.
Speaker 1: I don't know that i'd say I have chronic pain,
Speaker 1: but I have back pain often enough that you know,
Speaker 1: I would list it among my woes. But we talked
Speaker 1: about this idea that what we normally refer to as
Speaker 1: pain is really sort of three different things. There's there's
Speaker 1: three parts that make up what we just generally just
Speaker 1: call pain. And I'm wondering if you could walk us
Speaker 1: through that, because I just found that so helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I talked about this um probably in more than one
Speaker 1: of my books that, interestingly enough, two components of pain
Speaker 1: are mental. The first, of course, is the bodily pain itself.
Speaker 1: So I know about back pain. Yeah. I actually like
Speaker 1: to joke that since I became chronically ill, my back
Speaker 1: is my best feature. But I used to suffer. I
Speaker 1: sometimes it would be off work for a week or
Speaker 1: two because my back would go what we would call
Speaker 1: it out. There's the pain, and then there's the reaction
Speaker 1: to the pain. I hate this pain. I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: in pain. It's this aversive reaction, which is not helpful
Speaker 1: because oddily, pain is just part of the human condition.
Speaker 1: Everyone's going to experience it at one time or another.
Speaker 1: So the appropriate reaction is self compassion, which simply means
Speaker 1: being nice to yourself, do what you can to take
Speaker 1: care of it, instead of reacting with aversion that that
Speaker 1: feeding that wolf, the angry wolf, and the aversive wolf.
Speaker 1: And then the third aspect of pain are the stories
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves that just increase our emotional, mental, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, suffering, stories like I'll never
Speaker 1: be able to go for a walk again. I'm sticking
Speaker 1: with the back pain as an example. I'm gonna lose
Speaker 1: my job because I'm out for so long. People aren't
Speaker 1: going to want to hang out with me because they
Speaker 1: like to do this sport and I can't do it.
Speaker 1: In Buddhism, it's called papacha, this proliferation of thought, which
Speaker 1: we do all the time. You don't need bodily pain
Speaker 1: to be doing that. We do that all the time
Speaker 1: with anything that's bothering us. We tell ourselves stories which
Speaker 1: we then believe without any evidence. It's what is the
Speaker 1: cause of most of our suffering in life in my view,
Speaker 1: because the fact is we don't know what the future holds,
Speaker 1: and tomorrow it might feel better, and if not tomorrow,
Speaker 1: maybe the next day, and there are things you can
Speaker 1: find to do with the pain that might be enjoyable anyway.
Speaker 1: So the proliferation of thought that is around either physical
Speaker 1: pain or even mental pain. For example, if I'm upset
Speaker 1: about maybe I've had a phone conversation and the person says,
Speaker 1: well I've got to go and gets off the phone, well,
Speaker 1: the appropriate response would be to say, well, she had
Speaker 1: to go. But we will then start to tell ourselves stories. Well,
Speaker 1: she doesn't want to be my friend anymore because I'm
Speaker 1: chronically ill, and so I can't meet her at restaurants
Speaker 1: for lunch, and we call on these whole stories. And
Speaker 1: I give several examples telling stories on myself in my
Speaker 1: books about times that I've done that only to find
Speaker 1: out later and that, and that's actually one of the
Speaker 1: examples in my book that she had to go because
Speaker 1: one of her children had, you know, texted her and
Speaker 1: said I need to talk to you right now. Mom. Well,
Speaker 1: what would I do if one of my kids did that,
Speaker 1: It would have said I have to go. So it's
Speaker 1: this proliferation of thought, and so that is the third factor.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that how we make things worse when
Speaker 1: what you basically had there In my example was what
Speaker 1: I used to call a bad back. It always got better,
Speaker 1: but I made myself quite miss sewable with my mind
Speaker 1: on the way to getting better. Yep. I love that
Speaker 1: because I think it points out a couple of really
Speaker 1: important things. And the first is that two out of
Speaker 1: the three things that make up what we call pain
Speaker 1: are mental and emotional, which means we have some degree
Speaker 1: of ability to influence them without having to change the
Speaker 1: underlying pain at all, which we may have no ability
Speaker 1: to do. We may, we may not right, but by
Speaker 1: working with our mind and our emotions, we can lessen
Speaker 1: what we would consider sort of the total amount of suffering.
