Self-Compassion with Dr Kristin Neff: Part One

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Doun. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Today, I am so excited to bring you a conversation with a woman whose work I have long admired and which has had a huge impact on me personally and professionally. Doctor Christin Neff is a pioneer in the field of self compassion. During her final year of graduate school, while she was studying to be a psychologist, she became interested in Buddhism and began practicing meditation, and this was also when she first was introduced to this idea of compassion, and particularly self compassion. Later, while she was doing her postdoc work, she decided to conduct her research on self compassion, which is a central construct in Buddhist psychology, but it's one that hadn't yet been really studied empirically. She went on to create a scale to measure self compassion and has developed a whole lot of practices that we can use in our own lives to help us grow our own level of self compassion. Now, the reason I'm so passionate about this topic is because being kind to yourself, particularly when things aren't going well,

1:35 is something that. We're not very good at. We typically default to self criticism and that can have really significant, painful, and very real consequences to our physical and mental health. So doctor Neff explains why we do this, how we are wired for this self criticism, and importantly, how we can stop doing it. The most exciting thing for me is that this is the. First of two conversations that I'm having with doctor Kristin Nef. In this chat, we're really looking at the fundamentals of self compassion, and next week we'll be diving into a new idea of fierce self compassion and why women in particular can use self compassion to protect ourselves and reclaim our power and our voice. Today, here is my first of two conversations with doctor Kristin Nef. Doctor Kristin Nef, it is my absolute pleasure and honor to have you on the Crappy to Happy Podcast today. Thank you so much for making the time.

2:36 Oh thanks for having me, Cas, I'm really happy to be here with you. In my mind, you are the pioneer of this whole concept of self compassion and bringing self compassion from the sort of Buddhist philosophy into Western science and making it very real and relevant and practical to all of us. And I use it a lot in my work with women, So which is why I'm so thrilled to be able to talk to you directly. Let's just get to definitions best. So what what is self compassion? Right? So self compassion is basically just compassion turned inward. Right, So what is compassion, Well, it's in the Latin passion means to suffer, come, means with So it's a way of being with suffering. And so when we're with the suffering of others, there's a sense of warmth, of care and concern. You know, we're present with them, and we also have this desire, this impulse to help in some way, and so it's exactly the same thing with self compassion.

3:32 Again that turned inwards. So it's a desire to help ourselves to be well, to alleviate our suffering. To be there for ourselves and kindness, acceptance, and support. And I'm interested for you to share. How did you first come across this idea of self compassion and realize how important it was? Right? Well, So it was my last year of graduate school. I was going to University of California at Berkeley, and basically I was a basket case, right. I'd just got a divorce and it was really messy divorce, feeling a lot of shame, a lot of inadequacy, a lot of a sense of failure. And I was also under a lot of pressure and stress about my studies. So I was about to finish up my PhD with absolutely no prospect of a job, right after seven years of devoting my life. And so I thought I had heard that mindfulness meditation was good for stress. And believe it or not, it was Berkeley. I don't know if you know about Berkeley, but it's like a hippie town and there was there was like meditation groups everywhere, and just down the street from me was a meditation group that taught in the tradition of a Vietnamese zen teacher called Tikna Han. So I went to the group. You know, I didn't really know what to expect, but they were Buddhists, so I thought they would talk, you know, about mindfulness, and I also kind of expected they would talk about compassion, because you know, Buddhists talk about compassion. But what really surprised me is the woman leading the group talked primarily about self compassion, about how we needed to actively explicitly give

5:04 ourselves kindness, warm support, especially when we're really struggling, which I was. And I was like, wow, you mean you're allowed to be nice to yourself? Is that going to make you like lazy or self indulgent or is it a bad thing? But she was talking about how compassion and from the Buddhist perspective of course self another we're all intertwined, We're all part of this larger, interconnected hole, so it doesn't only make sense to give compassion outward and not also inward. So I tried it out and I was really just blown away by the immediate, Like that night, almost immediately, the ability had to help me cope.

5:45 I mean, the mindfulness meditation took a while, that was a little abstract, a little strange, but just being kind to myself and being more understanding and really, you know, treating myself like I would treat a good friend. It almost immediately made it easier for me to cope with all the difficulties I was going through. And so that's really how I got hooked. It was personal practice. And then it wasn't until a few years later that I actually did research on AM was like, I did get a real job luckily. So yeah, and gosh, there has been so much research in the years since. Was that maybe twenty years ago. Believe it or not? Yeah, so well, I actually started researching did twenty years ago. I published the first paper on in two thousand and three, So it's a wow.

