But often life's a battle. Who do you want inside your head as you go into battle? Do you want an enemy who's cutting you down? Who's shaming you? Or do you want an ally? He says, I got your back. We can do this. I believe in you. I'm here for you. Clearly, we're going to be stronger, more competent, more able to deal with the difficulties of life when we're our own ally, when we support ourselves as opposed to pulling the rug out underneath ourselves, which we do with self criticism.

Hey guys, how you doing?

Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Doctor Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, feel better live more for this week's episode, I have decided to re release a conversation that originally came out over three years ago, all the way back in March 2021. Now, since then, this podcast has attracted many new listeners who perhaps will will not have heard this particular conversation. And to me, this is an episode that speaks to one of the most important topics when it comes to improving our health and happiness, compassion. But I'm not talking about compassion for others, as important as this is. Of course, I'm talking about compassion for ourselves and how this is a crucial ingredient that is often overlooked when it comes to living a happier and healthier life. Even if you did hear the original episode, I still think it is worth relistening as this is a topic that we could all do with a reminder on from time to time. Doctor Kristen Neff is a professor at the University of Texas in the department of Psychology. She is co founder of the center for Mindful Self Compassion and the author of several bestselling books on the topic.

In our conversation, Kristen of explains what self compassion is and why it matters. She explains the difference between self compassion and self esteem and makes it really clear that self compassion is not about making excuses for yourself, nor is it about self pity. Instead, it is very much an active, mindful state. We also talk about the ever present problem of our brain's inner critic, our internal negative voice, and how our parents influence the way that we talk to ourselves. She also explains why self compassion is most definitely not selfish. In fact, people who have it are kinder, more loving, and less controlling of others. Kristen also makes a key distinction between acts of self care, such as taking a bath, and self compassion. She explains that self compassion is actually a state of mind. It's not something you have to do. It doesn't take time or resources, is simply the opposite of being self critical. It's a way of thinking that has your own best interests at heart and who doesn't want that? At the end of our conversation, Kristen takes us through a beautiful practical exercise in finding self compassion that I really think you're going to enjoy.

This is such an important topic that, in my opinion, simply does not get spoken about enough.

But, yeah, there's a lot of hard science that also shows that when the tough get going, the tough get self compassionate if they want to be strong to get through, because it's basically the idea of being really supportive towards yourself when you're struggling. And of course, being supportive to yourself is going to make you stronger, rather than shaming or slamming yourself. It's kind of an idea that once you break it down, it's like, oh, yeah, I never thought of it that way. But our culture has a lot of myths about things like compassion. I think it's like just soft and sweet and sugar coating. And that is why the hard science helps, because it shows people that, hey, this stuff really works.

Right at the start of this conversation, I thought we should probably define a few terms, because a lot of these terms get used and everyone's got a different understanding of what they mean. How would you describe self compassion?

Right. So there's kind of two levels. There's just describing what it is, and then there's actually defining what goes into it. So at the simplest level, compassion, kind of the agreed upon scientific definition, is concerned with the alleviation of suffering and the motivation to do something about it. Right. And so at the simplest level, you might think that compassion is just self compassion. It's just compassion turned inward, concerned with our own suffering. We care about ourselves, and we try to help ourselves so that we are healthier and don't suffer so much. But, of course, you know, in science, we need a little more precise definition, especially because 20 years ago, I decided I wanted to create a scale to measure this thing and to conduct research on it. And so in my model, there are actually three main ingredients of self compassion. The first one is something that people have heard a lot about these days, and that is mindfulness. Mindfulness and self compassion. They're actually very closely related. So mindfulness is the ability to turn toward what is, to be aware of what is, to not run from it or dive into it too much, especially when things are painful.

And if you think about it, most of us, when things are painful, or especially if that pain is caused by feelings of inadequacy or making a mistake, either we avoid it, we don't want to think about it. We just go into problem solving mode, or we blame other people, or we do the opposite, and we kind of get consumed by it. We get so lost in our pain and our suffering that there's no perspective. And so in order to give compassion to ourselves, it takes a little bit of perspective taking. We kind of have to step outside of ourselves and say, hey, you're really having a hard time. Is there anything I can do to help? And that perspective is actually mindfulness. We're aware of what's happening, and we also have some perspective about what's happening. So you might say that's the first step. And then, of course, when we're aware of what's happening, we also have to respond with kindness. I mean, we may be aware of our pain and just say, you know, suck it up or it's all your fault. That's actually not compassionate. Compassionate means there's some sort of sense of warmth, some sense of care, some sense of understanding.

It's a kind response as opposed to a harsh response. And then finally, what's really important, what differentiates self compassion from self pity? And a lot of people get these two confused, and they're very, very different. Self pity is woe is me. Compassion and pity are different. So, Ramgan, if I had compassion for you, you'd probably like it. I'd say, maybe you're telling me about a problem you had. And I said, oh, yeah, I've been there. I'm so sorry. Is there anything you can do to help? Whereas if I pitied you, you wouldn't like it because I'd be looking down on you like, well, you really got a bad poor thing, you know? So the difference between pity and compassion is the sense of interconnectedness, right? If you look at the word compassion in the Latin, come means with passion, means to suffer. There's a sense of suffering with suffering together. And so with self compassion, instead of poor me, it's just recognizing that, you know, hey, life is difficult for everyone. Everyone's imperfect. There's nothing to do with me personally, right? You know, we all make mistakes. We're all imperfect. We're all flawed. We all go through difficult times.

And the reason that's so important is because more often, you know, especially if we make a mistake or even if you get an unpleasant call from the doctor, our irrational reaction is something has gone wrong. This isn't supposed to be happening. And again, it's not a logical reaction. But emotionally, we feel like what's supposed to be happening is perfection. And maybe everyone else in the world is living a problem free life, and it's just me who's made this big mistake, or it's just me who's struggling with this personal issue. It's kind of just a fallacy of the mind. And so with self compassion, we remember, oh, wait a second, this is the human condition. You know, being human isn't about being perfect. Being human is about being flawed and struggling and doing the best we can, you know, falling down and getting ourselves up again. And so these elements together, the sense of mindfulness, of our difficulty and pain, a kind reaction to it, and then feeling connected in that experience, all these three things have to be there, according to my model, in order to be self compassion. And empirically they tend to go together, they tend to engender one another.

And as you mentioned, the research, now, there's over 3000 studies on self compassion. There's two or three coming out every single day, and it really overwhelmingly supports the benefits of this mind state when we turn toward ourselves with this supportive way of being.

Yeah. Something I've observed over the years, particularly as I've got more and more experienced, is when you look at the patients who really transform and change their lives, not just in the short term, but also in the medium term and long term, as I've sort of become more aware of this, I'm seeing that it actually is because of self compassion. It's those ones who start to quieten down and then ultimately eliminate that inner voice, that nasty inner voice in their heads that actually starts to change things. So it's, for me, I feel that self compassion is really important for health outcomes as well as our day to day well being. And I guess the question I'd put to you at the start for people who are listening, for people who are watching, who are skeptical, right? Why should anyone consuming this podcast at the moment be bothered about self compassion?

Right? So, well, self compassion is really the antidote to our more habitual way of being, which is harshly self critical or really cold to ourselves. And talk about health. There's just a new meta analysis that came out showing that self compassion is linked to physical as well as emotional health. Because, of course, I'm sure, as you know, our state of mind impacts our body and how healthy and how well it's functioning. So when you're harshly self critical or cold to yourself, and by the way, believe it or not, we don't want to judge ourselves for judging ourselves. We don't want to beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up, because really, what's happening when we're really hard on ourselves is we're just trying to stay safe. We feel threatened in some way. When we feel we're inadequate or we've made a mistake, we feel like, oh, gosh, I better need to change this because it's going to cause problems in my life. And so we go into the threat defense mode. We attack ourselves, thinking that somehow, if we attack ourselves, we're going to whip ourselves into shape and we'll be better, and therefore we'll be safe.

