The One You Feed - Kristin Neff

Episode Date: December 22, 2015

Interested in behavior change? Please help us out by taking our short 3 question survey and receive a free guide: The 5 Biggest Behavior Change Mistakes  This week we talk to Kristin Neff about self compassionKristin Neff is a self-compassion researcher, author, and Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She got her Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1997 in the field of moral development.While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically.In addition to her pioneering research into self-compassion, she has developed an 8-week program to teach self-compassion skills. The program, co-created with her colleague Chris Germer, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, is called Mindful Self-Compassion. Her book, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself was recently released in paperback.She and her family were recently featured in the documentary and book called The Horse Boy. Our Sponsor this Week is Thrive Market! Wholesome Products. Wholesale Prices.In This Interview, Kristin and I Discuss...The One You Feed parableThe difference between self-esteem and self-compassionWhat self compassion isThe research on self-compassion and its benefitsHow self-compassion increases motivationThe more self-compassionate you are, the less afraid of failure you areHow self-compassion reduces performance anxietyThe three pillars of self-compassionLearning to soothe and comfort ourselvesRemembering that all people struggle and sufferThe damaging psychological effects of isolationLearning to turn towards our own pain in order to work with itHow to practice self-compassionLearning to talk to ourselves like we would a friendFor more show notes visit our websiteInterested in behavior change? Please help us out by taking our short 3 question survey and receive a free guide: The 5 Biggest Behavior Change MistakesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Somehow, everyone else in the world is living a perfectly normal, perfect life, and it's just me who's failed. 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 Know 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 reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Kristen Neff, a self-compassion researcher, author, and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She got her PhD at the University of California in Berkeley in 1997 in the field of moral development. 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 into self-compassion, she has developed an eight-week program to teach self-compassion skills. The program, co-created with her colleague Chris Germer, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, is called Mindful Self-Compassion. Her book, Self-Compassion, The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, was recently released in paperback. Kristen and her family were recently featured in the documentary and book called The Horse Boy. And here's the interview with Kristen Neff. Hi, Kristen. Welcome to the show.

Hello. How are you? I'm doing good. I'm happy to have you on. You and I had some scheduling challenges. The last time we were going to do this, I was driving to get set up for the interview and my boy broke his finger. So that took us, we had to reschedule that. So I'm glad we got to finally get this scheduled. Yes. Good to be here. So our podcast is called The One You Feed and it's based on the parable of two wolves. And in the parable, there is a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, parable, there is a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, 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 bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, well, it's really key. I mean, it's a parable I'm very familiar with. And it's really about to me setting your intention, right? We don't have total control over how our life unfolds. We don't even have control over our thoughts and emotions moment to moment. But the seeds of intention we plant toward being, you know, with my work, toward being compassionate and kind with oneself,

or harsh and critical and judgmental of oneself, that's really what's going to manifest in terms of the mind state you inhabit. So it's really setting your intention firmly on compassion and then just let the wolf do its own thing. But the one who gets fed is probably going to be stronger, healthier, and more vibrant. So your research primarily focuses on self-compassion. And my first question would be, how is self-compassion different than self-esteem? Well, there's a pretty important difference. Self-esteem refers to a positive evaluation of self-worth. In other words, that I'm a good person as opposed to a bad person. Self-compassion does not entail judgment or evaluation at all. In fact, what it does is it's simply a way of relating to yourself kindly, like you would relate to a good friend.

So whereas self-esteem deserves you when you fail or make a mistake or you look in the mirror and you've noticed you've gained 20 pounds, whatever it is that shakes your self-esteem, it's just not there for you to rely on anymore. Whereas self-compassion is a much more reliable friend because even when you fail or you feel inadequate or something has gone terribly wrong in your life, you can still support yourself like a friend and treat yourself with kindness. So research pretty strongly differentiates the two and shows that although both are strongly linked to well-being, you're happier, less depressed if you have self-esteem or self-compassion. Self-compassion isn't contingent and unstable the way self-esteem is and so you started by taking self-compassion as as an idea that you had been taught in various different spiritual settings and then you decided that what you wanted to do was take it into the lab and do research on how it works and how effective it is so So what are some of the things that you found in your research about what self-compassion does for us?