6:30 It's been a long time, another almost four thousand studies, so it's really mind blowing. It's amazing. I'm curious to know when you first learned about that, what did you experience some resistance to that, because so many people that I talked to really struggle with this whole idea, as it sounds like you did, with being kind to themselves. Right, Yeah, So, I mean, especially as a woman in her culture, were raised to be other focused and it's all about self sacrifice and you know, self compassion. Wasn't that just again being self indulgent or was that going to make me narcissistic? And I had all these normal fears about what it might do to me, or that maybe wasn't a good thing. But I suppose what really convinced me was just that again, the effect it had on me. I noticed that instead of being self indulgent or just letting myself off the hook, I noticed that the kinder I was to myself, the more able I was able to take responsibility for some of the problems I had caused my personal life, or or responsibility for my work and making sure I did what I needed to get a job. And I was really really surprised again by how much easier it made things. And it wasn't easier like you don't have to worry anything about anything because I was worried. It was more like I'm here for you, I got your back. And once I changed that mindset instead of shame and blame, which is not exactly very helpful, when I left, when I got rid of the shame and and I went toward the

8:01 encouragement and support and understanding, I found I could take again more responsibility for myself and what I'd done. I was more motivated to again look for a job. Really, I just saw only positive benefits and that's why I was so convinced. And then what had happened actually is the very first job I got Before at U T Austin, I did two years of postdoctoral study with a woman who was one of the countries leading self esteem researchers because I was kind of interested in the self and Buddhism and all that, And it was while I was working with her that I started to learn about all the research on the negative sides of self esteem. So it's not a problem to have self esteem, but most people get their self esteem in an unhealthy way, right, Either they had to be special and above average or better than other people, or their self esteem is contingent, right, it depends on whether or not they're popular, or they look the way they want to look, or they succeed it was important to them. And then when they fail or they get rejected, right, or they're told God forbid their average at something, they're devastated and the self esteem leaves them. So I was learning about the problems of self esteem, and in my personal life, I was practicing self compassion and that I thought, wow, you know, this is a perfect alternative to self esteem because it's a way to feel worthy and feel good about yourself. But it's not for being better than others or forgetting it right.

9:29 It's simply because you're a flat human being, worthy of kindness and compassion like everyone else. It's much more sustainable over time. And then when I got my real job University of Texas at Austin, I decided, hey, I want to research this, so the rest is history. Really, that's really interesting. I'm glad that you brought up that distinction between self esteem because for so many of us at that time and maybe even still to some degree, there's this huge focus on that's the most important thing is to have a healthy self esteem. That's right. I even get a bit confused about the definition of that, Like, yeah, I had never considered until I came across your work that self esteem was potentially not a great thing, that there was this sort of almost an an unconscious comparison with others, sort of checking how you going against other people.

10:20 Absolutely, I mean so self esteem itself is good. It's good to have a sense of value because we're all valuable, and it's certainly unhealthy to hate yourself or have low self esteem. So against self esteem, a sense of worth is good, but how do you get your self esteem? So usually when people say esteem, it's like a judgment. I judge myself to be a good person or a bad person. Self compassion is not about judging yourself. It's not your own evaluating yourself at all. It's just like, hey, I'm inherently intrinsically worthy of kindness because I'm a human being like everyone else. So self esteem. Again, you might have an unconditional sense of self esteem, but most people don't.

11:00 Most people get it again from being successful or looking a certain way. Actually for a woman especially, you know, our perceived attractiveness is so huge, or you know, be good at work or whatever is if you're an athlete, being good at sports, whatever is important to you. And for that reason, it's contingent and it's unstable. Right. And then also the social comparison thing, this thing, I mean, how would I say if, oh, you know, yeah, your podcast it's average. I mean, admit it. You'd be heard if you said, Kristen, your self compassion work is average. I'd be like, oh, true, it's not okay to be average. So true and because of that, Because our self esteem comes from being better than others at some level, it really sets up some nasty social comparisons. I mean, for instance, some bullying. We know from the research that one of the reason reasons young kids start to bully others is to boost their self esteem so they feel like the cool kid compared to the nerdy kid, or even prejudice.

