Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome, everybody, to the heart rate variability. Podcast. We're going to play a old episode today with Dr. Chris GERMER talking about mindfulness self compassion with myself and Ena. This is a great episode. Huge fan of Chris's work has been really powerful on us integrating self compassion into the optimal HRV app. And just a great show. Chris has become a real teacher of mine. And so I wanted over Thanksgiving week, I thought this would be a great I know we got an international crowd, so as we stuff our face over here in the US, I just thought this would be a good replay for us, just kind of for the holidays, go a little bit back and learn from Chris. So hope you enjoy. This episode is definitely one of my all time favorites. So here we go. As always, you can find us at Optimalhrv Comarability podcast, where we explore the exciting science behind heart rate variability.
The material discussed in this podcast should not be taken as medical advice. Please check with your medical provider to make sure any suggestions or strategies are right for you.
Visit us at the Optimohrv.com website to learn more about the Optimo HRV app. Download a free copy of Matt's book, Heart Rate Variability and also get show notes and additional resources around Heart rate variability and its application.
Welcome friends to the heart rate variability. Podcast. I'm Matt Bennett. I am here with some heavyweights around the concept of mindful self compassion, and I'm so excited to have both my colleague, Dr. Ina Hazan and Dr. Chris GERMER here today as well to dive into Chris's expertise and work around self compassion. So, Chris ina. Welcome to the show.
I am so excited after Chris learned a little bit about your work to really dive into this. But before I do, I'd love for you to just give an introduction of yourself and I'm going to ask a question that I want to know the answer to.
What brought you to self compassion and really dedicating a good part of your work to this important.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Thanks. Thanks for having me, Matt. It's really great to be talking with you and also with my old friend Ena. Yeah. So what brings me to self compassion? I've been meditating since I was 25 years old. I'm now 69.
I thought I'd be Enlightened by now.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: So I need a lot I was going to ask, have you got to the self actualization stage of the pyramid yet?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Well, I need a lot of self compassion in light of the current situation.
I've been practicing mindfulness for most of my adult life.
I'm also a clinical psychologist, and what got me to self compassion was after I graduated with a PhD as a so called expert in anxiety disorders. For the next 20 years, I suffered from debilitating public speaking anxiety and really had no capacity to address it. And I did everything that I knew was possible and then I learned lovingkindness meditation for myself, for oneself. And that was basically my doorway into self compassion. That was in 2006 and 2008 I met Kristen Neff who is leading researcher in this field. She created this self compassion scale back in 2003 and then from 2010 until the present we've basically been developing it's pretty well developed now, an eight week scientifically supported training program for self compassion, kind of based on mindfulness based stress reduction but focusing specifically on increasing self compassion. And that program has been taught by teachers around the world probably to probably, I would say over 200,000 people right now.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And so if people are interested in that, there's an organization called the center for Mindful Self Compassion that really distributes the program in a really beautiful way. So that's my main interest for the last 15 years at least is self compassion. I think it's, as Kristen F says, kind of the secret sauce for mental health and well being.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Great.
Let me start really simple. We'll keep progressing into the topic but what is self compassion? Let's start there because I think we could all probably come up with our own definition to it. But as somebody who's historically kind of had what, fixed mindset, thinking, that sort of thing, beat myself up a lot as an athlete and continue to do a little bit of that today, I think I could probably throw out a layperson's definition. But I would love to see, as an expert in this field, how would you define self compassion?
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Well, first of all, the term tends to give people the creeps because when they think of self they think of selfishness and when they think of compassion, they think of weakness. So why would I want to cultivate something that's going to make me selfish and weak?
But the research really shows quite the opposite.
There's over 4000 studies on this subject right now and it actually increases compassion for others. It makes us more emotionally resilient, less selfish, more motivated, all kinds of good things in the research. But what it means in a simple way, say an informal definition of self compassion is treating our, when we suffer, treating ourselves with the same kindness and understanding as we would treat a good friend. And this, I should add, is not so easy. In fact, the research also shows that 78% of us are more compassionate toward others than toward ourselves.
