Tara Well || Mirror Meditation

of leadership for over twenty years. Her research on motivation, perception, and cognition have been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. She outlines the research and benefits of her meditation program in her latest book, Mirror Meditation. In this episode, I talked to Tara about mirror meditation. What is the first thing you think of when you look in the mirror. For a lot of us,

our initial instinct is to nitpick at our flaws. Using mirror meditation, Tara teaches people how to use one's reflection to promote self acceptance and inner Knowing the mirror can also help us become kinder, not just to ourselves, but to the people around us as well. We also touch on the topics of narcissism, compassion, and attachment. It was really great catching up with my colleague at Columbia, Tara, who I hold in very high esteem. Her work is

really great and really novel. I hope that it helps you view the world in new ways and to view yourself in new ways, just like her work has helped me with. So, without further ado, I bring you Tara Well. Taro Well, I'm so good to finally have you on my show. It's great to be here, Scott, thank you for the invitation, My pleasure. The great Tara Well. Can

you tell our audience a little bit about you? Obviously, I know you as a colleague from Barnard College at Columbia University, as the star professor there Barnard, Tara Well, and you're so kind and warm and welcoming when I first got there. I remember and I'll never forget that. I'm so deeply appreciative of you, and I love your work. But tell the broader world more about you. Sure Well. It's a thrilled to have you at Barnard and teaching

for us. It's amazing you know what you're doing in the class to really use psychology research to teach our students some great skills to help to regulate their emotions and to be more present and enjoy the present moment in their lives. I've been at Barnard for about twenty five years. I've been teaching personality psychology there. I remember my job interview thinking like, oh, I'd love to have gone to a school like that, and it all worked out, so I got to be there. I've been there for

all these years teaching our amazing undergraduates. I have a PhD in personality psychology that I received from Michigan State, where I work with Professor Joel Aronoff, who was one of Abraham Masel's original students at Brandeis in the seventies. So I started out doing a lot of work and motivation, which is why I love your work so much, and continuing to carry that torch of all those wonderful ideas bringing them forward again. That is so cool. I didn't

actually know about that history. What was your dissertation about, Like, what was the title of your doc? Magisation was like this ponderous title called the Antcedents of complex of Cognitive Complexity. So I was talking about differentiation, integration, as to psychological processes that we can use to think about, you know, how we perceive other people? Do we see differences, do we see connections? How do we see see links between

other people? And just looking also at how differentiation can be more related to individual orientations towards things and seeing the connections and the integration is more related to more social kinds of variables. What used to be called the difference between agency and communion years differences between sort of like individualism collectivism. I love that, and I love that difference between communalism and agentism. I love that agentic or

communal way of styles. But some of us favor one over the other as as I think we can see sometimes yes, yes, but then I have getting it, been really getting interested in what happens when both are at the extremes and both become toxic, So toxic agency, and I'm also interested in toxic altruism, and I've been I've published some work on that. So yes, yes, that's so great. It used to be called unmitigated the idea if you have the one that's right, it's not as good as

having a little bit of both. Yes, yes, I know it's called unmitigated I love reframing things that sound really technical to something a little more sexy. So just toxic sounds a little sexier for the for the general public, sounds scary. It's also you know, I suppose toxic is scary too. But anyway, love it, love love it. Okay. So wait, so you're are you a social psychologist? Is that your identity psychologist? And social psychology and developmental psychology?

I know a lot of social psychology, and I teach you to some degree, there's some of it in my book. But yes, social personality. We're going to go with that social personality, right, there is the there is no no, there's yeah. Is that different than anti social? Though? I don't know. Social personality sounds good? Okay, So what is the pathway from that dissertation work to the research you started doing earlier in career to like where did you

start to get into mirror meditation? Like because this is your baby, I mean this is like I think mirror meditation, I think tarawell, Like, what when did you know what I'm saying? At what point in your career did you like come up with that term? Did you think, oh, well, this could be really valuable to helping people like where

when was that? Well? I've always been really interested in how and why people perceive the same thing differently, why everybody's perception of reality is just like a little bit different or sometimes a lot different. And as a personality psychologists, I was looking for personality variables, motivations, ways of perceiving

that could kind of account for that variability. And so I did a lot of work on motivation and looking at differences in cognitive processes and perception, and then also looking at autobiographical memories early on, and then I became more interested in developing my own meditation practice, and one of the tools was, you know, sitting there kind of with my eyes closed. When you meditate, you're supposed to kind of clear your mind and focus on your breathing

and relax your body. But as a psychologist, I was always more interested in sort of the content of what I'm thinking. Why did that idea just pop into my mind right then, you know, and what does it mean and all that. Rather than trying to breathe it away,

