Hidden Brain - Being Kind to Yourself

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Self-criticism is often seen as a virtue. But psychologist Kristin Neff says there’s a better path to self-improvement — self-compassion. She says people who practice self-compassion are more conscientious and more likely to take responsibility for their mistakes. If you like our work, please consider supporting it! See how you can help at support.hiddenbrain.org. And to learn more about human behavior and ideas that can improve your life, subscribe to our newsletter at news.hiddenbrain.org.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. When you take the wrong turn off the highway or fumble a presentation at work, do you get mad at yourself for making a mistake? Do you silently kick yourself or maybe actually kick yourself? Self-criticism is often seen as heroic, maybe even noble. Many people think it's the shortest path to self-improvement. But is it? The belief that we need to be hard on ourselves, criticize ourselves, to succeed or reach our

goals or make a change is actually the number one block to self-compassion we found in the research. People are afraid that they're kind to themselves, they just won't get anything done. This week on Hidden Brain, the story of a psychologist who learned to stop beating up on herself and how you can convert your harsh inner critic into a friend. People who are more self-compassionate take more responsibility for their mistakes.

They're more conscientious and more likely to apologize. Ironically, even though the word self is in self-compassion, when you take that approach, it actually means you don't have to be so self-focused. Christian Neff's father left the family when she was a very small child. It was the late 1960s and he decided he was going to be a hippie. He picked up and moved to Hawaii. One of my first memories is going to visit him when I was about six years old in Maui. And him telling me, please don't call me dad, call me brother Dionysius because we are

all God's children. I was incredibly uncomfortable and he said that to my brother as well. And so we couldn't call him brother Dionysius, that was just absurd. But we weren't, we didn't want us to call him dad. So, you know, for many, many years, both my brother and I were like, excuse me, could you pass the salt please, like without using any sort of name for him, because we didn't know what to call him. So that was kind of the backdrop of feeling unwanted and rejected. I should grow up.

Kristen's insecurity about her dad shaped her romantic relationships. I was kind of felt insecure. And so there was always that sense of, if any boy liked me enough to want to be with me, I should go for it because there aren't a lot of options. And that actually played into my first marriage. Kristen married young. Her husband was a guy she met in college. He was a good guy, he was intelligent, he was handsome, and up until then my boyfriends

had all been kind of jerks. And so I kind of thought, okay, I've got a good one. I'll say yes when he asked me to marry him, that's amazing that someone would actually ask me to marry them. I'll just go for it. And I didn't have the larger understanding to realize that, well, what is it that I actually want in a man? It was like if it was somebody that was good enough.

Kristen entered graduate school at the University of California Berkeley. She assumed her marriage was good. Her husband was committed to her. But there wasn't a lot of passion, but I didn't really know what I was missing until the man I worked for as a research assistant in graduate school, UC Berkeley, I found out I did have a lot of passion with and I started to realize, ah, of all, he was much older than me. He was about 15 years older than me. And so looking back, it probably played into some of my father issues, right? And so we just started developing

this intense attraction toward each other. At one point, I was working with him at his office and he was looking at me and I was looking at him at his office, and he was looking at me, and I was looking at him, and we started kissing. So we started having a physical relationship, and the passion and the intensity was like, and nothing I'd ever experienced before. Is it almost like it became a split personality?

So I was having this affair with Peter and I was hiding it from my husband and I was split in two. The half that was, the part of me that was still married was horrible. The part of me that was with Peter, I was like on cloud nine. I'd never felt such love, such passion. I felt so deeply seen. It was amazing. So it was like the best

in the worst simultaneously and the two sides of me just didn't talk to each other. There was one more complicating factor. Kristen and Peter were also hiding their affair from his partner. So one more layer of something that I was horrified about that I just didn't deal with. To top it off, even as she was breaking all sorts of moral codes, Kristen was in graduate school to study moral development. There were so many ways in which it was wrong. Of course, I didn't even cross my mind at the time that I was as research assistant. He was really bad on his part, not to mention he was cheating, but he was, you know, I guess

you consider that a sexually inappropriate relationship from his point of view. But at the time, that didn't even cross my mind. Kristen was preparing to spend a year in India for her dissertation research. Peter promised her he was going to leave his partner and join her. And we had made these plans. I thought this was it. I thought we were soulmates without a doubt. He was going to leave his partner for me.