Right. Well, the research on self-compassion really is exploding. It's so gratifying for me to see. And so we do know in terms of basic links to well-being that people who are more self-compassionate, they tend to be happier, they tend to be more optimistic, more satisfied with their lives. They're also less likely to be depressed or full of anxiety or shame. So their overall functioning is more positive, more healthy on a day-to-day basis. But what's been really interesting coming out more recently is research showing that a lot of the fears and misgivings we have about self-compassion aren't true. So I'll give you one example. A lot of people are afraid that if they're

self-compassionate, they'll lose their edge. They won't be motivated to achieve their goals. They're just going to be kind of passive or self-indulgent or lazy. And in fact, what the research shows quite clearly is that self-compassion enhances motivation, right? So just like if you're a good supportive friend to yourself, encouraging, not that there's no criticism, but the criticism is constructive as opposed to harsh and belittling that type of feedback is much more productive in terms of encouraging you to make needed changes or to learn and grow one of the the big findings coming out is that if you're self-compassionate you're less afraid of failure it's safe to fail right you're a human being you're less afraid of failure. It's safe to fail, right? You're a human being. You're imperfect like

everyone else. You fail sometimes. Failure is part of the learning experience. And so when you're less afraid of failure, you're more willing to take risks. When you do fail, you get less derailed by it. You stay confident in yourself and you're more likely to try again and to persist in trying even when things are difficult. So really, it's pretty clear that self-compassion increases, not decreases, motivation. I think there's a sense that we all have that being really critical and hard on ourselves is the way that we drive results. That's by not letting up on ourselves. And it seems that the research you're

doing shows that that is not the case. And in one of your books, you say that self-criticism is strongly linked with depression and that creates sort of a perpetual cycle, a downward spiral. Yes, that's right. So when we're self-critical, let's say you blew a big work assignment, right? So you've got two ways to respond to that, either with harsh self-critical, let's say you blew a big work assignment, right? So you've got two ways to respond to that, either with harsh self-criticism, oh, I'm such an idiot, like in the belief that if I'm really hard on myself, I'll never blow it again. You know, maybe if I were to just try that little bit harder, I would be perfect, perfection is possible, right? So what happens when you take that stance towards yourself is, first of all, when you call yourself names, which a lot of people do, I'm ashamed of myself, I'm worthless, we undermine our own self-confidence, which is very bad for motivation and achieving our goals.

We also create an anxious state of mind. It's like, you know, I can't fail again. And if I try again, what if I fail? I can't fail again. And if I try again, what if I fail? I can't fail. And we get very, we get very fearful, fear of failure. And just we have a lot of performance anxiety because the stakes are so high if we do fail. And we know that performance anxiety undermines our ability to do our best. Whereas if we're compassionate and understanding and we just basically ask ourselves to do the best we can, knowing that even if we fail, we'll still support and be there for ourselves, then that creates the optimal state of mind to do our best. In your research, you've identified three pillars of self-compassion. What are those three pillars and how do those help us to practice self-compassion? The first one is really how you relate to yourself when you fail or feel inadequate or life just becomes very difficult. Do you relate to yourself with kindness, care and support? Or do you relate yourself with a sense of, relate to yourself with harsh criticism again that punitive

cold harsh driving behavior that we think is good for us but actually turns out not to be all right so a self-compassion we're caring we're supportive we're understanding we don't beat ourselves up and more than that just like you will with a friend when we're distressed or we're really struggling we actively soothe and comfort ourselves. It's really one of the most powerful aspects of self-compassion is the ability to soothe and comfort ourselves when we're feeling emotional pain. pillar of self-compassion, as you call it, it's very important to remember this one, is framing our experience, our experience of human imperfection, in light of the shared human experience, remembering that all people have both weaknesses and strengths, and that all people struggle at some point in their lives. It's part of what it means to be a human. Now, this is in contrast to our more habitual way of relating to ourselves,

especially when we fail. There's a feeling, and this isn't really a logical thought process. It's an emotional reaction. There's a feeling, let's say you fail at some big task. This shouldn't be happening. This isn't supposed to be happening. I should have been able to get it right. And the fact that I didn't mean something is wrong. And implicit in that assumption, that this shouldn't be happening, is that somehow everyone else in the world is living a perfectly normal, perfect life.

