Mirror Meditation for Self Compassion

I didn't know actually how much my choices had been driven by genetics versus me thinking I had free will and I was like being this radical person becoming a psychologist.

This is RxChill Pill, where just by listening, your brain will get more resilient and less stressed out. Now is the time to stay well. Each episode teaches your brain how to become resilient with amazing stories, knowledge from experts, and short meditations you can do anywhere, anytime to elicit your relaxation response. I'm your resilience doctor, Juna Bobby MD. I'm a physician and a mom of two amazing kids. In this episode, I'm speaking with Dr. Tara Well, an associate psychology professor at Barnard College of Columbia University, where she teaches health psychology, leadership, as well as integrating her mirror meditation to increase self-connection and compassion in her students. She'll talk to us today about her story, how she became the first college-educated professor in her family, her journey of self-discovery, which led her to research and creation of the Mirror Meditation Method, as well as sharing her valuable insider tips on becoming a TEDx speaker. Hi, Tara. Hi.

Hi, Juna.

I'm so excited to have Tara Well here today. Tara Well is an associate professor of psychology at Barnard College, and you've been teaching there for 20 years, right?

Yes, indeed.

So she's teaching personality psychology, health psychology, and psychology of leadership. She's also done research on motivation, perception, and cognition, and she's been funded by the NIMH, which is the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Science Foundation. Recently, she just finished her first TEDx Talk, right?

Yes, indeed.

Congratulations. Thank you. That's so exciting. And tell us a little bit about what you spoke about. I mean, I met you, you know, maybe 3 years ago at Barnard when I was giving some workshops there, and I had the privilege of sneaking into your classroom and watching you do the meditation that you're gonna tell us about, right? It's called the mirror meditation.

Yes, indeed. I've been using mirrors in my work as a way to help people see themselves more clearly. Oftentimes when people meditate, their minds tend to wander.

Mm-hmm.

The mirror actually helps people to bring their attention back to the present moment. Mm-hmm. It also helps people see themselves more compassionately. Oftentimes we don't realize how sort of mean we are to ourselves, that we have an inner critic that is constantly active, and when we try to slow our minds down to meditate, it kind of pops up almost with a vengeance. So the mirror really helps people to see just how how much their inner critic is affecting them.

Mm-hmm.

It also helps people to manage their emotions. One of the things that we find as we spend more time alone and on our devices is that we're not having as much face-to-face contact.

With other people.

Exactly.

Or ourselves.

Or ourselves, exactly. And so what's happening is we're having an increase in anxiety, increase in loneliness, a lack of empathy in our society.

This epidemic on anxiety and depression Is that right? It's increasing every year? I mean, you teach young women, right? Mm-hmm. And do you teach Columbia students as well?

I teach Columbia students as well, yes.

Okay, so do you have men in your classrooms, or is it—

It varies. It can usually be about 10% men. In one of my classes this semester, I have more men than women, so.

Wow.

That's interesting. But yes, we definitely see an increase in just generally in our society of people reporting that they're lonely and increases in anxiety, definitely.

And how does that show up in the college population?

In the college population—

Have you noticed a difference in the last 20 years you've taught there?

Yes, I think for me, and I don't have the statistics on my specific group of students over time, but my observation is that students seem much more anxious.

And how does that show up in their day-to-day lives?

They look anxious. And so what I've come to do is to teach meditation in all my classes.

In all your classes?

So I begin each class with a meditation, yes. My seminars, the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in my classes.

The Jon Kabat-Zinn UMass program. Yes.

And I also give them a chance to do the mirror meditation as well.

Wow. So do they know when they're signing up for your class that they're going to get this meditation?

Yeah, I tell them.

So they know on the syllabus before they choose it.

Exactly.

Okay, good. So nobody's coming and saying, "What is this?" And I get a lot of positive feedback.

You know, there's thousands and thousands of studies showing that the benefits of meditation. When I used to teach my health psychology class and it was just sort of the beginning of mind-body medicine, there was a book that Bill Moyers did called Healing in the Mind, which was published in 1995. It had interviews with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dean Ornish, Candace Pert, who's now deceased, and a bunch of other people who were kind of at the cutting edge of doing mind-body medicine. And it was sort of like very radical that I wanted to use this book in a college setting.

So you used it in your class? Class.

I did use it in my class. It was considered very, very, very radical, but over time, I think my colleagues and everyone in most academic communities has come to accept meditation as something that can create some serious health benefits and also emotion regulation.

And there's ever-growing evidence. Totally. So how did you get involved in that?

Well, I've been meditate— I'd had a meditation yoga practice since I think I read Autobiography of a Yogi when I was in high school. And I remember thinking, "This is it!" I remember, like, sitting at the kitchen table telling my mom, you know, "This is it! This is like, I discovered the key to life," kind of a thing. Wow. You know, and, you know, over time I—

Where did you grow up? That doesn't sound normal.

I grew up in Cleveland. Working class background and—

But how did you even come across a book like that?

We had a class where we had to read something.

Mm-hmm.

And it was in a free reading bin.

So it just attracted you?

Yeah, I was like glowing. No, I'm just kidding.

Were your parents interested in meditation? No, not at all. Were they not? They weren't hippies or anything?

No, no, not at all. They're pretty conservative.

And so did they think you were weird?

I think that, you know, they thought it was a phase I was going through. And over time, you know, I became less, less sort of zealous about it. But I think it's been sort of unwavering that I've really seen the benefits of meditation and yoga. I'm really happy that it's become more integrated into the mainstream. That everyone can benefit from it.

Yeah.

You know, even if it's not the spiritual aspects, they can at least benefit from it from the stress reduction aspects of it. Yeah. And the emotion regulation is really key. That's the part that we're developing more and more in science and in research is showing, you know, kind of breaking it down. Why is meditation so effective?

Mm-hmm. And there's my Handbook of Emotion Regulation. Look behind you. Uh-huh.

James Grossman.

I love that book.

Yeah.

So when you were in high school and you pick up this book, do you remember what stuck? Do you remember what the impression was?

