January 27, 2025 • 34 mins
Welcome back, Slight Changers! 2025 has already been quite the year. Whew. Because so many of us are feeling overwhelmed, we in the Slight Change family produced a compilation episode with wisdom from our past guests about how we can rethink our inner voice and the sometimes negative things it tells us. This episode tackles topics like rumination, stress, and self-compassion. We each found this episode to be a helpful resource on a personal level as we navigate hard times and we hope it helps you too :)
If you liked the format of this episode, let us know! You can find me on instagram at @DrMayaShankar.
If you want to hear more from the guests featured here, listen to their full-length episodes at the links below.
Ethan Kross: The Science of Our Inner Voice
Modupe Akinola: The Upside of Stress
Kristin Neff: The Science of Self-Compassion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin Hey, Slight Changers.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So it's only January, but if you're like me, you're
already feeling pretty overwhelmed by twenty twenty five insert melting
face emoji. Three weeks in and my Slight Change team
and I have found ourselves ruminating, feeling despondent, and being
needlessly self critical. And so we decided to look back
(00:52):
at the archives and create a special compilation episode for you.
We're sharing our favorite scientific tools for improving our relationship
with ourselves and our mental health. Today, we're going to
hear from three psychologists we've had on the show, Ethan
cross And on the Science of introspection, Madubey Aquinola, who
(01:12):
specializes in stress research, and Kristin Nef, a pioneer in
the science of self compassion. We'll start with Ethan, who
talks about our inner voice, that internal monologue that often
serves us so well, but sometimes turns negative and starts
the spiral out of control. Ethan calls this chatter and
(01:33):
he shares some valuable tips for reining it in. But
first he explains why having an inner voice at all
is actually an incredible feature of our minds.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I like to think about this inner voice as a
kind of Swiss army knife of the human mind that
lets us achieve a number of important things. So, at
the most basic end of the spectrum, your inner voice
lets you just keep information active in your heads. This
may not be the most glamorous feature of it, but my,
oh my, is it an important one. So if you
(02:06):
go to the grocery store, for example, and you're like me,
you know, my wife tells me what we need, and
thirty seconds later, I forget what those things are. I'm
walking down the grocery all that I'm thinking to myself
what do I have to order? And I go over
the list in my head cheez granola fruit. I'm using
words silently to repeat those items. It's part of our
(02:29):
working memory system, basic system of the human mind that
is fundamental to our ability to navigate the world.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, and I love another one you mentioned in your book,
which is that our inability to escape our minds is
also a driver of human ingenuity. It's like the fact
that we can't escape our minds is giving us this
fertile soil for creative ideas to come into existence. Right,
I mean those the thoughts you have in the shower
and you're taking a walk and you don't even notice it,
(02:58):
but your mind is drifting off and then all of
a sudden you come up with the new idea.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think this is the source
of human innovation, which is why I think we actually
want to give our elves latitude to let our introspective
capacities run wild. So you know, it's interesting. There's some
research which suggests that we spend between one half and
one third of our waking hours not focused on the present,
(03:25):
and sometimes those data are used to suggest that there's
a huge problem, right because we should always be in
the present, but this ability to travel in time in
our minds, so to turn our attention in where to
think about our past and anticipate the future. This lets
us do a number of remarkable things.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
When does our inner voice become harmful and transform into
what you call chatter?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So it becomes harmful when we experience something in our
life that cuse us to try to use this tool
that we have to make sense of our feelings, but
the tool gets jammed up, so something bad happens. We
turn our attention in word to try to make sense
of the problem, but we get stuck in a negative
thought loop. That's what I call chatter. You keep on
(04:15):
trying to think and work through the problem, but you
don't make any progress. And there are lots of different
terms that scientists have used to describe this state. If
it's chatter about the past, we tend to call that ruminating.
If it's about the future or present, we call that worrying.
Sometimes we call it perseverating. But the common idea here
(04:36):
is you're trying to make sense of a problem with language,
but you're not making any forward progress. It's kind of
like the visual is one of a hamster on an
exercise wheel.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
We fall prey to this illusion when we're actively repeating
those loops in our mind, that we are actually making
progress because just merely indulging in that topic, right, like
staying in that space. I think it fools our brains
into thinking, ah, I am in fact advancing because look
at how much airtime this topic is getting in my mind.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
And then only maybe.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Hours later, do you realize, oh crap, I'm in exactly
the same position that I was in at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Well, and think about how much experience you have succeeding
in the usage of this tool. Like most of the time,
this tool, this ability to use language to think analytically
about a problem, it serves you really really will. I mean,
this is undoubtedly why you have been able to achieve
the things that you have accomplished in your life. And
(05:40):
the same is true for so many other people. So
you've got this tool that often works really really well.
It should work here it's not working. I'm not a
I don't give up. I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah. Can you say more about how that inner monologue
can lead us astray in these moments or what the
negative consequences can be?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah, happy to So, first, chatter consumes our attention to
the point where we have very little left over to
focus on other things. And so the example I like
to give people is to think about a time when
you're worried about something, you're ruminating, and you sit down,
you try to read a couple of pages in a
book or a magazine, and you read the pages. You
are sure, like under oath, you would swear that the
(06:23):
information has passed your gaze, but you don't remember anything
that you have read. It is an incredibly common experience,
and the idea is very very simple. We only have
so much attention. If all of it is being consumed
by your chatter, that means not much is left over
to do your job. Not a good thing. We also
know that chatter can undo our habits. And the way
(06:46):
this works is like what is a habit? A habit
is a complex set of behaviors that are strung together
through repeated practice. So when I get up on stage
to give a presentation, I've given hundreds and hundreds of talks.
I've learned to do things without thinking, like to move
my hands in particular ways, and vary my vocal tone,
(07:07):
and smile and look at different people in the audience.
If I start to worry about what I'm doing, oh
my god, am I giving a good presentation? What happens
is I zoom in on all the individual behaviors. Am
I smiling enough?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Am I using the stage appropriately? And once you start
doing that, the whole script explodes, the behavior explodes. You
don't do well. And we saw this happen on the
grandest stage in the Olympics, when Simone Biles dropped out
because of what she called the twisties. The twisties are
another name for chatter. Sometimes they're called the yips and
(07:44):
and if you think about Simone's situation, I think it
really highlights just how toxic this can be. Here you
have someone who is on the peak. You know, she's
at the peak of her career, on the grandest stage.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, and she appropriate best in human history as well.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Best in human history, and she has to drop out
appropriately because it was dangerous. And so that's what chatter
can do to us when it comes to our individual performance.
