How to Hack Your Nervous System (Kristin Neff)

Hello and welcome to my brand new series, Doing It Anyway. I'm Catty Kay. Today, I want to ask what if the voice in your head, you know, the one telling you to power through at all costs, is actually the thing that's holding you back. I'm talking to Dr. Tristan Neff. She's a pioneer in the science of self-compassion. And she argues that being kinder to yourself is one of the most powerful tools for confidence, for resilience and success. This episode is presented by Vanguard. When it comes to investing, many of us feel totally out of our depth and we just don't know where to start. And we can't be blamed for that. A lot of us simply don't have the time, or the confidence to take the first steps. And that's where Vanguard can help. With their managed ICER, Vanguard experts do the hard work for you. They'll match you to an investment plan that feels right for you. And then they'll handle the rest. No second guessing, just smart professional management. So stop wondering how to start investing and start making your money work harder. Search Vanguard managed ICER to find out more. When investing your capital is at risk, tax rules apply. Kristen, thank you very much for doing this. I have been looking forward to this conversation. And and your work, I have to say, on self-compassion has meant a lot to me over the years. Because whenever I've been in one of those positions where I've found myself being hard on myself and I am prone to self-criticism, I summon a little bit of Kristen F to make myself feel a little bit better. And to put myself in the kind of context of just being human, not being a superstar, not being perfect, and all of those things that we often try to be, but just being human. So give us the sort of definition, the idiot's guide to self-compassion. Okay, Carrie, happy to. Do you believe it or not? There is like the dummy's guide to self-compassions. I can do this. Not that our audience are dummies. I don't want to podcast any expressions. Well, self-compassion is one of those things that it's when you think about it, it's kind of intuitive, but we don't think about it, which is the problem. So we're more familiar with the concept of compassion. So if you break down the Latin roots of the word, passion refers to suffering, calm is with. So it's basically, how do we show up for suffering? And normally, we think of that as how do we show up for other people when they're suffering or hurting or feeling badly about themselves? We're pretty good at that. Most of us are fairly skilled at that. And so self-compassion is really, how do we show up for ourselves? Well, we're struggling, whether that struggle comes from making a mistake or feeling like a failure, or something just really difficult challenging or stressful is happening in our lives. Can we show up for ourselves with the same compassion, concern, support, warmth, encouragement that we might more naturally do for others? When you and I've spoken about this before, you've put it in this great context of treating yourself like you treat your best friends. Yes. And I think that's a way for people in a kind of non-academic way. And I want to kind of geek out in a minute and get the differences between self-compassion and self-esteem and self-confidence and optimism and all that kind of thing. But I think that's such a lovely way of framing it. I think particularly for women who are listening to this, because I think we are really good at showing up for our friends, right? I mean, I think that is something we do so well, but we're not always so good at doing it for ourselves. Yeah. So actually, women in particular, we can talk, we don't go too much into gender now, but we're compassionate experts, but all human beings, either you have a good friend, or if you have a pet, we've learned how to be compassionate. And in fact, compassion comes naturally to us, but evolution kind of designed us to be compassionate to others and to be more self-critical. We can go into that later if you want, if you want to geek out on the science behind it, but this is the easy part to understand. We know how to be compassionate. It's not a new skill, but we aren't used to, or what does it feel so natural to us. It's turning the lens of compassion inward. And when we do, when we actually recognize that we're having a hard time, or we're feeling badly, we need a little support. And when we show up for ourselves, the same way that it's natural to show up for a friend, it makes all the difference. One of the other things that I really liked about self-compassion when I came across it, and I came across it because of your work on it, is this idea of putting ourselves in the kind of human context, because I think for me, where self-compassion has been particularly useful, is that when I mess up, or, which I have footnote to my children, actually, I have messed up, even though I have to think I'm perfect, shocking, when I mess up at something, or when I'm not as good at something, as I think, when I'm not the best, let's be honest, I like to do things that I'm good at. And when I'm not so good at something, the thing that has really helped me about self-compassion is this idea that, well, I'm just human. Put the study of self-compassion from that point of view too, that it's not just about being kind to yourself, it's about recognizing that you're part of this kind of great human experiment, and we all screw up and fail, and that it's normal to do those things, and I think self-compassion has really helped me with that. Yeah, so there are actually three elements to self-compassion. One is myfulness just being aware when you're hurting. Sometimes we just kind of push through it. I'll just have a cup of tea, I'm