105: BEST OF: Self-Esteem Sucks. You need Self-Compassion with Dr. Kristin Neff
🌟 Taking a Break! 🌟
Hey everyone! I am taking a short break for August to recharge and prepare exciting new content for you. I’ll be back in September with fresh episodes and engaging conversations. Thanks for your support and patience. Stay tuned for what’s coming next!
I’m excited about today’s guest because she has had a huge influence on me. I can confidently say that finding her research on self-compassion was a turning point in my healing journey. Do you need more self-compassion? Join us to learn more!
Dr. Kristin Neff is a renowned psychologist, self-care researcher, and author. Her work has had a profound impact on the field of psychology and has helped countless people cultivate self-acceptance and resilience.
Show Highlights:
How self-compassion became Dr. Kristin’s main area of research
Understanding self-esteem vs. self-compassion
The three components of self-compassion: mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness
How self-esteem creates comparison and social disconnection by being conditional and unstable
How self-compassion gives the gift of authenticity
The difference between fierce self-compassion and tender self-compassion
How self-compassion helps us get past our shame
Why self-compassion doesn’t mean indulgence
Pathways and blocks to self-compassion
The connection between self-compassion and psychological functioning
How self-compassion helps when we fail and make mistakes
Why the goal of practicing self-compassion is to be simply a compassionate mess who is completely human
Why the practice of self-compassion has to start small with baby steps of warmth and support (What would you say to a friend?)
A look at Dr. Kristin’s latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion
How anger fits into self-compassion
Resources and Links:
Connect with Dr. Kristin and find many helpful resources: Website
Connect with KC: TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes
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KC Davis 0:05
Hello, you sentient balls of stardust, this is Struggle Care, the self care podcast by a host that hates the term self care. And today I have a guest that I'm really excited about Dr. Kristin Neff, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Kristin Neff 0:17
Oh, thank you, KC, happy to be here.
KC Davis 0:18
I have to admit that I have been a little under the weather for like three days. And I was like, no matter what, I will not miss this recording. Okay, so the reason why I wanted to ask you to come on the podcast is because you have been such a huge influence on me, when you talk about self compassion, and the research behind it, that was a real turning point for me in really starting to heal and grow and get better in a way that sort of leaned me out of the self improvement kind of genre of getting better and more into the actual healing of feeling better. And so I wanted to ask you, how did self compassion become your main area of focus in your research?
Dr. Kristin Neff 1:06
Well, for me, it also started as a personal practice, I needed self compassion, I was a mess. I you know, I didn't invent the idea. I learned about self compassion when I first learned about mindfulness meditation. And it just made such a powerful difference to me, I was going through a very stressful time, and I started being more kind of supportive to myself. And I saw that the immediate difference it made, and this was when I was actually my last year of graduate school. And then I did two years of postdoctoral study with one of the country's leading self esteem researchers and I studied self concept development. And I started to see how we can come back to this how self compassion didn't have some of the problems associated with the need for high self esteem, that kind of endless treadmill of self improvement. So when I got to UT Austin, where I still am, I kind of thought, well, no one's really researched this before. But heck, they can study self esteem, they can study self compassion. So I started researching it, you know, really shortly after I got there about around 2000. And I'm just so blown away by not only how beneficial it is, but the applications just so many areas of life life, I mean, basically any area of life in which there's suffering or struggle with, there's a lot, it's irrelevant. So very quickly, it just became my life's work, I became devoted not only to research unit for the last 10 years, figuring out how to teach other people to practice being more self compassionate, because it's not just an idea. It's not just like a trait that some people have. And some people don't, it really is a practice, anyone can learn.
KC Davis 2:37
So how would you define self compassion, and then I also am curious how you would define self esteem because I feel like most of us, I mean, I grew up, I was one of the 80s, kind of a 90s kid. And I feel like a lot of the self help world when I was sort of growing up, and even today was this heavy focus on self esteem. I remember going through rehab at 16. And doing all these treatment assignments about self esteem, I remember having to look in the mirror and say, I am okay today. And people like me, and I write like giving myself these positive affirmations. And I remember thinking, this is not working. I do not believe these things. So can you tell us what the difference is?
