Being Kind to Yourself

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. When you take the wrong turn off the highway or fumble a presentation at work, do you get mad at yourself for making a mistake? Do you silently kick yourself or maybe actually kick yourself? Self-criticism is often seen as heroic, maybe even noble. Many people think It's the surest path to self-improvement. But is it?

The belief that we need to be hard on ourselves, criticize ourselves to succeed or reach our goals or make a change is actually the number one block to self-compassion we found in the research. People are afraid that if they're kind to themselves, they just won't get anything done.

This week on Hidden Brain, the story of a psychologist who learned to stop beating up on herself, and how you can convert your harsh inner critic into a friend.

People who are more self-compassionate take more responsibility for their mistakes. They're more conscientious. They're more likely to apologize. Ironically, even though the word self is in self-compassion, when you take that approach, it actually— it means you don't have to be so self-focused.

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One of my first memories is going to visit him when I was about 6 years old in Maui, and him telling me, please don't call me Dad, call me Brother Dionysius, because we are all God's children. I was incredibly uncomfortable, and he said that to my brother as well. And so we couldn't call him Brother Dionysius, that was just absurd, but we weren't He didn't want us to call him Dad. So, you know, for many, many years, both my brother and I were like, excuse me, could you pass the salt, please? Like, without using any sort of name for him 'cause we didn't know what to call him. So that was kind of the backdrop of feeling unwanted and rejected.

As she grew up, Kristin's insecurity about her dad shaped her romantic relationships.

And I always kind of felt insecure. And so there was always that sense of if any boy If someone liked me enough to want to be with me, I should go for it because there aren't a lot of options. And that actually played into my first marriage.

Kristin married young. Her husband was a guy she met in college.

He was, he was a good guy. He was intelligent. He was handsome. And up until then, my boyfriends had all been kind of jerks. And so I kind of thought, okay, I've got a good one. I'll say yes when he asks me to marry him. That's amazing that someone would actually ask If they ask me to marry them, I'll just go for it. And I didn't have the larger understanding to realize that, well, what is it that I actually want in a man? It was like if it was somebody, that was good enough.

Kristin entered graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. She assumed her marriage was good. Her husband was committed to her.

But there wasn't a lot of passion. But I didn't really know what I was missing. Until the man I worked for as a research assistant in graduate school at UC Berkeley, I found out I did have a lot of passion with, and I started to realize, ah, I see, this is what I'm missing.

Kristin refers to this man as Peter, although that's not his real name.

First of all, he was much older than me. He was about 15 years older than me, and so Looking back, it's probably played into some of my father issues, right? And so we just started developing this intense attraction toward each other. At one point, I was working with him at his office, and he was looking at me, and I was looking at him, and we started kissing. So we started having a physical relationship, and the passion and the intensity was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. It's almost like it became a split personality. So I was having this affair with Peter, and I was hiding it from my husband, and I was split in two. The half that was— the part of me that was still married was horrible. The part of me that was with Peter, I was like on cloud nine. I'd never felt such love. Such love, such passion. I felt so deeply seen. It was amazing. So it was like the best and the worst simultaneously. And the two sides of me just didn't talk to each other.

There was one more complicating factor. Kristen and Peter were also hiding their affair from his partner. So one more layer of something that I was horrified about that I just didn't To top it off, even as she was breaking all sorts of moral codes, Kristin was in graduate school to study moral development.

There were so many ways in which it was wrong. Of course, it didn't even cross my mind at the time that I was his research assistant. It was really bad on his part, not to mention he was cheating. But he was, you know, I guess you consider that a sexually inappropriate relationship from his point of view. But at the time, that didn't even cross my mind.

Kristin was preparing to spend a year in India for her dissertation research. Peter promised her he was going to leave his partner and join her.

And we had made these plans. I thought this was it. I thought we were soulmates without a doubt. He was going to leave his partner for me. He was going to come to India. We were going to spend our lives together.

Kristin hadn't thought through how she'd tell her husband that their marriage was over.

I assumed that I would just tell him at some point, but I hadn't even gotten to that point when my husband discovered us.

She and Peter were at work one day when her husband paid a surprise visit.

And he knocked on the door of the office. And it took a long time to answer that knock, let's just say. And when he opened the door, like, he knew and I knew. And it's like it all just came out. Oh, God. It was like one of the worst moments in my entire life. I told him how sorry I was for hurting him, but I also said, you know, this is the love of my life and I need to do this and we need to get a divorce. And obviously he was very, very angry about it. I mean, I, I just felt— I felt horrible for hurting him.

