[Rerun] Kristin Neff on The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Just a quick note that today's episode is going to be a rerun the next season of the Psychology Podcast we'll begin later this year. I haven't taken any break in five years of doing this podcast, so I thought it was about time to take a step back and think about how it can make this a better experience for you all. Until then, enjoy these episodes from our archives.

Kristin is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Culture and the Educational Psychology Department the University of Texas at Austin. She's author of the Self Compassion Scales and the book Self Compassion, The Proven Power of being Kind to Yourself. Thanks Christin for being on the show today. Oh thanks for having me. Happy to be here. So your story

of how you got interested in self compassion. Is interesting, right, the last year in grad school you became interested in Buddhism, and kind of this was an outgrowth of your interest

in Buddhism. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Actually it was interesting because the very first night I went to the group to learn really meditation to help with the stress I was feeling, the woman leading the group talked a lot about self compassion, which I hadn't really been expecting and lucky for me because it really changed the course of my life that one evening. So it kind of made immediate sense to me, and I started being kinder and more supportive to myself, and I saw

the impact almost immediately. Yeah, is this something that like, You've struggled with your life like most people, kind of having an inner critic that is loud. Yeah, it's funny. I wouldn't say I'm particularly harsh, you have really harsh and a critic is kind of like an averagely harsh and critical are pretty unkind to themselves. Well, what really made the difference for me is I didn't realize I

could support myself when I needed. I was more used to relying on other people to help get me through and when those people weren't available, I was kind of, you know, up a creek without a paddle, right, So this really helped me learn that when I was upset or anxious or stress, but also of course if I was feeling shame or bad about myself, that it was a way I could really be friendly, supportive and accepting the way you know, in good times other people would

be toward me. But I'd actually just gotten out of a divorce and my ex was not interested in being a kind of compassion figure to me. I had to do it myself. You know. The whole thing was really a mess. It was a very messy time in my life, which in hindsight is good because it really inspired me to embrace self compassion. There's a Buddhist teacher in Scotland who says the goal of practice is to become a

compassionate mess. So really it's like, no matter what screwed up your life is, you can almost be a compassionate mess. And if you at least see that as your aim. The aim is not perfection. The aim isn't to have you you know, you know what together. The aim is just to each moment be kind compassionate, open hearted. Then really, that's a goal anyone can obtain all the time. Really, Oh,

I really love that. A compassionate mess Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, but it's shoes like we give up our striving for perfection, and we give up this idea that we aren't supposed to make mistakes and we aren't supposed to get it wrong. Of course we are, that's what's being human. But what we can do is approach all of it with kindness and acceptance and compassion, and ultimately having our hearts open, at least for many of us, is what we're really

after in life. Living in an open hearted life. I'm really interested in people the worrying disabilities and kind of showing their strengths and things of that nature. Your son was diagnosed with lautism, Is that right? Yeah? Did you see The Horseboy? No? But I saw an interview with you. Should I see the film? Sure? Was on an Amazon from you can rent it. Yeah. We took a crazy trip to Mongolia writing from shaman to shaman on horseback.

Believe it or not, at worked. I very much had no choice in that situation except to be open minded, and we tried everything, including shamanism. It's really horses. My son responded radically well to being an horseback. That's why he learned all his own language. So we actually have an equine therapy center. Now we run an equine therapy center for other kids. Yeah, but I can tell you self compassion save my you know what, over and over again. I don't know how I would have gotten through. He's

not through in one piece. I mean, the fact that I managed to get through and I think be stronger from it is largely due to my self compassion practice. And I hope you teach him how to have some self compassion for himself as well. No, I do. I do try, you know. I teach to put his hand on his card and to breathe deeply. So well, a very very loving, sweet kid, sweetheart. Okay, what is the

relationship between mindfulness and self compassion. There's a very strong link there, right, Yeah, Well, see, the way to fine self compassion is I define mindfulness as one of the core components are really a foundational aspect of self compassion. So from my point of view, you can't really be

self compassionate unless you're being mindful. So right to the extent that mindfulness gives us stability to be with things as they are, even if we don't like things the way they are, but to be with it, to turn forward, especially painful feelings, without immediately trying to resist or avoid. We have to be mindful of our suffering in order to have self compassion. If we're just avoiding it, we aren't thinking about it. We're just resisting it, trying to

