Hey, everybody, Chris Gerber is on the show today, and I was just so inspired. So moved. I just noticed I kept nodding my head, smiling, closing my eyes, There's moments where he shares about shame and what it means and compassion and how powerful it is, I hope you enjoy this episode with Chris Ge. Welcome to Lu everyday radius. Podcast cast brought to you about Hoffman Institute. My name is Drew Horn.
And on this podcast, we catch up with graduates of the process and have a conversation with them about how their work in the process. Is informing their life outside of the process, how their spirit and how their love are living in the world around them. Their everyday radius. Everybody welcome to the Hoffman podcast.
Chris Gerber is with us. He's a clinical psychologist, a lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, He developed with Kristen Ne, the mindful self compassion program, and that has now been taught to over how many people, Chris. It's hard to know for sure, but maybe 202 hundred and 50000 people around the world. Wow. 250000 people around the world. You've...
Also coa authored 2 books together with doctor Ne, the mindful self compassion workbook and teaching the mindful self compassion program, and, Chris spends most of his time lecturing and leading workshops around the world on mindfulness on self compassion. And you also authored the mindful path to self compassion. You've also c edited 2 influential volumes on therapy, and you maintain a small private practice in Arlington, Massachusetts. Does that feel right?
That's all correct. To the best of my knowledge. Welcome, Chris, it's great to have you on the Hoffman podcast. Thank you, Drew. It's a privilege. Can I just ask you in this moment on this morning? What is in your head and your heart about... Self compassion about the work you're doing, what feels important and alive to you
in this moment. In this moment is the awareness that, self compassion is a stage on the path liberation, it's not a complete program, but it's a powerful and overlooked way of responding to suffering, emotional, physical suffering, and we need to do that in order to have the freedom to explore even more deeply the nature of reality and who we are. So what's alive for me now is self compassion in the context of the Larger adventure of living.
Self compassion in the context of the larger adventure of life. Can you share a little bit about how you came to this field? It... Imagine it wasn't a crowded field when you first came into it. So a little bit of of your story. It's a funny. Fun way of saying it it was not a crowded field. Yeah. And now it's a lot more crowded. Now there are 5000 articles on this. And when I got interested back in 2006, Kristen Ne had published the first paper on this in 2003,
So was really an a omniscient field. So I got interested because I've been meditating for... Oh, at least 20 years. Or more. And throughout that whole time, even though I was a clinical psychologist, specializing in anxiety disorders, I suffered from public speaking anxiety and nothing I knew, I could touch it, including meditation, which is to, you know, kind of make space for anxiety, and and so forth nothing worked.
And so I suffered my for many years, especially when I was trying to talk about mindfulness in front of an audience. Sorry you're supposed to be, you know, calm. And if you're gonna walk the talk, who's supposed to look pretty cool, you know, kinda chill. And I was shaking like a leaf, and it was hard to get words out. And so this was was problematic because I was interested in mindfulness this whole time. I was working with colleagues to integrate mindfulness into psychotherapy.
But it was only when I learned self compassion, which is did really, a, complimentary practice to mindfulness as. It's embedded and mindfulness as it's a complimentary practice. It was only when I learned self compassion, frankly that the public speaking anxiety evaporated. And I could say that I have colleagues who wish I had a little more because now it's hard to shut me up. The the confidence and verbal, acuity that comes from self compassion has set
you free. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, ultimately, what it was about for me was I wasn't suffering from an anxiety disorder. I was suffering from a shame disorder. So I was trying to, you know, make room for anxiety and a as a good mindfulness medi would, but I didn't see or and could not make room for shame, which is the experience of feeling for me, you know, fraudulent and incompetence, stupid. That experience was just not touch.
And what self compassion does, this is really no of it is it is kindness toward ourselves as imperfect people, as people who can be absorbed in shame, you know, Shame is universal emotion, as people who are incomplete as people who are foolish people who are vulnerable, at basically being a human being. Can we be loving and kind to ourselves when we suffer with the limitations of being human. And frankly, everything that happens in life can be in that category. It's a human limitation.