If we shift to the second domain, we know that
chatter undermines our relationships. It can create friction, and there
are a couple of ways that works too. One thing
that that chatter can do is it can push other
(08:26):
people who care about us away. And here are the ideas.
You've got a problem and you're motivated to share it
with other people for a variety of reasons. You want
to get support. But what happens is you talk to
the other person about the problem, and then you keep
talking about it over and over and over again. And
for most of us, there's only so much we can
(08:47):
listen to before we ourselves start to get brought down.
And so that's one of the ways that that chatter
can alienate us from others lead us to feel socially
rejected and alone. These are not not healthy states.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Okay, so we need some hope, Ethan. You got to
help us out here, all right. I'd love to do
a deep dive in some of the strategies we can
use for better managing our chatter.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
So I'll tell you about two of my favorites, which
also happen to be two tools that I use myself
if I experienced shadow. They're my first lines of defense.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
The first one is maybe counterintuitive to folks. What it
involves doing is trying to coach yourself through a problem
using your own name or the second person pronound you. So,
if I'm really upset about something and spinning, all right, Ethan,
here's what you're going to do. Here's how you're going
(09:46):
to manage the situation. I'm basically talking to myself like
I would speak to another person, right, the second person
pronound you. This is a part of speech that we
almost exclusively use when we think about and refer to
other people. That shifts your perspective. It puts you into
this different mode of thinking about your problems. It's like
(10:07):
you're giving advice to your best fri and when you're
in that mode of advice giving, you come up with
much better solutions to your problems. So that's a really
simple thing that people can do to switch their perspectives.
And that's the first thing that I'll do. Another distancing
tool that is really easy and works for many situations
is something that we call temporal distancing, or thinking about
(10:32):
how you're going to feel about something that's causing you
chatter right now? How are you going to feel about
this a week from now, or a month from now
or a year from now. Right, You could stretch out
the time window as much as you want. What engaging
in that little mental time travel exercise does for us
is it often makes clear that whatever we're dealing with,
(10:53):
as awful as it is, it will eventually fade, because
most of the trials and tribulations we experience do eventually
fade with time, and that gives us hope, which is
really useful for managing chatter. This is actually what I
do when I wake up on occasion two am and
am grippe, Oh my god, why did I send that email?
(11:14):
And what are they going to think?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Did they read?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
So I will just remind myself Ethan, You're going to
feel better about this in six hours.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I'm hearing you say that, and I'm thinking to myself that,
in my most anxious moments, if you had asked me,
how are you going to feel about this in six months,
or five years, or ten years, I would have said,
I'm going to feel exactly the same damn way, Ethan.
And so what's occurring to me in this moment is
that potentially another healthful thought experiment is to think about
past experiences where we felt a certain way and we're
(11:45):
absolutely convinced that that was going to be a immutable
state of the world, but looking back, we now know
we no longer feel that same way about it today.
I'm just remembering how there was this thing that I
was worrying about in my early twenties, and I was
imposing a lot of negativity of my brother, who was
on the receiving end of all this anxiety to your
(12:06):
earlier point, and I remember him saying, I promise you,
this is not going to be a topic you're worried
about in ten years. And I was absolutely resolute in
my convictions that it was going to be something that
I continue to worry about and you know, older brother,
wiser than me.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
He's right.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I no longer am worried about this issue, and I
keep that in my mind often as a personal anecdote
of how I engaged in bad cognitive forecasting. I was
wrong about myself and my own ability to be able
to move on from certain challenges or anxieties. And I
think it's helpful, potentially helpful for listeners to identify. You know,
(12:42):
there's the Spanish flu, which is like the global thing,
but you know, we all have some element of narcissism
in us that leads us to want to know that actually.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Narcissm is the wrong word here.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I think we can feel sometimes like society might be
able to deal with this, but I maya won't be
able to because I'm not as cognitively strong as other people.
And so I think it can be helpful to just
find even one instance, one case study from your own
life where you did actually exit a state of mental
chatter successfully and think differently about it so that you
(13:14):
can hold on to because it helps me in present
day moments where I'm like, no, I'm still gonna be
worried about this thing now in ten years, and I'm
like eh, you're wrong about this, at least once.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
You've actually touched on something that is. I think another
message of hope for listeners, which is there's a lot
of research which shows that as we get older, we
actually get happier barring negative health conditions. And one of
the explanations for why that happens is we're learning how
to regulate ourselves better. And part of how that works
is we're learning from our experiences. And I think this
(13:45):
is exactly what you've described. When you're younger, you don't
have the same quantity of experiences. You don't know that
you're not going to be worried about this ten years
later because you may not have been around for that long.
And so I think we accrue that wisdom with age.
And what's exciting about some of these tools is they
(14:06):
have the potential to give us that insight without having
to wait to be forty sixty, seventy years old, right,
So we can have the insight that, oh, wait, it
will get better with time without having to wait the
whole stretch of time for that to happen. So it's
a really valuable exercise for folks to think about.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
That was psychologist Ethan Cross. I'll be talking to Ethan
again about his latest book, which is all about how
to better manage our emotions. Make sure to follow a
slight change of plans on your favorite podcast app so
you can catch that episode when it comes out next month.
After the break, we'll hear from Madupey Aquinola on how
(14:47):
we can work with our stress rather than against it.
Madupay Aquinola is a psychologist who's an expert on something
that most of us try to limit as much as possible, stress,
(15:08):
but a different perspective. She wants us to make stress
our friend because our body's stress response is actually a
kind of superpower on a physiological level. Can you tell
us what happens to us when we experience stress?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So when we experience stress, our sympathetic nervous system gets activated.
It's that part of our body that tells us do
you need to fight or do you need to flee
this situation? And when that happens, we get adrenaline, we
get dopamine, we get cortisol, all of the resources we
(15:44):
need physiologically to move to act to do what we
need to do. This process is a very adaptive one,
so that when you're done with the stressor ideally your
body wants to go back to its resting state where
you know, those hormones decrease, that adrenaline decreased, you get
back to resting and relaxing and all that. That is
(16:05):
a normal physiological response to an acute dresser.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, I love your sharing that because stress obviously gets
a really bad rep but it's not just this random
bad thing that our bodies experience. It exists in part
because it is highly adaptive and there are many situations
in which an active stress response helps us do what
needs to be done. So, in other words, you mentioned cortisol, dopamine, adrenaline.