not going to think of it. You know, shove that down, so we need to be aware that we're suffering. We need to be kind to ourselves, but the third element which you're pointing to, which is actually really key, it's like a three-legged stool. We need all three to be really stable, is the sense of common humanity. Even though the word self is in self-compassion, actually what we're doing in a moment of self-compassion is removing away from identification with the self. It's the self that feels overwhelmed or hurting or flawed or inadequate, feels separate and isolated. I'm removing from identifying with this sense of separate self into the field of compassionate presence, which is all about humanity. So it's not pity, it's not self-focused, it's not for me, it's saying human beings, they make mistakes. You know, this is the human experience. This is actually how we learn. You know, how are we going to learn if we aren't allowed to make mistakes? We're not robots. Yeah, and so it's that sense of feeling connected to the larger whole, which gives self-compassion that sense of safety and stability. If I were to pity you, Katty, you wouldn't like it because I'd be looking down on you. But if I have compassion, it's like, hey, I've been there. I've made mistakes. It's the exact same thing with self-compassion. It's not self-focused. It's just coming from the perspective of the shared human experience. And when we do that, it makes such a big difference. And it helps us feel as alone and isolated, which is very scary and hard to feel. Clash shipment and eye when we were writing our book on confidence that you were very helpful with. One of the ways we described it was this idea of being good enough, that sometimes it's okay to be good enough. And I remember talking to you about this and you saying, well, look, if we were all going to be the best, I mean, it just doesn't work, right? We set ourselves these insanely high standards. And we all want to be the best. But just do the maths for a second. I mean, we can't all be the best. I mean, the numbers don't work out like that. And I've always used this phrase, well, it's okay sometimes to be good enough. Not every single piece of work that you hand in, not every single report you write for your boss, not every single essay you write in college, not every single assignment you do, not every single client write up that you do, has to be the very best. It can't, by definition, you can't always be perfect. And the phrase we use is this idea of good enough. Is that similar to the idea of self-compassion and putting yourself in the kind of context of being human? Yeah, well, so the place overlap strongly on that. And I love that good enough. I say, my work is well good enough is part of what's happening with self-compassion is we aren't taking things personally. So our sense of self-worth isn't totally invested in what we produce and what we achieve, right? And so when what we achieve is good enough and we don't take it personally, we don't, in other words, our work doesn't have to be perfect for us to feel good about ourselves. Then we can evaluate, is it worth working harder on this or not? Is it good enough to get the job done? So when we take the sense of identification with it out of the equation, it can really help. But I just have to say here, because I know some of your listeners are saying, well, sometimes I want to be the best. So we taught self-compassion to NCAA athletes for whom they have to be the best. They have to be at the top of their game. If they want to keep their scholarships or go on to the pros, when you take the sense of identification out of it, in other words, if I maybe my, maybe my game wasn't good enough this time, maybe I want to get it better so that I can achieve my goal. But it has nothing to do with my worth as a person. What that does is it moves this from what's called, you know, this a performance orientation where I want to be, I want to be perfect because that means that I'm a good person, you take that out of the equation. I'm good, regardless of my performance. Then it takes away performance anxiety. But look at the Olympics. When our sense of self is invested in winning that gold, it often tanks us because we're still nervous and, you know, it takes us off our game. The more we can take ourself out of the equation, then sometimes, So what being the best is really important. You're more free to achieve your goals. It actually improves your performance. Those athletes we trained, their athletic performance improved once they took their sense of self out of the picture. So what we're really saying is that, you know, separating is our work good enough? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And am I good enough? Always. My worth is intrinsic to being a flawed human being. The only thing you need to achieve to have self-compassion and self-worth is to be a flawed human being. That's a box. I don't know about you, Katie, but I can always check that box. So it raises several issues, what you're saying. Let's start with the kind of gender component of this now. Because I know in your latest book, "Fear Self-compassion," you've studied more the gender component of this. Tell me whether you think women are more prone to the kind of self-criticism for which demands us to also have a need for more self-compassion. Because when we were looking at confidence-- when I wrote my book on confidence-- one of the things we did find actually was data suggesting that women were more prone to perfectionism than men are. That we want to be the best at things. And I'm wondering if that also is the case with self-compassion that you've found that women are more prone to self-criticism and therefore need self-compassion