So it kind of comes. Underlying motive of self criticism is a good one. The problem is, it's really counterproductive. Right? So, first of all, when we're really hard on ourselves or harsh with ourselves, it activates the sympathetic nervous system response, which is associated with things like high cortisol levels, inflammation, high heart rate, eventually high blood pressure and heart attacks, things like that. So when we're constantly in, you might call it the freak out mode, the threat defense mode, we feel really threatened, you know, our bodies on very high alert to deal with the danger. But if the danger is really, like, does the stress make me look fat? I'm sorry, but things like that, the things we criticize ourselves for constantly means we feel like a lion is chasing us, and that constant activation actually is bad for our physical health. So what self compassion does is, by the way, it doesn't say, oh, that's fine, you don't need to change, but it says, okay, maybe you do need to change, but it does it with encouragement and support, as opposed to harsh self criticism. It's kind of like, ultimately a really wise coach or really compassionate parent.

A compassionate parent doesn't say to their child, you know, okay, little Johnny, you don't want to go to school today, that's fine. Oh, you want the whole entire bag of cookies? Oh, I love you so much. It's not a compassionate parent, right? That parent is harming their child. A compassionate parent cares about their child, wants the best for them. And so the same thing with self compassion. If we care about ourselves and want the best for ourselves, we're going to make change, unhealthy behaviors, we're going to try to reach our goals. We're going to do whatever we need to do to be healthy. And so what happens when we're self compassionate at the physiological level is it actually taps into the parasympathetic nervous system. So this is the system that gets activated when we feel loved, when we feel cared for, when we feel connected, when we feel secure, like in our tribe, right? And this helps us feel calm and relaxed. It lowers cortisol levels and increases heart rate variability and improves things like sleep. And that's why self compassion is also linked to better physical health. So think about this. There's been a lot of work done with army veterans, people in the USA who had seen combat either in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And they found that those veterans who were self compassionate about what they had faced and also maybe what they had done, in other words, who are in their ally to themselves, who had their own back, as opposed to beating themselves up all the time or feeling a lot of shame about what had happened or just total despair. Those who were supportive of themselves were less likely to develop post traumatic stress syndrome. They could function a lot better coming back to daily life. They were less likely to abuse alcohol, less likely to try to commit suicide, which, unfortunately, is a big problem among veterans. So when you go into. Life's a battle, not always, but often life's a battle. Who do you want inside your head as you go into battle? Do you want an enemy who's cutting you down, who's shaming you? Who's saying, oh, you're crap, I hate you, or do you want an ally? He says, I got your back. We can do this. I believe in you. I'm here for you. Clearly, we're going to be stronger, more competent, more able to deal with the difficulties of life when we're our own ally, when we support ourselves, as opposed to pulling the rug out underneath ourselves, which we do with self criticism.

Yeah, I think that's a great analogy, because as you were talking then, I was thinking about, well, what's the opposite of self compassion? Is there an opposite to self compassion?

Yeah. So compassion, in terms of how we measure compassion, it's an increase in positive behaviors, like being kind to yourself, being mindful, feeling connected to others, and it's a decrease in things like self criticism, feeling isolated from others, or feeling what's called over identify. That's when you kind of exaggerate and get lost in how bad things are. So both change simultaneously.

I love how you brought up the stress response, because I find that most things these days, when it comes to health and wellbeing, can be explained on an evolutionary level, particularly when we just look at our core stress response. And it strikes me that the stress response really evolved into help us against those physical threats.

Exactly.

But you're sort of saying that actually, if we don't practice self compassion, if we're harsh with ourselves, if we're critical of ourselves, then we're still activating the stress response, not against a physical threat, but almost against our concept of who we are, ourselves. And actually, we're not getting away from ourselves. We live with ourselves. We're with ourselves 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So actually, you're making this powerful case that actually, if that's happening, if we have that negative view of ourselves or we talk to ourselves in a really harsh way, which is so, so common and I would imagine is the norm in society, well, many of us are activating our stress responses every single day.

Absolutely. So basically, when we attack ourselves, our body is, is acting. The sympathetic nervous system is activated, often more so than physical danger. I mean, if we think of how stressed we get and how upset we get when we feel shame, or maybe you've got to, like, publicly speak and you make you say something really wrong, or these things can be incredibly scary, incredibly activating and our bodies feel it. And I have to say, just did a little bit of cross cultural research and the UK was near the bottom of 17 countries I looked at in terms of levels of self compassion. And I think it's partly because the USA was also fairly low. It was like seven to the bottom. But the UK, I think, was, was just about the lowest. And I think it really comes from, again, we don't want to beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up because it comes from this underlying desire to be safe and healthy. The idea of, well, just push it through, you know, get through it, don't complain. And kind of this, it's this idea that if I'm really hard on myself that somehow that's going to help me or somehow that's going to help other people, you know, it's going to make me less self centered, it's going to make me, you know, less of a complainer.

The problem is, is it's just wrong. I mean, the research shows it's just wrong.

Yeah.

So, for instance, self criticism is an incredibly self focused state and it's also unmotivating. So let me back up a little bit. It kind of works in some circumstances. I mean, there are people, I'm sure, you know, got through to get through med school off of harsh self criticism. But what it does is it. Yeah, but it creates these knock these, you might say, unwanted side effects that are really damaging. Right. So, for instance, it lowers your sense of self confidence, it makes you more anxious. So, for instance, if you take a really big exam and you're afraid that if you don't get the, the score you need, you're going to beat yourself up. That's actually going to make you more anxious as you're taking the test, and it's going to lower your ability to perform at your best. Also, when you, when you do fail, and even doctors who are expected to be gods, they're only human, right? What happens is when you fail, because you can't, like, handle the failure, oftentimes people just give up. Well, then, you know, just drop out of med school or I'll just do something else or, you know, make.

Make some other choice because it feels so unacceptable to be. To fail. Whereas with self compassion, right. It's a much more effective motivator. So put it this way, shame is not exactly a get up and go mind state. I think we can all kind of recognize that. Also saying, it's okay, don't worry about it. That's not a motivator either. But that's not self compassionate, self compassion. If you imagine this coach maybe like a football coach in the british firm, soccer coach, who's like, really good, really knows their stuff, really believes in their players, and that coach is not going to, like, just let their player slide. If they're doing something that's not good, they can say, hey, I know you can do better. Here's how to do better. What can we learn from our mistakes? How can we practice and make up for any weaknesses so we can do better in the next game? That's the type of mindset that a compassionate mindset is, and it's just much more effective and it's more sustainable over time. So, for instance, when you criticize yourself, it's painful, it actually starts to harm your body. It starts to harm, it feels bad, it hurts you.

Self compassion, this is the amazing thing. Even though it's aimed at suffering, by definition, it's like when we're feeling badly about ourselves, or maybe we're just going through a really hard time in our lives when we kind of embrace ourselves like a friend, with kindness, with support, with care, even though we're suffering. Compassion itself is a positive emotion and activates the reward centers of the brain. Right? We all, we all want kindness. We want to feel connected. We want to feel that peace of mindfulness. These are positive states of mind. So what we're doing is we're holding a negative experience with this positive state of mind, but not in a way, it's not like sugar coating, it's not like positive thinking. You know, it's not denying the negative state of mind. It's not like saying, oh, yeah, things are fine. You know, everything's gonna be wonderful. Every day I'm getting stronger and stronger because I actually may not be, you know, maybe I'm sick. So it doesn't, it doesn't repress or sugar or paper over the negative feelings. It embraces the negative feelings and says, okay, this is reality. This is what is. This is hard.