He was going to come to India. We're going to spend our lives together. Kristen hadn't thought through how she tell her husband that their marriage was over. I assume that I would just tell him at some point, but I hadn't even gotten to that point when I was discovered this. She and Peter were at work one day when her husband paid a surprise visit. And he knocked on the door of the office, and it took a long time to answer that knock. Let's just say.

And when he opened the door, he knew and I knew and it's like, it all just came out. Oh God. Like one of the worst moments in my entire life. I told him how sorry it was for her, but I also said, you know, this is the love of my life. And I need to do this and we need to get a divorce. And obviously he was very, very angry about it. I mean, I just for divorce. She left for India and waited for Peter to join her. And I really thought he would come and he kept on saying he would come.

Eventually, he broke the news to her. After I was there about three months, he actually said, Christian, I'm not going to come. At the say, I was a basket case would probably not be an understatement. It kind of, you know, played into that storyline again of, okay, here I am rejected yet again. I was very hurt and also felt betrayed. And you know, so I started to realize, well, did even meme what he said about wanting to spend the rest of his life with me. Maybe not. That was also hard.

After a year overseas, Christian moved back to Berkeley to finish her PhD. She was still angry at Peter and had no interest in seeing him ever again. But then, Peter's partner, who knew about his affair with Kristen, contacted her. She sent me an email and said, Kristen, I need to tell you something. Peter is in the hospital with brain cancer. He only has a couple of months left to live. If you wanna see him, here's my visiting hours, you can come when I'm not there.

Holy s***, huh? Ha ha ha. First of all, I felt overwhelmingly grateful to her. Like what kind of woman would be so kind to this woman who tried to steal her partner that she would do this and let me know. Peter's partner had more news for Kristen. She said, Kristen, I have to tell you this isn't the first time this has happened with another woman. For whatever reason, she had decided to stick with them, but I guess this was the pattern that he would meet younger woman, say he

was going to spend their life with him, and then dump them. Still, Kristen decided to visit Peter at the hospital. I just actually went once to see him because he was actually very close to the end and it was really difficult because he couldn't talk but he could see me. And he was making these weird sounds and faces because I don't know if he was in so much pain. He didn't seem happy to see me. And so I just said, my goodbyes. I think I told him that I forgave him because he was about to die and I didn't want him to end thinking that I hated him. It wasn't a Hollywood script version of how you say goodbye. It was a very awkward, uncertain, unclear version

of how you say goodbye to someone. Peter died a few days later. And Christian was saddled with a toxic brew of emotions. I'm still incredibly angry at myself. I will admit there was a part of me that thought, well, is this somehow life saying, okay, you know, Kristen, if you do something like this and you you cheat and you have an affair, look what happens. I didn't really believe that, but that thought crossed my mind because I still felt so much shame and guilt about what I had done to my husband.

I asked Kristen about the conversations she had with herself in the days that followed her visit with Peter. You're feeling horrible for lying. It's not who you are. You've broken your vows. You've hurt someone. And then add on that coming back and all the layers of being angry at him because he basically, I don't know if he used me or not, but he basically was honest with me, dumped

me, left me in India. And then he's got brain cancer and we wanted to forgive him, I'm laughing, but of course it wasn't funny at the time. It was like a bad soap opera. Of all people, Christen told herself, she ought to have known better. She was doing a PhD on moral development for crying out loud. Honesty has always been one of my core values. I am by nature an incredibly honest person. Line comes very unnaturally to me.

So not only was I studying world development, not only was morality kind of part of myself concept and honesty part of myself concept, so that when I had done this, not only was I hypocritical, but I was completely inauthentic. So I just felt a lot of shame, a lot of shame. But this had happened that I had allowed it to happen. You know, there's even the slight thought, did I somehow cause this to happen through my karma? You know, I don't really believe in karma, but brother Dionysius, certainly my dad, certainly talked a lot my karma. I don't really believe in karma, but brother Dianisha, certainly

my dad, certainly talked a lot about karma. What I was was I was really cold to myself. Well, maybe you deserve this. You know, you did this. This is what happens. I don't feel sorry for you. You know, it was just an intense coldness toward myself. Coldness mixed with shame. Perhaps you are familiar with an inner voice that says things like this. That castigates you, criticizes you, belittles you. A voice that tells you that you are no good, that you deserve to suffer. In the aftermath of her meltdown, Christian became more and more aware of that voice inside her.

She would never dream of saying harsh and cruel things to other people. So why was she doing it to herself? The vast majority of people say they're significantly more compassionate and understanding and kinder to other people than they are to themselves. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. When she was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, Kristen Neff made a series of choices in her personal life.

