The One You Feed - How to Deal with Burnout Through Self-Compassion with Kristin Neff
Episode Date: September 17, 2024In this episode, Kristin Neff shares effective strategies for how to deal with burnout through self-compassion practices. Drawing from her work as a teacher and researcher, as well as her personal e...xperiences, she offers several strategies and real-life examples to illustrate the transformative power of self-compassion. She emphasizes the importance of self-compassion in fostering resilience and empathy, especially in challenging circumstances.  In this episode, you'll be able to: Discover effective self-compassion practices to combat burnout and thrive in any environment Uncover the powerful benefits of establishing in a mindful self-compassion practice Learn effective strategies for coping with stress and maintaining resilience in challenging times Explore the impact of physical touch on self-compassion and its significance on overall well-being Overcome self-criticism with kindness and cultivate a more compassionate mindset in your life To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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What do we think is going to work for a kid or a friend if you say you're a stupid loser, I hate you?
How helpful is that really going to be?
And yet somehow we think that's going to be good for us.
You know, it's the exact same effect.
Welcome to The One You Feed.
Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.
We see what we don't have instead of what we do.
We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter.
It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living.
This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction.
How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together our mission on the really no really
podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door
doesn't go all the way to the floor what's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you
we have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our
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follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
thanks for joining us.
Back on the show is one of our favorites, Kristen Neff.
She is currently an associate professor in human development at the University of Texas at Austin.
While doing her postdoctoral work, she decided to conduct research on self-compassion,
a central construct in Buddhist psychology, and one that had not been examined empirically.
In addition to her
pioneering research in self-compassion, she has developed an eight-week program to teach
self-compassion skills. The program is called Mindful Self-Compassion. Today, Eric and Kristen
discuss her new book, Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout, tools to help you heal and recharge when
you're wrung out by stress.
But before we get into that, let's start like we always do with the parable. In the parable,
there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like
kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent
and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Yeah.
So I suppose actually my response to that may have altered somewhat.
I mean, because the obvious response is to feed the wolf of kindness and, you know, to
try to promote kindness, to practice kindness, to practice peace.
But I think it's also important to feed the so-called bad wolf and to kind of
reframe the bad wolf, not as a bad wolf, but as a part of us that for whatever reason hasn't gotten
the love it needs or doesn't feel safe, which is why it often growls so loudly or, you know,
barks or what do wolves do? Howl. That's it. They howl so loudly. So I think you primarily focus on
cultivating the good habits, but you don't want to judge or shun or like isolate those parts of
yourself that you think are bad or unworthy because then they just kind of go deeper in
the recesses of your psyche. So I think all of our internal parts, we want to feed them
understanding and safety and care with the idea that we want to
behave or operate from those parts of ourselves that are in line with our values.
Yep. I guess castigating or casting off any part of ourselves is not really
to be acting in self-compassion.
Yeah. I mean, so Dick Schwartz, I don't know if you've had him on the founder of
Internal Family Systems, you know, talks about no bad parts. I do think it's a really important perspective.
It's not really a bad wolf. It's a wolf, it's a scared wolf. And the reason it's acting bad
or mean or hateful is because part of it's scared. And so I think to the extent that we
can offer that sense of safety to all parts of ourselves, that sense of acceptance.
Now, of course, accepting ourselves is not the same as accepting our behavior.
So we don't want to act like the bad wolf. We don't want to make the other people's problem.
We don't want to, again, act in a way that's contrary to our values. But the impulses,
the thoughts and feelings that come up, you know, we don't choose to have them. That wolf is often
formed when we're very young as a way just to try to make us feel safe. Sometimes a child may think,
okay, the only action I know how to take is to tantrum. So in some ways that bad wolf might
represent this young part of us that didn't know any other way to respond. So it's a good parable,
but it's also important that we don't shun or ostracize any parts of ourselves.
So listeners, what resonated for you while listening to that? What came up for you when
thinking about how you could be feeding your good wolf? This month, when I think about feeding my
good wolf, I've been thinking a lot about relationships. Relationships really shape
the quality of our lives in profound ways. When they're healthy, they bring joy and fulfillment,
but when they're struggling, the impact can be deeply unsettling.
It's a common struggle, but one that often goes unaddressed.
The good news? There are concrete skills we can learn to improve our relationships.
Relationships are this month's theme in our weekly bite of wisdom
for a wiser, happier you newsletter.
And I'd love to send them your way.
Every week we send a menu of a few small exercises you can put into practice to feed your good wolf,
along with a reflection and a related podcast episode on the topic if you want to go deeper.
Just head to goodwolf.me slash relationships.
If you think you'd benefit from these useful reminders and
small bite-sized exercises to help you feed your good wolf, I'd love to send them to you
for free. Just head over to goodwolf.me slash relationships and I'll send them your way.
So let's talk about this latest book, which is applying the research that you've been doing for
a long time and writing on for a long time
around self-compassion, applying it to burnout. Why is that the direction that you chose to
take this book? Yeah. So, well, it's really just come up for me a lot in the last five years or so.
It actually started when a woman actually from a children's hospital here in Austin
had taken our full mindful self-compassion program and loved it and said, by the way,
this was pre-pandemic.
And she said, you know, the doctors and nurses and cares at my children's hospital, the parents,
they are so exhausted.
They're overwhelmed.
It's such a stressful job.