Yeah. So let me start by defining what self compassion is, and then I'll come back to self esteem. So self compassion is really just like compassion for others. You know, the Lenten compassion being with suffering, how are we with the tough stuff, whether that suffering comes from, you know, your hurricane, or COVID, or something difficult happens externally, or you're suffering because you feel you aren't good enough, or you've made a mistake, or you feel like a failure of those types of sources. And really, just like we work with a friend, we naturally be warm and supportive. When our friends hopefully for good friend, they say they're having a hard time we're present for them, we listen, we pay attention to them. And also the difference between compassion and pity is, hey, I've been there. It's inherently connected stance. It's not like I feel sorry for myself, or I feel sorry for you. It's just recognizing that everyone struggles, everyone's imperfect. That's what human life means, really. And so those are the three components mindfulness, being aware of difficulty, common humanity, recognizing this, this is shared and kindness, warmth, support. So the thing about self compassion is it's really unconditional in the sense that it's there for us. You know, we can be kind of supportive towards yourself when things are going well. But we're also especially kind of supportive towards yourself when things aren't going well. The difference between self esteem and self compassion, as you might say, self compassion is a stable unconditional friend. Self esteem is pretty much a fairweather friend. Right. So what do I mean by self esteem? It's important to define our terms. I'm referring to a positive judgment or evaluation of self like, I'm good are people like me? I'm great. These are positive judgments and values, you know, good as opposed to bad. So the thing about self esteem is that, and nothing wrong with having self esteem, it's actually psychologically better to delight yourself than to hate yourself. The problem is that it's contingent, it depends. Again, it's unstable. So typically, it depends on first of all feeling special and above average, it's not okay to be average, if I said, KC, yeah, your podcast is pretty average. Admit it, you feel hurt, right, I would feel hurt. You said Kristin, your work is pretty average. It's not okay to be average in our society, which means that technically, if we asked to be above average, it's technically, impossible for us to all have high self esteem at the same time. So we're setting ourselves up also in the sort of comparison, like is that person better than me, you're smarter than me or more attractive to be whatever it is. And that can create social disconnection, for instance, and we know one of the reasons kids start to bully others is to raise their self esteem. I'm the cool kid, you're the nerdy kid, I'm picking on you, I've got more power compared to you, that raises my self esteem. So that's a problem. Really big problem is that it's contingent on success, whatever we value, and so usually, what we value for our self esteem is social approval. Like you said, other people like me, well, that's great when they like you, but what happens when they don't like you? And how are you going to be authentic? If your self esteem is totally dependent on whether or not they like you, right? Or how we look? Actually for men and woman perceived attractiveness is huge. What happens when you start getting older or you know, you don't look the way the supermodels? Look, you don't have the filter on your camera when you post it on Instagram, right? Your self esteem takes a hit. And then also performance, right? So we have high self esteem when we succeed for what happens when we fail or make a mistake. We feel badly about ourselves. So the difference with self compassion is when we make a mistake, or other people don't like us, or you know, we're feeling inadequate in some way. That's precisely when we give ourselves compassion. Oh, well, it's only human to make mistakes. What can I learn from this? Right? Okay, so I'm imperfect. That's part of being human. That's okay. Whoever said I was supposed to be perfect. Other people don't like me sometimes. Ouch that hurt. Well, can I like myself, at least, you know, do I really want to twist myself to contort to meet other people's expectations if it's not true to me. So those are the types of difference. So just to show you one study I did on comparing self esteem and self compassion, we found that the stability of self worth the both forms of self worth, but self compassion is unconditional, because I'm a flawed human being, self esteem is usually conditional, because I'm the way I want to be or because other people like me, or because I'm better than others. So the self worth linked to self compassion was my first stable over time that the self is worth that comes from self esteem.
