Kristin Neff is a psychologist and the author of "Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself." Her pioneering research busts cultural myths about self-compassion and shows it’s an effective motivational tool. In this episode from the archives, Kristin talks with Maya about how to get past the idea that caring for ourselves is selfish and offers simple practices for being kinder to ourselves.
If you enjoyed this episode, we recommend this one from the archives: “The Science of Our Inner Voice.”
Connect with Maya on instagram @DrMayaShankar.
Pushkin. Hey everyone, I'm wishing you a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving week. It's my favorite holiday of the year, and I like taking a moment to reflect on all that I'm grateful for. So many of the conversations I've had on the show have changed me for the better. One of these was with psychologist Kristin Neff, who's an expert on the science of self compassion. I had a lot of misconceptions about self compassion going into this interview, like that it's self indulgent, or it's a way of letting ourselves off the hook for stuff we should really be taking accountability for. As you'll hear, I shared this skepticism with Kristin, and she told me about some fascinating research that challenged many of my assumptions. We'll be back next week with a new episode, but until then, I hope you enjoyed this conversation and that it helps you be a bit kinder to yourself. And as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the conversation. I'm on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
Self compassion in the simplest form is just treating yourself with the same warmth, kindness, care concern that you would naturally show to a friend you cared about, So it's really nothing unusual. It's just that we're much more used to giving compassion to friends than we are to ourselves.
Psychologist Kristin Neff is a pioneer in the study of self compassion, and she says the first step towards cultivating it is to ask ourselves this one question.
The quintessential self compassion Q question is what do I need right now? What do I need to learn? What do I need to be there for myself right now? What do I need? Do I need to give some help? Do I need a bath? Wisdom is what tells you the answer, but being willing to ask the question is key, because what you're saying is my needs count I'm worthy of care and support.
On today's episode, we learn about the science of self compassion, including strategies you can use to be kinder to yourself. I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. Kristin Neff has written several books, including Self Compassion, The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, She also runs workshops that teach people self compassion skills that they can use in their daily lives. Even though it seems like these skills should come to us pretty naturally, many of us struggle with being kind to ourselves. We often find it easier to be kind towards others. So I started our conversation by asking Kristen why, Well, there's a lot.
Of reasons actually when we shouldn't beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up, because they are cultural and evolutionary reasons. So cultural reasons are that we aren't told it's good to be self compassionate. We're raised to be self sacrificing, and that we should almost be compassionate to others. And there's a lot of miss that get in the way of self compassion that we can talk about in a moment. But there's also an important evolutionary element. So the system that evolved to keep ourselves safe is a threat defense system, right fight or freeze. So when we feel threatened, we fight ourselves with criticism, hoping we'll get ourselves in shape and be safe, or we flee into a sense of shame and isolation and get stuck. On the other hand, we do have a safety system for others, which is called the care system, and that system evolved primarily for our offspring and for our group members. And so in order to keep our offspring safe, for our group safe, we give compassion and support and kindness to those people who care about who are suffering. So we have to kind of do a little hack. It's actually more natural to be self critical when we're threatened in some way than it is to be self compassionate.
You know.
You know, when your friend loses their job, you aren't personally threatened, so you go into care mode. When you lose your job, you're personally threatened, so you go into fight, flight or freeze mode. And so that's a pretty heavy brain difference that we've got to you know, work. Luckily, it can be done. But it's actually more natural to be compassionate to others than ourselves.
To make sure I understand that you're saying that it's actually the feeling of threat that's ignited by our own pain and suffering that leads us to withhold compassion from ourselves because we think we need to act on that. Yes, we need to get this right, We need to solve this problem.
Exactly, and so we're using the kind of our reptilian brain, the older brain to think of just immediately, either you know, we beat ourselves up. I'll criticize myself before other people do. Or again we just try to whip ourselves into shape with the most immediate way we know how, or again we go into shame mode, which is also a safety behavior, or rumination is also a safety behavior. Maybe if I just don't move or think about it five hundred times and problem will go away.
I have no idea what you're talking about, Kristin. I've never experienced this. It's more like a thousand times.
But you know, the care mode is also natural, right, as you know, even like young children can feel carrying toward others. It's a completely natural system. It's just more often triggered by others people we care about. So we do have to make a switch and start treating ourselves like we would treat someone else we cared about.
