Episode 3: A Crash Course in Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is often dismissed as a feel-good, ethereal concept but it’s actually an essential behavior change skill. It’s well-researched and highly correlated with positive changes in happiness, body image, eating behavior, physical activity, social relationships, and life satisfaction. This episode defines self-compassion, explores both tender and fierce self-compassion, and elaborates on how we can use compassion to motivate ourselves towards change.

Episode Transcript:

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hi, everyone! Welcome to today's episode. I'm gonna be completely honest, today's episode is a big topic and I have gone over several times how to present this in a way that I like, and I'm not sure I've quite found it yet. I think the reason that I'm having such a hard time putting this one together is because this topic is so important to me. It's something I'm very passionate about; something that I feel is essential to behavior change and it is a lot to try to put all of that into a short little episode, something that's digestible, and that I feel will make a difference. So I'm having a hard time with that.

The topic we're talking about today is self-compassion, which you can probably tell just by the name of this podcast is something that I feel is very important. It really underlies my whole approach to health and wellness, my approach to this podcast, and to coaching. Compassion is of huge importance to health and wellness.

As I've been thinking about how to describe this, how to put it into something that feels understandable with the magnitude of how important this topic is, I was thinking of a toolbox. How we have different tools that we pull out, different things we use in different situations, specifically behavior change skills that we keep in our toolbox. Depending on what we encounter, we may pull out a hammer or a screwdriver. There's different needs and different tools that we rely on. Self-compassion is the tool that fits every situation.

So not knowing a lot about tools. I reached out to my husband. I said, "Okay, what would you say is like the most versatile tool? The tool that everyone needs, and everyone should have in their tool bag?" His response was actually perfect, and exactly what I didn't know I needed. He said, "a pocket knife", which apparently is also called "an everyday carry". I'd never heard that phrase before, but that's what he said they call a pocket knife. And that is perfect. Because self-compassion is your pocket knife. It's so important, it doesn't even go in the tool bag. It's in your pocket. It's on you. It's with you all the time. It's that essential and can be used in so many circumstances that it transcends the toolbox.

So that's what we're talking about with self-compassion today. I know it sounds like a froofy topic, ethereal, this idealized skill. But there's actually a lot of research on self-compassion. It's something that is very concrete, very well-defined, and has a ton of research behind it and so that's what I want to go over today. What it is, what it's not how we use it, the role it has in behavior change. And what makes it so important.

We cannot talk about self-compassion, without talking about Dr. Kristin Neff. She is the queen of self-compassion. She literally has written the book on self-compassion, which I will link in the show notes because if you are interested in this topic at all, she's by far the best resource I can think of and a lot of the information I'll be sharing today comes from her research.

Dr. Neff has identified three components of self-compassion. The first one is self-kindness. This is exactly what it sounds like, that when we are experiencing suffering or pain, we are kind to ourselves. We're not judging ourselves. We are comforting. We are accepting. We're treating ourselves how we would want to be treated by a friend or how we would treat a friend experiencing a hard thing.

The second component is common humanity, which is this idea that we are all connected in imperfectness. Nobody is perfect. Nobody has a perfect situation, and that pain, suffering, hard times are literally a part of the human experience. Sometimes we get stuck in this trap of thinking that everything needs to go perfectly, and if it's not perfect, then something has gone wrong. That's just not the case. The 'going wrong' piece is the most human part of that whole sentence. That's really the idea behind common humanity, that we are not isolated in our challenges. Anything hard that you are going through or have been through someone else has been there before.

The last component of self-compassion is mindfulness. We've defined mindfulness before on this podcast, it's the non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. In this case, with self-compassion, it's really acknowledging that something hard is happening without over identifying with it. With mindfulness, we often hear it compared to sitting on the side, or the bank of a river, watching the river go by. You see it happening, but you're not standing in the river, you're not overflowing with all the currents and everything that's happening in there. You can watch it non judgmentally from the side. That's the same idea with mindfulness and self-compassion, we can see the hard thing, we can recognize it, we're not pretending it's not happening. But we're also not freaking out about it and over-identifying and becoming whatever that hard thing is that's happening to us.