That makes me think, also, when you talk about self esteem, being sort of contingent on how you are in comparison to others, or how others think of you, that's not always lined up with your actual values, like people can like you for the wrong reasons and hate you for the right reasons. And and so it that makes it even more turbulent?
Dr. Kristin Neff 7:54
And that absolutely, yeah, so one of the biggest findings of the research is self compassion is linked to authenticity, right? You know what some of the feedback powers your self compassion practice helped me personally? Well, I'm still very flawed, I still got a lot of problems, but I'm authentically flag, who I am. Because my self worth is contingent on other people liking me. And that's one of the gifts that gives you you can be your true self. And also, by the way, it doesn't mean some people think it means you're complacent, you aren't going to try to change or improve. That's not the case at all. It's why do you want to improve, I want to improve not to be acceptable as am I'm already acceptable. I want to improve because I care about myself, and I don't want to keep suffering and causing problems with myself and others. And what that does is when it's safe to fail and make mistakes, that means I can actually learn from them. If I'm just full of shame, Oh, I'm such a failure. Everyone hates me. It's not exactly conducive mindset to like, figure out what happened or try to learn from the situation or try again. So it's actually a better motivator is more effective motivator than the motivator of shame or self criticism.
KC Davis 8:59
I'm so glad you said that. Because when I talk online, and so you know, my focus is mainly on how people care for their homes and their self in periods of struggle. And one of the major push backs I get is, well, if I'm being compassionate towards myself, when my house is a mess, and everything is dirty, and I'm not really caring for myself, like, won't that just enable me just give me permission to stay stuck? And it's interesting, because in my own experience, it's the opposite. There's nothing more motivating than real self compassion.
Dr. Kristin Neff 9:31
Yeah, we know that empirically. So here's the difference. So I like to turn these fierce and tender self compassion, tender self compassion is about unconditional self acceptance. It's also about accepting the fact that life's imperfect, we have difficult emotions. It's kind of the acceptance of the imperfection of life. Fear self compassion is about taking action, right? What can we do in terms of our behaviors and our situations not to suffer? So even while unconditionally accepting yourself and the fact that your house is a mess doesn't mean that you're less worthy person because it that your house was mess, you don't have to identify with it. But if your house being a mess is causing you suffering, if it's making you harder for you to, you know, relax or to get things done, or it's actually causing stress in your life, then it's actually not helping you. So compassion is about the alleviation of suffering, right. So if you're doing things that are causing suffering, like the way you live, or something's causing you suffering, it's not compassionate to let it slide. But it's aimed at our behaviors and our situations, we need to try to change our behaviors and our situations, to maximize well being at the same time that we as people are worth is like, given the fact that we are at imperfect human being is all we need. That's the only bar we need to check to be worthy of compassion, which remember is kindness and support. It doesn't mean you know, maybe you aren't doing things, right. It's not fake, because you don't say, oh, Kristin, you're great. Actually, Kristin, and this has happened. That was a really unkind thing. You said, that really hurt that person's feelings, that self compassion now saying, and you're terrible, horrible person, I hate you. That's not self compassion. But saying, Kristin, you said, what you just said was really unkind. Pay, I understand your stress is only human, it happens sometimes. But this person is hurting, what can we do to try to repair the situation. So for instance, we find that self compassionate people are more able to take responsibility for their mistakes or things they do, because it's safe to do so. And they're more willing to try to repair them again, because you have the emotional resource to do so.
KC Davis 11:34
So I want to take a short break here. And then when we come back, I want to talk about that word tender.
