Be Kind... Even To Yourself
We all have that little voice inside our heads—you know the one: calling you names, criticizing everything you do, just in general being a negative Nancy. Although we may think "tough love" will get us to our goals faster, it turns out it may actually backfire and make it harder to be successful. On this episode, we talk to Dr. Kristin Neff all about the science of self-compassion, and how practicing it may actually help us stick to our goals and live happier, healthier lives.
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Guest
Kristin Neff is an associate professor at UT Austin and expert in self compassion. She co-created the Mindful Self Compassion program and the Center for Mindful Self Compassion. She is the author of The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook (2018) and Self Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself (2015) and her latest book, Fierce Self Compassion.
Check out Dr. Kristin Neff’s website for videos, exercises, and meditations for self compassion HERE.
Key Takeaways
One way to practice self compassion is to treat yourself as a friend. “Would a friend say this (negative self-talk) to me?”
Self criticism engages the sympathetic nervous system. On the other hand, self compassion engages the parasympathetic nervous system that is there to nurture and calm.
Self criticism may be effective in the short term, but it is not effective at long term change. Increased feelings of shame and regret make it harder to learn from mistakes and affect positive change.
Self compassion is not = self indulgence
Self compassion can allow us to regulate our emotions directly, instead of reaching for food as comfort.
People who are more compassionate towards themselves often engage in healthier behaviors.
Healthy self esteem is unconditional, not contingent on anything.
Self compassion is a radical act of self love and doing what is best for you.
For resources, please visit the National Eating Disorders Association website.
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Juna Hey, guys, it's Juna. And I was wondering if I could ask you a huge favor. If you're enjoying this podcast, please go onto whatever podcast platform you're listening to us on and give us a five star rating and review. It really helps us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you so much. And now to the show. Food, We Need to Talk is funded by a grant from the Ardmore Institute of Health home of Full Plate Living. Okay, guys, today we are starting the show on a stage.
Eddie A stage? Changing it up. I love it.
Juna As some of you may or may not know, in my past life, I actually used to want to be a concert pianist. Like as a job. And this isn't at age eight or nine. This is at age 23.
Eddie And you were pretty good, too, weren't you, playing at Carnegie Hall?
Juna Okay. I did play at Carnegie Hall, but in my opinion, that was kind of a fluke. But anyways, the point is that I would go to a lot of concerts when I was trying to pursue this and then I would play a piece, people would clap. Afterwards, I would get off stage and nine times out of ten I was crying.
Eddie Cry, that was beautiful. I'm crying.
Juna Eddie. That's very, very nice of you. But I wasn't crying because it was beautiful. I was crying because I was so upset with myself at how badly I felt I had played. I was just so disappointed. It was literally crippling.
Eddie Oh, Juna, like objectively, how bad could it have been if you were playing at Carnegie Hall and weren't you like practicing six or 8 hours a day back then?
Juna Well, ironically enough, at the time in my life, when I was the best I've probably ever been at piano because I was practicing all day long, I felt the worst about my playing that I have ever felt because I was so incredibly self-critical. And now when I'm like, horrible, like, no offense, myself, but I barely ever play. I play like an hour a day and I post clips on Instagram now. I'm like, Guys, look, I can play piano. This is awesome. I've just never been more chill with my own playing than I am right now. And this all relates to our topic of today.
Eddie We're learning Beethoven?
Juna Not quite. We are going to be learning about self-compassion. What is it? How does it affect us not only psychologically but physiologically? And how does practicing self-compassion actually make us healthier? I'm Juna Gjata.
Eddie And I'm Dr. Eddie Phillips.
Juna And this is Food, We Need To Talk. The only podcast that finds a way to relate. Being a concert pianist to food and exercise. Let's meet today's guest.
Kristin Neff My name is Kristen Neff, and I'm an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Juna You're probably pretty good at being compassionate towards your friends, your family members, even your colleagues at work. But when it comes to yourself, oftentimes it's a very different story.
