Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #163 How to Silence Your Inner Critic (and Why You Should) with Dr Kristin Neff

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

CAUTION ADVISED: this podcast contains mild bad language and themes of an adult nature. Today’s conversation is all about one of my favourite topics – compassion. But it’s not about compassion for others, it’s about compassion for ourselves and how this can lead to a happier and healthier life. Self-compassion is not only linked to better emotional health, it is important for our physical and mental health too. In fact, there are now over 3000 studies showing the amazing benefits of self-compassion on our wellbeing and my guest this week is one of the leading researchers in this area and along with several others, is responsible for putting self-compassion on the scientific map. Dr Kristin Neff is a professor at the University of Texas in the department of psychology. She’s co-founder of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion and the author of several best-selling books on the topic. In our conversation, Kristin explains what self-compassion is and why it matters. She explains the difference between self-compassion and self-esteem. Self-compassion is not about making excuses for yourself nor is it about self-pity, instead, it is very much an active, mindful state. Now I know from my patients that the very notion of self-love can make a lot of people feel very uncomfortable. Kristin explains why this might be and shares many different ways we can give ourselves compassion. She recommends that people experiment and find a method that feels easy and pleasant for them. We also talk about the ever-present problem of our brain’s ‘inner critic’ and how our parents influence the way we talk to ourselves. She also explains why self-compassion is most definitely not selfish, in fact, people who have it are kinder, more loving and less controlling of others. Kristin also makes a key distinction between acts of self-care – such as taking a bath, having a massage – and self-compassion. She explains that self-compassion is actually a state of mind. It’s not something you have to do, it doesn’t take time or resources. It’s simply the opposite of being self-critical. It’s a way of thinking that has your own best interests at heart. But, this way of thinking doesn’t come naturally to us. As humans, we are hard-wired for self-criticism - it’s an evolutionary mechanism that makes us feel safe. But when navigating life, who do you want in your head: an enemy who belittles you or a friend who supports you? At the end of our conversation today, Kristin takes us through a beautiful practical exercise in finding self-compassion that I think you will really enjoy. This is such an important topic that doesn’t get spoken about enough in the conversation around health – I hope you enjoy listening. Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/163 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

But often life's a battle. Who do you want inside your head as you go into battle? Do you want an enemy who's cutting you down, who's shaming you? Or do you want an ally who says, I got your back, we can do this, I believe in you, I'm here for you. Clearly, we're going to be stronger, more competent, more able to deal with the difficulties of life when we're our own ally, when we support ourselves, as opposed to pulling the rug out underneath ourselves, which we do with self-criticism. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Today's conversation is all about one of my favorite topics, compassion. But it's not about compassion for others, it's about compassion for ourselves and how this can lead to a happier and healthier life.

Now self-compassion is not only linked to better emotional health, it's also important for our physical and mental health. In fact, there are now over 3,000 studies showing the amazing benefits of self-compassion on our well-being. And my guest this week is one of the world's leading researchers in this area, and along with several others, is responsible for putting self-compassion on the scientific map. Dr. Kristen Neff is a professor at the University of Texas in the Department of Psychology. She's co-founder of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion and the author of several best-selling books on the topic. In our conversation, Kristen explains what self-compassion

is and why it matters. She explains the difference between self-compassion and self-esteem and explains why it's not about making excuses for yourself, nor is it about self-pity, but instead it is very much an active, mindful state. Now I know full well that the very notion of self-love can make a lot of people feel very uncomfortable. Kristen explains why this might be and shares the many different ways in which we can start to show ourselves compassion. She recommends that people experiment and find a method that feels easy and pleasant for them. We also talk about the

ever-present problem of our brain's inner critic and how our parents influence the way we talk to ourselves. She also explains why self-compassion is most definitely not selfish. In fact, people who have it are kinder, more loving, and less controlling of others. Kristen also makes a key distinction between acts of self-care, like having a bath or a massage, and self-compassion, and explains that self-compassion is actually a state of mind. It's not something you have to do, it doesn't take time or resources, it's simply the opposite of being self-critical. It's a way of thinking that has your own best interests at heart. But it doesn't come naturally to us. Humans are hard wired for self-criticism and that's an evolutionary mechanism that makes us feel safe. But when we're

navigating life, who do you want in your head? An enemy who belittles you or a friend that supports you? At the end of our conversation today, Kristen takes us through a beautiful practical exercise in finding self-compassion that I think you will enjoy doing. This really is such an important topic that I don't feel gets enough airtime in the conversation around health. I hope you enjoyed listening. And now my conversation with Dr. Kristen Nett. But yeah, there's a lot of hard science that also shows that, you know, when the tough get going, the tough get self-compassionate if they want to be strong and get through,

because it's basically the idea of being really supportive towards yourself when you're struggling. And of course, being supportive to yourself is going to make you stronger rather than shaming or slamming yourself. It's kind of an idea that once you break it down, it's like, oh yeah, I never thought of it that way. But our culture has a lot of myths about things like compassion. I think it's like just soft and sweet and sugar coating. And that is why the hard science helps because it shows people that, hey, this stuff really works. Right at the start of this conversation, I thought we should probably define a few terms because a lot of these terms get used and everyone's got a different understanding of what they mean. So how would you describe self-compassion? Right. So there's kind of two levels. There's

just describing what it is and then there's actually defining what goes into it. So at the simplest level, compassion, kind of the agreed upon scientific definition, is concerned with the alleviation of suffering and the motivation to do something about it, right? And so at the simplest level, you might think that compassion is just self-compassion, it's just compassion turned inward. We're concerned with our own suffering, we care about ourselves, and we try to help ourselves so that we are healthier and don't suffer so much. But of course, you know, in science, we need a little more precise definition, especially because 20 years ago, I decided I wanted to create a scale to measure this thing and to conduct research on it. And so

in my model, there are actually three main ingredients of self-compassion. The first one is something that people have heard a lot about these days, and that is mindfulness. Mindfulness and self-compassion, they're actually very closely related. So mindfulness is the ability to turn toward what is, to be aware of what is, to not run from it or dive into it too much, especially when things are painful. And if you think about it, most of us, when things are painful, or especially if that pain is caused by feelings of inadequacy or making a mistake, either we avoid it, we don't want to think about it, you know, we just go into problem-solving mode, or we blame other people, or we do the opposite, and we kind of get consumed by it. We get so lost in our pain and our suffering that there's

no perspective. And so in order to give compassion to ourselves, it takes a little bit of perspective taking. We kind of have to step outside of ourselves and say, hey, you're really having a hard time. Is there anything I can do to help? And that perspective is actually mindfulness. We're aware of what's happening and we also have some perspective about what's happening. So you might say that's the first step. And then, of course, when we're aware of what's happening, we also have to respond with kindness. I mean, we may be aware of our pain and just say, you know, suck it up, or it's all your fault. That's actually not compassionate.

Compassionate means there's some sort of sense of warmth, some sense of care, some sense of understanding. It's a kind response as opposed to a harsh response. And then finally, what's really important, what differentiates self-compassion from self-pity, and a lot of people get these two confused and they're very, very different. Self-pity is woe is me. Compassion and pity are different. So Rangan, if I had compassion for you, you'd probably like it. I'd say, maybe you're telling me about a problem you had. And I said, oh yeah, I've been there. You know, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? Whereas if I pitied you, you wouldn't like it because I'd be looking down on you like, well, you really got a bad poor, poor thing, you know? So the difference between pity and compassion is the sense of

interconnectedness, right? If you look at the word compassion in the Latin, come means with, passion means to suffer. There's a sense of suffering with, suffering together. And so with self-compassion, instead of poor me, it's just recognizing that, hey, life is difficult for everyone. Everyone's imperfect. There's nothing to do with me personally, right? We all make mistakes. We're all imperfect. We're all flawed. We all go through difficult times. important is because more often, you know, especially if we make a mistake or even if you get an unpleasant call from the doctor, our irrational reaction is something has gone wrong. This isn't supposed to be happening. You know, and again, it's not a logical reaction, but emotionally we feel like what's supposed to be happening is perfection. And maybe everyone else in the world is living a problem-free life. And it's just me who's made this big mistake, or it's just me who's struggling with this personal issue.

