Well with Arielle Lorre - 115: How to Use Self-Compassion to Transform Your Life with Dr. Kristin Neff

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

In this episode I’m talking to University of Texas professor, author and researcher Dr. Kristin Neff about the power of self-compassion and how it can transform our lives. We discuss her fascinating (and groundbreaking) research into the psychological benefits of self-compassion; using self-compassion to overcome perfectionism; how self-compassion counteracts shame; using self-compassion to avoid burnout; how to overcome self-criticism; self-compassion in relationships; unstable vs stable sources of self-esteem; balancing fierce and tender self-compassion, and so much more!   www.gomacro.com with code BLONDEFILES for 30% off plus free shipping on all orders over $50 www.get-base.com/blondefiles for 20% off your first month of membership www.dipseastories.com/BLONDE for your extended 30 day trial www.athleticgreens.com/BLONDEFILES for your free year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there's There is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. Today, I am talking to University of Texas professor, Dr. Kristen Neff.

For the past 20 years, Dr. Neff has pioneered research into the psychological health benefits of self-compassion and taught people how to be kinder and more supportive to themselves. In her timely new book, Fierce Self-Compassion, How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. She argues that in order to realize the full benefits of self-compassion, we need to develop both its fierce and tender side. This year has revealed the inequities when it comes to women and work and illuminated just how hard we are on ourselves, making the stressors we face all the more harmful to us. So in the book, Dr. Neff draws on a wealth of research, her personal life story, and empirically supported practices to demonstrate how women can use fierce and tender self-compassion to

succeed in the workplace, engage in caregiving without burnout, be authentic in relationships, and end the silence around sexual harassment and abuse. So in this episode, we cover so much ground to be totally honest. This really wasn't something that was on my radar so much. And I learned so much. I know that you will too. I've been putting these principles that we talk about in the episode into practice since we recorded a while back. And I've really noticed some major shifts. So there's a lot that you can apply to your own lives as well. So please enjoy Dr. Kristen Neff. Okay. So welcome to the show. I'm so excited to talk to you. And I know a lot of my audience is really excited to hear from you too. But in case anybody who's listening is unfamiliar with your work, can you just

tell us a little bit of a background on yourself and how you came to be interested in what you're interested in and how you landed on self-compassion? Yes. So I came by honestly. It was my last year of graduate school at UC Berkeley. It was back in 1996. So a long time, I guess it's 25 years ago. And basically, I was a basket case. I had just gotten a divorce. And it was a really messy divorce and I was feeling like a lot of shame and self-doubt. And I was also feeling a lot of pressure about getting my PhD. I mean, I thought I would probably get it, but like when I get a job, there were no guarantees after all that work. So I'd heard that mindfulness meditation was good for stress. And so it was Berkeley. It was actually literally a meditation group just down the street

for me. So luckily for me, the people taught in the tradition of Tickna Han, was a meditation teacher who actually talks a lot about self-compassion. And so the very first night I went, the woman leaving the group talked about the importance of being compassionate to yourself, of being kind, warm, and supportive, especially when you're going through a hard time, which I was. And it took me a little while to figure out mindfulness meditation, but the very first night I went to this course, I just tried being warm and supportive with myself. I never really thought about it before I tried saying, Kristen, you're going through a hard time, you did the best you can, I'm here for you, you know, it's going to be okay. And I was just blown away by the immediate

difference it made in my ability to cope with all the stress I was going through. It just, it really worked. And then so I did get a job, luckily, at University of Texas at Austin as a professor. And so I decided I wanted to research self-compassion. So I've been doing really for the past 20 years, a lot of research on self-compassion. I kind of, I'm credited with founding the field. I mean, none of these ideas are new, but I guess what I did is I created a scale to measure, and I really thought carefully about the definition. So started research on it. And then the last 10 years, I've actually been more focused on how to help people develop self-compassion. So we know it works. We know it's a good thing, but how do you teach people to be more self-compassionate?

So that's what I've been focusing on more recently. And then much more recently, I really brought in ideas of gender into self-compassion. And we can talk about that. But gender impacts our ability to be self-compassionate, especially what I like to call fierce self-compassion, our ability to care for ourselves by standing up for ourselves, drawing boundaries, et cetera. And so that's why my new book is coming out in June. So that's how I got here. I love it. It's so funny because when you were talking about your own experience with self-compassion and how you kind of discovered it during this meditation group, I was thinking about my experience with it. And I told you before we started recording that I've been kind of going down a rabbit hole with your content. And I had a similar experience where I was listening to you talk on a podcast recently when I was preparing for this interview. And I was like, yeah, I've never done that with myself. And it's so interesting. It's such like a novel idea, you know, and it's kind of shocking to realize that it is probably

so simple at its core. I mean, we'll get into what self-compassion looks like. But it just is so kind of counterintuitive, I think, to what we're taught and what we practice. Yes, it is. It's like we have the superpower in our back pocket. And it's actually not that hard to access. It's right there, but no one never told us we had this superpower. And the research is just phenomenal in terms of the strength that gives you, the resilience it gives you, the ability to cope with difficult things. It's really, really helpful to be kind and supportive to yourself. But again, as you say, we aren't taught that. It doesn't actually come naturally. But it's not, again, it's not rocket science. It's not like we have to figure out a whole new way of being. We already know how to be compassionate

and supportive and kind to others who are good friends and the people who care about in our life. we were just never really told that we can use this stance toward ourselves. And once we do do that intentionally, consciously, the research shows it makes a huge, a huge difference in well-being. And I would love to hear about that. But you mentioned that you thought really hard about the definition of self-compassion. So what is that for you? So, yeah.