Kristin and her husband filed for divorce. She left for India and waited for Peter to join her.

And I really thought he would come, and he kept on saying he would come.

Eventually, he broke the news to her.

After I was there about 3 months, he actually said, Kristin, I'm not going to come. And to say I was a basket case would probably not be an understatement. It kind of, you know, played into that storyline again of, okay, here I am rejected yet again. I was very hurt and I also felt betrayed. And, you know, so I started to realize, well, did he even mean what he said about wanting to spend the rest of his life with me? Maybe not. That was also hard.

After a year overseas, Kristin moved back to Berkeley to finish her PhD. She was still angry at Peter and had no interest in seeing him ever again. But then Peter's partner, who knew about his affair with Kristin, contacted her.

She sent me an email and said, Kristin, I need to tell you something. Peter's in the hospital with brain cancer. He only has a couple months left to live. If you want to see him, here's my visiting hours. You can come when I'm not there. Holy shit, huh? First of all, I felt overwhelmingly grateful to her. Like, what kind of woman would be so kind to this woman who tried to steal her partner? That she would do this and let me know.

Peter's partner had more news for Kristin.

She said, Kristin, I have to tell you, this isn't the first time this has happened with another woman. For whatever reason, she had decided to stick with him. But I guess this was the pattern, that he would meet younger women, say he was going to spend their life with him, and then dump them.

Still, Kristin decided to visit Peter at the hospital.

I just actually went once to see him because he was actually very close to the end. And it was really difficult because he couldn't talk, but he could see me. And he was making these weird sounds and faces because I don't know if he was in so much pain. He didn't seem happy to see me. And so I just, I said my goodbyes, you know, and I think I told him that I forgave him because he was about to die and I didn't want him to end thinking that I hated him. It wasn't a Hollywood script version of how you say goodbye. It was a very awkward— Uncertain, unclear version of how you say goodbye to someone.

Peter died a few days later, and Kristin was saddled with a toxic brew of emotions.

I'm still incredibly angry at myself. You know, I will admit there was a part of me that thought, well, is this somehow life saying, okay, you know, Kristin, if you do something like this and you You cheat and you have an affair, look what happens. I didn't really believe that, but that thought crossed my mind because I still felt so much shame and guilt about what I had done to my husband.

I asked Kristin about the conversations she had with herself in the days that followed her visit with Peter.

You're feeling horrible for lying. It's not who you are. You know, you've broken your vows. You've hurt someone. And then add on that coming back and all the layers of being angry at him because he basically— I don't know if he used me or not, but he basically wasn't honest with me, dumped me, left me in India. And then he's got brain cancer and me wanting to forgive him. I'm laughing, but of course it wasn't funny at the time. It was like a bad soap opera.

Of all people, Kristin told herself, she ought to have known better. She was doing a PhD on moral development, for crying out loud.

Honesty has always been one of my core values. I am by nature an incredibly honest person. Lying comes very unnaturally to me. So not only was I studying moral development, not only was morality kind of part of my self-concept and honesty Part of my self-concept. So that when I had done this, not only was I hypocritical, but I was completely inauthentic. So I just felt a lot of shame, a lot of shame that this had happened, that I had allowed it to happen. You know, there's even the slight thought, did I somehow cause this to happen through my karma? You know, I don't really believe in karma, but Brother Dionysius certainly— my dad certainly talked a lot about karma. What I was, was I was really cold to myself. Well, maybe you deserve this, you know. You know, you, you did this, this is what happens. I don't feel sorry for you. You know, it was just an intense Coldness toward myself. Coldness mixed with shame.

Perhaps you are familiar with an inner voice that says things like this, that castigates you, criticizes you, belittles you. A voice that tells you that you are no good, that you deserve to suffer. In the aftermath of her meltdown, Kristin became more and more aware of that voice inside her. She would never dream of saying harsh and cruel things to other people. So why was she doing it to herself?

The vast majority of people say they're significantly more compassionate and understanding and kinder to other people than they are to themselves.

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In my research, actually, the vast majority of people say they're significantly more compassionate and understanding and kinder to other people than they are to themselves, especially when they make a mistake or fail some way. It's interesting. Some people manifest this with, like, harsh language, with name-calling. You know, they swear at themselves. They really use a harsh tone. Other people, like myself, it's more just a sense of coldness or shame. Other people almost like they disassociate, almost like by abandoning themselves, just the way you might with someone you didn't like. You just stop returning their calls, right? And so that can manifest as just a shutting down, a going numb. Sometimes it's just a feeling of disappointment, like, you know, like a sigh out. That's, that's the way it manifests. But pretty much everyone has a self-critic that comes out one way or another.