more perhaps than men do. Yeah, so I would say that everyone needs self-compassion because the research is overwhelming. It helps you in so many ways. But this will interest you, Katie. Women are quite a bit more compassionate to others than men are. And by the way, just when we're talking about gender, I'm not talking about biological sex. I'm talking about gender role socialization. And we've studied it in a way that can separate the two. So people socialized as women tend to be more compassionate to others because it's part of our gender role. I don't think that comes as any big surprise to people. Exactly. But we're a little less self-compassionate. It's not huge, but it's consistent. It's a stable funding. We've done a meta-analyses, which correlates with the fact that, as you say, we're a little more self-critical. And so part of what's happening is feeling threatened. So a natural response when we feel threatened is to go into fight mode, right? So it's kind of fight, flight, or freeze. So when we feel threatened, personally threatened, we fight the problem. And so in the case we're threatened by some-- maybe feeling we aren't good enough, for instance-- we fight ourselves. It's kind of going on subconsciously. We fight ourselves, thinking that somehow, if we're perfect, we get everything right, then we'll be safe. And of course, if you're in a hierarchy, and you aren't valued as much, you need to be a little bit better. So there's some truth to that, right? But we think fighting ourselves is going to help or we flee into a sense of shame and isolation or we freezing, get stuck and we ruminate. So this is actually natural when we feel threatened. And because women-- historically, well, still in many contexts, we're actually armed or more threatened than men. Some men are kind of assumed when a woman-- when a man gets angry or really passionate, people think, oh, he's great. I love him. He believes in what he's saying. And when a woman gets passionate or it's kind of angry, or really voices, states her voice, you'll think, oh, she's crazy. So the environment is a little more threatening to women. And so we naturally respond. All people do this with self-criticism as a way to deal with that threat. So in a way, it's that we live in a world-- particularly, let's put this in a professional context-- we live in a world of the office world, the corporate world. I don't want to kind of, you know, sound all patriarchy-ish about this. But it was built by and for men. I mean, it just was over centuries. So we are trying to kind of fit ourselves having only come into that world in the last 50 years or so. We are now trying to fit ourselves into a world that wasn't really designed for us. It wasn't designed for our skill set. It wasn't designed to make us feel our best. It wasn't designed to be comfortable for us because we didn't construct it. So in a way, it's normal that we would get into that world and suddenly feel, oh, I don't really fit in very well here or I'm not performing at my best here because it's not a world that is appealing to our best instincts. Is that oversimplifying it? Because that's what it sometimes feels like to me. You know, I go into these meetings and I think, oh my God, if it was just women in this meeting, we would be running this differently. I just know we would. So first of all, there's a couple of points I want to make. It is true. So when I talk about fears and tender self-compassion, one way to talk about that is fierceness is about taking action to alleviate suffering. Tender self-compassion is about acceptance and kind of nurturing to alleviate suffering. And everyone needs both. So there's a lot of research showing that more compassion and organizations actually help those organizations run better. So just to say, everyone needs both. But what's happened is it used to be the case that in business context, women were automatically viewed as less competent. So if you saw two resumes, one was from John, one was from Susan, people would assume John was more competent. That has actually shifted down recently. So now women in men's view is equally competent. Interesting. That's great. Partly because we've been in the workforce, we've been kicking ass. But what's still the case, Katty? And this is, it feeds directly into what you're talking about. Is people like a competent man more? If you're competent, they think, oh, I really like him. They dislike a competent woman. Because a competent woman, especially in work contexts, is fined with a competent mother, that's great. But a competent professional woman. And this is true, both among men and women, they dislike a competent woman because they think she's not feminine. So it is backlash to being a successful competent woman. I'm sure I'm absolutely positive. You've experienced that in professional context. So I may think you're competent, but I'd really kind of like you a little bit more if you're a little more uncertain, a little less confident. And that's real, Katty, you're making it up. It's not just coming in from you. It's coming from you from other women are particularly likely to dislike competent woman because it goes against gender roles. So we're kind of between rock and a hard place. And that's just the way that where we are right now is a society. OK, I'm going to put a pin in that because in the second half of this program, we're going to look at real-life scenarios. And we have some questions for you. And I'm going to ask-- this is a question I get asked all the time, particularly by younger women who, when I'm speaking to groups of women, it's how do I avoid this Katty 22 of being confident and coming across as confident at work, and competent at work, and then not being penalized for those very