How can I help myself deal with this? And so the warmth and the kindness and the feeling of connection, you know, everyone struggles. That actually gives us the strength and sense of support as we're coping with the negative emotions simultaneously. So it's like generating good feelings alongside of recognizing the bad feelings. And this is really the power of it, because it allows us to more productively deal with the problems we have. It feels good. It helps us to connect with other people, and it's much more sustainable over time.

As we record this, we're in the middle of January, and I've just coming towards the end of two weeks off, I guess, a virtual book tour I released a couple of weeks ago, a book which is called feel great, lose weight. But it's a compassionate approach to people who have been struggling to lose weight for many years. And what's been really interesting in all the media interviews, there's a question that often comes up, which is to do with the whole motivation piece. And it's really interesting that I say, look, everyone's been on a diet before for two or three weeks and lost a bit of weight or felt a little bit better. But the question is, how many of those people are still able to make those changes long lasting in two months, in three months, in four months, in five months? And I find myself a lot talking to these interviewers on tv, saying, well, look, you can lose weight on any diet in January, frankly, if that's what your goal is. But what I see as a doctor is in March time, not only are people put back on the weight, they've gone higher, but even worse, they've damaged their feeling of self worth.

They don't blame the diet. They feel like failures. And that feeling of being a failure leads to them going, ah, screw it, and leads to more comfort eating and more negative behaviors. And actually, there's, there's a whole section on compassion. And actually, what is that inner voice? How do you talk to yourself? And I can't tell you how many messages Chris and I have had over the last two weeks, private messages from people saying, that is so impactful, because I am really harsh with myself. I talk to myself like I would talk to nobody else. I guess that is. And this is what doesn't get spoken about for in many conditions, but something like weight loss, which all around the world, people are trying to lose weight in a sustainable way. They're trying to beat themselves up, they're trying to be the drill sergeant, they're trying to be the kind of mean coach saying, come on, you can do this. When actually, when you shift to having that compassionate voice to yourself, the changes, they may not be as quick, but they're certainly more long lasting and more sustainable, right?

Yes. So let me tell you a study, one of the earliest studies that came out on self compassion and dieting behavior.

Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to ag one, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, as you may be aware, nutrition plays a crucial role in our physical health and mental wellbeing day to day. The quality of our diet can have a huge impact on our energy, our vitality, our moods and even our sleep. Now, in an ideal world, no question everybody would get all of their nutrition from real whole foods. But I have been a medical doctor since 2001 and I have seen firsthand that many people struggle to do this despite their best intentions. And this is one of the main reasons why I am a fan of, of good quality whole food supplements like ag one. Ag one is a foundational nutrition supplement that delivers comprehensive nutrients to support whole body health. It's a science driven formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics and whole food source nutrients. And the best thing is that all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving. AG one has been in my own life for over five years and I genuinely think it is one of the best whole food supplements out there.

It can help support energy, focus gut health, digestion, and it also helps support a healthy immune system for listeners. At this podcast, you can get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is go to drinkag one.com livemore. That's drinkag one.com livemore. Vivobarefoot are also sponsoring today's show now. I'm a huge fan of vivo barefoot shoes and I have been wearing them for over a decade now, well before they started supporting my podcast. I've also been recommending them to my patients for years and I have seen so many benefits when people start wearing them. Improvements in back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain, even things like plantar fasciitis. Now one of the common things people feed back to me when they start wearing vivo barefoot shoes is that they have an increased enjoyment of movement. Because when you walk around in minimalist shoes like vivos, you automatically become more mindful of the experience as you feel more connected to the ground beneath your feet. And contrary to what you might initially think, most people find Vevos really, really comfortable. In fact, many people tell me they would never go back to wearing cushioned shoes.

In fact, they're the only shoes that I wear, whether I'm working, going to the shops, exercising, or just walking around. I honestly would love to see more people experiment with wearing barefoot shoes like Vevo's. So now that spring is here, and many of us are going to be moving our bodies more than we do over the winter months, my question to you, what is stopping you from giving them a go, especially with this brand new 20% off discount? If you go to vivobearthuthot.com livemore? They are giving 20% off now as a one time code to all of my podcast listeners. Terms and conditions do apply, but to get your 20% off code, all you have to do is go to vivobarefoot.com livemore.

There's a lot of research showing that, yeah, it helps people lose weight. It helps them do intuitive eating. So they don't eat when they're stuffed, because they don't need to emotionally eat, because they have a healthier way to deal with their pain than food, which is self compassion. But in this study, what they did is they had, they gathered, I think it was mainly women who are on a diet. These were undergraduates. And as part of. And they had them come in to do one of these psychology subject pools. So they all had to take this and participate in this experiment. And they pretended that they were doing a taste testing session as part of the experiment. And one of the things that they had to taste was a doughnut. And they had to eat the whole doughnut. It was like a big, greasy, fried, glazed doughnut. And all these women were on diets, right? They recruited them because they were on diets. And then afterward, they either. So they broke them into three groups. One group, they told them to be compassionate about the fact, hey, don't beat yourself up. It's okay. It was kind of part of, we know that it's troubling, but everyone had to do it.

It's only human. Don't beat yourself up. Try to be kind and supportive to yourself. The other third, they tried to boost their self esteem. Hey, write about things that you really like about yourself. And the third group, they didn't tell anything, which meant they were probably beating themselves up. They didn't tell the subject, beat yourself up, but they probably were beating themselves up. Then the second part of the experiment, they said, okay, we have another part of the experiment. We'd like you to rate how flavorful these candies are. They were like M and Ms. They gave them a big bowl of candies. Then they left the room, the experimental. Left the room for a while and said, okay, just try these out. See if you like them or not. And then they came back in, and later, they actually measured how many m and Ms they had eaten. And what they found was that the women who were told to be compassionate about breaking their diet, which they had done with the glazed doughnut, didn't eat very many m and Ms, but the ones who were either told to boost their self esteem or weren't told anything.

So, in other words, they beat themselves up, ate a lot more m and Ms. Again, that's illustrating what happens. We break our diet, we beat ourselves up. I'm a loser. We feel upset with our habitual way of feeling better. When we feel upset, we eat. By the way, there's another study, because overeating is also linked to diabetes. There's another study that showed that people who participated in the mindful self compassion program, which is the program I've developed with colleagues, eight week self compassion training. Not only did they gain self compassion, they actually lowered their glucose levels. And part of this is related to the fact that they're more able to stick to the regime, whether it's medication and eating. But actually, eight weeks of training, actually, they measured their glucose before and after the training, and the glucose levels actually went down and were stabilized. So it's really powerful medicine.

Yeah, I mean, the phrase that I often use, which seems very apt to. In relevance to what you just said, is that we used to eat to fill a hole in our stomachs. Now we're often eating to fill a hole in our heart. And if we're not compassionate to ourselves, then actually, in many ways, that hole in our heart becomes bigger and bigger, and we seek all kinds of different behaviors. Yes, it could be food, it could be sugar, but it could be gambling. It could be scrolling for 4 hours on Instagram every evening. It could be, you know, alcohol, alcohol, porn addiction, whatever it is. There can be all kinds of things that actually are stemming from this lack of feeling hole in who you are, compassionate to who you are. Something you said before about medical students I found really interesting, because I think I used to be not. Okay, let's be totally honest here. I was very, very harsh with myself. I can remember, I'm not sure I should be missing this, but I can remember at medical school going with one of my buddies to the pool hall in Edinburgh called Diane's pool hall.