Well, he talks a lot about, like, I don't know, like reincarnation and how you can enter these altered states and the reality is much bigger than your day-to-day activities. And at that time, something about it really clicked. And I was like, hmm, I want to do more of this. Meditation.

And then did you start a practice?

Yeah, I started a practice on my own. I used to do a lot of different breathing techniques, actually. And if you breathe— I mean, I was a kid, so I experimented with breathing to the point where you almost start hallucinating because you're like, breathe, you're like hyperventilating, you start seeing visions and stuff like that. So yeah, so I was kind of, you know, very experimental in my, in my early in my late teens, early 20s.

And did you read about it? I read some about it. 'Cause I bought a book on breathwork and they give you all these methods, but did you just make it up or do you remember reading about it?

I kind of spontaneously discovered it and then I found books on it. So I was thinking, wow, you know, and to a lot of the experience I had when I was meditating that kind of seemed kooky or that I was like making them up in fantasy, when I read later books on Eastern philosophy, it was more like, they've arrived at the same conclusions. So as a scientist, I know that when you observe something and you make detailed observations of it, and then other people observe the same thing and their observations match, that there's something to that. And that's one of the differences between just sort of looking at things and projecting your own stuff onto it. Right, versus seeing something, you know, having a sense of what it is, and then reading about other people's experience who are having the same experience.

And then having, coming up with a theory and a thesis and like, why trust science, right? Uh-huh. Like that book behind you.

I know, that's a great book.

Having that scientific method appeal to you.

Oh yeah, definitely.

And that's interesting to me because you were very interested in this kind of yoga reincarnation, kind of far out there stuff. So how, where does the scientist come in?

Well, the scientist comes in For me, I mean, I think my basic life question has always been and still is, how and why do people see the same thing differently? Like, everybody has a little bit of a different spin on how they see the world, sometimes a lot different. So in my early work as a psychologist, I did a lot of research looking at motivation and perception and sort of the intersection of motivation and perception. How does what people's motives affect how they see the world, how they see their own experiences, how they see opportunities, how they see and explain what's happening. And there's a lot of variability in that. And I think it's very good to be able to understand those differences.

So did you stay curious in the mystical realm as well, all along?

I think less so, mainly because I knew that, you know, I got some very clear feedback that that wasn't going to fly, like in graduate school and my first job as an assistant professor, you know, talking about that stuff. And so it wasn't going to fly for you in the academic world, right?

But in your heart, you're still interested in that? It still spoke to you?

I mean, I'm interested in it, but I think at this point, I don't consider myself a seeker because I think that I I basically sort of have my beliefs and I'm comfortable with them and I'm open to changing and growing. But I'm not like looking for the answer.

Right.

You know, I'm more like in the present moment and being open to whatever the experience is. And then, you know, trying to see the world with kindness and integrity.

And now, did you grow up in a particular religion?

Sort of like Congregational Protestant, but not really. I think I've expanded over time. Like, I certainly include Christianity in my beliefs, but I think that all the basic world religions come down to a few simple principles that I think that we can all agree on. That, you know, to love other people, to love ourselves, to take care of the planet, to how our actions come back to us.

Compassion.

Compassion. We have responsibility for our actions. So I think they're just basic guiding principles that most people follow, I think.

Mm-hmm. Hopefully.

On a good day.

Yeah. So you're in graduate school, you start to study psychology?

Uh-huh. It's interesting because I come from a working-class family, and so I wasn't really that motivated in high school. But once I started going to community college and taking classes, I really loved it. And I continued to go to a public undergraduate institution while I was working full-time. And then I ended up—

What were you doing full-time?

Waiting tables.

Wow, okay. So you supported yourself.

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. And then I went to Michigan State, which is where I worked with a professor named Joel Aronoff, who was one of Abraham Maslow's original students. He worked with Maslow at Brandeis in the '70s.

Wow.

And so—

Can you just explain for the audience who Maslow is and his theory?

Yeah, Abraham Maslow is the pyramid guy. He's the guy who came up with the pyramid hierarchy of needs. And he began at the bottom of the pyramid with our basic physiological needs, then our safety needs.

Like we have to have food. Yes. Water.

Yeah. And then we have to feel safe. We have to have a predictable environment to grow up in. If we grow up in chaos, then we can get kind of fixated at being concerned with outer circumstances to help us feel safe.

And that's the second part of the pyramid. Yeah.

And then the third is love and belongingness, which is, you know, making connections with other people. And esteem needs, there's basically feeling like what you're— that you're worthy and that you're contributing something to the world.

And then at the very top, it's like—

Self-actualization. Yes. Which was, in Maslow's view, that was only like 1% of the population or less who really got there, and that was kinda transcending these strong drives that kind of affect us and guide our behavior. And you have to have all those basic needs met before you can get to that highest part of the pyramid.

Exactly.

That's why it's a pyramid. Although he never really stated it as a pyramid, it was kinda like something that other people came up with as a graphic.

Mm. And by self-actualization, he meant fulfillment. Fulfilling your greatest potential.

Fulfilling life's potential. Yeah, fulfilling your highest potential, definitely.

So you worked with somebody who directly worked with him.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah. That was sort of the beginning of really focusing on motivation and perception. You know, over time I became, you know, interested in personality and I moved to Barnard. And one of the interesting things too was that I was adopted as a kid. Oh. I actually met my birth parents maybe about 15 years ago. I found out that they're both college professors. My dad was a psychology professor. They're retired now too. I just got chills.

That's— yeah.

So that has been interesting in terms of—

Nature versus nurture, right?

Exactly. Like, I thought I was being rebellious by becoming a college professor and being a psychologist because I grew up in this, you know, very practical family and they were like, Well, you got a degree in psychology. How are you going to get a job doing that? You know? And I was like, uh, don't worry about it. You know? And so as time went on, like, I was like this rebel who was going to be a psychologist.

Were you the first one to go to college?

Yeah.

In your adopted family?

Right. I mean, I don't have brothers and sisters. So when I met my birth parents, it was amazing. I didn't know actually how much my choices had been driven by genetics versus me thinking I had free will. Free will. And I was like being this radical person becoming a psychologist.