Speaker 1: And then the second thing that you said in there,
Speaker 1: and I think is really important, and I joke about
Speaker 1: this a lot, is like you're saying, like it's really
Speaker 1: about not making things worse. I've often said that's like
Speaker 1: what I teach people a lot is how to not
Speaker 1: make things worse. I'm like, that's not going to show
Speaker 1: up on any motivational posters anywhere, but boy, do we
Speaker 1: have a remarkable ability to do so. And the ability
Speaker 1: to stop making things worse can really bring about a
Speaker 1: whole lot of improvement in life. It can be transformative.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is where mindfulness practice comes in.
Speaker 1: And I hesitate when I use that word now, because
Speaker 1: it's a bit like compassion. It's entered the mainstream culture,
Speaker 1: and sometimes a word when that happens, it loses its
Speaker 1: its meaning because people are using it for everything. But
Speaker 1: mindfulness simply means paying attention to what's happening in the moment.
Speaker 1: And I mean, it's fine to pay attention to sounds
Speaker 1: and sites, but what's most valuable to me is paying
Speaker 1: attention to what's going on in my mind. Because what
Speaker 1: I've just described, this proliferation of thought where I think, oh,
Speaker 1: she doesn't want to talk to me anymore because I
Speaker 1: can't have lunch and all of that. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons that happens is that we're not even aware we're
Speaker 1: doing it. If we can become aware, if we practice
Speaker 1: saying there, I am going off on one of these
Speaker 1: crazy tangents that there's absolutely no reason to believe, or
Speaker 1: to use your phrase, you know, there, I am starting
Speaker 1: to make things worse. You can stop it at that point.
Speaker 1: That's mindfulness. It's a practice of becoming aware of what
Speaker 1: your mind is doing and then switching gears over to self.
Speaker 1: Compassion really nothing more than being kind to yourself. There's
Speaker 1: a wonderful zen teacher who's passed away. Her name was
Speaker 1: Joco Back, and she wrote I never met her, but
Speaker 1: I read some of her books and she has this
Speaker 1: wonderful suggestion. She says, stick to the facts. If your
Speaker 1: back is hurting, what are the facts? The facts are
Speaker 1: my back is hurting. Second fact, I don't know when
Speaker 1: it will get better, but it always does, so I
Speaker 1: know it will. And that's about it. Before I came
Speaker 1: chronically ill and had to leave my profession. The other
Speaker 1: fact might be I'm going to have to arrange to
Speaker 1: make up a couple of the classes that I've missed
Speaker 1: because it was a teacher. So stick to the facts,
Speaker 1: and that is the way to not make things worse,
Speaker 1: because it's something concrete that you can do. What do
Speaker 1: I really know here? What are the facts? And the
Speaker 1: rest is just that storytelling that my husband and I
Speaker 1: sometimes call it being often la la land, and like
Speaker 1: you and I have been saying, it just makes things work.
Speaker 1: That's to me, the principal value of mindfulness is that
Speaker 1: ability to say, oh, I'm about to go off in
Speaker 1: La la land. I'm not going to take the trip
Speaker 1: and just come back to the present moment and see
Speaker 1: what you can do to help with the pain. I
Speaker 1: love that stick to the facts, and the question I
Speaker 1: love to follow that up with is once I've established
Speaker 1: what the facts are is then to sort of ask
Speaker 1: myself what am I making this mean? That question is
Speaker 1: so helpful because it seems to me as humans we
Speaker 1: can't not make meaning. That's what our brains do. They
Speaker 1: have to do it. They can't live almost without it.
Speaker 1: So recognizing that it's really helpful to go, well, what
Speaker 1: am I making it mean? And what else might it mean?
