June 26, 2021 • 32 mins
Dr. Neff is the leading expert and scientist in Self-Compassion. According to the data, Dr. Neff explains why the inner critic doesn’t lead to healthy change, and the first steps to being kinder to ourselves. She explains how shame shuts down our ability to learn and grow, and the true difference between self-esteem vs. self-compassion. PLUS- all things PERFECTIONISM and how to escape it from robbing of you of your life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't lend my body out, be outwait everything that
I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me.
It's beautiful and I will always out way if you
(00:24):
feel it with your hands in the air. She'll love
to the mow at there say good one day and
time did you and die out? Welcome back to Eltweigh
today's guest. I'm so, so so excited for you to meet.
Some of you may be familiar with her work. It's
Dr Neff, who is widely recognized as one of the
(00:46):
world's leading experts on the topic of self compassion. She
was really one of the first to define and measure
it almost twenty years ago, and she is here to
help us really utilize self compassion. While learning about her
new book, Fear Self Compassion that has so much wisdom
to offer, I think when it comes to how us
(01:08):
women can exactly what you say on the title harness
kindness to speak up, claim our power and thrive. So
thanks for this amazing book, which we're going to link
in the show notes and kind of breaking down self
compassion for those of us who are new to it. Great,
happy to be here at Lisa. Yeah, it's an important
topic how we can use self compassion to relate to
(01:28):
health and our bodies and eating and all that. So,
just to kick us off, in your book, you talk
about the three elements of self compassion and what self
compassion is. Yeah, so there are three components and from
my model, you really need all three to be healthy.
Are the one that's easiest to understand is simply self kindness, right, So,
(01:48):
self compassion means treating ourselves with the same warmth, care, concerns,
support that we could naturally show to a friend or
a loved one. Unfortunately, we usually don't show ourselves the
same care or support we showed a loved ones. Typically
we're much harsher and harder on ourselves than we are
to other people. And so with self compassion, we turn
(02:10):
that around and we we also care about ourselves. We
also see ourselves as worthy of compassion and support, understanding,
more encouragement if we need to make a change. So
kindness is one element, but there's also two other elements
that are that are very important. So mindfulness actually, from
my from my point of view is a part of
self compassion, and particularly self compassion is concerned with the
(02:35):
alleviation of suffering. So when the same outward is concerned
with the alleviation of other suffering, when it's inward, it's
concerned with our own suffering. We want to be well,
we want to be healthy, we want to be happy,
and in order to do that, the first step of
that really is to be mindfully aware of when we're
in pain, emotional pain, pain, physical pain. If we're just
(02:57):
like stiff up all it, don't complain and just bear through,
we don't notice we're suffering or struggling. We actually can't
give ourselves compassion. Would be like a friend who called
you up and said, hey, Lisa, I really need to
talk to you. I'm upset, and like, don't have time
for it. I'm too busy, right. We kind of do
that with ourselves, or either we ignore our pain or
(03:17):
the other common thing we do is we get fused
with it. We get lost in it, Like our whole
awareness is filled with I'm so awful of my life
is so awful. We kind of drowned in it to
the point we have no perspective to step outside of
ourselves and say, hey, you're having a really hard time.
Is there anything I can do to help? So mindfulness
is actually needs to be built into self compassion. And
(03:39):
then the third element, which is really important and which
is what distinguishes self compassion from self pity, is a
sense of common humanity. Right. So, um, the word compassion
in the Latins passion means to suffer, come means with
So there's a sense of connectedness in compassion that feels
really different than pity, which maybe you know, if I
(03:59):
pity you, it means I'm still separate from you, I'm
looking down on you. And if I have self pity,
it means I feel isolated. It's just me and the
only one in the world who's struggling. So self compassion
means we just really frame our situation. A lot of
the human experience. Everyone's imperfect, everyone struggles, everyone's you need
Some people do struggle more than others, absolutely, but everyone's
(04:22):
struggle is worthy of a compassionate response, and so that
connectiveness can be very very important in terms of dealing
with a lot of the struggles we go through in life.
Thank you for breaking that down in such a meticulous way.
A lot of our listeners are moms or daughters, and
I know we have some men as well listening. But
(04:42):
regardless of who they are, they're all really good people
that are really good at caring for those around them,
whether it's their siblings, partners, parents, maybe their kids as well.
But when it comes to being able to apply that inward,
it's like they've got no ability to do so. I
think that's most people, to be honest, we have the
(05:03):
ability to do so. There's there's a couple of reasons
why they don't. One is cultural. We aren't taught that
this is a good thing. I mean, when you're going up,
did anyone ever say, hey, make sure you're a good
friend to yourself. Really, just you know, think about supporting
yourself with warmth and encouragement. You know, no one tells
us that. And then there's also some physiological reasons why
(05:24):
it's difficult. It's not hard, but it's not instinctual. When
we like we look at in the mirror and we
don't like what we see, For instance, we feel threatened.
We feel something's wrong. You know, maybe I'm gonna be
in safe maybe people will reject me, and so we
go into threat defense mode. Fight, fight, or freeze. We
try to get away from the problem, which is of
course us. So we fight ourselves and self criticism. We
(05:47):
beat ourselves up, thinking somehow that's going to make us
change and be able to keep safe, or it means
we're going to somehow kind of young beat other people
to the punch. If we criticize ourselves, that won't hurt
so much, and other people criticize us, or we flee
into shame, like we imagine the judgments of others and
we hang our head and shame that's also a safety behavior,
or we freeze, we get stuck. It's like you know,
(06:09):
we just go over and over and over in our
head this sense and I'm not worthy or whatever it is. Again,
these are natural safety behaviors. They evolved to keep us safe.
They actually aren't very safe, but we do this naturally,
whereas the other safety system is is called like the
care response, right, and this actually evolved to use other
(06:30):
people with our children or our group members. And so
in this case, when we feel connected with others, we
feel bonded, we feel like close, we feel that sense
of warmth and belonging that also helps us feel safe.
But usually it evolved with other people, again, our children
or group members. So what we're having to do with
self compassion is something it's a little feels a little
(06:51):
awkward at first, is we have to use the care
system which evolved for others with ourselves. It feels a
little weird at first, although of course it doesn't feel
at all weird to us to call ourselves mean names.