She would come to regret them for a long time. These mistakes filled her with shame, and judgment, and self-criticism. After she became a psychologist, she started to study the harsh ways people talk to themselves. Christian, I routinely find myself saying very critical things to myself that I would never dream of saying to another human being, you've studied all the ways people beat up on themselves. What do you find? In my research, actually, the vast majority of people say they're significantly more

compassionate and understanding and kinder to other people than they are to themselves, especially when they make a mistake or fail some way. It's interesting. Some people manifest this with like harsh language, with name calling, but you know, they swear at themselves, they really use a harsh tone. Other people like myself, it's more just a sense

of coldness or shame. Other people almost like they disassociate, almost like by abandoning themselves. Just the way you might with someone you didn't like, you just stopped returning their calls, right? And so that can manifest is just a shutting down, a going numb. Sometimes it's just a feeling of disappointment,

like, you know, like I said, a sigh out. That's the way it manifests. But pretty much everyone has a self-critic that comes out one way or another. You've talked about the concept of the inner critic. I think all of us have experienced this. What is the role that the inner critic plays in our lives? Well, so the inner critic actually plays an important role.

And I like to say we should have beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up because the inner critic comes from the simple desire to stay safe. Right. So what we know about the inner critic is it actually is tapping into the body's fight flight or freeze response. And so we're scared of something and gosh, when we make a mistake or fail, it's scary. We feel frightened. We feel threatened. So we either fight ourselves, thinking we could control the situation and be safe. Are we flee and shame from the perceived judgments of others?

Are we kind of freezing, get stuck in rumination? And these are all really natural ways we try to stay safe. So you might even say the motivation of inner critic is a good one, even though the consequences are anything but. Our inner self-critic may have forced evolved to teach us how to survive. If you make a mistake when dealing with a predator, a mistake that costs you a limb, for example, it might make sense to beat yourself up over your mistake, so you never repeat it. But today, this harsh teacher shows up even when we commit trivial infractions.

And we actually feel incredibly threatened even when we do something as simple as a friend and you see that she's, we don't know she's put on a little weight, you know that she's got a little bump and you say, oh, when are you expecting? And she says, I'm not expecting. And by the way, that happened to me not too long ago. I was really bloated. And someone said to me, when are you expecting? And I said, I'm not expecting.

And so something like that happens. And it feels as serious as a predator chasing you about to kill you. Because what's happened is your self-concept at that moment is obliterated. And it feels like a death because our ego is hurt, and we confuse our ego with our actual bodily cells, at least mentally. And when we fail, or we make a mistake, or someone criticizes us, or doesn't accept

us, or reject us, it does feel like a death. And I hate to say this, but some people do go so as far as to try to take their own life that they feel too much shame. Shame is a big factor in alcoholism, in addiction, in suicidal ideation, and eating disorders, a huge number of dysfunctional behaviors are driven by shame. Shame is kind of the undercurrent behind everything. So the difference between shame and guilt, for instance, guilt is I did something bad. It's about our behaviors.

Shame is I am bad. Is the connection between perfectionism and our inner critic? Is that also connected, do you think, to the phenomenon of shame? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, some perfectionism is like, I want to do my very best, but if I don't, I'm still okay. That's actually useful perfectionism. A maladaptive perfectionism, unhelpful perfectionism, is if I'm not perfect, I am bad. and that feeling of I am bad is shame. Feeling shame, feeling the pain caused by the inner self-critic prompts many of us to do things that are unhelpful to our mental well-being. One of those responses, we try to suppress the pain by artificially propping up our self-esteem. Self-esteem, there's nothing wrong with self-esteem.

Self-esteem is just a judgment or evaluation of self-worth. And when you care about yourself, you're gonna have a higher sense of self-esteem. The problem is a lot of people get their self-esteem from, again, identifying with their ego, right? So I have high self-esteem if I think I'm attractive, or if other people like me, or if I succeed in business or sports or whatever it is, it's important to me to

succeed at. And so in an eye way, when we're basing our self-esteem on our ego, this judgment of self-worth, then anytime we fail or make a mistake or get rejected, then because we're identified with our ego, again, it feels like a death when this happens. It feels very, very serious. And of course, the times that you actually might need a boost is actually when things are down for you, and that might be precisely when self-esteem deserts you. Exactly. So I'll just give you an example, a funny, sadly true story. I was with a group of friends. We were visiting some writing stables.