You've talked about the concept of the inner critic. I think all of us have experienced this. What is the role that the inner critic plays in our lives?

Well, so the inner critic actually plays an important role. And I like to say we shouldn't beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up because the inner critic comes from the simple desire to stay safe, right? So what we know about the inner critic is it actually It's tapping into the body's fight, flight, or freeze response. And so when we're scared of something— and gosh, when we make a mistake or fail, it's scary. We feel frightened. We feel threatened. So we either fight ourselves, thinking we can control the situation and be safe, or we flee in shame from the perceived judgments of others, or we kind of freeze and get stuck in rumination. And these are all really natural ways We try to stay safe. So you might even say the motivation of the inner critic is a good one, even though the consequences are anything but.

Our inner self-critic may have first evolved to teach us how to survive. If you make a mistake when dealing with a predator, a mistake that costs you a limb, for example, it might make sense to beat yourself up over your mistake So you never repeat it. But today, this harsh teacher shows up even when we commit trivial infractions.

And we actually feel incredibly threatened even when we do something as simple as a friend and you see that she's— well, you don't know she's put on a little weight. You notice she's got a little bump and you say, oh, when are you expecting? And she says, uh, I'm not expecting. And by the way, that happened to me not too long ago. I was really bloated and someone said to me, when are you expecting? expecting? And I said, I'm not expecting. And so something like that happens, and it feels as serious as a predator chasing you about to kill you. Because what's happened is your self-concept at that moment is obliterated, you know, and it feels like a death because our ego is hurt. And we confuse our ego with our actual bodily selves, at least mentally. And when we fail, or we make a mistake, or someone criticizes us, or doesn't accept us or reject us, It does feel like a death. And I hate to say this, but some people do go so as far as to try to take their own life if they feel too much shame. Shame is a big factor in alcoholism and addiction and suicidal ideation and eating disorders. A huge number of dysfunctional behaviors are driven by shame. Shame is kind of the undercurrent behind everything. So the difference between shame and guilt, for instance, guilt is I did something bad. It's about our behaviors. Shame is, I am bad.

Is the connection between perfectionism and our inner critic, is that also connected, do you think, to the phenomenon of shame?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, some perfectionism is like, I want to do my very best, but if I don't, I'm still okay. That's actually useful perfectionism. Maladaptive perfectionism, unhelpful perfectionism is, if I'm not perfect, I am bad. And that feeling of I am bad is shame.

Feeling shame, feeling the pain caused by the inner self-critic, prompts many of us to do things that are unhelpful to our mental well-being. One of those responses: we try to suppress the pain by artificially propping up our self-esteem.

Self-esteem— there's nothing wrong with self-esteem. Self-esteem is just a judgment or evaluation of self-worth. And when you care about yourself, you're going to have a higher sense of self-esteem. The problem is a lot of people get their self-esteem from, again, identifying with their ego, right? So I have high self-esteem if I think I'm attractive, or if other people like me, or if I succeed in business or sports or whatever it is that's important to me to succeed at. And so in an odd way, when we're basing our self-esteem on our ego, this judgment of self-worth, that anytime we fail or make a mistake or get rejected, then because we're identified with our ego, again, it feels like a death when this happens. It feels very, very serious.

And of course, the times that you actually might need a boost is actually when things are down for you. And that might be precisely when self-esteem deserts you.

Exactly. So I'll just give you an example, a funny, sadly true story. I was with a group of friends. We were visiting some riding stables. And there was this old Spanish riding instructor. And, yeah, I was younger, and I have— I'm part Greek, so I have kind of Mediterranean looks. And he looked at me and he said, oh, you are very beautiful. And I was like, well, gosh, you know, my self-esteem boost, feeling good about myself. And he said, don't ever shave your mustache.

Okay.

You know, self-esteem here one moment, gone the next. Right? And so it's very fragile. So it's really humiliating when someone tells you not to shave your mustache. And so it is a fair-weather friend because it's based on externals. Or even when it's based on internals, because we aren't perfect, we're always going to get it wrong sometimes.

Right. Because you might think of yourself as being a very conscientious person or a very persistent person, and then you might not succeed or persist at a certain task. And then what happens to that inner self-concept?