fix the problem, fix ourselves. We can't really hold the space needed to open our hearts to ourself. Also, if you have self compassion without mindfulness, what could happen is you could fall into something that looks like self compassion that isn't really like. For instance, I'm gonna throw compassion at myself to try to make the pain goal away. Right, We're gonna put my hand on my heart, hopefully, and maybe I won't have to feel pain anymore if I

do this, if I sue the comfort myself. The fact, if you use self compassion as a way to make the pain goalway, if you lose your mindfulness, it stops working. So we say self compassion. We give ourselves compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad. So, in other words, when we're feeling bad. We fully accept that this is how it is without resistance, and yet we also say, ah, what could I do to help? You know,

there's that kind compassionate response. So mindfulness is necessary for compassion, but compassion, I mean people have various points of view about this. Certainly compassion isn't always maybe even relevant. If you're mindful of eating or raisin, for instance, compassion doesn't really come into play. Compassion also includes being kind to the person who is suffering and also recognizing that this

is part of the shared human condition. Sometimes if you're mindful of eating a raisin, I mean, these needs have the elements of compassion aren't really wellvant Maybe there's probably not suffering, and you don't give compassion to the raisin, right, but you give compassion to a person who is suffering will mindfully accepting that suffering is present. There's a sense of care, kindness, you're emotionally moved by the suffering. Oh

that's you know, poortying. I'm kindness for encouragement. That's the response of the heart. And then also common humanity is it's very very important numbering that the human experience is one of imperfection. People often forget this not logically they know it logically, but irrationally, when they make a mistake, or they fail, or some big struggle happens in their life, they feel this should not be happening. Very powerful emotional reaction.

This should not be happening. Something's wrong, because this is how this is abnormal, as if everyone else in the world is living this perfectly happy, normal life with no problems, and it's just me who's failed. It just made who said that stupid comment or just maybe got that diagnosis, And that sense of should and abnormality is really psychologically destabilizing. It makes us feel cut off and isolated from others.

So compassion compassion actually means to suffer with the term come passion, to suffer with for with our onway with when our own suffering. That means we recognize that this is a shared experience, it's not just us, and that actually allows any moment of suffering when health with self passion to be a moment of connection to others. Very very important for kind of stabilizing us and allowing us to feel yeah, more loving and connected toward everyone, not

just ourselves. It's so obvious that you are very passionate about your research. Yes, it's really a way of life. I mean, I guess I'm the classic example of a scientist practitioner. You know, I practice self compassion in my personal life. I teach people self compassion. I spend a large part of my time teaching people self compassion. I've developed a curriculum with my colleague Chrispermur to teach self compassion.

So the science for me supplements that. But you know, sometimes I admit I'm not the total pure scientist because I really study self compassion to prove but I already know, which maybe is not the most subjective stance. Nonetheless, you know, I know it works. I've seen it work, I felt it work. So for me, the science is a way of trying to understand how it works, and of course gives support for it. You do do good science. Oh thank you. No, I mean it's not. But I say

that I'm kind of joking. Now. Hopefully it don't let my biases that get involved in the science. But you know, I kind of like to be upfront about it because I am passionate about it and I do believe in it. I'm not pretending to be neutral. I think other people. If other people want to show the problems of self compassion, they're welcome to I believe in the scientific method, but I've really just been I've seen so many people whose life have radically transform when they started being more self

compassionate to themself. I know, it's a really powerful tool that anyone, anyone can learn to help change the life for the better. Yeah, I'd like to take your eight week course. Yeah. Well, we just started teacher training, so we've trained about six hundred teachers. It's still growing compared to Mindfulness based stress Reduction. We're tiny. But can I

be trained? Yeah, you can. You have to take the course first, but yeah, so you can take the course either in your local community as an a week course. We also offer the Holy Week course and a five day intensive. You can find it all on the Center for Mindful Self Compassion website. But yeah, it's really taking off like wildfire, and a lot of teachers teach both Mindfulness based Stress Reduction and our self Compassion program because

they really compliment each other. You know, we can kind of talk about explicitly what mindfulness based stress reduction kind of talks about. Implessly. Self compassion is there, but it's more implicit. We really really explicitly teach the skill, and again we teach a little bit of mindfulness, but we can't go deeply into it the way it is. So a lot of people are actually saying that taking both programs is very useful. I think so wonderful. What is

the difference between self esteem and compassion? There is a difference. There's a difference. Yeah. So when I first introduced the idea of self compassion into the field, if I say introduced the idea, I mean other people like Carl Rodgers had talked about self acceptance. It wasn't like I came up with the idea, but I kind of it was

the first to operationally define and measure it. So I really positioned it as an alternative to self esteem because I was actually coming off a two year post doc working with the self esteem researcher, becoming very familiar with all the problems with self esteem, not that there are problems with having self esteem, that there are problems with trying to get it right. We know very clearly that, for instance, reason kids start to bully other kids is

because they want to feel good about themselves. The tempt to get high self esteem. The reason people are prejudiced. Self esteem is very contingent. We have at one moment and then we fail and it deserves us. So I was studying all this in my postdoc, and I was practicing self compassion in my personal life, and I realized that really what self compassion does, and the evidence supports this, it offers all the same mental health benefits of self esteem.