And there was this old Spanish writing instructor. And I was younger. I'm part Greek, so I kind of Mediterranean looks. And he looked at me and he said, oh, you are very beautiful. I was like, well, gosh, you know, my self-esteem boost, you are very beautiful. I was like, oh gosh, you know, my self-esteem boost feeling good about myself. And he said, don't ever shave your moustache.

Ha! Like, okay, you know, self-esteem here one moment, gone the next, right? And so it's very fragile. So it's really humiliating when someone tells you not to shave your moustache. And so it's a fair weather friend because it's based on externals. Or even when it's based on internals, because we aren't perfect, we're always going to get

it wrong sometimes. Right, because you might think of yourself as being a very conscientious person or a very persistent person, and then you might not succeed or persist at a certain task, and then what happens to that inner self concept that you have? Exactly. Exactly. That's the problem with self-esteem. There's nothing wrong with having it, but it's how do you get it?

Do you get it from being better than other people, from being a narcissist, and really ego-defensive, or do you get it from having to be perfect or having to succeed, and all of these things are bound to eventually lead to problems. The harsh inner critic doesn't have consequences just for us. When we are harsh with ourselves, that harsh voice can also come out in our conversations with others. Part of the problem is that many of us go to pains to hide our inner critic from the outside world. Even as our inside voice gets harsher, we try to project confidence and success to the outside world.

Eventually, the gap can become overwhelming. If you don't give yourself compassion and kindness and support when you're experiencing these negative emotions, and instead of the way you try to deal with them, it's by like shoving them down, suppressing them, bodilying them up, then what's going to happen is you haven't actually dealt with those negative emotions. You haven't processed them. And what we know very clearly from the psychological research is whatever you resist actually grows stronger.

So trying to avoid them creates this pressure so that eventually you've actually strengthened the negative emotion so that when it comes out it's even worse than it would have been otherwise. I feel like one of the things that happens for many people, you come home after a stressful day, you're exhausted, you've had a difficult time, maybe the day has not gone well,

maybe you're beating up on yourself for things that you have done or things that you should have done that you didn't do. And one of the things that we do because we're not processing this in a way that's healthy is that we take out this anger or our impatience or frustrations on other people. If we're criticizing ourselves and beating ourselves up, it means we're agitated. Our cortisol levels are elevated. And so that activation means we're more likely to have a shorter fuse with others. And then also other people can pick up on our internal mindset. So if you're feeling kind of grumpy and agitated, other people not only are they grumpy and agitated

because you're being grumpy and agitated, but they can also feel your vibe, so to speak, which makes them grumpy and agitated. So at least to this really downward spiral. And then it doesn't lead to good outcomes typically. I want to talk about one related idea, the role that are in our inner critic plays in shaping our relationships with other people.

In the movie Bridesmaids, the main character Annie is a single woman who feels her life is a mess. She complains about it to her friend Megan, and I want to play you a short clip from the movie. I got fired from my job, I got kicked out of my apartment, I can't pay any of my bills. My car is a piece of s***, I don't have any friends. The last time I find interesting about that Annie. It's interesting to me that you have absolutely no friends.

You know why it's interesting? Here's a friend standing directly in front of you, trying to talk to you and you choose to talk about the fact that you don't have any friends. You know what I mean? No, I don't think you want any help. I think you want to have a pity party. Yeah, I think anyone's a little pity party.

So I think what was happening in that clip is when you just focus on self-criticism and everything's wrong and we're really in this negativity bias, you can't even see the good things like you actually have friends, right? So things aren't as bad as you think they are. You know, we criticize yourself.

I'm so hopeless. I'm so worthless. And it kind of starts morphing into self pity. There may be part of us that's hoping that I will get a compassionate response from others. But of course, it doesn't because who wants to be around someone who's full of self pity. One of the things that I took away from your work that was really interesting is that self-criticism can sometimes be an outgrowth of self-focus or self-absorption. That in some ways the person who is regularly criticizing themselves really is often

unable to step outside themselves. You write so shame and self-criticism, they're incredibly self-absorbed states. You're just thinking about how awful you are, how horrible you are, what a big mistake you made. So self-deprecation of the people may kind of like it a little bit. Self-criticism is, when it's especially when it's done without humor, but it's really serious, just can turn people off and do rally, really. So besides being very critical of ourselves,

can you talk about how some of us denigrate others to feel better about ourselves? So it's superficially designed to boost our self-esteem, but I can't imagine that this can be good for relationships. Right, so, well, you know, Shankar, can I ask you a question? Yes. If I said your podcast was average, how would you feel? I would feel deeply wounded.