I wanted to think about what it really meant. And I started to look in the mirror when I was meditating to try and track my you know, feelings and emotions, or what was the feeling or sensation I was having right before I thought a certain thought as a way to sort of externalize what was happening in my own mind by seeing it in the mirror, and it was

really useful to me. So I wanted to do some mirror gazing experiments with people to see if it was useful for them too, and to see what they would discover if they were willing to take the time to really look at themselves. And really the three main things that I discovered was that people are much more critical of themselves than they realize. When they sit in front of a mirror with nothing to do, the first thing they usually do is find things wrong with them and

criticize themselves. And then the second thing is, oftentimes there's a bit of a disconnect between our emotions, how our emotions are showing up on our face, and what we're feeling inside. And working with the mirror can oftentimes help people develop more awareness of what they're actually feeling and how maybe some of the social display rules that we've been taught have prevented them from actually feeling deeply what

they're feeling socially. And then the third was just people becoming more aware of how looking at other people affected other people, and how being seen by other people was affecting them, and the quality of those interactions. Just gazes, not talking, but just how people can look at you and kind of change how you're feeling about yourself or how you're feeling about a situation, and the power in that.

I have so many questions. First, let me ask you, did was there any precedent in the psychological literature to this, had anyone actually, don't in anyone in the history of the humanity before you to talk about the value of staring yourself in the mirror for meditation purposes. I tend not to say steering because it sounds like like her wheezing,

but observing. Yes, yes, yes, Well, there was early work by Louise Hay who was a self love girl, and she developed mirror work which was actually positive affirmations in the mirror. And you might have seen skits on Saturday Night Lives Stuarts smally saying how much you loved himself

in the mirror, that kind of thing. But then there was more recently a study done by Nicola petershki I believe in which they did a really interesting study to try and see if there was any actual results that could be found from doing the mirror gazing and saying affirmations, and they had three conditions. They had. First, people were asked to come up with kind of reassuring phrases that they would give to a friend who was in distress. So it was more realistic because some of the positive

affirmations can kind of almost be like gaslighting yourself. You're saying things like if you really feel fat and ugly and you say I'm thin, I'm beautiful, and it doesn't really work very well, and it can almost be like gaslighting yourself into you know, not coming into contact with

yourself as truly. So in the study they had the three conditions, one in which they said the affirmations in front of the mirror, the other in which they does to the affirmations, and then they just gaze at themselves in the mirror. And they found that people felt a lot better and actually experience different types of physiological effects the ability to downwardly regulate their emotions when they said positive affirmations in the mirror. So they created a self

soothing effect by looking at themselves. And so I think this is very much related to how we mutually gaze with each other and that that creates a dopamine hit, and it also helps us to regulate and connect with each other. And you can do that with yourself in the mirror. Wow. Are you familiar with the Saturday Night Live character in the eighties Stuart Smally? Uh huh yeah by Alf Franken. I'm good enough. Look at yourself in the mirror and say I'm good enough, I'm smart enough,

and dogged on it people like me. Now, what you're doing is not that no, no, be clear. It may be clear to people. Yeah, yeah, yes. This is a silent meditation in which you basically sit with yourself using the principles of mindfulness meditation, trying to keep your attention in the present moment, having an open awareness of anything that you might be experience seeing during the meditation, and

then having a kind intention towards yourself. We found many people's first impulse is to just criticize themselves, to find something wrong, either with their physical appearance or some aspect of their personality, or something about themselves that does Seeing themselves activates that, and so that's really important information for people to work with because oftentimes, you know, those critical thoughts are kind of running in the background or they

get evoked when we talk to other people. But to be able to work with those with with ourselves can be really useful. Absolutely, I agree. You know, I'm really curious about that the interplay between identity and the way our physical appearance and well ways that our identity can influence our perceptions of our physical appearance or perceptions of

who we are. What is the intertwined each of there, between the identities we have and how we see ourselves in front of the mirror and seeing ourselves in reality. This is complex stuff, right, It's really complex. People think you just, oh, just sit in front of the mirror and stare at yourself, but a lot happens when you're doing that. If you're really willing to sit and commit

