Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Compassion isn't always soft. Sometimes it's very firm, very tough. There's a real strength to it, that real commitment, that courage, that sense of. Yeah, taking action. Do you have your own back? And clearly, I mean, if you think about it, it's such a, it seems so obvious, but if you have your own back, you're going to be stronger than if you're cutting yourself down and criticizing yourself and shaming yourself.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Deborah Rosman and a warm welcome to our listeners. Each month for the At Heart podcast, I have the privilege of interviewing individuals who are contributing to the creation of a more heart based world.
This month I'm talking with Dr. Kristin Neff, co author of a recent and timely book, Mindful Self Compassion for burnout. Tools to help you heal and recharge when you're wrung out by stress. Oh, so many people are wrung out by stress these days. Dr. Neff is one of the leading academic researchers on self compassion and why it's so important for our health and well being.
And I've so admired her work and the influence she's had helping people learn how to practice self compassion. And given the rising levels of stress in the world that affect us all, we could all benefit from increasing our self compassion, especially when we can't see solutions or feel we can't handle it all.
So welcome Kristin.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Oh, thanks so much for having me here, Debbie. Really appreciate it.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: You know, so many people find it hard to have self compassion. They think it's narcissistic or self centered or self pity. And your book, you talk about how self compassion changes the way you deal with distress and burnout so you stop avoiding it or beating yourself up for it or judging yourself as somehow deficient because you can't do it all. But you have to lift yourself out of all that to have real relief or self compassion where it doesn't just drain into pity and feeling sorry for your fear, sorry for yourself. Can you explain how self compassion can lift you above all that?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, so when people think of self compassion, they usually just think of the warmth component, the care component. But there's actually two other elements to compassion, which is what makes it something that doesn't devolve into self pity. One is mindfulness. Right? We need to have some mindful awareness of what's going on, the fact that we're hurting, but do it in a way that so we aren't ignoring the pain. We can't give ourselves compassion if we don't even acknowledge that we're in harm's way or hurting in some way. But on the other hand, if we dive into it, if we become over identified with it, if we kind of get lost in the drama, then that's not healthy either. So we need some mindful awareness around the fact that we're struggling.
And of course we need the warmth and this desire to care. But also really important, which is something that people don't talk a lot about. But I think it's so key. It's a sense of connectedness to others.
Right. So often we feel like we're all alone. We feel like there's something wrong with us or we're abnormal for what we're going through. So when we remember, hey, this is part of the human condition, everyone's imperfect, everyone makes mistakes, everyone struggles, you know, it's like this is actually what connects us to other people now. It separates from other people, that separates us from other people. So self pity is, woe is me, poor me, self compassion is, hey, this is what it's like to be a human being. And once you, once you make that, you broaden the sense of separate self, it actually really strengthens us.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Oh, that's such an important distinction. You know, we look at things in our research from vibration, you know, just like what is uplifting, what lifts you and what depletes you. You know, depletion versus renewal is a way that you can kind of tell where you're at and how then use some kind of tool to be able to turn that around. You know, we call getting heart coherence so that you're, you're in another frequency, really. And you know, it's the, the core components that you talk about, Mike. Mindfulness, common humanity and kindness. Let's not forget that. Because that's a heart feeling. Yes, it's warm, but it's also an accepting feeling.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: So important when we have emotional awareness or awareness of what's going on to also have acceptance of what we're feeling because you can't do anything about it. It's just resistance and fight until you can accept it. And that's not just a mental comment concept.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. When we just. So we accept ourselves as well as our emotions. And what you said about turning around and I noticed when reading your stuff is very similar. So often we start out with self compassion by people having people imagine, well, what would you say to a good friend who is in the same situation? And I think probably from your point of view, which is just another way of slic up the Pie where you're getting into heart coherence. When you think about when you have compassion for another, even in your imagination, and then you do this U turn and then you just go ahead and include yourself in the circle of compassion so you kind of get the ball rolling, so to speak, and then you tuck yourself in. And we find that absolutely is very effective when we teach people how to be self compassionate.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I can imagine. And so often I found for myself, but also when I teach others first, having compassion for the world, like sending hard energy to the people suffering in Gaza, for example, that's an example, opens the heart that you can have that pure genuine feeling and then have compassion for yourself or whatever you're going through can kind of keep that clean feeling rather than have it dip.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Well, and I'm sure I don't need to explain this to you. The issue when we're suffering is we feel threatened as we go into sympathetic nervous system reactivity and fight flight or freeze. And it's very hard to keep that coherence or that sense of calm and peace when we feel personally threatened. And you know, we don't feel so personally threatened when other people are hurting or our best friend is hurting. And so that's why we kind of do this little. It's almost like a. I call it a hack, but you know, it's not really a hack. You're just getting yourself into that vibrational level, you can call it, or that state of more parasympathetic nervous system response and then you, then you include yourself.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Right. Of course, that's what the heart coherence technology is helping people do and the techniques. Because that way you're getting the parasympathetic activated.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Synchronizing the sympathetic and parasympathetic into that coherent waveform and that gives you the leg up so that you can begin to really feel the genuine heart feeling of compassion.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So I've always called it a hack, but I think about it, you figured like a device actually have that hack, even be more effective and have some real time feedback, which is just very cool.