Yeah, I mean, I love this framing because I think it shows Look, there are some things that come very naturally to us, and there are other things that require a lot of deliberate cognitive effort in order to inspire and cultivate within ourselves, and it seems like self compassion is one of those things.
The effort needs to be made to remember to do it and also to give ourselves permission to do it, and the permission is very important, especially when our culture has told us that it's selfish to be kind to ourselves and that it's you know, will be lazy if we do, or will become self indulgent. So actually the act of being self compassionate is easeful. It actually is a lot easier, if you think about it, to be kind to yourself than all the pain and effort that comes with criticizing yourself and cutting yourself down. This actually makes things flow better, more naturally. But remembering to do so is the bit that takes a little bit of practice and permission.
Okay, that's really helpful and very clarifying. I love that. Okay, So you know, Kristin, I will confess that when I first encountered this work years ago, I was a little skeptical. And to be clear, it's not because I don't need more self compassion. I've always been an intensely self critical person. It's more that I just have had specific concerns and I'm wondering if right now we can engage in a quick mythbusting session in case there are listeners out there who share some of the same skepticism I used to have. I want to bring them on this journey with me towards really embracing the research and really understanding the value. So one concern that I've had is that it seems like promoting self compassion can cause people to let themselves off the hook for their bad behaviors. And you know, I look around and I see a lot of people who are not taking accountability for their actions. Right, it seems like they could benefit from a bit more internal criticism and so and of course for myself, right, I've benefited from self criticism a lot. And so don't we need people to be more self critical so that they can be better to others?
Yeah, So self compassion, this kind of unconditional acceptance and kindness, is toward our worthless people. As human beings. We need to accept ourselves, but we can't accept all our behavior, especially if it's harming self or others, Because if your behaviors cause harm to yourself or others is not compassionate. So what we do with self compassion is we accept ourselves as flawed human beings who've made a mistake, and that sense of safety. First of all, we don't blame others as much. Often, if we slam ourselves with shame for admitting we've done something wrong, our little brains are going to try as hard as they can to avoid taking responsibility and to blame someone else that they can. And by the way, research shows that self compassion lessons shame, which is a sense of I am bad, but not necessarily guilt, which is I did something bad.
Yeah, And reading your scholarship, I found this distinction very helpful because you talk about the difference between guilt and shame, and you say, look, being critical of our behavior is healthy. It is good. It provides learning opportunities, It allows us to be better people, allows us to reflect on who we are and what we want from ourselves moving forward. But criticism aimed at ourselves, at our being as a whole, is not healthy because, as you said, and I've definitely fallen into this camp in the past, you don't want to internalize I made a mistake as I am a mistake, right, I am bad?
Exactly When you do that, it actually shuts down your ability to learn from your mistakes because you're so consumed by the thoughts of inadequacy or shame, our sense of self kind of gets totally absorbed by the shame. It's like we disappear. There's no one home to be able to try to correct the behavior. You need the safety of self acceptance to be able to criticize your behavior and to learn from it. Yeah.
One really counterintuitive finding that I stumbled upon when I was reading your work is that when we are consumed by shame, it actually makes it harder for us to apologize to others.
Yes.
There was also another study that I read about that hits on what I would call moral motivation. Ah. Yes, so research suggesting that self compassion can actually increase our motivation to take personal responsibility for our actions. Yeah.
So one study they did Brienni's and Chen was they had undergraduate students think about some behavior they had done that they regretted. Maybe they lied to someone, or they cheated on an exam, or they did something they felt really badly about. And one group of people they gave instructions to be compassionate about what they had done, and a control group they told nothing, which meant they were probably beating themselves up about what they'd done, because that's kind of default mode for most of us. And what they found was that the students who were told to be compassionate about the mistake they made when they were asked how motivated are you to either apologize or actually to repair the mistake in some way, they found those who are told to be self compassionate were more motivated to repair the situation and to apologize.