Okay, we're back with Dr. Kristin Neff. I love that word tender. Because what I was trained to be a therapist, we talked a lot about this term, unconditional positive regard that we're supposed to have for our clients. And when I heard you use that word tender, something kind of switched for me when I realized that when I am compassionate towards myself, it's not necessarily an unconditional positive regard, because sometimes I haven't done something positive, but it's an unconditionally tender regard. Because if that connected
Dr. Kristin Neff 12:14
conditionally positive evaluation, but to the extent that warmth and kindness is a positive emotion, which it is, it is positive, right, really good analogy, I think an intuitive one is an ideally compassionate parent, you know, most of us are not ideally, compassion raised by them. But if you imagine an ideally compassionate parent, that parent loves their child unconditionally, when their child fails, does something wrong, just mean hurtful. The bottom line is I love you, I'm here for you, right? But a compassionate parent doesn't stop there. A compassionate parent wouldn't say, oh, that's fine, get all this, skip school, use drugs, whenever you know, don't worry about it. That's not because that's causing their child's suffering. A compassionate parent is I care about you? How can I help sometimes it may be kind of tough drawing boundaries, listen is really important that you follow these rules. Because if you don't follow these rules, you aren't gonna learn the skills you need to get by in life. You know, that is true love. And the same thing with ourselves. Complacency is not caring for ourselves, it's actually undermining ourselves. But shame and self hatred is also undermining ourselves. So we can combine unconditional warm support, being there for ourselves with some real hard honestly, this really needs to change. It's not working for me, you know, if I want to be happy, if I don't want to suffer, I gotta either me, I have to change or my situation. So fear, self compassion is also I think, for instance, the Black Lives Matter movement, or the me to movement. These are pure Self Compassion movements, when people rise up and say, Hey, this, you can't treat me this way. I'm valuable, you know, this, this situation is wrong, or maybe your work situation, you're being treated unfairly. Or maybe you're in a relationship where you're not being treated well, part of self compassion is taking action against either behaviors, yours or others, or situations to try to engender wellbeing and alleviate suffering,
KC Davis 14:03
When I find that when self esteem is sort of the measure, and there's a lot of shame involved, people can't be accountable, because when that truth is being brought to them about something that's either not going right or something they've done, that's harmful, they can't get unless you can get to a place I don't even know how to it's like, We're such social creatures, that when I'm feeling the social rejection, that is the only thing I can feel. It's the only thing I'm preoccupied with. And it's the only literally my fight or flight kicks in and goes I have to find out how to be acceptable again. And when that's happening, I'm inherently centering me. And I'm not even able to look or be accountable to the thing that I might have done.
Dr. Kristin Neff 14:46
Exactly. Shame is incredibly self focused. I mean, it's human. It's natural. It's we evolved to feel shame, but it's so self focused and it shuts down our ability to learn. When we're flooded with shame. We actually can't learn from our mistakes all we can
Do is like hide in a corner and say I'm so terrible, please don't hate me. And again, shame still rises for me because it is actually evolutionary emotion. So shame arises and like, okay, human beings feel shame, that's okay, this hurts. How can I help myself in the moment, you know, and often helping yourself in the moment means, well, maybe I need to apologize, maybe I need to do something different. But here's the thing, some sources of shame are from social injustice, prejudice. So for instance, we've done a lot of research with teens who are, you know, LGBT plus community, who are shamed all the time. So in that case, it's like, screw you shame, I'm not going to buy into this message perfectly wonderful, just as I am. So but you know, if the shame, like my case, did say something mean to someone, then the shame was playing a function and saying, Hey, Kristen, who, you know, that was not good. And then I can move on from there. If we get stuck in it, that's when it really holds us back.
KC Davis 15:55
Yeah, I remember having these feelings when I first entered rehab, and people would try to help myself low self worth, by saying things like, oh, but you're so pretty, and you're so smart. And you're so these things. And there's this real sense of, you know, no matter how many good attributes you try to ascribe to me, I have this sense of if you only knew, and I think that's where that authenticity comes into place, because it really felt like it will not penetrate my heart and make any difference, unless I'm being fully known by that person. And it wasn't until I was able to get authentic and honest, and let everybody see kind of all of the ugly insides, then receive that sort of compassion from others that I was in a place to actually hear. And here are some issues that we may want to look at KC?