We talked before about the fact that our work is so overlapping, yet we haven't really had much dialogue. But we're both going to the exact same place just using slightly different methods. But you know.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that's what's so fun about coming together because the world needs all of us to work together with whatever is the best practices.
Everyone is going through such stress these days, you know, the common humanity. You talk about Too, you know, it's like part of that is we need to cut ourselves and each other some slack, you know.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And the pressure to get it right and you be perfect and that which is just exacerbated by social media and you know, there's just so much to do and, and so much we want to achieve and.
But the interesting thing is what we find in what I find in my research is that when you give yourself a break, you actually achieve more, not less. Right. What we find is that we're more likely to achieve our goals when we're approaching them out of encouragement, as opposed to you better achieve or else I'll hurt you forever. I mean that kind of fear, when you add in the fear, you better get it right or else that actually undermines your performance because partly again through the physiology activates sympathetic nervous system and you aren't as effective in your decision making, for instance. And so for instance, we caught athletes how to be self compassionate about mistakes in their training routine or their games and they actually improve their athletic performance as opposed to the normal way of doing it, which is just beating themselves up. So it doesn't undermine your performance. Taking a break actually helps, except when it doesn't. So if you take a break to the point where it's self indulgent, then it's no longer compassionate. That's why we need the mindfulness to tell the difference. Am I just fooling myself? Well, how do you know the answer is really easy? Is it helping me or harming me?
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Right, Exactly.
It's just like we talk about care and over care. Is the care regenerating and nurturing or is it draining? Is it stress producing? And that's something you can ask yourself. Is my care or compassion stress reducing or stress producing? And that's a signal to come back to balance. You know, again, that's what your tools and the heart math tools are all designed to do to help people come back and reboot, reset to that balanced state and then move forward from there. And you know, we talked about being kind to ourselves and kind to each other. That's a heart texture, a heart attitude that nurtures and soothes. Yes, self soothing has, is, is almost foreign to how a lot of us were brought up. Like you're talking about and thinking somehow that being self critical and self beating is going to advance us where it doesn't. And so often like yourself, when we do programs for companies or for the military, you know, for first responders, for law enforcement we work with, it has to be the research first. Yeah, here's the research showing you why you should shift to your heart and get your heart and brain in sync for higher performance. Here's why you should activate a heart quality like kindness or appreciation or compassion, because it actually activates your higher brain centers so you're more capable. And it's just amazing that in our culture it's been so the opposite. And of course you can see the play out in it in society.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Yeah, but I do think, you know, I always tell people, don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up. I mean, yeah, yeah, the culture hasn't cultivated it, but I do think there are physiological reasons because the human brain evolved when it sees a problem or a threat to go into sympathetic nervous system, fight, flight or freeze. And so we've got this negativity bias right in our brain. So I think it's natural that we do that, that we tend to immediately go into problem solving modes. We try to solve the problem of ourself and we just do it. These like fighting kind of reactive methods.