So it's a bit of an uphill climb, but it's definitely worth it. It really does appear to have a very positive effect on psychological well being, physical well being and also improves our relationships. So that's an informal definition. The formal definition was made by Kristen Neff, as I mentioned before, in 2003. And that is basically a three component definition which includes mindfulness versus overidentification or getting caught in our stories, common humanity versus sense of isolation and also self kindness rather than self criticism. So to be self compassionate. We actually need to be aware. We need to feel connected to others, and there needs to be a quality of warmth. So we call.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: That so, EDA, I want to bring you in.
You know, we connected over when I read your book, which I thought did a good job, and you speak to this a little bit as well, but I would love to get you jumping in here as one of the world experts on mindfulness and even throwing maybe a more scientific not necessarily scientific, but more technology part with the biofeedback thing. And I wonder what you're thinking about mindfulness biofeedback, how self compassion and Chris's work informs your.
[00:08:44] Speaker C: You know, Chris's work is know saved my thinking.
I met Chris back when I was very much into biofeedback, and I loved measuring things and getting the ability to keep track of results and having data and knowing what's going on with people internally with a fair bit of precision. And we kept getting stuck on things like that inner critic, I'm not doing this right. I'm a failure, I'm an idiot. There we go again. I can't breathe correctly. I keep doing this to myself. What's wrong with me? And I kept getting stuck on this with my clients who themselves were getting stuck. And my internal critic was going, yes, you're a failure. You're no good therapist. You just need to stop it right here. You can't go and help people breathe correctly, and they shouldn't need you for this. And there we go.
And I was fortunate enough to be meeting regularly with Chris at that time in my life. And what came of that Chris at some point suggested like, well, do you have to you do people have to be making things happen. And this idea know, we can do biofeedback from the standpoint of mindfulness and compassion, where we can just approach whatever is happening with kind presence. Your finger temperature is going down instead of, well, that's okay, let's just stay with that. Let's see what's going on. Let's allow that to happen and let's see what your body does when you allow your body to do what it knows how to do. And lo and behold, that's when your finger temperature starts going up. And that's when that internal critic goes, oh, maybe you're not so bad.
And that's when the client goes, oh, you are being so helpful to me.
So I think the idea that self compassion really is the secret sauce to many other things. Bifeback is really powerful. Hearturability training is really powerful, and it can really get people stuck if they're not able to have a compassionate presence. And for us as therapists, as trainers, we can get really stuck right there with them without the ability for us to be compassionate for ourselves and to help our clients cultivate it awesome.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: So I would love to hear, because I know a lot of people that kind of tune in, maybe that have followed me are in the helping and healing professions. And I don't think this question only applies to them. I think if you're a spouse, partner, friend, family member, can apply to all that as well. But something that I often train folks in is empathy, compassion, creating a partnership, a therapeutic alliance, we've called it. Different things throughout the years.
Chris, I believe I heard you mention, which I'd love to kind of pull this nugget out, if I heard you correctly, is compassion for self maybe translating into compassion for others? And I want to ask one, did I sort of hear that right, a little nugget that you gave us there? And I love if I did for you to expand on that a little bit.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah, you certainly heard that right. And the research is very clear that as we grow in self compassion, we also grow in compassion for others. What's interesting, though, is that if we just look at the population in general, as I mentioned before, people are more compassionate to others than themselves. But when we increase our self compassion, definitely compassion for others increases. And I had a direct experience of this after I learned loving, kindness, meditation for myself, and then got up on stage at a Harvard Medical School conference.
This was the first public event after learning self compassion.
The usual terror arose with me when I got up to speak, but there was a new voice in the back of my head that said, oh, may you be safe, may you be peaceful, may you be healthy. And then I looked over at the crowd, and I had, for the first time, I would say in my life, really warm feelings toward these folks. And that sort of flow that may I be safe was really, oh, everybody looked so beautiful to me. And I just had the wish that everybody in the room would enjoy the conference, they would be happy, they'd be thriving. So I had, after practicing lovingkindness for myself for four months, had a very direct, immediate experience of how self compassion spills over to compassion for others.