Dr. Kristin Neff 16:45
Absolutely. You know, and the slight problem with that, although it's natural is that we don't want our compassion to be contingent, either. Everyone, you know, people in prison are people who've made horrible mistakes of their life, they're worthy of compassion as well. All human beings are worthy of compassion, right? Something that's an intrinsic human right, compassion. Again, that doesn't mean indulgence. That doesn't mean letting you get you know, what you do for people to try to help society or help them is a different issue. But our worth isn't dependent on our attributes, you know, and also, these are attributes are constantly changing, right? We all get older, I'm getting older. Now I'm seeing that one, you know, we go up and down, none of this is really stable. The only thing stable is that, at least in the course of our lifetime, is that we are aware human beings who are experiencing life, and that's actually the source of compassion. And you know, you could get spiritual on this, if you want it, I have no problem going there. And it's not like generated by our small cells, it's part of being a part of this larger interconnected universe. You know, we're one in many ways, we're all part of this larger, interdependent whole. So our worth comes from being part of this larger, independent whole, it's supposed to be ego based, like, because I went to grad school. And because I did this right look a certain way. That's where my worth comes from egocentric way of looking at it, do you think that in order to have self compassion, you have to be able to humanize others first, like if you're sort of seeing others, as if you're being really harshly judgmental to others, if you're having to kind of push others down to push yourself up, if you've got whether it's internal bias, or all these things, like I imagined it would be hard to extend yourself the grace and compassion that you're not extending to others or that you believe others don't? Because if they don't deserve it, then how could I deserve it? Yeah, so there's a lot of pathways to compassion and a lot of different blocks to compassion, I, from what my understanding, also with my research, it's not like some people say, you have to have compassion for yourself before you can have compassion for others. That doesn't seem to be true. A lot of people are very compassionate to others. And that oneself, I wouldn't necessarily say that you have to be compassionate for others before yourself, either, because there are probably some people who, whatever reason connect with their own experience and not those of others. So I wouldn't say there's a halfway but some of the principles are the same, the principles of understanding the nature of humanity, and the fact that, you know, we aren't totally in control of our actions, we do our best, but there's so many causes and conditions, you know, culture, history, genetics, environment, so many things that are out of our control, even our thoughts. I mean, how good are you at controlling your thoughts, you know? Exactly. Right. So so many things that are out of our control, understanding principles like that definitely help foster compassion. For some people that's the doorway in is because they can see it with others, they might be able to then make a U turn and do it for themselves. Yeah, I wouldn't be comfortable saying it has to be the case. But what we do knows when you learn to be more self compassionate, it does increase compassion for others, because again, we're understanding the bigger picture of our shared humanity, but it also does big time is actually gives us the
resources to care for others. Not everyone, but most people are pretty compassionate and caring to others and not to themselves. But what happens is they burn out, they give and they give, and they give. And you know, they always say yes to other people, and they're always trying to help others. And they're, they deny themselves, they don't meet their own needs. And eventually, their cup runs dry. So um, self compassion is very good for decreasing caregiver burnout.
KC Davis 20:22
So somebody asked you that you published a lot of research on the connection between self compassion and psychological functioning. I think a lot of people see things like self compassion, I think that's nice. And people should feel nice about themselves. But they don't necessarily understand that it's not just a nice thing to teach people that it actually helps them raise their psychological level of functioning, that it actually can be a way of them getting better and feeling better, and sort of that, you know, the high tide that raises all ships. Can you talk some about that connection?