Kristin Neff People say things to themselves that they would never say to a friend and that people often say things to themselves that they wouldn't like to the people they don't like very much in their life. Right. We're often at our worst with ourselves, so we tend to be harsher. We also tend to do things like catastrophize more. With our friends, we can see it's not the end of the world. It will pass. With ourselves, it's like a disaster. It'll be this way forever. And with our friends we tend to give them, especially good friends, we give them more the benefit of the doubt or there's a lot of things going on in your life that led to this happen. And for ourselves, we tend to blame ourselves more directly.
Eddie Juna, I agree that self-compassion is really critical, but how does this exactly relate to our health and fitness?
Juna Okay. I'm so glad you asked. I think one of the things that held me back the most when I was first starting to get into health and fitness was how hard on myself I constantly was. Back then, it was definitely all about weight loss for me. So the second that I would quote unquote mess up or go over my calories or something, I was furious. And it got to the point where I think my inner critic, not food or exercise or any sort of health behavior, became my biggest obstacle.
Eddie I'm hearing how you feel, but it's really not just a Juna thing. It's a little more universal. I feel it. I question myself. How are we doing at work? What about my health habits? How am I performing as a parent? What's interesting about self-criticism is that our body reacts to it in the same way as we do to external stressors.
Kristin Neff And so we know, for instance, when you criticize yourself, your sympathetic nervous system gets activated. Things like cortisol, inflammation happens, which happens when you're facing and physical threat. We have those same signs when we're facing a kind of mental threat or a threat to our self-image.
Juna So what you guys are saying is that me beating myself up after a concert or when I go over my calories or whatever is upsetting me at the moment is causing the same physical response that our classic example of running into a tiger on the savanna might cause us.
Eddie Right. That's the sympathetic nervous system. And don't be fooled by the name. There's really nothing sympathetic about it. This is what we classically see as the stress response. Your hands are sweating. Yeah. Your heart's beating. Your blood pressure goes up. Your cortisol skyrockets. In evolutionary terms, all of these physical responses are preparing you to either fight against the threat like that tiger jumping out or to run away. It's fight or flight. But today these same responses happened just to our thoughts.
Juna On the other hand, when we tap into the thing that Dr. Neff studies, self-compassion,
Kristin Neff We tap into another safety system, which is the care system. And this system evolved really to care for others like our infants or the group members. In this case, we feel and some feel threatened. We try to help them. We try to let them know that we care, that we feel safe or more attached to others. In interpersonal relationships, we release things like oxytocin. We reduce our cortisol levels as a way to feel safe. And this is what self-compassion provides. We're kind of switching from one safety system to another.
Eddie So that's the counterweight to the sympathetic nervous system. It's called the parasympathetic. It's the one that helps us rest and digest.
Juna Or chillin and grilling. One might call it.
Eddie Do you just make that up on the spot?
Juna Guys, it's the talent is it's just exuding from me. So the part that I get stuck on is that sometimes I really think if I'm hard on myself, I'll do better. Like, constantly giving myself the benefit of the doubt doesn't really help me achieve anything. And I've seen this in my own life. I have proof of this, okay? Because when I was super mean to myself, I could make myself go to the gym in the morning, run in the afternoon, only eat salads like I was doing all of this stuff to such a higher degree than when I'm nice to myself. But the thing about self criticism is that it works, but not for long.
Kristin Neff You know, it does kind of work as a motivator, but the same way like harsh corporal punishment works to motivate our children. It get short term compliance. Yeah, you may do something because you're so harsh with yourself, but it's going to lead to a lot of long term problems.
Eddie You know, Juna, I actually think that your piano recital flashback is a great example of this. Let me ask you, if you're constantly harsh on yourself for messing up or not playing the way you want to. How do you feel before you go on stage?
Juna Literally terrified. My heart is like beating so fast. My hands are so sweaty and cold. My thoughts are just racing.
Eddie I'm getting anxious just listening to you.
Juna Yeah, I know. And then I have to go play like I'm going to try to be my best in this state, you know?
Eddie Exactly. Beating ourselves up leads to this fear of failure. And a fear of failure can oftentimes lead to more anxiety. And that's going to make it even harder to try again the next time. Can you remember the first time when you went to the gym?