Right with self esteem, great in terms of less anxiety, less depression, more happiness, same with self compassion. But it's not contingent the way self esteem is. And now there was when we fail. That's precisely when self compassion steps in, exactly when self esteem deserves us. And it's not it's not based on feeling better than others. It's yeah, I got to do is be your average, compassionate mess like everyone else. You don't have to be you know, special,

above average. And it's not LinkedIn narcissism the way self esteem is. So yeah, it seems to be really offering the benefits of self esteem. It's kind of like a type of unconditional self esteem. So researchers have talk to about unconditional self esteem and it's like, well, that's great. But how do I get it? Well, this is one way to get it. I love that. It's like you're

married to yourself for better or worse, and sick for health. Yeah, So it's like, do you wanna do you want to have be an inner enemy or an inner ally that's really the choice we all face, and most of us walk down with an inner enemy inside our heads, cutting us down, undermining us, pulling the rug out from underneath us. And when we switch that relationship and start being an inner supportive friend, we are so much We are much stronger and more capable of dealing with adversity. Some people

think self compassion is weak. Is it weak to have an inner allies and posted an inner enemy? No, it's an import it's strict. But people really are afraid that self compassion means being weak in fact, so if they do, people have this reaction they oh, self compassion, I'm going to be soft and weak and what? But I think people haven't really thought about it deeply, right, So the idea of being kind seen as weakness, whereas being harsh right is a strength. But in fact, internally we're harsh

with ourselves to we cut ourselves down. We are weakening ourselves. We're undermining our self confidence, whereas if we're kind, supportive and encouraging, we're strengthening ourselves. I think people just don't really think it through clearly, and our culture doesn't encourage it. But if you look at the coping literature, like that's

coming back to my rack. In Afghanistan, for instance, they find that the level of self compassion is more predictive of whether or not they'll developed PTSD the level of combat exposure that they face. There's absolutely a strength that helps us cope with life's biggest challenges, to be an inner friend and inner support and inner ally wi we need most right, I love it, No, I love it. I love it red so compassion. By the way, if you were your age you are now in the sixties,

you would be even more popular. I think, well, I don't know, because you know what's beautiful now that wasn't possible in the six This is a whole field of people who are mixing kind of personal practice Buddhism typically meditation, with science, rigorous science. In the sixties it was a little more hippie hippy, you know. And my hippie name is blossom, free Flower and I definitely had my part of my hippie childhood, so a lot of these ideas. You mean, yeah, my father it was my official name.

But yeah, so I definitely spent some time in the hippie world. The thing about it is there's an element to it that was kind of flaky. I mean, it's a real genuine, good spirituality. I grew up with rom Das's be here Now coffee book on my table. I think it's a brilliant book. We hear in nor it's really a mindfulness book before it's time. But because there was a lot of lack of credibility, we got mixed up and a lot of personality cults and things went

haywharren't and things weren't done responsibly. I think whereas now with this approach meditation combined with science, I feel like we've got the good, that spiritual movement, but without the I don't know if flakiness is the only word I could think of it. With more rigor, more more reality, more our feet, more firmly planted on the ground in a way that's very useful. So I'm not in the sixties. I take it back. You've convinced me you're ther perfect

time period to do your work. I mean, well, yeah, and really, I mean my work rides on the coattails very closely in the mindfulness movement. If it wasn't people like John Cabizin and Pritchie Davison and all these people doing rigorous scientific research on mindfulness, my work wouldn't have been as readily accepted. So I definitely came at the right time in terms of other people had done the work for me, so I could kind of slot myself in. But absolutely I agree. And you developed a scale, a

twenty six item long. That's the longest version of the scale, and then you have a shorter version, and it measures different aspects like self kindness, self judgment, common humanity, isolation, mindfulness, over identified. Yes, the various measures both compassionate and uncompassionate behavior. The scale, because it was kind of the only game in town, has come under criticism lately about its psychometric validity across populations. And I just published a new article