So self compassion is a embrace of our humanity, even when we're hurting when we're wounded when we're imperfect when we're incomplete and when we're ashamed. And when that happened, when I started to do that, I lost my fear and love came in its place joy arose. That fear of being when judged by others turned into excitement and delight, and what I was doing and frankly,
in the people I was speaking with. They had changed from being the enemy, which is the case when you have public speaking anxiety, you know, Whoever you're talking to is the enemy because they can judge you. But when self compassion started c through my veins. And nobody was the enemy. They were they were a loved 1. You know? I just had the wish that everybody enjoys themselves. And has a positive experience. And but without attachments, you know, like, it... I wouldn't be a
failure if it didn't happen. You know? So that's the power of self compassion, I appreciate you bringing up shame, listeners will know grads of the process that we we talk about shame in the process, we have students connect with some shameful moments in their lives in the past. Before our conversation, I'm grateful that you checked out the process in the Institute a little bit. And before we pushed record, you were just sharing what you appreciated about the approach that the process takes.
Can you just share a little bit about that? Well, so Hoffman in, you know, 19 67 really put his finger on the pulse, which is that... You know, so much of what we do un winning and repetitive that causes us suffering and, others suffering is often due to disconnection in early childhood wounds. Naturally as children we reach out, for comfort and love and affection. And because our parents and caregivers are humans, they can't return. Perfectly, our yearning and Everybody experiences
disconnection. And, you know, you line those up enough, and then it gets lodged in our heads as a kind of negative core belief or something. And that's shame. What I really appreciate that Hoffman did was often when people talk about attachment, history and attachment patterns, you know, like, what we learn unconsciously before we even have a person is about interruptions and belonging and connection. You And this is all really true.
But the fact of the matter is is that there's something deeper and more vulnerable that we're doing. As babies and young children. We don't just want to be, you know, in the old Harry Harlow experiments holding on a terry cloth we need to be loved. That means we need to have an experience of connection and belonging, but we also need to feel prized. We need to be special. We need to feel the tender. So basically,
we need to be love. And a lot of scientists, particularly because love has been in those days, particularly in the sixties, you know, entirely in the province of spirituality and and religion, scientifically minded psychologists. Were trying to kind of you know, re language these things. So we talked about belonging connection. But Hoffman was talking about love. And frankly, I think that's really closer to the actual felt experience of it. Another thing I like about the Hoffman process
is it's experiential. And if we're going to be experiential, we need to be actually... So aware of what we're talking about? What like, what is the experience? And, frankly, I think the word love describes more accurately the totality of the thing that we are hunger for as children and the thing that we start to defend ourselves and armor ourselves against when it hurts. That armor and that defending... We call the false self and the patterns that we develop as a way of trying to earn.
The love, a way of trying to get the love that we could never get, and it's those patterns that are that are problematic in our life. They may have helped to survive when we were younger, but they have a expiration date. Yeah. We want them to have an expiration date probably when people show up at the Hoffman Institute, the expiration date has arrived. In other words, there there because, They're now wondering what do you do after the expiration. Chris, what do you find in teaching this
in talking about this? This is your life's. Work. How is it received? What's it like as you take it out into the world with the people you train, the people you speak to? What do you notice in that interaction in those connections? Well, first of all, that, just about everybody. Feels like an enormous relief when they actually manage to give themselves compassion. You know? It's a relief. It's not hard work. It's not a struggle. You know In fact, we say if it's a struggle,
it's not self compassion. What I see around the world, and, you know, I've taught this on just about every continent. It's just people are just so grateful. When they give that... Can give themselves permission to be self compassionate, and frankly, know how to be self compassionate because many people, particularly those who've been raised in environments that were not very compassionate. They don't even know how to do it. So it's almost like creating
a new cult... Sure within which we can live in which compassion and especially self compassion is welcome. In a nutshell, every single culture I've had a the privilege of teaching in, people are way more compassionate toward others than themselves. Just about every culture prescribe, compassion for others and even suggest that self compassion is is a bad thing. But what we know for sure is that you know these 5000 research articles show the opposite.