looking at yourself, a lot can happen. And I think one of the main things that people realize is that oftentimes they have identities that have been assigned to them by other people, and so when they look in the mirror, they can oftentimes and I even have some exercises in the book where I ask people to come up with the names that people use to describe them, like if you're you know, the difference between being Professor Kaufman versus Scott or maybe a friend to call you Scottie or

something like that, and how that would make you feel differently, and then to say those words that people call you and to see how that feels in your body as

you look at yourself in the mirror. And in that way it really helps people, you know, see what lands with them and what doesn't, and I think helps them get clear on the roles that they're playing and do they want to play them, and you know, and the toll it might be taking on them emotionally to be a certain thing for a certain person, or to act in a certain way that's consistent with how they always acted, but now they feel that they change beyond it. So the mirror can really be a way to kind of

experiment with alternative identities or shifts an identity. It's a great exercise to do when you're going through an identity shift, be it a change in your I don't know your your sexuality, the change in your relationship status, the change in your work environment, loss of a friend, all kinds of experiences that impact our identity indirect ways. It's great to be able to sit in front of the mirror and just say whoa who am I now you know,

and have that be an open question. Yeah. I think this constant balancing line between self acceptance and wanting to change things is really interesting. And how can mirror meditation help you figure out which is which? I mean, we already ascertain it's not Stuart Small's technique. You're not no matter who you are. Like, let's say you're morbidly obese and you stand in front of the mirror and you're like, I am skinny, right, I mean, that's obviously not true, right,

and so like. But then if you just have self acceptance that then you won't ever hit the gym, or you won't ever do what you have to do to loose some weight. So how can mere meditation help you see yourself clearly and motivate you to change. One of the things that I emphasize is that first you should get comfortable just seeing yourself and not doing anything. Because we oftentimes live in a culture world, we have to keep constantly doing things, and many people who are interested

in these kinds of techniques. They're on a very rigorous self improvement program, so they want to sit down, they want to do mereor meditation. They want to get results, and they have to be constantly working on something to change. And what I recommend for people have those kinds of tendencies to always like how am I improving? You know, I have to be improving every second, to just do nothing, to just do nothing, to just sit for ten minutes a day in front of the mirror, get a cup

of coffee or whatever, and just do nothing. That's going to be hard for some people who they want to hack every moment. It's very hard. But think about it. You know, we all want to have these relationships with people that were in the present moment and they accept us for who we truly are, and we just hang out and appreciate each other. And we can't do that for ourselves. We always have to be, you know, doing something,

striving to be better. Yeah, there's a lot of pressure for that in our society today, all in the cellf out world, you know, there's a lot of like get up at six am and every day and run five miles, right, you can just mere meditation is actually perfect when you first get up and just sitting with yourself for ten minutes as a way to center and start your day. So mere meditation too. It's also about it's more about

listening than about talking. So it's about listening to your kind of like your inner knowing, which might sound a little cheesy, but it's like it's like, you know, how am I feeling about my day? You know? Instead of you know, checking things off my to do list, if I just hang out with myself for ten minutes, how how is that going to you know, help me to be centered? Yeah, I hear it, And don't worry everyone. We are going to do a sample meditation today. I

assume at the end, at the end, right, right? Is that okay? Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, so everyone can see how how this is applied. The trauma, loss, and on certainty of our world have led many of us to ask life's biggest questions, such as who are we? What is our highest purpose? And how do we not only live through but thrive in the wake of tragedy, division,

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We truly hope this book helps you grow and thrive and become your best self. Okay, now back to the show. So let's go through some of some more of this sort of theory behind it and philosophy behind it. So how can you unfreeze yourself with mirror meditation? Ah? Yes, I talk in the book about the stress response, fight, freeze,

and flee, and so unfreezing. We tend to freeze, you know, suddenly when something catches a soft guard, and you can unfreeze yourself by simply moving moving your body in some way. And then also the example I given the book is a cat collar. So you're, you know, women's walking down the street and someone says hey, nice body part, and woman freezes and then feels bad because she froze because

some random person is like creating this response. So one of the best ways to unfreeze is to take your attention from yourself and how you're feeling and put it back onto whatever the threat is. So so that you're taking attention off yourself and putting it onto another person instead of focusing on ooh, maybe I do you know someone criticizes you, you know, something to do with your