But also, if we look at this physiologically, a lot of us, when we're under stress, we're in a threat state. You know, we're in a fight, flight, or freeze state. And self compassion is and that kind self compassion is the opposite physiology. The fight, flight, freeze, threat state is more about cortisol and adrenaline, whereas there's a kind of a care physiology that's involved when we're in a self compassionate state, and that is the hormones like oxytocin love hormone or the endorphins a feel good hormone. So there's really a different physiology in a state of self compassion. And when we're in that state of physiology, it kind of doesn't matter whether we're focusing on ourselves or others. We're just in a warm state. And I think we all know when we beat up on ourselves, we're likely to beat up on others. When we like ourselves, there's a kind of a glow that includes others. So definitely, Matt, self compassion does spill over to compassion for others as we learn the.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: You know, hearing you sort of the script is very familiar with the meditation, which I have found in actually working with people in the helping healing professions. As I like to say, if you're looking to start a mindfulness practice, I always encourage people at least, hey, listen to that on Spotify or YouTube, because I think it's a great thing for folks in the fields. Education is another one I find it really useful for. I'm interested in your journey from sort of learning about self compassion to having that powerful experience of applying it to some of your own anxiety around public speaking to then creating the mindful self compassion program.
Could you tell me a little bit about because I imagine you saw something in lovingkindness that you found really valuable, and yet you saw a direction where you could bring additional value to the world. And I kind of wonder how that journey went for you.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Well, I think the watershed event was a meeting with Kristen Neff. We were at a scientist's meditation retreat, and I was giving her a ride back to the airport. She lives in Austin and then back to the Boston Airport.
And at some point we were talking about self compassion. I said, you know, Kristen, you should really start a training program and self compassion because she's a researcher and she was mostly just interested in measuring it and how it works and so forth. But I'm a clinician, so I thought, well, this sounds like a really good thing for people to learn. But there was no training for that. So I said to her, you should teach people self compassion. She said, I'm a scientist. I don't do it. You should.
So at that moment, we kind of looked at each other and thought, well, I don't know, let's do it together.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: I've made the trip to the Boston Airport a few times. So if you were regulated, it probably shows that the mindfulness sessions that you were just coming out of were very effective if you were having innovative ideas on the way to Boston Airport. Because my personal experience with that commute, I'm not thinking about how to help change the world.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Well, but I do think because there is an inevitable traffic jam, we had a lot of time, so we might eventually gotten to.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Like to chris mentioned some of the sort of neurobiological and physical chemicals when we talk about maybe reductions in the cortisol and that being sort of the inverse system, if that word is okay to use to the self compassion piece where we see more oxytocin endorphins.
I just kind of wonder, with your experience with biofeedback and all the amazing things that you sort of measure in your experience, how have you seen folks that might be practicing self compassion as part of a biofeedback. And I think I'm talking about things you do here, which hopefully I'm not too out in left field here, but I wonder, with everything you measure, what are some of the things you found with folks?
[00:18:42] Speaker C: Yeah, let me start a little bit prior to your question, and I will answer your question, but I think it's very much related. As I was listening to Chris describing the physiology of self compassion and how that translates to compassion for others, what kept coming back to me is it's really difficult to be focused on other people and how to be compassionate and open towards others when we're not feeling safe, when we're not feeling regulated ourselves. So what it sounded to me like Chris you were describing was a state of better self regulation where your mind and your body were feeling in a safer place to then be able to lock outward and go, oh, look at all these wonderful people who are not here to eat me, but they are here to hear me and support me.
And I think this is where harder variability comes in, just as importantly as oxytocin and endorphins, because heart durability is the self regulatory mechanism. And I think this is the point of intersection between self compassion and hearturability. They both work on self regulation. The state of self compassion regulates your body and your mind and raises your heart, your viability. And the same thing happens the other way around. As you raise your heart, your viability, you regulate yourself better, you're in a better state to experience self compassion, and you're better able to experience compassion for others. And then, Matt, to answer your question more directly, this is exactly what I see when I get people hooked up to all the instruments, when we're measuring all the various aspects of heart viability and breathing and perhaps other physiological measurements such as muscle tension and skin conductance and things like that.