Juna Yeah, I was so scared. I felt like everyone was judging me and thinking, Oh, my God, this girl has no idea what she's doing.
Eddie Now, if you came home after that and you beat yourself up saying, I look so dumb, I don't belong there and so on. How likely is it that you're going to want to go back to the gym again?
Juna Not that likely at all, because you just feel like crap. It doesn't make you feel good.
Eddie Not only that, but if you're constantly putting yourself down, it doesn't really allow a lot of room for maybe reflection and growth.
Kristin Neff It also makes it harder to learn from our mistakes. Right. If we're so full of shame and regret and, you know, feeling badly about ourselves, we don't have the resources to say, oh, that's interesting. I wonder what I can learn from this situation and do better next time. So self-compassion is actually a more effective motivator than self criticism. But people don't realize this and they, you know, they somehow think that self-criticism works and they're almost afraid to let it go because it's the way they've motivated themselves their whole lives.
Juna So we've covered how the physiological effects of beating yourself up are stressful to your body and actually make you perform worse in the future. But there's also emotional effects to beating yourself up. And just to warn our listeners, we are going to be briefly talking about eating disorders.
Kristin Neff It hurts. It makes us anxious. It makes us full of shame. It makes us upset.
Juna And think about a person who's feeling all these things. So me before the concert or somebody going for the first time to the gym. Think about how that person is going to act.
Kristin Neff We know that negative emotions in general, the more negative emotions we have, the less we're able to look around us and look for opportunities like we become less creative thinkers we don't think as well. We start becoming overwhelmed. Right. It decreases our ability to make good decisions for us.
Eddie So these behaviors that you think are going to make you more successful? Well, it seems like they actually kind of backfire in a way.
Juna It does seem like that goes both physiologically and emotionally. But this is where I get stuck. Mm hmm. Is coddling yourself necessarily any better? Because giving yourself the benefit of the doubt and being like, Oh, it's okay. It's okay to mess up. Doesn't that just, like, not make you even try to get better?
Eddie All right, Juna, here's the thing. Having self-compassion doesn't mean that you're coddling yourself. That's the other extreme. It means trying to quiet your inner critic. It's always going to be there. But just quiet down a little bit so you can hear your inner coach. The coach is the one that wants their athletes to succeed. So that doesn't mean saying, hey, guys, do it if you want to, but it does mean giving the rest, recovery, and support even during failure, as well as the drills and exercises. In other words, self-compassion is not self-indulgence.
Kristin Neff Self-indulgence would be, you know, maybe eating something really unhealthy that, you know, your body doesn't agree with because it tastes good, even though it's going to harm you in the long run. Right. In terms of what it does to your body. So if you care about yourself, you're going to you want to help yourself. By definition, compassion is concerned with the alleviation of suffering.
Juna So let's go back to some of the things that we talk about on this show a lot. If you're making an effort to change the way you're eating, as so many of us have done in the past, and then you mess up. So let's say you're upset about something and then you reach for the ice cream. Or for me, it's always peanut butter. I love peanut butter. The next thing you know, you feel sick because you've eaten so much and you're just sitting there like feeling horrible about what you've done. You're saying things like, Oh my God, I'm so disgusting. Why do I have no self-control? Why have I messed this up again? Why am I just, like, always self-sabotaging?
Eddie Or you could say, Hmm, next time I'm upset, I might try calling a friend or going for a walk or my vice is ice cream. Maybe I'll put a small scoop in a bowl and eat it outside of the kitchen. So if you're busy yelling at yourself, there's just no brain space to have these kinds of more positive thoughts.
Juna We can even go a step further and say that self-compassion could also help us not engage in the emotional eating behaviors in the first place.
Kristin Neff What self-compassion does is. Allows us to regulate our emotions directly. In other words, if we're really upset. Instead of using food as a way to deal with those feelings of sadness, we can give ourselves compassion because we're so upset. We can, you know, give ourselves kindness, remind ourselves that we aren't alone. This is part of being human. We can be mindful of it, like, you know, yes, I'm upset, but we are like lost in the feelings of distress. We can have some space around them. And so we can regulate our emotions directly through self-compassion. We don't need to rely on food to regulate our emotions.