Speaker 1: You know, at least let's get some alternate explanations on
Speaker 1: the table besides my usual worst case scenario. I love that.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes people think that meditation is about not
Speaker 1: having thoughts. Well you can't at least I can't stop
Speaker 1: thoughts from coming, but I can examine them. I can investigate.
Speaker 1: And actually the Buddha that was one of his I'm
Speaker 1: going to forget. It's seven or eight factors of enlightenment,
Speaker 1: and one of them is investigation, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: you're referring to. What does this mean? And what are
Speaker 1: other possible meanings? Am I making things worse for myself
Speaker 1: by attributing meanings that may not even be true. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because a zen is not my tradition, but I
Speaker 1: love so many teachings of Zen teachers as wonderful Korean
Speaker 1: Zen master song Son who came from Korea to the
Speaker 1: United States, and he has this teaching called don't know Mind?
Speaker 1: And wow, is that freeing? It's just another way of
Speaker 1: stating what we've been saying. But to recognize that you
Speaker 1: don't know even what's going to happen in the next moment,
Speaker 1: for me, there's freedom in that. Of course, as with
Speaker 1: a lot of these practices, the trick is to remember
Speaker 1: to do it. I'm not suggesting any way, shape or
Speaker 1: form that I'm a liberated person, but I know I
Speaker 1: know a lot of practices that can lead me in
Speaker 1: that direction. And don't know mind is just a wonderful expression.
Speaker 1: And even when you say what does this mean, maybe
Speaker 1: you don't know what it means in terms of what
Speaker 1: tomorrow may hold or what the rest of the day
Speaker 1: may hold. So I think when Jocobec says stick to
Speaker 1: the fact, she's also saying stick to the present moment.
Speaker 1: What's going on now, and is there anything you can
Speaker 1: do to alleviate your suffering, be it mental or physical,
Speaker 1: or to alleviate the suffering of others. In my view
Speaker 1: and many other people's views, there's no better calling in
Speaker 1: life than to alleviate suffering. Life is full of suffering.
Speaker 1: There's no way around it. And there was something you said,
Speaker 1: you're not going to see this on a poster. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not going to see this on a poster either.
Speaker 1: You know, we have this uh cultural idea of the
Speaker 1: power of positive thinking and always being positive and never
Speaker 1: letting anything get in the way of our peace of mind. Well,
Speaker 1: life isn't like that. You lose loved ones, either by
Speaker 1: death or just even by separation that we've seen since
Speaker 1: this pandemic, there's been a lot of separation. To deny
Speaker 1: that this has been a tough year, it makes things
Speaker 1: worse because you're not accepting the way things are and
Speaker 1: focusing on how you can be kind to yourself and
Speaker 1: others to alleviate the suffering that this last year has brought. YEA, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: You said it in one of your books, is you
Speaker 1: know I found myself face to face with that stark reality.
Speaker 1: A lot of the time we simply do not get
Speaker 1: our way. I like to call it want, don't want mind.
Speaker 1: We often live in a world of I refer to
Speaker 1: it and I think my blue book, and if only
Speaker 1: you know, with my illness, if only I could travel
Speaker 1: to Hawaii. Uh, Like I used to love doing from
Speaker 1: California my husband, I would try to go to Hawaii
Speaker 1: when we could. If only I could go back, then
Speaker 1: I would be happy. Well, I don't think so, because
Speaker 1: life is a mixture of joys and sorrows, of getting
Speaker 1: what you want and not getting what you want. Maybe
Speaker 1: I haven't met a fully enlightened person, but I suppose
Speaker 1: if I were, then I would just take things as
Speaker 1: they happen and everything would be okay. But for the
Speaker 1: rest of us, life is a mixture of joys and sorrows,
Speaker 1: and successes and disappointments, And when things don't go our way,
Speaker 1: my approach is to say, first of all, don't push
Speaker 1: it away in aversion, accept whether it's sadness or loneliness,
Speaker 1: let it into your heart. It's part of being human.