It's a good thing. It increases compassion for others. It decreases self absorption. It... It's good for our physical health. You know, it it makes us strong and not weak, you know, it it helps with coping and resilience when there are crises and in air airlines. So it's it's so good for us, but most cultures suggest that 1 shouldn't do it. So when they get permission, and then they actually... Have the experience, what I noticed drew is
enormous relief. And some people have said to us, oh, how how is it that this program has been dis discriminated so widely in such a short period of time. Kristen and Ne, my collaborator. She sums it up into where she says, well, self compassion works. It works. So it's not there's no shrewd marketing involved here, it's just that when people hear about and practice it, she they're grateful. It's a hidden resource, which we all have, but we haven't been
tapping it. That quote by Chris and Ne, it works. Feels important that it's empirical based that this isn't just somebody's hunch, or somebody's intuition that there's data to prove that this works. Yeah. And that helps with the mental obstacles You know, there are a lot of obstacles to self compassion, not just the cultural ones, but individual ones. They're myths and misunderstandings. They, when people hear the term, self compassion, they think of self, they think of selfish ness.
They think of compassion, they think of, you know, just... Being kind of too open hearted and gonna get hurt. So they shy away. They don't actually realize that it's the opposite. People become less self absorbed. People who become more compassionate. They become more resilient, stronger. The research opens the door to self compassion practice. It's kind of a mental thing. You know? Like, we give ourselves permission. Okay. I think I can do this even though it may creep me out to think about it.
Because the research is there. It helps with buy in. You know? That's great. You've said a couple times, Chris and it, I know that as students come to the process they're in pain. And you use this... This term self absorption. And there's something that happens when people are in pain that they become self absorbed. And self compassion decreases the self absorption. It actually connects you. It feels counterintuitive,
but there's just something there. I'm wondering if you could we could dig in a little more. Yeah. For sure. So I I appreciate. Drew, that you... Put your finger on that thing. So often, when we're self absorbed, we experience we're actually in shame. In other words, when we're kinda wrapped up in ourselves, it's because the sense of self is under attack. We feel like, we're kinda circling the wagon. The sense of self is under attack. And self absorption or rum illumination is really a
a hallmark of shame. And self compassion is the opposite of shame. So literally, the scientific definition of self compassion that Kristin came up with has 3 components. 1 is self kindness versus self criticism. The other is common humanity versus isolation and that third is mindfulness versus over identification or a self absorption. Those opposites. Namely self criticism, isolation and over identification or self absorption are actually qualities of shame.
So theoretically, simply being compassionate to ourselves is an antidote to shame. And the research is very clear about this. When people improve in almost anything they're doing, you know, when in therapy, or... As their lives get better. People tend to become more self compassionate, and you can see that on scales of self compassion, scales of self compassion go up. Scales of shame go down. So both empirical and theoretically, self compassion is an antidote to shame.
And I found this in in my own experience of public speaking anxiety. You know, I didn't know that I was suffering from a shame disorder. I thought it was an anxiety disorder. But after I learned self compassion, I started to feel better than I was able to... Actually look more closely at what was going on. And I said, oh my goodness. This whole time I was suffering from shame. I
didn't know it. But the point is that self compassion actually addressed the shame, down regulated the shame to the point that I could actually see it. And then start to intentionally work with it. So in this way, this self absorption aspect is we need to look at as actually a hallmark of shame. We're not being, you know, shameful for being self absorbed. When we feel shame, we cannot be self absorbed. We are self absorbed. It simply means I'm feeling shame.
And when that's the case, then if we think, oh, how can I, you know, get out of this state or how can I free my heart, the answer is, You don't need to go into shame anymore? What you need to do is to start being kind to yourself because you're feeling shame. And then we noticed that we have less shame and less self absorption. Beautiful, Chris. Beautiful. It's the strange tension as you're talking between... The shame that we all have that is part of being human and yet
we don't wanna indulge it. There's this odd, dynamic, can you share a little bit about how is it possible that we all have this thing and yet we shouldn't be this thing. Well, so first of all, Shame is probably the most difficult human emotion. And also 1 of the most uncomfortable human emotions. Because what's unique about Shame is that it attacks the sense of self on the sense of self is under attack, then we try to disappear, You know, we go small. We go silent. We go away, You know,
we wanna sink into the floor. Basically, it's hard to work with shame because no one's home. We You know, we check out. We check out by drinking too much by, you know, reckless activities, often simply bites dis association when the shame is stuff is tough enough. So shame is a very tricky emotion. It's it rattle our nerves because it is a self attack. Whereas other emotions are not quite a self attack. They have aspects of self attack, but that's not actually what they're all about.