It used to be, actually sometimes we'd even think that with our children, spare the rod, spoil the child. And now I think most people kind of realize encouragement, support is more effective with children, but it's not totally natural with ourselves. The good news is, as you know, it only takes a few seconds. There's a research study showing 20 seconds of putting your hand on your heart and kind of saying a few encouraging things to yourself is all you need. You know, we aren't talking about having to sit in meditation for 30 minutes.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Exactly. Right. What do we do in the moment when we have that stress reaction and catching it? That's. That's what it works. That's what works. That's the whole heart mass system is built on what we can do in the moment to shift and connect with the heart. Because stress builds up when the mind is active and running one way, the heart another, and our emotions get all entangled up in that and creates chaos. And the quickest shift we've seen is like you example, put your hand in your heart and breathe through your heart or get into true heart rhythm biofeedback that synchronizes your heart and brain, which actually releases the negative mind talk. Because now the mind and heart and emotions are in sync. And so that lifts your emotional vibration and lifts your perception above the issue, which is key to reducing overwhelming burnout. You need a new perspective.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. And so if you think of that, that trigger of the stress that, that trigger that says there's a problem, watch out, pay attention. Yeah, that's really only meant, you know, to last a few moments. Of course, the human, you know, the human brain, then we develop this cognitive system and these brain, big prefrontal cortexes which therefore then we identify with the stress. We start having thoughts like I'm not good enough and we start imagining what might happen in the future and, and something that was supposed to be just a momentary pay attention becomes the place we live. And so anything we can do to shift out of that. You know, sometimes we say drop out of your head into your body. It's so effective at kind of letting go of all that rumination and worry and anxiety and just, well, what is actually happening right now? And can I be with myself as I go through this moment of difficulty?
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, we do a lot of work with hospital nurses, you know, and the Kaiser and the dignity systems and others. And just the, such a real, the aha. The realization that happens when they go, oh, it's my over care that's stress producing and draining and leading to burnout and sometimes called compassion fatigue, which I think is a misnomer because true compassion is uplifting, it's regenerating, it's not fatiguing. But when the mind's worry takes over and the anxiety and the how am I doing and pushing myself more than balance, that's when it all gets a sort of downward association. Compassion fatigue or.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, so there's actually a movement in psychology we're calling it empathy, not compassion, that's fatiguing. So when you're, when you're resonating with the pain of others, which of course you do if you're a nurse and you're probably also sensitive, if you're in the healthcare field, then you're empathically resonating with other people's pain. I mean, in addition to worry about trying to help them. So there's that. But just empathic resonance in and of itself can be draining unless you give yourself compassion for the empathic pain you're feeling. So you give compassion in the pain, the person who's experiencing the pain, but you also give yourself compassion for your empathic pain. We actually teach an exercise where you breathe out for the patient to breathe in for yourself. So the compassion's flowing back and forth. And I know there are, there's a lot of studies showing that self compassion puts you into heart rate clearance. So I'm sure if you throw it at your little sensors, it would show that it's doing it and it really makes, you know, makes a difference. But yeah, there's some really interesting work by Tanya Singer, who's done brain scans of people on empathy versus people on compassion. And it looks very different in the brain.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: I'm sure it does. Sometimes we call it. In our book Heart Intelligence, a chapter by our founder, Doc Childry, talks about unmanaged empathy.
Again, it's the heart feeling, but we let the mind take over and the resonance. Like you're talking about the over identification. Yes, you, you. To regain balanced care, we have to sometimes give ourselves a meaningful bottom line. And I liked your expression when you talked about the two faces of self compassion. Tender and fierce.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: What are some examples of fierce?
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah, so. So the tender self compassion is about acceptance. Basically accepting ourselves as flawed human beings and also accepting our emotions and the fact that we can't control everything.