(16:32):
How do those translate into increased performance increased acuity? Just
help me build that bridge.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
So essentially, your body is being taxed and your heart
rate is increasing because again you're getting ready. That cortisol
is giving you the energy that you need to be attentive,
to be focused to approach the situation. And when you
have increased cortisol, you are attentive to threats, often in
a good way. You're like waiting for what's happening. You're
(17:00):
able to remember things in a different way, and so
we need to remember when our bodies are acting. It's
telling us you've got this, now, let's use this. But
one of the problems is when we can be overactivated
and too attentive to threat and those levels of the dopamine,
(17:20):
the cordis the adrenaline all that are staying elevated kind
of chronically, and that is what leads to disease and
all of these problems that we want to avoid physiologically.
So that's kind of the stress cycle.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Okay, So now you've given us the lay of the
land on the basics of stress. Yes, one fascinating thing
your research focuses on is that how we think about
our own stress, our mindset, and our attitude towards stress
can actually change its impact on us. Yes, can you
first walk us through the two types of mindsets that
we can have towards stress.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
So the two types of mindsets are a mindset that
stress is enhancing, it can help us in terms of
our performance, our growth, our learning. The second piece is
that stress is debilitating, harms us in terms of our
health and vitality and our performance and our growth in
our learning. And it's often your mindset about stress that
(18:18):
can influence the extent to which it can have harmful
or helpful effects. So when we have more of a
stress is enhancing mindset that leads to better outcomes.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I love this research.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I'm wondering if you can give me a couple of
examples of how introducing this mindset shift was actually able
to help performance in different contexts.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
So in one study, we had people just watch a
video showing the many ways in which stress can be enhancing.
You can imagine things like that stressful moment in a
soccer game and somebody makes the goal. We can each
think of times when we have risen to the occasion.
When we show people these videos and then have them
engage in a creative task, we find that they're more creative.
(19:03):
We find that they are more attentive to positive things
in the environment versus negative things in the vironment. On
the flip side, tell people or show them videos of
when stress can be debilitating and see the opposite, they're
less creative and also generally more negative mood, more attentive
to threats. So that's some of the research we've done.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, and one of the most fascinating insights is that
our underlying physiology can change when we adopt a stress
is enhancing mindset. So it's not just that I think
more positive thoughts. It actually can affect our physiological response
to stress at this underlying level.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I think that that's absolutely right, that when you have
an enhancing mindset, it can affect your body's response to stress.
There has been research showing that the walls of your
blood vessels, rather than constricting, they're more likely to dilate
with a stress is enhancing mindset and the importance of
the mind body connection is something I think we often forget.
(20:03):
And you know, our dominant model and narrative is that
we should deny, reduce and avoid stress, and that is
not always the case. Every single person I know can
tell of the time where their stress helps them. So instead,
in this research we talk a lot about how can
you acknowledge your stress, welcome your stress, and use it
(20:25):
in a way that will be beneficial because it is
designed to help you. Now, it's important to say, I'm
not saying run towards stress, like you shouldn't like find
more stressors. No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying
it's not always a bad thing. It's actually designed to
help you.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, you talk about dating your stress, Yes, you know
slight change listeners. We're simply asking for a first date. Okay,
you can decide if you want to do a second
or a third, but just go on that first date.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Get to know your stress a little better and brace
it and.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Be kind to it. Open the door for it, you know,
let it in, welcome it, see how it feels. That's
what we need to do a lot more of.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Are there situations where applying a stress is enhancing mind
set doesn't make sense because I can see a situation
where if we apply this mindset too liberally, we might
end up tolerating certain stressful situations that we really should
try and avoid. So, for example, a highly toxic relationship
at work or in your personal life, that's a situation
(21:26):
where you're kind of you really think, okay, we need
to change the situation. I need to get out of
this situation, versus using a mindset shift in order to
better adapt to it.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So do you have thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yeah? I do think that our minds are so complicated
and we will trick ourselves into believing a stressful situation
is a good one when it's not. So that's when
the idea, Remember I talked about demands resources. One resource
is external support, your friends helping you and seeing when
something is harmful versus helpful for you.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, I think it's helpful to clarify that this is
a mindset that's almost best to adopt when you're in
situations where you can't avoid the stress, so you can't
control whether that situation exists or not, and so adopting
a more positive mindset might be one of the few
resources at hand.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
That's absolutely right. And the challenge with the dominant narrative
about reducing or avoiding stress is that there are times
where we cannot do that. You can't, it's not possible.
So that's why it's important to understand how the stress
that you're experiencing or how your body's response can be helpful.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
How do we learn to cultivate this mindset?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
So a piece of this goes back to that, how
do I think of my stress differently? When my heart
is beating, I'm normally thinking to myself, this is bad.
But if you can remind yourself that my heart beating
is telling me, like I'm excited about something, there's something
here that I care about. This is something that I
want to do. Well in this is something that I
can do well in. Then that reframes that heartbeat not
(22:55):
as a bad thing, but as your body preparing to act.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
There have been so many times in my life, whether
when I was, you know, a child playing the violin,
or whether it's going into an interviews for a slight
change of plans, I get a little spooked if I'm
not nervous, because that means maybe I don't care as
much as I used to, and so I've actually I
see stress as being a very affirming signal because it
shows me that I really care about the outcome, and
it justifies the unpleasantness of some of those feelings.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
And that's a beautiful way of approaching it. That we
are typically stressed because there is an underlying reason why
we care about the situation. And if we can continue
to ask ourselves why why why, then that puts a
whole different lens around why you're stressed and changes your approach.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Our next and final guest is psychologist Kristin Nef. Kristen's
an expert in self compassion, which she defines as treating
yourself with the same warmth, kindness, and care that you
would show to a friend. I'd never been totally bought
into the idea of self compassion, but Kristin helped me
see the resent in a new light. Okay, so you know, Kristin,
(24:12):
I will confess that when I first encountered this work
years ago, I was a little skeptical. And to be clear,
it's not because I don't need more self compassion. I've
always been an intensely self critical person. It's more that
I just have had specific concerns, and I'm wondering if
right now we can engage in a quick mythbusting session
(24:36):
in case there are listeners out there who share some
of the same skepticism I used to have. I want
to bring them on this journey with me towards really
embracing the research and really understanding the value. So one
concern that I've had is that it seems like promoting
self compassion can cause people to let themselves off the
hook for their bad behaviors. And you know, I look
(24:56):
around and I see a lot of people who are
not taking accountability for their actions. Right, it seems like
they could benefit from a bit more internal criticism and
so and of course, for myself, right, I've benefited from
self criticism a lot. And so don't we need people
to be more self critical so that they can be
better to others?