athletes? So I'm going to ask you how we get around that in the second half of the show. But let's talk a bit more specifically about self-compassion because what I love about your work as well, Christian, is that you actually look at this sort of physically. You've taken the science of this. And you've seen what the actually pursuing self-compassion and acting on self-compassion, what it can actually do for us in terms of our physical health, as well as just our mental health. So talk a little bit about that and why you wanted to explore that and what you've found the benefits to people are of self-compassion when it comes to how they actually feel physically. Yes. So both self-criticism and self-compassion act through the nervous system. So I mentioned that when we feel threatened, we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. That's associated with what's called sympathetic, nervous activity. Our heart rate goes up. Cortisol levels go up. We get ready for fight, flight, or freeze. And what happens with self-criticism is we turn that response inward to try to stay safe. But we're actually more activated when we're criticizing ourselves. A compassion is also natural, but it operates through the care system which evolved not to deal with personal threats, but evolved to deal with threats to our offspring, our family members, and our in-group members. So it's also natural, but it actually evolved to take care of others. And that activates what's called the parasympathetic nervous system. That's the same in men and women. This is human. All humans have this. But there's a few gender roles. But all humans have this. What triggers the systems is a little bit different. So we go into parasympathetic activity, which means we have more heart rate variability. Our cortisol levels go down. Our immune system functions better. We feel common or unsafe. So think about when you're a baby and you're held by a caregiver, maybe you're really upset. When you're held, you're sued. You're comforted. You calm down. And we also calm down when we feel connected to others. So compassion taps in to the parasympathetic nervous system, the care system, criticism of self or others taps in to the sympathetic nervous system, that the threat system. So what we're doing with self-compassion is we're doing a hack. And the hack works. This is a good news. It works. When we treat ourselves like we treat a good friend, we can even do simple things to activate, like putting our hands on our heart or our face, like helping our nervous system feel held and cared for. Tone of voice, you know, this is activated by the caregiver's tone of voice to a baby. Baby, so understand the caregiver. But they understand that, oh, I'm here for you. The warm tone of voice, if we use a warm tone of voice and touch with self-compassion, we're actually activating-- we know this from the research, parasympathetic nervous system activity. Cortisol goes down, heart rate variability increases. So we can use the care system for ourselves. as a different way to feel safe, and it's much more effective because we aren't so activated, we're calmer, we can see more possibilities, we can think more clearly when we don't feel so threatened. And that's partly what's happening physiologically. Literally just doing what I was going to be watching on YouTube. Literally just putting it, I'm now putting my hand on my heart. You feel it? That is something I'm talking to you so I'm probably not feeling it as much, but I'm definitely going to try this afterwards. You put your hand on your heart. You talk to yourself in a calm voice. That will reduce my cortisol. Yes, it will. That's the cheapest therapy I've ever had. And actually this research showing if someone else puts her hand on your shoulder or you put your hand on your body, the body doesn't really know the difference, right? So it reacts the same way. I mean, it does a little bit, but basically it reacts the same way. The sense of safety that comes from self-compassion works through the care system, and the sense of safety that comes to self-criticism works through the threat system. But unfortunately, the threat system evolved for lines chasing us. It's actually not that helpful when your threat is like, what are people going to think of me in this meeting? Now they can think I'm a fool. And then we go into, you know, sympathetic mode. We get anxious that anxiety actually distracts us and makes it less likely that we're able to deliver our best performance. So I mean, give compassion to ourselves, which is basically saying, hey, first of all, whether you blow it or not in that meeting, your worth is intrinsic. Your worth doesn't come from other people liking you. Your worth comes from just the fact that you're a human being. When you know that you're going to be there for yourself, that gives you a sense of safety that actually reduces your performance anxiety. And what we know from the research is actually allows you to deliver a better performance. Before we take a break and get some real-life questions, I did want to ask about this in the context of the professional world and success. Because when I first, okay, full disclosure, when I first came across your work, Kristen and Claire and I were looking at confidence. And we have found that confidence is very much related to action and taking action and taking risks and getting outside your comfort zone. And the more action you take, the more confidence you build, I've always seen confidence a bit like kind of building a wall. And you take a risk and you do something hard for yourself and you've got yourself another brick to put in your wall. And no one can take that away from you. And I wondered when I first read your work, where the