You should see my face right now. They can't see my face, but I'm just like floored by this story. That's unbelievable. And how did you end up meeting them?

Well, um, I initially hired actually a private detective to try and find my mother when the adoption records were open. So, and that varies state by state. I thought that I kind of pinpointed her, but I, I wanted somebody else to approach her because I really didn't want to invade her life, you know, or— and I didn't know, like, you know, I knew she was married and had had a family after that happened. So after she gave me up for adoption, and I didn't want to intrude on her life. I didn't know if she had told her husband or kids or whatever.

Right.

So I wanted someone else to approach her as sort of a mediator.

What drove you to wanting to find her? Have you always thought about it?

Yeah, I mean, I wanted to say thank you and to tell them, you know, my life turned out really well. And, um, and, and too, I was interested in, you know, getting health information, right? In terms of, as I got older, any kind of health concerns I wanted to— I didn't have any of the genetic information. This is before genetic testing accelerated and you could just order it online. You just order it now, right?

But that must have been emotional for for you, right?

Yeah, it was. It was a big deal. I mean, I think you have to go to those— in a situation like that, you can't really have expectations that it's gonna, like, be a certain way or that you're gonna get something that you didn't get before, because you just can't have those kinds of expectations. So when people ask me, you know, "Should you do it?" or, you know, "Do I regret doing it?" it's important to do it from a place that you have a lot of emotional support you have a lot of support from people in your life already. And that you don't go thinking that you're going to get something from them in the sense of that they're going to love you and they're going to think you're great or they're going to, you know, whatever it is you want. That's kind of part of the story that most adopted people have. So that you just go as an adult saying, you know, for whatever reason you're going and you're really clear about it and you have a lot of support.

I wonder some of that seeking and your attachment to Autobiography of a Yogi, like, would have to do with the fact that you were adopted?

Hmm. Well, I mean, I think one of the things that adopted people have in common is they kind of have two tracks. They have their kind of persona and their personality of who they're expected to be by their adopted parents, and then they have this other mysterious part of themselves that they don't know where they come from or what the story is. So that can be disturbing, but it can also be really freeing because you have a lot of creativity in terms of discovering who you are and then just creating an identity or a sense of self out of this void that you just don't really know.

Mm-hmm.

So—

But it sounds like you were very resilient about this.

I think—

You were seeking intellectual resilience.

Yeah, I would say that I used psychology as a, as a kid to really help me learn coping skills and to help me learn, you know, emotion regulation, to put things in perspective, again, to understand how people see the world differently.

And who am I, basically?

Right. Who am I was a big question, and it is for most adopted children, I think.

Uh-huh. So that, that brings me to an observation I've often made is people in the helping professions psychologists, especially psychiatrists, all seem to have had a story of resilience in their lives where they sought. Do you think that's true? Like we learn or teach what we need?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think there's research on it. I think Dan McAdams has done some interesting research on generativity stories, the idea that you want to give back to future generations from what you've learned in life. Mm-hmm. And that one of the core characteristics of people who tend to be very generative are those who've had some kind of adversity in life, and then they'd see a way to help other people to make meaning out of the experience and then use that meaning to help other people understand their own experiences, or at least put the interpretation of it out into the world.

Mm-hmm. To help others. With our own experience. Yeah. So that's an amazing story. Getting back to your mirror meditation, I mean, I could put a spin on it now, right?

Looking in the mirror, who am I?

Who am I? Right.

Yeah.

When did that start? Did you just come upon it or did you read about it?

It's interesting because I think as a child, I used to spend a lot of time looking in the mirror. We used to have a shiny chrome toaster on the table. In our dining room, and I used to remember making faces. My grandpa used to call them monkey shines. I did for as long as my parents would let me, you know, and it was a lot of fun. And you know, as a kid, I didn't have brothers and sisters growing up, so it was kind of like almost imaginary friend. And it was also a way, I spent a lot of time imitating adults, trying on these different characters that I saw on TV. And so it really taught me about some emotion regulation and also, you know, just social skills and trying on different roles and pretending.

Yeah, like an imaginary friend, but you yourself.

Yeah, exactly. It was fun. But then, you know, as I grew older, I think—

Babies are so obsessed with the mirror. I remember when I had my kids, you know, putting a mirror in front of my son for the first time. You know, they're fascinated by it, right? And then it's that metacognition that humans have to realize that that person in the mirror is you. And I don't think many other mammals have that. Maybe, I think a monkey knows.

Yeah.

Maybe dolphins, I think know.

Yeah, dolphins too. Monkeys, primates, there's a sort of a correlation with the amount of time that mammals spend needing care from their mothers or caregivers, how much they can recognize themselves in the mirror.

That happens— They spend longer. Your mom is taking care of you as a baby, the more likely that species will be able to recognize that they are themselves in the mirror. Right. Okay, and not some other being.

Right, for children it's about 20 months is the average. So before that, they might be fascinated by what they see, but they don't know it's them. They think it's just like something interesting.

And like photographs too. I remember my son, he was the only child for a little while, he would see photographs of me holding him and he would smack it.

It's like jealous.

So you started playing with the mirror, and I guess it was friendly to you.

Yeah, it was very fun.

Uh-huh.

And then, you know, as I grew older, I think I sort of got shamed out of it in terms of, "What are you doing looking at yourself in the mirror all the time?" And then, you know, as I grew older too, those messages about beauty and everything as I grew into a young woman, I was using the mirror basically to compare myself with the fashion models in magazines and and actors on TV in terms of how I was supposed to look and the makeup I was supposed to wear and my hair.

And at some point, right, like I think middle school maybe or high school, we literally just look to make sure that nothing's out of place.

Right.

Or just to fix ourselves.

Right. So the mirror becomes associated with scrutiny and also self-objectification, which is the idea of seeing oneself as an object rather than as a person. So when we look in the mirror, we want to kind of adjust this and that so that we look presentable. Yeah. But we oftentimes forget to check in with how we're feeling.

I don't think most people ever do that. I can't remember the last time. Well, now that I know about your mirror meditation, I don't remember the last time where I would regularly look in the mirror and smile at myself, for example, like you would your neighbor or your friend. We don't relate to ourselves in that way.

