Kristin Neff - Why We Need Self-Compassion

Kristin Neff is the author of "Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself", and is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion. She teaches several courses, including one with Brene Brown that examines why we’re always our toughest critic. Kristen gives us tools to be kinder to ourselves and teaches us why this is so important.

Transcript

Welcome to Untangle.

I'm your host,

Patricia Karpis.

We're hoping that your meditation practice is giving you exactly what you need to be more calm,

Grounded,

Resilient,

And hopeful as we live through these uncertain times.

I honestly don't know what I would do without my meditation practice.

Today's Encore is an interview I did with Kristin Neff a few years ago.

She's an associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin in the Department of Educational Psychology.

She's also a pioneer in the field of self-compassion.

Kristin gives us tools to be kinder to ourselves and teaches us why this is so important.

I thought this might be a great topic to think about as we begin the year.

I'm hoping we can take good care of each other and ourselves.

Now here's Kristin.

Welcome to Untangle.

I'm so happy to have you here today.

Oh,

Thank you,

Patricia.

Happy to be here.

Yeah,

I love your work.

You've done such incredible stuff.

And I just,

For our audience,

I just think this first paragraph in your book was so interesting.

It starts like this.

In this incredibly competitive society of ours,

How many of us truly feel good about ourselves?

It seems like such a fleeting thing,

Feeling good,

Especially as we need to feel special or above average to feel worthy.

Anything else seems like a failure.

Tell me a little bit about that and what led you to really do this work on self-compassion.

Yeah.

So I started practicing self-compassion when I started learning mindfulness meditation actually my last year in graduate school at UC Berkeley.

And then I did two years of postdoctoral study with one of the country's leading self-esteem researchers and I started really becoming familiar with all the research showing the downsides of self-esteem.

It's not a downside of having high self-esteem,

But of pursuing it,

Trying to get it,

The shenanigans we go through,

Trying to feel good about ourselves compared to others.

And so I kind of thought that while I was practicing self-compassion and seeing the incredible benefits of my personal life,

And I just thought this is such a healthier way to think about how to relate to yourself positively than self-esteem.

So that's kind of really what gave me the,

You might say,

The confidence to actually start researching self-compassion.

But what's wrong with self-esteem?

So many parents today want their children to have self-esteem and self-confidence.

Tell us a little bit about the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion.

Right.

So there's absolutely nothing wrong with self-esteem,

Feeling you're a person of worth and value.

And we definitely want people to have a sense of high worth as opposed to hating themselves and that's the well-being and that goes to that question.

Really the problem is how people go about getting their high self-esteem.

So for most people,

Self-esteem involves a process of social comparison,

Right?

So I mean,

Again,

If I said,

Patricia,

Your podcast,

Yeah,

It's average,

You know,

How would you feel?

You probably wouldn't feel very good about that evaluation,

Right?

That's just kind of the way the system is stacked against us.

We all have to feel above average,

At least in those areas that are important to us,

To feel like that's just like baseline minimum self-esteem.

And so we're always comparing ourselves to others.

If someone else does something better than we do,

We often feel inadequate in comparison.

The other really big problem with self-esteem is that it tends to be contingent.

In other words,

We only have self-esteem when we succeed and we lose it when we fail.

So you know,

When things are going well for us,

Sure,

We like ourselves,

We feel we have value.

But what happens when we fail or we blow that big job assignment or we get rejected?

As soon as we fail,

Our self-esteem deserts us,

Which is actually precisely when we need that self-confidence the most.

Self-compassion,

It's not about judging yourself positively.

It's not saying I'm a good person or I'm better than other people or I'm always great.

It's just about relating to yourself kindly.

So there is a sense of self-worth inherent in self-compassion,

But the self-worth comes from just being a flawed human being,

You know,

Worthy like all other flawed human beings as opposed to necessarily succeeding or being better than others.

So you know,

We've done research showing the sense of self-worth linked to self-compassion is much more stable over time than just a simple self-worth of judging yourself positively.

But how did we get in this culture to a place where we are so critical of ourselves and where we need to study something like self-compassion,

Where it's not a natural characteristic?

I'm not convinced that it's just a Western cultural phenomena.

I mean,

I think definitely it's hard in the West because there's so much pressure to compete and succeed.