And it's kind of just a fallacy of the mind. And so with self-compassion, we remember, oh, wait a second. This is the human condition. You know, being human isn't about being perfect. Being human is about being flawed and struggling and doing the best we can, falling down and getting ourselves up again. And so these elements together, the sense of mindfulness of our difficulty and pain, a kind reaction to it, and then feeling connected in that experience, all these three things have to be there, according to my model, in order to be

self-compassion. And empirically, they tend to go together. They tend to engender one another. And as you mentioned, the research now, there's over 3,000 studies on self-compassion. There's two or three coming out every single day. And it really overwhelmingly supports the benefits of this mind state when we turn toward ourselves with this supportive way of being yeah something I've observed over the years particularly as I've got more and more experienced is when you look at the patients who really transform and change their lives not just in the short term but also in the medium term and long term. As I've sort of become more aware of this, I'm seeing that it actually is because of

self-compassion. It's those ones who start to quieten down and then ultimately eliminates that inner voice, that nasty inner voice in their heads that actually starts to change things. So it's, for me, I feel that self-compassion is really important for health outcomes as well as our day-to-day well-being. And I guess the question I'd put to you at the start, for people who are listening, for people who are watching, who are skeptical, right? Why should anyone consuming this podcast at the moment be bothered about self-compassion? Right. So, well, self-compassion is really the antidote to our more habitual way of being, which is harshly self-critical, right? Or really cold to ourselves. And talk about health, right?

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

The problem is, is it's really counterproductive, right? So first of all, when we're really hard on ourselves or harsh with ourselves, it activates the sympathetic nervous system response, which is associated with things like high cortisol levels, inflammation, high heart rate, eventually blood high blood pressure and heart attacks things like that so when we're constantly in you might call it the freak out mode the threat defense well we feel really threatened you know our body's on very high alert to deal with the danger but if the danger is really like does the stress make me look fat you know i'm sorry but you know things like that we just the things we criticize ourself for constantly means we feel like a lion is chasing us.

And that constant activation actually is bad for our physical health. So what self-compassion does is, by the way, it doesn't say, oh, that's fine, you don't need to change. But it says, okay, maybe you do need to change, but it does it with encouragement and support as opposed to harsh self-criticism. It's kind of like an ultimately really wise coach or really compassionate parent. A compassionate parent doesn't say to their child, you know, okay, little Johnny, you don't want to go to school today. That's fine. Oh, you want the whole entire bag of cookies? Oh, I love you so much. It's not a compassionate parent, right? That parent is harming their child. A compassionate parent cares about their child and wants the best for them.

for ourselves, we're going to make change unhealthy behaviors. We're going to try to reach our goals. We're going to do whatever we need to do to be healthy. And so what happens when we're self-compassionate at the physiological level is it actually taps into the parasympathetic nervous system. So this is the system that gets activated when we feel loved, when we feel cared for, when we feel connected, when we feel secure, like in our tribe, right? And this helps us feel calm and relaxed. It lowers cortisol levels and increases heart rate variability and improves things like sleep. And that's why self-compassion is also linked to better physical health, right? So think about this. There's been a lot of work done with army veterans, people in the USA who had seen combat either in Iraq or Afghanistan. And they found that those

veterans who were self-compassionate about what they had faced and also maybe what they had done, in other words, who were an inner ally to themselves, who had their own back as opposed to beating themselves up all the time or feeling a lot of shame about what had happened or just total despair. Those who are supportive of themselves were less likely to develop post-traumatic stress syndrome. They could function a lot better coming back to daily life. They were less likely to abuse alcohol, less likely to try to commit suicide, which unfortunately is a big problem among veterans. So when you go into, life's a battle, not always, but often life's a battle. I mean, this coronavirus is certainly, we talk about it like this battle. Who do you want inside your head as you go into battle? Do you want an enemy who's cutting you down, who's shaming

you, who's saying, oh, you're crap, I I hate you or do you want an ally he says I got your back we can do this I believe in you I'm here for you clearly we're going to be stronger more competent more able to deal with the difficulties of life when we're our own ally when we support ourselves as opposed to pulling the rug out underneath ourselves which we do with self-criticism yeah I think that's a great analogy because as you were talking then, I was thinking about, well, what's the opposite of self-compassion? Is there an opposite to self-compassion? Yeah, so compassion, in terms of how we measure compassion, it's an increase in positive behaviors like being kind to yourself, being mindful, feeling connected to others. And it's

a decrease in things like self-criticism, a feeling isolated from others, or feeling what's called over-identified. That's when you kind of exaggerate and get lost in how bad things are. So both change simultaneously. I love how you brought up the stress response because I find that most things these days when it comes to health and well-being can be explained on an evolutionary level particularly when we just look at our core stress response and it strikes me that the stress response really evolved into it to help us against those physical threats exactly but you're sort of saying that actually if we don't practice self-compassion if we're harsh with ourselves if we're critical of saying that actually, if we don't practice self-compassion, if we're harsh with ourselves, if we're critical of ourselves, then we're still activating the stress response, not against a physical threat, but almost against our concept of getting away from ourselves. We live with ourselves. We're with ourselves 24

hours a day, seven days a week. So actually, you're making this powerful case that actually, if that's happening, if we have that negative view of ourselves, or we talk to ourselves in a really harsh way, which is so, so common, and I would imagine is the norm in society. Well, many of us are activating our stress responses every single day. Absolutely. So basically when we attack ourselves, our body is acting, the sympathetic nervous system is activated,

often more so than physical danger. I mean, if we think of how stressed we get and how upset we get when we feel shame or maybe you've got to like publicly speak and you say something really wrong or these things can be incredibly scary, incredibly activating. And our bodies feel it. And I have to say, I just did a little bit of cross-cultural research. And the UK was near the bottom of 17 countries I looked at in terms of levels of self-compassion. And I think it's partly because the USA was also fairly low. It was like seventh to the bottom, but the UK I think was just about the lowest. And I think it really comes from, again, we don't want to beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up because it comes from this

underlying desire to be safe and healthy. The idea of we'll just push it through, you know, get through it, don't complain. And kind of this, it's this idea that if I'm really hard on myself, that somehow that's going to help me or somehow that's going to help other people. You know, it's going to make me less self-centered. It's going to make me, you know, less of a complainer. The problem is, is it's just wrong. I mean, the research shows it's just wrong. So for instance, self-criticism is an incredibly self-focused state. And it's also unmotivating. So let me back up a little bit. It kind of works in some circumstances. I mean, there are people I'm sure you know, got to get through med school off of harsh self-criticism.