that uses a new form. It's probably not relevant to your readers, but basically really establishes the validity of the Self Compassion Scale using a new form of analysis. So this is good it kind of. I just collected at a largely set five different samples using a new type of analysis that really shows to my point of view. I'm happy with the scale. I think it stands up great because you've done there's so many studies have done

with this scale. Yeah, hundreds, hundreds, Yeah, And I just want to just review some of the major findings, like really almost like every aspect of life, human life, you've found a correlation. Is that something that it doesn't help? Probably not with cooking skill or you know, but yeah, it's a There's only been one published study that shows that it might not be such a good thing for men only who are low in conscientiousness in the context

of romantic relationships. It was like a very and I think what's happening is men who are low in conscientiousness usually self compassion goes with more conscientiousness. You got this weird subpopulation. I think what happens They found that men who were low on conscientiousness, if you told them to be more self compassionate, they actually used it as a way to evade taking responsibility in their which I see is they were kind of not really opening clearly their

heart to themselves. They were just using. You can misuse anything if you're clever enough. So that's kind of what I see what was happening. But pretty much, yeah, either it seems to be linked to pretty much all good things psychological. But if you think it's such a deep process again being an inner friend, whether an inner enemy as opposed to inner enemy, it's almost nothing that that's not going to help. But us wondering is can you be really high in self compassion and really low and

compassion for others? What if you like and self compassion but your well in agreeableness on the big five? What's going on there in terms of compassion for others? It almost never happens. I want to play with some data. I haven't figured out how it can do the analysis, but we created a compassion for other scale using the same components, very structurally similar, including the same endpoint, so you can kind of look at how often you're compassionate

versus self compassionate. Almost everybody is more compassionate to others than themselves, significantly more so. As a matter of fact, under among college undergraduates, they aren't even significantly related. The way people treat themselves and others is radically different. In almost every single case, people are more compassionate to others

than to themselves. I think that two percent of people and but I'm not sure if we're doing the analysis right, but it seemed like two percent of people were significantly more compassionate to themselves than others. So I don't know what's going on with those two percent, but it's very very tiny, right. Yeah, people are much harder on themselves than others, and I think there's reasons for that, but yeah, it doesn't happen very often that you're compassionate to self

and not to others. Yeah. I think that's a good point. And I think it's important that you distinguish self compassion from narcissism, and it's very clear that there are different things. Yeah. Yeah, Then you might say I'm being self compassionate, which is why I don't care about you, which is wanting to blow off seeing my kids and move to why or something,

you know whatever, that's not really self compassion. So I think if it's true self compassion, which is partly what it needs, the mindfulness, because mindfulness is where the clear scene is, and just like looking things straight and face and saying yep, I own that I did that or this is my responsibility. The mindfulness helps ground us and see clearly. And then the kindness is the warm hearted

response to that. And common humanity is recognizing that it's not just me this stuff everyone faces, but you need all three components otherwise it could morph into self pity or narcissism or self indulgence. One of the three components tell oh sorry, okay. Well, So the three components, and each one kind of has a positive compassion of versus

uncompassionate aspect. So the first is being kind, supportive, and caring to yourself, treating yourself like you a good treated, good friend, as opposed to being harshly, self critical and judgmental, which is the way actually most of us are with ourselves. The second component involves seeing our imperfection and suffering as

part of the shared human condition. This is normal. It's normal to make mistakes, it's normal to fail, it's normal to have struggles, as opposed to feeling isolated in that as if somehow everyone else was leaving a normal, perfect life and it's just me who's failed or struggling. And then the third component is the mindfulness right being able to be aware when we're suffering and see the kind of balance, stable manner, clear sided manner, as opposed to

what I call overidentification. And that's really a process where we run away with the dramatic storyline of oh, this is so terrible, so we're seeing that ever happened, you know this is bad, and therefore I am bad. That kind of emotional dysregulation really would be the opposite of mindfulness. So I call it three components. But if you consider what the positive and the negative aspect is really sick, Oh cool, Okay, So you need all those components. You

need those components because if not, it can morph. Like they say in Buddhism that pity is the ner enemy of compassion. So if you were just being kind to yourself, but I had the quality of kind of feeling sorry for yourself, if you weren't remembering that, hey, this is everyone suffers, and if you were, you know, getting lost in an exaggerated storyline of how bad things are, If you weren't seeing things clearly, self compassion could easily turn