Can you figure out any way to teach them that
will fit with their overwhelmed schedules, you know, that doesn't require meditating,
that's kind of easy on the spot practices they can do to help support themselves given all the
stress they're in. And so we did, we created something called the Self-Compassion for
Healthcare Communities Program. We did research on it. And one of the main findings of the research
was, first of all, not only did it increase
self-compassion, not only did it increase a sense of well-being, it increased a sense
of compassion for others, compassion satisfaction.
In other words, these people could start getting satisfaction about caring for the children.
Or when you're so stressed and you get burnout, we'll come back to this, you stop caring as much because you feel so overloaded and so overwhelmed,
you kind of have to shut down as a natural reaction to all the stress.
And we found that it did actually reduce the three core symptoms of burnout.
And then the pandemic hit, right?
And so before it was like, oh, these poor doctors and nurses at the hospital,
they're so burned out.
And then it was like, okay,
my source of income has totally changed. I usually made most of my income from like doing
in-person workshops. Okay, that's off the table. How am I going to make a living? My son, you know,
in special needs classes, can't go to school anymore. And so I has to do it from home. And,
and so I became one of those people along with pretty much everyone else on the planet
that started feeling the intense stress that was exacerbated by the pandemic.
And I'll be honest, I definitely teetered on the edge of burnout.
Just some moments, it felt like I didn't even want to get out of bed.
It was like, how am I going to put one foot in front of the other?
But I have my self-compassion practice.
So I really applied it to myself during those times.
You know, I was just there for myself.
I supported myself.
I allowed myself to feel my feelings.
I had a way to hold the stress and kindness and warmth and support so that it wasn't so
overwhelming.
And so I didn't go into full-on, you know, clinical burnout.
And so toward the end of the pandemic, I thought, you know, we've created all these great tools and self-compassion practices in the Mindful Self-Compassion Program.
Why don't we write a book applying that specifically to people who are burned out?
Because, again, for a while, we mainly talked about our healthcare workers, of course, who are especially burned out because of the pandemic.
But it's way beyond that. I mean, stress, chronic stress, it just seems like it's getting more and
more intense all of the time, you know, in the workplace, even just like stressed out by the
uncertainty of whether it's politics or global stability. There's just so much chronic stress.
I thought that this book would be helpful. And I have to say, I think it is. I think we managed to write something that's easy to read. It's not like an academic tome.
No.
It's short. It's easy. It's kind of entertaining the way we tell the stories.
But it's really practical. I mean, every single chapter has a tool that you can use. You don't
have to make extra time in your day to practice it every day. You can do it on the spot in the
moment.
And these practices, again, I know they work not only for my research, but really for my own life.
Yeah, you've been pretty open in the past.
You and I have discussed the challenges of parenting your son.
And it sounds like he went from having autism to OCD on top of it.
And you say he started having real mental health issues. So in addition to the
income, you've got this going on with your child. Where specifically were a couple of the things
that you did, I assume they're the tools that are in this book, but that you found particularly
helpful for you out of the full suite of tools that are there? Yeah. So probably the tool I use most often because it's the easiest and it's immediate
is touch, you know, because it just goes straight to your physiology, your nervous system,
active, you know, probably activates the vagus nerve, parasympathetic nervous system,
just putting your hands on your heart or touching yourself in some way, it does a few things.
One, we have research shows, for instance, it lowers cortisol levels because as infants, we're designed to interpret touch as a signal of, oh, it's okay, it's safe, someone's here for me.
So that's part of it, you know, changing your physiology.
But it also, like, literally gives you that sense of, I got myself.
I'm here for myself.
It's like, you know, you feel
your own touch and it's like, oh yeah, that's right. Normally we're lost in our thoughts and
we're lost in the problem, but putting our hands in our body brings us back to ourself in the
present moment. And so that would probably be the most common way I did it, but often just same
words of, you know, mindfulness, I know this is hard for you, a common humanity, you know, you
aren't alone. And the pandemic, that was A common humanity. You aren't alone. And the
pandemic, that was very clear. You certainly aren't alone. All human beings are going through
this right now. And then words of kindness. What do you need? Actually asking myself,
what do I need? Even though I couldn't necessarily give it to myself. Like I need for this. I need
to not have to wear a mask or I need for things to be different. Okay, well, you can't give yourself everything you need.
But just simply asking the question reminds you that, hey, my needs are important too,
especially because in that situation, I was so focused on getting my son's needs met and
just doing everything I needed to do to say, hey, Kristen, what do you need right now?
And even if it was simply like, oh, I need a glass of water. I've forgotten to
have a glass of water all day. So a little act like that makes a difference in just reminding
ourselves that we're worthy of care. So that's probably the main thing I do. And then the thing
about self-compassion, if you look what the word is in the Latin, passion is to suffer, come is with.
So it's really how do you show up for suffering, right? It's very
specific. What do you do when suffering is present? And normally we try to fight it or we try to solve
the problem immediately. We try to fix it. We try, or sometimes we just avoid it, pretend it's not
there. Now, if we had a friend, you know, to be a good friend to someone else who's suffering,
usually we're like, oh, I'm here for you. Tell me about it. We listen. We kind of make the space. We allow our friend to be upset. We don't try to shut them down.
Sometimes we do try to solve their problem, but often they'll say, hey,
can you just listen to me first? I just need to express myself. So that's really what we do with
ourselves is showing up for ourselves, allowing ourselves to feel what we're feeling. And yes,
we do try to fix our problems, but not immediately.
First, we just kind of allow ourselves to feel the pain.
This is hard.
We kind of give ourselves emotional support.