Dr. Kristin Neff 20:57
Yeah. So again, if you think of the word compassion with suffering, how are we with suffering, right, and it's usually the suffering the painful emotions of painful thoughts that derails us psychologically might lead to things like addiction, or suicidal ideation, or eating disorders, or depression or anxiety, because when difficult feelings or thoughts or situations arise, we get overwhelmed by them, we aren't able to cope effectively with and we get overwhelmed. And we're still just trying to cope by whatever means necessary. We're just trying to survive. And so by having a resource, which is warmth, care, support, kindness, what can I do to help kind of unconditional self acceptance, but also that realizing that maybe, how can I change that in a way that's helpful and supportive? That resource is, first of all, you might call it a type of emotion regulation, because it helps us being so overwhelmed by the difficulty. It also is a form of resilience, we might call it a form of resilience and coping. It's huge, right? It's not just good feelings, it's a way of approaching difficulty. In fact, sometimes it doesn't feel good at all, you know, it's really allowed opening to the incredible pain and grief and distress and all the difficult stuff, we open to it, we don't sugarcoat it. But we do open to it's love. And it's the love the warmth, that's actually the strength that helps us get through it. In fact, I think if you don't do it, if you just kind of grin and bear it or just shut down, you can function but it's going to come back to get your body's going to start holding all the trauma you experienced in your processing it. One of the things the ability to open to pain with warmth allows us to process difficult emotions, so they aren't stuck in our body so that we can work through them. So we can kind of integrate them in our understanding of ourselves in the world. If we don't, that all that stuff just gets stuck gets shoved in Eskalene. Things like heart attacks or you know, physical problems are coming back and like dramatic we're experiencing from my point of view, self compassion is really essential to leading a healthy life. And we're also showing that it's like basically, marker of good therapy, doesn't matter what type of therapy you use. If it's good therapy, it's gonna raise yourself compassion. It's kind of like what it is, is how do I can I relate to difficulty suffering stress difficult does in a way that that helps whether the harms is kind of like self evident, from my point of view at both course, we want to do that. Why don't we? Okay, so when we come back from the short break, I'm going to ask you a series of sort of negative messages and talk about the difference about what would that look like from a self esteem standpoint versus a self compassion standpoint?
KC Davis 23:37
Okay, so the idea being that, let's say that I'm going about my day, and I make a mistake at work. And the first thing that comes to my mind is me going, Oh, I'm so stupid. I think when we come from like a self esteem perspective, we're often told that the way to combat that is to go no, you're smart. When it's like, well, but in that moment, like I wasn't, that was actually me not being able to think through something or that was actually a mistake that I made. And so I think that's why for so many people that often feels really hollow as a response, like, What do you mean, replace the negative messages with positive ones? I don't believe that I'm smart. I made a stupid mistake. But what would self compassion sound like in that moment?
Dr. Kristin Neff 24:21
Yeah, so certainly is not positive thinking anyway, that falls flat. You don't say I am smart. There's a couple things you can do. First of all, one of the things about self compassion is remember, it's kind of separating ourselves from our behaviors or the situations. So yeah, it was a stupid mistake. It doesn't mean that you're stupid. It also doesn't mean you're not stupid. In a way the kind of what you are is irrelevant. Right? Because you are a human being who did the best you could in the moment, but there might be a way you could do better next time, right? So it'd be like okay, that behavior was not good. It didn't work out right. Maybe it was a stupid mistake, but me
First thing you do is give yourself tender compassion for the pain of that, oh, oh, man, that hurts. I feel ashamed. I regret it. Ouch. So you kind of where you're with your pain of that you kind of hold it, give yourself some space, some comfort, you know, everyone makes mistakes. It's okay. But that's like step one. And then okay, well, that didn't work out. So could I do differently next time that might be more effective. This is how we learn mistakes. And again, even if we do it more effectively next time, it's not because that'll make us a good person. We're already flawed human being is okay, who we are. But we want not to make mistakes, because it helps us to be happy and healthy. And whatever our goals are, it helps them to achieve them right or do well at work, whatever our goal is. So it's really, really separating our worth is people from our behaviors and the situations we find ourselves in another thing, self compassion, because compassion, I'm just complexity, you know, understanding of the causes or conditions. It's also we have lots of parts of ourselves, the part of myself that made that decision maybe wasn't working that well. But maybe there was another voice or another part of myself that wasn't engaged. So instead of saying, I am bad, or I am good, it's like, well, first of all, I have a lot of different parts, and they're neither bad nor good. There's just some of them are effective or skillful or aren't effective, or skillfulness. Focus on what our behaviors are, what gets manifested. Our intrinsic worth is unquestioned. That's the bottom line of self compassion. All human beings, no matter what they do any awareness, you know, and if you think of the thoughts in your head are different than the thoughts in my head, but as your awareness different than my awareness, that's an open question.