So according to my model, there's really three elements to self-compassion. And all three need to be there in order for this to be a really healthy and stable mindset. and they tend to cohere to go together. The first is actually mindfulness, believe it or not. Mindfulness is the foundation of self-compassion. And most people have heard about mindfulness has been around longer, at least in the psychology literature, than self-compassion.

But mindfulness is our ability to be aware of what's happening, you know, what's happening externally, but also really what's happening inside of us, what we're feeling, what we're experiencing. This can be physical sensations, but it also is our emotion. And in the context of self-compassion, it means mindfulness of suffering or some sort of emotional or physical pain, some difficulty or struggle. Now, often when things are hard, we actually don't want to face it because it's hard.

So we do one or two things. Either we avoid it or we suppress it or we try to get rid of it. And you know, you share your own journey. People who, for instance, abuse alcohol and drugs, part of what's happening is a very simple, understandable natural desire. not to be in pain. You know, it's human beings. We don't want to be in pain. So we try to drown it out or find some way to escape our pain.

A lot of people use a lot of different ways to try to escape their pain. Or they just get really busy and become workaholics, right? There's a lot of ways to escape our pain. But in order to have compassion, we need to open to our pain. We need to say, this is here. This hurts, right? Imagine if you had a friend who was trying to say, hey, I need your help. And it's like, no, I don't want to listen to you.

It's too painful. You can't be a good friend to that person. So we need to be aware of our pain. But we need to be aware of it with some space. So in other words, if we go to the other extreme and we get lost in it, we almost be confused with it. And it's like we can't even see what's happening because our mind is just full of, this is so terrible, I'm so terrible, whatever we're experiencing.

In order to treat yourself like a good friend, which is in some ways the easiest way to think of what self-compassion is, we need some perspective. We need to be able to step outside. of ourselves and say, wow, you're really having a hard time. Is there anything I can do to help? And so that's what mindfulness gives us. It gives us awareness of what's happening with some space in it. So that's almost the first step. And then, of course, we need to respond with kindness. That's what makes it compassion as opposed to, you know, harsh self-judgment or blame or shame, right?

Which is a lot of people when they notice their pain, especially if they blame themselves for that pain. It's something you've done. You're such a screw-up. You know, you made a mistake. then we may judge ourselves. So a compassionate response is kind, is supportive, it's warm, it's understanding, it's caring, and really important. You know, in science, they don't really define compassion as an emotion. They define it as a type of motivation. So in particular, it's a motivation to alleviate suffering or to help.

If you look at a brain, it's experiencing compassion, the parts of the brain associated with planned movement get activated. Right. So there's some desire to help in some way. And this is actually very natural for humans. This desire to help, we're born with it. It develops very early. So with self-compassion, there's the desire to help ourselves. It's kind of the ability to ask, well, what do I need right now? And the willingness to do something about it. So that's the kindness element. And then really important, this isn't necessarily, people don't think of this, but compassion is an inherently connected state of mind. If you look at their Latin root, passion means to suffer, calm means with.

So what's the difference between compassion and pity? Right. If I pity you, you're not going to like that because that means I'm looking down on you and I feel separate from you. If I have compassion for you, it's like, hey, I've been there. This is something we connected this experience. The same thing with self-compassion. There has to be a sense of connectedness, what I call common humanity.

Right. we recognize that, first of all, everyone's imperfect, every makes mistakes, and everyone lives an imperfect life. Yeah, some people suffer more than others. It's not like we're all the same. And yet actually what defines us as human beings is the imperfection of ourselves and our lives. But what happens is often people forget that.

Like, you know, when they make a mistake or something difficult happens, there's this irrational sense that this isn't supposed to be happening. Something is gone wrong, as if what's supposed to be happening is perfection. And if perfection isn't happening, something has gone wrong. And that misperception creates a sense of abnormality and isolation from others. We don't feel connected. So self-compassion really corrects that and reminds us that, hey, this is part of the human experience. I'm not alone.

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In a study by Esquire, 54% of women said they'd rather be hit by a car than considered fat. If I'm being honest, I've been those women. So for me, this isn't just a podcast. It's personal. I'm Danielle Robeye, TV host and journalist. And years of celebrity interviewing taught me that beauty isn't about what you look like. It's about who you become.

Each week, I'm having thought-provoking conversations, digging into the stories of people who put a new spin on pretty. From entrepreneurs and authors to politicians and celebrities, no topic is off limits. So join me every Thursday for a new episode to feel pretty inspired, pretty seen, and best of all, pretty smart. I feel like we all hold ourselves to this impossible standard now. And I was watching your TED talk, which was from many years ago, and you were talking about the epidemic of narcissism. And I was thinking how much more that's probably multiplied with social media. And daily, we are comparing our insides to other people's outsides. Yes. So if somebody is, you know, feeling less than and feeling critical of

themselves, because I think that's kind of the default, right, to be critical, how can they, what are some steps that they can take to practice some self-compassion in the moment? Right. So one is, believe it or not, kind of letting go of the need for high self-esteem. So self-esteem is a judgment of self-worth. It's an evaluation. It's like, do I get an A or do I get an F or do I get a C? It's a judgmental process. And although it's better to have high self-esteem than low self-esteem, so if you hate yourself, then that can lead to all sorts of problems. But on the other hand, wanting to get that A or that A-plus can also be a problem.