You feel deeply wounded, right? And if you said my book was average, I'd feel deeply wounded, right? So we all suffer from this, don't we? We all have to feel special and above average, just for baseline to feel good about ourselves. And so the social comparison is really built into the need for self-esteem. line to feel good about ourselves. And so this social comparison is really built in to the need for self-esteem. And so what we start doing, because we all want to be above average,

is one way to feel above average is to say, oh, that other scholars work isn't quite as good as mine, or that other person's podcast isn't quite as good as mine. We do it subtly, maybe not even intentionally, That isn't quite as good as mine. We do it subtly, maybe not even intentionally, but we're always trying, if we can get away with it, to subtly put others down and puff ourselves up in comparison so that we can again boost our self-esteem. But in some ways, I think what I hear you saying is that this is like a sugar high. It's sort of a transient burst that you get. But in some ways, it's keeping us from sort of exercising the kind of compassion that can actually draw us closer to other people

or closer to ourselves. Yeah, so when we have to feel better than others, to feel good about ourselves, that creates distance in relationships, right? But if we can be compassionate toward ourselves and others, we accept that we're flawed. It also allows us to be closer to others because we accept that they're flawed. We accept that we're flawed. We can actually feel connected to others and our imperfection as opposed to thinking

that they're flawed, but I'm not. So that's one of the reasons self-compassion is so good for relationships that when we can be more forgiving toward ourselves, we can be more forgiving toward others. We don't have to be better than others in order to feel good about ourselves, which means we can have more intimacy in relationships.

When we come back, how to take the voice of our inner critic and turn down the volume? You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. Kristen Neff is a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. She finds that we're often harder on ourselves than we are on anyone else. We criticize ourselves for shortcomings, beat up on ourselves for trivial mistakes. Christian, while you were in graduate school and you went through this terrible saga, you found all kinds of ways to beat up on yourself, but you also

started a journey toward self-compassion. Can you tell me what happened in your own life that led you in that direction? Yes, so I was a basket case, like I said, but I was also nervous about getting my PhD when I get a job. And I had learned that mindfulness meditation was good for stress. I had heard this and I was in Berkeley, you know, and there was a meditation group just on the street from where I lived. I was a Buddhist group and

the very first night I went, the woman leading the group, talked about self-compassion. You know, and I had heard of compassion. I knew that Buddhist talked about compassion, but I'd never heard of self-compassion before. And it was a real light bulb moment for me. It was like, wait a second. You're allowed to be kind and supportive to yourself. I'm even if you've done something wrong, which of course, so this is when I was going through everything with Peter and all the shame and all the guilt and all the drama of it. When I tried to turn the lens

of compassion inward and I tried it out. So, you know, Kristen, yes, I know you feel really horrible about leaving your husband and cheating on him and all that. But everyone makes mistakes. You did your best at the time. You wanted this new experience of love that you never had before and that's so human. So I started being warmer and more supportive and more understanding toward myself. And the crazy thing is it didn't make me say, okay, well that's fine. I'll just cheat on whoever. It's not like it, although it caused me to dismiss my behavior. And actually, though, I mean to take more responsibility

for it, I could turn toward it because what was happening is I couldn't even look at it. It was still so painful and I was feeling all the shame, but I couldn't even really hold a process what I'd done. And so the more I was able to say, yes, you're feeling pain, it was human, you made a mistake. I still felt guilty in the sense that yes, I regretted my behavior. I wish I would have had the wherewithal or the maturity to not have been in that situation, but that's where I was. And so the kinder, more supportive I could be toward myself,

the more able I was to take responsibility for what I had done, but also to move on from it, right? So instead of being stuck there, I was able to learn my lessons, okay? I'm never gonna get myself in that situation again if I can help it, and to really commit much more firmly to honesty and trying to be forced for good in the world and not to harm others.

You know, it's interesting as you're saying this because I'm realizing that when you were really hard on yourself, part of what was happening, I think, was you were telling yourself, look, I'm such a good person that I can beat up on myself for doing this really bad thing. But when you're self compassionate, it's almost like you're saying, I'm actually acknowledging what actually happened. Absolutely. So the self critic, the back of the self critic is tall. I am such a good person that I know what a bad person I am. And also, the self-critic has a sense of control as if I should have been able to get it

right, even though I didn't. And that sense of control, and kind of like I am a good person that I know what a bad person I am, that kind of, again, props up the ego. And so what you do with self-compassion is not like you're saying, I'm a bad, worthless person, but what you're saying is I'm a human being. Yes, I wasn't in control. There was a lot of immaturity, a lot of factors that played in to the decisions I made. I'm not the only one who's hurt someone or that did something they really regretted.