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Yeah, So self compassion, this kind of unconditional acceptance and
kindness is toward our worthless people. As human beings. We
need to accept ourselves, but we can't accept all our behavior,
especially if it's harming self or others, because if your
behaviors cause harm to yourself or others is not compassionate.
So what we do with self compassion is we accept
(25:39):
ourselves as flawed human beings who've made a mistake and
that sense of safety. First of all, we don't blame
others as much. Often, if we slam ourselves with shame
for admitting we've done something wrong, our little brains are
going to try as hard as they can to avoid
taking responsibility and to blame someone else that they can.
And by the way, research shows that self compassion lessons shame,
(26:03):
which is a sense of I am bad, but not
necessarily guilt, which is I did something bad.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, and reading your scholarship, I found this distinction very
helpful because you talk about the difference between guilt and shame,
and you say, look, being critical of our behaviors is healthy.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
It is good.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It provides learning opportunities, It allows us to be better people,
allows us to reflect on who we are and what
we want from ourselves moving forward. But criticism aimed at ourselves,
at our being as a whole, is not healthy because,
as you said, and I've definitely fallen into this camp
in the past, you don't want to internalize I made
a mistake, as I am a mistake, right, I am bad.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Exactly when you do that, it actually shuts down your
ability to learn from your mistakes because you're so consumed
by the thoughts of inadequacy or shame. Our sense of
self kind of gets totally absorbed by the shame. It's
like we disappear. There's no one home to be able
to try to correct the behavior. You need the safety
of self acceptance to be able to criticize your behavior
(27:08):
and learn from it.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
So another myth that I love you to bust is
that self compassion is demotivating. And this one's personal. So
my husband, Jimmy, he loves playing competitive squash. Okay, he's
obsessed with squash, he's obsessed with getting better, and he's
so self motivated, But he really berates himself when he
has a poor performance, and as someone who really loves him,
(27:32):
I hate seeing him in this self vurration mode. Like
it's pretty painful after a tournament or after some competition
for him to be like, oh God, why did I
do that? Or you know, I messed up or I
didn't play my best. But what I tell him to
stop the self criticism to curve it a bit. His
counter argument is that he doesn't want to lose that
part of himself because it means he might have less
(27:53):
motivation to work hard during his next practice session. And so, yeah,
give me a good argument with my husband.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Yeah, well, I'll give you the argument. Then I'll give
you the data. Because this one is also very very clear,
is it self Compassion is a more effective motivator than
self criticism. So self criticism does kind of work. Clearly,
it works gets people through med school. It probably motivates
your husband. But the motivation comes from fear I have
to do better or else I'll slam myself, and that's motivating.
(28:22):
No one wants to feel like they're a bad person
or a loser, So that does provide some motivational power,
but it also has some maladaptive side effects, which is
first of all, performance anxiety. Right, So we want some
anxiety to feel like, Okay, it's important that I work.
But performance anxiety, which is kind of fear of if
I mess up, I'm going to be a loser or
(28:42):
I'm going to shame myself that actually stands in the
way of our ability to do our best. It also
undermines our self confidence. But this is really key, It
undermines our ability to learn. It's very similar to what
we were just talking about. If you shame yourself for losing,
I'm a loser, I'm a bad person. You aren't going
to be as able to say, Okay, just because I
(29:05):
lost doesn't mean I'm a loser. What can I do
better next time? And so self compassion is very strongly
linked to a learning goal orientation as opposed to what's
called performance goals, which is my success or failure defiance
my work as a person. There's a new study that
isn't even published yet. It just got accepted a few
days ago. Hot Off the Presses, who I Love Hot
Off the Presses? Slight Change listeners, listen up. So you
(29:28):
know I work at University of Texas at Austin, and
I had a dissertation student at the time. He was
an ex basketball player who for her dissertation decided to
formalize a self compassion training for NC DOUBLEA athletes. So
we did a study with several high end NCUBLEA sports teams,
all different sports, and we taught them self compassion over
(29:52):
about four weeks. We actually didn't call it self compassion
because we knew that was standing in the way. We
called it inner resilience training, and we taught them how
to be warm and supportive and kind to themselves when
they were having trouble in their training routine or if
they lost in their sport. And what we found is
not only did it help players' mental health, it improved
(30:13):
their performance, both self rated and coach rated performance, because again,
when it's okay to make a mistake or to lose,
you're more able to learn from the loss or the
mistake and improve it next time.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So yes, I love all this research, Kristen.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Another concern that I'd had when it came to engaging
with the self compassion work or trying out these interventions
is that it just kind of felt self centered or
selfish or narcissistic.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I was like, what am I doing here? Sitting here
trying to love myself? Like I just yeah, convince me
that this is not just the most extreme form of narcissism.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Yes, well, absolutely. The reason it's not selfish or narcissistic
is because it's not like we only have five units
of compassion and if we give three to ourselves, we
only have two left over for other people. It actually
doesn't work this way. Then the research is very clear,
the more self compassion we give ourselves, in other words,
(31:13):
the more we fill our own cup, the more compassion
we have available to give to others. Right, So, there's
a couple of studies that show this one is burnout.
You know, this burnout such a problem. We know, whether
you're a special needs parent or you're a healthcare worker,
if you're more self compassionate, you're less likely to burn
out or experience fatigue giving compassion to others. And then
(31:35):
the other evidence we have that self compassion isn't selfish
is that in relationships, our partners say that we're more giving,
we're less selfish, we're less controlling in the relationship if
we have self compassion. And again, it's really about resourcing yourself.
When you can resource yourself, you actually have more to
give to others and you aren't so self focused because
(31:58):
it's like, oh, Okay, maybe I made a mistake or
maybe this is a little difficult, and you give yourself
what you need to get through that, and that actually
gives you the emotional energy you need to care for
us others. Shame and self criticism is an incredibly self
focused state. You know, who are you thinking about when
you're beating yourself up? Not other people?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
A good point to Chee. I think this is such
a critical point that you're making about us not having
finite compassion resources, because I think we do think of
it as a trade off instinctively. Oh, if I'm really
compassionate towards myself, then I have fewer resources to give
to others. Or if I'm really compassionate towards others, I
don't have the resources to give that same compassion to myself. Yes,
(32:41):
And what you're telling me is that we shouldn't see
it as a limited resource. We actually can tap into
a lot and it can be a virtuous cycle where
the more we invest compassion ourselves, the more the more
we have to give to others.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Is that right?