KC Davis 26:36
Well, I think it's important to say that we don't have to believe that we're worthy to treat ourselves with compassion, like it's actually not a prerequisite, like, there's a lot of people that don't believe they're worthy, but you actually like, you can still treat yourself as if you are like, there's no like worthiness police, can I bust down the door be like, no, no, no.
Dr. Kristin Neff 26:54
Well, and the thing is, you have to ask yourself, when a baby is born, do they have to, like, get their high school degree? Or what's a GED enough to be worthy? I mean, right. So it's like, there's something intrinsic to being a human being who's aware is where the worthiness comes from. Now, for people who were treated by their parents is that they weren't worthy of kindness or compassion. It can be scary to have self compassion and can be difficult. But there's even a term we have for it called Backdraft. It's like when I give myself unconditional love, I immediately remember all the conditions under which I was unloved. And that could come up. And so that's something else we have to have compassion for, you know, it's natural doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, and actually means you're opening to the pain so that it can be healed, right? It has to be dealt with. It's totally natural. But yeah, it's really the thing about compassion is it's not self focused. It's really not about me as an individual. It's about life, the human experience, which is again, which is intrinsically worthy of compassion. As long as you're a flawed human being. That's the only checkbox you have to check to be worthy of compassion can take a while, because we aren't taught that. But again, as you act that way, eventually, there's a part of you who will start to be able to see that oh, yeah, that's right. I'm a flawed human being doing the best I can.
KC Davis 28:14
I talked to my book about my sort of journey with self affirmations and how they always felt like someone was just asking me to believe in Santa Claus, and you can't really make yourself believe something,
Dr. Kristin Neff 28:23
by the way, you aren't getting stronger every day. I'm not I'm fifth year, that's the truth. The only one that ever really worked was when I finally started saying to myself, I'm allowed to be human. Yes, exactly. That's the truth. One of the sayings we have in the self compassion world is the goal of practice is simply to be a compassionate mess, right? So you will still be a mess. I've been practicing for 30 years now I'm still making mistakes, but I have a compassionate mess. So your goal is chess, just from getting it right to be getting it opening your heart that starts to become your goal. And then when your hearts open, even when things are painful, your heart open, feels good, you feel connected to all of life feels good, that actually becomes your primary goal. This mean you don't even give up on all the other stuff as well. But it's not as important. The point is not to perfect ourselves, but to perfect our love, you know, and that when once you you shift your aim in that way, then things are much more workable, much more doable. You are human. Yeah. Whenever people ask me, you know, I've been trying self compassion, and I'm just not very good at it. What do I always say? Well, I mean, then you can just have self compassion about how hard self compassion is. Absolutely. You start where you are. That's actually often when I say to people, what's your current source of struggle? I feel so frustrated because I can't seem to practice self compassion. Well, what if a good friend came to you and said that would you say us cuz you're stupid idiot. Just give up? No, you probably say, Well, of course, it's hard. You know, you're given your history and it's challenging and you know, you just take it day by day and
KC Davis 30:00
So that type of warmth and support you can give toward anything, including how hard it is sometimes to practice self compassion, but you can also start small, you're just a baby step, you're just like, ah, you know, just kind of like a little bit, just a little more arms and get your foot in the door. And then you build on that little bit of warmth, that little bit of understanding, having a tiny bit of patience for some people path is, you know, you walk a little slowly, but you might go farther, right? So it's just about taking it moment by moment, trying to approach each moment with warmth, that sense of support, how can I help myself in this moment?
One of the things that that I'm thinking about is, because we talk a lot about, you know, what would a friend say? What would a friend say? And it's made me when I say to a friend, yeah, what would I say to a friend, it's really made me realize how much even that is something we sometimes have to learn. Because for so much of my life, I would say to a friend, no, you're smart, and beautiful. And there's nothing wrong with you. And you. And I had to learn how to just hold space for a friend and say, yeah, yeah, maybe it was a fail, I fail two people fail, it doesn't change that I love you. It doesn't change. Failure, you fail doesn't mean you are a failure. Like you have to sum up the whole your entire worth is a failure. But I think it's powerful that it whether we're applying it to ourselves, or trying to have compassion to others, sometimes we really haven't raised with the belief that it's about fixing it. It's about convincing, it's something entirely different.