It should, but we're just used to it, so you know,
that's what we're doing. But the system is there, and
it's not rocket science. We know how to be kind,
we know how to be supportive, we know how to
(07:12):
be encouraging. If we need to make a change, we
just have to kind of consciously say, Okay, I'm going
to choose to treat myself that way. And the research
shows the effects are just phenomenal in terms of how
much how helpful it is. You said so many amazing
points so quickly that that I was taking notes. I
actually want to encourage our listeners to maybe take notes
or listen to this twice, because there's so much to unpack, digest,
(07:37):
and let's settle into our body. But one thing that
you said was that when we look in the mirror
and we say oh I look disgusting, and we're beating
others to the punch like if we know it. We've
built this protective barrier so that if other person people
are thinking it, we're saying it, we're buffered. And that
is so interesting because do that, and I think we
(07:58):
do it out loud too, as women were very quick
in front of other women, maybe in front of our
partners as well, to say I look disgusting, almost to
protect against the other person thinking it or saying it. Yeah. Absolutely,
you know, again it's natural. We shouldn't beat ourselves up
for beating ourselves up. It really it's really quite in
(08:18):
a sense as the safety behavior, but it's not again,
it's not very effective and result as it tends to
make things worse, you know. And the other hand, we
don't have to say I look like a victorious secret model,
you know, we don't have we can just it was
it really interesting with the research shows is that when
we model self compassion like yeah, so I'm not perfect,
but you know I look pretty healthy or I'm happy
(08:40):
with who I am, we're actually giving other people, especially
as a woman, permission to do the same. When we
actually said I'm modeling oh, we look at the cell
you ladd in my thighs. We modeled Wow, you know
we don't feeling okay about my body and feeling pretty
healthy and feeling pretty strong. Yeah, I'm not perfect, but
that's okay. Who's that episodes to be perfect? Then you're
giving other people permission to do the same for themselves,
(09:01):
to just exist exactly. You began to talk about the
inner critic, which we're all here very familiar with that
voice in our head that is telling us that we're
not enough, that we're not doing enough, that no matter
how hard we try, we still mess it up. But
you started to say something, if we could dive a
little bit deeper, does this criticism according to the research.
(09:22):
So you know that's why Dr Neff is so amazing.
She's really looking at the science the research. What does
the research say about the self criticism leading to change? Right? So,
first of all, it's the self criticism. It kind of works.
I mean, yeah, there are people who've gone through gone
through law school or med school through hard self criticism.
So we don't want to deny that it works, but
(09:44):
it looks kind of the way corporal punishment works. If
you want a child to comply with your rules. If
you you know, use like the paddle, which is you
you used to be the We used to say spare
the rod, spoiled the child. It works for short term compliance,
but it actually has a lot of long term negative
side effects. So with self criticism particular kind of works.
(10:04):
It may have you work a little harder, but it
has all these negative side effects. For instance, it creates anxiety. Right,
so when you know you're gonna try something new and
you know that if you fail, you're gonna really criticize yourself,
it's gonna be making more anxious about trying. So it
can lead to fear of failure. It can lead to
performance anxiety, which actually undermined your ability to perform. What
(10:28):
it also does is when you when you do fail,
I mean and everyone's going to fail. That's how we learn, right,
It's a truism. Failures our best teacher, and yet somehow
we think it shouldn't be true. So if you're very
self critical, and if you just start criticizing yourself or
beating yourself up when you fail, what you're gonna do
is you're gonna put yourself in a state of shame
(10:48):
and shame shuts down our ability to learn. You know,
shame is not exactly a great learning mindset, whereas if
you're self compassionate, it's like, okay, I failed, everyone fail
else no, no, no shame and failing, what can I
learn from this? And when you're when you allow yourself
to learn, that actually is much more effective in terms
of trying again. So people who are more self compassionate
(11:11):
that they can sustain their motivation for longer. They're more
able to pick themselves up and try again. When they
do fail, they do things like they procrastinate less. What's procrastination,
it's fear of failure. I kind of put it off
because I don't want to try because if I fail
and it's gonna hurt too bad. But if it's okay
to fail, Okay, I'll give it a shot. Why not,
(11:32):
you know, do my best and if it doesn't work
at I'll just see what I can learn and try again.
It's just such a it's so much healthier in terms
of doing taking on new tasks, and it's also more
effective because when you have your own support, when you
have your own back, when you feel encouraged, you have
more emotional resources to do your best. You know, it
(11:53):
doesn't mean like everything you do is okay. Actually maybe
when you fail, you're supposed to learn from it. Okay,
Well that didn't work out too well, Maybe I can
try this differently next time. But you know, it's not
a big deal as opposed to shame, which just so
there's also a big difference that we need to make
between the person and the behavior. Self compassion is an
(12:13):
unconditional source of self worth, and in terms of me
as a person, it doesn't matter if I succeed or fail.
It's kind of like with your child. You hopefully you
love your child unconditionally, whether they succeed or fail, no
matter what they look like, no matter what they're doing
in life. It's like an unconditional bottom line is unconditional
acceptance of the person. But the behaviors, you know, maybe
(12:36):
the behaviors aren't healthy. We don't want to accept unhealthy
behaviors or situations. Maybe we weren't a situation. That's unhealthier, job,
that's unhealthy, relationship, that's unhealthy, political system, that's unhealthy. Right,
it's not compassionate to accept harmful behaviors or situations because
those cause harm. And so with self compassion. And you know,
(12:57):
coming to the issue, for instance, of a body appearance,
you can absolutely unconditionally accept yourself no matter whether or
not you're happy with your even your health or your appearance.
But it doesn't mean you're going to try to engage
in healthy behaviors or situations. And you do that because
you care, not because you're inadequate, but just simply because
you want. You know, you want to be as healthy
(13:17):
as possible. It comes from a place of care. So
acceptance and change do this really important dance and self compassion,
and that's where that the fierce and the tender self
compassion come in. The tender self compassion is as a person,
we are good enough as people. We don't need to
change or do anything different in order to be worthy
of love and care. But we may want to change
(13:39):
and of our behaviors or the situations where any they
aren't healthy because we care, not because we are inadequate,
simply because we care. You want to be happy. So
a lot of people listening to this podcast will I think,
can apply this directly to going on a diet saying
I'm going to do better, I'm going to be disciplined,
I'm going to be fierce, and maybe they're doing this
(13:59):
that to lose weight. Maybe they're doing it because they
want to feel better. Whatever the reason is, maybe their
doctor told them that they have to. The reason comes
from that. And it starts off strong and I'm gonna
be disciplined, and for a few days it works, and
then for whatever reason, it doesn't work anymore. Their life
gets in the way, they eat something that they shouldn't
(14:20):
blah blah blah blah blah, and they find themselves with
shame as the failure. You know, there's actually research on this.
There was There was a great study where they had
they looked at and I think they are all women,
college women who are all in the diet, and they
wanted to see what happens with dieting lapses. So these
are womanu forever reason, I don't know, if you know,
they're healthy and unhealthy reasons to lose weight. You might
(14:42):
want to for health reasons. And then they put them
through the study that it was a it was a
fake taste testing study and all the women and by
the way, there were lots of women, but they focused
on the woman on a diet. They had to eat
this really like greasy sugaren donut taste, it sank in
their opinion on it. So they basically made all a
woman blow their diets. Half the woman they said, you're
(15:04):
trying to beat yourself up about everyone had to eat
the stone and trying to be kind to yourself. They
give them self compassion instructions, and then the other half
of the woman they didn't say anything, which meant that
woman were probably like, oh God, I can't believe we
did that, beating themselves up. And then they had a
second taste testing session where they said, Okay, here are
these eminem candies and want you to see if you
like them. I'm gonna I'm gonna go to a room.
(15:25):
I gotta do something. I'll be back at a moment.
And they counted how many eminem's the woman ate. Those
who are called to be self compassionate about blowing their
diet with the donut ate fewer Eminem's than those who
are beat themselves up about the donut. Because what happens
is if you beat yourself up and you feel shame,
then you actually might turn to food is a way
(15:47):
to feel better or kind of shuts down your resolve.