appearance or something like that. People tend to focus on themselves, but really it's better to take their attention off of themselves onto the situation. That's the best ways to manage anxiety, particularly social anxiety, because in social life anxiety, we tend to focus on ourselves and how we're feeling, and how we might be looking to other people and how we're coming across. But when we just put our attention on

the other person, that can really shift things. So the mirror is really about practicing shifting your attention in different ways, so you can focus on what you're feeling inside, your

motions and body sensations. You can look outside yourself at the other people you're talking to, at your environment, and you can also take a third person perspective, which is more of a self objectifying perspective, so you're actually sort of like watching yourself from a bird's eye view about how other people see you, and that can oftentimes lead to anxiety if you do it in times when you don't want to do it, and there's a good deal

of research showing that self objectification can you can evoke self obtuification using mirrors, because we're all been trained to scrutinize our appearance using mirrors and to compare ourselves with perfect images that we see in the media. Such a good What about like narcissists who everywhere there's a mirror, they get a chance, they look at themselves in the mirror. Do you ever think like mirror meditation can run amok?

You know among narcissisms, well, too much focus on the self, right right, Well, that was one of the main sort of criticisms I was anticipating putting this work out out into the world because it did seem like what am I just advocating narcissism. So I did think about it, and I did do some research on it, and my sense of this is that narcissists can only really focus on their surface appearance, so they'll look in the mirror,

but they don't have the patients to go deeper. They don't have the patients to look for ten minutes and be involved in what they're actually experiencing. And of course there's been a long history of a connection between narcissism and mirrors. In fact, that's how the disorder was named, of the narcissusts looking at himself in the mirror and

stuck in looking at his own reflection. In the research on narcissism, particularly the neuroscience on narcissism, it appears that narcissists can't turn off self focus in their anterior insula. So it's, oh, that's super interesting, right, and so in the research that shows like one of the main things about narcissism, the hallmark of narcissism is that narcissists don't have a capacity for empathy, and oftentimes we characterize that as some kind of willful I want to focus on me,

I'm self absorbed, I don't care about other people. But there's some research to suggest that this could be happening at a neurological level, so that the interior insula of narcissists, they tend not to be able to shift from self focus to other focuses readily, so they're always sort of focused on themselves and sort of this automatic way empathy can come about by being able to recognize the emotions and others, particularly emotions of distress in others and there's

a few studies that show that narcissists cannot recognize negative emotions, particularly fear and anger in others, and there also can't really downward regulate their own anxiety, but they oftentimes have

this facade of being very cool and together. So the combination of not being able to shift out of self focus, then also not being able to recognize these negative emotions of distress in others, and also not having an impaired ability to regulate their own level of arousal all sort of contributes to sort of the annoying behavior we sometimes see in that self focus in narcissists, where they don't really reflect the emotions of others and are able to

be in communication. So one of the things that I recommend as a possibility is, you know, when people are in that self focused state, instead of getting annoyed, you might need to just point out how you're feeling, or keep drawing their attention back to how you're feeling in more obvious ways than you might think you need to. For someone who can has more capacity to shift their self focus. Wow wow wow, So what tell our audience a little more? Who our audience who aren't neuroscientists what

the interior insula does. What are some of its functions. The antier insula acts like a switch between two main types of cognitive function. One is ability to function on tasks and do the work at hand, and the other is the self focus. And basically it's difficult to do

both at the same time. So the example I give oftentimes is you're a skier and you're going downhill and your skis what you don't want to do is shift your attention to either oh, how nervous you are about out you know, doing this, or worse yet, focusing on how you look in your ski suit, to the person, to the people in the audience. Because you're going to hit a treat. You want to be able to just

focus on the task at hand. And so if you're always thinking about yourself, it's going to impair your ability to function and certainly to relate to other people. Thank you for that little neuroscience one on one. There's a chapter in your book about compassion for the narcissist. Can you talk a little about what you meant about that? And again, I want to keep digging deeper into why

your meditation actually can lead us out of narcissism. Paradoxically, well, compassion for the narcissist is it's really about reframing it instead of as an annoying person who's pulling our attention onto them, thinking about what it is that they truly