And, you know, I love playing snooker and pool. It's one of my favorite sports to play. And if I wasn't playing very well or I was losing against a friend who I thought I should be beating, I'd go into the men's toilets and I'd look in front of the mirror and I'd look at me and I'd slap my face. Come on, you loser. You can do this. Sort yourself out. Now, this sounds really trivial, okay? Because it would work. The thing is, it would work in the short term. I'd come out thinking that, yeah, I'm a loser for losing that last game. I want to sort myself out and then go. And I'd play really well after that, typically, and win. So that then reinforces, oh, this works. This works. And I remember doing, you know, I can feel as I talk about it, similar type of behavioral patterns. Now that's been getting less for a number of years, but we still fall into old patterns. And I tell you why that story almost comes full circle. I'm very mindful. I try to be, of how I behave and talk to myself in front of my children because I don't want to model negative self talk to them.

I was playing snooker with my son the other day, and normally I don't, but something slipped out. It wasn't too bad, but I was like, I can't believe you missed that. I was talking to myself and my son said to me, hey, daddy, come on, don't talk to yourself like that. And it was really gorgeous, actually, because in the past, when he's ever said anything like that, I've said, he told me, listen, it's okay, you know, but don't torture yourself like that. Treat yourself better than you would treat even your friends, right? Why would you torture yourself like that? And it was so lovely that he started to, in a really compassionate way, call me out on. And I thought, oh, yeah, thanks.

Thanks for reminding me.

Yeah, yeah. And modeling is definitely one of the ways we develop our levels of self compassion as adults. And it's either parents were critical of you or they are very self critical, and then we pick that up.

But in that story, I just want to say I feel that that negative self talk in the short term, it got me to get through an exam, win a snooker match. Right. But I think it came at a cost. And it's what you said about those hidden side effects. I think it came from a place of lack of not feeling good enough at just being me. Because why does it matter if you lose a snooker game? But for me, it became my identity. If I lost, it would say something about who I was as a person. But as I become more compassionate to myself, I feel happier, I feel calmer. I feel I'm less likely to engage in behaviors I'm trying not to engage in because I just don't feel the need to plug that gap anymore.

Yeah. You know? No, absolutely. So what? I mean, the research shows not only are you happier and you're more satisfied with your life, you're also able to give more to others in relationships. Some people think that self compassion is selfish. But in fact, people who have self compassionate, romantic partners, they say that, you know, their partners are, they're kinder, they're more intimate, they're more loving, they're less controlling, they get less angry. You know, people are more satisfied with partners who are self compassionate. And that's because when you aren't beating yourself up and you're kind of filling your own reserves with these feelings of kindness and support and connectedness, you actually have more available to give others. But I want to return to the point about motivation. And the reason it's so important is because what the research shows is the number one block to self compassion is people believe is going to undermine their motivation. So it's really huge. And so let's talk about the fact that it kind of works in the long run. So there are kind of two forms of self compassion. There's accepting self compassion when we accept ourselves as we are.

And I call that kind of tender self compassion. But in order to alleviate our suffering, sometimes the right thing to do is to accept ourselves as we are. And sometimes the right thing to do is to try as hard as we can to change. I like to call that fierce self compassion. That energy of this is not okay. Maybe saying that to someone else, protecting ourselves, that's not okay. You can't treat me that way. That's absolutely part of self compassion. And sometimes this inside saying, maybe we might say that to our inner critic, you can't treat me that way. Or you might say, maybe it's not okay to lose. I mean, you know, it's ultimately, the bottom line is I'm still worthy if I lose. But if I want to be happy, maybe I'm a professional athlete, and self compassion is starting to take off among athletes. Maybe I'm a professional athlete, and if I want to be happy, of course I want to be the best. Of course I want to win games. And to say, like, oh, don't worry about it. If you win or lose, that's actually not being kind to yourself because it's really important to you to win and to be the best athlete you can.

And so I think people get confused and they think self compassion is just about acceptance again. So the way self compassion motivates is it says, the bottom line is if you fail, you're still worthy. Your worthiness isn't contingent on success or failure. I will still love you. You'll still be worthy. I won't hate you if you lose. But at the same time, I want you to succeed. And I'm going to do. Here's the important thing. I'm going to do everything I can do to help you succeed, including looking very carefully at how you failed and seeing how we can learn from that failure to help you do better next time. That's on top of that bottom line of unconditional self acceptance. And that is actually much more effective. Right? Any parent, any parent knows that they can. There's three ways of reacting to your child who's failing. One is you stupid loser. I'm ashamed of you. Yeah, the child may try harder next time to get up their grades, but, you know, they may just hate themselves. They may give up out of school. They may just internalize this as low self esteem. They might turn to drugs.

There's going to be a lot of negative consequences. If you tell your child who's failing, I hate you, you're a loser. Another way might be, and you may think this is compassionate, but it's not really compassionate. A parent who says, oh, that's fine, don't worry, sweetheart. It's okay if you fail out of school. You know, everyone fails sometimes that's all right. And they just leave it there. A parent who just leaves it there is not helping their child because their child needs to get good grades so they can go to college and succeed in life. Right? So a compassionate parent who wants to motivate their child, the first thing they say is, it's okay to fail. Everyone fails. It doesn't one iota impact my love for you, but I want you to succeed. You know, I care about you. I want you to achieve your best. So what can we learn from this failure? You know, this happened with my son when he failed an exam actually, you know, and he was really upset because he failed at exam. And so the first thing I said is, hey, everyone fails. It's okay, give me a hug.

But what did I do? I called all his teachers and I found out, okay, what was going on with the study routine that wasn't working. We changed the study routine, and then he started succeeding on his exams. That's compassion. Right? And so people get confused. They think it's just the tender, accepting side, and they don't see the fierce motivating, what can we do to make things better side. And we actually need both to be self compassionate, and in combination, they're much more effective than saying, you better, do better or I'll kick your ass, which kind of works, but has lots of negative side effects.

Yeah, I really like that. There's a real subtle difference, isn't there, between just accepting everything and saying, that's okay. But there's a way where you get that middle ground where you do accept and say, actually, whether you win or lose doesn't change my love for you. Right. It's not your identity as a person.

Right. Your worth is a contingent on it.

But let me help you, and let me help. That's with a child, but also with yourself. Right? I did this online event last night. It was an independent bookshop near London. Normally, I'd go and speak there, but obviously, because of the restrictions, it was done on Zoom. And I gave the talk and there was a lot of questions. And actually, this is really fresh in my mind. It only happened a few hours ago. And the lady said, because it was a book event, and she said, rongan, I really like the book. It's helped me understand things to do with my weights, but I'm really struggling with motivation now. I couldn't speak to her. It was just on the chat functionality on Zoom. But I answered and I was thinking, okay, it's hard to know what's going on exactly without hearing the nuance of that individual story. But my feeling is, and I directed her to that compassion part within the book, talking about how you talk to yourself, because. And I was thinking. I was lying in bed last night thinking about that question, and I was thinking that motivation is really interesting, because if you really do have compassion for yourself, then motivation, actually, I'm guessing, is not that tricky.

If you really love yourself, then would someone who loves themselves do nothing at all for their health each day with someone who. Exactly.

So actually leads to suffering.

Exactly. So what she doesn't need is someone beating her up and saying, you're lazy. Or the government saying, you got to try harder. You are not pulling your weight. Lose weight and save the NHS, which is some of the messaging that's been coming out over the past few months. And I think they're missing a big part of the picture, which is, first of all, for anyone who's really worked with people, they will know, as you've already mentioned, that shame never helped anybody change in the long term. Nobody.