Same thing in East Asian cultures where there's a lot of pressure to succeed and compete.

But I also think there are some natural reasons why we tend to jump to self-criticism immediately.

And that's basically that when we feel inadequate in some way or we fail at something,

We feel threatened.

And when we feel threatened,

We naturally have the threat defense response,

Right?

We want to attack the situation,

Get rid of the problem so we feel safe again.

Unfortunately,

When the problem is ourselves,

When we attack the threat,

We actually attack ourselves.

So I really do think at some level,

Our tendency to be self-critical is really a desire to keep ourselves safe.

So I don't think necessarily that self-criticism is unnatural.

It's just that it takes over the system.

We have other ways of feeling safe,

And that is the safety that stems from feeling we belong,

Feeling good about ourselves,

Feeling connected to others,

Kind of the attachment system,

Right?

Feeling loved and valued.

And when we can derive our sense of safety,

Not from being perfect or being without threat,

But from just supporting ourselves,

Caring for ourselves,

It's really a much more stable way to stay safe.

And do you think that many people have looked for this from other people versus from themselves?

Yeah,

I think that's natural.

I mean,

We know that human beings evolve the capacity to feel compassion.

Our brains are wired for compassion.

That is part of our biology,

But it seems to have evolved more feeling for others,

Right?

And that may be just because self-concept is a later development in human evolution.

Who knows what exactly?

But it seems like to have compassion for ourselves,

What we're doing is kind of doing some second order processing and actually applying this feeling that we kind of more naturally feel for others to ourselves.

And so the problem is many people don't do that,

Right?

They're very kind and compassionate to others,

But in fact,

They're very harsh to themselves.

Do you think that there's a risk of people becoming narcissistic or is that more tied to self-esteem characteristics?

People are really afraid of that.

Even some Buddhists don't like the word self-compassion because it has the S word.

Isn't the self the problem?

Isn't it a self-focus?

And it's really exactly the opposite.

I actually define self-compassion as having three main components.

One is being kind to yourself as opposed to harshly judgmental,

Remembering that our common humanity that life is imperfect.

All people are imperfect as opposed to feeling isolated in our imperfection and mindfulness.

Being mindful of when we're suffering as opposed to what I call being over identified or kind of lost in the storyline of our suffering fused with it.

Self-compassion does not mean feeling superior to others.

It just means acknowledging that all human beings are imperfect and doing the best they can.

And do you think this is one of the big challenges for most of us?

And then a follow-up question would be,

How do we learn self-compassion?

If we haven't learned it as a child,

How do we learn these skills as an adult?

There are very strong cultural blocks to self-compassion.

It's not really talked about or we aren't raised with the idea that this is a good thing.

So one block is the idea that it's narcissistic or self-centered.

We're taught to focus on others,

Not ourselves.

So that's a block.

Another big block is that it's going to undermine our motivation.

We think if we're kind to ourselves,

We won't try hard.

We'll just like accept second best.

We won't reach our goals.

And what's really interesting is all the research now clearly shows that the exact opposite is the case.

People are self-compassionate.

They're more likely to take care of themselves.

They aren't self-indulgent.

They're more likely to be motivated to reach their goals because they're less afraid of failure because it's safe to fail.

Actually self-compassion is one of the absolutely strongest,

Most powerful sources of resilience we have.

What we do know kind of responds to your second question is that even though most people aren't really naturally very self-compassionate,

It's not like a culturally valued trait that absolutely can be learned.

I've been really surprised by the way people can learn self-compassion and sustain it.

It's kind of just that initial shift in mindset and then developing this new habit pattern.

But how do we learn it?

If you were to tell our audience like,

Are there five steps you could take to either be kinder to yourself or how you would deal with difficult emotions to become more emotionally resilient?

Yeah.

Good.

I've been very interested in and spent lately disseminating and teaching the mindful self-compassion program that my colleague Chris Germer and I developed,

Which is an eight week training program very similar to mindfulness based stress reduction and structure,

But actually that has a ton of meditations and practices and ways to develop the habit of self-compassion.

The biggest tool people have available to them is they know how to be compassionate to others.