there are people I'm sure you know got through could get through med school off of harsh self criticism and but what it does is it yeah but it creates and they see these knock these you might say unwanted side effects that are really damaging right so for instance it lowers your sense of self-confidence it makes you more anxious so for instance if you take a really big exam and you're afraid that if you don't get the score you need, you're going to beat yourself up. That's actually going to make you more anxious as you're taking the test and it's going to lower your ability to perform at your best. Also, when you do fail, and even doctors who are expected to be gods, they're only human, right? What happens is when you fail, because you can't handle handle the failure oftentimes people

just give up well then you know just drop out of med school or i'll just do something else or you know make some other choice because it feels so unacceptable to be to fail uh whereas with self-compassion right it's a much more effective motivator so put it this way shame is not exactly a get up and go mind state. I think we can all kind of recognize that. Also saying it's okay, don't worry about it. That's not a motivator either, but that's not self-compassionate. Self-compassionate, if you imagine this coach, maybe like a football coach and the British term soccer coach, who's like really good, really knows their stuff, really believes in their players. And that coach is not

going to like just let their players slide if they're doing something that's not good. They can say, hey, I know you can do better. Here's how to do better. What can we learn from our mistakes, right? How can we practice and, you know, make up for any weaknesses so we can do better in the next game? That's the type of mindset that a compassionate mindset is. And it's just much more effective and it's more sustainable over time. So for instance, when you criticize yourself, it's painful, right? It actually starts to harm your body. It starts to harm, you know, it feels bad. It hurts you. Self-compassion. This is the amazing thing. Even though it's aimed at suffering by definition, you know, it's like when we're feeling badly about ourselves or maybe we're

just going through a really hard time in our lives when we kind of embrace ourselves like a friend with kindness with support with care even though we're suffering compassion itself is a positive emotion and activates the reward centers of the brain, right? We all want kindness. We want to feel connected. We want to feel that peace of mindfulness. These are positive states of mind. So what we're doing is we're holding a negative experience with this positive state of mind, but not in a way, it's not like sugarcoating. It's not like positive thinking, you know, it's not denying the negative state of mind. It's not like saying, oh yeah, things are fine. Yeah. Everything's going to be wonderful. Every day I'm getting stronger and stronger because I actually may not be, you know, maybe I'm sick. So it doesn't,

it doesn't repress or sugar or paper over the negative feelings. It embraces the negative feelings and says, okay, this is reality. This is what is. This is hard. How can I help myself deal with this? And so the warmth and the kindness and the feeling of connection, you know, everyone struggles.

That actually gives us the strength and sense of support as we're coping with the negative emotions simultaneously. So it's like generating good feelings alongside of recognizing the bad feelings. And this is really the power of it because it allows us to more productively deal with the problems we have. It feels good. It helps us to connect with other people. And it's much more sustainable over time. with other people and it's much more sustainable over time. As we record this, we're in the middle of January and I've just coming towards the end of two weeks off, I guess a virtual book tour. I released a couple of weeks ago a book which is called Feel Great, Lose Weight, but it's a

compassionate approach to people who have been struggling to lose weight for many years. And what's been really interesting in all the media interviews, there's a question that often comes up, which is to do with the whole motivation piece. And it's really interesting that I say, look, everyone's been on a diet before for two or three weeks and lost a bit of weight or felt a little bit better. But the question is how many of those people are still able to make those changes long lasting in two months and three months and four months and five months. And I find myself a lot talking to these interviewers on TV saying, well, look, you can lose weight on any diet in January, frankly, if that's what your goal is. But what I see as a doctor is in March time not only have people put back on the weight they've gone higher but even worse they've damaged their feeling of self-worth they don't blame the diet

they feel like failures and that feeling of being a failure leads to them going, ah, screw it, and leads to more comfort eating and more negative behaviors. And actually, there's a whole section on compassion and actually, what is that inner voice? How do you talk to yourself? And I can't tell you how many messages Chris and I've had over the last two weeks, private messages from people saying, that is so impactful because I am really harsh with myself. I talk to myself like I would talk to nobody else. I guess that is, and this is what doesn't get spoken about for in many conditions, but something like weight loss, which all around the world, people are trying to lose weight in a sustainable way. They're trying to beat themselves up. people are trying to lose weight in a sustainable way.

They're trying to beat themselves up. They're trying to be the drill sergeant. They're trying to be the kind of mean coach saying, come on, you can do this. When actually, when you shift to having that compassionate voice to yourself, the changes, they may not be as quick, but they're certainly more long lasting and more sustainable, right? Yes. So let me tell you a study, one of the earliest studies that came out on self-compassion and dieting behavior. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health

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do intuitive eating so they don't eat when they're stuffed because they don't need to emotionally eat because they have a better healthier way to deal with their pain than food which is self-compassion but in this study what they did is they had um they gathered i think it was mainly women who are on a diet um these were undergraduates. And as part of, and they had them come in to do one of these psychology subject pools. So they all had to take this and participate in this experiment. And they pretended that they were doing a taste testing session as part of the experiment. And one of the things that they had to taste was a donut and they had to eat the whole donut. It was like a big, greasy, fried, glazed donut. And all these women

were on diets, right? They recruited them because they were on diets. And then afterward, they broke them into three groups. One group, they told them to be compassionate about the fact, hey, don't beat yourself up. You know, it's okay. It was kind of part of, we know that it's troubling, but everyone had to do it. You know, it's only human. Don't beat yourself up. Try to be kind and supportive to yourself. The other third, they tried to boost their self-esteem. You know, hey, write about things that you really like about yourself. And the third group, they didn't tell anything, which kind of, which meant they were probably beating themselves up. I mean, they didn't tell the subject to beat yourself up, but they probably were beating themselves up, right? And then the second part of the experiment, they said, okay, well, we have

another part of the experiment. We'd like you to rate how flavorful these candies are. They were like M&Ms. So they gave them a big bowl of candies and then they left the room, the experimenter left the room for a while and said, okay, just try these out, see if you like them or not. And then they came back in and later they actually measured

how many M&Ms they had eaten. And what they found was that the women who were told to be compassionate about breaking their diet, which they had done with the glazed donut, didn't eat very many M&Ms. But the ones who were either told to boost their self-esteem or weren't told anything, so in other words, they beat themselves up, ate a lot more M&Ms. And so again, that's kind of illustrating what happens, right? We break our diet. We feel we beat ourselves up. I'm a loser. We feel upset. What's a habitual way of feeling better when we feel upset? We eat. Right. And by the way, there's another study because, you know, overeating is also linked to diabetes. There's another study that showed that people who participated in the mindful self-compassion program, which is the program I've developed with colleagues, eight week self-compassion training.

which is the program I've developed with colleagues, eight-week self-compassion training, not only did they gain self-compassion, they actually lowered their glucose levels, right? And part of this is related to the fact that they're more able to stick to the regime, whether it's medication and eating. But actually, if eight weeks of training, actually they measured their glucose

before and after the training, and their glucose levels actually went down and were stabilized. So it's really powerful medicine. Yeah, I mean, the phrase that I often use, which seems very apt in relevance to what you just said, is that we used to eat to fill a hole in our stomachs. Now we're often eating to fill a hole in our hearts. a hole in our stomachs now we're often eating to fill a hole in our hearts and if we're not compassionate to ourselves then actually that in many ways that that hole in our hearts becomes

bigger and bigger and we seek all kinds of different behaviors yes it could be food it could be sugar but it could be gambling it could be scrolling for four hours on Instagram every evening. It could be alcohol, porn addiction, whatever it is. There can be all kinds of things that actually are stemming from this lack of feeling whole in who you are, compassionate to who you are. Something you said before about medical students, I found really interesting because I think I used to be not, okay, let's be totally honest here. I was very, very harsh with myself. I can remember, I'm not sure I should be omitting this, but I can remember at medical school, going with one of my buddies to the pool hall in Edinburgh called Diane's Pool

Hall. And you know, I love playing snooker and pool. It's one of my favorite sports to play. And if I wasn't playing very well, or I was losing against a friend who I thought I should be beating, I'd go into the men's toilets and I'd look in front of the mirror and I'd look at me and I'd slap my face. Come on, you loser. You can do this. Sort yourself out. Now this sounds really trivial, okay? Because it would work. The thing is, it would work in the short term. I'd come out thinking that, yeah, I'm a loser for losing that last game. I'm going to sort myself out and then go and I'd play really well after that typically and win. So that then reinforces, oh, this works. This works. And I remember doing, you know, I can feel as I talk about it, similar type of behavioral patterns.