need and why they're not getting that. So the idea of calling narcissism narcissism and techoanalysts identified a certain kind of patient they had that had an insatiable need to be seen and reflected and reaffirmed, but it seemed to be a one way reflection in that their patient was unable to regard other people as any more than reflectors of them, so that they didn't really see people as people, but people who were going to admire and think that they were great, and that ended up being what was

called a mirror transference. So the question is why would someone do that? Well, one of the things that we know about narcissism is that people oftentimes identify with an idealized self image that they have created, oftentimes again to shield them against vulnerability and feeling the negative emotions. This can often be due to trauma or some kind of emotional abuse and in accurate reflection, so being reflected in

ways that are just not sustainable. So, for instance, the child who's told that they're brilliant and beautiful and wonderful and then expects the whole world to always stop and see them as brilliant and beautiful and wonderful, when in fact they that might not be the most accurate way to see oneself because everyone has both good and bad qualities. So the narcissist only wants to focus on the good qualities.

But to really build like a sense of self esteem, a sense of efficacy and accomplishment, you have to have failure experiences too, and you have accurate reflection. You have to have people around who tell you, hey, you're not good at this, or you need to get better at that, or what you said was very you know, it had this impact on people, so maybe, you know, if you

can think about some other ways to say things. So it's kind of developing, sort of like a hard show, so that you can't feel anyone's criticisms of you anymore, because it was it was just too painful for them to experience that when they were younger. So this can also be about growing up in a way that you weren't able to express any kind of vulnerability, and so the mirror can really help people who don't trust others to share their negative emotions and share their vulnerabilities so

that you can develop that relationship with yourself. First, Wow, that's amazing. So your mirror meditation can actually improve compassion among narcissists, I think, well, I think it can improve compassion for narcissists, and I think that if they're willing to look. And again, the whole term narcissists, it's so broad, it's so general. It's about like, it can be anybody who doesn't do what you want them to do or

pay attention to you. There narcissis because they didn't do what you wanted them to do, or they were more focused on what they wanted to do. So it's hard to create those blanket statements, you know. But I would say that in general, it can really help people to develop a stronger relationship with themselves so that they feel safe to know themselves. Because it's amazing how many people will say, oh, I'm afraid to look at myself in the mirror. I can never do that, and so what

does that really say about one's relationship to themselves? You know, to be afraid to look at yourself for ten minutes, and I have compassion for that. You know, I have comparisons for people who don't want to look at themselves in the mirror. It's very common. In order to support the Psychology Podcast, we need the help of some great advertisers, and we want to make sure theo's advertisers are ones

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the Psychology Dash Podcast. Thanks for your help. I was wondering if you've ever if you've ever worked with someone who would score very high on a narcissistic questionnaire and have seen a reduction in narcissism based on meditation. I'm sure if you've any anecdotes. I don't have any let me see, let me see. I answer that you've seen a lot in twenty five years. I've seen in twenty

five years the majority of people. I think people can be very defensive about doing this kind of thing, particularly if they're defending against their own vulnerability. So I oftentimes plan a seed with people, particularly people who get kind of like irritated with me and the idea of doing this, and I think that they might go away and the next time they pass by a mirror, they might it might change their view of who they are. But working with narcissists, it takes a long time, and it takes

a lot of commitment. You know. The clinical work on narcissism really shows that you have to get them at a window when they feel really vulnerable, build trust, and do individual psychotherapy. Narcissists also do better in groups in group psychotherapy settings because they can't develop that special relationship with their therapist and they get reflection from a whole

group of people. So in a sense, I think that group therapy, when you get reflections from a lot of different people, might be better than having a narcissist to look in the mirror, because that's old hat for them. I don't think that they would benefit from it. And also, it's sort of penetrating beyond your image. It's not about

your image. It's not about what you look like. And so if you really have that strong relationship with I am what I look like, and I'm looking at myself to feel better about myself, then you have to create some kind of a shift so that people can see themselves more deeply. Yes, so not just clearly, but deeply. Yes. Yes, Yeah, I love that you have this phrase in your book that I just thought was brilliant because I never thought of it before. I've seen it in the literature. Talk

about anxious and avoidant attachment styles to other people. You talk about anxious and avoidant self attachment, self attachment. That's genius, it's genius. Did you come up with that phrase? I did? I did. I've never seen it in the literature. Well, I mean, it's it's just an idea that's that's based

on the attachment styles. And this actually comes from a friend of mine who's a psychotherapist, who one of his core ideas that that has really made an influence in my life and looking at people is the idea of self abandonment. The idea that you're feeling bad about something and you don't stay with yourself, You abandon yourself to go off and distract yourself and do all kinds of things.