Speaker 5 (32:53):
Absolutely, it's additive. It's not a zero sum game.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yes, yeah, Hey, thanks so much for listening. You can
(33:21):
find links to the full versions of the episodes featuring Ethan,
Madupe and Kristen in the show notes. If you enjoyed
the special compilation episode, let us know. We're always eager
to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram
at doctor Maya Shunker. We'll be back in your feed
with a new episode on February tenth.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
See you then.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes
our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Lubin, and our sound
engineer Erica Wong. Scara wrote our delightful theme song and
Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of
(34:15):
Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks
to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks
to Jimmy Lee.
Pushkin Hey, Slight Changers.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So it's only January, but if you're like me, you're
already feeling pretty overwhelmed by twenty twenty five insert melting
face emoji. Three weeks in and my Slight Change team
and I have found ourselves ruminating, feeling despondent, and being
needlessly self critical. And so we decided to look back
(00:52):
at the archives and create a special compilation episode for you.
We're sharing our favorite scientific tools for improving our relationship
with ourselves and our mental health. Today, we're going to
hear from three psychologists we've had on the show, Ethan
cross And on the Science of introspection, Madubey Aquinola, who
(01:12):
specializes in stress research, and Kristin Nef, a pioneer in
the science of self compassion. We'll start with Ethan, who
talks about our inner voice, that internal monologue that often
serves us so well, but sometimes turns negative and starts
the spiral out of control. Ethan calls this chatter and
(01:33):
he shares some valuable tips for reining it in. But
first he explains why having an inner voice at all
is actually an incredible feature of our minds.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I like to think about this inner voice as a
kind of Swiss army knife of the human mind that
lets us achieve a number of important things. So, at
the most basic end of the spectrum, your inner voice
lets you just keep information active in your heads. This
may not be the most glamorous feature of it, but my,
oh my, is it an important one. So if you
(02:06):
go to the grocery store, for example, and you're like me,
you know, my wife tells me what we need, and
thirty seconds later, I forget what those things are. I'm
walking down the grocery all that I'm thinking to myself
what do I have to order? And I go over
the list in my head cheez granola fruit. I'm using
words silently to repeat those items. It's part of our
(02:29):
working memory system, basic system of the human mind that
is fundamental to our ability to navigate the world.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, and I love another one you mentioned in your book,
which is that our inability to escape our minds is
also a driver of human ingenuity. It's like the fact
that we can't escape our minds is giving us this
fertile soil for creative ideas to come into existence. Right,
I mean those the thoughts you have in the shower
and you're taking a walk and you don't even notice it,
(02:58):
but your mind is drifting off and then all of
a sudden you come up with the new idea.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think this is the source
of human innovation, which is why I think we actually
want to give our elves latitude to let our introspective
capacities run wild. So you know, it's interesting. There's some
research which suggests that we spend between one half and
one third of our waking hours not focused on the present,
(03:25):
and sometimes those data are used to suggest that there's
a huge problem, right because we should always be in
the present, but this ability to travel in time in
our minds, so to turn our attention in where to
think about our past and anticipate the future. This lets
us do a number of remarkable things.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
When does our inner voice become harmful and transform into
what you call chatter?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So it becomes harmful when we experience something in our
life that cuse us to try to use this tool
that we have to make sense of our feelings, but
the tool gets jammed up, so something bad happens. We
turn our attention in word to try to make sense
of the problem, but we get stuck in a negative
thought loop. That's what I call chatter. You keep on
(04:15):
trying to think and work through the problem, but you
don't make any progress. And there are lots of different
terms that scientists have used to describe this state. If
it's chatter about the past, we tend to call that ruminating.
If it's about the future or present, we call that worrying.
Sometimes we call it perseverating. But the common idea here
(04:36):
is you're trying to make sense of a problem with language,
but you're not making any forward progress. It's kind of
like the visual is one of a hamster on an
exercise wheel.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
We fall prey to this illusion when we're actively repeating
those loops in our mind, that we are actually making
progress because just merely indulging in that topic, right, like
staying in that space. I think it fools our brains
into thinking, ah, I am in fact advancing because look
at how much airtime this topic is getting in my mind.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
And then only maybe.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Hours later, do you realize, oh crap, I'm in exactly
the same position that I was in at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Well, and think about how much experience you have succeeding
in the usage of this tool. Like most of the time,
this tool, this ability to use language to think analytically
about a problem, it serves you really really will. I mean,
this is undoubtedly why you have been able to achieve
the things that you have accomplished in your life. And
(05:40):
the same is true for so many other people. So
you've got this tool that often works really really well.
It should work here it's not working. I'm not a
I don't give up. I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah. Can you say more about how that inner monologue
can lead us astray in these moments or what the
negative consequences can be?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah, happy to So, first, chatter consumes our attention to
the point where we have very little left over to
focus on other things. And so the example I like
to give people is to think about a time when
you're worried about something, you're ruminating, and you sit down,
you try to read a couple of pages in a
book or a magazine, and you read the pages. You
are sure, like under oath, you would swear that the
(06:23):
information has passed your gaze, but you don't remember anything
that you have read. It is an incredibly common experience,
and the idea is very very simple. We only have
so much attention. If all of it is being consumed
by your chatter, that means not much is left over
to do your job. Not a good thing. We also
know that chatter can undo our habits. And the way
(06:46):
this works is like what is a habit? A habit
is a complex set of behaviors that are strung together
through repeated practice. So when I get up on stage
to give a presentation, I've given hundreds and hundreds of talks.
I've learned to do things without thinking, like to move
my hands in particular ways, and vary my vocal tone,
(07:07):
and smile and look at different people in the audience.
If I start to worry about what I'm doing, oh
my god, am I giving a good presentation? What happens
is I zoom in on all the individual behaviors. Am
I smiling enough?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Am I using the stage appropriately? And once you start
doing that, the whole script explodes, the behavior explodes. You
don't do well. And we saw this happen on the
grandest stage in the Olympics, when Simone Biles dropped out
because of what she called the twisties. The twisties are
another name for chatter. Sometimes they're called the yips and
(07:44):
and if you think about Simone's situation, I think it
really highlights just how toxic this can be. Here you
have someone who is on the peak. You know, she's
at the peak of her career, on the grandest stage.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, and she appropriate best in human history as well.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Best in human history, and she has to drop out
appropriately because it was dangerous. And so that's what chatter
can do to us when it comes to our individual performance.
If we shift to the second domain, we know that
chatter undermines our relationships. It can create friction, and there
are a couple of ways that works too. One thing
that that chatter can do is it can push other
(08:26):
people who care about us away. And here are the ideas.
You've got a problem and you're motivated to share it
with other people for a variety of reasons. You want
to get support. But what happens is you talk to
the other person about the problem, and then you keep
talking about it over and over and over again. And
for most of us, there's only so much we can
(08:47):
listen to before we ourselves start to get brought down.