Now, that's been getting less for a number of years. But we still fall into old patterns. And I tell you why that story almost comes full circle. I'm very mindful. I try to be of how I behave and talk to myself in front of my children, because I don't want to model negative self-talk to them. I was playing snooker with my son the other day and normally I don't, but something slipped out. It wasn't too bad, but I was like, I can't believe you missed that. I was talking to myself and my son said to me, hey, daddy, come on.

Don't talk to yourself like that. And it was really gorgeous actually, because in the past when he's ever said anything like that, I've said, hey darling, listen, it's okay. You're like, but don't talk to yourself like that. Treat yourself better than you would treat even your friends, right? Why would you talk to yourself like that? Treat yourself better than you would treat even your friends, right? Why would you talk to yourself like that? And it was so lovely that he started to, in a really compassionate way, call me out on it. And I thought, oh yeah, thanks. Thanks for reminding me. Yeah. Yeah. And modeling is definitely one of the ways we develop our

levels of self-compassion as adults. And it's either parents were critical of you, or they are very self-critical. And then we pick that up. But in that story, I just want to say, I feel that that negative self-talk in the short term, it got me to get through an exam, win a snooker match, right? But I think it came at a cost. And it's what you said about those hidden side effects. I think it came from a place of lack, of not feeling good enough at just being me because why does it matter if you lose a Snooki game? But for me, it became my identity.

If I lost it, it would say something about who I was as a person. But as I become more compassionate to myself, I feel happier. I feel calmer. I feel I'm less likely to engage in behaviors I'm trying not to engage in because I just don't feel the need to plug that gap anymore. Yeah, no, absolutely. So, I mean, the research shows not only are you happier and you're more satisfied with your life,

you're also able to give more to others in relationships. Some people think that self compassion is selfish, but in fact, people who have self-compassionate romantic partners, they say their partners are kinder, they're more intimate, they're more loving, they're less controlling, they get less angry. People are more satisfied with partners who are self-compassionate. And that's because when you aren't beating yourself up and you're kind of filling your own reserves with these feelings of kindness and support and connectedness, you actually have more available to give others. But I want to return to the point about motivation. And the reason it's so important is because what the research shows is the number one block to self-compassion is people believe

is going to undermine their motivation. So it's really huge. And so let's talk about the fact that it kind of works in the long run. So there are kind of two forms of self-compassion. There's accepting self-compassion when we accept ourselves as we are. And I call that kind of tender self-compassion. But in order to alleviate our suffering, sometimes the right thing to do is to accept ourselves as we are. And sometimes the right thing to do is to try as hard as we can to change. And I like to call that fierce self-compassion, that energy of, you know, this is not okay. Maybe it's saying that to someone else, protecting ourselves, right? That's not okay.

You can't treat me that way. That's absolutely part of self-compassion. And sometimes it's inside saying, you know, maybe we might say that to our inner critic, you can't treat me that way. Or we might say, you know, maybe it's not okay to lose. I mean, you know, it's ultimately the bottom line is I'm still worthy if I lose, but if I want to be happy, maybe I'm a professional athlete and their self-compassion is starting to take off among athletes. Maybe I'm a professional athlete. And if I want to be happy, of course, I want to

be the best. Of course, I want to win games and to to say like, oh, don't worry about it if you win or lose, that's actually not being kind to yourself because it's really important to you to win and to be the best athlete you can. acceptance. Again, so what, what the way self-compassion motivates is it says the bottom line is if you fail, you're still worthy. You know, your worthiness isn't contingent on success or failure. I will still love you. You'll still be worthy. You know, I won't hate you if you lose, but at the same time, I want you to succeed. And I i'm going to do here's the important thing i'm going to do everything i can do to help you succeed including looking very carefully how you failed and seeing how we can learn from that failure to help you do better next time that's you know on top of that bottom line of unconditional self-acceptance. And that is actually much more effective, right? Any parent, any parent knows that they can, there's three ways of reacting

to your child who's failing. One is you stupid loser. I'm ashamed of you. Yeah. The child may try harder next time to get up their grades, but you know, they may just hate themselves. They may give up out of school. They may just internalize this as low self-esteem. They might turn to drugs. There's going to be a lot of negative consequences if you tell your child whose failing, I hate you, you're a loser. Another way might be, and you may think this is compassionate, but it's not really compassionate. A parent who says, oh, that's fine. Don't worry, sweetheart. It's okay if you fail out of school. You know, everyone fails sometimes. That's all right. And they just leave it there. A parent who just leaves it there is not helping their child because their child needs to get good grades so they can go to college and succeed in life, right?

So a compassionate parent who wants to motivate their child, the first thing they say is, it's okay to fail. Everyone fails. It doesn't one iota impact my love for you. But I want you to succeed. You know, I care about you. I want you to achieve your best. So what can we learn from this failure? You know, this happened with my son when he failed an exam, actually.

And he was really upset because he failed an exam. And so the first thing I said is, hey, everyone fails. It's OK. Give me a hug. But what did I do? I called all his teachers. And I found out, OK, what's going on with the study routine that wasn't working? We changed his study routine.

And then he started succeeding on his exams. That's compassion, right? And so people get confused. They think it's just the tender accepting side and they don't see the fierce motivating, what can we do to make things better side? And we actually need both to be self-compassionate. And in combination, they're much more effective than saying, you better do better or I'll kick your ass, which kind of works, than saying you better do better or I'll kick your ass, you know, which kind of works, but has lots of negative side effects. Yeah. I really liked that. There's a, there's a, there's a real subtle difference, isn't there between just accepting everything and saying that's okay. But, but that

there's a way where you get that middle ground where you do accept and say, actually, whether you win or lose doesn't change my love for you, right? it's not your identity as a person right it's not your worth is a contingent on it but but let me help you and let me help that's with a child but also with yourself right it's yourself there was this I did this online event last night it was a independent bookshop near London we normally I'd go and speak there but obviously because of the restrictions it was done on zoom yeah and I gave the talk and there was a lot of questions. And actually, this is really fresh in my mind. It only happened a few hours ago. And the lady said, because it was a book event and she said, Rangan, I really liked the book. It's helped me understand things to do in

my weight, but I'm really struggling with motivation. Now I couldn't speak to her. It was just on, you know, the chat functionality on Zoom, but I answered and I was thinking, okay, it's hard to know what's going on exactly without hearing, you know, the nuance of that individual story. But my feeling is, and I directed her to that compassion part within the book talking about how you talk to yourself because I and I was thinking I was lying in bed last night thinking about that question and I was thinking that motivation is really interesting because if you really do have compassion for yourself

then motivation actually I'm, is not that tricky. If you really love yourself, then would someone who loves themselves do nothing at all for their health each day? Of course not. Exactly. Of course not. So actually... It's not compassionate.