We make sure we don't judge and blame ourselves for what we're feeling.
That's what I like to call tender self-compassion.
And then fierce self-compassion is more about taking the actions that might help us.
And we do need both.
And so I can tell you, it really saved my butt.
I'm not going to lie.
It really made a huge difference.
So we'll come back to fear self-compassion in a few moments.
Normally, when we think of burnout, we think about having to change the circumstances of
what's happening around us, whether that be
to take better care of ourselves, to say no to things. There's a variety of different things.
And like I said, that's going to fall under sort of fierce self-compassion that we'll get to
here shortly. But in what way does self-compassion, the tender side of it,
help with burnout? How does that actually help with the specific
thing of burnout? So you may think of burnout as the inability to cope with the stressors we're
experiencing. It overloads the system. And so when we're overloaded, when we feel we don't have the
resources to cope with all the stress we're experiencing, first of all, we get exhausted,
kind of start to shut down. We also start to care a little bit less
because ironically, when you care about a person in your family, you're caring about your work,
the more you carry, the more sensitive you are to the fact that you can't accomplish what you
want to accomplish. So we kind of shut down naturally. And then we usually start to blame
ourselves. We feel like there's something wrong with us because I should be able to cope.
And that leads to feelings of incompetence, like, oh, I'm just worthless.
And also because, especially in Western society, we judge our self-worth so related to our
productivity that we aren't productive anymore because, again, we're just overwhelmed and
beyond our capacity to cope.
Then we also feel badly about ourselves.
So self-compassion helps in so many ways.
to cope, then we also feel badly about ourselves. So self-compassion helps in so many ways.
One of the things it does, when we allow ourselves just to say, I feel so overwhelmed,
this is so hard, I feel scared, I don't know what to do. And we kind of bring space and warmth through those feelings. What that does is instead of those feelings like overwhelming us, like,
I don't know what to do and it's too much. It's like, you aren't just the difficult thoughts and emotions. You're also like this warm, compassionate awareness that's
observing the fact that you've got all these difficult thoughts and emotions. You become
bigger. It's almost like you expand your sense of self. There's more room for these difficult
thoughts and emotions to be there, which means they're less likely to overwhelm us. By making
ourselves bigger, instead of just being locked into the difficult thoughts and
emotions, we're like, the compassion that can hold these difficult emotions.
When we're bigger, we're less likely to get overwhelmed.
So that's one way it works, especially for coping.
It also means that it keeps our hearts open, right?
When we keep our hearts open to ourselves, we don't have to
shut down to cope. When we care for ourselves, that also means we can still care about our work.
We don't have to shut down just to survive. And really importantly, we're understanding to
ourselves. We say, hey, you know, anyone in this circumstance would be overwhelmed. You're doing
the best you can. It's okay to be imperfect. You know, sometimes you can't get it all right. And, you know, just do the most you can right now and just take it step
by step. I know I definitely did that in the pandemic was like, I'm just going to do the best
I can today. And I'm not going to ask any more from myself and good enough is good enough, you
know? So really it's a perfect antidote to burnout because it reduces feelings of exhaustion.
They call it depersonalization, which is like the fancy psychological term for not caring
as much, kind of shutting down, going numb, and then feelings of incompetence.
So you've been on a couple times before, and I'll encourage listeners to go to those episodes
for more in-depth on what we're about to cover.
But I do feel like it's always worth spending a couple minutes
here and maybe you can just do the couple minute tour. But in general, most of our objection when
we hear this idea of being compassionate to ourselves is that it's going to somehow make us
weaker or more indulgent or less motivated or selfish. And you've done a tremendous amount
of research that shows that isn't true,
but give us the highlights of it. Yeah. So I can take them one by one. So it doesn't make you
weaker. The research overwhelmingly shows it makes you stronger because when you show up for
yourself and things are tough, i.e. when you're suffering in some way, you're stressed or you're
feeling overwhelmed, you're going to be stronger if you support yourself than if you kneecap yourself by calling yourself names
or shaming yourself.
I mean, that's kind of, in some ways, a no-brainer.
I know we think that to be tough is to be mean, but to be tough is to be supportive.
Now, that doesn't mean like papering over it, there's a problem.
That's not kind.
It means giving it to yourself straight and honest, but with kindness and support.
A lot of research supporting that.
The idea that it's selfish.
The burnout work is such a good counter to that.
I mean, actually, if you're going to give to others and you're giving just one way,
you only give compassion to others and you ignore your own needs or you just ignore yourself
or you don't think you're worthy of getting your needs met, your cup will run dry, guaranteed, eventually. So compassion
needs to flow inward as well as outward in order to keep resourcing yourself so you don't burn out.
But probably the biggest one is this idea that it's going to make me lazy or indulgent or
unmotivated. The research shows it's the exact opposite. So often what happens
is when we start judging ourselves for not achieving or thinking that we should do this,
we should be another way. If we fail or we make a mistake, often what happens is it creates anxiety
like, oh, I'm a failure. Maybe I shouldn't try so hard because I'm going to fail. Or what happens
is we make a mistake. We're just consumed with feelings of inadequacy and we can't learn from the situation.
You know, it's a truism.
We learn from our failures.
And so what the research shows very clearly is when you have self-compassion, you can
acknowledge when you've made a mistake.
You can make the hard decisions, ones that maybe don't feel as good but are better for
you in the long run.
You can learn,
you can grow, and you work harder and try harder, and you have less fear of failure and less anxiety.