Eddie It seems like self-compassion is not just useful for after you've done something that you maybe preferred not to do, it can actually help us act in a way that may be more aligned with how we want to be. It can be more proactive than reactive.
Juna One thing that Dr. Neff says that self-compassion helps us with is feelings of shame. I think as many of our listeners will relate to, shame is associated with all sorts of negative mental and physical health outcomes.
Kristin Neff Shame, which is just the "I am bad" that it actually doesn't help anyone. It debilitates your ability to learn. It really undermines your motivation. It can just, like, wipe you out. So there's no sense of self left as almost nothing left it to try again.
Juna As we've covered in the past. Feelings of shame not only make us feel bad, which obviously sucks, but especially when associated with food and your body. For some people, it can lead to really maladaptive behaviors, in particular with regards to eating disorders.
Kristin Neff There's a couple of ways that shame is involved. One is they feel they aren't worthy unless maybe they look a certain way. Now, some are eating disorders are driven by body dissatisfaction, or sometimes it's feeling like you don't deserve food for some cases and anorexia. All of those are driven by shame, largely. And self-compassion is a direct antidote to shame, right? So shame feeling that I'm not worthy. Self-compassion says all human beings are worthy.
Eddie I just want to say here that we have a whole episode that goes into depth about eating disorders and we also link to some resources in our show notes at foodweneedtotalk.com, but I think this point of being worthy is absolutely crucial. All human beings are worthy of self-compassion, no matter if you think you've messed up or if you've actually made a mistake. Been there. Done that. There's nothing that makes one person your friend, let's say, worthy of your compassion and makes you unworthy.
Kristin Neff It's like you've got to earn your worthiness by getting it right or looking perfect or, you know, having your healthy behaviors be perfect. You're intrinsically worthy of compassion. All human beings are all human beings who suffer, are intrinsically worthy of kindness, care, support. And so that part of it is taken off the table. And therefore, any behaviors you try to engage in to be healthier, they come from this place of care, not from a place of inadequacy.
Eddie If you're challenging yourself in a new way, whether you want to start exercising, meditating, maybe a new food habit, being compassionate with yourself when you mess up will actually help you figure out why you messed up. It will help you get better faster.
Juna Okay. So far we've got everyone is deserving of self-compassion and it'll help you learn from your failures and just be a better coach to yourself overall.
Eddie Right.
Juna Well, it turns out that contrary to what the inner critic may be telling you, self-compassion actually makes you engage in healthier behaviors. Eating, better exercising. We'll talk all about it right after this break.
Eddie Food We Need to Talk is funded by a grant from the Ardmore Institute of Health, the home of Full Plate Living. Full Plate Living helps you add more whole, plant based foods to meals you're already eating. These are foods you're already familiar with apples bean strawberries and avocados. It's a small step approach that can lead to big health outcomes. Full Plate Living includes weekly recipes and programs for weight loss, meal makeovers and better blood sugar management. Best of all, Full Plate Living is a free service of the Ardmore Institute of Health. Sign up for free at fullplateliving.org. And we're back.
Juna So where we left off, we were talking about how self-compassion is going to help you respond better to your failures and make you more likely to try again in the future, which makes you more resilient. But it turns out self-compassion also just makes you be healthier.
Kristin Neff So people who are more self compassionate, they go to the doctor more often, they exercise more, they eat better foods. They tend to do what's practiced, more intuitive eating. In other words, checking in to notice when they're full, as opposed to continuing past the point of fullness, which is often done for emotional reasons.
Eddie If you truly care about yourself, it makes sense that you would probably make better food choices and let's say, move your body more because we know that's what makes us feel our best.
Juna And for the time when you feel like you could have done better in a situation, it'll help you to not completely go off the wagon, so to speak.
Kristin Neff If you don't stick to your eating goals, then if you give yourself compassion for that, then you're more able to secure eating goals like, okay, well, I messed up. It was one time. I'll just keep going.
Juna By the way, guys, I hope this is abundantly clear, but when we say, you know, quote unquote messing up, we're not talking about having a piece of cake or having a cookie.