But yet, many people who tell stories about being abandoned, either by their appearents or romantic partners or mentors or bosses or whatever, they can sometimes be struggling with not abandoning themselves and staying present with themselves. So the mirror can help people come back to themselves. And that's sort of like avoidant avoidant self attachment, abandoning yourself, disregarding your feelings, not wanting to be vulnerable, not able to sit with

yourself and give yourself your full attention. And then anxious self attachment is when you really can't focus on yourself because you're always in kind of what they call relationship monitoring mode, and that is you're always thinking about your relationships with other people and what they would think about what you were doing as you're doing whatever you're doing, and you know, not able to really drop the focus of thinking about other people and being concerned about your

relationship with them in the moment. Wow, I think it's such so brilliant. Have you ever written a full feature article about specifically that topic. I wrote a short piece for Psychology Today, one on anxious self attachment and the other on avoidant self attachment. And I thought the anxious self attachment would you know, be a big hit because, as we know, the literature and attachment shows that the majority of or more readers than any other, tend to

be anxious. So people who are anxiously attached to read a lot of books about relationships because they want to, you know, sort of figure it out. And and then the avoidance in theory care less about relationships, so they don't buy relationship books or read read about relationshipooks. But I found that the avoidant attachment the title of the article are you avoiding yourself? It ended up being like the number one article for like a few days on

Psychology Today, and I, you know, it was amazing. I heard from a number of people that decided to try mere meditation to stop avoiding themselves. So, yeah, we should collaborate and create create scales psychometrically valid scales for both avoidant and anxious self attachment scales and validate it and correlate it with other attachment as well as lots of things vulnerable narcissism. I have all sorts of hypotheses about that already on the spot. Yeah, that sounds amazing. You

should definitely do that. That would be such a fun collaboration and we could just put that up on EDERC, you know, like this doesn't have to be rocket science study, but we can just a preliminary sort of exploration scientifically of that. I just think it's such a brilliant idea. So I'm down to do that, Collabo if you're open. Sounds great. Yeah, really to this relating this because a big part of self, a big part of attachments theory

in general is trust. You know, do you trust your partner to be there for you in times of need? So turning that within again brilliant, I really do that. It's so brilliant, Like you're under selling yourself a little bit, like, you know, like it's it's really revolutionary to think of yourself. Well from that attack of framework, what does it mean to trust yourself to be seen? What is also what would it mean, you know, to trust yourself to be

there for yourself in times of need? Just like they apply to the attachment theory in general, what would that mean? For yourself, and it's such an interesting question. I'd love

to hear thoughts. Yeah, and I think doing the mere meditation regularly, and I also have a section on video journaling, which is making a ten minute video journal of whatever you're feeling, you know, at the end of every day, and doing that consistently helps you build self trust because what the mirror does is it sort of externalizes what's

happening inside of you. So when you see yourself in the mirror and you see yourself consistently there for yourself or not there for yourself, it creates a shift in you because oftentimes, and I think everybody does this and I certainly do this. When I go into a new situation, I look around for affirmation of if I'm okay, is everything going all right? Like am I doing okay? In

your podcast? Kind of a thing, But you're doing great, thank you, And it's less so when you're able to trust yourself and you're there for yourself, it also helps you to choose more carefully your relationships with others and whose reflections you take in, because we're being reflected all the time by people who are having reactions to us, and so if you don't have a solid sense of yourself and really know yourself, you're going to be more

vulnerable to, you know, kind of these crazy reflections that people have of you that aren't rooted in reality. Now, we all need people, We all need a core group of people who love us and understand and can give us really good feedback. But we also you know, in the world of social media and public image, there's also all these other people who have these interesting reflections that can be somewhat negative and usually productions of their own stuff.

They can sort of get to us if we don't have that sense of self trust that we can discern what really lands as true in us and what is just something that is not useful, that feedback that's not useful, and by you know, develop strengthening one's relationship with oneself, you can be more discerning about your relationships and the feedback you're getting from people so good, so good? So how can you look at others through the eyes of love? Ah? Well, we did do meergazing. One of cool things that I

did in New York. In York was I did the public debut of Mere Meditation at the Rear and Museum of Art, which is downtown in Chelsea, and they have a wonderful room. It's a sacred shrine in the upper area. And we had like sixty people come and in silence, come and take their seats in front of a mirror, and I guided them through a mirror meditation. And this was it was less of a kind of clinical psychological setting. It was much more sort of like a spiritual, sublime setting.

