[00:00:05] Henry Emmons, MD: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons, and welcome back to Joy Lab.
[00:00:09] Aimee Prasek, PhD: And I'm Aimee Prasek. So we are kicking off our brand new Element, which is Self-Compassion.
So I wanna start with an example why this matters. Imagine you're helping your friend set up for a party, and these sandwiches — these beautiful, tasty sandwiches for the whole party — need to be put in this walk-in fridge. So you carefully walk in, proud of your balancing skills, and you place the sandwiches on a top rack really gently, just so nobody bumps them you know, and messes them up. And as you let go, the rack collapses and the sandwiches fall to the floor.
So what do you say to yourself now that you dropped those sammies? How do you feel? What words or judgments are running through your head?
How about you, Henry? What's happening?
[00:01:14] Henry Emmons, MD: I can't — I can't repeat it. Hahaha. Are we — can we say whatever we want on the Podcast?
[00:01:19] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Haha. Well, I hope so. But yeah, we'd have to put an E for explicit if you've got a lot going on in your mind right now. Yeah, I'm guessing all of our language is explicit when that happens. So now imagine that I'm telling you this story as your friend, confiding in you that, you know, me, I dropped those sandwiches.
What do you say to me? What words or judgments do you share with me? What do you tell me, Henry?
[00:01:54] Henry Emmons, MD: Oh boy, that is so much easier. Oh, oh, Aimee, it — that wasn't your fault. You were trying to help, you know? You were — you're a great person. You're not — hahaha, you hardly ever do this kind of thing. Hahaha.
[00:02:11] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Not explicit; wasn't abusive. Absolutely. It was true.
[00:02:16] Henry Emmons, MD: Haha.
[00:02:17] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, so, many of us would have a difference there but, if you found no difference between the way you'd speak to yourself and the way you'd speak to me, then you are definitely in the minority of folks. There's research to say that maybe, around 20% of people are in that space. And it can be a good space if you're compassionate.
[00:02:41] Henry Emmons, MD: I'm surprised it's that high, actually.
[00:02:41] Aimee Prasek, PhD: I kind of — Right?
[00:02:43] Henry Emmons, MD: Sounds like it needs to be studied some more. Haha.
[00:02:50] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah, yeah. And so, just shy of 80% of people are harder on themselves than others. So that makes more sense. But, you know, just like we demonstrated here — and maybe you felt — we can respond to ourselves like those sandwiches were an irreparable mistake. we should never be forgiven, and we undoubtedly have ruined the party. Whereas when, you know, you were speaking to me perhaps, as Henry did, [it's]: "Oh, uh, accidents happen you know? It's okay." And then there's like this tiny bit of folks who are kinder to themselves relative to others in situations like these. I don't think I've met those folks, and I don't think I've met the 20% of folks either. So most of us — welcome to the club of the 80%.
So this is just one example [of] this double standard that we hold ourselves to and often don't realize it. So an important part of Self-Compassion and practicing it is to kind of right-size this; to just not be so hard on ourselves.
So for our Episodes on this Element, we'll lean on the work of Dr. Kristin Neff, who is a pioneer in self-compassion research, and I like Neff's definition of self-compassion. She writes, "Self-compassion refers to being supportive toward oneself when experiencing suffering or pain, be it caused by personal mistakes and inadequacies or external life challenges." So this might be the simplest concept, like definitionally speaking, that we've worked on lately, but it is not the easiest to practice.
[00:04:37] Henry Emmons, MD: Hmm, no. But you get a lot of bang for the buck with this.
[00:04:39] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yes, absolutely.
[00:04:42] Henry Emmons, MD: Well, I love your example, Aimee. I think all of us can imagine something like that happening and almost can feel that initial reaction.
[00:04:55] Aimee Prasek, PhD: That was a story of me at my friend's baby shower.
[00:04:59] Henry Emmons, MD: Oh, okay.
[00:05:02] Aimee Prasek, PhD: A big baby shower too. Lots of sandwiches.
[00:05:04] Henry Emmons, MD: Oh. Hahaha.
[00:05:07] Aimee Prasek, PhD: I felt so bad.
[00:05:08] Henry Emmons, MD: Oh, shoot.