Eddie Right. We all eat cake or I think maybe we should all eat cake. We all eat foods that may not be the most nutritious for the body, but maybe are necessary for our soul. But we are also talking about how you respond when you do something you perceive as going against what you had intended to do. Maybe you perceiving that as failure.
Juna Right. So this relates to a concept that Dr. Neff talks about, which is self-esteem, which we usually think of as a good thing. But it turns out that there are different kinds of self-esteem.
Kristin Neff There's healthy self-esteem and unhealthy self-esteem. So healthy self-esteem is unconditional. Right. So you might say that self-compassion is a source of unconditional worth. You know, whether I make mistakes or not, whether I'm a mess or not.
Juna And then there's unhealthy self-esteem, which is contingent on something. So some achievement or some goal.
Kristin Neff So, for instance, most people have to feel special and above average to have high self-esteem, which means everyone can't be above average at the same time. So you're kind of always trying to subtly put people down and subtly trying to see yourself in the best possible light.
Eddie I love the unconditional part. You know, I remember when our first child was coming, someone saying, you will love this being unconditionally. And through the years, there have been many challenges to that.
Juna Omg Jesse are you listening? Jesse close your ears.
Eddie But it's actually true. And it's more along the lines of what we were discussing earlier. I'm worthy only when I'm this way. I'm worthy only if I do well at this recital. I'm worthy only if I eat perfectly. That's not unconditional.
Kristin Neff The problem with that, as you know, is, is the fairweather friend self esteem was there for you and you succeed when things are going your way. But what happens when you don't? Your self-esteem deserts you. And that's precisely where self-compassion steps in, in those moments of failure or mistakes or suffering.
Eddie I don't know about you, but I know which type of self-esteem I'd rather cultivate. And that's the one that's not based on external circumstances. Because when you go through life, there's a lot of times when you really don't have much control over those external circumstances.
Juna So true. So Eddie and I both know this, but just to let the listeners in on a little behind the scenes, a majority of our listeners are actually women, and on average, body image issues do tend to affect women more than men. That's not to say that men don't face body image issues, but women just do more. And this might have something to do with the way that women develop self-esteem.
Kristin Neff Both boys and girls really care about perceived attractiveness in terms of factored into their self-esteem. The big difference is that boys tend to think they're more attractive than girls do, right? So because the standards of beauty are so high for girls, what you start seeing is very young girls, you know, still an elementary school age. They start seeing themselves as less attractive because they're already comparing themselves to the supermodels and all these media images.
Eddie And I have a really good, easy, controlled experiment as a father of one boy and two girls. What she's saying is absolutely true.
Kristin Neff In some ways, self-compassion is a really radical act as an act of saying, I don't care whether you like me or you know, what I care about is what's authentic and true for me. That's what's important, how I feel about myself.
Juna This is why it's so important to think about why you're making the changes you're making. Your motivations for eating better, exercising, taking better care of your health. They can actually dictate the outcomes.
Kristin Neff If it's coming from this place of weight stigma, or feeling like you're inadequate unless you're a certain weight. It's actually really damaging. It really needs to come from a place of health and love as opposed to judgment and stigma.
Eddie Juna I love this part.
Juna I know this is your favorite topic.
Eddie Absolutely. We are down to the part where we're digging into the deeper why. It's something we talk about all the time on the show. It is so important when it comes to making long term difficult changes. Why do you want to do it? What is driving you? So what are some of the easy ways that we can start practicing self-compassion?
Juna While one of the first things which might sound kind of weird is to actually practice talking to yourself the way you would talk to a friend.
Kristin Neff You can imagine what you would say to a friend in a similar situation and repeat that to yourself. Or you can imagine, like, what would the ideal coach or ultimately compassionate friend? Or even if you're spiritual, what would Jesus say?