So it improves motivation. It makes us take more responsibility and choose the difficult path over
the easiest path. But we will ask ourselves, is this really what's good for me? Or is it maybe
just what society tells me? Sometimes maybe you are going to change what you're doing if it's not truly you and it's just what your parents told you you
should do. And when we're authentic in that way, self-compassion allows us to be authentic
or more motivated. There's lots of research that shows that.
When you say a lot of research, you mean a lot of research.
In the social psychology space, we hear about replication crisis and these underpowered
studies. And this is a lot of research you and the people who've come after you have done.
Yeah. I mean, I can't even keep up the literature. If you just do a Google scholar search of
things with self-compassion in the title, I think there's like 8,000 right now. I mean,
dozens of studies come out every day. So definitely this is not based on one clever study.
We have a lot of research confirming this and done various ways with self-report scales,
through training, through experimental manipulations, pretty solid stuff. And you
think about it, of course, like make it so obvious. Of course, if you support yourself,
you're going to do better than if you slam yourself. I mean, what do we think is going to work for a kid or a friend?
If you say you're a stupid loser, I hate you.
How helpful is that really going to be?
And yet somehow we think that's going to be good for us.
You know, it's the exact same effect.
Right.
And I think the point that you made in the midst of all this that is so important is
there is absolutely a way to hold ourselves accountable to certain standards.
Yes.
To be honest with ourselves when we haven't lived up to who ourselves accountable to certain standards. Yes.
To be honest with ourselves when we haven't lived up to who we want to be or in the situations we want to be. And there's a way to do that that's kind and not, you know, awful.
And I'm working on a book and I was writing a chapter.
I was thinking about this idea a little bit.
this idea a little bit. And it was interesting because I realized where I learned my particularly harsh internal voice, which has gotten so much better over the last 15 years, but was my father.
And I remember I flashed back to playing golf and the things he would say to himself when he
missed a shot and the same things to me. And it did not make me a better golfer. It made me terrified is what it made me,
right? It made me not want to play. It made me afraid. I mean, all those things. And so it's
very clear how I see what his intention was. He was an old school military type person. That was
how he talked to himself. But at least in my case, it absolutely was a thing that sort of backfired. Anything that
I was subjected to that much criticism from him, and thus then myself, I just simply didn't do
anymore if I could avoid it. It used to be the parenting philosophy, you know, spare the rod,
spoil the child. And I think that's in general switched, not for everyone. But we do have to
have compassion for where that comes from,
whether it's in our parents or ourselves. Because when we feel threatened, just as a species,
you know, we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. The criticism is the fight mode. There's
a part of us that thinks, if I just am mean enough or, you know, strong enough or intense enough,
I'll be able to control the situation. So I'll be able to force myself to
get it right. I'll be able to force my son to have that good gallstring. It's a distortive view. It's
an immature view. It's kind of, you know, but it's also very natural. A hundred percent. The
sympathetic nervous system only knows, ah, you know, that's kind of what it's a form of. And so
that's what it does. And it comes up and, you know, we don't have to
judge ourselves or other people for having it. It really comes from a place of fear.
And so I think really safety is absolutely the core of self-compassion. It's not even so much
being nice to yourself. So if you look at the three components of self-compassion, which are
mindfulness, a sense of common humanity and kindness and support, they really establish safety. Mindfulness gives us safety when we know
we are more than just these difficult thoughts and feelings. That gives us a sense of more
perspective and safety. We know we aren't alone. For human beings, feeling alone and isolated is
like the scariest feeling we could possibly have. So remember, hey, we're human.
You know, we aren't alone.
It happens.
My son, for instance, he just left his suitcase on the train and left his medication in it.
And the way he talked himself through it is, I know this happens to a lot of people.
It's not just me.
You could just see when he said that to himself, you know, he started feeling safer and calmer.
And then the kindness and support,
again, remembering like, yeah, okay, maybe we did mess up or make a mistake. Yeah, we don't want to
keep on leaving our suitcases on trains. It's not fun. But it doesn't mean you're a bad person,
you know, kind of being understanding, warm, and that caring attitude is going to be more likely
to help people learn from it. So again, with my son, this actually really happened just like three days ago. I said, well, this is how we learn. This is a really good learning opportunity.
One thing maybe for now, we can keep our medication in our backpack that you carry in your body.
And like, actually he said, well, I heard about these air tags. So I bought him some air tags to
put in his suitcase. I mean, it's kind of a mundane example, but if I had been like,
oh, you stupid idiot. And he was like, I'm such a stupid idiot. He might still be just in that
place. And now it's like, okay, next time I'll put my medicine in my backpack and I'll get some air
tags and I'll maybe do like a little checklist. This is how we learn and grow from our mistakes
and failures, but so much easier when we feel safe than as opposed to when we feel threatened. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,
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So a lot of people, and I think I was this way when I was first really exposed to a lot of this research, will say, I hear what you're saying about the research and, you know, I've been really
hard on myself and that's gotten me where I am. How do you respond to that? What are your thoughts
about that? Well, it is true.
I mean, it does kind of work, just like harsh corporal punishment for children kind of works.
Kind of, you might say, tried and true method for thousands of years.
So it does kind of work, but it doesn't work as well as support, feeling supported from
a sense of safety.
We actually take in more information when we feel safe.
We're less anxious, which allows us to take in more information.
We're less self-focused, which allows us to take in more information so that we learn.
So, yeah.
So, you know, it does kind of work.
It'd be silly to deny it because there are many a person who got their law degree by beating themselves up.