Wow. So another myth that I love you to bust is that self compassion is demotivating. And this one's personal. So my husband, Jimmy, he loves playing competitive squash. Okay, he's obsessed with squash. He's obsessed with getting better, and he's so self motivated, but he really berates himself when he has a poor performance. And as someone who really loves him, I hate seeing him in this self duration mode, Like it's pretty painful after a tournament or after some competition for him to be like, oh God, why did I do that? Or you know I messed up or I didn't play my best. But what I tell him to stop the self criticism, to curve it a bit. His counter argument is that he doesn't want to lose that part of himself because it means he might have less motivation to work hard during his next practice session. And so, yeah, give me a good argument with my husband.
Yeah, well, I'll give you the argument that I'll give you the data. Because this one is also very very clear, is that self compassion is a more effective motivator than self criticism. So self criticism does kind of work. Clearly, it gets people through med school, It probably motivates your husband, But the motivation comes from fear I have to do better or else I'll slam myself, And that's motivating. No one wants to feel like they're a bad person or a loser, so that does provide some motivational power, but it also has some maladaptive side effects, which is first of all, performance anxiety. Right, So we want some anxiety to feel like, okay, it's important that I work. But performance anxiety, which is kind of fear of if I mess up, I'm going to be a loser or I'm going to shame myself. That actually stands in the way of our ability to do our best. It also undermines our self confidence. But this is really key. It undermines our ability to learn. It's very similar to what we were just talking about. If you shame yourself for losing, I'm a loser, I'm a bad person, you aren't going to be as able to say, Okay, just because I lost doesn't mean I'm a loser. What can I do better next time? And so self compassion is very strongly linked to a learning goal orientation as opposed to what's called performance goals, which is my success or failure, defiance my work as a person. There's a new study that isn't even published yet. It just got accepted a few days ago. Hot Off the Presses.
Who I Love? Hot Off the Presses? Slight change listeners, listen not so you know.
I work at University of Texas at Austin, and I had a dissertation student at the time. He was an ex basketball player who for her dissertation decided to formalize a self compassion training for NC DOUBLEA athletes. So we did a study with several high end NC DOUBLEA sports teams, all different sports, and we taught them self compassion over about four weeks. We actually didn't call it self compassion because we knew that was stand in the way. We called it inner resilience training, and we taught them how to be warm and supportive and kind of themselves when they were having trouble in their training routine or if they lost in their sport. And what we found is not only did it help players' mental health, it improved their performance, both self rated and coach rated performance, because again, when it's okay to make a mistake or to lose, you're more able to learn from the loss or the mistake and improve it next time.
So yes, I love all this research, Kristen. Another concern that I'd had when it came to engaging with the self compassion work or trying out these interventions is that it just kind of felt self centered or selfish or narcissistic. I don't know. I was like, what am I doing here? Sitting here trying to love myself? Like I just yeah, convinced me that this is not just the most extreme form of narcissism.
Yes, well, absolutely. The reason it's not selfish or narcissistic is because it's not like we only have five units of compassion and if we give three to ourselves, we only have two left over for other people. It actually doesn't work this way. Then the research is very clear. The more self compassion we give ourselves, in other words, the more we fill our own cup, the more compassion we have available to give to others. Right, so, there's a couple of studies that show this one is burnout. You know, this burnout such a problem. We know whether you're a special needs parent or you're a healthcare worker, if you're more self compassionate, you're less likely to burn out or experience fatigue giving compassion to others. And then the other evidence we have that self compassion isn't selfish. This is that in relationships, our partners say that we're more giving, we're less selfish, we're less controlling in the relationship if we have self compassion. And again, it's really about resourcing yourself. When you can resource yourself, you actually have more to give to others and you aren't so self focused because it's like, oh, okay, maybe I made a mistake or maybe this is a little difficult, and you give yourself what you need to get through that, and that actually gives you the emotional energy you need to care for others. Shame and self criticism is an incredibly self focused state, you know, who are you thinking about when you're beating yourself up? Not other people?
A good point toiche. I think this is such a critical point that you're making about us not having finite compassion resources, because I think we do think of it as a trade off instinctively. Oh, if I'm really compassionate towards myself, then I have fewer resources to give to others, Or if I'm really compassionate towards others, I don't have the resources to give that same compassion to myself. Yes, And what you're telling me is that we shouldn't see it as a limited resource. We actually can tap into a lot and it can be a virtuous cycle where the more we invest compassion ourselves, the more the more we have to give to others. Is that right?