And then when you open to that, when you open to the fact that you're a flawed human being, I like to say what you're doing is you're becoming a compassionate mess. You're still a mess. You don't expect yourself to be perfect, but when you're compassionate toward that mess, it becomes much more workable.

You're more able to see what you've done to own it, to take responsibility for it. You have more emotional resources to learn from your mistakes and commit to trying to do something differently in the future. I'm wondering as you were doing this though, was there a part of you, the self-critical part of you that was, I would say, in response, you know what, Christian, you're just letting yourself off the hook? Oh, yeah, absolutely, right. So in response, you know what, Christian, you're just letting yourself off the hook. Oh, yeah, absolutely, right. So when you first learn self-compassion, it's almost like there's one voice that says,

okay, I'm going to try to understand and support myself. I'm only human. And another voice that says, you're full of it, you're just letting yourself off the hook, because we aren't used to being kind and supportive toward ourselves. What happens is the self-critic resist reality. The self-critic somehow believes that perfection is possible if we just try hard enough. The self-compassion is like, hey, reality actually means making mistakes. Well, that's okay.

Let's just see what we can learn from them and grow. So it took a while. But what I started to see in my research that actually people who are more self-compassionate take more responsibility for their mistakes, they're more conscientious and more likely to apologize. Ironically, even though the word self is in self-compassion, when you take that approach, it actually means you don't have to be so self-focused. Christian had discovered something important. One reason many people avoid self-compassion

is because they think being harsh with themselves is the only way to improve. Of course, many of us do not believe this is the case when it comes to dealing with co-workers, or friends, or children. But we turn to old ideas about corporal punishment when it comes to ourselves. The belief that we need to be hard on ourselves, criticize ourselves, to succeed or reach our goals or make a change is actually the number one block to self-compassion we found in the research. People are afraid that they're kind to themselves. They just won't get anything done. So first of all, self-criticism, it kind of works as a motivator. A lot of people get through med school or law school to self-criticism.

But it works kind of the way corporal punishment works with children. It gets short-term compliance, but it causes a lot of long-term harm. So it may, you may scare yourself or shame yourself into studying more or working harder or whatever it is you need to do to achieve your goals, but it has a lot of long-term negative consequences. So, for instance, it creates anxiety, a little anxiety is okay, but when you have a lot of anxiety, it actually undermines your ability to perform at your best. If you have a lot of shame, shame actually shuts down our ability to learn and to grow because

when we've come absorbed and shame, we can't say, well, what did I learn from this mistake? You're just thinking about what a horrible person you are. It leads to things like depression. And again, depression, one of the manifestations of depression is a lack of motivation. So again, it may work in the short term, but in the long one, it's counterproductive. Kristen cites one study that examines the efficacy of self-compassion in learning. Students at our alma mater, UC Berkeley, were given a very difficult vocabulary test. It was designed to be so difficult that all the students failed. They had three groups. One group, they gave a self-esteem boost to,

which is, don't worry about it, you must be smart. You got into Berkeley for good and sake, right? Another group, they didn't tell anything, which meant they were probably, these are Berkeley students, so they were probably beating themselves up for failing the vocab test. And the third group, they told to be self-compassionate. You know, hey, it's okay, everyone fails, it was a hard test, try to be kind and supportive to yourself. And then they said, okay, we're going to give you the vocab test again.

You can study as long as you want, you're some materials, you can study, and just let us know when you're ready to take the next test. And what they found is those people who are told to be self-compassionate about the failure actually study longer for the next test. And study time was associated with how well they did. So it's kind of shows that you may boost your self-esteem, but it's not necessarily going to lead to trying to do any better. Because, hey, I'm already smart. I don't need to study. Or when you're criticizing yourself, it kind of, you know, my undermined durability to study because you're so full of the

shame or the self-criticism, but saying, hey, it's okay, everyone fails. Why don't I just try again? That's what self-compassion gives you. In your research, you found that self-compassion involves three distinct components. What are they, Christian? In addition to kindness,

which is really what we've been talking about, one is actually mindfulness, which is the ability to become aware of whatever is happening as it's happening and kind of accept that it is happening. When it comes to our own pain, again, one of that pain is because we've made a mistake or we failed or that pain comes from something happens like the pandemic or something difficult in life, we usually don't want to be mindful of it. We'd like to pretend it's not there, we'd like to turn away, we'd like to rail against it

and fight against it. In order to be kind to ourselves, we have to acknowledge that we're hurting. It's almost like if a friend called you up and said, hey, I really need to talk, Shankar, I've got this big problem, I'm feeling badly, and you're like, I really need to talk, Shankar, I've got this big problem. I'm feeling badly. And you're like, I'm sorry, I'm too busy. I can't talk to you.