And so that's one of the ways that that chatter
can alienate us from others lead us to feel socially
rejected and alone. These are not not healthy states.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Okay, so we need some hope, Ethan. You got to
help us out here, all right. I'd love to do
a deep dive in some of the strategies we can
use for better managing our chatter.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
So I'll tell you about two of my favorites, which
also happen to be two tools that I use myself
if I experienced shadow. They're my first lines of defense.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
The first one is maybe counterintuitive to folks. What it
involves doing is trying to coach yourself through a problem
using your own name or the second person pronound you. So,
if I'm really upset about something and spinning, all right, Ethan,
here's what you're going to do. Here's how you're going
(09:46):
to manage the situation. I'm basically talking to myself like
I would speak to another person, right, the second person
pronound you. This is a part of speech that we
almost exclusively use when we think about and refer to
other people. That shifts your perspective. It puts you into
this different mode of thinking about your problems. It's like
(10:07):
you're giving advice to your best fri and when you're
in that mode of advice giving, you come up with
much better solutions to your problems. So that's a really
simple thing that people can do to switch their perspectives.
And that's the first thing that I'll do. Another distancing
tool that is really easy and works for many situations
is something that we call temporal distancing, or thinking about
(10:32):
how you're going to feel about something that's causing you
chatter right now? How are you going to feel about
this a week from now, or a month from now
or a year from now. Right, You could stretch out
the time window as much as you want. What engaging
in that little mental time travel exercise does for us
is it often makes clear that whatever we're dealing with,
(10:53):
as awful as it is, it will eventually fade, because
most of the trials and tribulations we experience do eventually
fade with time, and that gives us hope, which is
really useful for managing chatter. This is actually what I
do when I wake up on occasion two am and
am grippe, Oh my god, why did I send that email?
(11:14):
And what are they going to think?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Did they read?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
So I will just remind myself Ethan, You're going to
feel better about this in six hours.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I'm hearing you say that, and I'm thinking to myself that,
in my most anxious moments, if you had asked me,
how are you going to feel about this in six months,
or five years, or ten years, I would have said,
I'm going to feel exactly the same damn way, Ethan.
And so what's occurring to me in this moment is
that potentially another healthful thought experiment is to think about
past experiences where we felt a certain way and we're
(11:45):
absolutely convinced that that was going to be a immutable
state of the world, but looking back, we now know
we no longer feel that same way about it today.
I'm just remembering how there was this thing that I
was worrying about in my early twenties, and I was
imposing a lot of negativity of my brother, who was
on the receiving end of all this anxiety to your
(12:06):
earlier point, and I remember him saying, I promise you,
this is not going to be a topic you're worried
about in ten years. And I was absolutely resolute in
my convictions that it was going to be something that
I continue to worry about and you know, older brother,
wiser than me.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
He's right.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I no longer am worried about this issue, and I
keep that in my mind often as a personal anecdote
of how I engaged in bad cognitive forecasting. I was
wrong about myself and my own ability to be able
to move on from certain challenges or anxieties. And I
think it's helpful, potentially helpful for listeners to identify. You know,
(12:42):
there's the Spanish flu, which is like the global thing,
but you know, we all have some element of narcissism
in us that leads us to want to know that actually.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Narcissm is the wrong word here.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I think we can feel sometimes like society might be
able to deal with this, but I maya won't be
able to because I'm not as cognitively strong as other people.
And so I think it can be helpful to just
find even one instance, one case study from your own
life where you did actually exit a state of mental
chatter successfully and think differently about it so that you
(13:14):
can hold on to because it helps me in present
day moments where I'm like, no, I'm still gonna be
worried about this thing now in ten years, and I'm
like eh, you're wrong about this, at least once.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
You've actually touched on something that is. I think another
message of hope for listeners, which is there's a lot
of research which shows that as we get older, we
actually get happier barring negative health conditions. And one of
the explanations for why that happens is we're learning how
to regulate ourselves better. And part of how that works
is we're learning from our experiences. And I think this
(13:45):
is exactly what you've described. When you're younger, you don't
have the same quantity of experiences. You don't know that
you're not going to be worried about this ten years
later because you may not have been around for that long.
And so I think we accrue that wisdom with age.
And what's exciting about some of these tools is they
(14:06):
have the potential to give us that insight without having
to wait to be forty sixty, seventy years old, right,
So we can have the insight that, oh, wait, it
will get better with time without having to wait the
whole stretch of time for that to happen. So it's
a really valuable exercise for folks to think about.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
That was psychologist Ethan Cross. I'll be talking to Ethan
again about his latest book, which is all about how
to better manage our emotions. Make sure to follow a
slight change of plans on your favorite podcast app so
you can catch that episode when it comes out next month.
After the break, we'll hear from Madupey Aquinola on how
(14:47):
we can work with our stress rather than against it.
Madupay Aquinola is a psychologist who's an expert on something
that most of us try to limit as much as possible, stress,
(15:08):
but a different perspective. She wants us to make stress
our friend because our body's stress response is actually a
kind of superpower on a physiological level. Can you tell
us what happens to us when we experience stress?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So when we experience stress, our sympathetic nervous system gets activated.
It's that part of our body that tells us do
you need to fight or do you need to flee
this situation? And when that happens, we get adrenaline, we
get dopamine, we get cortisol, all of the resources we
(15:44):
need physiologically to move to act to do what we
need to do. This process is a very adaptive one,
so that when you're done with the stressor ideally your
body wants to go back to its resting state where
you know, those hormones decrease, that adrenaline decreased, you get
back to resting and relaxing and all that. That is
(16:05):
a normal physiological response to an acute dresser.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, I love your sharing that because stress obviously gets
a really bad rep but it's not just this random
bad thing that our bodies experience. It exists in part
because it is highly adaptive and there are many situations
in which an active stress response helps us do what
needs to be done. So, in other words, you mentioned cortisol, dopamine, adrenaline.
(16:32):
How do those translate into increased performance increased acuity? Just
help me build that bridge.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
So essentially, your body is being taxed and your heart
rate is increasing because again you're getting ready. That cortisol
is giving you the energy that you need to be attentive,
to be focused to approach the situation. And when you
have increased cortisol, you are attentive to threats, often in
a good way. You're like waiting for what's happening. You're
(17:00):
able to remember things in a different way, and so
we need to remember when our bodies are acting. It's
telling us you've got this, now, let's use this. But
one of the problems is when we can be overactivated
and too attentive to threat and those levels of the dopamine,
(17:20):
the cordis the adrenaline all that are staying elevated kind
of chronically, and that is what leads to disease and
all of these problems that we want to avoid physiologically.