Exactly, exactly. That, that's the problem with self-esteem. There's nothing wrong with having it, but it's how, how do you get it? Do you get it from being better than other people, from being a narcissist and, you know, really ego-defensive? Or do you get it from having to be perfect or having to succeed? And all of these things are bound to eventually lead to problems.

The harsh inner critic. Doesn't have consequences just for us. When we are harsh with ourselves, that harsh voice can also come out in our conversations with others. Part of the problem is that many of us go to pains to hide our inner critic from the outside world. Even as our inside voice gets harsher, we try to project confidence and success to the outside world. Eventually, the gap can become overwhelming.

If you don't give yourself compassion and kindness and support when you're experiencing these negative emotions, and instead if the way you try to deal with them is by like shoving them down, suppressing them, bottling them up, then what's gonna happen is you haven't actually dealt with those negative emotions. You haven't processed them. And what we know very clearly from the psychological research is whatever you resist actually grows stronger. So trying to avoid them creates this pressure so that eventually you've actually strengthened the negative emotion so that when it comes out, it's even worse than it would have been otherwise.

I feel like one of the things that happens for many people, you know, you come home after a stressful day, you're exhausted, you've had a difficult time, maybe the day has not gone well. Maybe you're beating up on yourself for things that you have done or things that you should have done that you didn't do. And one of the things that we do, because we're not processing this in a way that's healthy, is that we take out this anger or our impatience or frustrations on other people.

If we're criticizing ourselves and beating ourselves up, it means we're agitated, our cortisol levels are elevated. And so that activation means we're more likely to have a shorter fuse with others. And then also, other people can pick up on our internal mindset. So if you're feeling kind of grumpy and agitated, other people, not only are they grumpy and agitated because you're being grumpy and agitated, but they can also feel your vibe, so to speak, which makes them grumpy and agitated. So it leads to this really downward spiral, and then it doesn't lead to good outcomes typically.

I want to talk about one related idea, the role that our inner critic plays in shaping our relationships with other people. In the movie Bridesmaids, the main character Annie is a single woman who feels her life is a mess. She complains about it to her friend Megan, and I want to play you a short clip from the movie.

I got fired from my job. I got kicked out of my apartment. I can't pay any of my bills. My car is a piece of shit. I don't have any friends.

The last time I—

You know what I find interesting about that, Annie? It's interesting to me that you have, you have absolutely no friends. You know why it's interesting? Here's a friend standing directly in front of you trying to talk to you, and you choose to talk about the fact that you don't have any friends.

You know what I mean?

Nope, nope. I don't think you want any help. I think you want to have a little pity party. Yeah, I think Annie wants a little pity party.

So I think what was happening in that clip is when you just focus on self-criticism and everything's wrong, and we're really in this negativity bias, you can't even see the good things like you actually have friends, right? So things aren't as bad as you think they are. You know, we criticize ourselves. I'm so hopeless. I'm so worthless. And it kind of starts morphing into self-pity. There may be part of us that's hoping that that will get a compassionate response from others. But of course, it doesn't, because who wants to be around someone who's full of self-pity?

One of the things that I took away from your work that was really interesting is that self-criticism can sometimes be an outgrowth of self-focus or self-absorption, that in some ways the person who is regularly criticizing themselves really is often unable to step outside themselves.

Right. So shame and self-criticism, they're incredibly self-absorbed states. You're just thinking about how awful you are, how horrible you are, what a big mistake you made. So self-deprecation, other people may kind of like it a little bit, but self-criticism is— especially when it's done without humor, but it's really serious, Mm-hmm. Just can turn people off and derail you, really.

Besides being very critical of ourselves, can you talk about how some of us denigrate others to feel better about ourselves? It's superficially designed to boost our self-esteem, but I can't imagine that this can be good for relationships.

Right. Well, Shankar, can I ask you a question?

Yes.

If I said your podcast was average, How would you feel?

I would feel deeply wounded.

You'd feel deeply wounded, right? And if you said my book was average, I'd feel deeply wounded, right? So we all suffer from this, don't we? We all have to feel special and above average just for baseline to feel good about ourselves. And so this social comparison is really built into the need for self-esteem. And so what we start doing, because we all want to be above average, is one way to feel above average is to say, oh, that other scholar's work isn't quite as good as mine, or that other person's podcast isn't quite as good as mine. And we do it subtly, maybe not even intentionally, but we're always trying, if we can get away with it, to subtly put others down and puff ourselves up in comparison so that we can, again, boost our self-esteem.