[00:05:09] Aimee Prasek, PhD: You know what, though? As I reflect on it, if I had practiced more self-compassion in that moment, I could've gone out and got more sandwiches, which I'm just realizing, like, two years later. But I just, like, stared at the sandwiches and beat myself up and, like, made it all terrible.
[00:05:24] Henry Emmons, MD: Uh-huh.
[00:05:25] Aimee Prasek, PhD: There was more than enough time to go get more sandwiches. But no, we just ate less sandwiches. Anyway.
[00:05:32] Henry Emmons, MD: Well, having a — having a good laugh about it is a pretty self-compassionate way to handle it, too.
[00:05:40] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yes, absolutely.
[00:05:42] Henry Emmons, MD: Well, you gave us Dr. Neff's definition, and I just want to give her a shout-out, 'cause I think her work has just made such a contribution and brought this notion of self-compassion from being sort of a philosophical thing and spiritual thing, right into the heart of psychotherapy and the science of psychotherapy.
So I think Self-Compassion builds on other ideas in psychology like having a strong sense of self, or self-acceptance, or what we referred to recently as Enoughness. It builds on these concepts and it gives us a clear model for how to act on them, which is really great. It's worth saying that Self-Compassion is not only for those who are suffering emotionally, or people who might have low self-worth or something. This is a universal need. It's just that most of us don't know we need it or don't realize it's missing from our inner lives. 'Cause most people who have that conversation when they drop the sandwiches — the concept of self-compassion doesn't even enter in, you know? It's, "This is true. This is — I really screwed it up. I'm a klutz," or whatever.
I like to think of Self-Compassion really simply. I — just like friendship. It is being a friend to yourself. We all know we need that and how could it be anything but good to treat yourself with the kind of kindness that you try to offer to others? Most of us are hard on ourselves without even realizing it and so thinking about, and practicing, Self-Compassion is a nice way to counter that.
[00:07:45] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. We don't realize how hard we are on ourselves. That is so true. We'll be digging into that a lot throughout our Episodes. I also love this — thinking about friendship — that we can give ourselves this type of kind of friendly attention, and see ourselves through the lens of compassion like we would a friend. We see them. We see when they're struggling, we see when they've achieved something; we see when they've screwed up as well, and we can even call them out on it, when we do so through the lens of compassion, you know, through a desire to help them flourish, and grow, and feel supported — that's a friendship that feels really nourishing.
And I love coming back to that simple act, that compassionate act. You noted that compassion is like — it's an action; it's something that we do, and we can offer that to ourselves. And of course, it's not that simple, which is why we are digging into it over the next three Episodes.
[00:08:51] Henry Emmons, MD: Mm-hmm. For several years I ran a program for folks with depression who were not recovering with the usual treatments like therapy, medication, and whatnot. And we did a lot of different things in that program. We did nutrition, movement, holistic therapies, mindfulness. And we did research on it to see, first of all, did it work? And then if it did, what seemed to make it work? And it turns out it did work. It worked really well. It helped a lot of folks, and there were many parts of it that were helpful, but there were two that stood out — these were the things that helped people turn things around even after years of struggling with depression — and they were self-compassion and social connection. I see them as being related, you know? If you're kinder to yourself, if you can learn to be a friend to yourself, you're more open and available to make good connections with others, too. [It] just stands to reason.
Practicing Self-Compassion, in my view, is one of the most important things you can do to protect your mental health, or to build a joyful life. It helps regulate the nervous system; it helps turn down the stress response; it activates healthy, life-giving neural circuits. It speeds up recovery from an episode of anxiety or depression, and it does help to prevent their recurring. But it's not just your mood that is impacted by this. It changes even the way that you see yourself, and I think that just changes our whole experience in life.
[00:10:42] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Yeah. [It] changes the way you see yourself. The evidence is real clear here. Self-compassion is helpful for nearly all aspects of our wellbeing, as you noted, Henry. It is hard then to understand why we just don't do it very often. And we'll get into a lot of different obstacles over the next Episodes. But I think a really big one to focus on right now, so we can kind of myth bust — is that self-criticism is motivating and self-compassion is like lazy, enabling, weak.