They know that when a close friend comes to them and is feeling bad about themselves or upset,

Most of us have experience knowing what to say,

How to be supportive,

How to be understanding and empathetic,

What tone do you use,

Maybe giving someone a hug.

So all we really need to do is remember,

Give ourselves permission to treat ourselves the same way.

So very simply,

If you let's say you failed at something,

You failed on a big work assignment,

You can just simply ask yourself,

Well,

What if I had a close friend who this happened to?

What would I say?

How would I say it?

What would I use?

And then you can say that same thing for yourself.

And it does feel a little awkward at first.

I got to admit it.

You know,

We aren't used to talking ourselves this way,

But after a while it does become a habit again.

So it's not like we have to reinvent the wheel.

We just have to take the wheel out of our back pocket and use it with ourselves.

Yeah.

We're turning something that we do with other people back towards ourselves to nurture and self-soothe.

And you talk about it really having a big impact on stress,

Anxiety,

Depression,

And takes away some of our personal suffering.

How does that work actually?

So you can imagine when a difficult situation arises,

And so you're depressed,

You're fearful,

You're angry,

You're sad,

Whatever it is,

When you hold the painful emotions and loving connected presence,

The first thing it does is it calms and soothes and comforts yourself,

Right?

It's like instead of just feeling the suffering,

We're also feeling the loving connected presence that's holding the suffering.

And then of course these are actually ironically positive emotions we're generating in the face of suffering.

Compassion we know in the brain is a positive emotion.

So what seems to be happening is it helps us bear negative experiences.

It doesn't make them go away,

But it makes them bearable.

We're there for ourselves,

We're with ourselves as we go through it.

At the same time,

We're generating this positive emotion that has all sorts of benefits in terms of giving us more perspective,

Allowing us to see more possible ways to resolve situations.

So I think that's really why it's so powerful because it doesn't try to resist negative emotions.

It doesn't try to force them to go away.

And we know from all the mindfulness research that that doesn't work.

It's kind of holding ourselves with this really connected loving stance as we mindfully accept our situation.

And that seems to be,

I think the extra power of self-compassion because as human beings,

We are programmed to respond to warmth and love and care.

That's what it means to be human being.

So we can give that to ourselves,

We're actually meeting our deepest needs in a very powerful way.

There's some interesting debates,

Areas of overlap and difference between mindfulness and compassion in the brain.

They aren't exactly the same,

Although they are overlapping.

And I suspect it'll be the same thing with self-compassion.

There are areas of the brain that maybe are uniquely related to self-compassion or compassion as opposed to mindfulness,

But it's just a little too early to say what's going on.

Would you anticipate that there would be a difference between if something happens with me and I'm compassionate to myself versus someone else is compassionate to me?

Do you think there's a difference in how I might respond?

Yeah.

So,

I mean,

In many ways,

The brain does process self-stimulation and other stimulation the same way.

If you accept the compassion for others,

I expect it will look very similar to giving yourself compassion.

Sometimes,

If you're really feeling bad about yourself,

We've all had experiences where a friend tries to comfort us and we just can't even take it in.

We're so full of our own self-loathing,

It bounces right off of us.

Or sometimes the other person isn't available,

They've got their own stuff going on or we don't have those good relationships in our lives.

I do think the process is similar.

I think of self-compassion as being a good friend to yourself in the same way that another person might be a good friend to us.

The process is the same.

The big difference is that when it comes internally,

It's always available.

It's the voice that usually has the most impact on us because,

Again,

Other people's voices and messages,

We often tune out if we don't believe them.

In a weird way,

We have to kind of allow it in,

Which means we have to also have self-compassion.

But isn't compassion sometimes mixed with someone sees you through their own lens?

So if you're feeling self-compassionate,

There would be something a little bit more pure and trusted and authentic about that feeling versus someone else feeling compassionate for you.

I think we tend to believe ourselves more.

When we can really change that internal dialogue,

When we really give ourselves permission to be kind and supportive and understanding and caring,

I think it just has a much more powerful and immediate impact on our state of mind.

And when you talk about changing the internal dialogue,

I think that that's such a great way to put it.

Is this a practice like mindfulness is a practice or we meditate to become more mindful?

Do you recommend a meditation practice to become more self-compassionate?

Yeah.

So this is a topic I'm really interested in.