So that's kind of the stress cycle.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Okay, So now you've given us the lay of the
land on the basics of stress. Yes, one fascinating thing
your research focuses on is that how we think about
our own stress, our mindset, and our attitude towards stress
can actually change its impact on us. Yes, can you
first walk us through the two types of mindsets that
we can have towards stress.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
So the two types of mindsets are a mindset that
stress is enhancing, it can help us in terms of
our performance, our growth, our learning. The second piece is
that stress is debilitating, harms us in terms of our
health and vitality and our performance and our growth in
our learning. And it's often your mindset about stress that
(18:18):
can influence the extent to which it can have harmful
or helpful effects. So when we have more of a
stress is enhancing mindset that leads to better outcomes.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I love this research.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I'm wondering if you can give me a couple of
examples of how introducing this mindset shift was actually able
to help performance in different contexts.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
So in one study, we had people just watch a
video showing the many ways in which stress can be enhancing.
You can imagine things like that stressful moment in a
soccer game and somebody makes the goal. We can each
think of times when we have risen to the occasion.
When we show people these videos and then have them
engage in a creative task, we find that they're more creative.
(19:03):
We find that they are more attentive to positive things
in the environment versus negative things in the vironment. On
the flip side, tell people or show them videos of
when stress can be debilitating and see the opposite, they're
less creative and also generally more negative mood, more attentive
to threats. So that's some of the research we've done.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, and one of the most fascinating insights is that
our underlying physiology can change when we adopt a stress
is enhancing mindset. So it's not just that I think
more positive thoughts. It actually can affect our physiological response
to stress at this underlying level.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I think that that's absolutely right, that when you have
an enhancing mindset, it can affect your body's response to stress.
There has been research showing that the walls of your
blood vessels, rather than constricting, they're more likely to dilate
with a stress is enhancing mindset and the importance of
the mind body connection is something I think we often forget.
(20:03):
And you know, our dominant model and narrative is that
we should deny, reduce and avoid stress, and that is
not always the case. Every single person I know can
tell of the time where their stress helps them. So instead,
in this research we talk a lot about how can
you acknowledge your stress, welcome your stress, and use it
(20:25):
in a way that will be beneficial because it is
designed to help you. Now, it's important to say, I'm
not saying run towards stress, like you shouldn't like find
more stressors. No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying
it's not always a bad thing. It's actually designed to
help you.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Yeah, you talk about dating your stress, Yes, you know
slight change listeners. We're simply asking for a first date. Okay,
you can decide if you want to do a second
or a third, but just go on that first date.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Get to know your stress a little better and brace
it and.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Be kind to it. Open the door for it, you know,
let it in, welcome it, see how it feels. That's
what we need to do a lot more of.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Are there situations where applying a stress is enhancing mind
set doesn't make sense because I can see a situation
where if we apply this mindset too liberally, we might
end up tolerating certain stressful situations that we really should
try and avoid. So, for example, a highly toxic relationship
at work or in your personal life, that's a situation
(21:26):
where you're kind of you really think, okay, we need
to change the situation. I need to get out of
this situation, versus using a mindset shift in order to
better adapt to it.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
So do you have thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yeah? I do think that our minds are so complicated
and we will trick ourselves into believing a stressful situation
is a good one when it's not. So that's when
the idea, Remember I talked about demands resources. One resource
is external support, your friends helping you and seeing when
something is harmful versus helpful for you.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, I think it's helpful to clarify that this is
a mindset that's almost best to adopt when you're in
situations where you can't avoid the stress, so you can't
control whether that situation exists or not, and so adopting
a more positive mindset might be one of the few
resources at hand.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
That's absolutely right. And the challenge with the dominant narrative
about reducing or avoiding stress is that there are times
where we cannot do that. You can't, it's not possible.
So that's why it's important to understand how the stress
that you're experiencing or how your body's response can be helpful.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
How do we learn to cultivate this mindset?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
So a piece of this goes back to that, how
do I think of my stress differently? When my heart
is beating, I'm normally thinking to myself, this is bad.
But if you can remind yourself that my heart beating
is telling me, like I'm excited about something, there's something
here that I care about. This is something that I
want to do. Well in this is something that I
can do well in. Then that reframes that heartbeat not
(22:55):
as a bad thing, but as your body preparing to act.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
There have been so many times in my life, whether
when I was, you know, a child playing the violin,
or whether it's going into an interviews for a slight
change of plans, I get a little spooked if I'm
not nervous, because that means maybe I don't care as
much as I used to, and so I've actually I
see stress as being a very affirming signal because it
shows me that I really care about the outcome, and
it justifies the unpleasantness of some of those feelings.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
And that's a beautiful way of approaching it. That we
are typically stressed because there is an underlying reason why
we care about the situation. And if we can continue
to ask ourselves why why why, then that puts a
whole different lens around why you're stressed and changes your approach.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Our next and final guest is psychologist Kristin Nef. Kristen's
an expert in self compassion, which she defines as treating
yourself with the same warmth, kindness, and care that you
would show to a friend. I'd never been totally bought
into the idea of self compassion, but Kristin helped me
see the resent in a new light. Okay, so you know, Kristin,
(24:12):
I will confess that when I first encountered this work
years ago, I was a little skeptical. And to be clear,
it's not because I don't need more self compassion. I've
always been an intensely self critical person. It's more that
I just have had specific concerns, and I'm wondering if
right now we can engage in a quick mythbusting session
(24:36):
in case there are listeners out there who share some
of the same skepticism I used to have. I want
to bring them on this journey with me towards really
embracing the research and really understanding the value. So one
concern that I've had is that it seems like promoting
self compassion can cause people to let themselves off the
hook for their bad behaviors. And you know, I look
(24:56):
around and I see a lot of people who are
not taking accountability for their actions. Right, it seems like
they could benefit from a bit more internal criticism and
so and of course, for myself, right, I've benefited from
self criticism a lot. And so don't we need people
to be more self critical so that they can be
better to others?
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Yeah, So self compassion, this kind of unconditional acceptance and
kindness is toward our worthless people. As human beings. We
need to accept ourselves, but we can't accept all our behavior,
especially if it's harming self or others, because if your
behaviors cause harm to yourself or others is not compassionate.
So what we do with self compassion is we accept
(25:39):
ourselves as flawed human beings who've made a mistake and
that sense of safety. First of all, we don't blame
others as much. Often, if we slam ourselves with shame
for admitting we've done something wrong, our little brains are
going to try as hard as they can to avoid
taking responsibility and to blame someone else that they can.