into self pity. We need the mindfulness and the common humanity to keep it from being self pity and to keep it just being this stable, clear sighted, open hearted way of relating to yourself. Are there some people that really shouldn't be self compassionate? Like do you think Donald Trump like could use more self compassion? I don't know. Going on with Stutle, I think that's one area that we need to look at more closely. And I'm not a clinical psychologist, but some people have asked me should

you teach narcissists self compassion? And I actually don't know the answer to that. I also know there are different types of narcissism, and sometimes narcissism is stemming from underlying self hate, and in that case it may be a good thing. If not, I'm not sure At this point. I don't think we can clearly say that there's anyone

who wouldn't benefit from self compassion. Certainly, some people have a more difficult time with it, people, for instance, who've got with the trauma background early childhood, history of neglect or abuse. It can be scary actually to be self compassionate because those feelings of warmth and care that we hopefully normally got from a carry and caregiver, if it gets mixed up with other feelings like fear neglect, then it can actually activating that whole self soothing system can

actually be a little frightening. Public clovert calls it fear of compassion. So although it is harder for some people and some people have to go slower, I recommend that some people when they go down the self compassion path, they do it with the help of the therapist, because you know, really most of us have closed our hearts and response to suffering most of our lives, and we

start opening our hearts. There's a term we use for it and our program called backdraft, Like you let in the fresh oxygen of compassion and the pain comes rushing out, and sometimes it's like a boom. This more mild, but this is normal because sometimes it does help to have a little support as you're going down the path is self compassion in case you get overwhelmed by the pain that you actually touch. But pretty much anyone so far that we've seen can learn self compassion. It just makes

you just need to feel it yourself. Be a slow learner is all better people, for instance, to Tronta histories, who learn to be more self compassionate. It's one of the most effective ways of coping with one's pass and moving on from it by giving yourself what maybe you didn't get from your early childhood. So yeah, and the thing is, it's not rocket science. I think that's the thing that surprised me that I thought it might be harder for people who are really you habitual self critics

to learn these new ways. The thing is, most people have a fair amount of experience being compassionate to those that care about friends, family members. They know what to say, they know the tone of the voice to you. They kind of had a lot of experience being a caring, compassionate friend to another. So all you have to really do is give yourself permission to relate to yourself that way and to remember. But if you just ask people, okay, the way you spoke to yourself right now, would you

say that to someone you really cared about? No, I'll what would you say I cared about? And then you get them to do that, and then they kind of have this tool already. I'll ask you something I've been thinking about. Shouldn't sometimes you actually be? Shouldn't you be hard on yourself? Sometimes? Well? So, self compassion mean you don't see yourself clearly, And in fact, one of them most useful aspects of self compassion is it allows us to hold our shame. Sometimes we feel shamed for very

good reason. We've done something really harmful, and self compassion gives the strength to own it. In fact, people who are more self compassion and take more responsibility than others for the harm that cause because they have the strength of so self compassion. It doesn't mean you condone bad behavior.

In fact, just the opposite. What it's saying is it's allowing that I am imperfect, and yes, in an ideal world, I would have not made that mistake, absolutely, But you know it also acknowledges the truth that we aren't in total control. Right, we do the best we can, but we didn't choose our genes, how reactive our wiringness. What if you didn't do the best you can? What if, like you intentionally did something bad? Well, so, okay, this

isn't we start getting the philosophy here, right? What is it that made you choose that action in the moment? Most likely that choice was tingent upon thousands of causes and conditions that you actually didn't choose. Right, So this is you know, this is kind of the philosophical position, And you know, I kind of take the more Buddhist view that we are in part of a larger, interdependent whole, and there's no separate self that is capable of radical

choice independent of all other causes and conditions. So really the wisdom of self compassion is saying, hey, this is what I was capable of doing at the time. Does that mean I am a bad person? Usually? You know, again, we do think self compassion is possibly linked guilt, which is I did something bad. It's negatively linked to shame, which is, and there I am bad. And this is

where the common humanity comes in understanding the complexity. Self compassion seems very clearly, I made a mistake, I did wrong. I'm really going to try to commit as much as I can not to doing it again. But it doesn't say and therefore I am hopeless, worthless, and you know, start calling yourself names, which actually that type of behavior is usually it keeps people from taking responsibility in the first place. They don't want to admit that, yeah I'm