But in some ways, I think what I hear you saying is that this is like a sugar high. It's sort of a transient burst that you get. But in some ways, it's keeping us from sort of exercising the kind of compassion that can actually draw us closer to other people or closer to ourselves.

Yeah. So when we have to feel better than others to feel good about ourselves, that creates distance in relationships, right? But if we can be compassionate toward ourselves, in other words, we accept that we're flawed, it also allows us to be closer to others because we accept that they're flawed, we accept that we're flawed, we can actually feel connected to others in our imperfection, as opposed to, you know, thinking that they're flawed, but I'm not. So that's one of the reasons self-compassion is so good for relationships, that when we can be more forgiving toward ourselves, we can be more forgiving toward others. We don't have to be better than others in order to feel good about ourselves, which means we can have more intimacy in relationships.

When we come back, how to take the voice of our inner critic and turn down the volume. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram teen accounts' automatic protections limit who can contact teens. the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Teens are automatically placed into Teen Accounts. Teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. Learn more about Teen Accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

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Support for Hidden Brain comes from Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort throughout the journey with priority check-in, boarding, and lounge access. Onboard, enjoy menus from renowned French chefs, wines and champagne selected by a sommelier, and free high-speed Wi-Fi. When it's time to rest, settle into a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with added mattress comfort. The art of travel Elevated, because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Kristin Neff is a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. She finds that we're often harder on ourselves than we are on anyone else. We criticize ourselves for shortcomings, beat up on ourselves for trivial mistakes. Kristin, while you were in graduate school and you went through this terrible saga, you found all kinds of ways to beat up on yourself, but you also started a journey toward self-compassion. Can you tell me what happened in your own life that led you in that direction?

Yes. So I was a basket case, like I said, but I was also nervous about getting my PhD. Would I get a job? And I had learned that mindfulness meditation was good for stress. I had heard this, and I was in Berkeley, you know, and there was There was a meditation group just down the street from where I lived, and it was a Buddhist group. And the very first night I went, the woman leading the group talked about self-compassion, you know. And I, I'd heard of compassion. I knew that Buddhists talked about compassion, but I'd never heard of self-compassion before. And it was a real light bulb moment for me. It was like Wait a second. You're allowed to be kind and supportive to yourself, even if you've done something wrong. Which of course, so this is when I was going through everything with Peter and all the shame and all the guilt and all the drama of it. When I tried to turn the lens of compassion inward and I tried it out. So, you know, Kristen, yes, I know you feel really horrible about leaving Your husband and cheating on him and all that, you know. But everyone makes mistakes. You did your best at the time. You wanted this new experience of love that you'd never had before, and that's so human. So I started being warmer and more supportive and more understanding toward myself. And the crazy thing is, it didn't make me say, okay, well, that's fine, I'll Cheat on whoever. It's not like it allowed me— caused me to dismiss my behavior. It actually allowed me to take more responsibility for it. I could turn toward it because what was happening is I couldn't even look at it. It was still so painful and I was feeling all this shame, but I couldn't even really hold or process what I'd done. And so the more I was able to say, yes, you're feeling pain, it was human, you made a mistake, You know, I still felt guilty in the sense that, yes, I regretted my behavior. I wish I would have had the wherewithal or the maturity to not have been in that situation, but that's where I was. And so the kinder and more supportive I could be toward myself, the more able I was to take responsibility for what I had done, but also to move on from it, right? So instead of being stuck there, I was able to learn my lessons. Okay, I'm never going to get myself in that situation again if I can help it. And to really commit much more firmly to honesty and trying to be a force for good in the world and not to harm others.

It's interesting as you're saying this because I'm realizing that when you were really hard on yourself, part of what was happening, I think, was you were telling yourself, look, I'm such a good person. that I can beat up on myself for doing this really bad thing. But when you're self-compassionate, it's almost like you're saying, I'm actually acknowledging what actually happened.

Absolutely. So the self-critic, the back of the self-critic is tall. I'm such a good person that I know what a bad person I am, right? And also, the self-critic has a sense of control, as if I should have been able to get it right.

Mm-hmm.

Even though I didn't. And that sense of control and kind of like, I am a good person and I know what a bad person I am, that kind of again props up the ego. And so what you do with self-compassion, it's not like you're saying I'm a bad, worthless person, but what you're saying is I'm a human being. Yes, I wasn't in control. There was a lot of immaturity, a lot of factors that played into the decisions I made. I'm not the only one who's hurt someone or that did something they really regretted. And then when you open to that, when you open to the fact that you're a flawed human being, I like to say what you're doing is you're becoming a compassionate mess. You're still a mess. You don't expect yourself to be perfect. But when you're compassionate toward that mess, it becomes much more workable.