Speaker 1: And then arouse compassion for the suffering. And I say
Speaker 1: that a lot, but it's not that hard to do.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people write to me and say, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize until I read one of your books that
Speaker 1: I could be kind to myself. I find it easy
Speaker 1: to be kind to other people, but I've found it
Speaker 1: hard to be kind to myself. And I like to say,
Speaker 1: there's so little that we control in this life. That's
Speaker 1: kind of an don't know mine thing. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen tomorrow. I control so little, But
Speaker 1: one thing I do control is how I treat myself.
Speaker 1: I see no reason not to treat yourself kindly. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you can't reflect on past behavior that
Speaker 1: wasn't so skillful and try to change the way you
Speaker 1: behave in the future. That's valuable. But to uh hold
Speaker 1: a negative judgment and old guilt, it doesn't benefit you
Speaker 1: and it doesn't benefit others when in doubt, be nice
Speaker 1: to yourself, right. It is one of those very foundational
Speaker 1: practices is to learn to to be more self compassionate.
Speaker 1: You know, I think when people are expressing it it's
Speaker 1: hard to do. It's just a lifetime of not doing it.
Speaker 1: It's a lifetime of relating to ourselves in a certain way,
Speaker 1: and anything that we've done for a long time is
Speaker 1: more entrenched. It takes more effort to change those patterns absolutely,
Speaker 1: and there are reasons sometimes why people find it hard
Speaker 1: to be nice to themselves. It comes out of a
Speaker 1: lifetime of conditioning. And that conditioning can include people in
Speaker 1: your life who were super critical, a parent who was
Speaker 1: always saying that's not good enough, that's not good enough,
Speaker 1: or some other person in your life who was always critical,
Speaker 1: and you've turned that on yourself, and so you think
Speaker 1: you're not good enough. So this takes us back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of where we were talking about the one
Speaker 1: you feed, and a lot of people feed the wrong
Speaker 1: wolf out of a lifetime of conditioning. But you can change.
Speaker 1: The Buddhist said the mind is as flexible as the
Speaker 1: balsam tree, and I've always loved that, And this is
Speaker 1: what neuroscientists are telling us today, that the mind is changeable,
Speaker 1: nothing set in stone. If you think of yourself as
Speaker 1: an angry person, you can start right now to undo
Speaker 1: that conditioning. You might think about, why are you this way?
Speaker 1: Did you have a parent who was always saying you
Speaker 1: weren't good enough? When I first started teaching, I always
Speaker 1: thought I wasn't good enough, and then one day I said, well,
Speaker 1: who is that benefiting? I'm doing the best I can.
Speaker 1: And that was the beginning of my becoming a better
Speaker 1: teacher because I let go of this thought I had
Speaker 1: that I needed to know everything and excel in everything,
Speaker 1: and I learned it was okay, for example, to say
Speaker 1: to a students question, I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 1: Maybe say I'll look it up and get back to
Speaker 1: you or something. And so people who have that strong
Speaker 1: inner critic, all I would say to you is that
Speaker 1: you don't have to be that way. Start with little
Speaker 1: baby steps. Don't expect overnight to become this self loving person,
Speaker 1: but start with baby steps. Do something kind for yourself
Speaker 1: and see how it feels, see how good it feels,
Speaker 1: and then you'll find the next time will be a
Speaker 1: little easier and a little easier. I've received thousands of
Speaker 1: emails from people who read my books, and they find
Speaker 1: these sections on self compassion to be life changing because
Speaker 1: it's never occurred to them to be kind to themselves.
Speaker 1: Let's turn our attention here a little bit to some
Speaker 1: things specifically relating to being sick, chronic illness or chronic pain.