So in our Mindful Self-Compassion Program,

We have both formal meditation practices and we do know that meditation is like a tried and true way to develop compassion for others and self-compassion.

But we also have a ton of informal practices,

Things like putting your hand on your heart when you're feeling badly or saying a series of words to yourself to remind you of the three components of self-compassion or writing a letter to yourself from a self-compassionate perspective.

We have a ton of those types of exercises.

And the reason I'm excited by that is because mindfulness,

Because it's a subtle skill,

You kind of can teach it,

Mindfulness in daily life without meditation.

But really,

I think to really learn the skill of mindfulness,

Meditation is pretty darn central.

But I think there may be more access points to self-compassion because you can do it through things like letter writing or just using phrases or putting your hand on your heart,

Etc.

So I'm actually working on developing a brief self-compassion intervention,

One for teachers and one for healthcare workers that's much shorter and that doesn't require meditation.

That's great because I think a lot of what you're talking about is these habitual behaviors that we get into and something like touching your heart can be a very quick reminder to shift the way that you're thinking.

So to me,

That makes a lot of sense and to have tools like that that just change the way that you have behaved before.

And I think they all work in concert.

And because remember,

Mindfulness is one of the components of self-compassion,

So you can't totally tease them apart anyway.

It's just you might say there's other access points for self-compassion,

The common humanity and the kindness as opposed to going straight to the mindfulness.

So it gives a little more,

Just a few more options in terms of how to learn the skill.

I think it's also,

I mean,

I would think that meditation would help with the self-awareness that would lead to self-compassion,

But certainly,

Yeah.

But I also think,

You know,

There's actually some research showing that people who learn some kind of informal self-compassion practice are more likely to stick to a meditation practice.

So I think they kind of,

They all help each other.

I kind of see this as lots of different doorways into the same room.

In your book,

You talk about relationships and we have personal relationships,

We have business relationships.

We've got our friendships.

Let me ask you this question.

How does self-compassion help us to be better in our romantic relationships?

Yeah.

I often make a joke when people ask me this question because,

You know,

I develop the self-compassion scale.

People can test out self-compassion,

That they aren't going to score.

And I joke that if you're on one of those dating websites,

Before you agree to that first cup of coffee,

Get their score.

Because we know through the research that people who score higher in self-compassion or report having more compassion,

They're rated by their partners as being much better relationship partners.

So and I think what happens is when we do depend on other people to meet all our needs,

We get really upset if they don't meet them exactly the way we think they should be meeting them or,

You know,

Aren't available at the moment.

We think they should be available.

And I think what's happening with self-compassion is if you can meet some of your needs directly,

And you aren't so dependent on your partner to do everything correctly all the time,

It gives you kind of more emotional resources available,

Not only to help yourself if maybe your partner can't in the moment,

But also then to help your partner.

It actually is possible to be compassionate to others and not very self-compassionate.

It's actually a very,

Very common pattern.

The problem is those people burn out.

Yeah.

Have you done actually work with a lot of caregivers in situations in the hospitals?

Because I would imagine that would make a huge difference.

Yeah.

So I'm very excited about this.

So in our program,

Our Mindful Self-Compassion Program,

A lot of the people who take it are therapists.

We do have caregiving modules in the program.

So I work with a lot of caregivers and also doctors,

Et cetera,

Just as participants in our workshops.

But yeah,

I'm starting a study this fall actually with Dell Children's Hospital.

We're actually going to study this brief self-compassion intervention on a healthcare worker burnout.

People talk about self-care for caregivers.

Get a massage,

Eat healthy,

Visit with friends.

Well,

That's all well and good,

But you can't say to when your patient's stressing you out,

You're not going to say,

Hey,

Man,

I need a massage.

You need some resource you can use in the moment when you are caring for someone who's suffering and feeling some of that empathetic distress.

And that's what self-compassion does.

You can do something like one of the practices we teach is you breathe in compassion for yourself acknowledging,

Wow,

This is hard for me as a caregiver.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.

But then you breathe out for the other and recognize their suffering.

So it's kind of this easy flow between compassion in,

Compassion out,

As opposed to just being directed outward,

Which is usually where people's focus is.

Yeah,

I love that because so many people talk about empathy overload.

That's right.