Yeah. Whether you shame people for being overweight or like, you look at things like race relations, right? If you want to shame oppressors and you know that's not going to help them, say, okay, you're right, I need to change. You know, so even people who are doing really bad things, we need to help them change from a place of care and compassion doesn't mean acceptance. Acceptance is not always compassionate. It's part of compassion. But you can't accept behaviors that are harmful. That's not compassionate by definition. So it's, how do you change? Is the change motivated by love or is it motivated by fear? So shame, self criticism is like saying, unless you want to feel, unless you want to hate yourself, you know, you better change. So it's like, okay, well, okay, I guess I don't want to hate myself or I don't want to feel shame, so I'll try. But that feeling, that uncertainty, that feeling like, okay, maybe I'm a bad person, that's like, again, pulling the rug out from underneath yourself, creating anxiety that's going to make it harder for you to succeed. But motivation out of love, hey, I want you to change because I see that you're unhappy.

You know, I care about you. You are a worthy person. How can I help you? How can I help? That's really what self compassion is. How can I help? And if you don't say how I can help, then you aren't. You're just part of the problem, whether it's for yourself or other people.

Yeah.

I want to get into practical tips later on in this conversation. So for people who want to start a practice of self compassion, they can have a few pointers as to where to go. But this whole idea of societal conditioning fascinates me. Why is something that really, you know, when you, when you look at it rationally, when you make the case for it, it's quite obvious, actually that this is the way we should be talking to ourselves, with love and with compassion. Yet we don't. And you mentioned that Britain is very low down, if not bottom off the table. Doesn't surprise me, if I'm honest, because we have a phrase here, you know, you, stiff upper lip, you just get on with it. Particularly for men, I think so I'm interested in different countries, the sexes, men, the women are there. You know, what are the obstacles to self compassion that you've seen across genders or across different countries? And how might we start to overcome them?

I think part of the reason we're so hard on ourselves is I do think it's part of our human physiology. As you know, the threat defense response is the quickly, most easily triggered nervous system reaction to danger. It comes online first before the parasympathetic nervous response kicks in to say, okay, it's so safe, or you can feel safe by being connected. They call it a reptilian brain on purpose, because even reptiles have this brain. This is a natural response, natural safety response. It's universal. We don't want to beat ourselves up for it. We want to have compassion for it. So that's one level. But then on top of that, there are also all these cultural things. So in terms of cultures now, there hasn't been a lot of cross cultural work. There's just been a little bit. And so I don't want to say too much about it because it's complex, but there are obviously cultural differences. And it's not just east west, because, for instance, in Thailand, they have higher levels of self compassion. Thailand is more buddhist. They actually. A lot of people meditate. It's kind of part of the culture, this more gentle approach to other people and themselves, whereas China is incredibly low.

It's more confucian. They actually believe in self criticism as a way to motivate change. So it's not east west. So there are differences in eastern cultures, also in western cultures. Italy is actually higher in self compassion. UK is very low. The United States is kind of in between, but on the lower end. So a lot of the cultural messages we get about, you know, is self compassion selfish, is it going to undermine your motivation? Is it a form of self pity? Is it going to make you weak? Right. All these things get in the way. Gender. Now, gender is really interesting. I'm sorry, but gender roles really mess everyone up, because gender roles tell men that they're allowed to be fierce, but they aren't allowed to be tender. It's okay to be angry, you should be angry, you should be active, you should go out and conquer the world. But don't be too sensitive, don't be soft. Right? And so men, men's ability to feel the tender self compassion is inhibited, right. Because they think it's a weakness. Power plays into this, as well. Right? So, power kind of engenders that fierce action. So, men are allowed to be fierce but not tender.

Women is the exact opposite. We're allowed to be tender and soft and loving, but we aren't allowed to be angry or fierce or stand up for ourselves or claim our power. So, gender kind of messes up men and women in slightly different ways. So, if you look at in terms of who's more compassionate, they're actually pretty close. But women are slightly less self compassionate than men. And basically, where it comes from, and that's linked to gender roles, androgynous women are not. It's because women are taught they shouldn't meet their own needs. They should always meet other people's needs. So, women are actually much more compassionate to others than men are, but slightly less self compassionate because we feel like, oh, we aren't allowed to meet our own needs. And that's. That's kind of a form of fear, self compassion. So, gender and culture really play into all of this. And the reason it's a trophy is because this is a human thing. It's not about being male or female. It doesn't matter whether you're cisgendered or transgender, whatever it is, whatever culture you're from as human beings, we need both tender and fierce self compassion in order to be healthy and whole, but society really is a barrier.

And so I'm writing this new book called fear Self compassion that really talks about this and really talks about how we need to stand up to some of these restrictive gender roles and say, actually, what do I really need to be healthy, to be happy, to be whole, whether that's physically healthy, whether that's mentally healthy. And in order to be healthy, we need both fierce and tender self compassion, and they need to be in balance. Again, like, with motivation. If it's too much acceptance and not enough of that fierce, hey, you got to do something about this. It's not healthy. That's not good. On the other hand, if it's just about, you know, striving and get it right and be the best, and there's no bottom line of self acceptance, that's not good, either. We need both, you know, constantly, and they're always in balance. And part of it. Part of the issue is we get knocked off balance, and we say, okay, what do I need? Well, sometimes I need a little more acceptance. Sometimes I need a little more change. You know, we don't know, it changes moment to moment. But how many people actually pause to ask themselves, what do I really need in this moment to be healthy?

Yeah, think about that. Think about it before. And by the way, I'm guilty, too. With all the craziness in the United States, I've been watching way too much tv. But sometimes I catch myself and I say, what do I need right now? Do I really need to watch more tv and get upset? Or maybe what I need is to go to bed. Or maybe what I need is a cup of tea. Asking yourself the question is really will eventually provide its own answer.

Yeah, so many things I want to follow up on there. What you said about women definitely mirrors my own experience in clinical practice. The way I've seen it show up is that when I would talk to a lot of my female patients about, hey, listen, you need a bit of me time every day. You need a bit of time to yourself. What I can see is that you're looking after your kids, you're looking after your parents, you're looking after your husband, but what are you doing for yourself? And I found that when I actually can help them take a bit of time for themselves, the results on their symptoms can be quite dramatic. One patient with really bad Crohn's disease and with lots of gastrointestinal symptoms every day went down by 50%. Now, I didn't call this self compassion. I just asked her to take 1520 minutes to herself each day, where she just did something unashamedly for her, not with her phone, not with anyone else. And I was like, really? And I've seen that over and over again, because, as you say, it's to do with the stress response. And the stress response affects every single organ.

So if you can start to lower that, you can see improvement in symptoms in all different kinds of areas of the body. So that's. That's one thing I really resonate with in terms of how you describe that. Again, I didn't see it as self compassion, but now I would probably look at it slightly differently. The other points was how you said that a lot of women are really good about being compassionate to others, but not to themselves. And then I really thought, well, this is quite an interesting conflict, isn't it? Because one might imagine that if you can radiate compassion, then that's going to go to others and to yourself. But what you're saying is that these things are actually quite separate.

Yeah, believe it or not, so in the research, there's a very small correlation between self compassion and compassion for others. Now, what we know is when you, when you learn to be more self compassionate, it increases your, not only your ability to be compassionate to others, but to sustain being compassionate to others without burning out. But because so many people, especially women, you know, it's actually not true to say you need to be self compassionate first before you can be compassionate to others, because that's actually not the case. There are many, many people who are very kind, compassionate and giving to others who treat themselves horribly, so they don't necessarily go hand in hand. Part of what happens when you learn to be more self compassionate is to become more integrated. And again, you are more able to therefore be more compassionate to others, but especially to do it in a balanced way that's not going to burn you out. But yes, and I hate to say this, why? That'll hate to say this. I'm going to just say it. Hierarchy comes into this to some level. I mean, women, we've been taught that we're supposed to meet other people's needs and that our needs don't count.

