Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Oftentimes self critical self talk, shaming ourselves can keep us really, really stuck, including on a physiological level. Like, it can actually put us into a stress response that can be quite overwhelming. And the first step is just kind of bring some awareness to the fact that we have a choice about do I want to continue this way or do I want to try something different?
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Deborah Rosman, and a warm welcome to our listeners each month for the Ad 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 Doctor Justine Grasso, a licensed psychologist, media contributor and wellness speaker.
And Doctor Grasso specializes in the intersection of the mind body connection, trauma and relationships. And she's particularly passionate about helping people reduce shame through cutting edge research and education on the neurobiology of stress and trauma. She's been featured in dozens of publications, including Vogue, Newsweek, mindbody, green, bustle and Al. Welcome, Justine.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Thank you. So nice to be here with you.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Well, I find it very interesting, looking at some of your instagram posts, how you talk about one's self love language. What is self love language?
[00:01:36] Speaker A: So the self love languages are an adaptation from Gary Chapman's five love languages that I put together.
And Gary Chapman came up with these five love languages as a way to kind of get clear on how to express love to other people or significant others and friends and loved ones, and also how we receive love in relationship.
And as a trauma psychologist, I specialize in developmental trauma and, and complex PTSD.
One thing that's very clear is that folks who've experienced developmental trauma and relational trauma often struggle with self love. Right? And so when I talk about the self love languages as looking at how each of these five areas of embodied love, or love through action, can be directed towards the self to nurture the self and to heal from trauma.
So Gary Chapman talks about physical touch, acts of service, words of affirmation, gifts and quality time.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: Well, I would have thought, and I'm sure this includes self love language. Is our inner dialogue inner?
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: You know, because so often our inner dialogue is not self loving. And when a lot of people hear the term self love, especially older people, maybe they go, oh, that feels narcissistic.
But how our thoughts and our language and how we talk to ourselves really is key to how we relate to others as well as our own health and well being.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. So that's where I go into the words of affirmation, right? Turned on self would be self compassionate, self talk or self loving statements.
And there's a lot of ways to do that. We can do that through self compassion practices. We can do that by writing ourself a letter that is kind and understanding.
You can practice loving kindness mantras.
So that's, yeah, that's one way of many to be focusing on the self talk. Super important.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah. What do you, what do you do about people? How do you help people who have strong self criticism or shame and their, their inner dialogue is like, what you're just suggesting just seems so foreign. Or maybe there's times they feel self compassion, but it's really self pity.
It's really distinguishing. As we look at heart math, what is the coherent heart self talk, so to speak.
Lips spirit is a good lens to look through. Like, for myself this morning in my meditation, my higher self, I call it my large, basically said, you need to appreciate yourself today, appreciate all you do. I like, that's not something I do very often. I appreciate others a lot, but the focus, appreciating and looking what I could appreciate about me was refreshing and accurate, and it was lifted my spirit. So to me, it's like, what do you find most effective in communicating to people about that?
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a really important place to start is to help folks bring awareness to the fact that they are talking to themselves in a critical way or in a shaming way. Just bringing awareness to that is a crucial first step. And I also like to share some education about attachment and development. Oftentimes for folks who've experienced chronic stress or trauma, or like grown up with an alcoholic parent or a parent with a mental health issue, there's a bind between attaching to the parent and being authentic.
And doctor Gabor mate actually talks a lot about that. And it's in attachment failures, failure to get the love or the nurturing, or even like, physical support from a caregiver that you can develop a critical narrative about, like, I need to be perfect in order to be loved or cared for. Or it can look like should statements like, I shouldn't be relaxing right now, I need to be doing more.
I shouldn't feel scared. So this can happen in the attachment relationship with caregivers and other important people, mentors and religious figures.
And of course, we can also internalize the self critical self talk if a caregiver or peers are mean, right? If they're being critical and judgmental. So the first step is just kind of bring some awareness to the fact that, okay, yes, like, I do have some self critical inner voice here, and understanding that we come by it innocently.
We come by it in relationship to others, and that we have a choice.