What I see when people are talking about threatening situations, things like public speaking events or encounters with scary family members or scary bosses, et cetera, the body goes into the state of threat and we can very much see that heart survivability decreases, breathing becomes dysregulated, speeding backwards goes up, muscle tension increases, things like that. And when we either bring a self compassion into that, or we go into a state of increasing heart durability, both achieve a similar result. And for different people that weigh in, for some people, the weigh in really is through self compassion because they actually have a lot of trouble paying attention to the physiology of it. And for others, self compassion is scary. So they're able to get there through regulating their physiology more directly by raising their hearturability. But eventually people get to that state of better self regulation and those who raise their heart durability end up becoming more self compassionate. And those who start with more self compassion, increase their heartability.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Fascinating. Chris, I'd like to something know Ena said, and I've seen it in my work as, you know, people struggling. I think your words may have been almost afraid or scared of.
And I've done a lot of work in the trauma arena, and we talk a lot about personal narratives and the story of yourself and those sort of things. So Chris, I would love to hear from you. I'm going to just ask a very general question, and I'll let you just go wherever it sort of makes sense to go is why do we struggle so much as human beings to accept ourselves?
I won't even say love, but even sometimes like ourselves, it just seems like there's this I don't know if it's a modern phenomena.
Do we just have too much time on our hands? So we overthink? I'd love to just get your even if it's not scientific, I'd love to get your opinion on why is it such a struggle for us to like ourselves?
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's the million dollar question. And I suspect that we don't really have research evidence to answer that question. But many people think, well, it's cultural, but I've had the opportunity to teach self compassion all over the world, and wherever I go, people have a cultural reason for not being more self compassionate in that area. You know, in China, it's because of confucius.
In the Midwest, it's because we're supposed to be working hard and not giving us a break because we're Lutheran. And then there's Catholic guilt.
There's always a good explanation. But I think what's really more consistent around the world is that people are just way more compassionate toward others than themselves. And I have to say I think it goes down to human physiology. I think we're just hardwired for that.
And in particular, our threat system is more rapid than the care system, subsystem of the autonomic nervous system, and we're so easily triggered in a threat state. And my sense is that when that happens and there's no external danger, I like when Ena said the audience is not going to eat you.
Basically the threat system is kind of based on the idea that something's going to eat you. But nowadays what eats us is attacks on our self esteem. So we're getting triggered all the time. The threat system getting triggered all the time, but when there's no being outside is going to eat us, instead of fighting an external threat, we fight ourselves.
So basically fight becomes self criticism. Flight becomes kind of a self abandonment. When the danger is inside, we abandon ourselves, often in shame, and freeze becomes rumination or getting stuck in our heads. And what's really interesting in Kristen Neff's conceptual definition of self compassion is that she has two compass. There's like, self kindness on the one hand and self criticism on the other. And there's common humanity on one hand and isolation on the other, and mindfulness on one hand and rumination or overidentification on the other, really the opposite of self compassion is, we could say the fight flight free system turned against ourselves. What's also interesting, I should say, Matt, is that those aspects of self criticism, isolation and self absorption, rumination are very clearly aspects of shame.
So in the same way that self compassion is a state of care and a state of safeness, as ina is saying, it's also the opposite of shame.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Yeah, and I just seen that with working especially early on in my career with survivors of abuse.