11:59 I mean, part of the reason we cling so tightly to our particular groups is because we want to feel good about ourselves because we're a group member that's better than your group. Yeah. True, So it can really be unhealthy, so true if we aren't careful. So self compassion. Self compassion is a source of self esteem, but it's an unconditional, a healthy source of self esteem. You might say. When you first dug into better understand this concept of self compassion, I mean, how did you go about that? How did you bring this to a research study? Right? So the first thing I had to do was define it, to come up with a good operational definition. You know, so just being a good friend to yourself like wasn't specific enough. So I actually did a lot of research into really compassion for others is where I started, and I realized that compassion has three core components. The first is actually mindfulness. You know, there's a lot of talk about mindfulness, but mindfulness is the ability to be present with what is, to kind of accept this is the way things are in the moment, you know this is happening, to be aware of it and not suppress it or fight it. And often when we suffer, when things are bad, we don't want to accept it. We either want to fight it, like we just totally resist it, or we put our head in the sand and we don't acknowledge it. So maybe you're feeling sad, or feeling grief or feeling stressed. Sometimes it's like I'm just going to stiff up a little bit. I'm just not going to pay any attention to it. And if we aren't aware of the fact that we're struggling, we can't be a good friend to ourselves. We can't say, hey, what

13:29 do you need? How can I help if we aren't even aware of what we're going through in the moment. So that's actually kind of the first step of self compassion. And then of course it means responding with kindness, care and warmth as opposed to what's more typical for most people actually, which is responding with you know, criticism or shame or blame. And by the way, we do that because we think somehow it's going to help us if we beat ourselves up, somehow we'll prevent ourselves from making mistakes or it will help us deal with things. So it kind of comes from a good intention, but it's not very helpful. So with self compassion, we are helpful, right, we are kind, supportive, warm, And then really importantly what makes it compassion and not pity is a sense of connectedness to other people. So you would probably not like it if I pitied you. You probably might like it if I had compassion for something you were going through.

14:24 And the difference is pity is looking down as like says the separation between me and you. Compassion is hey, I've been there, And so self compassion the same thing. Self pity is woe is me? Just feeling sorry for yourself and somehow you're suffering. Is special and unique and the only one in the world right where self compassion is hey, everyone struggles, everyone's imperfect. And it's so key because normally, not only are we suffering and struggling when we feel all alone. When we feel isolated from others, it makes it so much worse. But if we're remind hey, you know, the human experience is about struggle, It's about making mistakes. This is normal. There's nothing wrong with me because I'm struggling in the moment. Then it really helps support us and it makes things not so overwhelming.

15:14 So they are the three the mindfulness, self kindness, and common humanity. Yeah yeah, oh yeah. So I didn't finish my story. So then so I defined it and then I developed a measure of it. I created a measure that's kind of had items like you know, when I when I struggle, I tend to be kind to myself, right, I tend to feel like everyone else is having an easier time of it. Right. So I just created items that measured the construct. And then we started doing research and we found that, I mean, really, the research is overwhelming, and it just just shows that people who are more self compassionate. And by the way, it's not just done with the scale. Now we might train people to be more self compassionate, or we might have people write a paragraph with mindfulness, a paragraph of common humanity, a paragraph of kindness, and see that changes their behavior. Right, So those are the most common ways we do the research, and what we find is people they're much more able to deal with their difficult emotions, right, They don't become so overwhelmed, they don't ruminate, they're so depressed, they aren't so anxious, They're happier, they're more able to function in life, they're more satisfied with their lives. So it reduces negative mind states and it really enhances positive, healthy ones.

16:25 It's amazing you did a really good job of describing why we become so self critical, because I think that's a really key question, isn't it, Like why are we so inclined to that harsh self judgment and self flagellation for every little thing? Yeah, And I mean part of that is cultural, because some cultures encourage it more than others, Right, So we kind of we think it's a good thing to be heard on ourselves. That's part of it. But there's also just some plain, I think, physiological reasons why so hard on ourselves. So for instance, if I fail and make a mistake, I feel threatened, right, and especially my self concept is really threatened, and part of me feels like, oh my god, you know, this is the worst thing that ever happened. I failed. What's going to happen to me?