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

overweight or like you look at things like race relations right if you want to shame oppressors and you know that's not going to help them say, okay, you're right. I'm going to change, you know? So even people who are doing really bad things, we need to help them change from a place of care and compassion. It doesn't mean acceptance. That's not, acceptance is not always compassionate. It's part of compassion, but you can't accept behaviors that are harmful. That's not compassionate by definition. So it's how do you change? Is the change motivated by love or is it motivated by fear? So shame, self-criticism is like saying, unless you want to feel like, unless you want to

hate yourself, you know, you better change. So it's like, okay, well, okay, I guess I don't want to hate myself or I don't want to feel shame. So I'll try. But that feeling of uncertainty, that feeling like, okay, I guess I don't want to hate myself or I don't want to feel shame, so I'll try. But that feeling, that uncertainty, that feeling like, okay, maybe I'm a bad person. That's like, again, pulling the rug out from underneath yourself,

creating anxiety that's going to make it harder for you to succeed. But motivation out of love, hey, I want you to change because I see that you're unhappy. You know, I care about you. You are a worthy person. How can I help? How can I help?

That, you know, that's really what self-compassion is. How can I help? And if you don't say how I can help, then you're just part of the problem, whether it's for yourself or other people. Yeah. I want to get into practical tips later on in this conversation. So for people who want to start a practice of self-compassion, they can have a few pointers as to where to go. But this whole idea of societal conditioning fascinates me. Why is something that really, when you look at it rationally, when you make the case for it, it's quite obvious actually that this is the way we should be talking to ourself with love and with compassion. Yet we don't. And you mentioned that Britain is very low down, if not bottom of the table. Doesn't surprise me, if I'm honest, because

we have a phrase here, you know, your stiff upper lip, you just get on with it. You know, particularly for men, I think. So I'm interested in different countries, the sexes, men v. women. Are there, you know, what are the obstacles to self-compassion that you've seen across genders or across different countries and how might we start to overcome them? I think part of the reason we're so hard on ourselves is I do think it's part of our human physiology. As you know, the threat defense response is the quickly, most easily triggered nervous system reaction to danger, right? It comes online first before the parasympathetic nervous response kicks in to say, okay, it's so safe, or you can feel safe by being connected. They call it a reptilian brain on purpose because even reptiles have this brain, right? This is a natural response, natural safety response.

It's universal. We don't want to beat ourselves up for it. We want to have compassion for it. So that's one level. But then on top of that, there are also all these cultural things. So in terms of cultures, now there hasn't been a lot of cross-cultural work. There's just been a little bit. And so I don't want to say too much about it because it's complex, but there are obviously cultural differences. higher levels of self-compassion. Thailand is more Buddhist. They actually, a lot of people meditate. It's kind of part of the culture, this more gentle approach to other people and themselves. Whereas China is incredibly low. It's more Confucian. They actually believe in self-criticism as a way to motivate change. So it's not East-West. So there are differences in Eastern cultures, also in Western cultures. Italy is actually higher in self-compassion. The UK is very low. The United States is kind of in between, but on the lower end. So a lot of the cultural messages we get about, you know, is self-compassion

selfish? Is it going to undermine your motivation? Is it a form of self-pity? Is it going to make you weak? Right? All these things get in the way. Gender. Now, gender is really interesting. I'm sorry, but gender roles really mess everyone up. Because gender roles tell men that they're allowed to be fierce, but they aren't allowed to be tender. It's okay to be angry.

You should be angry. You should be active. You should be active. You should go out and you'll conquer the world, but don't be too sensitive. Don't be soft. Right. And so men, men's ability to feel the tender self-compassion is inhibited, right? Because they think it's a weakness. Power plays into this as well. right? So power kind of engenders that fierce action. So men are allowed to be fierce but not tender. Women, it's the exact opposite. We're allowed to be tender and soft and loving, but we aren't allowed to be angry or fierce

or stand up for ourselves or claim our power. So gender kind of messes up men and women in slightly different ways. So if you look at in terms of who's more compassionate, they're actually pretty close, but women are slightly less self-compassionate than men. And basically the way it comes from, and that's linked to gender roles, androgynous women are not. It's because women are taught they shouldn't meet their own needs. They should always meet other people's needs. So women are actually much more compassionate to others than men are, but slightly less self-compassionate because we feel like, oh, we aren't allowed to meet our own needs. And that's kind of a form of fear, self-compassion.

So gender and culture really play into all of this and it's the reason it's a tragedy is because this is a human thing you know it's not about being male or female or doesn't matter you know whether you're cisgendered or transgender whatever it is whether you know whatever culture you're from as human beings we need both tender and fierce self-compassion in order to be healthy and whole. But society really is a barrier. talks about this and really talks about how we need to stand up to some of these restrictive gender roles and say, actually, you know, what do I really need to be healthy, to be happy, to be whole, whether that's physically healthy, whether that's mentally healthy. And in order to be healthy, we need both fierce and tender self-compassion and they need to be in balance. Again, like with motivation, if it's too much acceptance

and not enough of that fierce hey you got to do something about this it's not healthy that's not good on the other hand if it's just about you know striving and get it right and be the best and there's no bottom line of self-acceptance that's not good either we need both you know constantly and they're always in balance And part of it, part of the issue is we get knocked off balance and we say, okay, what do I need? Well, sometimes I need a little more acceptance. Sometimes I need a little more change. You know, we don't know it changes moment to moment, but how many people actually pause to ask themselves, what do I really need in this moment to be healthy? Think about that. Think about it before.

And by the way, I'm guilty too with all the craziness in the United States. I've been watching way too much TV. But sometimes I catch myself and I say, what do I need right now? Do I really need to watch more TV and get upset? Or maybe what I need is to go to bed. Or maybe what I need is a cup of tea. Asking yourself the question is really, will eventually provide its own answer. Yeah. I mean, so many things I want to follow up

on there. What you said about women definitely mirrors my own experience in clinical practice. The way I've seen it show up is that when I would talk to a lot of my female patients about, Hey, listen, you, you need a bit of me time every day. You need a bit of time to yourself. You know, or what I can see is that you're looking after your kids. You're looking after your parents, you're looking after your husband, but what are you doing for yourself? And I found that when I actually can help them take a bit of time for themselves, the results on their symptoms can be quite dramatic. One patient with really bad Crohn's disease and with lots of gastrointestinal symptoms every day went down by 50%. So I didn't call this self-compassion. I just asked her to take 15, 20 minutes to herself

each day where she just did something unashamedly for her, not with a phone, not with anyone else. And I was like, really? And I've seen that over and over again, because as you say, it's to do with the stress response and the stress response affects every single organ system. So if you can start to lower that, you can see improvement in symptoms in all different kinds of areas of the body so that's that's one thing i really resonate with in terms of how you described that again i didn't see it as self-compassion but now i would probably look at it slightly differently the other point was how you said that a lot of women are really good about being compassionate to others but not to themselves. And then I really

thought, well, this is quite an interesting conflict, isn't it? Because one might imagine that if you can radiate compassion, then that's going to go to others and to yourself. But what you're saying is that these things are actually quite separate. Yeah, believe it or not. So in the research, there's a very small correlation between self-compassion and compassion for others. Now, what we know is when you learn to be more self-compassionate, it increases not only your ability

to be compassionate to others, but to sustain being compassionate to others without burning out. But because so many people, especially women, it's actually not true to say you need to be self-compassionate first before you can be compassionate to others, because that's actually not the case. There are many, many people who are very kind,

compassionate and giving to others who treat themselves horribly. So they don't necessarily go hand in hand. Part of what happens when you learn to be more self-compassionate is to become more integrated. And again, you are more able to therefore be even more compassionate to others, but especially to do it in a balanced way, it's not going to burn you out. But yes, and I hate to say this, well, I don't hate to say this. I'm going to just say it. Hierarchy comes into this to some level. I mean, women, we've been taught that we're supposed to meet other people's needs and that our needs don't count. And that's really

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

balance of power in society. Is the ability to be self-compassionate something you are born with, or is it a skill that can be cultivated? It's both. It's both. Any question like that, nature or nurture, it's always both, as you know. Well, so certainly there may be some genetic thing linked to the nervous system. We actually don't have any information on that. But certainly the way we're raised, we know, is a big part of it. So if you're raised by parents who criticize you or if there's a lot of conflict in the home, right, or maybe if your parents were at all abusive towards you, then you're going to have a much more difficult time being compassionate as an adult. Because when you think about it, feelings of closeness and connection are supposed to make you feel safe.