We have a choice point about, do I want to continue this way, or do I want to try something different? Because oftentimes self critical self talk, shaming ourselves can keep us really, really stuck, including on a physiological level. Like, it can actually put us into a stress response that can be quite overwhelming and immobilizing. So a lot of energy. It sucks up a lot of energy to be talking to ourselves critically. And then I use Krista Neff's work to teach self compassion.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I was reading the surgeon general's report the other day about the mental health crisis happening among youth, and they know it's social media related, a lot of it. And yet the youth feel empowerless to give that up because that's their way of connecting and not being lonely. And I would imagine, in addition to our caregivers, that's become a major impetus for self critical dialogue.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. I am scared by social media, especially for young women. There's so much comparison amongst peers, comparison against AI generated images, comparison against images that are filtered and modified.
It's really scary. There's research that shows that for adolescent women, there's an increase in body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, anxiety, social anxiety, depression.
Yeah.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: So self compassion is. I mean, it's very important we teach that, too, but it seems like there needs to be another self reference other than what you keep getting. And even if, you know, it's distorted in social media, it's really impacting young people as their way of relating to the world and affecting their worldviews.
Do you work with many young people at all? What have you seen?
[00:09:54] Speaker A: I mean, so I mostly do work with adults over 18, but, you know, I work with younger adults who have grown up in the age of social media and been impacted by it. And, yeah, I mean, there's not only the comparison around body shape and size and appearance, but there's also comparison about, like, am I living my best life? Like, is my life good enough? Am I having enough fun, doing enough, having enough cool experiences?
So over and over again, you know, people are just sharing the highlight reel.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: On social media.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So what do you find most effective for helping people achieve self compassion or other ways to release unhealthy self criticism or even the shame that they take on from social media?
[00:10:53] Speaker A: I really love doctor Nupt's approach to self compassion. She talks about three components of self compassion, and it's basically a recipe for compassionate self talk.
The first step of practicing self compassion is noticing that in this moment, I am suffering. I'm having a hard time. Maybe there's uncomfortable sensations. I feel alone or I feel shame, I feel insecure. Just acknowledging this is a moment of suffering by saying to herself, yeah, I'm having a hard time right now. It's hard right now. This is not feeling good.
And oftentimes, bringing awareness to the suffering gives us an opportunity to move through it. So then the next step is to really deeply connect with the common humanity, common human experience, which is the fact that we all experience pain and suffering. It is really hard to be a human, as we all know. There is loss, there is heartbreak, there is war, there are atrocious things that happen, and it is hard to be with all of that. And in acknowledging this common human experience, we need to remember that we are not alone. We are all in it together. And so a phrase like, I'm not in this by myself.
Other people experience insecurity or shame or suffering, too. It can be really, really nice to remind us that it's not just me that maintains shame. And then the last step of the self compassionate self talk is sending ourselves some support kind phrases.
The way that we might talk to a loved one or a small child or a sweet pet that was injured, like, oh, sweetie pie, like this.
This is really hard right now, and it's going to be okay. Or it could be some loving kindness. Phrases like, may I be safe and secure in this moment may be at ease.
And the really cool stuff that I think you'll appreciate and maybe already know about is that there's mixed evidence, but there's some research that shows that self compassion practices like this can actually activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which allows us to feel more calm and rest and feel more at ease and feel more safe.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, we have a practice at Heartmath that we realized was needed a few years ago.
It was introduced by our founder, doc Childry.
Compassionate latitude.
You put those two words together because like you said, what if all people are? Everybody's going through the similar global challenges right now, a lot of the same social challenges. World's changing. It's an insecure place if you look at it from just what's going on in the news. And so compassionate latitude is knowing other people are going through something similar. Cut them some slack. Have some latitude, and then apply it to yourself. Cut yourself some slack. You know, allow for what's happening, and that self acceptance and allowance brings more heart energy forth. So bringing the heart energy, self compassion, loving kindness, is activating the heart energy. That is so key, not only for healing and feeling better, but for how the heart talks to the brain and body. Because the heart is not just a pump. It's an intelligent system, and it's sending signals, neural signals throughout the body about how the body feels. And when we can feel more of that warm hearted energy towards others and ourselves, it really helps not only self soothe, but open up new perceptions in the brain. And I think it's just so wonderful the work you're doing to help people have self acceptance. And one of the things you say is that yourself is one that you always have. You're always with yourself. So how do you. How do you talk about self acceptance or help people do that?