A lot of the concerns or the hesitancy that I hear as a coach with self-compassion (and we'll see if any of these resonate with you), a lot of times, I'll hear people say:

I'm never going to get anything done if I'm too self-compassionate.

I won't hold myself accountable.

I need to be hard on myself to push me.

I don't need the pity or the feeling, I just need to do it.

What this tells me, as a coach, is that there's an incomplete understanding of what self-compassion is, because there's this idea that it's it is kind of froofy, and it is just a feel good thing. There's much more to it than that.

What we've talked about so far is the tender side of self-compassion, the loving, the connection, the presence. Tender self-compassion is really about being with ourselves, sitting in that space, providing the soothing, the comfort, the safety. Healing ourselves. You can think of as being like a hen that gathers her chicks. They're in this safe space, it's warm, it's protected. That's the tender side of self-compassion.

There's also a different dimension of self-compassion that Dr. Neff has identified called fierce self-compassion. Sometimes we need the healing, we need the comfort, we need the tenderness. And sometimes we need to change something, we need action. That's where the fierce side of self-compassion comes in. Fierce self-compassion is about protecting ourselves. It's about providing for ourselves. And it's about motivating ourselves. It's really acting in order to alleviate the suffering, not just soothing ourselves from the suffering. If we're doing another animal comparison, this is the mama bear. The mom who has her cubs behind her, and she is going to take action to make sure that a change happens and that boundaries are held and that you know what she needs. And that's the fierceness.

When we view both of these aspects, the tender and the fierceness, we can see that self-compassion, then is not about complacency. It is about healing us and then encouraging us to make change happen to improve things for the future. What becomes important about self-compassion, then is that we find a balance between these two different sides, the tender side, and the fierce side of self-compassion. And more than a balance, I like to think of that as being a harmony, because it's not always going to be equally balanced. They're not always needed in equal amounts. This is really where the nuance comes in. You may need different aspects of compassion at different times. It's up to you to figure out, do I need the tenderness right now or do I need fierceness and to take action?

When looking at self-compassion in relation to behavior change, I like to think of it as this harmony between the structure and the flexibility. If we're too loose, then we aren't going to take action. There's no accountability, things stay the same. If we're too tight, too hard on ourselves, that sucks any motivation out anytime we encounter a challenge. If you think of it, like when you are rollerblading (and I don't know why rollerblading comes to my mind, because I literally haven't rollerbladed since I was probably 10), but when I think back to my days as a rollerblader, the important thing was keeping your knees bent a little bit. If your knees were locked and super straight, and you hit that crack in the road or the sidewalk, or a rock, it would cause you to fall because you didn't have the bounce to absorb that shock that was needed to be able to kind of go with the flow. That's what we're looking at here with self-compassion, that balance between these two things that allows you to take action and also care for yourself and to soothe yourself when a hard thing does happen.

One thing that is important to point out about self-compassion, is that it is a skill. I think sometimes we feel it should come naturally or we're just not good at it. Because it's

skill, we can get better at it. I want to acknowledge that it probably doesn't come naturally, it can feel very unnatural to be self-compassionate. Let's look at the physiology for just a minute. In your body, you have two systems in your autonomic nervous system, that function unconsciously. Your body just takes care of it.

One of those is the sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight, your stress response, and the other is your parasympathetic, which is the rest and digest. Your sympathetic is like your gas pedal, "go, we need to move". Parasympathetic is your brake, to calm things down.

When we don't feel that we're doing a good job, or we've let ourselves down, it challenges the idea of who we think we are. We generally want to think that we are capable and functional and doing well. So when that is threatened, that triggers the stress response, your sympathetic nervous system engages, and we want to fight, flight, or freeze. The thing that's tricky about this is that when our ideas are threatened by ourselves, by our own thoughts, the danger is coming from inside the house. The call is coming from inside the house! So in this case, we are both the person that feels attacked, and the person doing the attacking. When we fight, we fight ourselves. We criticize ourselves. When we flee, we're withdrawing. We're sitting in shame; we're pulling away. And when we freeze, we're stuck in our own thoughts. We're ruminating. We can't get past; we're having a hard time processing things. That stress response is targeted at our own self, which is the opposite of self-compassion. It is bound to feel unnatural, because our normal stress response, which has been built to protect us, is now triggered towards our self.