Juna Yeah, I know Jesus would not be being like you're fat, Juna. Can you imagine? I actually have a great story about this, Eddy, so I have an amazing therapist named Bryan-- shout-out-- Bryan. He's awesome. And one time when I was really, like, just going through it in the middle of the pannie., just like in the thick of the pandemic. Okay, I was telling Brian that I'm having so much trouble. I just feel so horrible about my body. And he had me write down, what are the first thoughts I have when I wake up in the morning? Okay. Huh. And I wrote them down and I was like, had to think back upon waking up in my bed and I'm thinking, oh, my God. Like, Oh, my body is just so disgusting. I hate my stomach. It's so gross, blah, blah, blah. And Brian said, Imagine that you had unlimited funds and you were hiring the top health coach in the world. And this person is going to make all your meals, go with you to the gym, and just be with you all day long, monitoring all of your health related behaviors. They're coming into my house in the morning. They're going to be with me all day long. Okay. They wake me up in the morning and they say to me what I say to myself, which is on this paper. And Brian read it to me in a very dramatic fashion. He was like, Juna, you're disgusting. Look at this stomach. Oh, my God, it's so nasty. Blah, blah, blah. And he was really it's me now is like, ooh, how dare you speak to me like that? And he was like, What would you do to this health coach? And I was like, I would fire them on the spot, like, get away from me. And he was like, Then why are you doing this to yourself all day long? How likely are you to succeed if you're talking to yourself like this? And I was like, Oh, Brian, you're so wise. That makes me so unlikely to succeed.
Eddie Oh, I love that story. I loved how you recruited someone else to help you. I mean, he's a professional, but we could also get our friends and our family to help us be compassionate towards ourselves.
Kristin Neff So, for instance, we taught self-compassion to healthcare workers in the hospital setting, and their the ideal with self-sacrifice, not self-compassion. But once a few people started practicing self-compassion, then everyone kind of started supporting each other to be more self compassionate when they were stressed, that actually helped change the culture.
Eddie Oh, she nailed it. The folks that work in hospitals, the nurses and the therapists and the doctors are all about self-sacrifice. We want to do well for others, and we really do need, she's spot on, to be self compassionate.
Juna And of course, like with everything. Practice is key.
Eddie That's how you got to Carnegie Hall, wasn't it?
Juna It is how I got to Carnegie Hall.
Kristin Neff So the more you practice, the more you do it. And so some people, I put little reminders around their their house. In some ways, you might say being self compassionate isn't as natural because we're usually compassionate to others. So that's the bit that we have to practice in our head around. Learn to make a new habit. The big barrier is just giving yourself permission to treat yourself this way and really trusting that it's not going to harm you. It's actually going to help you.
Eddie And something to help us catch that inner critic is going to be mindfulness, being mindful, practicing meditation. It just helps you get a little space to maybe just slow down to have that moment where we can think before we react. To turn down the volume on our inner critics.
Juna Right? So that's when Brian had me write down in my therapy, like what I was thinking, that's what that was kind of helping me do was kind of get space and distance from what I was thinking and actually seeing it like externalized from myself, you know? I think that's what like meditation helps you do is just take a pause. And something that you said that I think is really helpful is the inner critic is not ever going to go away, but you can just turn it down and you can try to turn up your inner coach. Right. And learn to be more self compassionate. And that's how we're going to end this episode. We're going to link to a bunch of resources for cultivating self-compassion on our Web site foodweneedtotalk.com. You can find us @foodweneedtotalk on Instagram. You can find me @theofficialjuna on Instagram where I play piano sometimes! If you want to see and Juna Gjata on YouTube and TikTok, you can find Eddie, try.
Eddie To cultivate more self-compassion meditation.
Juna Oh, and in his lasagna, guys, he told me about this lasagna he made the other day that was like a soup or something. And he was like, I had to be compassionate and not apologize for it to my family.
Eddie I like it.
Juna Food, We Need to Talk is a production of PRX.
Eddie Our producer is Morgan Flannery.
Juna Claire Carlander is our associate producer. Tommy Bazarian is our mix engineer.
Eddie Jocelyn Gonzales is executive producer for PRX Productions.
Juna Food, We Need to Talk was created by Carey Goldberg, George Hicks, Eddie Phillips and me.
Eddie Always remember consult with your health professional for your personal health questions. Also, if you're enjoying the show, don't forget to leave us a review and to share it with a friend. It helps others to find us.
Juna and Eddie Thanks for listening.