It just shocked me. There's things that I wish people in graduate school would at least mention to me. And the one was these people, children who've experienced just horrific abuse. I just heard over and over, it's my fault, I deserved it. And it's just like I don't think what would have been really useful to hear was that would be where I would meet people in their journey. It would be that devoid of any self compassion, or in the trauma world, we talk a lot about self worth and how trauma the message of trauma kind of steals that away from you astounded me. And obviously it is extreme examples of self criticism and shame, but just blew me away about where I met them in their journey. And I wasn't thinking. We were joking about self actualization early on. It's like, how do you get someone to just say I'm an okay person? And that was where a lot of my clinical work early on was really focused.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Well, I think that Ena has come up with a lot of brilliant things in this field. And the first really brilliant thing was actually that mindfulness is about feedback, but it's about a particular kind of feedback and can we allow ourselves to get this kind of clearer feedback, more clear than we might get from mindfulness? But one of the difficulties is that what Eno also said is that self compassion can be scary and biofeedback is not so scary. So the question ultimately comes up, why is self compassion so scary? And I think you just nailed it, Matt. And that is that when we start to give ourselves kindness, we actually do begin those early childhood traumas and toxic messages that we got about ourselves actually reveal themselves.
There's a saying love reveals everything unlike itself.
And we have an expression in the mindful, self compassion training called backdraft. That is, when you give yourself unconditional love, you discover the conditions under which you are not loved. So self compassion indeed can be scary. And I think this is another reason in answer to your earlier question of why people are not more self compassionate, is because when we are kind to ourselves, we will in fact re experience disconnections. Old basically relational pain will definitely come up. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't practice self compassion. It usually makes people not practice self compassion. But if you would like to increase self compassion, you actually need to expect, in fact even begin to welcome that these old pains come up because they will be healed with self compassion, giving ourselves now the love and attention that we needed back then.
When these old traumas come up, when we give ourselves self compassion, we can actually meet them with mindfulness and self compassion and heal them. We can re parent ourselves. So this comment by ina, which is that self compassion is scary, and then also the option of HRV biofeedback as a way of enhancing the same physiology without touching the early trauma, necessarily because it's resource building, it's creating safeness. HRV biofeedback is creating safeness is a gentle way in. It's a way of strengthening that resource so that when these traumas do come up, we already have a foundation for working with them.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Awesome.
I just want to pause anything you'd like to add or follow up with that. That was a master class right there.
[00:30:43] Speaker C: Yeah, that was a really awesome way to connect the concepts. Chris, I absolutely agree.
You're right.
When a self compassion appears threatening, it's ultimately not the self compassionate self that's scary. It's what we are being compassionate towards that's scary and threatening. And that's where people go no.
And again, as I was listening to what occurred to me, people so often say, oh, now self compassion is for the weak.
But again, that's almost like a justification for giving ourselves a break from paying attention to that really scary, difficult stuff. Because ultimately when we can allow ourselves to look at it through the lens of self compassion, that's when we are at our bravest.
And anything that we can do to help people get there in a gentler way can go a very long way. So if we're creating that sense of better self regulation so that by the time they get to the tough stuff, the intensity of it is just a little bit lower and people are willing to sit with it and the fear is not as strong. People are willing to look at it and experience self compassion, which for so many people is life changing.
From going from this is absolutely not for me, to going, oh, my God, this feels so different. And that transformation is just remarkable to watch.
For me as a therapist, as a clinician, having witnessed that a number of times, it's really just amazing.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Awesome.
I'd love to ask two Harvard Medical School connected folks here a question that is just a subject that I think personally I've dealt with my entire life. But I also see this almost rigidity around perfectionism because I think a lot of folks again, maybe it's cultural pieces. I think it's probably most cultures, at least that I have studied that have this sort of expectation. And Chris, I wonder if you had any thinking about this drive that's really I think supported by them to be perfect, whether that's to look perfect, to act perfect, to get straight A's to whatever it is, athletically, professionally, academically.
And I know I have two high achievers on here, so I'm probably talking at least a little bit about both of you as well. How do you see self compassion and perfectionism sort of go hand in hand as well?
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah, well, there are many ways to talk about that, but it's really central to the subject of self compassion.
We have a central paradox in the practice of self compassion that when people actually remember this, their practice goes really well, and that is when we suffer.
We practice not to perfect ourselves, but to embrace our imperfections.
This is a radical reframe of everything we do.