Because usually in order to feel good about ourselves, we need to feel special and above average. Right. So there's an inherent comparison. It's not like you can be great and I can be great or whatever. We're all just ourselves. It's like, how do I stack up? up to this other person. And that means we're always kind of trying to subtly put other people down to feel good

about ourselves in comparison. What happens with narcissists, which is that there are a lot of narcissists in society that they can't even entertain the idea that they've done something wrong, that they've, you know, made some mistake. And so they actually gaslight and they distort things and they don't acknowledge things, really all in an effort to preserve their self-esteem. Another problem is that self-esteem is contingent. It's contingent on success.

So you might say it's a fair-weather friend. It's there for us when we succeed and when we look the way we want to look or that people like us, what happens when we fail? When we need a friend the most, our self-esteem deserts us. And that's really where self-compassion steps in. It's kind of an unconditional sense of self-worth. So really what we're doing is we're making a switch. where does our self-worth come from?

Does it come from achieving? Does it come from getting that A? Does it come from looking a certain way? Those are kind of unstable sources of self-esteem. Or does it come from simply being a flawed human being, worthy of love, kindness, and care, just like every single other human being. It's kind of an unconditional source of self-worth.

And so what you need to do to cultivate it, well, first of all, I've developed a whole training program to cultivate it, And there are a lot of concrete meditations, exercises, practices you can do. But at the very simplest level, you know, we have a template for how to be compassionate and supportive, which is typically with our loved ones. You know, we aren't always compassionate with our loved ones. Usually a friend is the best because it's like voluntary. So your kids or your spouse, maybe you can get away with not being so compassionate.

But your best friend, they may not be your best friend if you're like, you know, if you really treat them poorly. Right. So we kind of understand how to maintain a friendship. We know we need to be there for them. That's part of what a friend does. We know what it looks like. And so all we need to do,

and it can feel uncomfortable at first, and it is a practice, but it's not actually difficult. We just need to start treating it. It's like, what would I say to a friend in this situation? We kind of have the template there, and then we just do a U-turn, right? We do a U-turn and consciously try to treat ourselves

in the same warm and supportive way. I'm really interested in hearing about how you measure self-compassion and how you came up with a scale for that. Yeah, so I'd actually done two years of postdoctoral study with a woman who had done a lot of self-esteem research, which is part of how I got familiar with all the problems with self-esteem, and she created a lot of scales. So, well, why not?

So I created, you can take it on my website. If you Google self-compassion, you'll find me, because I got an early, all algorithms point to my website. and there's a scale you can take and you can get your score. So they're pretty much just base valid items that assess either, you know, what counts as self-compassion or the lack of self-compassion. So if you're low on the negative stuff and high on the positive stuff, you'd be higher on self-compassion.

And there's a lot of psychometric validation for it over the years. But, you know, it's good just to give you a sense of your habitual ability or tendency to be compassionate to yourself. And so the way we do research is either with the scale, but more and more, because self-report scales are always kind of limited. You know, there might be some bias or may not be that accurate. So the two other ways we do it is either by training. So I've developed the mindful self-compassion program with my colleague Chris Ghrmer.

So maybe we say, okay, what happens after people take a training program? How do their lives change? Do their depression levels change? Is there anxiety change, et cetera? And also more and more, what we do is we induce a self-compassion. and it moved. Very simple. We have people like, think of something that's troubling you in your life that's causing emotional pain. Write a paragraph of mindfulness, validating what's happening, a paragraph of common humanity reminding yourself that you aren't alone. This is part of being

human. And then write a paragraph of kindness, saying some words of kindness and support. And then we see how that changes, like in the moment, their state of mind. And those are the main ways we research self-compassion. There's over 3,500 studies now. And they all, point to the same outcome, which is it's a really powerful source of coping and resilience of well-being, increases positive states of mind, decreases negative states of mind, body image, addiction, PTSD, basically you name it. Self-compassion appears to help. It's really kind of, it's very broad because it's just whatever your difficulty is, self-compassion will help you deal with that difficulty, which means any negative states that come from being overwhelmed by

that difficulty, self-compassion helps. So would you say that self-compassion is kind of the antidote to everything? Well, it's the antidote to shame and self-criticism. And we know that a lot of our problems come from shame and self-criticism. So if you look at the lack of self-compassion, that means you're being critical, you're shaming yourself, you're feeling isolated, you aren't aware. You're kind of just either lost in the drama or you're suppressing it. And if you look at most of the the problems like depression, anxiety, eating disorder, suicidal ideation, a maladaptive perfectionism, a lot of the really, I hate to use the word, pathological states of mind, unhealthy states of mind, including things like addiction where people don't have the resources to deal with their pain.