You couldn't give it that way. Your friend compassion. You can't give yourself compassion. And so the first step of self compassion is mindfulness, the willingness to acknowledge that we're hurting. Even if that hurt comes from some failure or mistake we made. And then we need that before we can be kind to ourselves. But as we're being kind to ourselves,

what makes it compassion is the sense of connectedness to others. I, you know, have struggled in my life, other people have struggles in their life. This is actually what separates self-compassion from self-pity and it makes all the difference. So I'm seeing these three different threads, their self-kindness, their mindfulness and if you will, a recognition of our common humanity. Yes.

And when it comes to the mindfulness component of it, as I was struck by something you were saying, when we are mindful of what we have done, that involves not diminishing what we have done, but also it involves not exaggerating what we have done. So one of the things that mindfulness might give us is it might give us a more accurate picture of what actually we have done rather than minimizing or exaggerating it. Exactly. So mindfulness is kind of as a balance stance that has perspective. And part of the reason we have perspective with self-compassion is we're usually compassionate

toward others, that's what feels natural. And so when we're giving compassion to ourselves, we're stepping outside of ourselves to see ourselves as if we were a friend and to say, well, you're really hurting, right? And that distance, instead of being absorbed in the shame, gives us the perspective we need to not ignore, minimize, but also not to exaggerate either. And that's why mindfulness is so key to self-compassion. Hmm.

Now, in some ways, it's easier said than done, you know, to set aside perfectionism to be kind to yourself, especially if you've spent a lifetime being harsh. You have a very interesting idea about something called a self-compassion break. Tell me about times in your life when you've been caught up with things and you've taken a self-compassion break. Yeah, so the self-compassion break is really quite simple. It involves intentionally bringing in mindfulness, awareness of what's happening to you and the fact that you're struggling,

bringing in common humanity, reminding yourself that you aren't alone even though it may feel like it. So whenever you notice there's pain, that's like the alarm on your phone to say, hey, it's time for a self-compassion break. And part of the self-compassion break is not only kind words, which we do use, speaking to yourself like you might speak to a good friend, but also touch, right? The very simple act of putting your hand on your heart

or maybe on your face, it triggers those memories, the feeling of being cared for by others to touch. And it can take like two minutes to do. And it's like pushing the reset button on a computer makes a huge difference. I'm wondering also if demonstrating more consistent self-compassion can help you become more compassionate to what other people. I mean, does it help you in your relationships with your friends, for example? Does it help you help them become more self-compassionate?

So, the answer is yes. Well, first of all, I have to say, some people say you have to be self-compassionate before you can have compassion for others. Actually, in my research, I find that's not the case. Actually, most people are very compassionate towards others and not compassionate toward themselves. But when you are self-compassion, what it does is it allows you to sustain compassion for others without burning out. So if we give and we give and we give toward others and beat ourselves up, eventually our couple run dry and we'll get burnt out, we'll get frustrated, maybe we'll snap an anger. So self-compassion allows you to sustain being there for others. And

then also what we know from the research as well is that when you model self-compassion out loud, other people learn self-compassion partly through a process of modeling. So when you talk to yourself, instead of beating yourself up, you say something like, well, it's okay, I messed up, it's only human, I'll just try again. Then other people get the message that maybe that's a better way to talk to themselves, and they start being more self-compassionate when they're around you. I'm wondering, Chris, if one way to help people be more compassionate to themselves is to ask themselves how they would respond if the person making a mistake was not them, but

a good friend of theirs. That's actually one of the practices, one of the first practices we teach people for being self-compassionate is to imagine that a good friend they cared about was in the exact same situation that they are. Because naturally, we tend to be, especially their close friends, once we care about, we tend to be compassionate to them. The other thing you could do is you could imagine what that close friend would say to you, and it gives you a model for what type of thing you may say to yourself.