Uh-huh.

You're more able to see what you've done, to own it, to take responsibility for it. You have more emotional resources to learn from your mistakes and commit to trying to do something differently in the future.

I'm wondering, as you were doing this, though, was there a part of you, the self-critical part of you, that would say in response, you know what, Kristin, you're just letting yourself off the hook?

Oh, yeah, absolutely, right? So when you first learn self-compassion, it's almost like this one voice that says, okay, I'm going to try to understand and support myself. I'm only human. And another voice that says, you're full of it. You're just letting yourself off the hook. Because we aren't used to being kind and supportive toward ourselves. What happens is the self-critic resists reality. The self-critic somehow believes that perfection is possible if we just try hard enough.

Hmm.

The self-compassion is like, hey, reality actually means making mistakes. Well, that's okay. Let's just see what we can learn from them and grow. So it took a while, but what I started to see in my research that actually People who are more self-compassionate take more responsibility for their mistakes. They're more conscientious. They're more likely to apologize. Ironically, even though the word self is in self-compassion, when you take that approach, it actually— it means you don't have to be so self-focused.

Kristin had discovered something important. One reason many people avoid self-compassion is because they think being harsh with themselves is the only way to improve. Of course, many of us do not believe this is the case when it comes to dealing with coworkers or friends or children. But we turn to old ideas about corporal punishment when it comes to ourselves.

The belief that we need to be hard on ourselves, criticize ourselves to succeed or reach our goals or make a change is actually the number one block to self-compassion we found in the research. People are afraid that if they're kind to themselves, they just won't get anything done. So first of all, self-criticism, it kind of works as a motivator. A lot of people get through med school or law school through self-criticism. But it works kind of the way corporal punishment works with children. It gets short-term compliance, but it causes a lot of long-term harm.

Hmm.

So it may— you may scare yourself or shame yourself into studying more or working harder or whatever it is you need to do to achieve your goals. But it has a lot of long-term negative consequences. So, for instance, it creates anxiety. A little anxiety is okay. But when you have a lot of anxiety, it actually undermines your ability to perform at your best. If you have a lot of shame, Shame actually shuts down our ability to learn and to grow because when we become absorbed in shame, we can't say, well, what did I learn from this mistake? You're just thinking about what a horrible person you are. It leads to things like depression. And again, depression— one of the manifestations of depression is a lack of motivation. So again, it may work in the short term, but in the long run, it's counterproductive.

Kristin cites one study that examined the efficacy of self-compassion in learning. Students at her alma mater, UC Berkeley, were given a very difficult vocabulary test. It was designed to be so difficult that all the students failed.

They had 3 groups. One group they gave a self-esteem boost to, which is, don't worry about it. You must be smart. You got into Berkeley, for goodness' sake, right? Another group they didn't tell anything, which meant They were probably— these are Berkeley students, so they were probably beating themselves up for failing the vocab test. And the third group, they told to be self-compassionate. You know, hey, it's okay, everyone fails, it was a hard test, try to be kind and supportive to yourself. And then they said, okay, we're going to give you the vocab test again. You can study as long as you want, here's some materials you can study, and just let us know when you're ready to take the next test. And what they found is those people who were told to be self-compassionate about the failure actually studied longer for the next test. And study time was associated with how well they did. So it kind of shows that you may boost your self-esteem, but it's not necessarily going to lead to trying to do any better because, hey, I'm already smart, I don't need to study.

Mm-hmm.

Or when you're criticizing yourself, it kind of, you know, might undermine your ability to study because you're so full of the shame or the self-criticism. But saying, hey, It's okay. Everyone fails. Why don't I just try again? That's what self-compassion gives you.

In your research, you found that self-compassion involves 3 distinct components. What are they, Kristin?

In addition to kindness, which is really what we've been talking about, one is actually mindfulness, which is the ability to become aware of whatever is happening as it's happening and kind of accept that it is happening. When it comes to our own pain, again, whether that pain is because, you know, we've made a mistake or we failed, or that pain comes from something happens like the pandemic or something difficult in life, we usually don't want to be mindful of it. We'd like to pretend it's not there. We'd like to turn away. We'd like to rail against it and fight against it. In order to be kind to ourselves, we have to acknowledge that we're hurting. It's almost like if a friend, you know, called you up and said, hey, I really need to talk, Shankar. I've got this big problem. I'm feeling badly. And you're like, I'm sorry, I'm too busy. I can't talk to you.