And that comes from the lack of self-compassion. And what we know is it's kind of like a seesaw when you increase mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness, it reduces self-judgment, isolation, and what I call over. over-identifications when you're lost. And then that's partly how it works, is it decreases these negative mind states that actually lead to the problems. So you kind of touched on this early, but I'm thinking about my own experience and getting sober. And when I got sober, I learned that a lot of my problems and a lot of my thinking patterns kind of arose from this obsession with myself and this self-centered fear and, you know, king baby. I'm better than everyone, but I'm also

a piece of shit. That kind of. mentality. And so when I started in recovery, I had to learn to kind of get out of that state of mind by looking outward and thinking of other people and not falling back into a place of self-pity or self-victimization. And I know that this is very different from that, but how do we stay in self-compassion and keep from kind of crossing that line into that obsession with ourselves? Yes. And it's funny. And I get a lot of flack from some of my Buddhist friends because this isn't self's the problem, you know? And so if you don't, it's actually a better term for it,

which I didn't use because it's less intuitive, but it's like inner compassion. Believe it or not, what the research shows is the more compassion you turn inward, the smaller your sense of separate self. And that's because of that common humanity component. So when you're criticizing yourself and you're shaming yourself, you're very self-focused. But when you say, hey, this is part of being human, you know,

and also there's some, and wisdom, you understand that the way you are, it's not actually all your fault. I mean, you can take responsibility, but it's culture, it's your genes, it's your family, a lot of things that you didn't choose are a lot of things you don't have control over. And so the more you take this compassionate perspective towards yourself, and really all you're doing is just including yourself in the circle of compassion. When you exclude yourself, somehow I'm different than everyone else. I deserve to be treated differently.

then you're kind of separating yourself. When you include yourself in the circle of compassion, you're actually de-emphasizing the focus on separate self. And so that's why it reduces things like shame or egoistic thinking or self-pity, things like that. Again, the language in some ways it's unfortunate. I think there's no way around it really. But you might say it's certainly less self-focused

than shame or self-criticism. Right. I heard you in another interview talking about self-compassion and how it kind of carries over to our partners and relationships. And I just wanted to touch on that because we're coming out of, you know, the kind of the tail end, hopefully of the pandemic. A lot of us have been living with our significant others for the past year on top of one another, probably falling into some of these patterns. How can self-compassion affect a relationship, I guess? Yeah, well, the research shows it's very, very positive for relationships. And it's, you know, some people have this misconception that they think the self-compassion is selfish.

It's like, well, I only have five units of compassion. So if I give three to myself, I'm only going to have two left over for someone else. It actually doesn't work that way. So the way it works is the more resources we have, the more we turn compassion inward, actually the more we have available to flow outward. Right. So the research shows people who are more self-compassionate, they're more able to take others' perspectives, right? because again, this is partly being less self-focused.

You're more able to forgive others for their imperfections because the more you can forgive yourself for your imperfections, the more you can forgive others. People are rated by their relationship partners as being more giving, more intimate, less controlling. People are more satisfied with self-compassionate partners. And really importantly, people who are caregivers, whether you're caring for like an autistic child,

or you're caring for your spouse, or your elderly parents or your professional care giver, you're a therapist or a nurse or a doctor, you're less likely to suffer burnout. Right. So if you give and you give and you give and you give and you don't resource yourself at all, and eventually you're going to be burned out

and you aren't going to be able to give anymore. So what self-compassion does is it works two ways in relationships. One way is simply by if you're stressed or overwhelmed or drained, if you kind of give yourself kindness, this is really hard. I'm here for you. Like, what can I do to help? What do I need right now?

That's going to give you resources to give to others. But it also works another way, which is quite interesting, which is through the level of empathic resonance. So the human brain is actually designed by evolution to empathically resonate with other human brains. So when you're upset, even if you don't say anything, I can pick that up. I can feel your vibe, so to speak. It's actually not woo-woo's speak.

The brain is designed to do that. I have mirror neurons whose whole function it is is to kind of feel what you're feeling. So if you're sad, I feel that sadness in my brain. And that was designed by evolution because parents who had more empathic resonance with their children before they learn to speak were more able to meet their child's needs and they pass their genes down. So the brain is designed that way. So we think we're separate human being, we're separate people,

but actually what's happening at the level of brain function is we're constantly reading each other. And we kind of know this intuitively, right? So our state of mind impacts the state of mind of other people. And of course, there's impacts ours as well. So what we cultivate internally actually impacts every single person we come into contact with. So if you're full of shame and anger at yourself and blame and you have frustration, every single person you contact with is kind of resonating with that shame and frustration and anger. But if you're full of like compassion and kindness and warm,

then everyone also gets the benefit of interacting with that brain as well. So, you know, the idea that we're separate, it really is an illusion. If you actually break it down scientifically, it is an illusion. There are so many ways in which we're interconnected, even at the level of brain function. And so it's kind of a complete fallacy to think that if I give myself compassion, that it's selfish. Actually, it's a gift to other people as well as yourself. As I record this, I have been traveling around a bit and with that comes eating out a lot, different sleep schedules and just an overall disruption in my routine.