All that to say, if self-compassion doesn't come naturally, if it doesn't feel normal at first, that's okay. That's normal physiology. The beauty of it is that is learnable, and because it's learnable, it takes practice. It's something that we need to do and be proactive about in order to increase our self-compassion.

The first step towards building self-compassion is building that awareness around it. Recognizing your own self-talk, your thought patterns. Recognizing when you're feeling that criticism against yourself, when you're feeling judgmental towards yourself. Journaling can be helpful with this. Sometimes just the recognition and stopping yourself, which may be physically stopping to think about it, and to ponder on it and pausing bringing some mindfulness in.

Once you have that awareness, there's lots of different exercises you can do to bring in elements of self-compassion. Because the stress response happens physiologically, self-compassion also happens physiologically. You can calm that down, you can engage your parasympathetic system, the rest and digest system, through touch.

A lot of self-compassion will have to do with touch. Putting your hands over your heart, maybe giving your hand a little massage, hugging yourself, gently rubbing your arm. Some people even put their hands on their face, kind of hold their face. You could do a power pose, if you're looking for more fierceness. Putting your hands on your hips, putting your feet apart, your hands on your solar plexus, which is right below your ribs above your belly button in that area. There's all these different things you can do to physically touch and bring some compassion to yourself.

Another thing you can do is ask yourself, "what do I need right now?" That's like the golden self-compassion question. Sometimes that may be the tenderness, you need to hold yourself, you need to just be soothed. Sometimes you may need the fierceness, you may need to hold a boundary, you may need to do something that doesn't sound very fun, but it's going to be helpful in the long run.

As you're thinking about what you might need, consider those three components. How can you be kind? How can you connect with someone? How can you bring some mindfulness in? Those three things can guide you, in addition to figuring out if you need some fierceness or some tenderness.

Another question you might ask yourself is, "what would I tell a friend who's experiencing this same situation?" This helps us to get out of our own bubble, because we are so much nicer to our friends to our family than we are to ourselves. If somebody was in that same situation, a good friend of yours, what would you tell them?

When your friend eats an extra slice of cake? Do you tell her she's not worth it? She's never

going to make a change. Why is she even trying? What is the point, she's worthless? No. But we say that to ourselves when we feel our eating behavior isn't aligned with this idea of perfect or what we think should be perfect. (Should's are a whole other thing, but we'll get there one day). There's quite a difference in how we approach others versus how we approach ourselves. Considering what you might say to somebody else that you really care for can be a helpful way to view a more compassionate perspective.

In addition to these questions, there's a lot of meditations you can do. There's writing exercises. I have a freebie that I can send to you that has three different self-compassion exercises, I'll link that in the show notes. If you want a copy. I'm happy to send that to you. Dr. Neff's website also has so many meditations and journaling prompts that you can go over. So I'll also link that below as well.

As we wrap up this super condensed crash course on self-compassion, I want to revisit the importance of this. Self-compassion matters, because you have inherent worth. I know we talked about it mostly in the context of behavior change, but whether you're working on goals or not, self-compassion is important. Whether you achieve your goals or not, self-compassion is important. Whether you feel productive or not, self-compassion is still important, because you are worthy of love. You're worthy of compassion, regardless of any of those things, regardless of your productivity, regardless of your accomplishments, you still deserve that self-compassion. Oftentimes, recognizing and accepting that is the key to being able to make a change, to being able to bring your health and wellness vision to life, and to do it from a positive perspective that feels enjoyable and feels like something you want to do and something you want to continue with. That's why self-compassion is so important to making health and wellness changes.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I know this was a lot to cover. Hopefully I made it makes sense. Hopefully it felt somewhat organized. I know this is a topic we will definitely be revisiting in lots of different contexts, so I thought it would be helpful to get a basic self-compassion 101 out there.

As always, references will be in the show notes. If you have thoughts, questions, feedback, feel free to send me a message. Rate and review the podcast. And I look forward to talking with you next week!

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.

References:

• 3 Practices to Increase Self-Compassion by Alex Treanor, MS, NBC-HWC

• Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Dr. Kristin Neff

• Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive by Dr. Kristin Neff

• Self-Compassion Guided Practices and Exercises by Dr. Kristin Neff - https://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/#guided-meditations