17:13 So I get very scared. So I go into fight flight or freeze mode, and so I fight the problem, which is myself because I made a mistake. So I beat myself up again, thinking somehow that will force me to be better next time, so I won't be under threat. Or am I flee in shame? I kind of, you know, I think I hang my head in shame compared to the perceived judgments of others, Like we kind of withdraw and shame thinking that I'll keep us safe from the judgments of others, or we freezing, get stuck, We go over and over in our head. Now, when you make a mistake, I actually don't feel so personally threatened. So I'm less likely to go into threat defense mode, and I'm more likely to use another system we have, which is the caregiving mode. It's called the tendon the friend response. Right, So we also feel safe when we feel connected and close to others, when we're connected to other people in groups.

18:09 And so it's easier for me if you have the care response for you than myself, because again, the systems really evolved, the care response evolved for other people, the threat defense response evolve more to keep ourselves safe. Almost like we're doing a little hat, we're doing a little workaround with our nervous system, and we're using the care response, which is normally toward others, toward ourselves. But it's not entirely natural, and that's all we have to practice it. But you know, again, we don't need to like beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up because we're just trying to stay safe. It's just not very effective. Unfortunately, that's a really good point that you might because I think it's also a common response when people start to realize the benefit of self compassion and then they realize that not being self compassionate, they start to get self critical of it, criticism.

19:00 About yes, why can't it was another I had someone send me an email once thanks for giving me telling me one more thing. I'm bad at. I'm like, oh no, that's misappointing, you know, but it's natural. So first is my son. You'd think he would be so self compassionate because I've been talking to him about it his whole life, but he's still very self critical. Partly it is because he has autism, and I think in some ways it's it's kind of his his reactions are just more exaggerated, but they're very, very normal, And I know what happens is he gets scared and he really thinks that somehow beating himself up will help him be in control and reduces anxiety. And so it's you know, even though his whole life he's learned about self compassion, it still isn't totally natural for him. So, you know, we have to be kind to ourselves and be kind to our self. Critic is just trying to keep us safe. Yeah, and then we can start listening to this other voice, which is one of care and kindness.

19:56 Yeah. It's really important though, isn't it to understand that this there's so much kind of instinct in that protecting ourselves from rejection and shame and anything that we perceive is going to get us ostracized from the tribe. You know, it's all this wiring that's you know, pretty deeply embedded. It's really ancient wiring. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So again it's part of the process. But there is another way. The research shows actually it's not that difficult to be kind to ourselves. And you know, for people like with early family trauma, it is more difficult because you may have been told you aren't worthy of kindness, and so sometimes it does need to be worked through. But it's not like mindfulness meditation where you need to learn to like, you know, come to a state of somebody or something like that. It's doing what we already know how to do, which is to be a good supportive from We already know how to do it to others. So it's really just more a matter of giving ourselves permission to do it with ourselves as opposed to learning some new skill.

20:57 We already have the skill, we just need to use it with ourselves. It's interesting, you know, because I am trained in my NBCTA Mindfulness Space Cognitive Therapy, and so I was all about the mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. Still am really all about the mindfulness. Yeah, but mindfulness is key. There's nothing without mindfulness. Right, exactly right. And I used to say the foundation of everything is you've got to start with mindfulness. And I think it was only later that I really realized there's if you're going to get present with this stuff, that's really hard and painful and uncomfortable. Then that's pretty challenging unless you really actively work on the self compassion. Yes, right, because and I now I'm all about self compassion. Self compassion, Yeah, yes, it involves mindfulness, but I think I find that even more important.

21:43 Well, it's funny, there's some research that shows that if you teach people a little bit of self compassion before teaching them how to meditate, for instance, that it actually helps them learn mindfulness. Interesting because when they're mind drifts or they notice they're really bad at this there and so hard on themselves and they can focus more. So the two really do work together. Yeah. And of course at some level it's just open heart mind and everything's just open. But while you're getting there, the explicit warmth is so key. So you know, just putting your hand on your heart can be so life changing in terms of your ability to cope with a difficult moment. Something as simple as that can make a huge difference.