We're not trying to improve ourselves. We're rather trying to embrace ourselves as we are. And this is really a difference that makes a difference, but why does it make a difference? And that is because perfectionism, in my view, is ultimately a shame problem. In other words, shame is an attack on the self. And the idea is, if I were more perfect, then I would not suffer any negative feedback. And this all comes down to Matt, one of the most basic primordial needs of human beings, which is to be loved, appreciated and respected. And so this is kind of the motivation that we wake up with and we go to sleep with and we carry with us through the day.
It's a matter of life and death, really, to be accepted, especially for our hunter gatherer ancestors. So when it appears that we're not going to be appreciated, loved and respected, we get afraid. And then we think, well, what would increase this is if I just did everything perfectly. Perfectly means that I would be able to control outcomes and I will always be receiving the love, appreciation and respect that I need. So the opposite of that is shame. So when people are continuously beating up on themselves, they need actually to work really hard to be perfect, but they ultimately will never solve the problem. Because the problem is not that people are being beaten up outside, the problem is they're beating up themselves. So if we can switch out that kind of harsh self criticism with the opposite, which is good enough, the sense of I love you, I'm here for you, you're not alone. I've got your back, I trust you. This is the spirit of the internal conversation. And when people are talking like that, then they don't have to be perfect in everything. They have actually dismantled the shame that underlies it. But what underlies shame? What underlies shame is the wish to be loved.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Powerful. So I got a couple of questions as I know we're hitting close to the wrap up here, but I got to get in. One is I know you teach this, so I would love to. Hear about somebody who might be listening to this who may not have thought a whole lot about this, but I think a lot of us right now is, I could use more of this.
Tell me a little bit, just sort of an overview of how do you approach this? I know you've kind of made a curriculum around this, a program around this, give our audience maybe a little taste of I could use a whole dose of this right now. If they reach out to you and maybe try to get into maybe one of your classes, how do you help people increase their self compassion?
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Well, there are as many doorways in as there are people. Probably the quintessential self compassion question is what do I need?
And just asking oneself that question is an act of self compassion. What do I need to comfort myself in this moment. What do I need to soothe myself, validate myself, protect myself, provide for myself, motivate myself? So what do I need is the main question. Another question people can ask if they would like to be compassionate, self compassionate in a particular moment is how would I treat a friend right now based on the informal definition of treating oneself as one would treat a good friend.
But just practically the single most impactful and simple practice, which people seem to like the most for activating self compassion is soothing and supportive touch, which means to simply place your hand on a part of your body, particular part of your body that might be holding stress and just feel the sense of touch and warmth of your hand. Again, not to manipulate or change how you feel, but simply as an act of kindness because we are experiencing a moment of stress. So this is called soothing and supportive touch.
And there was a research just came out of University of Monheim in Germany two months ago that showed that actually when you do this, it will decrease your cortisol level. In other words, it will actually reduce stress.
But interestingly, regarding heart rate variability is also another way of bringing compassion to ourselves is to speak to ourselves in a kind way, particularly with gentle and supportive words. So we can easily ask if in this moment, if someone were to whisper into my ear something that I need to hear, what would that be? And really have the courage to be honest with ourselves and then to actually offer ourselves those same words. So there's soothing touch, there's gentle vocalizations. And there was a really interesting HRV study, I think ina you might be aware of this by Nicholas Petrocci in Italy in which he had, I think, three experimental groups. One, people just looked at themselves in the mirror. Another one, people talked to themselves in a kind way without looking at themselves in the mirror. And the third is people looked at themselves in the mirror while talking to themselves in a kind way. And they found that the latter group increased self compassion and heart rate variability. In other words, if you look in the mirror and you say kind things to yourself, you will probably increase your heart rate variability. So anyhow, those are some different ways. But the Mindful Self Compassion training program is basically eight weeks in a very kind of scaffolded way learning how to build this skill of self compassion.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Awesome. I know your books are on my reading list. Now, I'll give you a chance here after this question to let folks know that might be interested in your work, sort of how to find it. I guess I couldn't let you leave, though, without kind of bringing your work into the present situation.
Whether it's my work with leaders around self care or wellness.
