This is a transcript excerpt from a July 2, 2022 YouTube interview between Josh Trent and Eric Zimmer about using self-love (self-compassion) to prevent and treat depression. Zimmer emphasizes that self-love develops over years, helps prevent ruminative self-critical loops that lead to depression, and is crucial during depressive episodes to avoid self-blame. The conversation references Zimmer’s "Spiritual Habits" program (a daily-practice course used by hundreds-to-thousands) and transitions to a discussion about distinguishing emotions versus feelings as different conceptual frameworks.
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You said self love is both the way I prevent and treat depression, which I thought was really profound. Because self love, there's probably more information on self love now than ever, which is a good thing. But self love is not some light switch that you flick on some random day. There's a journey to get to loving self in your programs and a lot of the work that you do with clients. Is there an abc? Obviously we can't do the whole Alphabet, but is there an ABC of using self love to treat and prevent depression?
Well, I think what you said is important, that it's not something we can just flip a switch on and suddenly have. I feel like it has taken, you know, years to develop a deeper and deeper self love. But I think, you know, self love, when it comes to preventing depression is really about not allowing myself to get locked in the ruminative states where my brain sort of swirls round and round. That goes for any sort of ruminative state, but particularly the ones that are self critical that we know is a recipe for depression. And so that's the, that's the preventative piece. The treatment piece is really then recognizing when I fall into depression that don't blame myself for that. Don't make it worse by then suddenly saying, oh, I shouldn't feel this way. Right. I mean, I've been teaching people for years now and running programs and doing coaching. And so it's one of the dangers of doing that I found is that I start to think I shouldn't have normal human things happen. You know, I get depressed, I shouldn't get depressed. Don't I know enough by now? Haven't I done enough inner work by now? Haven't I? And that's just a way of letting the inner critic really take over. And so I find that self love in those moments is really important by just going, you know what? It's okay. This is what happens to people. Another phrase for self love is self compassion. And another phrase for that that I love from a guest we interviewed. His book was called be on your own side. And I love that idea. Like I am always on my own side. I don't mean that like I always think I'm right in an argument or anything like that. I mean, I always want what's, you know, what's the best and healthiest thing for me. You know, I always want to support myself. I always want to have my own back. And that's a really powerful place to come from.
Yeah.
So I don't know if I gave you an ABC there.
But you did. You gave a great abc. Yeah. The spiritual habits program that you have. And probably at this point, thousands of people have gone through these programs. Definitely hundreds. Right. For spiritual habits.
Yep.
And so in this Spiritual habit program, this is about giving people, like, secure daily practices where people can go way deeper into the Alphabet on the self love aspect. But what I've been looking forward to this week in preparation for this podcast is thinking about the core difference between two aspects that are commonly misunderstood. And one is emotions, one is feelings. You know, one is guideposts, and then one is terra firma. You know, what actual energy and motion we're experiencing. I'm curious how you feel about this, because there's a lot of different camps.
Hey, if you love that clip, you'll love this full episode, linked right here on this screen. This is where we go even deeper and offer some solutions and some practical things that you can do and you can learn so that your life can be lived more. Well, I'll see you during the full episode.