But would they have gotten done better?
Maybe been less stressed?
Maybe had lower
cortisol levels if they had taken this more supportive method. And the research shows that
quite clearly, it's more effective. The other thing I've seen, and this is just in people I've
coached and people I've known and talked to, is that it also seems like although it does work,
that it also seems like although it does work, in certain people, it stops working.
Yes, it does.
And I see this in people usually in their 40s, where it's like it worked for a while,
but now everything is just either having really trouble being motivated, having real problems with anxiety and depression and other things.
So yes, it did work, but there was a cost. There's a guy, I don't know if you know Dr. Aziz Gazapura, but he wrote a book called
On My Own Side, which mines similar territory, which is a great phrase, you know, be on your
own side. And I think he makes an analogy in it to like burning dirty fuel in an engine. Yes,
it will burn, but eventually the engine is going to
get gunked up. And that's kind of what I've seen also is yes, I think that's the case with me. Yes,
it did work for a time. Well, maybe not. I was a homeless heroin addict at 24. Maybe it never
worked for me. I may need to rethink that one. And if you're burnt out, harsh self-criticism
absolutely contributes to burnout and makes
you more anxious.
You're more in that fight, flight, or freeze mode, elevates your stress levels, makes you
more self-focused.
And when you're burnt out, you aren't working.
That's the whole point.
You're exhausted.
If you can't get out of bed, then you aren't producing like you used to.
So in the long run, it's definitely counterproductive.
Even in the short run, it's counterproductive. So you say in the book that fighting
burnout makes it worse. And you're talking about resistance in general being futile.
Yes. Say more about that.
Yeah. So this is a basic psychological principle. And again, there's a lot of research that we know
that supports this. So when a particular thought has arisen or have a certain feeling or, you know, we're
in a situation like I feel exhausted and we have to accept that this is reality right
now.
If we say this shouldn't be in this reality, something's wrong with me for having this
reality, or we ignore this reality.
In other words, unless we accept the reality that this is how it is right now,
we don't have the sense of balance and equanimity we need to make changes in the future.
It's kind of like racism.
If you fight racism and you do it by saying, well, there's no racism,
how are you going to change it?
So you kind of have to accept the present moment in order to make changes in the future.
And so that's really how it works psychologically. We don't like to feel difficult, painful emotions. We don't like to feel
stress. We don't like to feel anxiety. We don't like to feel exhaustion. So we fight it and we
try to make it go away and we stress ourselves out because it's not going away and then it just
exacerbates it. We go into this downward spiral.
So if we can accept the fact that this moment, it sucks.
You don't want to say that it doesn't suck.
It does suck.
It sucks to be burnt out.
Know the way to put it.
It's not fun.
It's not good for you, for anyone else.
It's not enjoyable.
It is a problem.
We don't want to pretend that it's not, you know.
But then when you kind of open that, like, oh, wow, this sucks.
And you kind of give it some more space.
So again, you aren't just the feelings of being burnt out, but you're also this compassionate
presence that says, oh, that's really hard.
You know, I'm like, what can I do to help?
We feel this naturally when we have compassion for someone else.
We are identified with their problems and
that's what gives us the space to be bigger and just to focus on getting this kind of fount of
kindness and warmth and support. So when we do that for ourselves, it's like we enter, you might
say, this bigger perspective, our bigger self, and this allows us not to be so overwhelmed.
But if we resist it, if we pretend it's not there, we fight against it. It's almost like,
it's like if
you make a really tight fist and you fight the tight fist by making your fist tighter, it just
makes it worse. But if you just open your hand, you know, you can kind of feel you open to the
pain or whatever's here, that it is still there, but you aren't making it worse. And you also have
a lot more degrees of freedom, so to speak, to figure out, well, what might I do to help myself in this situation? You talk about approaching emotions with a strong back
and a soft front. Yeah. Explain that. Not to steal that line. It's a famous line of Joan
Halifax, who's a wonderful Buddhist teacher, actually. So again, some people think that
compassion is just about being soft, like being soft and squishy and, oh, that's,
I'm so sorry. That's so hard. You know, we might say that that's so hard, but there's also a
certain like thing about having your own back. When you have your own back, it's like, there's
a strength there. There's a stability there. Like I'm here for you. I will do whatever I need to do
to make sure you're safe, you know, protect you if you need to, or provide for your needs. Drawing boundaries, for instance, you know, if other people are trying
to harm you, part of having this strong back is standing up for yourself, speaking up. So the soft
front is kind of, you might say, the tender self-compassion of accepting the pain, accepting
our difficult emotions, accepting ourselves unconditionally. And the strong back is like
standing up for what's right, which might mean, hey, maybe some of our behaviors are not working
out so well. Maybe we need to think about doing something differently because it's not in align
with my values, things like that. The strong back may say, you need to get up off the couch.
That's really the interplay of the fierce and the tender, the strength and the acceptance.
It's like yin and yang.
You know, if you have just one or the other, it's not going to work.
We really need both to be there simultaneously.
If you're just hard toward others or yourself, you're not very helpful.
But if you're just soft and squishy, you aren't helpful either.
Yeah.
That makes me think a little bit of some research from Ethan Cross at the University
of Michigan, wrote a book called Chatter. But yes, later in the book, he talks about something.
I don't remember exactly what he calls it, but he was talking about venting to other people,
and whether it's helpful or not. And the research that they did seemed to show that truly healing conversations have two elements.
One element is the one that we traditionally think of, which is just listen to the person and don't try and solve their problem.