22:24 I used to run some workshops. I haven't done one for a long time COVID, but you know, used to run some mindfulness workshops and do this meditation, which is you know, turning towards difficulty, which is this practice of being able to sit with discomfort, which, as you mentioned, we're really bad at. We want to deny it and avoid it and not look at it, turn away from it. And so, you know, sitting with discomfort and then asking people to just put a hand on that part of their body where they feel that difficult or painful emotion, and people would just cry like they're so unaccustomed to sending any sort of kindness or friendliness to themselves. I mean, it's. Really anybody listening to this, you need to do it next time you've struggling with a difficult, difficult emotion, you know, just stop and put a hand on your own heart or on your belly or some way, you know, send yourself some kindness.

23:18 It's life changing for people, just like when. A friend you know reaches out and put holds your hand or puts your arm around you and says, I'm so sorry this is so hard for you. You know, we know the incredible power that has, but what we don't know is that we can also do that for ourselves. Yeah, and again, usually we're just in survival mode, which is understandable. If we're a good friend to ourselves, that actually helps us survive it's much more effective. It's much more efficient. It helps us calm down, we think better, We've got more clarity, it helps us not be so overwhelmed by the difficulties of life, which is part of the reason it's so powerful for mental and physical health. Right For instance, people who are more self compassionate, they have better immune function sick less often. It is because, of course, the mind the bardi are connected. So the more safe and secure we feel, the better are barty functions as well, so it's good for all sorts of reasons. We also sleep better.

24:16 I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you apps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review. One thing I do want to ask you to talk a bit more about is the link between self compassion and goal achievement. You know somebody who's really striving to. Achieve big things in life, they need to be driven and ambitious and motivated. I think those are the people who really experience burnout and overwhelm and find it really difficult to be cond to themselves because they're the ones who think, no, that would just be letting myself off the whole. Can you talk a little bit about why self compassion is important for those people exactly?

25:09 So, self compassion enhances motivation and is the more effective motivator than self criticism. So self compassion isn't just giving yourself a break. Sometimes you need a break, but sometimes if you want to be good to yourself, you want to help yourself. Actually you need to work a little harder sometimes, right, So who knows, it just depends where you are. But the reason you work hard is not because you're an adequate as you are, but because you care about yourself and you want to reach your goals. You want to fulfill your potential. And that kind encouraging stance, that idea of you know, I've got your backup here for you, what can I do to help? It's actually much more effective than you better get that right or else you're a stupid fool, you know. It's like that harsh the whip driver, so to speak, creates anxiety. Also, the big problem with using self critical system is a motivator is it makes it more difficult to learn from failure.

26:04 First of all, we don't want to admit we failed because we're so harsh on ourselves. We'd rather blame someone else if we can get away with it, and if we can't avoid that truth. It's like, you know, when we shame ourselves, it shuts down our ability to learn, whereas when we have self compassion, it's like ooh ooh, that failure hurt out Well, okay her, but it does happen to everyone. It's part of being human. We fail and make mistakes. It's part of life. What can I learn from this? What might I do better next time? Yeah? Right? And the ability to learn from our failures is part of the reason self compassion is such an effective motivator and actually helps us achieve our goals more easily because we can learn from our failures and that sense of encouragement and support keeps us going as opposed to just draining us or burning us out.

26:52 Yes, I'm a psychologist in a very popular online health and fitness program for women here in Australia, and my role is the psychologist is to help with you know, managing life and stress. And motivation and mood and mindset and mindfulness. Et cetera. And again here's a whole bunch of women who are you know, working on adopting a healthier lifestyle and the self judgment and the self criticism. So we work a lot on self compassion in that community. But again there's this idea. Like if I go off the rails and I eat all of this, you know, junk food, or I eat the whole cake, you know, how can you tell me to be kind to myself? Like that's obviously really bad behavior and obviously it's not supporting me to achieve my goals.

27:35 I mean, how do we encourage them in that moment. To see they're assuming kindness just means indulgence. Right, So a parent, you love your child unconditionally, even when they do something that's not healthy. But if you love your child, you don't say eat all the cake you want or whatever. Right, you don't see a skip school and you're retired this morning. It's a very similar thing. So we've we will try to help ourselves eat well. There's research shows people eat better, they exercise more. Right, So if if it's not healthy, it's not self compassion. Yeah, good by definition, because compassion is about the alleviation, alleviation of suffering. So people just have very kind of limited notions of what self compassion means.