So when the sense of self is under attack, every fiber in our body gets mobilized, to either get away. Mostly to just get away. And then once we've been away for a while, and then sometimes we just kind of calm down, but we've never addressed problem. This is frankly why Shame is so sticky because it's, you know, it's basically an emotion of denial We we don't wanna have it. We wanna disappear from it. But shame contains within it.
Treasures, you know, like, in the Hoffman process, you're really creating a social context, a loving community a kind community where people then feel the courage to look into shame and actually to name and to see those moments, a in relationship to my mother, in the in relationship to my father, when I learned certain things because of this natural desire to be loved. I took on so many things consciously and unconsciously from from the caregivers because I needed to be loved. I needed
to be in relationship. I needed to be in love, and that process of actually getting to the event is a kind of slipping through the net of shame. You know, shame kind of traps us and says look no further go away. But then in a kind of compassionate environment, You say, no. What We're gonna do is actually look toward. And we're not only gonna look toward and say, oh, I'm feeling shame. We're gonna look even through it and see, what were the interactions? Out of which this web of shame emerged.
And that process is an a incredibly heroic process is an incredibly courageous process, and ultimately profoundly transformative because we have gone where angels fear to tread into the actual original experience that I was trying no longer to feel? Chris, have you taken the process? Because it sounds so beautifully descriptive of the experience during the week. So what a beautiful thing I'm... I looked at the research study that came out on this.
To me, it's it's self evident that this would be a transformative in many different areas of ones. Life because it gets to a, you know, fundamental underlying issues. It dismantle the armor, you know, the patterns, the armor that we build around unacceptable experience. In your description of shame, 1 of the many things you said was nobody's home.
And in your conversation with B Brown on her podcast, you talk about meditation, and how you so appreciated because you go home that love the metaphor of home Will you talk a little bit about what it means to you in meditation and what home means to you in general around that? Well, first of all I also enjoyed on the Hoffman website to listen to people's testimonials of the experience. And a lot of people said I accept I accepting myself as I am, I can be more like myself.
So that's home. You know, when we feel at home with somebody. We can actually be our selves. Like, I have the privilege of having a really wonderful wife and a happy marriage, which basically means I feel most at home around her, not necessarily in my physical house. I feel more at home if we're someplace else together than in my physical space. So home is where you can be yourself. Put their layers to what it means to
be oneself. Okay? So where you can be yourself in a in a relative sense, like, your personality has permission to be as it is, but there's a deeper home. There's a deeper home in which we are actually free, and this is what I was alluding to with B Brown going home. Going home actually, I think My experiences is, it means to be able to let go of everything associated with our individuality.
And to rest in the way things are, which is way broader, way more magnificent than anything we can imagine. So our home is a beautiful place and it is not limited by our personality. So they're are 2 kinds of home. There's a relative home, and there's the absolute home. And self compassion allows us to rest in our relative home, rest in our personality. Which we come by it honestly. But that's limiting. It's it's based on desires, and which wishes for things to be
1 way and another. The whole personality is the construction is a web of desire. But when we can re these desires and then we can actually really rest in the way things are rather than in any, you know, condition structure that we've created. So in my view, before you asked, what's relevant for you right now in in regard to self compassion? So self compassion, I think is the first step, but then that leads to self confidence. Self confidence means I'm okay. Chris is okay.
Drew is okay. This personality is okay. It's very conditional. You know, it it suffers, but It's human. It's okay. That's self confidence. And then once we have self confidence, then we can have self surrender. In other words,
we actually don't even need it anymore. Because we're not trying to protect against something, I can imagine in the Hoffman process, once you look deeply at how the personality emerged out of childhood experience, then you actually don't need to maintain those patterns, you don't, need to maintain quite the same personality anymore, You know, your friends and neighbors will say, you know, he's different after Hoffman, or she's different after often.
Once we have kind of confidence in our personality, then we can surrender it. And surrendering it is the next step to going home. Letting go, it's such a relief to let go of individuality, and then to rest in the larger self. You know, like in hoffman you talk about the spiritual self, the larger self with an s where you just can be what is, rather than having to spend your whole day prop up something that happens to be associated
with your individuality. That's home. That's the ultimate home in my view so many students come to the process wanting that confidence that self confidence. And I I love how you say the once this self confidence is acquired, then we move to the next step, It's only a step along the way, to self surrender. And then, ultimately self realization, which is discovering a deeper truth, which is hard to explain and hard to know with any rational dual mine. So we've gone so big.