Yeah, we see ourselves as like, "What's wrong? Do I have spinach in my teeth?" You know, I call it the trifecta of self-cruelty: old, fat, and ugly. When they have a critical orientation toward themselves in the mirror, they see that they're getting older, they see that they're getting fatter, they see that they're not as attractive, they find some aspect of themselves that they don't like, you know, and that's—

Like pulling and tugging and all that.

Right, right. So it's not surprising that many people avoid mirrors, particularly as they get old.

Well, a lot of men, they probably don't look in the mirror as much, right?

They have a different set of issues. I work with a lot of men in doing mirror meditation too. It's less about their appearance and more about sort of like their integrity, their mood, how they're coming across generally to people. But I think they also do have appearance issues much more than women might think.

I remember like after reading about you and meeting you thinking that it is so interesting. I mean, we live with ourselves 24/7, and when we see ourselves, it's never friendly. In a reflection, you know, maybe once in a while you're like, "Oh, I like what I'm wearing," or it's not a regularity that we would— just as self-compassion has in its place, we don't do that to ourselves. When we see our friends, we're we expect it to be friendly and we expect ourselves to be friendly to them. It's normal. But when we see ourselves in the mirror, it's never like, oh, hey, how are you? Never.

We don't see ourselves and our first glance at ourselves tends to activate the inner critic. For many people. But that's not bad. In that case, it's like your reflection becomes associated with self-criticism.

Because of societal norms and we're expected to look in the mirror just to check ourselves and not to really talk to ourselves because that would look weird. Weird.

I think so. I mean, I think the other thing is mirrors are associated with narcissism. So if you spend your time looking in the mirror, kissing the mirror, that would not be good. So that's the other thing. That's the other extreme. It's either you're a narcissist because you're looking and you're looking at yourself fondly. Yeah. Or you're criticizing yourself, which is maybe more virtuous, but it's also very painful and not accurate.

The teenagers and the preteens now, they're always looking in their phones, but they're taking selfies. So they're constantly making faces, and they're making faces at themselves, and like sending pictures of themselves to people all day long.

Yeah, I know, I know.

But the true form of narcissism isn't just looking at ourselves physically, right? I think people get confused with the lay term, like pop culture narcissism versus true narcissism, which is when they can't even understand somebody else's emotions.

Narcissism— to have narcissistic personality disorder— yes, is only like 1% of the population. The main criteria for psychiatric diagnosis is if your personality disorder is getting in the way of you having a satisfying work life and relationships.

Mm-hmm.

And so But what we see in the culture is on a continuum in terms of narcissistic tendencies that people can have. And I even feel uncomfortable sometimes using the word narcissism because, as you say, it's thrown around so much you don't really know what it means. Mm-hmm. But people always bring it up when I talk about mirrors. The cornerstone of narcissism or narcissistic tendencies is a lack of empathy. Yes. Not being able to feel the emotions of others.

Yes, lack of empathy.

—And so it's very interesting that one of the ways that we learn empathy is through face-to-face contact as children. It creates a very interesting, uh, parallel to think about how narcissists might like looking at themselves in the mirror but not be empathic.

So they're not empathic to themselves either? Not really.

They, they identify with themselves through an image. The psychiatric literature, the psychoanalytic literature, there's a specific parenting pattern that leads to narcissistic tendencies. Uh-huh. And that is being raised by a parent who wants to focus on that image and that perfect image of their child. So that they look at the perfect image that they see in their child, but when their child feels other things like vulnerability or fear or anger or distress, the parent tends not to mirror them, tends not to look at them. Mm. So they look away from the child. Mm-hmm. So the child sort of feels invisible when they feel feel these more vulnerable feelings. So the child learns to then just project this perfect positive image to get affirmation. And then that leads to, you know, not necessarily being very empathic to other people because they're not really learning empathy. They're not being shown empathy. I see. You know, one of the things that we, we do to demonstrate empathy is to stay with people and to be in contact with them when they're feeling vulnerable. When they're feeling these negative emotions, you know, when things are uncertain and unclear, we have an ability to really stay with them in the present moment and look at them and give them our attention. And so if children are growing up—

That's a skill we could all use a little more of, right?

Totally. Yeah, particularly in our society as we spend more time alone and on our devices, we can't see the effects that our words and our pictures and what we're posting have on other people. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, the research on selfies shows that actually selfies usually create a negative impression for people who are seeing them, but we don't see people's reactions to our selfies. So other people who are looking at your selfies—

Yeah. —feel bad.

Yeah, and it doesn't— Or negative. It doesn't help— obviously, some caveats and some different circumstances, but in general, people who post a lot of selfies, their audience is not looking upon them as more favorably for doing that. I see. And then there's all kinds of different emotions that people are having, like envy and different things, because, you know, everybody just posts the best pictures of themselves. It's like, having a miserable day. I look horrible today. I'm just— I think I would like to share that with you. Right?

Yeah. Okay, so the mirror meditation. Uh-huh. When you're doing the mirror meditation, do you recommend a daily practice or is this just something you should rotate into your meditative practices? How would you recommend young children to have a mirror practice that would be more healthy? And then for, let's say, emerging adults, which I think now covers 18 to 29 years old. Yeah. Emerging adults are emerging for a while now. So how would you recommend younger children, like maybe in their tweens and teens, as they become more self-conscious and start looking at themselves critically in a mirror, to, you know, maybe prevent that from happening altogether? Because I'm all about prevention.

Yeah, totally. I totally— Proactive. Yes, indeed. Well, first I want to tell you how I shifted from my own being so critical when I looked in the mirror as a teen. One of the things that's that happened to me was I was doing that self-objectification where I was just looking at myself and, you know, thinking I should be thinner, my hair should be different, you know, I wanna do my eyes differently, my nose is too big, you know, all kinds of things. I was walking around my apartment and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I was shocked by how sad and distressed I looked 'cause I hadn't realized I felt that way. Over time then, I began to take a few minutes to look at myself in the mirror and check in with how I was feeling. Oh. That kind of revived my sense of the familiarity of seeing myself in the mirror that I used to sort of comfort me as a kid. Mm-hmm. And I began doing that just to kind of check in with how I was feeling emotionally. Mm. And over time, it became a meditation. The mirror was so helpful to me that I wanted to see, as the scientist in me then came online and was like, "Hmm, what's going on here scientifically?" Like, why is looking in the mirror, you know, am I a narcissist? Am I just sitting here being narcissistic, gazing at myself? And I didn't think so because I was oftentimes not feeling terribly great when I looked in the mirror, you know? But I was just sitting with myself as like an open inquiry. Like, what's here now? If I just sit for 10 minutes, what will I discover about myself? And I discovered some amazing things.