But so and then there's a fair number of research
like this. So in other words, if you're self compassionate
about failure, well everyone fails, it's not a big deal,
then you're much more able to just pick yourself up
and try again. If you shame yourself, it's going to
derail you. Yeah, and you said shame shuts down your
ability to learn. So in that moment there's information about, oh,
(16:11):
how did this donut make you feel? There's so much
to learn. But if we shift into shame, we are
paralyzed and stuck. If we shift into self compassion, we
have that tenderness first that you helped us find, which
is everybody messes up, you know, and what do I
really need in this moment? And is a donna that really,
you know, that big of a deal in the in
(16:32):
the grand scheme of things. So I think you just
bring up such a good point. One of the amazing
distinctions in your book that I think is really important
to separate here is the distinction between self compassion and
self esteem. They are polar opposites, you say, but often
used interchangeably. So what's the difference and how can self
(16:55):
compassion step in when self esteem deserts us? Right? To
say that their polar office is. It really depends on
where you get your self esteem, because actually self compassion
can be a healthy source of self esteem. So what
is self esteem is? Is that an evaluation of self worth?
And am I a good person? I'm a worthy person?
Am I worthless of my bad? So most people do
(17:18):
not get their self esteem from a healthy source, right,
So so if you're very self compassionate, you're gonna feel
worthy simply because you're a flawed human being worthy of respect.
You know, the second you're born, you're worthy of kindness
and compassion. So that's a healthy form of self esteem.
Most people get their self esteem through social comparison. We
have to be special and above average. You know, if
(17:40):
I said, Lisa, yeah your podcast, yes average, there would
be a little part of you that would cringe. If
you said, hey, Kristen, you're an average researcher, there's a
little part of me that would cringe. Like sort. Most
usually our self esteem is based on needing to feel
a little better than other people. Just that This is
like baseline or is contingent on the three most common domains.
(18:01):
So this is interesting for your audience. For women, the
number one domain in which we invest our self esteem.
Doesn't matter if you have a PhD or not. This
perceived attractiveness, and that's because of our whole history of
our value. Is a woman being because we needed to
be attractive to a man in order and we couldn't
even own property, right, we couldn't. We didn't even have
(18:24):
dominion of our own children. We needed to be attractive
to a man. And this is for heterosexual woman. But
back in the day, you know, they didn't really allow
even any of their possibility. So this is built into us.
We're conditioned is a woman that we need to be
attractive to be safe, and it's the number one domain
in which we invest our self esteem. For men, it's
(18:44):
also important. But it's interesting the research shows that the
standards of what counts as attractive are so much higher
than women. That about in you know, early early adolescents.
For women, their self esteem parts starts taking a nose
dive because they can't meet these impossible beauty standards. So
there's that, and then two other domains are perceived approval.
(19:05):
Do other people like me? And it's not like do
my best friend and mother like me? It's like other
people people on Instagram, people at work, you know, very
vague and morphous, and then success at work, whatever is
important to you. Uh, And so it's contingent, which means
is a fair weather friends therefore us when times are good.
But what happens when we don't have those things We
(19:26):
don't feel attractive enough, or we aren't popular, or you know,
we fail at something, It deserts us. Self compassion is
a stable friend. Research shows a sense of self worth
that comes with self compassion is much more stable over
time because it's always there for you good times. And
that can we talk a little bit about how self
compassion actually protects against eating disorders and what the research
(19:47):
has to show there. Yeah, there, there's actually a lot
of research on self compassion and eating disorders as well
as you know, disorder eating. It's actually a really promising
area of research because it makes a big difference. I'll
just give you one example. I've had a few students
who did research on disordered eating. We had one study
where I'm at the University of Texas at Austin, and
(20:09):
we recruited women again who had body image issues, who
weren't satisfied with their body and we had them listened
to the meditations free meditations on my website for three weeks. Afterward,
after just three weeks, we found not only were they
less dissatisfied with their body, you know, those they had
a more positive body image. This is really important. Their
(20:32):
sense of self worth became less contingent on how attractive
they felt they were. That's what self compassion gives you,
you know. It moves that sense of worth from am
I attractive enough? Too? Am I a human being? Yes?
I'm I'm a flawed human being. Okay, that's good enough.
I still care about myself right, And there's a lot
of research like that, and the people are interested. If
(20:53):
you go to my website, I've got a whole category
on on self compassion and body image and eating issues.
But a lot of research has it's very effective. In fact, personally,
I think it'd be very hard to sustain losing weight
or you know, exercising or whatever your goals are. You
can do it with self criticism and it can be done.
(21:13):
It has been done, but it's not sustainable. But if
you do it just from I don't need to change
one iota to be beautiful, to be worthy of love, care, kindness,
But I may want to change to be a little
more healthier for whatever reasons. That's my opinion, not sustainable
without self compassion. It's just so interesting because I don't
think people really understand how the breath of self compassion
(21:37):
and how it is the underlying like carpet that we
need to stand on, and yet it's never been laid
for us or or even really shown what it is.
I think a lot of people think that if I'm
too it's kind to myself, I won't be good at
work or be good at this, or that you know,
it really isn't, but but we really need it to
(22:01):
be the best versions of ourselves. Yeah, exactly. And so
back to your question about eating. So self compassion is
linked to more intuitive eating, which refers to basically stopping
when you're full. But they found that people who are
trained to be more self compassionate were less likely to
emotionally eat because basically what compassion is. It's also not
(22:21):
only is it directly related to our body image and
are eating, but just in terms of how we deal
with difficult emotions. I mean, oftentimes eating is a way
to just try to cope with difficult emotions. Again, very
very natural, of course, we don't want to hurt, so
we try to do whatever we can to make us
feel better. It's totally natural with self compassion, and you
can hold those painful feelings with care and with kindness,
(22:44):
and while everyone's hurting, it's not just me, and how
can I help myself in the moment, and actually gives
us another resource to use for painful emotions so that
we don't have to rely on, you know, behaviors which
may be less healthy for us. One last question, because
I know we're running low on time here. You talk
a lot about perfectionism in your new book, and again
(23:04):
another amazing distinction because you talk about two different types
of perfectionism. Can you break those types down for us? Yeah,
so you know, not all perfectionism is bad. So there's
adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. So if you're a you know,
like a top athlete, you want to have super high
standards if you really want to be at the top
(23:25):
of your game, you know, So there's nothing wrong with
having high standards for yourself and actually self compassionate people
their standards or as high as everyone else's. What becomes
maladaptive about perfectionism is when you beat yourself up and
you don't meet your standards, or you can, you can
aim for the moon, why not? But what do you
(23:45):
do when you don't reach your goals? And so if
you beat yourself up, if you criticize yourself, if you
shame yourself, that's really maladaptive. Not only does it lead
to things like depression and anxiety and for mental health, um,
it actually is going to undermine your ability to achieve
in the end because of all the anxiety you put
yourself through, which actually makes it harder for you to
(24:05):
achieve your goals. For instance, I just had this new book.
I would love it to be a number one New
York Times bestseller. Go for it. I'm doing everything I can.