But part of self compassion is taking action. For instance, saying no, drawing boundaries, protecting ourselves, motivating change, you know, meeting our own needs. So there's a lot of. It's. If we have too much tender self compassion and we don't take enough action, we might become complacent and that's no longer compassionate. On the other hand, if we're like our culture, our culture is all about do, do, do action, action, action, achieve. And then there's no acceptance. That's of course not healthy. E. The. The yin and yang balance between the two. And so learning, you know, you kind of have to ask yourself, what do I need right now? Maybe I need acceptance. Maybe I need action. Maybe often the answer is I need both. I need to accept myself as I'm taking action, you know, but it's. It's kind of an underappreciated aspect of care, is taking action to protect yourself. Again, drawing boundaries, as you say, for caregivers, especially if you just give yourself away, you're no good to anyone, you know, so learning how to say no, how to meet your own needs and those of others simultaneously is just. Just really key. Actually, I. One of the things I talk about in my book is anger can even be helpful when it's targeted, when it's not targeted at people, when it's not dehumanizing, but when it comes from love like Mama the Bear, anger, like protection, like when you, you know, you can even be angry about, you know, that kind of rush of, no, that's not okay. But when it's not personal, it can actually be used in the service of protection. I don't know if you probably aren't in heart coherence in that moment, but maybe you don't. We don't have to be in heart coherence all the time. There are moments when we're really threatened, for instance, and anger can focus us on the threat, it can give us bravery, can give us energy, but it's really a short term thing and it can't be aimed at people. It has to be aimed at stopping harmful behaviors or situations.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And maybe we call something other than anger because it's the frequency, it's the feeling of taking charge, the feeling of giving a bottom line or what we call business heart. You know, the heart isn't just the feminine qualities. It's also when we work with the military, it's also that patriotism, that respect, that passion for what you're doing and what you're calling, that type of courage. And all of those are courage, bravery? Yeah, all aspects of the heart. It's male and female.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Makes up who we are as integral human being.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: The problem, of course, is gender role socialization. Right. Unfortunately, people who raised as boys aren't allowed to be in touch with their tender side. And people raised as girls aren't, you know, encouraged to get in touch with their fierce side.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: When these are things like the Chinese philosophers got it right, yin and yang, we need both. And unfortunately, sometimes society gets in the way of us being integrated, full people.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Well, that's why what you're doing, what we're doing, the research, the tools to actualize that, it takes practice, but it's giving hope because it's how the human operating system works.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: So many people. And I just thought it was really fascinating since we work with the military and you mentioned the research, the military found that heart feelings like compassion and kindness which create nervous system regulation and coherence actually help the deregulated nervous system. So the soldiers who are compassionate to themselves after returning to civilian life were less likely to develop PTSD or abuse alcohol.
The amount of compassion you said that they gave themselves was a stronger predictor of whether they develop PTSD than how much of the negative experiences they saw. That was fascinating. Can you say more about that?
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Yeah, we found that. We found it with military soldiers also. I did a study with them autism parents that the amount of self compassion they gave themselves was more important, a predictor of their stress level than how severe their child's autism was. So again and again it's like less important what's happening and more important how are you relating to what's happening? Do you have your own back and clearly, I mean if you think about it, it's such a, it seems so obvious but if you have your own back, you're going to be stronger than if you're cutting yourself down and criticizing yourself and shaming yourself. That's not going to make you stronger. It's like kind of obvious but we somehow we think of, you know, the criticism is like tough as nails and you know. Yeah. So a lot of this is why I like the idea of fear, self compassion. Because compassion isn't always soft. Sometimes it's very firm, very tough. I was like, I got you, I'm not letting go. It's not like, oh, squishy. It's like, no, you know, I got your back, I got this, I got you, I'm here for you. It's a real strength to it, that, real commitment, that courage, that, that sense of. Yeah. Taking action.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Is really important aspect of compassion.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, I love what you're saying. What else, what are you seeing these days? The world is so crazy. As we all know, stress levels are going up, people are uncertain, they don't know what's going to happen. They're scared.
And self compassion is important. Compassion for each other. We call it compassionate latitude. Everyone's doing the best they can from where they're coming from.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Yeah. From where they're coming from. Yeah.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: What else do you see in this?