So did you actually do the research on that then?

Well, I did the research with people, so I had them come to my lab and actually just gaze at their own reflection and then tell me how they felt. Mm-hmm. You know, and we, we did some questionnaire studies, the PANAS, P-A-N-A-S, Positive Negative Affect Scale, and then a self-compassion scale that we sort of adopted Kristin Neff's work.

And these all relate to how happy you feel or your resilience, right?

Right. So we just give people the questionnaire before they start doing the meditation, and then we give them to them after.

Mm-hmm. And how long was the meditation? Was it one session, or was it weeks?

We did a variety. So for some, we wanted to do the lab-controlled studies. Uh-huh. We did them so that they did the meditation over the course of an hour. Sometimes they came back. And we did as many as, I think, 10 or 12 sessions in the lab. And then we also had a group of people who just Did it on their own, based on the honor system, do it. Self-reported.

Yeah. So when you say an hour, they weren't gazing at it for an hour. They had like some sort of a lecture or something? Yeah, usually 10 minutes.

Well, they filled the questionnaires before. We usually do a little bit of a guided relaxation. So with their eyes closed, we do kind of like a body scan. And then we also tune into the deep breathing. Because looking in the mirror for that long can be kind of scary for people. So we want to get people nice and relaxed before they start doing it.

You get them physically relaxed and then you have them look in the mirror. So you kind of prime them before. Exactly. Okay. Right.

So we do a physical relaxation and we also do the deep breathing, which is, you know, taking those deep belly breaths is one of the quickest ways to activate the vagus nerve and to calm people down. We do that. And do they have instructions on what to do while they're looking at the mirror? Yeah, I have guided instructions. We'll have a little bit of a progressive relaxation, some practice deep breathing, and And then I guide them through looking and we continue to focus on the breath and help people stay in their bodies because that's what happens too. We live in a culture that we're so based in our heads. I give people cues to help them sort of stay in their bodies. Like use their senses? Use all their senses, right? In terms of using the visual as a primary sense but using their other senses as they look.

And then is it a mindfulness exercise? You watch your thoughts and, and in a nonchalant way.

And definitely. So we use the 3 principles of mindfulness, which are keeping your attention in the present moment, having an open awareness. I invite people to be open to experiencing something that they weren't expecting, seeing something about themselves that they've never seen before, to just be open to that as a possibility. And then the 3rd principle of mindfulness is kind intention, having a kind intention toward yourself. Yourself. And to me too, if I'm the person giving them instructions, kind intention generally. And that really helps a lot. Those are really good guiding principles.

And then do you have any positive affirmations?

We don't say positive affirmations. Okay. And there are some reasons for this.

Do you ever watch Saturday Night Live way back?

Yeah, right.

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

There is actually research showing that that does work. Okay, the positive affirmations. Yes.

At least it'll make you laugh, right? Right, right. I actually wrote about it in a Psychology Today piece called "Compassion at the Mirror." And you have this awesome blog called The Clarity, which I'll also put a link to, but— Great. It sounds like it has an amazing readership at this point, right? It does.

It's gonna turn over to a million reads, I think, in about a month or so. So I'm excited. Wow. Hopefully by my birthday in April. So I'm really happy that that many people are interested in reading about self-awareness.

It's all about sharing your Resilience with People. That's incredible. Okay.

Yeah, it's been, it's been great. I've gotten some great feedback on it and I'm really into providing useful tips. So I provide science-backed useful exercises for people to do. Fantastic.

So you wrote about this research where they were doing affirmations in a mirror versus affirmations without a mirror and they did better when they did it in the mirror. Right.

And I think it was more compassionate phrases. So they said compassionate phrases either with a mirror or without a mirror. And those that said the compassionate phrases with a mirror showed more self-compassion. So that it does work.

Was there like how many minutes you have to do? For example, people always ask Dr. Benson, who coined the term relaxation response, like, what is the minimum I have to do? Like, what's the bare minimum?

Everybody wants to know the bare minimum.

They always laugh and say 17 and a half minutes or something like that. Yeah. And their recommendation is really 20 minutes, either 10 minutes twice a day or optimally 20 minutes twice a day.

Uh-huh. 10 minutes, 20 minutes is good. And getting back to the mirror meditation that I do without the affirmation, so sitting silently. But kindly. Kindly. With those 3 mindfulness. Kindly. Right. In the present moment, open awareness, with kind intention, sitting silently in stillness. That can be challenging for people, so they're tempted to say affirmations because if they sat in silence, they would discover some new things. And how long does this go on for? Well, we start with 3 minutes, then we work up to 10 minutes. Over 11 weeks. They can do it for 11 weeks. Some people do it for much longer. But in general, the reason we do it silently is because it's sort of like right when the people— right when people feel the urge to say an affirmation, this is oftentimes when an emotion is coming up and when something new is coming up that they might not know. So to me, affirmations is like a friend that you know is really upset and needs to talk about something, and you keep going, I love you as my friend, you're my best friend in the whole world, everything is going so great for you. You have a wonderful life. You're so pretty. You're so beautiful. And how annoying that is, right? Yes, yes. So this— you don't want to do that to yourself, right? You want to be like, I'm quiet and I'm listening and I value you by just being silent and giving you my attention.

Which is probably what we should do for our best friends as well. Exactly.

For our best friends and for ourselves. And so we're in a culture, particularly American culture, that's so sort of uncomfortable with silence. Mm-hmm. We wanna fill that space with some chatty chatty, something interesting. Mm-hmm. So it's like, what's under that chatter? Mm-hmm. And so the mirror minute, the silent mirror meditation helps people to tolerate listening deeply. Mm-hmm. Wow.