And it's just me who's failed or just me who's gotten that diagnosis, right? Just me who's facing that challenge. So when we fall into the illusion of thinking that failure or suffering is somehow abnormal, we feel really isolated from the rest of humanity. And it's that sense of isolation, research is starting to suggest that that sense of isolation and our own imperfection is especially psychologically damaging. So with self-compassion, when we remember that actually this is normal, failure is normal, facing life challenges is normal, that in fact every moment of suffering becomes an opportunity for connection and then the last part of self-compassion I talk about is something that

people are pretty familiar with these days and that's mindfulness okay so typically when something unpleasant happens some painful situation comes up we don't want to face it. We want to either avoid it and like, you know, stuff it down, not think about it, or else we get really reactive and resistant, get angry and frustrated at the fact that this has happened. And when we're in that state of mind, either avoiding our experience or fighting it madly, usually with self-criticism, we can't open our hearts to ourselves. We have to be able to pause mindfully and recognize this is really hard right now, right? This is a moment of suffering. This is challenging. I'm experiencing some emotional pain. We need to be able to turn toward our own pain, be with it long enough in order for us to validate it and

then, you know, have a compassionate response. So that's, it's very important that we're willing to turn toward our pain, then embrace it with a sense of warmth and connectedness. And here's the rest of the interview with Kristen Neff. So how do we go about practicing self-compassion? So I listen to this, you know, one of our listeners listens and goes, yeah, I am really hard on myself. I believe that's not a very helpful strategy. So I'm going to be more self-compassionate to myself. Is it as simple as just deciding to do that? Or are there particular steps that you recommend?

How do I get from here to there? Well, it is easier than you might think, right? I wasn't sure. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

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Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. How hard it would be for people to change their habits, but actually people, if it is a choice, you have to A, decide that you're worthy of kindness, you know, not by virtue of any special accomplishment other than being an imperfect human being, which most of us can manage, right? So if you decide you're worthy of being kind, then actually most of us have a lot of experience in knowing how to be kind. Again, the place to start is maybe to do a little inventory. How do I treat my friends when they're suffering or upset or feel inadequate in some way, maybe failed in some way? And how do I treat myself in those same circumstances? The vast majority of people

are a lot kinder, more patient and more understanding to others than they are to themselves. So the good news is, if you think, I don't know how to be kind to myself, you can just simply imagine, well, what would I say to a dear friend who was going through the exact same situation I was? You know, we know what to say. We know the tone of voice to use. We usually know how to soothe people close to us who are upset or children or close friends, maybe our partner. And just try adopting that same tone and language with yourself. That's one way.

What you say to yourself is important. Another thing that people have access to which they don't take advantage of is what we call soothing touch. don't take advantage of is what we call soothing touch. As mammals, we have what's called the mammalian caregiving system, or sometimes it's referred to as the attachment system. It's basically the system that makes the mother want to care for and keep her infant child safe, and that keeps the infant child desirous of maintaining contact with the mother so it feels safe. And this is what gives mammals their advantage is they have a long developmental period to adapt to the environment. But that means that all mammals, but especially primates and especially human primates, are born the most immature.

There are three main triggers of this compassion, soothing, caregiving system. And that is physical warmth, a gentle touch and soothing vocalizations. That's really tone. So what you can do when you're upset is simply touch yourself with kindness. Maybe put your hands over your heart, give yourself a hug, hold your own hand like you might hold the hand of a child. I really encourage people to experiment, to find some sort of touch that feels supportive and calming. People actually are pretty different in what works for them. But this is something that is instantly available, right? Your body gets, feels calmed and soothed by the warmth of

your hands, by the gentle pressure of your touch, by the tone of your internal dialogue, even before your mind can go there. So that's, that's something that people really can take advantage of almost immediately. Yeah, that idea of talking to ourselves as we would talk to a friend is one of those very simple pieces of wisdom that if implemented is so powerful. And one of the things I like about that so much is I think my experience of internal self conversation tends to oscillate between extremely self critical, or on the other hand, extremely indulgent of myself. Like you deserve, you know, a hundred hot fudge Sundays today because you've had such a bad day. And when I think about how I would treat a friend who is going through a similar situation,