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, so, but I just do think so. Life has always been difficult, you know, but it does feel like things are happening at a quicker pace. And then you added things like climate change and it just keeps on coming fast and furious.
And so important that we practice self compassion, you know, in some ways I think compassion for others obviously is very, very important as well. But it's kind of if you are full of like hate or resentment or all these feelings of insecurity, you are not going to be able to have compassion well for your out group. So it's actually not that hard to have compassion for your in group but it's very hard to have compassion for your out group. So you really need to have compassion for yourself to get yourself in the state of mind where you actually can see, oh yeah, well, I guess they're human too, even though I don't agree with them, you know, so you can expend that, extend the compassion out and see yourself as part of the larger whole. But there are so many pressures. The thing that it's really kind of a wild card in here is the whole thing of social media, especially for Young people, you know, the work being done about how that's changing people's ability even to pay attention because of the constant like dopamine hits of the constant input of information. How can you be in your heart when your brain is just fried by scrolling on social media, for instance? You know that's. I don't have the answer to that, but it is a little frightening and why we really need to pay attention to. Sometimes I think of it as being lost in our thought bubbles. You know we're just like in these bubbles of thought, like it was virtual reality in this. That virtual reality is exacerbated by the social media and the informational bubbles. And if we're just lost in our thoughts and we can't go down to our heart, we're in trouble.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: You know, I hate to say it but yeah, it's, it's real.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Well that's where you and I and everyone who knows that we're just on a mission to help.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: You know.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: So let's do heart meditation with everybody on self compassion. That's okay. Add some of that soothing heart quality and firmness to our self. Okay, let's focus our attention in the heart.
Breathe a little slower, a little deeper through the area of the heart.
And as you breathe in, breathe in the attitude, the feelings of love and compassion.
And as you breathe out, just radiate those heart qualities into your mental, emotional and physical systems.
As you breathe this love and compassion into your system, see your heart, mind, body and spirit aligning in harmony and coherence.
Doing this actually creates an energetic conduit for your heart's intuitive guidance and love to move through you and your day to day interactions.
Now pick an area of your life. Mental, emotional, physical. At home, at work, your reactions to what's happening in the world. Anything that's causing you stress and needs, more self compassion and renewal.
Pick one area.
Could be health, could be a relationship.
And as you continue that heart breathing, ask for your heart's guidance and facilitation.
Do this from your heart like you're interacting with a best friend that truly cares and understands.
Now quietly sense any suggestions from your heart's guidance and make a commitment to follow through on that prompting.
Now let's take a moment and radiate the collective compassion of all of us to all the people suffering from wars, trauma, famine, natural disasters and other major stressors on the planet that draw our hearts care, that amplifies our heart's compassion.
Now let's close by co creating a reservoir of Compassionate heart energy that each of us can tap into over the next month whenever we need a lift in spirit or support, in practicing self compassion or in following our heart's guidance.
I've had numerous people tell me these reservoirs we create with each podcast have really helped them when they've needed it.
Okay, thank you so much for sharing that with me, Kristen. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Yeah, well, so if anyone would like to learn more about self compassion, if you just Google self compassion or go to selfcompassion.org on my website, I've got a ton of research. There are videos, a lot of of free guided practices and exercises. So it's a really, it's a good place to start if you want to know about self compassion. And it complements so beautifully all the heart math stuff. They really go together. They're like sisters. Long lost sisters.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much. It's just been wonderful connecting with you here. And as a free gift to our listeners, I want to remind you that you can watch the interactive online video course the HeartMath Experience. It has five HeartMath techniques, it's available on our website.
And if you haven't done so already, check out the new HeartMath app with a camera sensor that can measure your heart coherence at the App Store or Google Play stores. And I want to remind you that the third Tuesday of every month we publish a new episode. So be sure to subscribe to the Ad Heart podcast so you don't miss our next guest and topic.
Take care and really have compassion for yourself. Thank you.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Add Heart Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you can catch the latest episodes. If you're wanting even more heart inspired content, find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. Look for Heart Math and also the HeartMath Institute. Both organizations are committed to helping activate the heart of humanity.