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
Yeah, I. So the self. The self is a relationship we're always going to have, like, other than our relationship to the earth. She's always there to support us. So, I mean, I think the way, it's just, it's like a friendship you want to keep your whole life, right? Like, the reality is that all other relationships will come to an end, but you're always going to have a self and self acceptance. I just like another way to talk about allowing and being with all of the emotions and sensations and memories that might come up when we're struggling or when we're triggered, as we're healing or as we're developing a new part of ourselves. And it can also include accepting our needs and wants and boundaries. Often for folks who've grown up with chronic stress or trauma, there's kind of a disconnection or a neglect of needs and wants and boundaries. And when we are suppressing any of these things, whether it's an emotion or a desire, when we're suppressing it, what ends up happening is that it actually becomes even. We become more reactive, the emotion becomes more intense, or the unmet need becomes even more intense. And then we can end up acting in ways that aren't consistent with our values. And so it's actually through allowing what is there to be there, accepting what is there, that we can really change and grow and be the person that we want to be in our relationships.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: You know, we focus a lot on the stress and trauma that people are going through because it's just increasing.
The amount of mental health issues and stress and trauma in the world is enormous. And that's among people who are living externally wonderful lives. It's not just people who are suffering from lack of financial issues or the standard traditional issues. How does self criticism and self compassion or self love play into the neurobiology of stress and trauma?
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Right? So, I mean, as we all know, there is a lot of stress, and there's a lot of violence happening in the world. And when our brain and our nervous and autonomic nervous system sense a threat, our stress response comes online.
And there's a whole series of changes and hormones that happen. And the most kind of obvious ones are that the heart rate increases, blood pressure increases. We might sweat, we might get tense.
Our digestion might speed up.
These are characteristics of the fight or flight side of the nervous system.
And in some cases, in chronic stress or in a traumatic situation, we can go into a freeze response, which everything kind of slows down and comes to a standstill. We might feel like we can't move. We might feel stuck in life, might be depressed, numb, apathetic, lethargic, might dissociate.
And one notice knowing. So when these things happen to our bodies, oftentimes people can become very critical or invalidating of themselves. They might be like, I'm making a big deal about nothing. I shouldn't feel this way. I'm a failure for feeling anxious. Right? There's all these judgments and criticisms. So it's really important to know that these stress responses are an automatic process that happens behind conscious awareness. Not like we choose to go into a stress response. However, we do have a choice about how we relate to the stress response. Are we going to criticize ourselves, or are we going to do something different, like self soothe through self compassion? And the really interesting thing is that we already are experiencing these stress responses. If we are self critical, it's like turning that fight response, like the volume of the fight response up.
I like to think about self criticism as the fight response turned inwards on the self, so it's amplified. Whereas self compassion is really an antidote to all of that autonomic dysregulation that can help us kind of quiet the fires and come back into what we call, like, a window of tolerance or zone of coherence or calm.
And it's through these self compassionate practices that we can regulate the nervous system. And then when we're in a space of more regulation and calm, then we can take action to help other people and help their nervous systems reestablish safety and calm as well. So the more that we know about neurobiology and stress response and then how to self soothe with self compassion, I think the more that we can be really intentional about our behaviors and reducing stress and trauma for other people and helping other people.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so much of is developing the awareness that if you are stressed and then you blame yourself, judge yourself, are critical about, because you're feeling that and how that just amplifies it. Like you're saying, becoming more sensitive to the tone, the feeling state, so that when it starts, you go, wait a minute, I don't want to go down that path. Let me reset. That's why we, there are a lot of tools to help people do that, including the heart math tools to really get that self regulation.