It's probably not gonna happen, but well, you never know,
you never know. But you know, so if I if
I said, okay, if I don't achieve that, then I'm
gonna shame myself. I must be worthless as a writer
because I'm not don't have a number one New York
Times bestseller. How is that going to help me? You know?
(24:27):
And that's probably just gonna it's gonna cause me a
lot of emotional pain. And so adaptive perfect yours and
I'm gonna do my best. I want to have this
book as far and as wide as possible. But it
says nothing about my sense of self worth, you know,
and I keep coming back to that, And it's so
important that our self worth, our worthiness is not predicated
(24:50):
on anything what what we look like, whether we've achieved
or not. You know, we we actually the phrase I
use as um compassionate mess. The goal of practice is
simply to become a compassionate mess. In other words, you're
still worthy no matter how much of a mess you are,
and your goal becomes just to hold that mess and
(25:10):
compassion your Your goal becomes not getting it right, but
opening your heart. And when you do that, ironically, kind
of counterintuitively, it actually makes it easier to get it
right because you're supporting yourself and your goals. And so
again with perfectionism. The more you realize, hey, it doesn't
matter if I fail. I'm still worthy, the mas's going
(25:31):
to give you the resources again available to say, well,
I failed, Okay, everyone fails. What can I learn from this?
Let me try again. It's not a big deal that
I failed. And those we're actually teaching self compassion to athletes.
That's the reason I talked about top tier athletes. If
you're an athlete and you miss a shot or field
goal of something and you beat yourself up, you've lost
(25:51):
the game, for your for your entire team, you're gonna fold.
You have to be able to deal productively with failure,
not shame yourself to say, okay, maybe notice something could
like oh I see I was doing this. That wasn't
as helpful to be able to keep trying and that
eventually succeed. Well. First of all, um, anyone who is
interested in this book, which is all of you, let's
(26:12):
help make it a best seller by giving it a
one click over on Amazon. I'll link the book below, UM,
so you all can check that out. Because the most
important thing, like you said, is not so you become
a best selling author, but because it's so that it
reaches the people. I mean, I kind of that. I
used to sometimes a joke. I'm a self compassion evangelists.
(26:35):
But the reason I am is because no one ever
told us. And it's not rocket science. You don't have
to like medicate and reach a state of somebody or
something like that. You already know how to be compassionate.
To others, especially woman, because we're raised to be compassionate experts.
We know how to use our tone of voice, we
know what to say to others. So all we gotta
(26:55):
do is give do this little you turn you get
over these fears that it's gonna make us lazy and
self indulgent. It doesn't. The research shows absolutely not. You know,
the only way you'll know for sure is if you
try it out. But it's actually not hard. It's like
we have a superpower in our back pocket. We don't
even know it's there. So that's kind of my mission
in life is to spread the good good words. You know, Hey,
(27:16):
you've got a resource, it's available to you. You can
use it. It will make a huge difference in your
health and happiness. We're also going to link those free
resources from your website below as well. But one of
the things that you said that really resonated with me
is that self compassion allows us to see common humanity
better and the fact that we are always changing. So
(27:40):
if if we want to feel perfect, sticking with perfectionism
for a minute about our looks right, we're set up
for failure in a society where we are aging. That's
not to say that you can't, you know, feel beautiful
and do whatever you need to do, were makeup or
any changes that you want to make. You know, I'm
all for all that, but we have to realize that
we can't always be number one with anything. I'm fifty
(28:05):
four on so I've been going through this and I
can't even tell you the different self compassion is made.
I mean like, after fifty you become invisible. It's really true.
You know, even if you're looking good that day, you know,
you don't get any attention at past fifty. And it's
like and so my self compassion practice really helped me
open to that. Yeah, well, first of all, you have
to open to the pain of it. It's fullest to
(28:26):
say I don't care. Yeah, it does hurt. It does
hurt because you know, it's kind of the way we're conditioned.
But when you really just open with compassion and really
remind yourself that well not only because you're worth not
predicated on it. If you really trace back why we're
only valued before fifty, it's many ways to serve the patriarchy.
I mean you have to kind of own that. It's like,
(28:48):
I'm not going to support that system. Are you kidding?
No way. But but then again, we we do need
to open to it. We don't want to shove it down,
pretend it's not there. It's natural. We feel you know,
you know I don't look like I did when I
was certain, And so you feel that pain, but you
don't stick with it, and you give yourself compassion and
support and then you just let it go. That's the
(29:08):
thing about self compassion is it doesn't sugarcoat things. It
doesn't pretend pain isn't there. If it is that, you
hold that pain, you open to it, you give yourself support,
and then it just processes and it moves on. We
don't get stuck in it, which is what happens when
we don't have self compassion. We get stuck in those
negative feelings and then we get derailed. And I just
(29:28):
think thinking that everything is always in motion is such
a helpful thing to understand because even if our perfectionism
isn't rooted in our looks, if it's rooted in our work.
I mean, I'm thinking of I'm just gonna give it.
You know. Beyonce, We all think Beyonce must have it
so easy. It's like, well, if she's not coming out
with a new song to keep her relevant with that,
keep her in the best hits, topics, whatever. Then if
(29:49):
her all of her worth is stuck into being the
best at all times, she's exhausted, you know. So we
have to recognize that we're not always going to be
at the top of the totem pole, whether we're scoring
that goal, winning the thing, writing the book, getting a promotion,
We're also going to get fired. We're gonna move down
on the list of being the best. We're gonna be
(30:09):
less attractive conventionally, you know, in society, like we're going
to die at everyone eventually. Right, That's that's that's the truth.
You know. One of the reasons I really emphasize the
fear self compassion is because although all this is two
people immediately say what that means, I'm going to stop trying,
and it's actually not the case. What changes is the
(30:32):
reason you try. You don't try to do better to
be adequate or to be acceptable. You try simply because
you care. And that means at some point if you're
trying is harmful, You're over trying, you're striving, you're stuck,
you're becoming you know, maladaptive. In in your goals. Then
you pull back. You know, the ideal parents is such
a good example. Of course, you want your child if
(30:53):
they can to go to college or to get you
have a good caer. You want them to be happy.
You're gonna support them, You're gonna do what you can
to help. But your love for them is a contingent
on it. And the more you can say hey, I'm
here for you regardless, the more the more secure they feel,
and probably the better chances will have the succeeding. But
you know, life happens. You can't we and we aren't
(31:14):
in total control either. And then self compassion again is
the safety net that no matter what happens, you're okay,
no matter how you look, you are a beautiful human
being worthy of love and care and respect, and you're
gonna try to be as healthy and happy as possible
if you care about yourself. That to go. They feed
each other, they don't work in opposition. Thank you so
(31:34):
much for sharing your book Fierce Compassion with us and
for really breaking down the nuance of how self compassion
can heal and hold space for us for future pain
that we will endeavor nonetheless so past, she says, just
keep that mind. My My goal of practice is to
be a compassion I can you can do that. I know.
(31:55):
I wish Amy was here to help. She makes um
clothing with like cute phrases. I think we might need
one with your quote that says, I'm a compassionate mess
and it's fully enough. As long as you have that compassion,
it's enough. And open heart is Isn't that what we
really want at the end of the day. And open
heart and open heart and ability to listen, to hear
(32:15):
and to show up as our our best selves whatever
that looks like, yeah, exactly. Well, thank you again for
your time and thanks for being a guest. Thanks Lisa,
I won't lend my body out, be outwait everything that
I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning to love who I am. I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me.