Absolutely, it's additive. It's not a zero sum game.
Yes, yeah, Okay, an important distinction you make, so in us really grasping what self compassion is, it's important to say what it is not. Yes, And so you do distinguish between something like self compassion and self esteem. And I think this actually helps us understand why it is not self indulgent, it's not necessarily ego boosting to be self compassion. So tell me about the difference between self compassion and self esteem.
Right, So self esteem, at least, you know, people define different ways. But if you think about the word esteem, it's a judgment or an evaluation of worth. So usually it's predicated on being special and above average. You know, if I said, hey, Maya, you have this podcasts average, You're going to be devastated. If you say, hey, Christian, your research is average, I'll be devastated. Right, So the way it's set up is we all have to be above average just for baseline self esteem. And so because we're always comparing ourselves to others, that could lead to problems like narcissism. If you think what narcissism is is people who have to either be really superior to others or who cannot take any negative feedback whatsoever they deflected. They put up the shield because it's so devastating. So self esteem is based on social comparison. It's also based on UH performance success, and that might be you know, success in terms of am I attractive? Do people like me? And so self esteem tends to be contingent on external factors like did I succeed or not. So self esteem is a fair weather friend, right. It's there for you when you're better than others or when you succeed, and it deserts you when you need it most, when you're rejected, or you feel inadequate, or you you know, fall flat on your face. Self compassion is a good friend. It's a stable friend. And if you're smiling and say, where's the research for that? One study, for instance, is we did measure self worth. We measured it twelve times over an eight month period, and it was level of overall self compassion, not level of self esteem that predicted stability and self worth. You know, so self worth goes up and down with self esteem. You have a good hair day, you have a bad hair day. Self compassion is really a constant friend. It's intrinsic to being human. Right. The quintessential self compassion question is what do I need right now? What do I need to learn? What do I need to be there for myself right now? What do I need? Do I need to give some help? Do I need a bath? Wisdom is what tells you the answer, but being willing to ask the question is key because what you're saying is my needs count I'm worthy of care and support.
After the break, Kristen walks us through the three elements of self compassion. Then she shares a helpful exercise so we can start practicing this skill in real time. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. I love this three opponent model you have for self compassion, and it actually starts with mindfulness, which is a little bit of a surprise for me. So help me thread the needle between mindfulness and self compassion.
Yes, so, first of all, that's not an accident because I first learned about self compassion when I was learning mindfulness meditation, And so mindfulness has to be in self compassion because mindfulness is what allows us to turn toward and acknowledge the pain. We can't give ourself warmth and support or ask you know, what can I do to help if we don't acknowledge it, I'm hurting, And because we're human beings who are naturally resistant to pain and suffering, often we don't either. We ignore it. We just stiff up the lip. But I'm just not going to pause to acknowledge that I'm hurting and need some compassion, or if we do the opposite, which I like to call over identification, and that means we're lost in the negative emotion. We're lost in the feelings of fear, shame, or anger, or whatever it happens to be. And so if you think about if a friend were to call you up, and first of all, you didn't take their phone call, you didn't listen to what your friend had to say, You couldn't give them compassion. You know, I'm too busy. We often do that with their selves. Actually we're too busy deposit and acknowledge we're hurting and we need a little help. But the other thing, imagine if your friend called you and you just talked right over them and you didn't give them any space for them to tell you your story. We also actually do that with ourself a lot. We get so wrapped up in our pain and the story and the drama of what's happening that there's no space to step outside of ourselves and say, hey, you're really having a hard time. How can I help you? So we actually need to start with mindfulness. We need to turn towards the pain, as uncomfortable as it is, in order to respond with this warmth and kindness and so then the second element of self compassion, which actually may not be so intuitive, is a sense of common humanity, or in other words, recognize seeing that we aren't alone. One of the problems when our suffering occurs, especially when it's something that we've done, we've made a mistake, is it Irrationally we feel like everyone else in the world is living a normal, perfect life and it's just me who's failed or made this mistake, or it's just me who's going through this really challenging time. So again, it's not a logical thought, but it's the way we feel about it. And this is like kicking ourselves when we're down, because not only are we hurting, we feel there's something wrong with us for hurting, and we feel like we're the only one. We feel isolated and alone in that pain. So remembering other people it does two things. First of all, it reminds us that we aren't alone, which helps as opposed to feeling isolated. But it also, going back to what I said earlier, it allows us to take our pain less personally, that it's not poor me, it's well, everyone is imperfect, everyone struggles. I'm not alone in this. This is part of the larger hole that we call human life. And then when we remember that, we feel more connected as opposed to feeling isolated.