But if the people, your family members actually made you feel unsafe, then it's very hard to treat yourself as if you're worthy and give yourself that sense of safety through your own care. But having said that, self-compassion absolutely can be learned. Even by people like with horrible trauma histories, there's an amazing scholar named Sir Paul Gilbert, who's from the UK, who does probably, he's the most famous person in terms of the clinical work on self-compassion. He's developed a type of therapy called compassion-focused therapy that's specifically designed for people who struggle with self-compassion, who maybe come from early childhood trauma. And they've found ways to help people who, even people who are really afraid of self-compassion, help them learn how to be more self-compassionate. So it absolutely can be done.

And for people, you know, so again, if you have a trauma history, it's a little, it takes a little longer, you need to go a little more slowly. But for people who don't have a trauma history, it's actually a lot easier than you might think. Because we already know how to be self-compassionate, we already know how to be compassionate to others. We've learned the skill of how to be warm, how to be supportive, how to be understanding, how to be accepting toward others, especially our good friends. And so really the only task is we need to give ourselves permission to be that way with ourselves. And once we give ourselves that permission, we already know what to do. It's not like rocket science.

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

an incredible message to be giving out because it's really, really empowering. Yeah. In a way, what you might think of self-compassion is a way of reparenting ourselves right maybe our parents weren't unconditionally accepting maybe they weren't supportive maybe they didn't encourage us with love but we can actually learn to do that for ourselves you can learn by treating yourself consistently fairly kindly with encouragement with support you can actually learn to feel worthy and to feel safe as an adult. We aren't totally dependent on our parents, which is the good news. Yeah, that's a nice idea that we can be the very best parents to ourselves. Maybe the aspects of

our parenting that we thought, oh, I wish my parents had done this. For example, we go, ah, you know what, I can sort that out right now. And actually I can be the very best parent to myself. But we also want to have compassion. Maybe your parents were critical or maybe you're kind of critical. You know, we also want to have compassion for that. Because remember, at least not,

there are some psychopaths out there, but most parents who are really critical, they actually think they're helping their child. Again, maybe you were raised that way. And they actually think, you know, it used to be the accepted parenting philosophy, spare the rod, spoil the child. People honestly believe that unless I'm very harsh with my child, maybe even giving them physical punishment, they're going to be spoiled and it's going to harm my child. And so the best way I can help them is by being very critical and strict. You know, of course, we know now from research that it's not true that if you may actually harm your child, make them, you know, turn to drugs and give them low self-esteem. But the underlying

motivation of it is actually a good one. That point I think is so key. You can have the success, but it comes at a cost. And that's, I think, the real conflict we have, because a lot of people feel that if you beat them up or beat yourself up, you can motivate yourself to make changes, work harder. but at what cost does that happen and and i think that's where your work so beautifully comes in because it's showing people that hey you know what yeah that's what we used to think that's what we used to do but as humanity evolves and researchers and scientists like yourself study this you realize actually no that wasn't the best way this is the best way. Be

kind to yourself, be kind to your children. This actually can lead to success without those negative side effects. And I think that's the magic. This is what we need to know about fierce and tender self-compassion. Because if your choice is be harsh or just totally accept anything, that actually then is kind of a toss up which one's better. And so the choice was actually a false one for parents who didn't really realize there was a third way. They call it authoritative parenting. You aren't authoritarian, but you aren't indulgent, right? You're actually, you've got rules, you have boundaries have boundaries you know you might be quite strict but the bottom line is unconditional love and acceptance and then once you realize that there's actually a third way available that's much more effective then it makes a lot more sense than it

did when we thought our choices you know harsh change or just complacent acceptance can you fake it and what i mean by that, can you start saying nice things to yourself that maybe part of you doesn't really believe and you feel a bit uncomfortable? But yeah, can you fake it until you actually make it? Yes. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health

and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for

years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was

published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. so first it does feel weird at first i'm gonna be straight up it feels weird at first especially if your habitual way of relating to yourself is um uh you know just really harsh but what we also encourage people to do is to try to use language that feels comfortable because if you're if you're

super syrupy sweet and you don't believe it, you're going to be creating conflict in your mind. So you might just say, you know, maybe start to be kinder to myself. You know, what I wish for myself is that I can begin to be a little more supportive toward myself. And that's kind of a lower bar to jump over. You know, you can also maybe start trying, maybe it feels a little more comfortable. You don't want to just shut down your self-critic. You can say something like, thank you, self-critic. I know you're trying to help. And so instead of just saying, you know, get out of here, because actually you can stick around, but maybe, maybe, you know, and I want to hear what you have to say. Maybe you've got some useful information, but would you mind saying it in slightly more constructive terms? All right. So

there's a lot of ways you can work with yourself that feel comfortable for you. Often, you know, I tell people that to think about what you would say to a good friend in a similar situation. So people are different. They have different go-to phrases. They've got language. You know, a woman may say something different to her best friend than, you know, a guy might say to his friend in a pub. He might say something different, right? So whatever feels comfortable for you is the type of language you should use. It's really all about changing your intention. You know, in a way, it doesn't even so much, this is the in a way it doesn't even so much this is the amazing thing it doesn't even matter so much what you say to yourself or what you actually do as

that you're intending to help yourself so for instance when we tell teach self-compassion workshops um sometimes it can be kind of difficult to be self-compassionate you know sometimes when we try to give ourselves unconditional love we immediately remember all those times in which we weren't loved and and especially with people with you know trauma histories it can be kind of scary to be compassionate you spend a whole life closing our hearts to keep ourselves safe and then we start to open our hearts and a lot of pain rushes out. And so it can be a little overwhelming. And so we tell people, if that's the case, then just do something else. So go ahead and close down your heart again, but do it consciously.

Do it not out of habit, like you might do scrolling for hours, but do it consciously. Like, you know, this is a little overwhelming. I think I'm going to stop this self-compassion practice because I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. So when you do it, your intention is actually to help yourself. And so even closing down with the intention to help yourself actually builds the muscle of self-compassion. We had a woman at one workshop in the middle of the meditation, she got activated and she stood up and stormed out of the room. And she said, you know, that was the most powerful moment of self-compassion the entire workshop, because I did it to take care of myself. And that really stuck with me. So again, it's not exactly what you do. It's your intention about

why you're doing it. And that's really amazing, isn't it? You build the intention, and eventually that intention starts becoming more habitual. And then it starts becoming more comfortable. And eventually, you may have to walk slowly, but you'll get there eventually. Well, it strikes me that the first ingredient for this, in many ways, is awareness. Awareness that you are not being kind to yourself. You're not being compassionate to yourself.

And actually, awareness is really the first step for any change, whether it's for compassion or anything else. And so really, I'd love to go into some sort of practical things that people can do. Okay. But it strikes me that for different people, self-compassion will look completely differently. There's going to be a unique approach for them. For some people, journaling is really, really effective because it's the first time that they actually get out of their own head and they're actually just writing stuff down. And suddenly they can see their thoughts on paper and just the act of writing. But I know some people who don't like journaling, who maybe, you know, talk to themselves in the mirror, have a dialogue with them.