The burnout model I use, I think is really relevant to this because what I see in the burnout research is people get exhausted. They realize they're not giving their best self to the work that's important to them. And then guess what hits is that guilt and shame that evolves over time. And I just see so many people there or in stages beyond that where maybe it's in many ways solidified into a trait of cynicism and callousness even. And a lot of people are really struggling with maybe not being the parent I've wanted to be or my child's not getting all this experience. I know teachers I worked with, physicians I work everybody sort of like not been is carrying around some guilt and shame about just who they've been able to be professionally, personally during this pandemic. And I wonder if you have any insights to how the last 2021 months, almost two years now has impacted people from your unique perspective. And if there's any, just like little nuggets. And then we'll give the folks the big nuggets about how to get deeper into your work. But just maybe little nuggets people can do besides saying good things to themselves in the mirror moving forward, just to maybe survive and much less recover from just the trauma and the tragedy we've been through the last 20 or so months.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for saying that. Well, for starters, Kristen Neff and I last month signed a book contract with Guilford Press to write a book called Self Compassion for Burnout.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: Congratulations.
We need that book. I'm excited.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: That'll come out probably in the early part of 2023. Awesome.
But what you're saying is really true in the medical field. At least 50% of physicians now consider themselves burnt out. And as you said, Matt, some people say, oh, I'm just so burnt out. But it actually is really a crippling condition where we feel cynical and start to hate the people we're supposed to care for and then we hate ourselves for hating them and exhaustion and low functioning and so forth. So Burnout is real and it's happening now.
There's been research on self compassion during the pandemic all over the world, actually, at least six or eight studies showing that self compassion is really, really helpful for regulating the stress and the added stress of the pandemic. And I think it really works along the lines that Ena was talking about in terms know, decreasing the threat response, the sympathetic nervous system, increasing the parasympathetic response, providing a sense of safeness, critical and also a sense of connection even in the midst of disconnection. So I think, frankly, heart rate variability is one of the underlying mechanisms by which self compassion regulates difficult emotions. But I would just like to say that it's really not fair if we consider personal development as the only way to deal with burnout. And toward that end, I think it's really important to note that self compassion has a yin and a yang side. It has a tender side and has a fierce side. And the tender side is attending, comforting, soothing, validating, but also has a fierce side. And we're seeing this with a great resignation.
It's kind of a great reevaluation and a great resignation, which basically means take this job and shove it. In other words, people are actually standing up, they're unionizing against inhuman work conditions. They're basically standing up to various inequities that really perpetuate our suffering. So just to know that to deal with burnout, it's really important that we deal with the structural situations that create it. And now we finally sort of popped out of it enough to see those things that have been going on for a long time as well as to increase our capacity to cope with respond and remain resilient to the inevitable stresses of life.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: Yeah, and I would be remiss and I'd love to just get your quick thought on this too.
I really see right now, the thing I'm really worried about is one of the things that I think everybody would agree if you ever work for a great boss, that boss becomes a huge resource for you and can help you really build resiliency in the face of work stress, pre COVID, post COVID, COVID, whatever it might be. Where I'm seeing so many leaders right now is that they've been burned out. And I think one of the things that we need to start talking about is if a burned out leader, a leader that kind of acts in some of these inverse ways and acts out of their shame, acts out of their guilt, acts out of their sympathetic, or Amygdala is just going to exacerbate all these problems that you just mentioned. So where I'm really excited that you're writing a book about this is everything you're saying about self compassion. Well, there is leadership skills to build on top of that. If you miss the relational piece of this, I love the idea of co regulating people's stress and being that support system is leaders who can't access this part or are struggling right now. I'm really worried about what consequences not only for them medically, psychologically, but I think one of the reasons we're seeing these systems fail is leaderships are in these systems that are burnt and a society that's burned out too.
And I wonder, just maybe as a kind of last answer to my question before I turn over to you, where have you seen this kind of hit with leaders? Have you seen folks gravitate towards this in their leadership approaches as well?