Dr. Kristin Neff 31:27
Yeah, you know, it's both right. So that's why you have to talk about the fierce of the tender. My new book is called fierce self compassion, because people get a little confused. We don't need to fix ourselves, we are fully worthy as we are. But some of our behaviors and our situations can use a little work, and that we need to honor that. Because if we don't, that's not helping either. So it's really disentangling our worth is people from some of our behaviors or situations which, and you know, again, we just do the best we can, they aren't going to be perfect. And that's okay. But we still try. And of course, as Carl Rogers said, the curious paradox is the more I accept myself, the more I can change, right, because it gives us the emotional resources to try to make effective I love the idea of fierce self compassion, and what that means about anger and women. Because I feel like as women, we've been told that anger is not okay to have. And that anger is a result of sort of maybe being unhealthy or not being at peace. When self fear self compassion really reframes what that anger is about, like, you shouldn't be angry, if you're being abused, you should be angry if other people are being abused. Yeah. So it's simple to say is that so simple to do, but simple to understand is, when anger is aimed at alleviating suffering, it's helpful. And when anger causes suffering, it's not helpful, right. And so if someone attacks my child, you better believe I'm gonna get angry. And that anger is involved emotion, that's going to give me a lot of things, it's going to focus me, it's going to energize me, it's gonna allow me to be brave, it's going to reduce the fear response, so that I can protect my child, you know that anger is really useful in the moment, but it's aimed at alleviating suffering. Now, if the person who you know, maybe, so maybe I stand up to that person, but once it starts getting personal, and I start, like getting angry at people, and kind of dehumanizing them, or harming them in some way that it's no longer helpful, but it has a role, it can be harnessed, we need to harness it for the alleviation of suffering. But if we just cut it out, if we suppress it, if we say we don't have it, well, that disempowers us because anger is, is an important source of power, when it's harnessed and channeled correctly. And actually easier said than done, I still struggle. But it is something we don't want to reject. We want to embrace,
KC Davis 33:45
I can imagine that if you're caught up in a self esteem sort of rat race where you have to be above others, anger becomes your weapon to push others down to push others away, to tear them down, because that's the only way that you can feel good. But if you've been practicing self compassion, I imagine it's a lot easier to let anger be your advocate, instead of you know, harming people.
Dr. Kristin Neff 34:06
Yeah, well, also, when you accept this part of yourself, you know, there's nothing wrong with this part of yourself. In fact, it's very useful. Again, this is the button it is a big butt because what happens we're angry is we just forget I mean, carried away. So it is challenging, right to work with, I'm not going to pretend it's not I struggle, but it definitely has a role, especially when it comes to standing up to injustice. Because what happens as we can see the tender and the fierce need to be imbalanced for two fears of a really angry, we have no tender acceptance of ourselves or others, then that's not good. But if we're too accepting, and we, you know, is no fierceness, then that's not good for ourselves for others, right. So it's really the balance. It's much, you know, will fall off balance. We try to reintegrate and it's a process. It's not like an end point we get to finally, that's really great.
KC Davis 34:55
Well, I really appreciate the time that you've taken. It's this is a topic that is something that we could talk about for hours. But if people wanted to know more about self compassion, where could they go to read your books and learn more from you?
Dr. Kristin Neff 35:08
Well, easiest place to start is if you Google self compassion, you'll find my website self compassion.org. You can take a self compassion test, you can read research hundreds of articles on there by a lots of different researchers. There's a guided practice, I've got videos, things you can read. And then you can also links to order by books. I've got four at this point. So and some of them are practice based, some of them are more just kind of talking about my own journey with self compassion.
KC Davis 35:34
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and I appreciate every bit of it.
Dr. Kristin Neff 35:39
Thank You will KC It was fun talking to you