Speaker 1: And we've sort of been circling around this, but one
Speaker 1: of them is this idea that we blame ourselves. I
Speaker 1: talked about parental conditioning. I'm obviously in the US, but
Speaker 1: my guess is that this is true almost everywhere in
Speaker 1: the world. But I'm talking mostly about my environment, where
Speaker 1: we are bumb barded by the media, whether you're on
Speaker 1: your computer or watching TV, with this idea that if
Speaker 1: you just eat this way, or exercise every day, or
Speaker 1: get rid of all the stress in your life, you'll
Speaker 1: be healthy. Until when I mean, you'll just you'll never
Speaker 1: be sick, you'll be healthy, you'll be all of this.
Speaker 1: So what happens is that when life doesn't turn out
Speaker 1: that way, sickness, pain and illness come with the human condition.
Speaker 1: I like being alive, and so I have to accept
Speaker 1: that part of that is bodily discomfort that happens to
Speaker 1: everybody at different ages. But when it happens, especially to
Speaker 1: people who are young, they blame themselves, and they blame
Speaker 1: them selves because they've been taught that it's a sign
Speaker 1: of weakness. When I didn't get better after I got
Speaker 1: that viral infection almost twenty years ago. I thought it
Speaker 1: was some kind of weakness of the will. I would
Speaker 1: go to bed at night because I was worried about
Speaker 1: keeping my profession, and I would just say, you are
Speaker 1: going to wake up in the morning and you're going
Speaker 1: to be better. I was like, I thought I could
Speaker 1: mentally push myself to get better, and I couldn't. And
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of self blame, and it
Speaker 1: was fed by the media. It was fed by people
Speaker 1: around me who had good intentions but would say things
Speaker 1: like are you better yet, And so there was a
Speaker 1: lot of self blame. And what I would say to
Speaker 1: people is you're not alone. This is a cultural phenomenon
Speaker 1: that people are seen as weak if they're sick or
Speaker 1: in pain. I remember an episode of The Sopranos way
Speaker 1: back when Tony's dad, I think, was diagnosed with cancer
Speaker 1: and he's told Tony said, don't tell anybody because they'll
Speaker 1: think I'm weak. And that has stuck in my mind
Speaker 1: because when he says that, it means he thinks he's weak.
Speaker 1: So you're not alone, and there's no reason to blame yourself.
Speaker 1: We're in bodies, and bodies get sick, they get injured,
Speaker 1: they develop pain. It's a natural part of the human condition.
Speaker 1: So I see no value to self blame. It just
Speaker 1: again to go back to our themes, it just makes
Speaker 1: things worse and ever makes things better. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this is one of those really interesting points because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of this sometimes comes from not just
Speaker 1: the media, but also comes from really well intentioned wellness practitioners.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is, I think there's
Speaker 1: this emerging idea that lifestyle factors are really important in
Speaker 1: our health, and that there's a role to be played,
Speaker 1: not just going and getting to pill, not just expecting
Speaker 1: it to be your doctor, that there's a role to
Speaker 1: be played taking care of our own health. But like
Speaker 1: any good idea, if you extend that idea too far,
Speaker 1: it becomes damaging. And I think that what you're talking
Speaker 1: about is this idea that we extend that idea, like, well,
Speaker 1: if I eat well and I exercise and I get
Speaker 1: sleep well, I'll never get sick, which is preposterous. You
Speaker 1: might be less likely to get sick of certain types
Speaker 1: of things, right, So there's value in that, you know.
Speaker 1: I often see it in the alternative medicine movement, where
Speaker 1: a lot of these ideas really pick up a lot
Speaker 1: of strength. You know people I typically ally myself with.
Speaker 1: But I see this taken too far. It becomes patient blaming,
Speaker 1: which is really, as you say, not helpful and not correct.