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tasty, and efficient. So simply visit athletic greens.com slash blonde files. That's B-L-O-N-D-E, F-I-L-E-S, and join health experts, athletes, and health-conscious go-getters around the world who make a daily commitment to their health every day. Again, simply visit athletic greens.com slash blonde files and get your free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. I'm just thinking back to what we were talking about before with addiction. And it is kind of interesting because I've heard a lot that addiction is kind of this isolation, right? You're cut off from something spiritual. You're cut off from your fellows. So it is really interesting how you can see that yeah compassion self-compassion does connect you more to everybody else and yeah i mean i can just i'm

thinking about the past year plus with my husband and it's like he's in a shitty mood you know it rubs off on me and vice versa so well and also particularly with addiction because you know shame is so such a driver of addiction right because shame is so overwhelming and so debilitating people will try to escape their shame you know again we want to have compassion but that of course you do. You know, of course, you're a human being. You want to be happy. You want to be well.

So you're trying to find ways to be happy and well and to be safe. And so one of the ways that people try to escape their shame is to turn into substances. It's like understandable. Unfortunately, instead of work, it doesn't not very effective, right? So what it does is it creates a negative feedback loop and you feel more shame and you have to use more and you feel more shame and it kind of this downward spiral. So self-compassion, if anything, is an antipsy. out to shame.

Yeah. Right. Instead of judging ourselves mercifully, we're kind to ourselves, instead of feeling isolated and alone, we're recognized, we're connected. And instead of being absorbed by, identified with these negative thoughts about ourselves, we're mindful, we're able to say, that's not all you are. You have these other sides to yourself and look from another perspective, things look a little different.

And it's, uh, the research again shows quite clearly it helps reduce shame, which is one of the ways it helps people. struggling with addiction. Okay, let's talk about fierce self-compassion. Yes. How does this differ from tender self-compassion? And let's just get into it. Yeah, so this is what, so the last couple years,

I've been focusing on the difference between what I call fierce and tender self-compassion. So there's kind of two faces of self-compassion, two main faces. And so one is the tender side of self-compassion. this is more of the nurturing side. I like to call it like the Yin side. If you use Yin and Yang, I like to spread of the masculine and feminine because the whole problem is we've gendered these things.

So if you call it Yin and Yang, Yin is kind of more the nurturing, yielding, energy of life. Yang is more the powerful action-oriented energy of life. So self-compassion has both these sides. So with tender self-compassion, you know, we're warm, we're very accepting toward ourselves. This is kind of the part of self-compassion that has to do with unconditional,

self-acceptance. We can be with ourselves and all our imperfection. We can be with our life. Okay, this is how it is. And then I'm going to be with myself, even if it's uncomfortable. It's like a mother or a parent, you know, their child may be screaming its head off, but you love that child unconditionally. But you also try to help that child.

You rock that child. You hold that child. You know, I love you. And eventually the child starts to calm down. So this is really the healing power of self-concernation. compassion, this tenderness, very, very key. I mean, some people think this is all there is to self-compassion, but there's also another side, which I like to call the fierce side.

In other words, if compassion is about the alleviation of suffering, sometimes to alleviate our suffering, we need more self-acceptance, but sometimes we need change, right? So if we're in a situation that we're harming ourselves, like maybe you're addicted, well, that behavior, even though you can accept yourself, the behavior needs to change, or maybe the circumstances, maybe the relationship, or where your living needs to be changed, or sometimes society needs to be changed. So sometimes we need to take action to change situations or behaviors that are causing harm. And I like to call that the fierce side of self-compassion. And also, the metaphor I like to use is fierce mama bear. So you might say if tender self-compassion

is mother, fierce self-compassion is like mama bear. You're like, if you want to see a force of nature, you threaten Mama Bear's cubs, you know. And she also motivates her cubs. You know, we've got to go to a new territory where there's food. She works hard to provide for her cubs, right? She might fish all day to get salmon for her cubs. And so that energy can also be used turned inward. So we can turn the tendering energy that we give to children inward. And we can also turn this fierce energy, protective energy inward. And I like, I like mom and bear because it's, you know, it's a feminine metaphor. The problem with society is we've gendered these things. Right. You know, we said women are allowed to be tender and nurturing, well, to their kids,

not to themselves. They need to be self-sacrificing. They can turn it outward. They can't turn it inward. But there's a reason 85% of the people who come to my workshops are women because compassion is like part of the female gender wall. And that's a female thing and men don't feel comfortable with, which harms men because they're cut. offer this incredibly powerfully useful, effective resource for dealing with difficult emotions. So it harms men. Men are allowed to be tender, but women aren't allowed to be fierce. People don't like fiercest, especially if it takes a form of anger or we don't like really competent, powerful women. Women are supposed to be tender. They're supposed to be gentle. They're supposed to be

soft. And that harms women because that disempowers us. And so you might say every human being, regardless of gender identity, whether you're trans, it doesn't matter. need the balance of fierceness and tenderness of yin and yang. I mean, in Chinese tradition, that's kind of the definition of ill health and imbalance between yin and yang. So we need to balance and integrate them. But gender roles prevent us from doing that. Right.