Interesting. I love it. And that's what you did— you did that at the Rubin Museum as well. I did it. A sold-out crowd.

The Rubin has a— it's a beautiful little museum in Chelsea that specializes in Eastern art, and they have a wonderful Tibetan sacred shrine on the top floor. Yeah, we actually did it for 60 people as a silent ritual in which people set intentions for what they wanted We did it in the spring, so they set intentions for what they wanted to create and what they wanted to see in themselves. They sat in silence and I guided them through the meditation.

That's beautiful. It was a great experience. So I did, I tried a little bit. It was just a very small group of kids and I had them use their phone. What do you think of that? Just to like face the phone because we didn't have mirrors. Right. So they just looked at themselves as a mirror on the phone. And it seemed to do the job. Would you— do you think there's a particular reason that you have to have an actual mirror?

I think there are some advantages to having a mirror, yeah. For one thing, phone, you know, you want to make sure you turn off all your notifications, put it in airplane mode, and that kind of thing. And the other thing is, you know, particularly for that population, they're already associating kind of their phone and their camera with taking selfies. —so, and there's a specific emotional pattern I find with people who have selfies and selfie addiction, which not everybody who takes selfies clearly has an addiction to it.

And by addiction we mean it's always an addiction if it's interfering with your daily life. Right. Problematic usage is just maybe it's bothering you, but you're not losing your job or you're not failing school. Right. Addiction is those two things, which I hate when we have to wait for someone to become diagnosable.

Yeah, it's an important distinction to make, but I would say too, you know, if you're doing something and you wish you weren't doing it, but you can't stop doing it. Problematic. That's problematic, right? Compulsive, compulsion. Compulsion, right? And I think the research on addictive behavior and what I see in working with individuals with a selfie behavior that they're trying to change, put it that way, is that it's almost an emotion regulation strategy. There's something coming up for them emotionally that they don't wanna deal with. So they take the focus off themselves and their internal space of what they're feeling emotionally and take a picture and create an image, and that makes them feel better, and then they get likes for that image. Mm. But then that's reinforcing again that external image that needs to be a certain way rather than getting any kind of validation or feedback or mirroring for what their inter— their actual internal state is.

So you think the actual phone has, like, so much meaning that it's probably better to have an actual mirror rather than a phone?

It becomes associated with all kinds of things for people. And most of it is— I think the phone in and of itself can provoke anxiety, just like seeing it, you know?

So did the Rubin whip out 60 mirrors? Yeah.

Wow. I mean, I also do a lot of work with individuals just because there's so many different aspects that we can get at individually. Like you were asking me earlier about, um, so you do clinical work, like one-on-one? I do one-on-one clinical work. I'm not a licensed clinical psychologist, so most of my clients who are dealing with serious issues are also in psychotherapy with a licensed therapist.

And you specifically teach them mirror meditation?

I specifically teach the mirror meditation. Wonderful. And, and this is sort of like a supplement between therapy.

So you're teaching, like you're a teacher rather than a therapist in that role?

Exactly, exactly. And so, um, what we discover again when we're in that process of silence and open awareness in terms of anything could happen, we could have any kind of experience, uh, is, is really amazing what people report. Um, you know, the three main findings are that people develop more self-compassion over time because they realize doing it initially activates that inner critic and those unkind voices. So over time they see on their face, when they start really tuning into themselves, they see on their face how, how their own criticism is affecting them. And then they have a practice to treat themselves with more kindness. That's wonderful.

So if somebody wanted to be guided by you, is there a recording or YouTube video that they can we can refer them to?

We're good. We're going to make some recordings, and I also work individually with people online. You can learn more about it and apply at my website, mirrormeditation.com.

Awesome. You did a TEDx talk recently, which was fantastic. I loved it. Um, how was that experience? How did that happen for you? Was this something you applied to or somebody recommended you?

I wanted to do one, and I wanted to choose a venue that I thought would be receptive to what I doing. I saw a TED Talk by a psychologist named Amy Morin, who you might have heard of. She's a resilience person, and she had a TED Talk on Secrets of Mental Strength, and it has over 11 million views. Wow. And she did it at TEDxOcala, and I thought, hmm, that might be a good venue. And I happened to look on their site, and the theme for the coming year was Reflections. Oh, this is perfect, you know, kind of a thing. And the deadline was like a couple weeks away to submit a video, and I'm like, I'm just gonna try. And they accepted me, and they gave me sort of like the keynote spot, the spot that Amy had, as a last speaker. So it was wonderful. Most TEDx talks will ask you to submit a video, and then usually you have an interview, you have to do more, but they accepted me right away. It needed to be a minute, so it was It was like kind of like a little abstract, it was like a pitch for the talk that I wanted to give that I recorded. Wow, okay. Yeah, so you have to have a kind of a concise pitch that gets people's attention.

Uh-huh, and so once you were accepted, they just whisked you out there or do they give you some coaching or do they help you get it up to par? How was that experience for you?

It was great. I was assigned a speaking coach who had given a TEDx talk 2 years ago Rina Romano, and she gave a TEDx talk at Ocala. She'd been on Oprah, has a best-selling book on her personal journey through dealing with sexual abuse. And her talk now, I think it has about 150,000 views or something.

So they recommended her to you?

They have a whole group of former speakers. Also, the, the woman who produces it is very active in Toastmasters. Mm-hmm. It was great to to have her guidance, 'cause she was wonderful. Reena was really wonderful. And also too, as I tell my students, we do TEDx talks in my classes for their research presentations at the ends of the class. And I tell students and basically anybody who'll listen to me, it's important to be able to talk about what is really of interest to you and what your area of expertise is in a short 10 to 15 minute talk. That is in the format of an Idea Worth Spreading, that I think that that's really invaluable. If you want to get, you know, your work out into the world, you have a message, that being able to craft your message in that format is really, really valuable. It's a bite-sized format that people can listen to quickly and get the gist of what you're talking about. Mm-hmm. It's entertaining, it's educational. Mm-hmm. And it gives you a lot of confidence to be able to then talk. It's not something that academic, it's not a strong suit in academics to teach people to communicate their ideas in a way that an average person can understand. Uh-huh. We tend to sort of wanna make it more complicated and more refined and sophisticated. And I think that that ends up becoming a disadvantage, particularly if what you're doing, it really has practical benefits in the world. You wanna be able to communicate that to just about anybody who would be interested in hearing about it.