self-compassion actually just would turn us into kind of marshmallows who sat on the sofa saying to ourselves, well, I'm a wonderful human being anyway. So I don't really need to get off the sofa. I can just be lazy as anything. And that's fine because I'm treating myself with self-compassion. I'm going to get you to push back against that. And I kind of thought, well, maybe self-compassion and self-confidence are actually kind of in conflict with each other. Because for confidence, to build confidence, you need action and risk-taking and work. And self-compassion is this nice warm, fluffy blanket that you wrap around yourself and say, well, I'm good enough anyway. So why am I wrong? So that's why, I mean, not to promote it too much, but that's why I wrote this book, "Fear's self-compassion." Because there's both acceptance and action. It's like you and young, we need both. So drawing boundaries, taking action, making change, speaking up, you know, taking those risks, those are some of the most self-compassion acts we can possibly take because they help ourselves, there's a way of supporting ourselves. So put it this way, there's mama bear, which might be, oh, oh, and there's mama bear, which is like, yeah, you threaten my cubs. You know, you want to see someone take action? Both are essential. It's like yidinyan. This is essential to all human beings, but men are socialized more out of the yin that the kind of tender side. Women are socialized more out of that fear side, which is a problem because we all need both, right? So, you know, if parenting is such a good example, if you just said, oh, when your baby's crying, if you just said, oh, poor thing, and like, held them and like, didn't feed them, or didn't work your job to be able to help them, that wouldn't be compassion and parenting. This is like difference in aim. The acceptance is about ourselves as individuals, flaws and all, we are worthy of acceptance. And it's also about the fact that sometimes life isn't the way we want it to be. Sometimes we hurt, you know, that's okay, we accept that to some degree. The action is more about behaviors and situations. You know, if I'm doing a behavior that's not very helpful to myself or others, it's not compassionate to accept it. I can change the behavior. I can say my behavior is unacceptable, even on me as a person I'm still worthy, you know, or this situation is unacceptable. You know, you're treating me unfairly. I need to say something. I need to draw a boundary. I need to stay in, say no. That's an ultimate act of self-compassion. But our sense of self-worth is kind of a different dimension. So we need both simultaneously. What helped me the way I saw these two in the end working together after our conversations was almost that self-compassion is your safety net. It is. It's the thing that let us actually, and I think maybe we could talk about this in the context of professional lives and success, because I actually think self-compassion is directly related to success and to success in the professional context, because it's the safety net that lets you take risks. One of the reasons we don't want to take risks, or do hard things, go for that promotion, ask for that pay raise, change companies, get that stretch assignment, ask for a new client, whatever it is in the context of your work, one of the reasons we don't want to do those things is because we're so god I'm afraid of failing. And all of my research shows that from the age of, you know, 10 onwards, girls in particular become terrified of this, of the idea of failing. It's just like a kind of bogeyman on their shoulders. And self-compassion in a way is the thing that lets us take risks because it's the thing that will hold us when we do fail, which god dammit we inevitably will at some point. That's precisely it and totally supported by the research. That's one of the, one of the ways it works. It reduces fear of failure. It increases the ability to get up and try again after you fail. It increases grit, for instance. It increases, it increases emotional resilience so that we only do fail. We don't take it so personally. We aren't so knocked over by it. So we're able to try again. It increases our ability to learn from our mistakes. And ultimately, there's a lot of research shows whether it's in athletics, whether it's in business, it helps you succeed. It increases performance because you're functioning better when you feel safe. But that safety means taking risks. I mean, they go hand in hand. I'm going to be less willing to take a risk. If I think that family means I'm a failure. But if I know, I can fail and this says nothing about my worth, it just means I failed. That means I can take more risk and when I do fail, I can try again. Okay, question. You have studied now self-compassion for decades. All that times that even you struggle with it still, struggle to summon it. Yes, also remember, self-criticism, don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up if you still struggle even after 20 years because it's part of our biology. This is why we need to have such compassion for ourselves. The feelings of shame still arise. That feeling of threat still arises when, you know, I've made a mistake. This desire to lash out because we're scared and we want to fight the problem and the problem is ourselves. Those still arise, but they don't last very long. So what happens is those emotions arise, those feelings arise that that tendency arises and I catch it very quickly and I don't feed it and I don't buy into it. But I still feel it. Of course, I do because I'm a human being and it's, you know, it's really important to remember both compassion and criticism are part of our nervous system. They're part of how we evolve as human