So it was a feeling of beauty and reverence in the shrine. And so I thought it would be great because it would help people to see, you know, that aspect of themselves, that kind of divine aspect of themselves, if you will, or the appreciation of just being human. It's so hard just to be alive and just to experience that. And so at one point what we did was I had them lift their gaze and to gaze at the person across from them. Something like magical happened.

Because what oftentimes happens when people look in the mirror as they start to start to criticize themselves, and then I'll try to guide them to open their perception more broadly, to see themselves more broadly than just this little criticism that they've come up with. About themselves, and once they've expanded that, it was so much easier for them to

then look at other people and not be critical. So even people they didn't know, it was very easy for them to look at them like through the eyes of love. I talk about that the Melissa Manchester song I Saw You through the Eyes of Love, that old song. But really being able to see people in that way is very helpful, and it's also helpful to again to understand the difference between what you're feeling and what other people

are feeling. So one of the things I talk about in the book in terms of why sometimes people don't help, or people might seem sort of callous and unconcerned, is that other people's distress evokes strong emotions in them that they don't know how to regulate, and they don't know how to manage, so that they don't have the capacity to downward regulate and then help, so they just something to either distract themselves or you know, avoid contact with

people in distress. Wow, well, look homegirl. You know a lot of people they have what's called the highly sensitive personality, right, And I imagine that this could be particularly a useful form of meditation for such individuals who are constantly shape shifting based on who they're with, and they have to feel that they feel other people's moods instantly and then they take it on. You have a whole chapter book reclaiming your projections, and I think that might be related

to what we're talking about. Right. It is, like I would put it, how can you reclaim yourself? Maybe in a way? I guess that's my question to you, is you know, if you're the type of person where you just always feel like you groundless or you don't know who yourself is because you're so influenced by others, can

this help you reclaim that self? Definitely spending time with yourself and then being aware of when your attention drifts off to other people and keep coming back to yourself, and you can see some very interesting patterns and when your attention goes reaching for other people, because that becomes a regulation strategy in and of itself, and oftentimes it

doesn't work very well. But if you can see the pattern of when you start to feel a little bit of distressed or when you start feeling overwhelmed by other people's emotions and come back to yourself, that can really

help a lot. We've covered a lot of ground. You know, maybe something we haven't really touched on so much is how this can increase love for your enemies in a way, Like there's a lot of times where others look threatening, right, yeah, and how can this meditation maybe help you see the best in another person, not just in yourself? Does that

question make sense? It does? Indeed. I talk a little bit about hostility attribution bias, the idea that basically, when someone does something that has a big impact on us, we're more likely to believe that they did it on purpose because of the impact, when in fact the other person might not even know what they did. And so a lot of that is being able to take yourself

out of that experience and realizing what you're doing. And you know, oftentis people too us say well, I don't really you know, have a hustle bias, and I just think, but when's the last time your computer didn't work or your phone had a glitch in it and you thought like the phone or your GPS gave you the wrong directions and you actually thought that person that was giving directions was you know, somehow trying to mess with you, you you know, and you went in on a you know,

on a detour that you weren't expecting. And so when something has a big impact on us, we tend to look at why and who who could have done this to us? So coming back to yourself realizing that you're that, you know, it's sort of like also, you know, separating out the impact of an event from them the intention of another person, because we oftentimes can't see other people clearly when we're in a state of defense, when we're

in a state of over arousal. So being able to again have those skills to down or regulate and be open to the idea that people could look differently than you think they do. Oh boy, Yeah, that can also happen when you idolize others, right, Sometimes you know, we can put people on a pedestal and as well as demonize others, you know, we can have this kind of splitting with people. So this this fermentation, you think, can help give a broader sort of view of a human

and it's and it's grander complex. Yeah, I think so. And also, you know, I talk in the books some about self talk because some of it is a silent meditation, but you can also do self talk to try on different perspectives. So there's some very good research that shows that talking about things from a third person perspective can give you more insight into how you're feeling. So you can say, you know, Scott is feeling distressed because this

and this happens. I'm feeling distressed because this happened. Gives you a bit of distance, and then the mirror adds an extra piece of distance because you're externalizing that internal dialogue, and then you're also taking the third person perspective. So the mirror is really just a tool that you can really use to shift your awareness and shift your perspective on how you're perceiving the events in your life. Which was my original question, how and why do people perceive

reality differently? And how can we change that and make it more accurate and more humane? What a great question. So I'm now queering my mind. Would you like to do a two to five minute meditation? Sure meor meditation? Do you want to do it for the world? I do want to do it for the world, but I want to tell people if they're driving, don't do mere meditation for sure? Thank you, thank you for yeah. Yeah, Okay,