Yeah, because it will help them. Exactly. Yeah. So did you feel like there was a big learning curve or—

In some ways, I mean, because I'm doing the work with the mirror meditation and a lot of it is really promoting or highlighting authenticity, it was very important that I came out as very authentic in the TEDx talk. And I think a lot of the talks, sometimes people are so like pumped up and it feels a little bit staged. So I wanted to not do that. I wanted to be really authentic in terms of how I was speaking. So I tried to feel like I wasn't performing, but that I was just like talking to— like I'm talking to you, like I'm sharing, just a person. I'm sharing. Yeah. And so that takes a little practice to do because you really are in front of an audience of 900 people and you got these bright lights. I mean, that's the other thing. If you don't realize how bright the lights are on you. It's like having an eye exam where you can see the flutters in your eyes. Like, like you're having an eye exam the whole time that you're on the— you're out there talking.

Do they give you stage time though to prep for that part?

We got one rehearsal. Wow. One rehearsal.

Uh-huh. Yeah. But you, you have like a— the teleprompter?

You have a screen that just shows you where your slides are. So you can look down on it and make sure that your slides are out. So you don't have to turn around and look at the slides. Although I did do that once in the talk. The talk is completely memorized.

Do you forward the slides or it's all like timed already? I forward the slides.

Okay. Yeah, and that's an art too, to kind of coordinating the slides. And generally, I think too, you know, one of the things in academic talks is you can kind of hide behind your slides, you know, like, "Don't look at me, look at my slide!" Or the podium.

I like to hide behind the podium sometimes.

Exactly. And with the TEDx talk, man, there's nothing. There's nothing there, you know. And And they say, you know, don't like write out your whole talk on a slide like many kind of boring academic talks. So you want to use as few visuals as you can. So I just had a couple of visuals of me actually doing mirror meditation with people. So you can kind of see what it's like.

That was your first TED Talk. I thought it was amazing. And what did you take away from it? Do you feel like you can just go on any stage now? Well, I mean, there are things that I'd like to do differently, but I think the mirror meditation was working because when you saw it, on my screen out there, you were like, "Hey, I look good." I look great on your huge screen.

That's the other thing, you know, people sometimes think, "Okay, so you're doing this work, so you're not critical of your appearance at all anymore, right?

You're completely cured, right?" It's always like when I'm teaching resilience, they're like, "Hey, you seem upset today." Well, yeah, I still have emotions. I still have my on days and off days.

Right, right. So I was critical of my appearance when I saw the TEDx talk. But for me, I think the difference is my criticism is normalized. So I don't have shame over it. I was just actually doing another interview with— I was talking about body shame. And I said, you know, the worst thing you can do with body shame is shame yourself for being ashamed. You know, like, I feel body shame, I'm ashamed. But it's just like, yeah, I look fat in my swimsuit. I hate it. Oh well, you know. So it's just normalizing that self-criticism so that you're not— it's not affecting your well-being. It's just like, yeah, I'm older and I'm fatter and my nose is bigger, my teeth don't look as good as they did 20 years ago, whatever.

And you're not saying, I'm a mirror meditation teacher, so I can never feel upset about how I look in a mirror. Right. Like, really? I love myself. I'm so beautiful. Yeah, the shame part is it could really get you stuck. Right.

Yeah. Right. So that's part of it too.

And also there's fact, right? I mean, if I— I gained some weight over the last few years. And if I look and I always say to myself, oh, you know, I can't criticize myself, you know, or see what's really there, I might become unhealthier. Because now I'm taking action. I'm saying, you know what? I did actually gain some weight and I do need to do these certain things to get my health back on track. Right. So there is a reality. To it too.

Yeah. So it's like, if you're afraid to look at yourself in the mirror because you're so mean to yourself that you want to avoid looking because you don't want to hurt yourself with how mean you are, then you're going in a self-delusion loop. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because you can't even look at yourself because you're so mean to yourself. And then whatever it is you need to see, you can't change because you're afraid to look. Yes. So what it is too, it's being able to sit with yourself and say, hey, yeah, you know, I gained some weight. I'm getting older. You know, my tooth is weird.

I better go to the dentist. Yeah.

Or whatever. You know, and having that be like, oh yeah, I'm human, kind of a thing, rather than I can't even look because I'm so not perfect, you know. So that's what, so it's normalizing. Normalizing. I love that word.

Yes, because you're not going, you're actually looking at your thoughts and saying that's overboard criticism versus actually, you know, I need to go see the doctor about that spot on my skin.

Right, saying, you know, I've gained 10 pounds, I can see this hanging over my, my whatever is a fact. But saying, saying like, I'm a fat pig, or God, how can I love myself? That's self-cruelty.

So that's actually CBT, right? Cognitive behavioral therapy, where you actually pick out the facts from opinion or just exaggeration or all those cognitive distortions.

Yes, it's definitely consistent with the principles of of CBT. CBT, not CBD. CBT. Not CBD. Right. That's a different one.

That's a different conversation. This was so fascinating. I could talk to you forever, but I want to give you lunch. I just have one extra question. My daughter has been in ballet since she was like, could walk. So they're always looking in the mirror in a critical fashion because that's part of ballet, right? So you have to adjust your body accordingly. Then, of course, in their teenage years, we've seen a lot of eating disorders. And then now she's actually a model. So that's even more magnified by cameras that actually put 10 pounds on you. What would you say to these girls who are in these kinds of either athletes or, or dancers and, you know, and they have to look in the mirror all the time in this kind of critical way?