It's beautiful and I will always out way if you
(00:24):
feel it with your hands in the air. She'll love
to the mow at there say good one day and
time did you and die out? Welcome back to Eltweigh
today's guest. I'm so, so so excited for you to meet.
Some of you may be familiar with her work. It's
Dr Neff, who is widely recognized as one of the
(00:46):
world's leading experts on the topic of self compassion. She
was really one of the first to define and measure
it almost twenty years ago, and she is here to
help us really utilize self compassion. While learning about her
new book, Fear Self Compassion that has so much wisdom
to offer, I think when it comes to how us
(01:08):
women can exactly what you say on the title harness
kindness to speak up, claim our power and thrive. So
thanks for this amazing book, which we're going to link
in the show notes and kind of breaking down self
compassion for those of us who are new to it. Great,
happy to be here at Lisa. Yeah, it's an important
topic how we can use self compassion to relate to
(01:28):
health and our bodies and eating and all that. So,
just to kick us off, in your book, you talk
about the three elements of self compassion and what self
compassion is. Yeah, so there are three components and from
my model, you really need all three to be healthy.
Are the one that's easiest to understand is simply self kindness, right, So,
(01:48):
self compassion means treating ourselves with the same warmth, care, concerns,
support that we could naturally show to a friend or
a loved one. Unfortunately, we usually don't show ourselves the
same care or support we showed a loved ones. Typically
we're much harsher and harder on ourselves than we are
to other people. And so with self compassion, we turn
(02:10):
that around and we we also care about ourselves. We
also see ourselves as worthy of compassion and support, understanding,
more encouragement if we need to make a change. So
kindness is one element, but there's also two other elements
that are that are very important. So mindfulness actually, from
my from my point of view is a part of
self compassion, and particularly self compassion is concerned with the
(02:35):
alleviation of suffering. So when the same outward is concerned
with the alleviation of other suffering, when it's inward, it's
concerned with our own suffering. We want to be well,
we want to be healthy, we want to be happy,
and in order to do that, the first step of
that really is to be mindfully aware of when we're
in pain, emotional pain, pain, physical pain. If we're just
(02:57):
like stiff up all it, don't complain and just bear through,
we don't notice we're suffering or struggling. We actually can't
give ourselves compassion. Would be like a friend who called
you up and said, hey, Lisa, I really need to
talk to you. I'm upset, and like, don't have time
for it. I'm too busy, right. We kind of do
that with ourselves, or either we ignore our pain or
(03:17):
the other common thing we do is we get fused
with it. We get lost in it, Like our whole
awareness is filled with I'm so awful of my life
is so awful. We kind of drowned in it to
the point we have no perspective to step outside of
ourselves and say, hey, you're having a really hard time.
Is there anything I can do to help? So mindfulness
is actually needs to be built into self compassion. And
(03:39):
then the third element, which is really important and which
is what distinguishes self compassion from self pity, is a
sense of common humanity. Right. So, um, the word compassion
in the Latins passion means to suffer, come means with
So there's a sense of connectedness in compassion that feels
really different than pity, which maybe you know, if I
(03:59):
pity you, it means I'm still separate from you, I'm
looking down on you. And if I have self pity,
it means I feel isolated. It's just me and the
only one in the world who's struggling. So self compassion
means we just really frame our situation. A lot of
the human experience. Everyone's imperfect, everyone struggles, everyone's you need
Some people do struggle more than others, absolutely, but everyone's
(04:22):
struggle is worthy of a compassionate response, and so that
connectiveness can be very very important in terms of dealing
with a lot of the struggles we go through in life.
Thank you for breaking that down in such a meticulous way.
A lot of our listeners are moms or daughters, and
I know we have some men as well listening. But
(04:42):
regardless of who they are, they're all really good people
that are really good at caring for those around them,
whether it's their siblings, partners, parents, maybe their kids as well.
But when it comes to being able to apply that inward,
it's like they've got no ability to do so. I
think that's most people, to be honest, we have the
(05:03):
ability to do so. There's there's a couple of reasons
why they don't. One is cultural. We aren't taught that
this is a good thing. I mean, when you're going up,
did anyone ever say, hey, make sure you're a good
friend to yourself. Really, just you know, think about supporting
yourself with warmth and encouragement. You know, no one tells
us that. And then there's also some physiological reasons why
(05:24):
it's difficult. It's not hard, but it's not instinctual. When
we like we look at in the mirror and we
don't like what we see, For instance, we feel threatened.
We feel something's wrong. You know, maybe I'm gonna be
in safe maybe people will reject me, and so we
go into threat defense mode. Fight, fight, or freeze. We
try to get away from the problem, which is of
course us. So we fight ourselves and self criticism. We
(05:47):
beat ourselves up, thinking somehow that's going to make us
change and be able to keep safe, or it means
we're going to somehow kind of young beat other people
to the punch. If we criticize ourselves, that won't hurt
so much, and other people criticize us, or we flee
into shame, like we imagine the judgments of others and
we hang our head and shame that's also a safety behavior,
or we freeze, we get stuck. It's like you know,
(06:09):
we just go over and over and over in our
head this sense and I'm not worthy or whatever it is. Again,
these are natural safety behaviors. They evolved to keep us safe.
They actually aren't very safe, but we do this naturally,
whereas the other safety system is is called like the
care response, right, and this actually evolved to use other
(06:30):
people with our children or our group members. And so
in this case, when we feel connected with others, we
feel bonded, we feel like close, we feel that sense
of warmth and belonging that also helps us feel safe.
But usually it evolved with other people, again, our children
or group members. So what we're having to do with
self compassion is something it's a little feels a little
(06:51):
awkward at first, is we have to use the care
system which evolved for others with ourselves. It feels a
little weird at first, although of course it doesn't feel
at all weird to us to call ourselves mean names.
It should, but we're just used to it, so you know,
that's what we're doing. But the system is there, and
it's not rocket science. We know how to be kind,
we know how to be supportive, we know how to
(07:12):
be encouraging. If we need to make a change, we
just have to kind of consciously say, Okay, I'm going
to choose to treat myself that way. And the research
shows the effects are just phenomenal in terms of how
much how helpful it is. You said so many amazing
points so quickly that that I was taking notes. I
actually want to encourage our listeners to maybe take notes
or listen to this twice, because there's so much to unpack, digest,
(07:37):
and let's settle into our body. But one thing that
you said was that when we look in the mirror
and we say oh I look disgusting, and we're beating
others to the punch like if we know it. We've
built this protective barrier so that if other person people
are thinking it, we're saying it, we're buffered. And that
is so interesting because do that, and I think we
(07:58):
do it out loud too, as women were very quick
in front of other women, maybe in front of our
partners as well, to say I look disgusting, almost to
protect against the other person thinking it or saying it. Yeah. Absolutely,
you know, again it's natural. We shouldn't beat ourselves up
for beating ourselves up. It really it's really quite in
(08:18):
a sense as the safety behavior, but it's not again,
it's not very effective and result as it tends to
make things worse, you know. And the other hand, we
don't have to say I look like a victorious secret model,
you know, we don't have we can just it was
it really interesting with the research shows is that when
we model self compassion like yeah, so I'm not perfect,
but you know I look pretty healthy or I'm happy
(08:40):
with who I am, we're actually giving other people, especially
as a woman, permission to do the same. When we
actually said I'm modeling oh, we look at the cell
you ladd in my thighs. We modeled Wow, you know
we don't feeling okay about my body and feeling pretty
healthy and feeling pretty strong. Yeah, I'm not perfect, but
that's okay. Who's that episodes to be perfect? Then you're
giving other people permission to do the same for themselves,
(09:01):
to just exist exactly. You began to talk about the
inner critic, which we're all here very familiar with that
voice in our head that is telling us that we're
not enough, that we're not doing enough, that no matter
how hard we try, we still mess it up. But
you started to say something, if we could dive a
little bit deeper, does this criticism according to the research.