Validate what they're feeling.
Be clear that you support them, that you're on their side.
Don't try and fix it.
Like, do that. But that the most healing conversations also then can go on and sometimes can show the person who's suffering some perspective that maybe they're not seeing.
And I think we end up very often in what we want from others and what we give others in one of those two camps.
We're either all like, hey, you know, I know what you're feeling.
It's so hard.
It's so hard. It's so hard.
Or we end up trying to solve people's problems.
Yeah.
And it just makes me think of what you're saying here about this sort of strong back, soft front or fierce and tender self-compassion.
That there are elements of both that are ultimately most helpful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
They really do fit together.
So I'm thinking like with my friends.
I've had friends tell me, I sometimes give advice.
I know I'm not supposed to, but if you were to ask me, would you like some advice?
And then I tell them, then they know it's not invalidating.
The problem with giving advice when people just want to be heard is it somehow invalidates
their emotions.
But if you ask, once they're clear it's coming from a place of support and not of trying
to control or not judgment, then it's so much more effective.
You can kind of say it's the same thing with ourselves.
When we try to fix things immediately, there's a way in which we're somehow thinking that
means that we're bad or we're wrong,
you know, or that there's something, this situation is unacceptable.
When we make that very clear, I'm unconditionally worthy, whether or not I've just screwed up.
I'm here for myself, regardless of how difficult this moment is.
Plus, but if there's anything I can do to help change my behavior or do something differently,
I'm open to it.
Carl Rogers, you've probably heard this, the curious paradox is the more I accept myself,
the more I can change. So the soft front actually helps us have a strong back. They aren't in contradiction. They work together. They enhance one another. I'm Jason Alexander.
And I'm Peter Tilden.
And together on the Really No Really podcast,
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In the chapter about dealing with the difficult emotions of burnout, you talk about the five stages of
acceptance. Can you walk us through what those five are? Yeah. So there are five stages of
working with difficult emotions and they aren't as linear as I'm going to make them out to be,
but I'm going to talk about them in order. The first and most natural response to a difficult
emotion is resistance. We don't like it.
We don't want it here.
We want to push it away.
It's as if someone comes to your door and you don't like it, come there and say, go
away.
I don't want to talk to you.
But then when we open up a little bit more to the experience of the emotion, we can actually
explore what's there.
It's like peeking through the peephole, you know, like, who's there?
So, you know, maybe we don't like it, but at least we're a little curious. We aren't in full
on resistant mode, even though, who's there? Don't like that person. Might still be some
negative reaction to it. And then there's some tolerating. So, okay, we've identified what's
here. We might use mindfulness to do that. And it's like, well, okay, this experience is here.
I don't like it, but I guess I can deal
with it. It'd be like letting the person you don't like into your foyer. You can come into the foyer,
but don't come into the house yet, right? Stay there, but it's okay, but not so sure about it.
And then once we start to feel a little safer, and this is self-compassion really facilitates this,
we can let go of resistance a little bit
more. All these stages are in some ways letting go of resistance versus total resistance. Then
we explore, we let go enough to at least figure out what's here. And then we kind of tolerate,
and then we can actually allow ourselves to feel what we feel. So we give up most of our resistance.
We kind of, okay, this is what I'm feeling. I'm not going to fight it.
I'm going to be with it as it is.
It's kind of letting the person into the house.
Yeah, go ahead.
Wander around the house.
That's okay.
You know, you can even use the bathroom if you want.
No, you know, you've kind of really given up your resistance.
And then the final stage is what's called befriending.
And this is where we realize that there's usually some learning,
gift of learning in the difficult emotion. So almost every difficult emotion can be used as
an opportunity to let us know, well, where are our wounds that might need healing? Where are
our triggers perhaps that might let us know there's some stuff we need to work on? Where
might we be resisting and where could we let go a little bit more?
What lesson might I learn from this that would help me do something differently in the future?
And that kind of comes at the very end.
But the reason it's important to know it goes in stages is some people think
the moment they have a difficult emotion or a difficult experience,
they're supposed to go straight to the, okay, what's the silver lining?
What can I learn from this? Or it's like Rumi, just let the emotion
sweep through your house. You don't necessarily want to do that. It's okay. Just let them into
the foyer for a while if that's all you can handle. Yeah. Not only is that not what we sometimes want
to do or should do, we just can't. Right. And that's what I love about this. There's a Sumonk kid quote that I use fairly often where she talks about letting go. And she says that
letting go is a spiraling and winding process. And I love that idea. And that's why I love these
stages because my experience is we don't tend to go from really not wanting something to be there
to allowing or befriending instantly. It's a process.
And this can show stages along the way.
Yeah.
And the other thing it does is the part of us that's feeling the difficult emotion,
and maybe this is a young wounded part of us, if we immediately just say,
okay, give up, don't resist anymore and befriend or just allow yourself to feel it,
that part of us
may feel invalidated. And so there's something about saying, take your time, go slowly. Let's
that part of us know that, okay, it's accepted. It can feel safe. It's okay. It doesn't have to
change on a dime. And that can also help the letting go process unfold a little more smoothly
if there's not the pressure to have to like let go all at
once. You talk about something called the paradox of self-compassion, which is we give ourselves
self-compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad. Yeah. So it's related to what we've
been talking about in terms of resistance. So often when we give ourselves compassion and support and
kindness, we do tend
to feel better. You know, we've stopped judging ourselves or shaming ourselves, and it feels good
to feel supported in this way. What can happen with practicing self-compassion is we start to
use self-compassion as a hidden form of resistance. Like, let's say I'm feeling worried about
something coming up in the future. And in
the past, I gave myself some compassion. It's okay to be worried. I'm here for you. And I started
worrying a little less. What can happen after a while is with them, we start to give ourselves
compassion to get rid of the worry instead of supporting ourselves because we're worried.