And what do we do, Kristin, when we what do we do to combat feelings of exceptionalism in this regard? And by that, I mean, yeah, I understand everyone's flawed, but I kame a maya am legitimately flawed. I am super flawed. And again I recognize there is an element of narcissism baked in a comment like that, which is to think you're so special that you're the worst person ever. Yeah, but you know, a lot of us do experience this feeling that, Okay, there is some shared common humanity, but what if secretly like I'm actually worse than everyone else than what? Yeah, does that resonate?
Yeah, so that is a common thought. That's why it's really helpful to practice self compassion with other people. So, for instance, our self compassion training program is done in small groups. I when you hear other people and they're belief that they are the motion needly flawed person in the world quite quickly disabuses you of that illusion that you know you're the most flawed person in the world. And then actually, what happens is self compassion, or turning towards your suffering, becomes a way of feeling more connected to everyone. Everyone struggles with feeling they're the most uniquely flawed person of the world. That belief itself actually connects us as human beings.
So what I'm hearing is that, you know, for those who are struggling to even just crack the door open on self compassion because they think they're unworthy of the practice altogether, if you go to a group setting, for example, where others are able to be open and honest with you about their own feelings of shame, their own feelings of unworthiness, that can be a really nice way to signal to your brain. Look, you're not even alone in the feeling that you're the most deeply flawed person ever, like other people are feeling that as.
Well, exactly as part of the human experience.
Okay, so we talked about two components so far. Right, So we've talked about the importance of paying attention to our sufferings, being mindful, and the second is around just seeing ourselves as humans. Right, we're part of this richer fabric which is complicated and messy, and we're not alone in our suffering. What is the third element?
Well, the third is actually the one that's most intuitive, and that's kindness, feelings of warmth, care and support. So you can either think what would I say to a dear friend in the exact same situation, and then that shock your template for what to say to yourself, or alternatively, you can imagine, you know, what would a really kind person, what would ted Lasso, for instance, say to me in this situation, or my grandmother or someone that really cared about me. And actually, when most people think of self compassion, they only think of the kindness. They forget the mindfulness and the sense of common humanity, and that's partly why people think it's selfish. I mean, a narcissists may be really kind to themselves, but if they think they're better than other people, or if they don't have mindfulness to clearly see their flaws and their mistakes, it's actually not self compassion. It's like a three leg good stool. You need all three.
So Kristin, first of all, thanks for convincing us that we should be on board with self compassion. That's very helpful, but that doesn't obviously make us immediately self compassionate, and so you have built a number of practices. You say, self compassion is a skill that we can work to intentionally develop. And one of your self compassion practices is called the self compassion break, and it just takes a few minutes. It can be practiced daily. I love this one because for someone like me just getting your feet wet, you know, it's easy to integrate into daily life. And so do you mind just leading me? We've got the expert here, so obviously I'm not going to forego an opportunity to be led through a self compassion exercise. Do you mind just leading us through a version of that?