(09:22):
So you know that's why Dr Neff is so amazing.
She's really looking at the science the research. What does
the research say about the self criticism leading to change? Right? So,
first of all, it's the self criticism. It kind of works.
I mean, yeah, there are people who've gone through gone
through law school or med school through hard self criticism.
So we don't want to deny that it works, but
(09:44):
it looks kind of the way corporal punishment works. If
you want a child to comply with your rules. If
you you know, use like the paddle, which is you
you used to be the We used to say spare
the rod, spoiled the child. It works for short term compliance,
but it actually has a lot of long term negative
side effects. So with self criticism particular kind of works.
(10:04):
It may have you work a little harder, but it
has all these negative side effects. For instance, it creates anxiety. Right,
so when you know you're gonna try something new and
you know that if you fail, you're gonna really criticize yourself,
it's gonna be making more anxious about trying. So it
can lead to fear of failure. It can lead to
performance anxiety, which actually undermined your ability to perform. What
(10:28):
it also does is when you when you do fail,
I mean and everyone's going to fail. That's how we learn, right,
It's a truism. Failures our best teacher, and yet somehow
we think it shouldn't be true. So if you're very
self critical, and if you just start criticizing yourself or
beating yourself up when you fail, what you're gonna do
is you're gonna put yourself in a state of shame
(10:48):
and shame shuts down our ability to learn. You know,
shame is not exactly a great learning mindset, whereas if
you're self compassionate, it's like, okay, I failed, everyone fail
else no, no, no shame and failing, what can I
learn from this? And when you're when you allow yourself
to learn, that actually is much more effective in terms
of trying again. So people who are more self compassionate
(11:11):
that they can sustain their motivation for longer. They're more
able to pick themselves up and try again. When they
do fail, they do things like they procrastinate less. What's procrastination,
it's fear of failure. I kind of put it off
because I don't want to try because if I fail
and it's gonna hurt too bad. But if it's okay
to fail, Okay, I'll give it a shot. Why not,
(11:32):
you know, do my best and if it doesn't work
at I'll just see what I can learn and try again.
It's just such a it's so much healthier in terms
of doing taking on new tasks, and it's also more
effective because when you have your own support, when you
have your own back, when you feel encouraged, you have
more emotional resources to do your best. You know, it
(11:53):
doesn't mean like everything you do is okay. Actually maybe
when you fail, you're supposed to learn from it. Okay,
Well that didn't work out too well, Maybe I can
try this differently next time. But you know, it's not
a big deal as opposed to shame, which just so
there's also a big difference that we need to make
between the person and the behavior. Self compassion is an
(12:13):
unconditional source of self worth, and in terms of me
as a person, it doesn't matter if I succeed or fail.
It's kind of like with your child. You hopefully you
love your child unconditionally, whether they succeed or fail, no
matter what they look like, no matter what they're doing
in life. It's like an unconditional bottom line is unconditional
acceptance of the person. But the behaviors, you know, maybe
(12:36):
the behaviors aren't healthy. We don't want to accept unhealthy
behaviors or situations. Maybe we weren't a situation. That's unhealthier, job,
that's unhealthy, relationship, that's unhealthy, political system, that's unhealthy. Right,
it's not compassionate to accept harmful behaviors or situations because
those cause harm. And so with self compassion. And you know,
(12:57):
coming to the issue, for instance, of a body appearance,
you can absolutely unconditionally accept yourself no matter whether or
not you're happy with your even your health or your appearance.
But it doesn't mean you're going to try to engage
in healthy behaviors or situations. And you do that because
you care, not because you're inadequate, but just simply because
you want. You know, you want to be as healthy
(13:17):
as possible. It comes from a place of care. So
acceptance and change do this really important dance and self compassion,
and that's where that the fierce and the tender self
compassion come in. The tender self compassion is as a person,
we are good enough as people. We don't need to
change or do anything different in order to be worthy
of love and care. But we may want to change
(13:39):
and of our behaviors or the situations where any they
aren't healthy because we care, not because we are inadequate,
simply because we care. You want to be happy. So
a lot of people listening to this podcast will I think,
can apply this directly to going on a diet saying
I'm going to do better, I'm going to be disciplined,
I'm going to be fierce, and maybe they're doing this
(13:59):
that to lose weight. Maybe they're doing it because they
want to feel better. Whatever the reason is, maybe their
doctor told them that they have to. The reason comes
from that. And it starts off strong and I'm gonna
be disciplined, and for a few days it works, and
then for whatever reason, it doesn't work anymore. Their life
gets in the way, they eat something that they shouldn't
(14:20):
blah blah blah blah blah, and they find themselves with
shame as the failure. You know, there's actually research on this.
There was There was a great study where they had
they looked at and I think they are all women,
college women who are all in the diet, and they
wanted to see what happens with dieting lapses. So these
are womanu forever reason, I don't know, if you know,
they're healthy and unhealthy reasons to lose weight. You might
(14:42):
want to for health reasons. And then they put them
through the study that it was a it was a
fake taste testing study and all the women and by
the way, there were lots of women, but they focused
on the woman on a diet. They had to eat
this really like greasy sugaren donut taste, it sank in
their opinion on it. So they basically made all a
woman blow their diets. Half the woman they said, you're
(15:04):
trying to beat yourself up about everyone had to eat
the stone and trying to be kind to yourself. They
give them self compassion instructions, and then the other half
of the woman they didn't say anything, which meant that
woman were probably like, oh God, I can't believe we
did that, beating themselves up. And then they had a
second taste testing session where they said, Okay, here are
these eminem candies and want you to see if you
like them. I'm gonna I'm gonna go to a room.
(15:25):
I gotta do something. I'll be back at a moment.
And they counted how many eminem's the woman ate. Those
who are called to be self compassionate about blowing their
diet with the donut ate fewer Eminem's than those who
are beat themselves up about the donut. Because what happens
is if you beat yourself up and you feel shame,
then you actually might turn to food is a way
(15:47):
to feel better or kind of shuts down your resolve.