it's that mixture of kindness, but I also would, would have their better interest at heart. There would be a sense of accountability. It seems to strike that right balance between the two places that I'm naturally prone to go in my own head when dealing with myself. Yeah, so absolutely. I mean, indulgence, whether it's self-indulgence or it's a mother maybe indulging her child, that's not compassionate because indulgence really means giving yourself short-term pleasure at the expense of long-term harm. And if you care about yourself and you want to alleviate your own suffering, you aren't going to engage in self-indulgent behavior, right? So sometimes compassion can be a little fierce. Sometimes compassion can say, hey, you know, you got to stop this.

This is harming you. It's really not in your best interest. I care about you. I mean, you can actually have a conversation with yourself saying things like this. I care about you. You're suffering. Can you please try to do things differently? And I'm here to support and encourage you.

and encourage you. So it's not like our inner compassion itself or that self-compassion doesn't want change to happen or doesn't want to end harmful behaviors or, you know, again, do things that are going to be healthy and productive. It's really all in how it's approached. Is it approached with warmth, kindness, and friendliness? And if so, those messages are much more likely to be received? Or is it approached with a harsh punitive tone, which basically is like pulling the rug out from underneath yourself? It makes the worst possible mental state of mind to make effective change. Right. Yeah, it's that idea of, you know, we're kind of circling back on that, the self-criticism, but my experience has certainly been that is not an effective driver of change. It just doesn't work that way.

Certainly for me in battling with addictions in the past and different things, the times where I was, you know, most harsh to myself were not the times that led to recovery. I think it was almost when I started to talk to myself in a different tone, talk to myself in that kind tone. That's when change started to be possible. It's important to remember, though, that we also don't want to criticize ourselves for criticizing ourselves, for beating ourselves up. because if we actually understand what the process of self-criticism is doing um also criticism really stems from when we feel threatened in some way right so when we fail for instance our self-concept is threatened and our body doesn't know the

difference between our self-concept being threatened and a bear charging us right all we think is threat to self so um we get really uh scared and by the way this is why we tend to criticize ourselves more than our friends because my friend fails it doesn't threaten me but when i fail i feel threatened so i go into this fight or flight mode unfortunately I turn that on myself I attack the problem the problem is me but it's all coming underneath from an actually good place and that's a desire to be safe so you might say our inner critic is like a tantruming two-year-old it's not very mature it doesn't give us advice well, it's actually usually completely counterproductive. But its intention is good, which is it's trying to keep you safe. And in fact, one of the ways to make it easier to access motivating ourselves and you know, the desire

to keep ourselves safe and happy and well, with compassion, is by kind of giving some kudos to the self-critic. You know, hey, thank you for caring. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. You know, I get you. I hear your message. You don't have to shout so loudly. I get it. There's danger here.

Okay. And then we can use this more mature, more recently involved mammalian caregiving system to provide that sense of safety. Right. It's really about, it's a skill in how we talk to ourselves. The self-critic is not bad. It's just, and it's also the most easily triggered safety system. So it's not surprising we're so habitually hard on ourselves, but we don't really want to be, you know, running our lives from our reptilian brain. We want to be have more mature, aware responses, which comes from this place of kindness as opposed to fear and threat. is it a slippery slope between self-compassion and self-pity. Right. So that's why common humanity is so important. Common humanity and mindfulness. Okay. If you are just kind of feeling sorry for yourself and saying, oh, that's terrible, poor thing, but you forget about common humanity, then it becomes poor me, woe is me. So it's

self-focused and there tends to be kind of an exaggeration and over-dramatization of the suffering. Common humanity is, for me, common humanity is, wow, life's difficult for everyone. So I'm including myself in the circle of compassion, but I'm certainly not saying my problems are worse than anyone else's. So that keeps it from being so self-focused. And the mindfulness, which is kind of a clear, balanced scene and acceptance of things as they are, prevents us from running away with this exaggerated storyline of how bad things are. If it weren't for those two elements, actually self-kindness could slip into self-pity. So all three really need to be present. So one of the things that you said in one of your books is that suffering stems from a single source, comparing our reality to our ideals.