beings and we need both. There's certain situations when you need that fight response. So what happens is I'm more able to, more quickly, not immediately all the time. I still get caught up, of course I do. But with practice, what can happen is you kind of rewire the system. So we've looked at brains and actually what happens is you brain over time with more self-compassion practice, you're more able to operate in a threat between your prefrontal cortex. In other words, to think what would actually be the most wisest way to deal with this situation as opposed to the amygdala, which is just like, you know, so change can't happen, but it will also arise if you're a human being. Okay, Kristen, we're going to take a break and come back with some questions. Welcome back. We're going to take self-compassion now into the real world. I want to start with asking you about your own experience with this and why you became interested in this whole subject of self-compassion because it seems to me that one thing that women are particularly good at both in the professional life and in our personal lives as well and I do think they bleed into each other is quite a lot of self-sacrifice. We're very good, as you said, in the first half of looking after other people. We're not so good at looking after ourselves or putting or giving ourselves that self-compassion. So what does it mean about your own life? Take this out of the academic sphere, but what has it been out of your own life that has made you want to study and embrace the science of self-compassion? Yeah, so for me, it's always really been a personal journey. I learned about self-compassion actually when I was only mindful in the spenditation and I saw how much more resilient it made me, but particularly in terms of how it works when you're caring for others. So what I really saw the power of self-compassion is when my son Rome was diagnosed with autism. And luckily, it already had several years of self-compassion practice under my belt at that point. And typically, when the diagnosis occurs, one 150% of your attention and energy is focused on your child. How do I help them? Getting them diagnosed. What can I do? And of course, I was very focused on that, but I knew that I also needed to focus inward on my own emotional experience. So even though everyone was telling you, you need to focus on your child. I knew I also, not instead of, but also needed to focus on my own needs and actually was able to sit with some of my own feelings, some of my, you know, feelings of fear, stress, how did you feel about the diagnosis? Yeah, and then we got a little disappointment, it wasn't the plan I had signed up for, you know, it wasn't, you know, a lot of feelings of overwhelm. So part of it is focusing on my own feelings, but especially, this is, and this is so true for any parent or any actually leader dealing with a meaning that's gone out of control. What happens is one more with other people who were upset, and you know, one of the things about autism is my son would have these really big meltdowns because he'd go into sensory overload. What happens when other people are feeling strong emotions is we feel them as well. We have, you know, mirror neurons, whose whole function is to feel what other people are feeling. And typically as parents, we just try to focus directly on helping the other person calm down. But in fact, the way our brains work is there influencing us, but we're influencing them. So I'd like to tell the story of what happened with my son once on an airplane. His father was, was, is British, so we were going to visit his grandparents in London, so transatlantic flight. And it was that moment just after we had our meal, and they turned the lights off so everyone could get some sleep. And that sudden lights going off for my son, he was very sensitive to his environment, triggered a meltdown, huge meltdown on the plane. He was a five years old, screaming, flailing, very disruptive. Oh my, what am I going to do? So the only thing I could think of was maybe I'll take him to the toilets and he can cross screaming there, or maybe it'll be a little less disturbing, but of course, those toilets were occupied because the lesson life had for me in that moment was not how to escape a difficult situation, but what do you do when you have no other choice, right? So I was really activated as feeling everyone's eyes on me. I couldn't reach him, you know, he was, he was just in full on meltdown. So what I did is I, I focused 100% of my energy on myself, on self-compassion. Normally, in public, I like give myself, I don't like go like that. I just might just cross my arms or something, but I didn't care. They were looking at me anyway. So I just flooded myself with compassion. I just said, this is so hard, Kristen, you feel so overwhelmed and I'm so sorry, this is happening. I kind of started rocking and like putting my hands on my heart. And I calmed myself down. I gave myself compassion. So my presence, instead of being one of agitation, overwhelm, became, I became fully embodied compassion at presence. And then my son calmed down. Wow. And this happens, whether your child is autistic or whether you're a leader in a meeting, people feel our presence. When we feel we're criticizing ourselves, we're harsh with ourselves, we're stressed, you know, and by the way, this ability to feel it, other people are feeling is pre-verbal. You don't have to say anything. We can sense it. Our brain is designed to sense it. So this idea that we should focus on others and not ourselves, that we don't understand how it works, because what we embody is what we bring out into the world, giving yourself compassion, not only helps you cope from a resource level, helps you be