And by the way, research shows that self compassion lessons shame,
(26:03):
which is a sense of I am bad, but not
necessarily guilt, which is I did something bad.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, and reading your scholarship, I found this distinction very
helpful because you talk about the difference between guilt and shame,
and you say, look, being critical of our behaviors is healthy.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
It is good.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It provides learning opportunities, It allows us to be better people,
allows us to reflect on who we are and what
we want from ourselves moving forward. But criticism aimed at ourselves,
at our being as a whole, is not healthy because,
as you said, and I've definitely fallen into this camp
in the past, you don't want to internalize I made
a mistake, as I am a mistake, right, I am bad.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Exactly when you do that, it actually shuts down your
ability to learn from your mistakes because you're so consumed
by the thoughts of inadequacy or shame. Our sense of
self kind of gets totally absorbed by the shame. It's
like we disappear. There's no one home to be able
to try to correct the behavior. You need the safety
of self acceptance to be able to criticize your behavior
(27:08):
and learn from it.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
So another myth that I love you to bust is
that self compassion is demotivating. And this one's personal. So
my husband, Jimmy, he loves playing competitive squash. Okay, he's
obsessed with squash, he's obsessed with getting better, and he's
so self motivated, But he really berates himself when he
has a poor performance, and as someone who really loves him,
(27:32):
I hate seeing him in this self vurration mode. Like
it's pretty painful after a tournament or after some competition
for him to be like, oh God, why did I
do that? Or you know, I messed up or I
didn't play my best. But what I tell him to
stop the self criticism to curve it a bit. His
counter argument is that he doesn't want to lose that
part of himself because it means he might have less
(27:53):
motivation to work hard during his next practice session. And so, yeah,
give me a good argument with my husband.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Yeah, well, I'll give you the argument. Then I'll give
you the data. Because this one is also very very clear,
is it self Compassion is a more effective motivator than
self criticism. So self criticism does kind of work. Clearly,
it works gets people through med school. It probably motivates
your husband. But the motivation comes from fear I have
to do better or else I'll slam myself, and that's motivating.
(28:22):
No one wants to feel like they're a bad person
or a loser, So that does provide some motivational power,
but it also has some maladaptive side effects, which is
first of all, performance anxiety. Right, So we want some
anxiety to feel like, Okay, it's important that I work.
But performance anxiety, which is kind of fear of if
I mess up, I'm going to be a loser or
(28:42):
I'm going to shame myself that actually stands in the
way of our ability to do our best. It also
undermines our self confidence. But this is really key, It
undermines our ability to learn. It's very similar to what
we were just talking about. If you shame yourself for losing,
I'm a loser, I'm a bad person. You aren't going
to be as able to say, Okay, just because I
(29:05):
lost doesn't mean I'm a loser. What can I do
better next time? And so self compassion is very strongly
linked to a learning goal orientation as opposed to what's
called performance goals, which is my success or failure defiance
my work as a person. There's a new study that
isn't even published yet. It just got accepted a few
days ago. Hot Off the Presses, who I Love Hot
Off the Presses? Slight Change listeners, listen up. So you
(29:28):
know I work at University of Texas at Austin, and
I had a dissertation student at the time. He was
an ex basketball player who for her dissertation decided to
formalize a self compassion training for NC DOUBLEA athletes. So
we did a study with several high end NCUBLEA sports teams,
all different sports, and we taught them self compassion over
(29:52):
about four weeks. We actually didn't call it self compassion
because we knew that was standing in the way. We
called it inner resilience training, and we taught them how
to be warm and supportive and kind to themselves when
they were having trouble in their training routine or if
they lost in their sport. And what we found is
not only did it help players' mental health, it improved
(30:13):
their performance, both self rated and coach rated performance, because again,
when it's okay to make a mistake or to lose,
you're more able to learn from the loss or the
mistake and improve it next time.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
So yes, I love all this research, Kristen.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Another concern that I'd had when it came to engaging
with the self compassion work or trying out these interventions
is that it just kind of felt self centered or
selfish or narcissistic.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I was like, what am I doing here? Sitting here
trying to love myself? Like I just yeah, convince me
that this is not just the most extreme form of narcissism.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
Yes, well, absolutely. The reason it's not selfish or narcissistic
is because it's not like we only have five units
of compassion and if we give three to ourselves, we
only have two left over for other people. It actually
doesn't work this way. Then the research is very clear,
the more self compassion we give ourselves, in other words,
(31:13):
the more we fill our own cup, the more compassion
we have available to give to others. Right, So, there's
a couple of studies that show this one is burnout.
You know, this burnout such a problem. We know, whether
you're a special needs parent or you're a healthcare worker,
if you're more self compassionate, you're less likely to burn
out or experience fatigue giving compassion to others. And then
(31:35):
the other evidence we have that self compassion isn't selfish
is that in relationships, our partners say that we're more giving,
we're less selfish, we're less controlling in the relationship if
we have self compassion. And again, it's really about resourcing yourself.
When you can resource yourself, you actually have more to
give to others and you aren't so self focused because
(31:58):
it's like, oh, Okay, maybe I made a mistake or
maybe this is a little difficult, and you give yourself
what you need to get through that, and that actually
gives you the emotional energy you need to care for
us others. Shame and self criticism is an incredibly self
focused state. You know, who are you thinking about when
you're beating yourself up? Not other people?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
A good point to Chee. I think this is such
a critical point that you're making about us not having
finite compassion resources, because I think we do think of
it as a trade off instinctively. Oh, if I'm really
compassionate towards myself, then I have fewer resources to give
to others. Or if I'm really compassionate towards others, I
don't have the resources to give that same compassion to myself. Yes,
(32:41):
And what you're telling me is that we shouldn't see
it as a limited resource. We actually can tap into
a lot and it can be a virtuous cycle where
the more we invest compassion ourselves, the more the more
we have to give to others.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Is that right?
Speaker 5 (32:53):
Absolutely, it's additive. It's not a zero sum game.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yes, yeah, Hey, thanks so much for listening. You can
(33:21):
find links to the full versions of the episodes featuring Ethan,
Madupe and Kristen in the show notes. If you enjoyed
the special compilation episode, let us know. We're always eager
to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram
at doctor Maya Shunker. We'll be back in your feed
with a new episode on February tenth.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
See you then.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes
our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Lubin, and our sound
engineer Erica Wong. Scara wrote our delightful theme song and
Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of
(34:15):
Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks
to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks
to Jimmy Lee.
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
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