When reality matches our wants and desires, we're happy and satisfied. When reality doesn't match our wants and desires, we suffer. How does self-compassion help with this pretty common human problem? I hope I'm not getting too technical here, but this thing about accepting reality as it is, basically not banging our head against reality, which makes things worse, is really referring a little more to mindfulness, that the peace of mind, the equanimity we gain

when we accept that things are often not as we like them to be. They're hard, they're difficult, they're scary. We don't always succeed. Things happen, you know, at the very least, we're all going to get sick and old and die, right? That's life. But the warmth part of self-compassion, the kindness, basically embraces ourselves in the midst of this acceptance that life is difficult. So it says, yes, you know, okay, I'll give you a personal example, right, where I really saw this bear fruit, my self-compassion practice. My son has autism.

And when he was diagnosed with autism, it was, you know, I didn't want to face it. I didn't want to accept it. I didn't want to accept it. Surely there must be some mistake. But because of my mind. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really.

Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In mindfulness practice, I was fairly quickly able to say, hey, listen, this is what life has dealt you. We need to accept it. I'll just make it worse if I fight against this reality. But the compassion, I was able to soothe and comfort myself, care for myself in the midst of it. So, you know, honor the fact that this is hard.

And I tried to be kind to myself. And I tried to be supportive with myself and caring. supportive with myself and caring. And that actually allowed me the kind of self-support needed to fully open to and accept my experience. So you might say that compassion is always aimed at soothing, comforting, caring for the experiencer, i.e. ourselves, when things are really difficult and painful. What lesson would you say that it has taken you the longest to learn in your life? Boy, that's a big question. There are still lessons I'm learning. So for instance, kind of in terms of how I'm wired, I'm actually a fairly reactive person, right?

My first instinct isn't to give a calm, balanced response if I feel threatened in some way. My first instinct is to be kind of challenging and reactive. And so I don't know if I will ever change. That might be part of my wiring. know if I will ever change that might be part of my wiring but what I'm learning is um to basically the notice when I'm triggered and again immediately myself soothing and comfort and kindness because I'm triggered does not expect that I shouldn't be. And then so hopefully that can give myself the sense of safety to maybe pause and not just react. Or to be totally honest, at this point, often what happens is I do react, but almost immediately I'm able to catch myself and apologize.

So no lasting harm is done to relationships. Something may come out of my mouth and I say, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I was totally out of line. Please forgive me. Right. So, um, you know, that one is just, we are imperfect and we don't always act the way we want, but if you can, I find that if you can own it and you can allow yourself to be vulnerable and especially admit when we've caused harm in some way or we're out of line. Most people are pretty forgiving, but you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable. You can't try to protect your ego or defend your ego and try to blow off responsibility. And the more you do that, I should say it's easier to do when you give yourself unconditional love and acceptance.

Excellent. So tell me very briefly about the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. Yes. So what's been really exciting, you know, I've been researching self-compassion for about 15 years now. But about five years ago, I teamed up with a man named Chris Germer, who is actually one of the main people who brought meditation and psychotherapy, founded the Meditation and Psychotherapy Institute. And we decided we wanted to create a kind of structured workshop in order to teach people how to be self-compassionate in their daily life so we developed an intervention which is eight sessions where we meet once a week for eight weeks two and a half hours each session and we've developed a variety of exercises small group exercises meditations that really seem to help people learn the skill of self-compassion and so we just founded this center we got our non-profit status recently to help really spread this throughout

the world and we're we're teaching people to teach the program to others we're not only teaching the program we're training teachers to teach the program in their local communities. And if people want to find out about that, they can actually link to my website or go to centerformsc.org. And there may even be a course near you if you want to check that out. We're growing by leaps and bounds all over the world. It's very exciting. Yeah, there are a lot of courses out there. I was looking at the page earlier, and we will have links to Kristen's work as well as the Center for Mindful Self Compassion in the show notes. Great. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a pleasure talking with you, and I've really enjoyed reading your books and learning more about self-compassion. So thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me, and thanks for the great

work you do in the world. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Take care. Okay. Okay. Bye. You can learn more about this podcast and Kristen Neff at oneufeed.net slash neff. That's N-E-F-F. Thanks.