Hmm.

You couldn't give your friend compassion. You can't give yourself compassion. And so the first step of self-compassion is mindfulness, the willing— the willingness to acknowledge that we're hurting, even if that hurt comes from some failure or mistake we made. And then we need that before we can be kind to ourselves. But as we're being kind to ourselves, what makes it compassion is the sense of connectedness to others. I, you know, have struggled in my life. Other people have struggles in their life. This is actually what separates self-compassion from self-pity, and it makes all the difference.

So I'm seeing these 3 different threads. There's self-kindness, there's mindfulness, and there's If you will, a recognition of our common humanity.

Yes.

And when it comes to the mindfulness component of it, I was struck by something you were saying. When we are mindful of what we have done, that involves not diminishing what we have done, but also it involves not exaggerating what we have done. So one of the things that mindfulness might give us is it might give us a more accurate picture of what actually we have done, rather than minimizing or exaggerating it.

Exactly. It's kind of— it's a balanced stance that has perspective. And part of the reason we have perspective with self-compassion is we're usually compassionate toward others. That's what feels natural. And so when we're giving compassion to ourselves, we're stepping outside of ourselves to see ourselves as if we were a friend and to say, wow, you're really hurting, right? And that distance, instead of being absorbed in the shame, gives us the perspective we need to not ignore or minimize, but also not to exaggerate either. And that's why mindfulness is so key to self-compassion.

Now, in some ways, it's easier said than done, you know, to set aside perfectionism, to be kind to yourself, especially if you've spent a lifetime being harsh. You have a very interesting idea about something called a self-compassion Tell me about times in your life when you've been caught up with things and you've taken a self-compassion break.

Yeah, so the self-compassion break is really quite simple. It involves intentionally bringing in mindfulness, awareness of what's happening to you and the fact that you're struggling, bringing in common humanity, reminding yourself that you aren't alone even though it may feel like it. So whenever you notice there's pain, that's like the alarm on your phone to say, hey, it's time for a self-compassion break. And part of the self-compassion break is not only kind words, which we do use, speaking to yourself like you might speak to a good friend, but also touch, right? The very simple act of putting your hand on your heart or maybe on your face, it triggers those, those memories, you know, the feeling of being cared for by others through touch. And it can take like 2 minutes to do, and it's like pushing the reset button on a computer. It makes a huge difference.

I'm wondering also if demonstrating more consistent self-compassion can help you become more compassionate toward other people. I mean, does it help you in your relationships with your friends, for example? Does it help you help them become more self-compassionate?

So the answer is yes. Well, first of all, I have to say some people say that you have to be self-compassionate before you can have compassion for others. Actually, in my research, I find that's not the case. Actually, most people are very compassionate towards others and not compassionate toward themselves. But when you are self-compassionate, what it does is it allows you to sustain compassion for others without burning out. So if we give and we give and we give toward others and beat ourselves up, eventually our cup will run dry and we'll get burnt out, we'll get frustrated, maybe we'll snap in anger. So self-compassion allows you to sustain Being there for others. And then also what we know from the research as well is that when you model self-compassion out loud, other people learn self-compassion partly through a process of modeling. So when you talk to yourself, instead of beating yourself up, you say something like, well, it's okay, I messed up, it's only human, I'll just try again. Then other people get the message that maybe that's a better way to talk to themselves. And they start being more self-compassionate when they're around you.

I'm wondering, Kristin, if one way to help people be more compassionate to themselves is to ask themselves how they would respond if the person making a mistake was not them, but a good friend of theirs.

That's actually one of the practices. One of the first practices we teach people for being self-compassionate is to imagine that a good friend they cared about was in the exact same situation that they are. Because naturally we tend to be, especially our close friends, the ones we care about, we tend to be compassionate to them. The other thing you could do is you could imagine what that close friend would say to you. And it gives you a model for what type of thing you may say to yourself.

You also talk about the importance of making friends with your inner critic. What do you mean by this?

Yeah, this is really key. Again, we shouldn't beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up. But if we can say to our inner critic, I see that you're actually trying to help me with your self-criticism, but maybe there's a more effective way to help myself, which is actually compassion, it allows our inner critic to feel heard. I mean, if, again, if we shut down our inner criticism, the part of us that sees the danger is going to try to shout that much louder to be heard.

Hmm.