resource to care for others. And by the way, the research is very powerful, you can less likely to burn out while caring for others when you give yourself compassion. But also at the interpersonal level, if you're full of compassion, I'm going to, so right now I'm going to do it and just fill myself with compassion at presence, give myself some compassion. That was a hard moment. And my presence changes, and that's going to impact other people, you know. So self-compassion is actually the biggest gift you could give to others. It makes so much sense, and yet it's bizarrely counterintuitive, because we think we should be thinking about the other. It's a bit like that thing in the airplane, going back to the airplanes in poor row and poor you. I'm so sorry that happened, because having had four children on airplanes, all of whom have had meltdowns, none of whom have been autistic, but I know what it's like when a child has a meltdown, and it must have been a hundred times worse, because you couldn't reach him. That thing in the airplane where they say, you know, you have to grab the air thing. If there's a problem, take the air mask for yourself before you put it on your children. And of course, I've always thought, there's no way I would do that. Of course, I'd want to put it on my child first. But actually, it's the same. You have to. This is a really weird analogy. I don't know why I got into this, but anyway, you have to look after yourself before you look after the child, because you can't look after that child, or that worker, or that colleague, or that partner, unless you're looking after yourself as well. And I love that analogy, Cathy, because it's like, while the planes going down, you need to breathe in. So because sometimes they talk about self-care, like do yoga, meditate, you know, exercise, but you can't do that while your child's having a meltdown. So in the moment, while the plane's going down metaphorically, which is when it's really hot, which is when it's the biggest challenge. And you can actually use the breath literally as a vehicle for this. So we teach people, like, professional caregivers, to breathe them for themselves when they're in a situation that's very difficult when someone's, you know, really maybe in physical pain or emotional pain, you can breathe in compassion for yourself, and also the other person. It's not me. At the expense of other, it's me resourcing myself so that I have more resources available to be there for the other. It's the least selfish thing you can do. Okay. Let's go from the airplane, and I really hope none of you have to go through what Kristen went through, but if you do remember what she did, I suspect I'm not the only one. Let's take this into the office situation and talk about your idea of fierce self-compassion and how it can empower us to say no when our boundaries are being violated. So let's take an example. I've got a workload. It's never ending. It's unmanageable. I'm very happy that my boss has confidence in me, and I really don't want to let them down or let myself down, but it's really taking a toll. And this is something I hear all the time from young women in particular. I think it's easier when you're older to say no, but when you're younger and you're starting out, it's much harder to say no. How would you deal with a situation like that, Kristen? Yeah. And it is tricky, by the way. There's so much talk about boundaries, and they are important, but it is true that can be consequences for drawing boundaries. I have a friend who said, "I drew a boundary at my work and I got fired." So we don't want to go boundary crazy because you do have to think about, is it safe to draw the boundary? What are the consequences going to be? How is my boss going to react? So we want to use wisdom in drawing boundaries. Basically one of the things that gets in the way, there's a lot of things that get in the way of drawing boundaries. Some is just reality, we got to honor reality, but some of it is wanting to be a people pleaser. We want people to like us. We don't want people to dislike us by saying no because of course they do like us better when we say yes. And sometimes we feel like we kind of belittle our own needs, we devalue our own need for space, for time, for self-care. So what self-compassion does is it really helps with some of these internal blocks to draw in boundaries, for instance, feeling like my worth comes from people liking me. Yeah, they might like you a little bit less, but is that okay if you're being authentic to yourself and you're taking care of yourself, or we feel we don't have the right to draw the boundary. Even if you can't draw a boundary because it might get you fired, it's really important that you know you have the right to get your needs met, that you don't internalize the message often unspoken, that somehow your needs are less worthy than those of others. So the self-compassion gives you the clarity, yes, I deserve to have my needs met. My needs count, too, we need to have balance, and then we use our wisdom to figure out what's the wisest thing to do in this particular situation. And that's going to change, again, you don't want to do something foolhardy that's going to get you fired and you've got to use wisdom of what's the right thing to do. Maybe I need to say yes to this, but can I say no to that? So we don't want to just draw boundaries everywhere indiscriminately because that actually could also harm you. We've got to be a little careful about this as well. Yeah, we don't want everyone getting fired, who's listening to this podcast. I always think about it as sort of strategic yeses and strategic yeses. There are some things you can say no to, and you can find ways to say no that actually sound