But I guess what are the different ways? Is it always voice or can there be other ways in which we can practice this? The last 10 years of my life has been spent primarily on developing ways to teach people how to be self-compassionate. It's not enough just to know that it helps. People need to learn how to do it. So we developed the Mindful Self-Compassion Program and it's available in workbook format. It's cheap on Amazon and we have 37 different practices in there. It's empirically validated that help. And these practices are really different. So we do have like compassionate letter writing. So just writing a letter to yourself with the three components of self-compassion,

first paragraph, you know, mindfulness, being just aware of what you're feeling, aware of your pain, kind of validating this is really hard. Writing a paragraph, reminding yourself that you aren't alone. This is part of the shared human experience. And then writing a paragraph with kindness, just the way you might write to a good friend who is going through a similar thing. That's very powerful. Some people like to write. We have meditations. Meditation is one of the most powerful ways to actually change your neural circuits, your neural pathways, build new habits. There's a lot of meditations. I've guided meditations on my website that people can listen to. Meditation is very powerful for some people. They love it. Other people don't like meditation. There are really simple things. One of the simplest is touch, believe it or not. So the first two years of life before babies have language, the primary way that parents convey

compassion to their children, it's actually three primary ways. One is touch, physical touch, you know, the warm touch. One is tone of voice. Babies can't understand words, but they understand that the tone, is it harsh or is it tender and warm? And also gaze, compassionate gaze. So one way is just touch, just putting your hands on your heart, putting your hands on your face. So one way is just touch, just putting your hands on your heart, putting your hands on your face. A lot of us do these gestures naturally when we're upset. But if you do them intentionally, in other words, your awareness is with the gesture, what it can do is it actually changes you at the physiological level. Touch activates the parasympathetic nervous response.

So if you're upset, you can put your hand on your heart or on your belly or on your face. You can give yourself a hug if that feels comfortable, right? And that kind of bypasses the mind, which is sometimes useful because sometimes the mind, the storyline going on there is not very helpful. So you drop out of your head and you go into your body and use some sort of touch to express compassion. it's just a oh you're just it's just oh just a warm tone it doesn't even matter what you say it's just that that warm tender tone that can convey it um one way we actually don't have any um these exercise in our program because it requires a mirror and it's the program is designed to be done in groups but and there's some research showing compassionate gaze in the mirror if you can do it it may be a little difficult you may feel really absurd but if you can gaze at yourself kindly in the mirror that

can be one way to get self-compassion so we really recommend that people find try out different ways of being self-compassionate find the ones that are feel easy and pleasant start there and then you can try other ways that expand your repertoire so to speak so people really need to experiment to find out to find out what works for them even just asking the question is self-compassion what do I need that will help it's just taking that pause isn't it and asking yourself like you would ask a friend like you would ask your child yeah yeah and just kind of getting about the because I know you're a doctor in terms of um for caregivers it's self-care sometimes people don't have time for self-care, right?

So for instance, these healthcare workers who are just overwhelmed with dealing with the pandemic and COVID patients, you can't really say, oh, take time out for yourself, have a cup of tea, get a massage because they are absolutely stressed to the max. The nice thing about self-compassion is it doesn't necessarily demand self-care. So it leads to more self-care. So self-compassion

leads to more self-care, but sometimes we don't have time for self-care or sometimes in the moment, you know, if you're dealing with a COVID patient and maybe you find that massage is your best form of self-care, you can't say like, whoa, man, I'm getting stressed. I'm going to go get a massage. So self-compassion can take a lot of different forms, including just in the moment of stress and overwhelm, just saying silently to yourself, this is so hard. I'm feeling stressed. I'm feeling overwhelmed. Oh, you know, poor thing or whatever it is you might naturally say, I'm here for you. It's going to be okay. It can be done in the moment, which is, so in a way it's more flexible than self-care, which actually takes time. We just actually, we developed a program for healthcare workers, a six-week training program,

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

Yeah, I mean, this is so powerful. so powerful. And, you know, it's a very compelling case that you've put together with the research that it's very hard for any of us to make the case that we should not be practicing self-compassion. Yeah. The nice thing is self-compassion takes no time. It doesn't take any more time than self-criticism. Self-compassion is a mind state, right? it's just how you relate to what's happening in your mind at the moment again just the way self-criticism is so it doesn't take any extra time but when you're self-compassionate towards your stress you're going to choose to try to take time for yourself but so sometimes you need to start with self-compassion about for the fact that you have no time and you're really stressed and you're overwhelmed, you start there. And then that, we also do need physical time for ourselves, but again, we can't really start there. We need to

start with compassion toward how stressed and busy and overwhelmed we are. And that will lead to taking more time for ourselves. But you you know, there are some circumstances where there actually is no time. Yeah. Right. And here's the thing for caregivers, especially for caregivers, is the more compassion we give ourselves in the moment when we're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, not only will it help us be able to hold the stress and overwhelm of it, it actually helps the people we're caring for. And I write a lot about this, and I talked about it in my TED talk with my son, Rowan, you know, who's autistic. And he's doing great now. Well, he's actually, he's 19, his autism is doing great. He's suffering with panic attacks now, which is quite common. So

we're dealing with that, which is stressful. But when he was younger, he would have horrible tantrums related to his autism. And, you know, in the midst of a tantrum, you can't like say, I need some time for myself. You have to be there for your child. And so what I would learn to do is give myself compassion for the pain of being in the center of my son having an uncontrollable tantrum, right? And so what we know about how the brain works, and you know this, we've got mirror neurons or we've got this thing called empathic resonance where the human brain is designed to feel the emotions of others. And that was evolutionarily advantageous for us, right? Our ancestors were more empathic. They could coordinate better. They could cooperate better. to feel the emotions of others. And that was evolutionarily advantageous for us, right? Our ancestors were more empathic. They could coordinate better. They could cooperate better. They passed their DNA on to later generations. Autistic kids actually are very empathic. They can't perspective take, but they're very sensitive. And that's part of the reason they shut down. So my son and I were very empathically attuned. And what I would find is

if he was being upset or having a tantrum, the more I got frustrated and upset, and of course it happened, the more his tantrums would increase. But when I could give myself compassion for how frustrated and overwhelmed I was, when I could fill my own mind with kind of this more loving, connected presence, he would calm down. So we actually feed on each other's emotions. And so just as there's this thing called secondary traumatic stress, if you're in the presence of someone feeling trauma,

we feel their trauma too through our mirror neurons. There's also, I would argue, something called secondary compassion. In other words, when we mirror nons, there's also, I would argue, something called secondary compassion. In other words, when we give ourselves compassion, the person when we're with feels that and can actually, they can help regulate their own emotions through us. So, I mean, that is so powerful that in the moment, by being compassionate to yourself, it impacts in your child. And by the way, you don't have to say I'm feeling calm. Maybe you aren't. I was not

feeling calm when my son was having a major tantrum. So what did you say to yourself? What does that look like? This is so hard. I feel so overwhelmed. I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? I'm here for you. I support you. This is really difficult. So something that simple. And I really want to want to pause on this point because I want people to understand that it can actually, from what I'm hearing from you, be that simple. In the moment, you just, instead of going down the critical pathway, you going down the compassionate pathway and you feel better. Your son responds and all kinds of secondary and tertiary effects on the back of that. That's right. You've got more ability to cope. You don't have to pretend things are other than

they are. In fact, if you do that, it's going to backfire. It's not going to work. You embrace the fact that this sucks. this hurts. I feel horrible. You know, I'm stressed, whatever it is. You don't deny it. You embrace it, but you feel concerned about it. I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? That's what compassion is.