So, you know, the idea [is] that if we're hard on ourselves like a drill sergeant , then we'll make changes in our lives. And I think we get stuck believing that because self-criticism and that kind of self-bullying creates a stress response, and that can get you to take a quick action toward your goal. You know, [you'll] go to the gym that morning, or say no to a second drink at a happy hour, or whatever the goal is that you're trying to kind of bully yourself into — that stress response can help you take a quick action, and tricks us into thinking this self-critical, bullying stuff works. Now the problem, or the reality, comes a few days later, or even hours later, when that stress response has eased but now there's nothing there to keep you going.
Behavior change is absolutely an endurance game, and the fuel for endurance is not stress. It's things like self-worth, self-efficacy, self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-connection , and self-compassion. Those kinds of nurturing supports, the stuff we work on here, they can help create that psychological safety to really clock what's going on in your world, which can help you identify your goals, your values, things that you align with. And then, you know, establishing [that] safety also helps you to apply the flexibility and care that is needed to create sustainable changes and growth. And that self-care, that self-worth, that self-compassion, it can still be fierce. It can be full of energy and action, but it's grounded also by those things rather than being grounded in self-rejection.
And you'll hear folks promote that [other] approach, like just, you know — you have to degrade yourself into making changes. And some of these sort of self-bullying evangelists pull it off, right? But so often, if they're even following their advice, they're in a constant stress response.So they're in a state that is not supposed to be constant where they are both kind of this perpetrator, and the victim, of the bullying — the predator and the prey. And it is an exhausting way to live. And you have to push out so many other, more nourishing, things because they just do not coexist with the stress response. Certainly our stress system and soothing system interact, but only one can really drive. Which is helpful actually, because it's a reminder that we don't have to stop ourselves from doing something, so much as we can start doing something else more often.
I think that's what Self-Compassion reminds us, like — we can let [it] take the wheel. And also I'd argue that folks who promote this kind of self-critical approach likely don't have the success that they claim they have because of it. Based on behavior change research, it is likely they could have achieved the same growth, the same changes — maybe more — if they had actually applied more self-compassion.
[00:14:41] Henry Emmons, MD: Yeah, it's exhausting, as you said . I think another aspect to what you're describing is that there's a very real way in which it's addicting, you know? People become addicted to stress — which I know sounds counterintuitive, but you kind of put your finger on it, I think, when you said that once the stress response dies down, they got nothing, you know? And so you need it again. You need to keep — keep that adrenaline going in order to make anything happen.
I have a couple of other thoughts as to why we don't do something like this even though it's so clearly good for us. And one is — it's the same basic dynamic as to why many of us don't always eat what's good for us; we don't always get to bed on time, or exercise every day; the list could go on, right? And I think it's just simply that we're human, and really none of us makes the best choice for ourselves every time. My belief is that we don't have to; we just need to make the wisest choice most of the time — 51% of the time, like we've talked about here — and that's enough to get us started on an upward spiral.
Beyond that, I do think there is a cultural bias that says we should not need self-compassion, or that it's somehow too soft. This might be, you know, a bigger challenge for the males of the species, but I think it's this idea that we have to be mentally tough in order to be resilient, and that self-compassion is not mental toughness. It sort of fits that notion of picking yourself up by the bootstraps, you know — go it alone. And I think this is changing, and the work of Kristin Neff and others, I think, is really helping with that change. But I do think it is sometimes seen as a weakness to direct compassion toward yourself. Almost like — at least in the past, the notion of needing to see a therapist was sometimes seen as a weakness. I think that's changing, and I think the — all these conversations, and all the science on self-compassion, is changing that as well.
[00:17:20] Aimee Prasek, PhD (2): Yeah. Yeah, I think it's changing too. The research is coming out to directly challenge these approaches; you know, to more clearly identify that self-compassion is the winner. If you're competitive like me, self-compassion will get you the W more often than if you're a jerk to yourself. This is a bit of a superpower that we can all tap into. So over the next several Episodes, we're going to explore Self-Compassion through the three parts of self-compassion that Neff notes: mindfulness versus overidentification, self-kindness versus self-judgment, and common-humanity versus isolation.
Until then, I wanna close us with some wisdom from Dr. Christopher Germer, another pioneer in self-compassion research. Here's what he said, "A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life."
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