So when you do the meditation. What what you just want to do is find a way to have a mirror so you don't have to like pitch forward or

grip it, and so you can see yourself clearly. So these days, I just have people, you know, turn their zoom camera on so that the cameras big enough to see themselves and use the camera as a mirror, and I just start with a little bit of a progressive relaxation, some three part breathing, and I asked you just gently close their eyes and feeling into your breath, noticing if your breath is all in your upper chest and the

summits happens when we're on zoom camera or talking. See if you can take some belly breaths to expand your belly, rib cage and collar bones as you breathe in, and then gently contracting collarbones, rib cage and belly as you breathe out, and feeling your feet on the ground on crossing your arms and your legs and starting with the steel brief progressive relaxation, starting with the tips of your toes, relaxing your toes, imagining mud oozing between your toes, the

balls of your feet, relaxing the balls and feet, letting them sink in your instep, your heels, relaxing your ankles, your calves, your knees, and your thighs, relaxing your hips and your lower back and your belly, relaxing your rib cage, your middle back, relaxing the front of your chest and your upper back, relaxing your shoulders, and noticing your hands, noticing your hands are gripping anything real or imagined, and seeing if you can just let that go, you can

just drop whatever to the ground. Or sometimes I have people imagine that they're putting the important things on a shelf that they can pick up after and then relaxing your upper arms, your elbows, forearms, your wrists, hands, and fingertips. I'm bringing your attention up to the back of your neck,

the front of your throat. Then focusing on your face, letting all the muscles in your face relax imagining your face is being like pelted by a waterfall or in the shower, and just letting all the muscles go slack. Gently parting your teeth, relaxing your jaw, your chin, your cheeks,

your tongue, and your lips. Relaxing the muscles behind your eyes, muscles between your eyebrows, your forehead, and your scalp, relaxing your hair and your teeth and your ears, just letting everything go, and then when you feel ready, gently open your eyes and take a look, keeping your gaze soft, Noticing if you're breathing changes, noticing any first thought, Noticing the affective tone of looking at yourself. Is it negative? Positive? Do you feel happy, sad, angry? What is the general

tone you have towards yourself as you look? There's no right or wrong way to do it. Also noticing if your attention tends to get very focused or fixated on some aspect of your appearance, and if you start to maybe want to tell a story about it or fix it, seeing if you can just let that go and just be really curious. Can you imagine that you might see yourself or see something about yourself that you don't already know,

and keeping kind intention towards yourself. If you do notice yourself criticizing yourself, one of the things I recommend is to see if you can shift your attention from being the object of your criticism to being the receiver of it. Can you shift to see yourself as the person who's receiving these criticisms and how that might be affecting you, And so we would go on like this for some time.

People can do this for ten minutes or longer. It's important to stay grounded and feeling your physical body as well as you're breathing. Some people can do this let's start to hallucinate they you know, like steer all into them, into the mirror and they almost start to get in doing it. So it's important if you're open, if you have a high openness to experience score, you can you

can get into that absorption of looking at yourself. And uh, yes, I've I've had some great reports of people who claim to have morphed into all these different creatures and and and stuff, which is very interesting you know itself. Well, thank you so much Tara for for doing this. I think your work is really revolutionary. And I sure hope you'll come and and uh do a little guest lecture for my students this in the fall, do meditation for them.

I think college students could really use this. Yes, so self critical, aren't they? They're so self critical? And also just you know, managing anxiety. This is an excellent technique for for managing anxiety, coming back to yourself, working with those negative, those critical thoughts. So look forward to having you come back to Bernard in the in the fust Yeah, thanks so much, Tara. Good luck with the book, and thanks for coming on the Psychology Podcast. Thank you for

having me. It's been great. Thank you so much, Scott Pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. 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. We're on our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so

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