But so and then there's a fair number of research
like this. So in other words, if you're self compassionate
about failure, well everyone fails, it's not a big deal,
then you're much more able to just pick yourself up
and try again. If you shame yourself, it's going to
derail you. Yeah, and you said shame shuts down your
ability to learn. So in that moment there's information about, oh,
(16:11):
how did this donut make you feel? There's so much
to learn. But if we shift into shame, we are
paralyzed and stuck. If we shift into self compassion, we
have that tenderness first that you helped us find, which
is everybody messes up, you know, and what do I
really need in this moment? And is a donna that really,
you know, that big of a deal in the in
(16:32):
the grand scheme of things. So I think you just
bring up such a good point. One of the amazing
distinctions in your book that I think is really important
to separate here is the distinction between self compassion and
self esteem. They are polar opposites, you say, but often
used interchangeably. So what's the difference and how can self
(16:55):
compassion step in when self esteem deserts us? Right? To
say that their polar office is. It really depends on
where you get your self esteem, because actually self compassion
can be a healthy source of self esteem. So what
is self esteem is? Is that an evaluation of self worth?
And am I a good person? I'm a worthy person?
Am I worthless of my bad? So most people do
(17:18):
not get their self esteem from a healthy source, right,
So so if you're very self compassionate, you're gonna feel
worthy simply because you're a flawed human being worthy of respect.
You know, the second you're born, you're worthy of kindness
and compassion. So that's a healthy form of self esteem.
Most people get their self esteem through social comparison. We
have to be special and above average. You know, if
(17:40):
I said, Lisa, yeah your podcast, yes average, there would
be a little part of you that would cringe. If
you said, hey, Kristen, you're an average researcher, there's a
little part of me that would cringe. Like sort. Most
usually our self esteem is based on needing to feel
a little better than other people. Just that This is
like baseline or is contingent on the three most common domains.
(18:01):
So this is interesting for your audience. For women, the
number one domain in which we invest our self esteem.
Doesn't matter if you have a PhD or not. This
perceived attractiveness, and that's because of our whole history of
our value. Is a woman being because we needed to
be attractive to a man in order and we couldn't
even own property, right, we couldn't. We didn't even have
(18:24):
dominion of our own children. We needed to be attractive
to a man. And this is for heterosexual woman. But
back in the day, you know, they didn't really allow
even any of their possibility. So this is built into us.
We're conditioned is a woman that we need to be
attractive to be safe, and it's the number one domain
in which we invest our self esteem. For men, it's
(18:44):
also important. But it's interesting the research shows that the
standards of what counts as attractive are so much higher
than women. That about in you know, early early adolescents.
For women, their self esteem parts starts taking a nose
dive because they can't meet these impossible beauty standards. So
there's that, and then two other domains are perceived approval.
(19:05):
Do other people like me? And it's not like do
my best friend and mother like me? It's like other
people people on Instagram, people at work, you know, very
vague and morphous, and then success at work, whatever is
important to you. Uh, And so it's contingent, which means
is a fair weather friends therefore us when times are good.
But what happens when we don't have those things We
(19:26):
don't feel attractive enough, or we aren't popular, or you know,
we fail at something, It deserts us. Self compassion is
a stable friend. Research shows a sense of self worth
that comes with self compassion is much more stable over
time because it's always there for you good times. And
that can we talk a little bit about how self
compassion actually protects against eating disorders and what the research
(19:47):
has to show there. Yeah, there, there's actually a lot
of research on self compassion and eating disorders as well
as you know, disorder eating. It's actually a really promising
area of research because it makes a big difference. I'll
just give you one example. I've had a few students
who did research on disordered eating. We had one study
where I'm at the University of Texas at Austin, and
(20:09):
we recruited women again who had body image issues, who
weren't satisfied with their body and we had them listened
to the meditations free meditations on my website for three weeks. Afterward,
after just three weeks, we found not only were they
less dissatisfied with their body, you know, those they had
a more positive body image. This is really important. Their
(20:32):
sense of self worth became less contingent on how attractive
they felt they were. That's what self compassion gives you,
you know. It moves that sense of worth from am
I attractive enough? Too? Am I a human being? Yes?
I'm I'm a flawed human being. Okay, that's good enough.
I still care about myself right, And there's a lot
of research like that, and the people are interested. If
(20:53):
you go to my website, I've got a whole category
on on self compassion and body image and eating issues.
But a lot of research has it's very effective. In fact, personally,
I think it'd be very hard to sustain losing weight
or you know, exercising or whatever your goals are. You
can do it with self criticism and it can be done.
(21:13):
It has been done, but it's not sustainable. But if
you do it just from I don't need to change
one iota to be beautiful, to be worthy of love, care, kindness,
But I may want to change to be a little
more healthier for whatever reasons. That's my opinion, not sustainable
without self compassion. It's just so interesting because I don't
think people really understand how the breath of self compassion
(21:37):
and how it is the underlying like carpet that we
need to stand on, and yet it's never been laid
for us or or even really shown what it is.
I think a lot of people think that if I'm
too it's kind to myself, I won't be good at
work or be good at this, or that you know,
it really isn't, but but we really need it to
(22:01):
be the best versions of ourselves. Yeah, exactly. And so
back to your question about eating. So self compassion is
linked to more intuitive eating, which refers to basically stopping
when you're full. But they found that people who are
trained to be more self compassionate were less likely to
emotionally eat because basically what compassion is. It's also not
(22:21):
only is it directly related to our body image and
are eating, but just in terms of how we deal
with difficult emotions. I mean, oftentimes eating is a way
to just try to cope with difficult emotions. Again, very
very natural, of course, we don't want to hurt, so
we try to do whatever we can to make us
feel better. It's totally natural with self compassion, and you
can hold those painful feelings with care and with kindness,
(22:44):
and while everyone's hurting, it's not just me, and how
can I help myself in the moment, and actually gives
us another resource to use for painful emotions so that
we don't have to rely on, you know, behaviors which
may be less healthy for us. One last question, because
I know we're running low on time here. You talk
a lot about perfectionism in your new book, and again
(23:04):
another amazing distinction because you talk about two different types
of perfectionism. Can you break those types down for us? Yeah,
so you know, not all perfectionism is bad. So there's
adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. So if you're a you know,
like a top athlete, you want to have super high
standards if you really want to be at the top
(23:25):
of your game, you know, So there's nothing wrong with
having high standards for yourself and actually self compassionate people
their standards or as high as everyone else's. What becomes
maladaptive about perfectionism is when you beat yourself up and
you don't meet your standards, or you can, you can
aim for the moon, why not? But what do you
(23:45):
do when you don't reach your goals? And so if
you beat yourself up, if you criticize yourself, if you
shame yourself, that's really maladaptive. Not only does it lead
to things like depression and anxiety and for mental health, um,
it actually is going to undermine your ability to achieve
in the end because of all the anxiety you put
yourself through, which actually makes it harder for you to
(24:05):
achieve your goals. For instance, I just had this new book.
I would love it to be a number one New
York Times bestseller. Go for it. I'm doing everything I can.
It's probably not gonna happen, but well, you never know,
you never know. But you know, so if I if
I said, okay, if I don't achieve that, then I'm
gonna shame myself. I must be worthless as a writer
because I'm not don't have a number one New York
Times bestseller. How is that going to help me? You know?