a horrible person. No I'm not just be your fault, you know, so, But yeah, some of it is kind of your philosophical approach. Do I think self compassion has to be earned. I think all human beings, by their very nature, we're all born into this world as innocent babies. You know, we don't have a lot of control. We certainly didn't choose our games. We don't have a lot of control about how we're we're raised. That influences that condition our habitual patterns. And therefore, I personally, I think

all people are intrinsically worthy of compassion. But that doesn't mean we condone behavior. Paul Gilbert has a great phrase for this. He says, it's not your fault, that it is your responsibility. Well, a lot of existential philosophers talked about that as well. Yeah so, And I think that's

the view of self compassion. And again, the empirical support seems to show if you help people, Like a study by Greens and chen Out at Berkely, they had people think about something they had done to hurt someone they felt really bad about, and half the people they helped them by thinking about the three components of self compassion in relation to what they did. I think they had a self esteem control group and a neutral writing control group.

People who were helped to be self compassionate about what they did were more likely to take responsibility to own it. Wow, I really messed up more and more motivated to try to repair the harm. I like that, I really like that. It sounds like you're a very compassionate person yourself. Well, I know that's the way of life. I certainly walked my walk, Not that I'm always perfectly compassionate. That's the whole point. Yeahs a nice thing about practicing self compassion.

You don't claim. I don't claim to be mindful all the time, or never to be reactive or never be out of line. But I'm pretty quick always to come to a place of self compassion. Because what choice do we have. I mean, if it's a choice between being self compassionate, mess are being perfect? Good luck with the perfection? Does that most of us try to be? Okay, I just will never make a mistake. I will be perfect, and it just tried really really hard to be perfect.

You know, good luck, It's just not reality. Have you found a link to reduced levels of perfectionism? Yeah? So basically, you know, if you look at there's two part way measuring perfectionism. One is how high you strive your standards, the goals you set for yourself. The other is how you treat yourself and you don't meet your goals, and so some passion is unrelated to how your standards, how how you know the aims you adopt for yourself with

the goals you set for yourself. But it's very negatively linked to how much you beat yourself up and you don't meet your stand So it's negatively linked to what they call maladaptive perfectionism. There's nothing wrong with aiming high, you know. It's just that if you aim high and you fail and you beat yourself up, you can become

afraid of failure, you can stop trying. So all that doesn't happen is selfy And that links to your earlier point that consciousness is positively correlated with it is and motivation. A lot of people think that self compassion is going to undermine your motivation. The data shows just the opposite, right, So again, fear of failure, performance, anxiety, underminding your self confidence, all of these are associated with self criticism. That's going

to undermine your motivation. But being a support like kind of think of that encouraging, kind, supportive coach. You may give you criticism, but it's going to be constructive criticism. As opposed to harsh, belittling criticism. That type of support is much more effective for motivating ourselves than our usual pattern, which is just to say I'm a hopeless loser, I'm ashamed of myself. You know how good a motivator is that. I don't think Trump ever says that to himself. He

doesn't know. So yeah, I want to wrap up just for the listeners. Some like amazing findings. You know. You found that self compassion is linked to less anxiety depression. It's linked to a lack of self criticism, less rumination, more levels of stress as well as the stress hormone cortisol, higher levels of well being, a higher motivation to learn

and grow, like a mass free mindset. Found self wish to found to help people after divorce, cope with divorce, cope with early child to traumas, cope with chronic physical pain. It's important for relationships. It's not selfish, it actually improves relationships. Very important point. Wow, yeah, great point. And there's also cultural differences in self compassion. Is that right? Or is our country? Are we like? Whoa? And yeah, you know,

I wish more people do research on this. I did a study with two of my grad students, like in two thousand and five, almost nothing has been done, which is kind of annoying because I don't have time to do everything. But I had a student from Thailand and a student from Taiwan, and the idea is, you know, it's not like a simple East West difference. In Thailand, people were most self compassionate. They actually it's more infused in the culture. Buddhism is a book part of the culture.

Like for instance, most men they go on a weak silent meditation we can before they get married. We take it seriously. Taiwan is more confusion and they use self criticism as a way to motivate themselves. So we found that highest levels were in Thailand, lowest levels were in Taiwan, and got stas is in between. But interesting me, in all three cultures we've got the strang same strong positive

association between self compassion and wellbeing. But even if you're on a culture that doesn't promote self compassion, you're still going to personally benefit by having more riders and less of it still helps. Well, that's just wonderful. That's a great place to end, I think, because Okay, anyone except maybe narcissts can benefit. Thank you so much for your generosity today. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I

hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Also, please add our rating and review of the podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next season for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.