I can just feel myself. The energy coming c through me as we have this conversation. And I'm wondering if we can... Reverse directions and go to the pragmatic and practical. So once we understand it, we get that research proves its, what does self compassion look like during the moments of a regular day? Very simple. It means that when something difficult occurs. You can say something to yourself, Mike? It's okay, Honey. This is part of being alive. I love you.
What I just said was actually the 3 components of self compassion. Like, it's okay. Honey means this is so. Part 2 is common humanity. You're not alone, You know? This is part of being alive. This happens. You know, it's okay. Honey is validating. Mindful ness is like validating. Yeah, This is true. You're not alone. It's part of being alive, and I love you, which is kindness. Well these 3 qualities are embedded in self compassion. And it's a it's what we call loving connected presence, Loving.
Self kindness, connected, common humanity and presence, mindfulness. The more we live in with self compassion as a habit, the opposite of which is the shame habit. The more we have the self compassion habit. When any when things happen, there's a kind of felt sense of it's okay, honey, Your chest human, I love you. The most important thing is that each person finds their own way. So some people are more physical. So they might, for example, take a hand and put it over their heart and just
rub their heart. And that could mean and you're like, ouch this hurts. You've got this. Just a hand on the heart. Or somebody might, you know, say, have a relationship with Jesus. And when a difficult time then they can imagine in this moment, what might Jesus whisper in my ear. And maybe the person would hear, I love you I'm here for you. You can get through this. Actually, those 3 words just capture 3 components of self compassion. You you can get through this as the
imp of mindfulness. I'm here for you. It means you're not alone, and I love you with self kindness. So there doesn't have to be anything you know, buddhist about this, Everybody has this in a capacity. But what we need to do is give ourselves permission. So we can do this behavioral. Sometimes the best way to be compassionate whether ourselves just have a cup of tea. We can do this interpersonal, sometimes the most compassionate thing is to call a friend. We
can meditate. We can pray. We could take a walk in the woods. The research shows that taking a long walk will increase your yourself compassion. Getting a dog will increase your yourself compassion, doing yoga will increase self compassion, taking a mindful self compassion course we'll do it, taking a mindfulness course and for sure doing the hoffman process increase the self compassion because Everything I've read about this program and also what people say was so transformative of. Sounds
to me identical to self compassion. It's just a brilliant. Group process, which gives people the courage to bring kindness to themselves at the deepest innermost levels of our experience where our personalities were created. So an answer to the question like, what what can you do? You can do it just about anything, but it's it's really shaped and determined by our intention. So frankly, when somebody signs up for the hoffman process, that's an active self compassion.
When people wait 6 months to get in, that's, you know, heroic, self compassion. And then when when people throw themselves into the process in a loving environment, that too. So it's inevitable that self compassion will arise. So the main thing to know is that this is an innate capacity. It starts with intentional. And then a little guidance so that we know exactly how to do this. That's wonderful. Chris, you mentioned the word courage.
It's interesting you you you use that word because it is 1 of the outcomes I see. Of students in the process this courage to look at things that they couldn't look at before to engage in conversations with other people, so openly so vulnerable, courage is such a maybe even an unexpected outcome of the process in your work? Do you see that as well? How do you relate to to the the word courage. Yeah. Well, so courage comes from the word heart.
It is saying, you know, the world knows no courage like that of a person truly loved. When somebody feels truly loved, they are not easily frightened, But imagine if you could feel a a kind of river of love going through your own being. Maybe you're feeling loved by god, maybe you're feeling...
Just connecting with, you know, love, or I imagine in the Hoffman process, you know, you're surrounded by people who are really good hearted and committed and basically giving courage because when you're starting to quiver if somebody will smile at you and say you can do this, and then you do and So that's courage. So we need courage from the outside, and we need courage from the inside. We need compassion from the outside. We need compassion. From the inside. We need love from the
outside. And we need love from the inside, but courage comes from love in my view and love is our nature, so we can tap that. However, most of us don't live at that deep level. So it's really necessary as we learn to become more self compassionate. That we also learn it in community. It's called self compassion, but it's actually best learned in community because community gives us the courage to go those places where we thought we couldn't.