And I think that when you add the compassion element,

That helps to soften.

I love how excited you are about your work.

I mean,

It's just amazing.

And will you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to initially get into this field of self-compassion and all of the research that you're doing in and around it?

Yeah.

So I mentioned,

You know,

I learned about self-compassion when I started practicing Buddhist meditation.

And I started practicing meditation because,

I mean,

Basically my life was a mess.

I just got out of a divorce.

I was feeling a lot of shame.

I was feeling a lot of stress related to graduate school.

And so to my surprise,

When I took that first meditation course,

I took the woman leading the course talked a lot about self-compassion and it just made sense to me.

I never really thought about it before,

But,

You know,

I started practicing it and I saw the real benefit it had in my life.

But then,

You know,

I think the reason I'm so passionate about it and the reason I know this is not very scientific to admit that I researched self-compassion to prove what I know.

I've seen it work on my own life and the data is just kind of to help convince other people that it works.

But many people know my son,

Rowan,

Is autistic.

And luckily when he got diagnosed,

I had about seven years of pretty solid self-compassion practice under my belt.

You know,

I just can't imagine how I would have gotten through without that practice.

I just saw over and over again in these situations that I thought were so challenging and there's no way I could cope.

I always could cope.

If I had my practice of self-compassion,

It's like this little angel that sat on my shoulder,

You know,

Whenever I needed it,

I could just kind of flood myself with this sense of care and connectedness and it's okay and this is part of living the human experience and I'm here for you.

I'm here to support you.

What do you need right now?

I think that's why I'm so passionate about it.

I just know it works and I've also seen thousands of lives transform.

You know,

I teach workshops all over the world and it's just amazing to see.

Even people who didn't get good parenting,

They can kind of re-parent themselves.

They can respond with the compassion and care and sensitivity that maybe they didn't receive from others.

So really it's very,

Very powerful stuff.

How amazing that you had seven years of self-compassion study and training under your belt before your son was diagnosed.

Very,

Very lucky.

I mean,

I suppose I would have gotten through it.

People do get through it,

But I just was really appreciative of what a big difference it made.

Yeah.

Have you been able to give this to other parents of autistic children?

We've just developed a teen version of our mindful self-compassion program that seems like most teens really like very much.

Not much has been done with little kids yet.

I don't have time to do it.

I'm sure it will happen.

You know,

Probably frame more in the context of just learning to be your own best friend type of thing.

Wow.

Is there anything else that you would like to share that you think would be helpful to our audience?

For people who want like a little takeaway about how to be more self-compassionate,

Speaking to yourself like a good friend or you can write,

You know,

Writing some paragraph or a page to yourself as from the perspective of a really good friend seems to be make long lasting changes,

But not to underestimate the power of physical touch.

You know,

We mentioned before putting your hand on your heart or your stomach or some other soothing gesture.

We're really finding out that compassion,

Because compassion is built in the human brain,

We know we respond to warmth,

Gentle touch,

Sound of voice with this kind of compassion response that even though it seems touchy feely to like put your hands on your heart,

It is touchy feely and touchy feely works in the sense that you can directly kind of bypass your brain,

Which may be full of the story of how inadequate you are and directly contact your parasympathetic nervous system through warm,

Gentle,

Soothing touch.

And it's really,

I would invite people to experiment with it because it can be incredibly powerful,

A powerful way to access a self-compassionate frame of mind.

So just kind of get over the fact that it's touchy feely,

Try it anyway.

You know,

You can do it in private or.

.

.

Oh,

That's so helpful.

Well,

Kristen,

Thank you so much.

Your work is amazing and your life story is equally amazing.

And it's obviously inspired you to do great things.

So I think that's wonderful.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

It's been nice talking to you.

Thanks so much to Kristen for joining us.

I am wishing you all a peaceful week.

We will see you next time.

Reviews

Dear Patricia, thank you for sharing this excellent interview with Kristen Neff. Grateful. Sending good wishes. 🌻

Wow that was very strong stuff 😊 i want to try some of these things 😊thank you so much 😊

Such a concise and needed conversation. Thanks

Great timing finding this today - some really helpful, easy tools to use given throughout this talk which will be of benefit to me + others 💚

Thank you.

Gratitude