Are there practices that we can do with our children? So not in the Mindful Self-Compassion program, but there are, there's some books on my website, which is if you Google self-compassion, you'll find me. I've got a resources page and there are some great books people have written for kids that tend to center around being a good friend to yourself. Right, you know, so when kids learn about what it means to be a friend or what a good friend's like you actually help your your child kind of

what you did naturally to be a good friend to yourself so there are some good books uh there is a program for young people for teens called making friends with yourself that you again if you go so my website is selfcompassion.org, but you can link to my nonprofit organization, which is called centerformsc.org. You can take a program for teens online and a program for younger kids is actually being developed. It's not fully online yet. And there's also some great work for parents, self-compassion for parents. Again, you can find that on my resources page. And the self-compassion for parents books

also have some practices that people can do with their kids, I'm pretty sure. So yes, what's amazing now is that self-compassion has been established. And now we're seeing all the adaptations and proliferations. How do we do this for teens? How do we do this with people on diets? How do we do this with people with addiction? First responders, military. I actually believe, believe it or not, just so great. I just got an invitation to speak to the female New York City police women, I guess, female police officers in New York City inviting me to come give a talk so it's kind of spreading throughout society which is so exciting I can't even tell you yeah that must be so gratifying you've been doing this for 25 years I mean getting the research

there getting us being accepted part of the literature I, has been really important, you know, because as we said right at the start, it can feel quite soft to many people. But you've really got that hard science behind it now to make that really, really compelling case. Kristen, I've so enjoyed speaking to you. There's so much more we could have spoken about. And maybe at some point we'll get to revisit this on this podcast. But what I always like to do at the end is leave my listeners with some practical tips. This podcast is called Feel Better Live More, because when we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. And I wonder, with all your wisdom, with all your experience, do you have some practical

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

That'd be amazing. Let's do it. So I like to do this with my eyes closed. It's not necessary, but when we close our eyes it helps us to go inward so you may want to close your eyes okay and and to practice this we actually need to call up a little um difficulty so we can give it compassion so i'd invite you to think of something that uh you're struggling with right now right? So it may be related to the pandemic, right? Maybe uncertainty, maybe you're bummed out because things are shut down, or you're in hard

lockdown. It may be something different, maybe a relationship issue, or a health issue. So just think of one thing right now, and make sure that when you think about it, you don't feel overwhelmed. It's not like a really big problem because if you feel overwhelmed, you're going to be distracted and you actually won't be able to learn the practice. So something that's like a four on a scale of one to ten. Okay, so just choose wisely. And then just play out the situation in your mind. Make it present for you. What's happening?

Right? How are you feeling? Or what's going on? What are you afraid of? If that's relevant. Right? What's going on? Who are the people involved?

That's relevant? Okay, so what we're going to do now is we're going to bring in the three components of self-compassion by saying some phrases that we want to evoke them. And I'm going to say a phrase that I'm going to invite you to come up with your own language that actually feels comfortable and right for you. So again, thinking about this difficulty, this challenge. So first we want to bring in mindfulness. So telling yourself, you know, this, this is what happened, what's happening right now. This is the moment of struggle or suffering. We're turning, we're turning toward it. We're, we're recognizing it.

And again, using language that may fit, it may be something like, this is really hard. Or yeah, I'm just, I'm just really hurting right now. So using some language that really calls attention and awareness to the fact, this is a moment of difficulty. This is a moment of difficulty. And then we also want to remember our shared humanity in this, right? So suffering, challenges, stress, difficulty. This is part of life. You know, there's nothing abnormal about having challenges like this.

So whatever way you want to talk to yourself about this, maybe it's just simply, I'm not alone. Other people feel this way too. And then finally, we want to give ourselves some kindness in the face of this difficulty. So one way to do that is with physical touch. You may want to try putting your hands on your heart, maybe your face, right? Putting your hands somewhere on your body that feels supportive. Feeling that supportive touch. Right? And saying some words of kindness and support to yourself.

You may think, you know, what would I say to a really beloved friend who is going through this exact same situation that I'm going through? What would I say to express my support, my care, my willingness to help? And then just try saying it to yourself. It may feel awkward. That's okay. We're just setting our intention to be more supportive to ourselves. Okay, and then you can open your eyes. So that's it really. It's pretty simple.

Just bringing in mindfulness, remembering common humanity and giving yourself kindness how did that how did that um go for you yeah yeah really good actually um even just the act of stopping and going inward is powerful in and of itself right it just feels i feel calmer i feel like a bit of the noise has just shut down or switched off or the volume's gone down in my mind um and i yeah i feel happier i feel calmer actually that's that's definitely true yeah so again this is a practice it's not just a good idea it's something you can do and again on my website I've got a lot of free guided practices I've got some written practices so that can be a place to start and then if you're interested now that everything's online

got a lot of online trainings that people can take. So it's much more, it's pretty accessible if you want to go deeper into this. Yeah. Kristen, listen, thank you so much for the time you've given up today to speak to me. I know you're busy trying to finish off your next book, which I'm really excited to read when it comes out in June. What is the website for people who want to check you out and check out the various courses that you have created? What's the best place to find you? Just if you just Google self-compassion, all the algorithms point to me because I got in early. So spell self-compassion anyway,

look into my website, selfcompassion.org. And that's probably the best place to start. And then you can link to the Center for MSC from there and you can see my workshops, my books. And again, there's a lot of free stuff on the website, including my TED Talk and videos. So I designed, oh, by the way, for those of you, those science nerds out there, I know there are many science nerds out there. I've got like hundreds,

probably even thousands at this point of the PDFs of research articles organized by category. any science nerds out there. I've got like hundreds, probably even thousands at this point, of the PDFs of research articles organized by category on my website. So if you want to look at the science side, that's also available there. Oh, fantastic. Well, you can take a test as well. You can test your own self-compassion level with my self-compassion scale. So that's there as well. Fantastic. Well, we'll link to everything in our show notes as well for people. But you're doing incredible work. Thanks so much for your time. And until the next time we get to speak, be kind to yourself. Thank you. All right, go well. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you can

take away from this episode and apply into your own life. And if you enjoyed listening, please do share this conversation with your friends and family. You can do this on social media or alternatively, you could send them a link to this episode right now, along with a personal message. Doing so has benefits for you both. It's going to make your friend feel good that you've taken the time to share something meaningful with them, but it's also going to make you happier because you will have done something kind for someone else. It is a win-win all round. And as you heard in the podcast, compassion to ourselves is so, so important to make sustainable

changes in our lives. My fourth book, Feel Great, Lose Weight, which came out in the UK in January, is about to be released in the USA, Canada, and Australia. And that book has compassion at its heart. Yes, it's written about the topic of sustainable weight loss, but the reality is that the principles in the book are universal and applicable to all of us. If you're interested in a compassionate approach to health, you could pick up a copy of Feel Great, Lose Weight in paperback, ebook, or as an audio book,

which I am narrating. Before we sign out, I want to let you know about Friday Five. It is my brand new weekly newsletter. It contains five short doses of positivity, a practical tip for your health, a book or an article or a video that I found inspiring, a quote that's caused me to stop and reflect. Basically anything that I feel would be helpful and uplifting. It started at the turn of the year and honestly your feedback has been incredible. If that sounds like something you would like to receive every Friday, you can sign up at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday five. A big thank you to my wife for producing this week's podcast and to Richard Hughes for audio engineering. Have a wonderful week. Make sure you have pressed

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