28:21 That it's just giving yourself a break. Again. Maybe it's like, hey, I really want you to be better, feel better in your body. I really want you to get more fit, I want you to be healthy. And therefore, really please don't eat that chocolate cake. It's not it's going to make you unhappy, You're going to regret it. Let's have let's do something else instead, and again, just like you would to a child or anyone you cared about, exactly. And I think that's a really that's a really great example using that kind of kind parent approach with ourselves that compassionate. You know, we can set boundaries with ourselves, but in a very kind and loving way because it's in our own best interests. It's like, what what does it come from? Does it come from care or does it come from fear. That's the big difference. The motivation of self criticism comes from fear, I will be inadequate unless I get it right. The motivation of compassion comes from care. I want to do my best because I care and want to be happy, and it's a much more sustainable motivation. Like I say so, Just as an example, research shows that usually when people are trying to lose weight and they blow their diet, they usually eat more afterward because they beat themselves up.

29:29 You know, I can't do it, so I'm just gonna have found my sorrows and eating. Where self compassionate people, they're more able to say, oh, well, blue my diet, It's okay, I'll just start again, So they're more able to stick to their goals. Yeah, so the self compassionate approach is much more likely to get them back on track and moving towards their goals than any kind of shaming or self criticism. This is a very important point exactly. Yeah, Kristen. So somebody's realizing, okay, this is really important for I'm really bad at this, I'm sorry, haush and judgmental of myself. How do I start, Like. How do I begin to practice this self compassion thing? Do I just talk content to myself? That feels really often awkward to me? What do I do right?

30:13 Right? So, first just to bring awareness to how do you relate to yourself? So if you're interested, you Actually, you can take the self compassion test on my website. If you go there, you can take a get a score that may give you some idea, or you can just think about it. You know, if you fail or make a mistake or something's difficult, just notice how you speak to yourself and ask yourself, when I say this in this way to a friend? And if not, then it probably means you could use being a little more self compassionate. But again, the good news is is you already know how to do it. You already know how to be compassionate to others most likely, right, if you're an adult, you've probably figured that one out. So you can just say, well, what would I say to a good friend I cared about in this situation? Right, And then you say something similar to yourself in the same tone, So it's language. I'm also, again, as we as we mentioned, touch is so huge because touch works at the level of physiology. It actually reduces sympathetic activity and increases parasympathetic activity, right, so it reduces cortisol makes us feel safer physically, because if you think about it, the primary way parents communicate to their infants that they care before they speak is to touch, so our bodies respond to touch instinctively by feeling cared for and feeling calmer and safer, more connected.

31:36 So you can use touch, you can use kind language. And then there's also a lot of resources now, right, So I've got books, I've got free stuff on my website, there's training courses, i mean, all mindfulness training. One of the good effects is that it raises self compassion, so that there really are a lot of resources. The good thing is it's not rocket science, right, It's not some tricky appstra. You don't have to get in a state of like quiet mind. You just have to be warm and kind to yourself, just like you would be to a friend. Yeah, but it can feel awkward, it definitely. It's not natural. It's not necessarily naturally natural evolutionarily, So it does feel awkwards. You've got to get through that bump.

32:17 But after a while it starts feeling normal. It takes practice, and you're right, it's not natural evolutionarily is that a word. But it's also just it goes against often a lifetime of conditioned yes thinking, doesn't it Like it's just changing those old habits. Changing those old habits and questioning them, right, really asking yourself, is it true? Is it really going to harm me? If I'm kind to myself, And then you can just try it out for yourself and see what's the impact. And most people, again are so surprised at how helpful it is for them to cope with difficulty, difficult emotions, difficult situations. It makes you feel stronger, it makes you feel more empowered, it makes you feel safer. It's I don't know how I would have gotten through COVID without it, for instance. And there's a lot of research that showed people with more self compassion did get through COVID better. Wow, they were less anxious about it, they were able to see maybe the gifts of it, they were less likely to turn to eating, for instance, as a way to deal with the stress of it. So this is real life stuff. It's not theoretical moment to moment. The more supportive you are towards yourself, the better you will be in terms of your ability to coping it through difficult times.

33:31 Yeah. I do often get people to take your self compassion scale, and people score terribly, So that is a really good first point. Just get real about how low your self compassion likely is and good for you if it's not, if you've actually already been working on this, But for most people that go, wow, like it's quite confronting how how low their level of self compassion is. The other thing is that you have on your website and exercise which is a self compassion letter. Yes, like write yourself a letter from like a compassionate friend. I often ask people to do that as well. And let me tell you they actively avoid it. Yes, they will do anything procrastinate.