Our whole system of heart math is based on science based self regulation techniques to turn around those draining, debilitating patterns and the nervous system dysregulation that generates stress. And the tools, a lot of it, I think for anything that works, your program, doctor Neff's, others, it's how do we befriend our feelings? How do we embrace that and radiate compassion, love, heart energy into ourselves, that the reactions aren't wrong or bad, but it takes practice to build that and develop the inner security that goes, yeah, this is working. And then you feel more empowered. So, I mean, that's what we, we call all of these qualities. Self compassion, care, kindness. It's their qualities of love. They're taking love to the street. As our founder says, doc, children, love is so needed in the world today.
How do you see, how can, since the pandemic, if things have gotten even more stressful for a lot of people and more anguish, more loneliness, what have you observed in that? And then how do you see social media able to help?
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's clear from research over the last few years that since the pandemic began, there's higher rates of anxiety and depression and loneliness. There's a loneliness epidemic.
Yeah. I mean, what I really love about social media is that it gives me the opportunity to provide free education to folks who might not normally be able to access it. And a lot of, I mean, you're doing it, a lot of people are out there doing it. And I think that's beautiful.
So learning on. Learning on social media is great, but people have to take it to the next step, right? You can't just kind of scroll through self love quotes, you know, you gotta join a program or find a psychotherapist or have a selfdevelop, you know, a home practice of some sort to actually rehearse and embody self compassion and other self soothing skills.
So I look at social media as like a jumping off point for healing and for increasing compassion in the world and love in the world.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I just hope more and more people are going to turn social media around from the problems to the solutions and that attract more people who want that. Help facilitate that.
Well, wonderful. Let's do a heart meditation together on self compassion and self love and sending heart energy to ourself, our others, our cells in our body, because that's something we can all do anytime.
So let's focus in the heart to center in your heart and breathe the qualities of love and appreciation.
Find something in your life that you appreciate, something about yourself. So let's just do that for a moment.
This just warms our heart and increases the coherence in our heart's intention.
Now, radiate warm hearted feelings of love, compassion and appreciation to the cells in your body, to your nervous system, to yourself.
Feel this heart energy soothing your system.
Now radiate this heart warmth to friends, family, coworkers who could use some extra heart care.
Just radiate it out from your heart. Send that warmth.
Next, envision more people committing to adding heart qualities of love, care, compassion, gratitude, kindness, patience, into their personal day to day life towards themselves and each other.
It's that hearth, values and love that's going to turn the tide and create a new baseline for a world we want to live in.
And it helps people move through the challenges.
Now, let's radiate our collective love and compassion to all people and nations across the world who are suffering from political divisiveness, trauma, wars, natural disasters and the other major stressors. Radiate our heart energy collectively. Our love, compassion to help lift her spirit.
Now let's close by radiating and co creating a reservoir of compassionate heart energy that each of us can tap into over the next month when we feel stressed or need some self compassion or need clarity or more support from our own heart's intelligence, our heart's intuitive guidance. Let's co create that reservoir we can all tap into.
Okay. Thank you so much for sharing that heart meditation with me.
Justine, is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?
[00:31:03] Speaker A: It was really heartwarming to know that as a community we were doing that meditation together. It was really beautiful.
Yeah. And you know, one, one reminder that I'd like to share that if anyone is experiencing the inner critic, the self criticism, it doesn't mean that they're doing anything wrong and that they're broken. It's just their mind and body trying to protect them and they can make a new choice to do something different.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. And there's tools available to make new choices to help you. And as a free gift to our listeners, I want to remind you you can watch the interactive online video course, the Heartmath experience, which has tools to help you turn things around, become more who you really are. Or check out the amazing new Heartmath app at your app store.
And I want to remind you that the third Tuesday of every month, we publish a new ad heart podcast episode. So be sure you subscribe so you don't miss our next guest and topic.
Take care. Thank you.
[00:32:16] Speaker C: Thank you for listening to the ad 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 Heartmath and also the Heartmath Institute. Both organizations are committed to helping activate the heart of humanity.