And whenever we start using something as a form of resistance,
a hidden or not, it doesn't work, right?
That's the resistance is futile idea.
What we resist persists and grows stronger.
And this is, again, an established psychological principle.
And by the way, not always.
Sometimes we can compartmentalize temporarily,
but eventually we have to open to it.
Otherwise, it's going to come back to haunt us.
So if we
just ask ourselves, why am I giving myself compassion? Is it to get rid of my pain or is
it simply to show up for myself, to be on my side as I'm experiencing pain? And it's the second
we're after. And then ironically, yes, of course, we're going to do what we can to get rid of our
pain. We're going to try to make steps to be healthy and well. We're going to ask ourselves what we need. First, we have to
accept ourselves and our situation with an open heart before we can take those next steps of
trying to make healthy change. Yeah, this always strikes me as a form of mental and emotional judo
that goes on because it's the idea of like people say, well, just if you just
allow your feelings, then that's the thing to do. And so we'll allow our feelings. And the reason
is to get them to go away. At least that's the reason I'm doing it, right? I'm like, okay,
I'm going to allow you so you get out of here. And it's sort of this idea where like, of course,
there's a part of us that does want that. And that's what we're aiming at. And yet, to your point, if that's the whole purpose, then it may not work as well. It's kind of like the whole debate around meditation practice that's been around forever. Like, well, if you're not practicing to get somewhere, then why are you doing it? And yet, if you're doing it to get somewhere,
it suddenly becomes a whole lot less effective. And so, like I said, it's this sort of
subtle judo I feel like we have to do inside ourselves.
Yeah. Sometimes the way I work with that is I say things to myself, especially those,
because remember, it's parts of us that are having these difficult emotions, right? Often
these are young parts of ourselves, wounded parts of ourselves, scared parts of ourselves.
What happens is we resist feeling them
and want to shove those emotions away immediately.
Those young parts of us often feel invalidated
or shut down or not accepted.
So sometimes I say to myself, I will not abandon you.
Really interesting, the reaction inside your system
when you say to yourself, I will not abandon you. Really interesting, the reaction inside your system when you say to yourself, I will not abandon you. It's like, okay, you can feel what you feel. I won't abandon you.
And then once there's that sense of safety, okay, I'm not going to be abandoned. Then those parts
start to feel safe and then they start to let go a little more readily. But the bottom line is,
then they start to let go a little more readily. But the bottom line is, I've actually told myself,
even if you never, ever change, I still love you. And then it's like, whoa, that's a big one.
Really? Yeah. Are you sure it's not contingent on maybe you lose making progress? Nope.
When you give yourself that sort of unconditional bottom line acceptance, you know, inevitably you can't do it as a form of manipulation, but inevitably that sense of safety and love helps us release and let go of those things that are in this book. So if somebody has listened to all of this,
believes now that self-compassion is a way they would like to try and approach themselves and
their lives, where do they start? Yeah. So it's actually pretty easy to start.
There's a couple of things you could do almost immediately even without reading the book.
One is the good news about self-compassion is most of us have a template
for what compassion and support looks like, right? Maybe we have a good friend that we're
compassionate with, or we have an animal or, you know, someone in our life we care about. We know
what that looks like, what would be supportive, what is helpful. Or maybe we've had someone like that in our life,
a teacher or a grandparent who's been compassionate and supportive. Or even if you haven't, even if
you haven't been lucky enough to have that in your life, there's like movie figures like Obi-Wan
Kenobi or some of these, you know, we have these like images from literature and film about what
a really caring, compassionate person looks like. So we don't have to invent
the wheel. So what you can do, let's say you're burnt out and you want to be more supportive to
yourself. You can either ask, well, what would I say to someone I really cared about who was burnt
out and wanted to be there for them? Or what would maybe a really good friend say to me?
Or what would this like fictional character that I, you know, if maybe if I'm really drawn to that, say to me right now. And then, so we have the template.
We don't have to invent the template. We just need to kind of adopt it. And by the way, I'm
not going to lie. It does, it can feel a little awkward at first. It feels like, oh, I'm being
phony. I'm not really feeling it. And that's okay. You know, you don't have to feel it right away.
Intention is driving the train here. It kind of leads the locomotive. You know, you don't have to feel it right away. Intention is driving the train
here. It kind of leads the locomotive. You set your intention to be kinder and more supportive
toward yourself. You try to, you know, put yourself in that position, do the perspective taking,
and then eventually the feelings come later. It's really all about cultivating goodwill for
yourself, not good feelings. The good feelings, we can't really control whether or not we feel it, but we can cultivate our intention to be more supportive
and kinder to ourselves. You talk about something called backdraft when we start practicing
self-compassion. What is that? Yeah. So maybe you do speak to yourself like you would speak to your
good friend and you say, I'm here for you. I care about you. You know, what do you need? And instead of feeling compassion or feeling safe, you feel agitated,
you feel scared, or maybe even angry. It's actually very, very common. Or you feel even
worse than you did before. So usually that's backdraft. It's a firefighting term. In firefighting,
it means, you know, when you open the doors of a house on fire, the fresh air rushes in, ignites the flames, and the flames rush out. That's why firefighters don't
just open the doors of a house on fire. Well, and actually something similar can happen with us. If
our whole life, the way we've dealt with our pain and our frustration or our fears by shutting down,
numbing ourselves out, closing our hearts, we open the doors of our hearts and like the fresh air,
the care and concern rushes in, and often the old pain our hearts and like the fresh air, the care and
concern rushes in. And often the old pain just rushes out. It's like sees the light of day and
comes out in a whoosh. And so we feel it as the anger or the fear. We actually, you know, we feel
worse. Or sometimes it's just a matter of like contrast. You're kind to yourself and you
immediately remember how like, well, my parents weren't kind to me or this person wasn't kind to me. It's actually all part of the healing process. It's a natural phenomenon.