And so that's why I wrote my book just for women. You know, there also needs to be book written for men. It was too much to put in one book, you know, tender self-compassion, how men can harness tenderness to, like, heal from their emotional wounds. But, you know, so I wrote the book for woman. And it also includes like a lot of, you know, as feminist theory, you know, the history, how do we get here? Because it's tied to a whole history of how women have been treated in society,

how gender roles have served to disempower women in a lot of ways. And kind of what I see is the way forward at this moment. And stuff's changing. I open the book by saying something's in the air. Every woman I talk to can feel it. There's something shifting at a transpersonal level among women. And so this is kind of a book. kind of my gift of woman to say,

we can use these metaphors. You know, we don't want, we don't want to be like men traditionally because we don't, tenderness without fierceness is complacency. It's kind of, could be weakness.

But fierceness without tenderness is aggression. And like a lot of the problems in our world today is that we need balance. And so it's kind of how women can find balance. So there's theory, but there's also practices. I mean, actually try this,

you know, use this. I've actually created concrete practices. for women basically to be able to balance these energies. So I'm real excited about it. It's kind of like brings together a lot of threads. Social justice work needs fierceness. It's different, but it's very related to what I've been doing for the past 20 years. I love how you talk about fierce self-compassion and boundaries.

And I think in your book you talk about, we don't want to be doormats. We want to be able to open and close doors how we want. And I think boundaries are something that we as women struggle with so much. because like you said, it can be perceived as aggressive. And we want people to like us. And I'm sorry, but the system is rigged against us. Think about it. People like us when we self-sacrifice and we meet others' needs.

Well, who does that serve? It doesn't really serve us. We don't want to go to the other extreme and be selfish. We want to have balance. And so, for instance, we know people who are more self-compassionate. There's a conflict between our own needs and those to someone else. We compromise. We don't.

subordinate our needs, but we don't, we aren't selfish either. We say, okay, both are important. How do we get some balance and compromise? And so that's, you know, the old system isn't working for us. Women actually have less self-compassion than men because they feel less entitled to meet their own needs. You know, and so in a weird way, it's not so weird. Self-compassion is also a political act because it's saying, no, our needs count too. And by the way, I see like the Black Lives Matter movement. I see the Me Too movement. A self-consumption. compassion movements. These are groups of people saying, uh-uh, you know, this isn't right. This isn't meeting our needs. We need to do things differently where, you know, I'm drawing boundaries. I'm saying

no more. Yeah. So that's, I think social justice work, social justice work is all about the alleviation of suffering. These are compassion movements. But again, we need the tenderness mixed with the fierceness. It's just fierceness and anger and, you know, that's, that's an adding to the problem. Right. It's so interesting, though. that you say men kind of inherently have more self-compassion, and yet they're also so resistant to practicing self-compassion, if they knew that that's what they were actually doing, I'm sure. Yeah, well, because it's a female thing.

Women have less power. You know, think about it. Poor men, they're called sissies. They're two that care about these things. There's a lot of, again, really harm to men. It cuts them off and the superpower that we all have, really cuts them off. But yeah, so for women,

and by the way, women who are more androgynous, you might say balanced you and young, they don't have less self-compassion. So it's really women who can't own their fear side that tend to feel like, well, I'm not supposed to meet my own needs. People like me if I say yes. They like me if I sacrifice myself. And what self-compassion does is it says, well, I don't need people to like me. If they like me, that's great, but I like myself, you know, and I'm not so dependent on other people

of proving of me. So I can draw boundaries. and I'm very sorry. I would love to be able to help, but I'm sorry I can't. And they may like you a little bit less. I'm not going to pretend that everyone's going to think, everyone's not going to necessarily be happy about this. You've got to do it for yourself. But remembering that, you know, people, it doesn't mean you're selfish. Doesn't mean you've got to be aggressive. Doesn't mean you have to hate men. None of those things. It just means that you open your heart, but you also open your heart

to yourself. And if you don't, it's not going to be sustainable. Right. Amazing. Well, I got a lot of listener questions. So let me go up here so that we have time. Okay, somebody asked, this is relevant. How can I teach my sons about self-compassion? Yes. So teaching children. So one of the best ways actually to teach self-compassion to kids, you know, is to model it. Right. So first of all, modeling, being compassionate to our kids. That's one. We know that kids who are raised in households where their parents validated their needs, validated their emotions, were consistent, met their needs, made them feel secure.

That leads to be more self-compassion as an adult because you feel your needs are worthy of being met. But also modeling it. So maybe you meet your kids' needs, but whenever you drop the glass, you say, oh, I'm such an idiot, you're sending the message that this is a good way to relate to yourself. And so what we know is that if you model self-compassion, oh, well, you know, I'm only human. It's okay. Everyone breaks things once in a while.

And then you model like taking responsibility or maybe not, breaking in class, but if you can learn from your failure, if you model the importance of learning from failure, it's okay to fail. This is how we learn. How can we learn from this? You know, with your kids' school, how can we learn from this? All those messages are really, really helpful. So that's one way. I think you can talk to kids, especially boys, kind of being explicit about it. You know, is it true that it weakens you to talk about your emotions? Well, in fact, you know, when you go into battle, who do you want in your head? Do you want to be an ally that says, I got your back, I'm here for you?