But if we say, hey, I hear you. Got it. Thank you so much for pointing out that this behavior is causing harm, or, you know, this isn't very helpful. I hear you. Thank you. But I think the way I'm going to try to approach this is through encouragement to make a change as opposed to shame to make a change. It's actually going to be more effective.

Are there examples, Kristin, in your own recent life where you've helped someone else show greater compassion for themselves?

Well, so my son, for instance. So my son, I have to try to help him have compassion all the time. My son, you might think because he's my son, is never self-critical, but his autism actually causes him to be very self-critical because when he beats himself up, he's under the illusion that somehow that's going to allow him to control things so he won't make mistakes. So whether he gets a grade he doesn't want in school, or I remember one time he forgot his— he forgot his keys when he needed them, and he was just beating himself up. For years, he resisted me. He's like, don't give me that self-compassion stuff, Mommy, because he was going through his adolescent rebellion like all kids do. Now he really gets it. So now, for instance, I'll hear him say to himself when he makes a mistake, It's okay. Everyone makes mistakes. It's not the end of the world. And it's actually helping him cope now.

I want to spend a little time talking about the research that you and others have done into the benefits of self-compassion. I'm imagining that there are some people who are listening to this who say, you know, this is just happy talk, you know, just being kind to yourself. But you and others have found that there's actually empirical backing at an emotional level, at a practical level, for the benefits of self-compassion. Can you describe that work to me, please?

Yeah, well, the literature now is huge. It's approaching 4,000 studies on the benefits of self-compassion. So it ain't just happy talk, right? And these studies are either by looking at people who are naturally more self-compassionate. They tend to be happier, more satisfied with their lives, less depressed, less anxious. More motivated. There's also a lot of experimental research either putting people in a self-compassionate frame of mind in the moment or else training them to be self-compassionate over the long run. And again, people are less likely to contemplate suicide. They're less likely to procrastinate. They eat better. They sleep better. They're less likely to engage in behaviors like addiction. or ways to try to escape their pain that are unhealthy. They're more likely to practice safe sex, right? When you care about yourself, you're more likely to do things that protect yourself. The benefits go on and on. It makes you stronger. When you are an inner ally to yourself, you're going to be much more capable of getting through the hard times than when you're an enemy and, you know, cut yourself down. So the research is— well, of course, I'm a little biased, but I think it's It's incontrovertible at this point that self-compassion is good for well-being.

You and a colleague once looked at the role of self-compassion in relationships and the effects it had on personal and intimate relationships. What did you find?

Yeah, so it was really interesting. So we had couples, and we had each person in the couple fill out the self-compassion scale. But we had people rate their partner's behaviors, like, how intimate is your partner with you? How kind are they to you? supportive are they to you? How often do they get angry at you or, you know, get in negative behaviors? And what we found is that people who were more self-compassionate were rated by their partners as being much better relationship partners, as being closer, more caring, more intimate. They felt more satisfied with self-compassionate partners. And basically that's because when we resource ourselves with self-compassion and warmth and care, That actually gives us more resources to give to others. When we are lost in shame and self-criticism, we actually have less emotional energy to give to others.

It's almost a paradox, isn't it, that the more we're able to see our imperfections, the more we can do something about it. The more we beat up on ourselves for our imperfections, the less we can do about it.

Exactly. So Carl Rogers famously said, the curious paradox is the more I accept myself, The more I can change. But it's not like I have to change in order to be worthy. It's I want to change because I care about myself and I don't want to suffer. It's a much more effective type of motivation and more sustainable in the long run.

Kristin Neff is a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. She's the author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. Kristin, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Thank you, Shankar. It's been a pleasure.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Kristin Wong, Laura Querelle, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Our unsung hero this week is Alex Curley. Alex works in NPR's programming department. He handles many projects, including the huge task of coordinating all the work that shows do to get ready for public radio fund drives. It's work that happens entirely behind the scenes and involves many different moving pieces and many partners. Alex is endlessly organized and patient, and we're always grateful to work with him on our radio show. Before we go, we're putting together a show about misunderstandings. We're looking for a story about a time when you assumed the worst about someone else. Perhaps a coworker, friend, or family member told you something that upset you. You could have given them the benefit of the doubt, but instead you interpreted what they said or did in the worst possible light. We're looking for a story about a misunderstanding that started out small and then gradually escalated, perhaps to titanic proportions. Something that, looking back, you came to regret. If you have a story along these lines that you are willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, Please record a short voice memo, 2 or 3 minutes is plenty, and send it to us at ideas@hiddenbrain.org. Please use the subject line Misunderstandings. Okay, thanks. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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