Speaker 1: You really said it beautifully because I didn't mean to
Speaker 1: suggest that eating well and exercising and reducing stress in
Speaker 1: your life isn't a good thing to do. It can
Speaker 1: certainly help you physically and mentally, but when people develop,
Speaker 1: there are some physical deterioration of the body. I hate
Speaker 1: to say it, but it's an inevitable part of all.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I like being alive, and so I'm
Speaker 1: willing to accept that as one of the conditions of
Speaker 1: being alive. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not taking
Speaker 1: care of myself as I can with this pandemic. I'm
Speaker 1: doing everything to not get that virus, and I don't
Speaker 1: expect to get it because that's how careful I'm being.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't mean that I'm saying that these aren't
Speaker 1: good suggestions. It's just that we're in bodies, and bodies
Speaker 1: get old. One of the things that I've learned from
Speaker 1: people who write to me is that there are I've
Speaker 1: heard from so many people in their twenties who have
Speaker 1: chronic pain conditions, uh, like ruma, toroid arthritis, or I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many of them, and they get told by
Speaker 1: parents and friends and sometimes doctors, you're too young to
Speaker 1: be in pain. Well, what is that trigger that triggers
Speaker 1: self blame? But the fact is chronic illness it's not
Speaker 1: likely to hit in your twenty but it can, and
Speaker 1: so it's just part of life. There's so much uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Equanimity is something I talk a lot about in my books,
Speaker 1: and it's really learning to roll the punches instead of
Speaker 1: hitting your head against the wall when you've come up
Speaker 1: against something that you can't do anything about. It's not
Speaker 1: that I haven't tried to get well these last twenty years.
Speaker 1: I've tried everything, alternative medicine, Eastern medicine, Western medicine. But
Speaker 1: I have an immune system dysfunction. And that's one doctor
Speaker 1: said to me, and one infectious these disease doctor said,
Speaker 1: what we need is a restart switch like you have
Speaker 1: on the computer. But we can't, so we have to
Speaker 1: live with what you've got in the book, which I
Speaker 1: think is really helpful. You say that anybody can get
Speaker 1: sick physically or mentally, and anybody can develop chronic pain,
Speaker 1: you know it, just it happens. It you know it,
Speaker 1: just it happens. And blaming ourselves. You talk about blame
Speaker 1: and embarrassment being really common parts of if you've got
Speaker 1: a chronic condition. Yeah, I did right. In the self
Speaker 1: blame section of the book, I wrote about embarrassment partly
Speaker 1: because I was so embarrassed and it would be triggered
Speaker 1: by people saying, are you better yet? And I was
Speaker 1: embarrassed that I couldn't get better, And of course at
Speaker 1: the bottom of embarrassment is self blame. What's wrong with
Speaker 1: me that I can't regain my health? Well, there was
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with me mentally. I had a physical problem
Speaker 1: and it's been with me a long time, and I've
Speaker 1: learned not to be embarrassed by it. But you want
Speaker 1: to be able to work on, saying, going back to Joco,
Speaker 1: back sticking with the facts. I tripped, I fell, I
Speaker 1: got embarrassed. People try to help me, now what's next
Speaker 1: in life? But we tend to just keep the painful part,
Speaker 1: the the suffering, the mental suffering. We hold onto it,
Speaker 1: and when we do that, we're missing what's happening in
Speaker 1: the moment. I'm not saying this is easy. It's something
Speaker 1: to commit to, to start paying attention to what you
Speaker 1: do in the mind that makes you suffer unnecessarily emotionally
Speaker 1: and mentally. Exactly, it is not easy. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Tony for coming on the show. You and I are
Speaker 1: going to talk for a few minutes more in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation. I want to talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of other techniques that we can use. Things, uh, something
Speaker 1: you call the draw bit practice and they are you
Speaker 1: sure practice. We're going to talk about those in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation. Listeners. If you'd like to get access
Speaker 1: to the post show conversations, add free episodes and special
Speaker 1: episode I do each week called Teaching Song and a Poem,
Speaker 1: go to one you feed dot net slash support. Tony.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on. It's such a
Speaker 1: pleasure to talk with you again. And I think that
Speaker 1: your work is so important because I do think there's
Speaker 1: so many people out there suffering and that our natural
Speaker 1: tendency is to make it worse, and I think your
Speaker 1: work gives people some real tools to not do that. Oh,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me, Eric, I really enjoyed it.
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