34:15 Is that your experience too, that people will just they really struggle to do this exercise? Yeah, well it does kind of depend on the person. But so sometimes it just feels awkward. There's cultural messages that it somehow hurts and flowers, or that it's going to make me soft. For other people, though, self compassion can be a little frightening, especially let's say if your parents were very critical. Is what happens is we start to give ourselves unconditional love and acceptance, and we immediately open the door to all those memories of not being unconditionally loved or accepted. So sometimes it can be activating for some people. We actually say it can help to do this work with the therapist, especially if you have an early trauma history, so you know people are different, but some people are more resistant to it, and it maybe partly because there's some fears. It's almost like the care system gets intermixed with the fear system if your caregivers weren't consistently kind and supportive to you, And in that case it may be helpful to get some help as you do it.

35:21 That's a really good point. I'm glad that you mentioned that. I was going to ask you earlier when you mentioned early trauma whether there is any research about self compassion being kind of healing. I imagine it would be. But absolutely it can be very, very healing. It's a way of kind of reparenting yourself. But on the other hand, it sometimes you need to go more slowly, and sometimes it really helps to have a therapist or so on train to help you deal with the difficult emotions that come up. A lot of people when they practice self compassion and all this old pain comes up, they think they're doing it wrong. They're actually doing it right. They're just kind of opening the door of their hearts and all this pain starts coming up that maybe was hidden or stuffed away, but it does mean, you have to do it compassionately. You don't want to like re traumatize yourself.

36:07 You need to go slowly. Sometimes maybe you're doing one of the exercises like the Self Compassionate Letter. If it's too intense, then maybe just having a cup of tea is actually the kindest thing you can do for yourself in the moment. It's really the attitude, the mindset. What do I need in this moment to be well? And they're trying to give yourself that, but at pausing to ask yourself the question is the number one thing? Yeah. The other thing that comes up for some people that I've talked to is almost like a grief at how long they have spent being so hot on themselves, like what they've denied themselves. It's like a real sense of loss. Yeah, And it is said, you know, that's partly who I've devoted my life to this, you know, all the unnecessary suffering, because I mean, life's hard enough, and we make it so much worse with our self criticism and our shame. Yeah, and we kind of we need to have that grief. We need to feel the pain of how we've treated it ourselves so that we can be motivated to try a different way. Yeah, we want to be aware of what we're doing to ourselves. We don't want to just think it's normal and go numb, because if we go numb, then we continue to harm ourselves.

37:18 And Kristin, you have just put out a new book called Fierce Self Compassion, How Women can harness kindness to speak up, claim their power and thrive, which I am still halfway through, and I am loving and this is a whole different, more well fearce approach to this idea of self kindness. And I am so thrilled that you have agreed to come back and have another conversation to dive into fierce self compassion. So I'm going to hold that off until our next chat. And I just want to say thank you so much for the time that you have spent today. I'm so grateful. It's a bit of pleasure. Thank you. Kristin is the author of the book Self Compassion, The Proven Power of being kind to Yourself, and this year she released her new book, Fierce Self Compassion, How Women can harness kindness to speak up, claim their power and thrive.

38:13 If this is a topic that. Is of interest to you, you might be interested to know that. In conjunction with her colleague doctor Chris Germa, doctor nef also developed a training program called Mindful Self Compassion, which is taught around the world. They co authored the Mindful Self Compassion Workbook and the Teaching Mindful Self Compassion Program, which is a guide for therapists. She's also co founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self Compassion. If you'd like to find out all about. Her work, and she has a whole lot of resources and exercises and her self Compassion Scale, It's all on her website self dashcompassion dot org. I hope that you will join us next week for the second installment of My conversation with doctor Christen nev All about fear, self compassion and particularly the circumstances that led her to writing this book. Now it's a book about how we can use self compassion to set boundaries, be brave, and stand up for the things that matter most. If you enjoy the show, please, as always, think about leaving a five star rating and a positive review on Apple Podcasts, hit the subscribe button or follow if you're listening on Spotify.

39:21 That is how the show achieves. A higher ranking and attracts new listeners, and I cannot wait to bring you part two of my conversation with Kristin Neff on the next episode of Crappy to Happy Listener