And then once we've actually tapped self compassion and we go out into the world low and behold, we have more courage. Thank you, Chris. In your conversation, you referenced your marriage, your relationship with your wife, and your working relationship with doctor Na, Kristen, and we interviewed her earlier in our season. I'm just curious about
that working relationship. It inspires me for some reason that that 2 of you c create and do this work together out in the world as friends as colleagues. I think it's actually kind of unusual from what I hear. You know, personality wise and also in terms of our skills we're quite complementary. We initially met because she was a scientist is a scientist, and I'm a clinical psychologist, but we had the shared interest. And we both, you know, realized together, we could probably do this a
lot better than we could individually. So so if we have complementary skills, we have complementary personalities. Even though I'm in a male body, I tend to be, you know, more of a yin kind of person, and she's in a female body, but she's more of a young kind of person. And we happily embrace that difference. But mostly to be honest, I just trust her, you know? She's very honest. Person.
I think she trusts me. And so over time, we've definitely battled it out on certain things, but 1 thing that's super clear to us is that that kind of rubbing. Produces something better, you know, than either of us would have generated individually. So it's been a fruitful collaboration, and, frankly, I enjoy her very much. She's funny person too, you know? Because she's so honest, you know? Somebody once said how do you develop a sense of humor, work on your character and speak the truth.
She's doing both of those things. But Hadn't haven't heard that definition before. I love it. And so what what's next for you, research wise or your clinical work, your relationship in this chapter in your life. In the next chapter in your life. What's next? Oh, it's a, gracious question. Right now... We're we're about to start our second pilot of an 8 week specific self compassion for shame program. It's kind of a graduate program for the regular mindful self compassion.
So actually Kristen made 1 called fear self compassion, which expands on the regular Msc course, and the shame subject because Shame is such a deep and profound emotion deepens. A person's experience after they've have taken the Ms program, then they have basically 24 hours to explore a self compassion for shame. So anyhow, this is very exciting for me And I'm doing this with a team of mindful self compassion teachers. It's actually a lot of
fun. I do like the community aspect both in the development of this program as well as in the teaching of it. I do think the best way to learn self compassion and community. I also turned 70, you know, last month, and the Indian stages of life that's called V. Which is a time when you actually don't have as many
obligations in this world. And so the imperative to be of service in a practical way, you can begin to hand over the reins to younger people and give yourself the freedom to to do a little more inner work. So so in my life, I'm mostly not scheduling anything before 12 noon in order to make room for meditation and inner exploration, and my commitment over the next... However, long there's left in my life is too deepen
that. But all the while, you know, as long as we have energy in our bodies, we have to move our bodies around, and hopefully, in a way that's of benefit to others. So I expect that I will be continuing along this vein in some help way. That's at least my hope. In moving your body, what are what are your some of your go to ways of of movement? While just before this meeting, I was at the gym. And I lifted weights, and I was on a treadmill.
But I I love skiing. Next week, I'm gonna be skiing in Utah, and I like biking, and my wife likes hiking my wife is in pat right now hiking, and we, as much as possible try to enjoy the body and explore a It's such a extraordinary privilege and a treasure to have a human body, and especially if it doesn't have much pain. I think we need to utilize every minute to learn and bring some joy to others and to ourselves. Chris, you've... Your gratitude is ex through your body,
and I'm... I'm getting a secondary gain from it, and I'm just so appreciative of this conversation, and I had a call with my colleagues, all the teachers get on a call once a month. So that is what's next for me and the community of of people who lead this. Hoffman process. So thank you for your time, Chris. Oh, I just so appreciated this conversation. You're a very generous interviewer. Because you interview not just with your head but clearly with your heart. It's just
been a delight and I've been... You know, I'm very flattered by all these kind of questions that you asked. And so I appreciate that and hope it's of value, and and thank you for your time. Many blessings for your work. And all the good people at Hoffman. Special shout out to, Kevin Ay. Now a good friend and I know that hoffman will thrive in the coming years because of people like yourselves. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza and Rossi. I'm the Ceo
and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Asking Grass. Often teacher and founder of the Hop institute foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater act access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves in each other and in the world. To find out more, please go to hop institute dot org.