(24:27):
And that's probably just gonna it's gonna cause me a
lot of emotional pain. And so adaptive perfect yours and
I'm gonna do my best. I want to have this
book as far and as wide as possible. But it
says nothing about my sense of self worth, you know,
and I keep coming back to that, And it's so
important that our self worth, our worthiness is not predicated
(24:50):
on anything what what we look like, whether we've achieved
or not. You know, we we actually the phrase I
use as um compassionate mess. The goal of practice is
simply to become a compassionate mess. In other words, you're
still worthy no matter how much of a mess you are,
and your goal becomes just to hold that mess and
(25:10):
compassion your Your goal becomes not getting it right, but
opening your heart. And when you do that, ironically, kind
of counterintuitively, it actually makes it easier to get it
right because you're supporting yourself and your goals. And so
again with perfectionism. The more you realize, hey, it doesn't
matter if I fail. I'm still worthy, the mas's going
(25:31):
to give you the resources again available to say, well,
I failed, Okay, everyone fails. What can I learn from this?
Let me try again. It's not a big deal that
I failed. And those we're actually teaching self compassion to athletes.
That's the reason I talked about top tier athletes. If
you're an athlete and you miss a shot or field
goal of something and you beat yourself up, you've lost
(25:51):
the game, for your for your entire team, you're gonna fold.
You have to be able to deal productively with failure,
not shame yourself to say, okay, maybe notice something could
like oh I see I was doing this. That wasn't
as helpful to be able to keep trying and that
eventually succeed. Well. First of all, um, anyone who is
interested in this book, which is all of you, let's
(26:12):
help make it a best seller by giving it a
one click over on Amazon. I'll link the book below, UM,
so you all can check that out. Because the most
important thing, like you said, is not so you become
a best selling author, but because it's so that it
reaches the people. I mean, I kind of that. I
used to sometimes a joke. I'm a self compassion evangelists.
(26:35):
But the reason I am is because no one ever
told us. And it's not rocket science. You don't have
to like medicate and reach a state of somebody or
something like that. You already know how to be compassionate.
To others, especially woman, because we're raised to be compassionate experts.
We know how to use our tone of voice, we
know what to say to others. So all we gotta
(26:55):
do is give do this little you turn you get
over these fears that it's gonna make us lazy and
self indulgent. It doesn't. The research shows absolutely not. You know,
the only way you'll know for sure is if you
try it out. But it's actually not hard. It's like
we have a superpower in our back pocket. We don't
even know it's there. So that's kind of my mission
in life is to spread the good good words. You know, Hey,
(27:16):
you've got a resource, it's available to you. You can
use it. It will make a huge difference in your
health and happiness. We're also going to link those free
resources from your website below as well. But one of
the things that you said that really resonated with me
is that self compassion allows us to see common humanity
better and the fact that we are always changing. So
(27:40):
if if we want to feel perfect, sticking with perfectionism
for a minute about our looks right, we're set up
for failure in a society where we are aging. That's
not to say that you can't, you know, feel beautiful
and do whatever you need to do, were makeup or
any changes that you want to make. You know, I'm
all for all that, but we have to realize that
we can't always be number one with anything. I'm fifty
(28:05):
four on so I've been going through this and I
can't even tell you the different self compassion is made.
I mean like, after fifty you become invisible. It's really true.
You know, even if you're looking good that day, you know,
you don't get any attention at past fifty. And it's
like and so my self compassion practice really helped me
open to that. Yeah, well, first of all, you have
to open to the pain of it. It's fullest to
(28:26):
say I don't care. Yeah, it does hurt. It does
hurt because you know, it's kind of the way we're conditioned.
But when you really just open with compassion and really
remind yourself that well not only because you're worth not
predicated on it. If you really trace back why we're
only valued before fifty, it's many ways to serve the patriarchy.
I mean you have to kind of own that. It's like,
(28:48):
I'm not going to support that system. Are you kidding?
No way. But but then again, we we do need
to open to it. We don't want to shove it down,
pretend it's not there. It's natural. We feel you know,
you know I don't look like I did when I
was certain, And so you feel that pain, but you
don't stick with it, and you give yourself compassion and
support and then you just let it go. That's the
(29:08):
thing about self compassion is it doesn't sugarcoat things. It
doesn't pretend pain isn't there. If it is that, you
hold that pain, you open to it, you give yourself support,
and then it just processes and it moves on. We
don't get stuck in it, which is what happens when
we don't have self compassion. We get stuck in those
negative feelings and then we get derailed. And I just
(29:28):
think thinking that everything is always in motion is such
a helpful thing to understand because even if our perfectionism
isn't rooted in our looks, if it's rooted in our work.
I mean, I'm thinking of I'm just gonna give it.
You know. Beyonce, We all think Beyonce must have it
so easy. It's like, well, if she's not coming out
with a new song to keep her relevant with that,
keep her in the best hits, topics, whatever. Then if
(29:49):
her all of her worth is stuck into being the
best at all times, she's exhausted, you know. So we
have to recognize that we're not always going to be
at the top of the totem pole, whether we're scoring
that goal, winning the thing, writing the book, getting a promotion,
We're also going to get fired. We're gonna move down
on the list of being the best. We're gonna be
(30:09):
less attractive conventionally, you know, in society, like we're going
to die at everyone eventually. Right, That's that's that's the truth.
You know. One of the reasons I really emphasize the
fear self compassion is because although all this is two
people immediately say what that means, I'm going to stop trying,
and it's actually not the case. What changes is the
(30:32):
reason you try. You don't try to do better to
be adequate or to be acceptable. You try simply because
you care. And that means at some point if you're
trying is harmful, You're over trying, you're striving, you're stuck,
you're becoming you know, maladaptive. In in your goals. Then
you pull back. You know, the ideal parents is such
a good example. Of course, you want your child if
(30:53):
they can to go to college or to get you
have a good caer. You want them to be happy.
You're gonna support them, You're gonna do what you can
to help. But your love for them is a contingent
on it. And the more you can say hey, I'm
here for you regardless, the more the more secure they feel,
and probably the better chances will have the succeeding. But
you know, life happens. You can't we and we aren't
(31:14):
in total control either. And then self compassion again is
the safety net that no matter what happens, you're okay,
no matter how you look, you are a beautiful human
being worthy of love and care and respect, and you're
gonna try to be as healthy and happy as possible
if you care about yourself. That to go. They feed
each other, they don't work in opposition. Thank you so
(31:34):
much for sharing your book Fierce Compassion with us and
for really breaking down the nuance of how self compassion
can heal and hold space for us for future pain
that we will endeavor nonetheless so past, she says, just
keep that mind. My My goal of practice is to
be a compassion I can you can do that. I know.
(31:55):
I wish Amy was here to help. She makes um
clothing with like cute phrases. I think we might need
one with your quote that says, I'm a compassionate mess
and it's fully enough. As long as you have that compassion,
it's enough. And open heart is Isn't that what we
really want at the end of the day. And open
heart and open heart and ability to listen, to hear
(32:15):
and to show up as our our best selves whatever
that looks like, yeah, exactly. Well, thank you again for
your time and thanks for being a guest. Thanks Lisa,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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