amenable. You can start that know with a, well, that sounds like such a good idea, Mr. Boss. I've got this big deadline for this program at the moment. Maybe Oliver would be a perfect candidate for that. Okay, let's take another one, and it was one you spoke about at the beginning, and that is this idea that keeps coming up to me of your competent at work, you presenters competent, you are competent, you try to present as confidence at work and what do you get, you get a backlash. How do we manage to be confident without being a bitch? Yeah, and by the way, it is more challenging for women than men. That's just reality. It shouldn't be that way. Yeah, I wish it wasn't, but that is the reality. And by the way, this is where you can all have a bit of self-compassion to is to recognize that it just is more challenging. This playing field is not level and it's not just you imagining this. So things have changed, like I say, in terms of perceptions of competence. We've made a lot of strides. Now, if that, if you read a bio of both, you know, Jane and John, we can judge them as equally competent if they have the same accomplishments. But it is true that we still like John better for being competent. We're kind of, it's because we got to like do extra back flips to put ourselves forward to not just sink in the background to speak up, say our ideas, but in a way that doesn't trigger if we can as much backlash. And so basically what we need to do, and again, easier said than done, is bring forward both the in and the young qualities, the fierce and the tender qualities. So if as you are saying, you know, maybe same, an accomplishment you made or speaking up for yourself, if you put in something that fits more with the traditional gender role, well, how are your kids doing by the way? Or like something, you know, I'm serious, it seems silly because it may not be relevant, but you need to realize it. And also we don't want to blame the other people for doing it. Women do it just as much as men because it's happening at the subconscious level. So we kind of throw their subconscious some bones that say, I still care because people are subconsciously assumed that a really competent woman is a less caring woman. They don't make that assumption of men, but they do have women. It's just, it's in our TV. We can't really help it at subconscious. So throw the subconscious some bones by saying something that sounds caring alongside that thing that's competent or assertive or, you know, for instance, this comes up in salary negotiations. People don't like a woman who asks for a raise. They think a man who asks for a raise is, wow, he's a go-getter. He's assertive. I like that. That means he's good at his job. A woman is like, oh, she's the big word. I don't like that. Maybe she's not so good. And so it can work against you. This is just the reality. We got to be skillful about it. But so what the research does show is that if you bring forward intentionally some of these more relational qualities, so look with your boss while asking for the raise, also be more relational, asking about their kids, talking about some things that are more emphasized, the caring aspect of your nature, which is also there, it's going to help buffer that. I think sometimes what happens, and I've seen myself do this, is because I'm not a particularly confrontational or fierce person, and that's why I like the idea of fierce self-compassion. I'm not that person. It doesn't come naturally to me. So when I try to be the sort of, you know, tough, I'm going to ask for this pay rise, and I damn well deserve it. I almost overcompensate, and I don't sound like myself. I mean, I'm not because I'm trying to be somebody else. I'm actually trying, and I don't, I don't think you can actually ever be very confident when you're trying to put on somebody else's suit of armor. And so I think that I almost become overly aggressive. I actually see it in my relationship with my husband and with my kids sometimes too. If I have to have a tough conversation, I go in too hot because I'm having to steal myself so much, but I love that idea that in fact, if you mix in a bit of inherent tenderness or, you know, just the qualities that we're so good at, empathy, with that conversation, it can come off better. Okay, before we go, Kristen, one key piece of advice that you would like to leave our audience with today. Well, basically self-compassion is a superpower. I mean, the research is overwhelming. They're now over 10,000 studies on self-compassion. The show is going to make you stronger, more resilient. You'll perform better. You'll be more motivated. Your physical health will work better. Any situation when there's any sort of discomfort, emotional pain, physical pain, stress, it'll, it'll help you be more resilient when you are there for yourself in a supportive way. Kind of obvious, but we forget about it. So, I'll leave this on this science note. It's not rocket science. A research study found that 20 seconds a day, it's a little bit of touch and a little bit of supportive language. It's like, this is hard. I'm here for you. You know, maybe 20 seconds is enough to significantly wage your self-compassion level. You can do it. It's a superpower. It's in your back pocket. You just have to remember to take it out of your pocket and use it. And it comes naturally for others. You know, again, we don't need to learn a new skill. Just touch some kind words comes naturally. We just have to try it out with ourselves. And 20 seconds a day is enough. Slow changes over time. And it will, it will change your life. It really will. Kristin Neff, thank you so much for joining the program. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Caddy. It's been a pleasure.