Well, I do work with a lot of actors and models and dancers because they have such a complex relationship with the mirror. Yes. As you, as you mentioned, you know, it's something that they use to have this exacting image and exacting movements, and they use it for feedback to improve themselves very rigorously. Yes. So I would say in addition to doing that, they want to have a different relationship with the mirror in the sense of being able to check in with how they're feeling. So doing the mirror meditation actually is wonderful for them because they need to separate out— if they don't want to only have a relationship with their own image that's critical and that is self-objectifying. Yes. But yet you can normalize that because if you want to be a model, if you want to be a dancer, you're going to have to use the mirror in that way. Yes. But that's not the only way you should be seeing yourself. Seeing yourself. Okay. You want to be able to see your emotions. You want to be able to sit with yourself and just have a day where you don't have any makeup on and you're just in your sweatpants and, you know, you look fat and ugly or whatever your, your deal is that you're trying to hide that you look like, and letting yourself have that. So I do the majority of my mirror meditations without makeup on, and though I'm not a model or anything, but I do many of them without makeup on. Sometimes I do them at night. I have my nightgown on and I'm funny and I do— I see your teeth. I do video journals. I do video journals too sometimes too. And sometimes I do it with the night guard on because I forget to do it before I put on my night guard.

But that's on your phone then, right?

Yeah. I do video journals on my phone sometimes too.

Okay. But you're not posting it?

No. The video journals— so we also do this program called the 10-10-10, which is 10 minutes of silent mirror gazing a day, making a 10-minute video journal in which you say whatever you want to in your video journal. You just agree not to show it to anybody. I see. So it's kind of like a diary, but it's a visual video diary. Oh. And then 10 minutes watching it back with your full attention, being aware of your body sensations and emotions as you watch yourself.

And then do you do it right after you filmed yourself? Oh.

Or does it matter? Usually not. I usually wait. Different people have different— that I've worked with have different rhythms to it. So most people do the mirror gazing in the morning. And then they do the video journal at night. And then what I do is like, I find—

I find at nighttime I'm so much more negative than I am in the morning.

Well, it's great to be able to see that pattern. It's great to be able to see that pattern. And you'll see it when you watch your videos. One of the interesting things we find is that when they look back on their videos, they're amazed at how much they've accomplished, how much they were feeling, what they did, because we tend to remember are unfinished tasks and things that turned out negatively. But if you're talking for 10 minutes, it's amazing how much, you know, you really have changed and progressed in just a week.

I love it because you're talking to yourself and you're going to listen to yourself as you would somebody you care about and that you are friends with.

Yeah, and you're not going to show it to anybody, so you, you can relieve yourself of that performance aspect. Yes. And so that's, you know, when I work with people who are performers, it's important that they have a relationship with themselves and their own image that isn't performance-based. Because over time, just focusing on your external image, research shows that it can numb body sensations. What can? Self-objectification. When you just look at your own image and you kind of get in that mode of always thinking about how you look to other people, people, how your external image looks to other people. It also affects cognitive function because you can't, you can't be thinking about how you look and be doing at the same time, you know. So it's getting comfortable with just seeing yourself as you are and giving yourself space to feel those emotions that you might need to regulate or sort of hide or keep under control when you're performing. But you still want to have access to them because you, you know, you don't want to cut yourself off from the full range of emotions because it's part of your image and what you're trying to do to only show certain aspects of yourself. Uh-huh. So you want to keep those other aspects and the variety of who you are alive, and that's what every creative person needs to do. You don't want to get so narrow in your kind of self-objectified persona roles that you're in, that you're that you wanna be in because you wanna be successful.

Part of their success is to be able to share as much of themselves as possible without feeling that self-consciousness. So— Right. That's probably freeing too, right? Right. Creatively. Definitely.

And the idea that you wanna be able to be vulnerable with yourself first. That's the other thing that I talk about with, particularly with people who take a lot of selfies. Oftentimes they'll show other people some vulnerable aspects of themselves, but they don't really process it themselves. And over time, it can be harmful to them because if they're showing a lot of emotions just out in public and they're getting a lot back in terms of negative stuff online or whatever, but they're not really processing it.

So you mean like those vloggers who like talk about how upset they were or something?

Or people who post pictures of themselves crying or really upset. Oh, okay. Process that. So one of the biggest changes we see in working with people with selfie addiction is that what they need is to trust themselves and to find and to share that privately, to take the time and to risk sharing it one-on-one with someone who really cares about them. They actually find that that is much more threatening and much harder to do than to just show a photo of themselves crying on Instagram. Mm.

And you're taking it to the next level where you are your own friend.

And then once you are your own friend, you can be more selective about how you share and what you share. Mm-hmm.

To keep your boundaries, to keep—

But to also know how you're feeling. Because the other thing is, if you don't know how you're feeling, you're much more vulnerable to letting other people tell you how you're feeling, to, like, gaslighting and emotional manipulation.

Oh, wow.

If you don't know how you're feeling. Yeah. If you're always looking to other people for affirmation, or to check in with them. So you want to trust yourself. And this is the other thing that I work with people on, building back self-trust if they've been in emotionally abusive relationships and situations. Again, they're also in psychotherapy, but to really feel that sense of self-trust, to look at themselves in the eye and to know that they trust themselves.

Well, this is fascinating. I mean, whoever thought of the mirror is such a symbol object could be so powerful.

Yes, indeed. It's, it's amazing. I keep finding more and more uses for it, and my students and my clients keep reporting more and more revelations. That's amazing.

So what's down the pike for you? Do you have new research coming?

Well, right now I'm writing a book which is going to share all the case studies— Fantastic. —of different people that I've worked with and the different discoveries that we've made on it. I continue to work with individuals And I also do a variety of workshops in private settings and corporate settings so that I can work with individual groups who know each other. We have special exercises that I do. Maybe couples? Married couples? Exactly. We've developed exercises in how to see each other. Wow. Practice being seen and seeing each other. And is there— are you going to do more in your lab? Yeah, we're doing some studies now in the lab.

Are you recruiting people, or is it usually just Barnard students?

We're usually using Barnard students, and, um, but again, I'm happy to talk with people about doing individual sessions. There's an application on the website, and so I'm always looking for interesting people who are open to experience of seeing themselves in a new way.

That was Tara Well. Thank you so much for coming out. My pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

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