[00:49:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
So compassion and self compassion is really following close at the heels of mindfulness in the leadership and in the business community. Mindfulness is now kind of standard procedure in business consulting, but the research is now getting really strong to show that compassionate organizations are more productive for many reasons. It increases collaboration, increases motivation and ultimately productivity. But then the question is how do you create a compassionate organization? And I think what you were referring to, Matt, is really key, which is it's a little hard for burnt out leaders to create a compassionate organization because they're just trying to survive.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: Frankly, the reason why I am so committed to this field of self compassion is because in my view, there's nothing more important in terms of personal development at this point in global history than for us all to be a little more compassionate. And I think the easiest way to be more compassionate toward others is to be more compassionate with ourselves. In the same way that there's no effort at all to fall in love with ourselves, with the proper training, we can actually fall in compassion for ourselves and the inevitable outcome of that is we're more compassionate toward others. So this is also getting into the business almost. It's almost done. We have a specialized eight week training for business leaders which has been organized by Michael Mercks in Germany and an international team to do exactly what you're saying to support the leaders so that they can create compassionate organizations so that organizations can thrive. The fact of the matter is that we spend so much of our time in the workplace and life includes suffering. So so much of the suffering that we experience in life happens at work, yet we consider it sort of something extra that people need to kind of suck up and deal with.
That's not a sustainable model anymore. We actually need, as you said, Matt, to attend to the connections between people. And also we need to foster and facilitate people to have a strong connection with whatever is meaningful to them so that everybody thrives.
[00:52:22] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, I cannot wait. And I hope that the book on Burnout will trigger another episode with you, because I'd love to get my hands on it, do a deep dive with you around that topic, because I think in any field, especially in the ones I work with, where you need to give empathy and compassion to other folks, which can be exhausting at times, too. I mean, there's a lot of work. There emotional labor that we don't talk about. I can't wait to have that as a resource and hopefully a good solid excuse to continue this conversation. So as somebody who has created and I just want to celebrate that ride to the Boston airport that spurred all of this, I love looking back at those little things that spur some really amazing and transformative work like yours.
I've got your website up here, great resource. But tell people if they're interested in learning more about you, hey, how do they find out about your trainings, about your books? I'll let you guide them to the right place.
[00:53:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think the best place is to go to the center for Mindful Self Compassion. WW dot Centerformsc.org. And that nonprofit is really responsible for disseminating self compassion training throughout the world. And there are a lot of resources. There free meditations and all kinds of things.
There are free online circles of practice groups in three times a day, every day that people can attend. It's all free.
And then there are also programs you can join and pay for if you want. And there are books, there's a professional book called Teaching the Mindful Self Compassion Program for your professional audience. There's a workbook called Mindful Self Compassion Workbook.
Kristen Neff's website is an enormous resource, especially for scientists that's self compassion.org.
And I also really give a shout out to our colleague in the UK, Paul Gilbert, who developed Compassion Focused Therapy and he has the compassionatemind Co UK, which has an enormous amount of resources on how to grow in self compassion. So there's a lot out there and the research is thriving. I think we're at the beginning of a big wave. And I really appreciate you, Matt and Ena for being interested in this and everybody who has been listening to this video, thank you.
[00:55:31] Speaker C: Thank you so much, Chris. This has been an incredibly insightful and thoughtful and useful practical conversation. Just a perfect blend, know the science, know, kind of a bit of an intro, but a deep dive and a lot of really great practical advice for people. So thank you so much.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: Absolutely, thank you. And we'll put some of that information in the show notes as well for folks which you can find at heart ratevariabilitypodcast.com. And Chris, I also want to thank you. This has been a great episode and like I said, please, as that new book is coming out, love to have you back. Who knows where the world's going to be at that time, but I can pretty much guarantee how things are going, at least in the United States right now. We will still be talking and in need of your expertise both inside and outside the work environment. So I really thank you for your work and joining us as well.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: Well, listen, Matt, I think that the best antidote to burnout is just to spend an hour with you. You're just so full of delight and energy.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: Hey, well, I'll take that as our last word and thank the audience for joining us as well. Thanks so much, everybody.
[00:56:45] Speaker B: Thank you.