Absolutely? So, really, all you're doing is intentionally calling the mind the three components of mindfulness, common humanity, kindness towards an instance of suffering. So basically, you just start by thinking of something that's causing you some distress in your life. You know, hopefully think of something minor right now, because you don't want to get lost and stop listening to the podcast because you're overwhelmed by the thing, something that's bothering you, maybe about yourself or you know, some stress you're experiencing, maybe a health issue. To just take a moment to decide what to work with. And of course in real life you don't have to decide it, it will present itself. But for right now, think of something and then the first thing to do is just to bring mindfulness to it. So just acknowledge, hey, this is hard, you know, instead of just immediately trying to problem solve or get rid of the problem, just acknowledge that this hurts, this is challenging, and then remember the humanity of this situation, right, This is part of life. Being human is not about being perfect. People make mistakes. You aren't the only one. Is just taking a moment to remember that this actually connects you to other people. You aren't alone in this, and then try giving yourself some kindness because it is hard. Maybe thinking of what you would say to a good friend. Imagine if you had a really good friend who was experiencing the exact same thing you're experiencing. Just take a moment to do that, right, What would you say? What tone of voice would you use? Right, And then just try saying something similar to yourself being I'm here for you, I'm so sorry, this is so difficult. How can I help? I care about you? Right, And that's really the practice. It can be done very quickly. You can also do it and longer, but it is that three legged stool you start with the mindfulness. You remember that you aren't alone. You give yourself kindness. So mind that short, little little mini self compactis break. Did you notice a shift and something you were thinking of?
I did, and I felt like, well, one, even just to pose these questions to yourself is so powerful and not at all what I naturally gravitate towards in my day to day life. I mean, it's I had this meta experience. It was literally powerful for me to hear those questions being asked of me in the first place. Yeah. Yeah, And I you know, I was thinking about reading some reviews of the podcast, which is always fun. I mean, some of the ninety nine percent are so delightful and so charming, and I'm so moved by the impact the show has had. And of course, like every other human planet Earth, I take the one that's critical or harsh, and I take it so personally, like this happened last night, right. I read this one comment and I was like, did I make the wrong decision? Should I have said it this way versus this way? And I was just I was beating myself up, and just in this moment, I was trying to think to myself, Okay, well, surely I'm not the only podcast or to have confronted this, or write or author or writer or literally anyone who puts their point of view out into the world right is going to have these feelings. And so yeah, it did allow me to have a slightly more compassionate posture towards myself, which is really amazing.
Yeah.
Okay, So now that we understand the value of self compassion and also why it is that we resist it and some ways that we can cultivate it, I'd love to workshop some of these ideas and help us understand how we can apply this very valuable wisdom to our everyday lives. And so I've chosen I think that everyone struggles in this area where we have to navigate difficult conversations or relationship moments. So you know, I hear from so many of my friends who have kids that they in the moment they're frustrated, they lose their patience, they overreact, and then they beat themselves up after or they're in a conversation with their partner and they find themselves getting angry or flippant or whatever it is. And so how can we show ourselves a little bit more self compassion in these moments where can we just fall prey to being human? Really, that's all it is.
Yeah, So it's funny. I just had something like this happened with my boyfriend where I was reactive and I was inappropriate. And we're fairly new in our relationship. It's about three months and he's thinking, she ths like this. I am wired to be reactive. I've worked on it a little bit, and I've done like lots of silent meditation, retreats and all these mindfulness techniques. When the reaction comes up, there's really nothing I can do. It's like my brain, the reactivity takes over this nose. This is me. Other people manage to be mindful, not me. It just takes over, and I don't have the clarity to be able to say, Kristen, do you really want to respond that way? You know, maybe just a little you know, help here. It just just my wiring doesn't work that way. People's brains are different. In my brain, when it gets triggered, I'm just I'm no longer there. I don't have the observer who's able to make a choice. It's gotten a little better. It's not totally fa but marginally so. And so you may not be able to give yourself compassion in the moment that you're having that reaction with your kids or your friend, but what you can do is very quickly afterward. So it takes me about five minutes tops to come down and I realize the little brain I call it brain farts re activity. It's like it just happens, and then it's like, okay, okay, I've got clarity again. Wow. The self compassion allows me to apologize if I've been reactive, whether it again to my son or my partner, to a friend, to own it. I don't like blame the other person. I don't try to justify it that I was really out of line. I'm very sorry, and that helps the other person get over it and you get to the point of talking about what happened. But you know, the other thing I've started doing recently which really helps as I frontload it, Like if I'm meeting a new person, I'll say, you know, I could be reactive. It's just the way my brain is wired. If it happens please don't take it personally. And you can also do that with your kids, right. You can say to your kids, I'm not perfect. Sometimes I react. It's not how I want to be with you, but it may happen. This is how human beings are. If it does happen, I will apologize. And then what you're doing is you're modeling for your kid that we are human. As long as we don't pretend we didn't do it, or try to blame someone else or avoid responsibility, then not only does it help them not take it personally, it gives them permission to be a little more self compassionate to themselves. We think that harshness helps us stay inline. It actually doesn't. When we're harsh and we feel shame or we really feel a lot of stress of judging ourselves, it actually makes us more reactive, not less reactive, because our brain is also filled with all these negative judgments. Carl Rogers said famously, the curious paradox is the more I accept myself, the more I can change.