You also talk about the importance of making friends with your inner critic. What do you mean by this? Yeah, this is really key. Again, we shouldn't beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up. But if we can say to our inner critic, I see that you're actually trying to help me with your self-criticism, but maybe there's a more effective way to help myself,

which is actually compassion. It allows our inner critic to feel heard. I mean, again, if we shut down our inner criticism, the part of us that sees the danger is going to try to shout that much louder to be heard. But if we say, Hey, I hear you. Got it. Thank you so much for pointing out that this behavior is causing harm. You know, this isn't very helpful. I hear you. Thank you. But I think with a way I'm going to try to approach this is through encouragement to make a change, as opposed to shame to make a change, it's

actually going to be more effective. Are there examples, Kristen, in your own recent life where you've helped someone else show greater compassion for themselves? Well, so my son, for instance, so my son, I have to try to help him have compassion all the time. My son, you might think because. So my son, I have to try to help him have compassion all the time. My son, you might think because he's my son, is never self-critical, but his autism actually causes them to be very self-critical because when he beats himself up, he's under the illusion that somehow that's going to allow him to control things so he won't make mistakes. So whether he gets a grade, he doesn't want

in school or, one time, he forgot his keys when he needed them and he was just beating himself up. For years, who existed me, he's like, don't give me that self-compassion stuff, mommy, because he was going through his adolescent rebellion like all kids do. Now he really gets it. So now for instance, I'll hear him say to himself when he makes a mistake, it's okay, everyone makes mistakes. It's not the end of the world. And it's actually helping them cope now. I want to spend a little time talking about the research that you and others have done into the benefits of self-compassion.

I'm imagining that there are some people who are listening to this who say, you know, this is just happy talk, you know, just being kind to yourself. But you and others have found that there's actually empirical backing at an emotional level, at a practical level, for the benefits of self-compassion. Can you describe that work to me, please? Yeah, well, the literature now is huge. It's approaching 4,000 studies on the benefits of self-compassion. So it ain't just happy talk, right? And these studies are either by looking at people who are naturally more self-compassionate. They tend to be happier, more satisfied with their lives, less depressed, less anxious, more motivated.

There's also a lot of experimental research, either putting people in a self-compassionate frame of mind in the moment, or else training them to be self-compassionate over the long run. And again, people are less likely to contemplate suicide. They eat better. They sleep better. They're less likely to engage in behaviors like addiction or ways to try to escape their pain that are unhealthy.

They're more likely to practice safe sex, right? When you care about yourself, you're more likely to do things that protect yourself. The benefits go on and on and makes you stronger. When you're an inner ally to yourself, you're going to be much more capable of getting through the hard times than when you're an enemy and you know cut yourself down. So the research is, well, of course, I'm a little biased, but I think it's incontrovertible at this point that self-compassion is good for well-being. You and a colleague once looked at the role of self-compassion in relationships and the effects it had on personal and intimate relationships.

What did you find? Yeah, so it was really interesting. So we had couples and we had each person in the couple fill out the self-compassion scale, but we had people write their partner's behaviors. How intimate is your partner with you? How kind are they to you? How supportive are they to you? How often do they get angry at you or get in negative behaviors?

And what we found is that people who are more self-compassionate were rated by their partners as being much better relationship partners, as being closer, more caring, more intimate, they felt more satisfied with self-compassion at partners, and basically that's because when we resource ourselves with self-compassion and warm-think care that actually gives us more resources to give to others. When we are lost in shame and self-criticism, we actually have less emotional energy to give to others. It's almost a paradox isn't it, that the more we're able to see our imperfections, the

more we can do something about it, the more we beat up on ourselves for our imperfections the less we can do about it. Exactly, so Carl Rogers famously said, the curious paradox is the more I accept to myself, the more I can change. But it's not like I have to change in order to be worthy. It's I want to change because I care about myself and I don't want to suffer. It's a much more effective type of motivation and more sustainable in the long run. Kristen Neff is a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of

self-compassion, the proven power of being kind to yourself, and fear self-compassion, how women can harness kindness to speak up, claim their power, and thrive. Christian, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. Thank you Shankar, it's been a pleasure. If you have follow-up questions for Christian Neff and are willing to share them with a hidden brain audience, please record a short voice memo and send it to us at ideasathydenbrain.org. That email address again is ideasathydenbrain.org. 60 seconds is plenty. Please use the subject line, self-compassion. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes

Bridget McCarthy, Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Quarelle, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you liked today's episode, please share it with three people who could use a reminder to show themselves a bit of self-compassion. If they are new to podcasting, please help them to subscribe to our show.

I'm Shankar Vidantam. See you soon.