There's nothing to worry about. It doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means you're doing it
right. But it does mean you need to go a little more slowly. It means maybe you're flinging open
the doors of your heart a little too quickly, you need to like have those picks that the firefighters used to poke holes. In other words, you know, maybe just give yourself a little bit
of compassion for a few minutes and then stop or give yourself compassion. Maybe not mental
compassion, maybe putting your hands on your heart and saying, I will never abandon you is
way too much. You know, it can be good, but yeah, that's pretty intense stuff, right?
Maybe something like, well, maybe I'll just have a cup of tea. Especially if you're British,
you can have a cup of tea or, you know, take a walk or do something else to just, again,
validate. So your needs are important, that you're worthy of care and consideration,
but this may be a little intense and maybe a little more behavioral.
Or just kind of feeling your feet on the floor, something like that, grounding yourself,
stabilizing yourself. Backdraft usually does get better over time. It is more intense with people with the trauma history, just something to be aware of. It can absolutely be worked with,
but you may need to go a little slower. We have a saying, walk slowly, go farther.
So it's not like a sprint to have your heart wide open, you know, just little bits at a time
as you feel more comfortable, as you get more used to it. And you can also have compassion
for your backdraft because it's like, wow, that's tough. You know, it hurts to give myself kindness.
Like if you had a friend who said that
to you, you'd be like, oh, sorry, you know? So listener, in thinking about that and all the
other great wisdom from today's episode, if you were going to isolate just one top insider gem
that you're taking away, what would it be? Remember, little by little, a little becomes a
lot. Profound change comes as a result of tiny actions, not huge efforts.
I mentioned earlier that I've been thinking about relationships and how to improve the
quality of them because they're the cornerstone of our well-being.
Thriving connections light up our world while strained ones can dim even the brightest days.
Too often we face relationship hurdles alone, feeling lost and powerless. But here's the key.
Building strong relationships isn't just about chance. It's about mastering specific,
learnable skills. And here's a quick exercise you can do to improve your relationships.
Establish small daily or weekly rituals that foster connections, such as shared meals or walks.
Every small effort to connect with a friend or family member
can lead to a deeper or more meaningful relationship.
For example, Chris and I have a weekly ongoing social night commitment
where one weeknight every week we get together and do something.
And having it scheduled just keeps us connected.
So if you found this helpful, this tip came from this week's newsletter
and you can sign up for free and get more just like it at goodwolf.me slash relationships.
Yeah, I think both those things, this idea of extending goodwill, not necessarily good feelings and backdraft are useful because I do know a lot of people, this is challenging, right? They don't believe it at first, or it feels really false,
or it doesn't feel natural. And that idea of recognizing that, like, I love the way you said
it, that it's the intention that's driving the locomotive. It's the intention to continue to
show up for myself in the best way that I can. Yeah. And if you think about what self-compassion
is, in many ways, it's a perspective shift.
Normally, we are in the perspective of the sense of self that needs compassion, that's
flubbed, that's imperfect, or that's struggling or scared or has some pain in some way.
What you're doing when you give yourself compassion is you're switching into the perspective
of the person giving compassion.
Most of us, again, are used to this part of ourselves.
We're used to giving it to others, right?
But this is also a really important part of ourself that's always been there.
And this part is less limited.
It struggles less.
It's more competent.
It's wiser.
It's calmer.
It's more peaceful.
It's more loving.
So you might say what we're doing is we're loosening our sense of identity
with the normal everyday sense of self. And we're just adopting consciously this identity that
comes up naturally when we're there for a dog or a cat or our children. But we have to do it a
little more intentionally to inhabit that part of ourselves toward ourself. But again, it's not
rocket science. It's a part of us most of us have
known for a long time. We just have to remember to make that little switch. It's a big switch.
I'm not going to lie. It's a big switch. I noticed that you talk about like talking
to ourselves as we might talk to a good friend or a small child or an animal we cared about.
I never hear you say, talk to yourself like you would your mother.
It's a joke.
It's a joke.
For some people, yeah.
Also, I don't also say your spouse or your partner either
because sometimes some people are too close.
And that's actually the reason why we say good friend
because usually you aren't identified with your friend's pain.
If your friend loses their job, you aren't scared by it.
Right.
Right?
And so you can just be your most compassionate self.
But if your child loses their job or your partner,
when we're too close, then our sense of self gets triggered
and the fear can come in.
And then when we're afraid, we often use these strategies
that we form when we are young, which are like fight or scream or hide or shame, which aren't as effective.
Well, Kristen, thank you so much.
It's been such a pleasure to talk with you again.
Thank you for coming back on and sharing your work with us.
It's been my pleasure.
Thank you for the good work you do.
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