Or do you want to be an enemy, cutting you down, shaming you? Who's going to make you stronger? You know, so making some of this explicit can help. And we also do have some, we have a program developed, a mindful self-compassion program for teenagers called Making Friends with Yourself. And we're developing one for kids right now. It's not totally ready to go, but there are some books. but really friendship is that when you're when kids are just learning how to be a good friend

if you just include and make sure you're also a good friend to yourself you know then that's really the time to start to get that message that this is a good thing to do no one told us we kind of no first of all no one even talked about it but we kind of got the implicit message that somehow beating yourself up is good that it's humble it's not humble it's just counterproductive And by the way, this isn't positive thinking, this isn't self-esteem, this isn't saying you're great. Actually, maybe the truth is, well, my performance was pretty poor. That's okay. Everyone has poor performance now and then.

What can I learn from this? How can I improve? You know, really separating evaluations of behavior or performance from self-worth. Right. Speaking of self-worth, somebody asked, how do I build self-worth when I'm starting out with none? Usually people who have none, not always, but usually it comes from early family history, right? So if you were abused emotionally or physically or your parents were negligent, it's not always from that, but it often is from that. It can be scary to have self-compassion.

In fact, what happens is the signals of care, which should have been associated with safety and warmth when your parents sometimes can get fused with signals of fear. if your parents yelled at you or made you feel frightened or, you know, physically harmed you. And so the road to self-compassion for people with, you know, early family trauma can be slower. You know, it can take more time. You're dealing with more. But the good news is, especially if you have a good therapist, it's actually a really effective way to deal with, to heal from your early childhood wounds. It's kind of like you learn to re-parent yourself. And some people actually work with their child's self.

I mean, in some ways, that's what good therapy is, is helping you to have compassion for your wounds. So, you know, we have a saying, walk slowly, go farther, just take, you know, one step at a time. You don't want to traumatize yourself with self-compassion practice. Maybe if you try to be kind to yourself and you get really traumatic memories, you know, maybe just pet your cat as a way of like calming yourself that's not so activating. Right.

But really when it comes down to it, And from this perspective, you know, it's not like you've got to earn the right to compassion. The second, you know, a baby, if you saw a newborn baby, you wouldn't say, oh, I'm going to treat you like crap until you go to college or earn, you know, it's like, no, this is a newborn baby is intrinsically worthy of care and kindness. And, you know, in a way, we are all those newborn babies, right? So we're all human beings. It's really just part of being human. You don't have to earn it. the way you kind of might have to with something like self-esteem.

So it's an unconditional source of self-worth. And again, the voice is going to come up, but what if I do things that are bad or wrong? Does it mean your behavior is okay? It means you're okay. But if you care about yourself, you're going to try to do everything you can to have your behaviors be healthy and contribute

to your own well-being and that of others because the well-being of others also impacts you. I love that metaphor about the baby. I never thought about it that way. Yeah, you don't say like, okay, once you go to college, come back and then I'll treat you well. It's like it's instinctual. It's like, you know, just because we're conscious, that's where it comes from. How can I balance self-compassion with ambition and self-discipline? Yes. So again, it's kind of some people think they need to be hard on themselves to be ambitious or to have self-discipline.

It's actually not the case. And now it may change your ambition. So it's going to make your ambition be a healthier ambition, right? So if your ambition is to be perfect or to maybe be like a size zero when your body type is naturally a size nine or something like that, you may decide to change your goals, right? Because the goal is your eyes always on the prize and that's well-being. It's a desire to alleviate suffering. So if your ambitions actually aren't going to help you,

maybe they're unrealistic or maybe they aren't actually, they're too striving, so you may change your goals. But if you're an athlete, so self-compassion helps athletes. If you're an athlete, you want to be number one. That's like that's your goal. Not because you're inadequate unless you're number one, but just because you care and you want this for yourself and you want to experience this. So self-compassion enhances motivation.

So your standards, your aim isn't any lower. I mean, again, sometimes you may change your direction if you realize what you're aiming for isn't healthy. But if it's a healthy aim, your standards aren't any lower. lower, the only difference is what happens when you don't meet your ambition? What happens when you fall short? Well, if you shame yourself and you criticize yourself and you call yourself names, it's actually not going to really help. It's going to make you anxious, which is going to undermine your ability to meet your goals. It's going to make you afraid of failure, right? It may make you decide to give up. Like, shame is not exactly a get up and go mind state, right? So with self-compassion, it's like you do it

not to gain self-force. You do it just because you care. And which allows you to, first of all, learn from your failure. hugely key to grow. You've got to be able to learn from your failure. You've got to accept everyone fails. What can I learn from this? You know, you're less likely to be anxious or have fear of failure, which allows you to take risk. You're more likely to be supportive of yourself as you achieve your goals. So again, the research is very clear on this. It's a more effective motivator than self-criticism. But again, people don't really know that because they've never, they've never tried it. Right.

Yeah. How can I be more self-compassionate on bad body image days? Yeah, so there's a huge literature on self-compassion and body image, and it's really, really effective. Actually, I did, I had one student who did the study. She had women with body image concerns. Listen to the meditations on my website, which is freely available, self-compassion. org for three weeks, not only did it lower their body dissatisfaction, so to improve their body image, it also made their sense of self-worth less contingent on how they looked. So you kind of

shifted their sense of self-worth to something more unconditional, like I'm a flawed human being. That's why I'm worthy. So again, a lot of research is on this. So that's really what you're doing. It's mainly through this mechanism of contingent self-worth. So women, what we know for the research, sad but true, the number one thing we place our sense of self-worth, the thing that's most contingent on, is most dependent on is perceived attractiveness. It doesn't matter if you have a PhD or not. It's like ubiquitous. You know, for some women, it's more than others, but it's the number one thing.