And that's really convenient for people with power who get to say that, okay, women, you meet my needs and don't meet your own, you know? And part of I think this movement toward equality that women are asking for is, hey, my needs count, too. It's not okay for me just to meet others needs. My needs count, too. It's not that my needs count more than other people's needs, but they have to be included in the calculation of what do I do in this moment. There always has to be balance. So you might say in a way that self compassion is a political as well as a personal act. Because once you start saying that my needs are important, too, then that also shifts the balance of power in society.

Is the ability to be self compassionate something you are born with, or is it a skill that can be cultivated?

It's both. It's both. Any question like that, nature and nurture, it's always both, as you know. Well, so certainly there may be some genetic thing linked to the nervous system. We actually don't have any information on that. But certainly the way we're raised, we know has a big, big part of. It's a big part of it. So if you're raised by parents who criticize you or if there's a lot of conflict in the home, right, or maybe, you know, if your parents were at all abusive towards you, then you're going to have a much more difficult time being compassionate as an adult. Because when you think about it. Feelings of closeness and connection are supposed to make you feel safe. But if the people, your family members, actually made you feel unsafe, then it's very hard to treat yourself as if you're worthy and give yourself that sense of safety through your own care. But having said that, self compassion absolutely can be learned, even by people with horrible trauma histories. There's an amazing scholar named Sir Paul Gilbert, who's from the UK, who does probably, he's the most famous person in terms of the clinical work on self compassion.

He's developed a type of therapy called compassion focused therapy that's specifically designed for people who struggle with self compassion, who maybe come from early childhood trauma. And they found ways to help people who, even people who are really afraid of self compassion, help them learn how to be more self compassionate. So it absolutely can be done and for people. So again, if you have a trauma history, it's a little, takes a little longer, you need to go a little more slowly. But for people who don't have a trauma history, it's actually a lot easier than you might think. Because we already know how to be self compassionate. We already know how to be compassionate to others. We've learned the skill of how to be warm, how to be supportive, how to be understanding, how to be accepting toward others, especially our good friends. And so really, the only task is we need to give ourselves permission to be that way with ourselves. And once we give ourselves that permission, we already know what to do. It's not like rocket science.

Yeah, I think that's quite empowering, because whenever we talk about children or parenting, it can often be quite charged for people. And, you know, many parents will know the feeling that, ah, maybe I'm a bit critical of my kids. Yeah, that's how I was raised. There may be that penny dropping moment when you said that, where somebody's thinking, wow. Yeah, I'm kind of bringing up my kids with this kind of critical voice, negative self talk. But then what you went on to say, it's really quite empowering, which is actually, this can be learned, this can be changed. If you do not have a history of, I think, severe trauma, it can be very, very quick. And even if you have been significantly traumatized, there are ways to actually change this. And I think that's an incredible message to be giving out because it's really, really empowering.

Yeah. In a way, what you might think of as self compassion is a way of reparenting ourselves. Maybe our parents weren't unconditionally accepting. Maybe they weren't supportive. Maybe they didn't encourage us with love, but we can actually learn to do that for ourselves. You can learn by treating yourself consistently, fairly, kindly, with encouragement, with support. You can actually learn to feel worthy and to feel safe. As an adult, we aren't totally dependent on our parents, which is the good news.

Yeah, that's a nice idea, that we can be the very best parent to ourselves. Maybe the aspects of our parenting that we thought, oh, I wish my parents had done this, for example, we go, ah, you know what? I can sort that out right now. And actually I can be the very best parent to myself.

But we also want to have compassion. Maybe your parents were critical, or maybe you're kind of critical. You know, we also want to have compassion for that because remember, at least there are some psychopaths out there. But most parents who are really critical, they actually think they're helping their child. Again, maybe you were raised that way and they actually think it used to be the accepted parenting philosophy. Spare the rod, spoil the child. People honestly believed that unless I'm very harsh with my child, maybe even giving them physical punishment, they're going to be spoiled and it's going to harm my child. And so the best way I can help them is by being very critical and strict. You know, of course, we know now from research that it's not true that if you, if you know, you may actually harm your child, can make them, you know, turn to drugs and have them give them low self esteem. But the underlying motivation of it is actually a good one.

That point, I think, is so key. You can have the success, but it comes at a cost. And that's, I think, the real conflict we have, because a lot of people feel that if you beat them up or beat yourself up, you can motivate yourself to make changes, work harder, but at what cost does that happen? And I think that's where your work so beautifully comes in, because it's showing people that, hey, you know what? Yeah, that's what we used to think. That's what we used to do. But as humanity evolves and researchers and scientists like you sort of study this, you realize, actually, no, that wasn't the best way. This is the best way. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to your children. This actually can lead to success without those negative side effects. And I think that's the magic.

This is what we need to know about fierce and tender self compassion. Because if your choice is be harsh or just totally accept anything, that actually then is kind of a toss up. Which one's better. And so the choice was actually a false one for parents who didn't really realize there was this third way. They call it authoritative parenting. You aren't authoritarian, but you aren't indulgent. Right. You're actually. You have got rules, you have boundaries. You know, you might be quite strict, but the bottom line is unconditional love and acceptance. And then once you realize that there's actually a third way available that's much more effective, then it makes a lot more sense than it did when we thought our choice is, you know, harsh change or just complacent acceptance.

Can you fake it? And what I mean by that is, can you start saying nice things to yourself that maybe part of you doesn't really believe and you feel a bit uncomfortable? But, yeah, can you fake it until you actually make it?

Yeah. So first, it does feel weird at first. I'm gonna straight up. It feels weird at first, especially if you're a habitual way of relating to yourself is, you know, just really harsh. But what we also encourage people to do is to try to use language that feels comfortable, because if you're. If you're super syrupy sweet and you don't believe it, you're gonna. You're gonna be creating conflict in your mind. So you might just say, you know, may start to be kinder to myself. You know, what I wish for myself is that I can begin to be a little more supportive toward myself, and that's kind of a lower bar to jump over. You know, you can also maybe start trying. Maybe it feels a little more comfortable. You don't want to just shut down your self critic. You can say something like, thank you, self critic. I know you're trying to help. And so instead of just saying, you know, get out of here, because actually you can stick around. But maybe. Maybe I. You know, and I want to hear what you have to say. Maybe you've got some useful information, but would you mind saying it in slightly more constructive terms?

All right, so there's a lot of ways you can work with yourself that feel comfortable for you. Often, you know, I tell people that, to think about what you would say to a good friend in a similar situation. So people are different. They have different go to phrases. They've got language. You know, a woman may say something different to her best friend than, you know, a guy, he might say to his friend in a pub, he might say something different. Right? So whatever feels comfortable for you is the type of language you should use. It's really all about changing your intention you know, in a way, it doesn't even so much. This is the amazing thing. It doesn't even matter so much what you say to yourself or what you actually do as that you're intending to help yourself. So, for instance, when we teach self compassion workshops, sometimes it can be kind of difficult to be self compassionate. You know, sometimes when we try to give ourselves unconditional love, we immediately remember all those times in which we weren't loved. And especially with people with, you know, trauma histories, it can be kind of scary to be compassionate.

We spent a whole life closing our hearts to keep ourselves safe. And then we start to open our hearts and a lot of pain rushes out. And so it can be a little overwhelming. And so we tell people, if that's the case, then just, you know, do something else. So, so close. Go ahead and close. Close down your heart again. But do it consciously. Do it not out of habit like you might do scrolling for hours, but do it consciously, like, you know, this is a little overwhelming. I think I'm going to stop this self compassion practice because I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. So when you do it, your intention is actually to help yourself. And so even closing down with the intention to help yourself actually builds the muscle of self compassion. We had a woman at one workshop, in the middle of the meditation, she got activated, and she stood up and stormed out of the room. And she said, you know, that was the most powerful moment of self compassion, the entire workshop, because I did it to take care of myself. And that really stuck with me. So, again, it's not exactly what you do.

It's your intention about why. Why you're doing it. And that's really amazing, isn't it? You know?

Yeah.

Build the intention. And eventually that intention starts becoming more habitual, and then it starts becoming more comfortable, you know? And eventually, you know, you may have to walk slowly, but you'll get there eventually.

Well, it strikes me that the first ingredient for this, in many ways, is awareness. Awareness that you are not being kind to yourself, you're not being compassionate to yourself. And actually, awareness is really the first step for any change, whether it's for compassion or anything else. And so, really, I'd love to go into some sort of practical things that people can do, okay? But it strikes me that for different people, self compassion will look completely differently. There's going to be a unique approach for them. For some people, journaling is really, really effective because it's the first time that they actually get out of their own head and they're actually just writing stuff down, and suddenly they can see their thoughts on paper and just the act of writing. But I know some people who don't like journaling, who maybe talk to themselves in the mirror, have a dialog with them. But I guess, what are the different ways? Is it always voice, or can there be other ways in which we can practice this?

The last ten years of my life has been spent primarily on developing ways to teach people how to be self compassionate. It's not enough just to know that it helps. People need to learn how to do it. So we developed the mindful self compassion program, and it's available in workbook format, it's cheap on Amazon. And we have 37 different practices in there. It's empirically validated that help. And these practices are really different. So we do have, like, compassionate letter writing. So just writing a letter to yourself with the three components of self compassion. First paragraph, you know, mindfulness, being just aware of what you're feeling, aware of your pain, kind of validating. This is really hard. Writing a paragraph, reminding yourself that you aren't alone. This is part of the shared human experience. And then writing a paragraph with kindness, just the way you might write to a good friend who is going through a similar thing. That's very powerful. Some people like to write. We have meditations. Meditation is one of the most powerful ways to actually change your neural circuits. Your neural pathways build new habits. There's a lot of meditations, I've guided meditations on my website that people can listen to.

Meditation is very powerful for some people. They love it. Other people don't like meditation. They're really simple things. One of the simplest is touch, believe it or not. So the first two years of life before babies have language, the primary way that parents convey compassion to their children is actually three primary ways. One is touch, physical touch, the warm touch. One is tone of voice. Babies can't understand words, but they understand that the tone, is it harsh or is it tender and warm? And also gaze, compassionate gaze. So one way is just touch, just putting your hands on your heart, putting your hands on your face. A lot of us do these gestures naturally when we're upset. But if you do them intentionally, in other words, your awareness is with the gesture. What it can do is it actually changes you at the physiological level, touch activates the parasympathetic nervous response. So if you're upset, you can put your hand on your heart or on your belly or on your face. You can give yourself a hug if that feels comfortable, right? And that kind of bypasses the mind, which is sometimes useful because sometimes the mind, the storyline going on there is not very helpful.

So you drop out of your head and you go into your body and use some sort of touch to express compassion. Sometimes it's just a, just a warm tone. It doesn't even matter what you say, it's just that warm, tender tone that can convey it one way. We actually don't have any of these exercise in our program because it requires a mirror and the program is designed to be done in groups. But there's some research showing compassionate gaze in the mirror. If you can do it, it may be a little difficult, you may feel really absurd. But if you can gaze at yourself kindly in the mirror, that can be one way to get self compassion. So we really recommend that people try out different ways of being self compassionate. Find the ones that feel easy and pleasant, start there, and then you can try other ways that expand your repertoire, so to speak. So people really need to experiment to find out what works for them. Even just asking the question is, self compassion, what do I need that will help?

It's just taking that pause, isn't it? And asking yourself, like you would ask a friend, like you would ask your child, yeah, yeah.

And just kind of getting about, because I know you're a doctor in terms of, for caregivers, self care, sometimes people don't have time for self care. You can't really say, oh, take time out for yourself, have a cup of tea, get a massage, because they are absolutely stressed to the max. The nice thing about self compassion is it doesn't necessarily demand self care. It leads to more self care. So self compassion leads to more self care. But sometimes we can't, don't have time for self care. So self compassion can take a lot of different forms, including just in the moment of stress and overwhelm, just saying silently to yourself, this is so hard, I'm feeling stressed, I'm feeling overwhelmed, poor thing. Or whatever it is, you might naturally say, I'm here for you. It's going to be okay. It can be done in the moment. In a way, it's more flexible than self care, which actually takes time. We just actually, we developed a program for healthcare workers, a six week training program, only 1 hour a week. And every single practice was designed to be done on the job. We didn't give them any homework.

We didn't give them anything they had to do in their off time because they didn't really have any. Every practice was designed to be done on the job while they're at work. And what we found is it reduced stress, it reduced depression, it increased self compassion. It increased compassion for others. And most importantly, it reduced burnout. It actually helped them be able to do their jobs without it finding being so draining. So this is pretty powerful stuff.

Yeah. I mean, this is so powerful. And, you know, it's a very compelling case that you've put together with the research that it's very hard for any of us to make the case that we should not be practicing self compassion.

Yeah, but the nice thing is self compassion takes no time. It doesn't take any more time than self criticism. Self compassion is a mind state. Right. It's just how you relate to what's happening in your mind at the moment. Again, just the way self criticism is. So it doesn't take any extra time. But when you're self compassionate towards your stress, you're going to choose to try to take time for yourself. But so you need to start with self compassion about. For the fact that you have no time and you're really stressed and you're overwhelmed, you start there and then that. We also do need physical time for ourselves, but again, we can't really start there. We need to start with compassion toward how stressed and busy and overwhelmed we are, and that will lead to taking more time for ourselves. But, you know, sometimes there are some circumstances where there actually is no time.

Yeah.

Right. So. And here's the thing for caregivers, especially for caregivers, is the more compassion we give ourselves in the moment when we're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, not only will it help us be able to hold the stress and overwhelm of it, it actually helps the people we're caring for. And I write. I write a lot about this, and I talked about it in my TED talk with my son Rowan, you know, who's autistic. And he's doing great now. Well, he's actually. He's 19. His autism is doing great. He's suffering with panic attacks now, which is quite common. So we're dealing with that, which is. Which is stressful. But when he was younger, he would have horrible tantrums related to his autism. And in the midst of a tantrum, you can't say, I need some time for myself. You have to be there for your child. What I would learn to do is give myself compassion for the pain of being in the center of my son having an uncontrollable tantrum. What we know about how the brain works, and you know this, we've got mirror neurons or we've got this thing called empathic resonance, where the human brain is designed to feel the emotions of others.

And that was evolutionarily advantageous for us, right? Our ancestors, who are more empathic, they could coordinate better, they could cooperate better, they pass their DNA on to later generations. Autistic kids actually are very empathic. They can't perspective take, but they're very sensitive. And that's part of the reason they shut down. So my son and I were very empathically attuned. And what I would find is if he was being upset or having a tantrum, the more I got frustrated and upset, and of course it happened, the more his tantrums would increase. But when I could give myself compassion for how frustrated and overwhelmed I was, when I could fill my own mind with kind of this more loving, connected presence, he would calm down. So we actually feed on each other's emotions. And so just as there's this thing called secondary traumatic stress, if you're in the presence of someone feeling trauma, we feel their trauma, too, through our mirror neurons. There's also, I would argue, something called secondary compassion. In other words, when we give ourselves compassion, the person when we're with feels that and can actually. They can help regulate their own emotions through us.

Right?

So, I mean, that is so powerful that in the moment, by being compassionate to yourself, it impacts on your child.

And by the way, you don't have to say, I'm feeling calm. Maybe you aren't. I was not feeling calm when my son was having a major tampa.

So what did you say to yourself? What does that look like?

This is so hard. I feel so overwhelmed. I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? I'm here for you. I support you. This is really difficult.

So something that simple. And I really want to. Want to pause on this point because I want people to understand that it can actually, from what I'm hearing from you, be that simple in the moment, you just. Instead of going down the critical pathway, you go down the compassionate pathway and you feel better. Your son responds, and all kinds of secondary and tertiary effects on the back of that.

That's right, you've got more ability to cope. You don't have to pretend things are other than they are. In fact, if you do that, it's going to backfire. It's not going to work. You embrace the fact that this sucks, this hurts. I feel horrible. You know, I'm stressed. Whatever it is, you don't deny it. You embrace it, but you feel concerned about it. I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? That's what compassion is.

Are there practices that we can do with our children?

So, not in the mindful self compassion program, but there are, there's some books on my website which just, if you google self compassion, you'll find me. I've got a resources page, and there are some great books people have written for kids that tend to center around being a good friend to yourself. So when kids learn about what it means to be a friend or what a good friend's like, you actually help your child, kind of what you did naturally to be a good friend to yourself. So there are some good books. There is a program for young people for teens called making friends with yourself. That again, if you go. So my website is selfcompassion.org comma, but you can link to my nonprofit organization, which is called centerformsc.org dot. You can take a program for teens online, and a program for younger kids is actually being developed. It's not fully online yet. And there's also some great work for parents. Self compassion for parents. Again, you can find that on my resources page. And the self compassion for parents book also have some practices that people can do with their kids, I'm pretty sure. So, yes.

What's amazing now is that self compassion has been established, and now we're seeing all the adaptations and proliferations. How do we do this for teens? How do we do this with people on diets? How do we do this with people with addiction? First responders on the military, I actually, believe it or not, just so great. I just got an invitation to speak to the female New York City police. Police. Women, I guess, female police officers in New York City inviting me to come get it, give a talk. So it's kind of spreading throughout society, which is so exciting, I can't even tell you.

Yeah, that must be so gratifying. You've been doing this for 25 years. I mean, getting the research there, getting, it's been accepted. Part of the literature, I think has been really important, you know, because as we said right at the start, it can feel quite soft to many people, but you've really got that hard science behind it now to make that really, really compelling case. Kristen, I've so enjoyed speaking to you. There's so much more we could have spoken about, and maybe at some point we'll get to revisit this on this podcast. But what I always like to do at the end is leave my listeners with some practical tips. This podcast is called feel better, live more, because when we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. And I wonder, with all your wisdom, with all your experience, do you have some practical tips to leave my listeners with, please?

Yes. Well, even more than a practical tip, I'll lead you through a little practice. It's called the self compassion break, which actually people can do. It can be their first self compassion practice. So the self compassion break. And the reason we call it a break is because that's the idea. You take that pause, you might be in the middle of stress or the middle of something difficult. It only takes about five minutes. A little break you can take. Or what we do is we intentionally bring in the three components of self compassion. So you want me to lead you through it and your listeners can just follow in?

That'd be amazing. Let's do it.

So I like to do this with my eyes closed. It's not necessary, but when we close our eyes, it helps us to go inward. So you may want to close your eyes. Okay. And to practice this, we actually need to call up a little difficulty so we can give it compassion. So I'd invite you to think of something that you're struggling with right now, maybe a relationship issue or a health issue. So just think of one thing right now and make sure that when you think about it, you don't feel overwhelmed. It's not, like, a really big problem, because if you feel overwhelmed, you're going to be distracted and you actually won't be able to learn the practice. So something that's like a four on a scale of one to ten. Okay. So just choose wisely, and then just play out this situation in your mind. Make it present for you. What's happening? Right. How are you feeling? Or what's going on? What are you afraid of? If that's relevant. Right. What's going on? Who are the people involved that's relevant? Okay. So what we're going to do now is we're going to bring in the three components of self compassion by saying some phrases that we want to evoke them.

And I'm going to say a phrase that I'm going to invite you to come up with your own language that actually feels comfortable and right for you. So, again, thinking about this difficulty, this challenge. So, first we want to bring in mindfulness. So, telling yourself, you know, this, this is what happened. What's happening right now. This is the moment of struggle or suffering. We're turning toward it, we're recognizing it. And again, using language that may fit it may be something like, this is really hard, or, yeah, I'm just really hurting right now. So using some language that really calls attention and awareness to the fact this is a moment of difficulty, then we also want to remember our shared humanity in this. Right? So, suffering, challenges, stress, difficulty. This is part of life, you know, there's nothing abnormal about having challenges like this. So whatever way you want to talk to yourself about this, maybe it's just simply, I'm not alone. Other people feel this way, too. And then finally, we want to give ourselves some kindness in the face of this difficulty. So one way to do that is with physical touch, you may want to try putting your hands on your heart, maybe your face, right.

Putting your hand somewhere on your body that feels supportive, feeling that supportive touch, right. And saying some words of kindness and support to yourself, you may think, you know, what would I say to a really beloved friend who is going through this exact same situation that I'm going through? What would I say to express my support, my care, my willingness to help, and then just try saying it to yourself. It may feel awkward. That's okay. We're just setting our intention to be more supportive to ourselves. Okay. And then you can open your eyes. So that's it, really. It's pretty simple. Just bringing in mindfulness, remembering common humanity and giving yourself kindness. How did that. How did that go for you, Rangan?

Yeah, yeah, really good, actually. Even just the act of stopping and going inward is powerful in and of itself. Right. It just feels. I feel calmer. I feel like a bit of the noise has just shut down or switched off or the volume's gone down in my mind. And, yeah, I feel happier. I feel calmer, actually. That's definitely true.

Yeah. So again, this is a practice. It's not just a good idea, it's something you can do. And again, on my website, I've got a lot of free guided practices. I've got some written practices. So that can be a place to start. And then if you're interested, now that everything's online, we've got a lot of online trainings that people can take. So it's much more. It's pretty accessible. If you want to go deeper into this.

Yeah. Kristen, listen, thank you so much for the time you've given up today to speak to me. I know you're busy trying to finish off your next book. What is the website for people who want to check you out and check out the various courses that you have created. What's the best place to find you?

Self compassion. All the algorithms point to me because I got in early. So spell self compassion anyway and you'll come to my website, selfcompassion.org and that's probably the best place to start. And then you can link to the center for MSc from there and you can see my workshops, my books. And again, there's a lot of free stuff on the website, including my TED talk and videos. So I design. Oh, by the way, for those of you, those science nerds out there, I know there are many science nerds out there. I've got hundreds, probably even thousands at this point of the PDF's of research articles organized by category on my website. So if you want to look at the science side, that's also available there.

Oh, fantastic. Well, we'll link to it.

You can take a test as well. You can test your own self compassion level with my self compassion scale. So that's there as well.

Fantastic. Well, look, we'll link to everything in our show notes as well for people, but you're doing incredible work. Thanks so much for your time. And until the next time we get to speak, be kind to yourself.

Thank you. All right, go. Well.

Really hope you enjoyed that conversation.

Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life.

And also have a think about one.

Thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now before you go, just wanted to.

Let you know about Friday five.

It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free@drchatajeet.com. If you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audiobooks, which are I am narrating. If you enjoyed todays episode. It is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.