Yeah, this is excellent role modeling when it comes to self compassion, because what I'm hearing you do is say, Okay, there's this thing that I do that I don't love. I'm owning it. I am trying to work on it. It's gotten a little bit better over the years, but it doesn't feel fully in my control. I do feel sometimes like I just lose it and I'm just not able to be that dispassionate observer who's curving the behavior. So given this, I am going to do whatever I can to protect the people around me when I mean in that state and make them know that they shouldn't. You take it personally, and so that just seems like such a healthy recipe, and you're not excusing it. You're not saying I love that, I'm this way deal with it. You're like, I'm working on it. But it's a it's a slow work.
And the more people accept you and your flaws, ironically, the easier it is to be mindful, to be aware, because often reactivity comes from your ego being triggered in some way, and the more you feel accepted, the less your ego needs to defend itself.
I like that what happens, Kristen. So a lot of people who are listening to this show, given my understanding of slight Change listeners based on my interactions, they're the kinds of people who really really care for others. Yeah, and then they also really want to be self compassionate. And sometimes those things can stand in conflict with one another, right, they can be at odds. So the thing that's going to be compassionate towards myself is going to conflict with being compassionate towards someone else. How do we navigate those tensions where we feel like doing a thing that's kind to us is maybe not the kindest thing for someone else.
Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the boundaries conversation. There's a great quote by apprentice Hempill that boundaries are the distance at which I can love myself and you simultaneously. So finding that balance point, whether it's a boundary or whether it's a negotiation where we respect the other person's needs and our needs is of course it's the ideal, right, But as you say, there are some situations where it's just not possible, where it's just either or, And that's what you know, there's no heart and fast rule for doing that is wisdom. So, for instance, with my son or you know, parent child relationships, he's also autistic, so when he was younger, you just make the choice to put your child first. You know, it's not even necessarily that difficult to choice. And by the way, it's not like you're ignoring your own needs, because if your child is unhappy, you're going to be unhappy. So or if the relationship is poor, you're going to be unhappy. So there's also some benefit for the self. But now that he's older, for instance, and he's doing great, by the way, I can say, you know, I would love to take you to the zoo, but actually I'm sorry, I've got to our plans that weekend. You know, self compassion doesn't provide answers about how to resolve a conflict. But what it does do is it allows you to access your wisdom. But think of it from all sides. Again, you don't prioritize your own needs, but you don't subordinate them. You don't make your choices based on whether or not people are gonna like you. You make your choices from care, care for yourself, care for the other person. And you also you give yourself the safety to know, maybe we'll make a mistake, maybe I'll try this and it won't work out, so we'll have to try something different. But a lot of people when they're starting out. Absolutely. I got an email at once from a woman who said, thanks for giving me one more thing I'm bad at, you know. So that's why it's so important to give yourself some kindness about that. It's not totally natural to be self compassionate. It is a practice you do have to learn, and pain will still arise, mistakes will still arise, shame will still arise. What you do with self compassion practice is you learn not to exacerbate it through harsh judgment or taking things personally or running away with the storyline.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my conversation with Kristen, you may also enjoy a conversation I had with a psychology professor, Ethan Cross. The episode is called The Science of Our Inner Voice. Ethan and I talk about strategies to rein in our mental chatter, like that pesky inner voice that tells us we aren't good enough. It's a great follow on episode if you're working on being kinder to yourself. We'll link to it in the show notes, and next week join me for a fun episode about turning your passion into a career. We'll share the story of a guy named Scott who loves pizza, I mean really loves it. He eventually turned that love into a one of a kind pizza tour business. Get ready for lots of cheesy pizza funds. Sorry in advance, see you next week. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change Family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producer Trisha Bobida, and our sound engineer Andrew Vestola. Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries. So big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker. See you next week. There the