By the way, it's also number one for men, but it's like kind of with men, it's kind of up there with things like being a good business, men, making money. For women, it's definitely number one. And by the way, we need to call out why is this? Because historically, a woman's worth was evaluated by her sexual attractiveness to a man. Our worth, we got to call it out. Where does this come from? Because of patriarchy. You know, that is their value.

You didn't really have a lot of value out of that. So in some ways, challenging that is kind of challenging the unfair system. But really what it does is it starts to shift yourself worth to something that's more unconditional. right it doesn't mean you're not going to try to be healthy or look your best or all that but your sense of self-worth isn't dependent on it right you need to see actually what's even more important is my body functioning well you know my healthy um you know how's my body working for me so what self-compassion practice does is it increases body appreciation which is more appreciating you know the health and well-being our bodies give us the fact that we can run and walk and dance and all these you know

our organs are working well. And so it switches your perspective in a way that's very helpful. And again, the research shows it's one of, it's very powerful for helping women, especially how their self-worth be just so contingent on what people think of us and objectifying. We're so objectified. We're just objects.

We're arm candy in movies. You know, no, I'm not going to be arm candy in movies. No more. And with social media. You know, it's hard. I got a lot of questions about that because we get addicted to external validation, I think. And that's contingent on how people look in a picture. I mean, it's a split second judgment that people make.

And there's filter. My friend, I mean, I love her. She's gorgeous, but she puts this filter on. It's like, she's 25 years younger. Yeah. And that's what people think she really looks like. She's still beautiful, but she's her age. She's 150.

She's not 25. You don't even know that because it's all filtered. There's a companion that I follow. who always says, I don't want to use a filter because I want people to be surprised when they see me at. How much better I look in person on the internet. Yeah, and that it's hard. It's something we really need to, we need to challenge.

That's where we need our fierce mama bear. Yeah. It's like, am I really going to let myself be manipulated that way? Am I really going to let my happiness be dependent on this? No, I'm not. Yeah. Damn it. You know, gang.

And also anger, I talk about anger, a force of self-compassion. When anger stands up to harm, you know, that's actually a force of compassion. And I think as a woman, we need to get angry at this. It's not okay. And a lot of it is done to like to sell products for, you know, commercialism. It's not okay. It's just not our word. This BS is bullshit. I'm going to say it. It's total bullshit. And we're sucked into it. And I think we do need to stand up to it. That's my own feeling. As a woman, he's 54 and like, it's starting to like, okay, it's downhill from here. You know, you really have to work with it.

And I've been working with it. It's so important that we pay attention to it. You know, our word that's our words grows with age. As we get wiser, more loving, we're able to, you know, make changes in the world. It doesn't go down just because we don't have the, you know, tight abs who may have once, you know, it's just not true. And we need to call it out. It's not true. Full stop.

That's for yourself, compassion. I love that. It's so important to talk about too because, you know, I'm in my mid-30s and there's kind of of this and living in L.A. and being a social media personality, whatever, all these things, you know, there's this expiration date. Like, well, after this, your worth goes down. Yeah. And it's very encouraging to hear from people that, you know, it does get better.

It gets so much better. It's not the end and it's and your worth is not dependent on this. It's not. And when you can really not only here's the kicker. So here I am. I'm actually single at 54. Not only is your worth not dependent on looking a certain way. Your worth is dependent even on having a relationship.

It's great if you have one. I mean, all four relationships, all that. But as women, we are conditioned to feel that our worth is dependent on having, if you're heterosexual, on having a man love us. Right. It's not. And talk about conditioning. This is our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers.

It used to be, we couldn't even own property on our bond. We couldn't vote. Our worth was literally dependent on a man. And part of going into this new era is challenging that. Is that true? You know, do I need a man to say, I love you? You're special? Or can I tell myself, I love you, you're special?

Or can I have my friends tell me that? You know what I mean? that's why it's kind of I'm so excited about it because I would consider myself a feminist or I really at least anti-patriarchy I don't believe in the impression of woman if that's the better way to say it and really if you really open to self-compassion you're also saying I'm not going to be oppressed anymore and I'm not going to collude in the process of mine oppression part of that is questioning the emphasis placed on body image the dependency on a relationship to feel like we have a place in society you know, it calls everything up in the air.

Right. And it really comes down to what do I need to be happy and well and whole and what does society need to be happy and well and whole? And if it's not serving that goal, you need to question it. Amazing. Well, where can everybody find your book, find you?

Well, it's June 15th. I'm not sure when this is going to air, but it comes out June 15th. And you can, of course, get it on Amazon, but also I love it when people support their local booksellers and other booksellers. Yeah, so it's going to be available. And I also have a fierce self-compassion page on my website, which is self-compassion.com. You'll find it, just Google it.

And I've got practices on there. So, again, you don't have to just take my word for it. You can try out some of these practices and see how that impacts you in your life. Well, thank you again so much. This was so fascinating. I love to talking to you. and yeah, everybody go get that book. We'll put a link here depending on when it comes out.

And rape again. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram, I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie.