Hi there, you're listening to Take Out Therapy, short lessons in popular topics about emotional health. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter. I'm a therapist by day, and we don't really tell people what to do.
We listen, we validate, and we focus on helping people reach their goals. But in the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations, because sometimes we need some damn instructions. Clearly, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee you it might help.
Listen up, and if you have little people in the room, throw on some headphones, because I swear. Okay? I'm grateful you're here. Thanks.
Hello, friends. Thanks for stopping in. Ooh, I've got a touchy-feely one for you today.
So thanks for joining me, and be willing to get a little touchy-feely. Are you going to be okay with that? Yeah, I know. I'm not good at touchy-feely sometimes either, but a while ago I went to an amazing conference and it was a conference in which a woman named Kristin Neff came to speak about something called self-compassion.
And it was a mindfulness and self-compassion conference. It was over a weekend and there was a lot of experiential stuff. And it was years ago and I was in kind of a shitty place, actually, in my work life.
I was doing agency work and it was not fulfilling at all. I do not thrive in bureaucracy. That's one thing I've learned.
Anywho, at the time I went to the conference, I was struggling and, oh, my gosh, it was amazing. So what I learned about, I'm going to share a little bit with you today because I've been practicing it now for a few years and I have, I finally, like it's a process. Everything's a process.
It's helped me to be more patient. But what I know is that we can practice self-compassion in hard moments and it helps so much. And we can kind of streamline it and it just becomes like a practice, basically.
So what I'm going to talk about today comes from the work of Kristin Neff. It also comes from my own life and being a therapist and just spending all day talking to people about their relationship with their self. But the general premise of all of this comes from Kristin Neff and I highly, highly recommend going to her website at self-compassion.org and just check out her work.
She's a lovely woman and very smart. And she's the only person, the first person, not the only person, the first person that started doing research on our relationship with our self. And so what she found is that like, we're not nice to ourselves, you guys.
Shocker, right? And so when things get tough, we are really unkind to ourselves and it makes things a lot worse and it isolates us. So when things get tough, what I'm going to teach you today is that self-compassion can help. So self-compassion is basically this idea.
It's not self-esteem. Self-compassion is just the idea that we can comfort ourselves, basically, and that that helps us be in a better relationship with ourselves, which is kind of different than self-esteem. Self-esteem, and I'm not going to go into big detail about self-esteem because I really want to focus on self-compassion, but self-esteem is very comparison-based.
Like, how am I looking compared to that lady over there? And then that's how I'm going to feel about myself. And so unfortunately, a lot of the source of self-esteem is for many of us, other people, right? Whereas self-compassion, self-compassion actually doesn't have a lot to do with other people. It's important to understand that it's kind of a, it's a private practice.
There you go. It's private. So self-compassion is very important to bring into our lives because we are not nice to ourselves, you guys.
And one other thing that Kristen talks about in our work is like, we're really unkind to ourselves. As a matter of fact, we treat our pets better than we treat ourselves. And so if you have a pet, just think about the words that you say to your pet, right? You say, oh, you're so beautiful, or you're so sweet, or aren't you such a good girl, right? And so we don't talk like that to ourselves, right? We don't have comforting, kind relationships with ourselves.
We're like, get your ass up and get to the gym. You look like hell, right? And that is not helpful. P.S. like that's not motivating.
I don't know who that motivates, but research shows like barely anyone. Anywho, we're not taught to be self-compassionate, right? We're taught to sort of like beat ourselves up a little bit. And as a matter of fact, sometimes our parents were kind enough to model that for us, right? Of course, they didn't know that that's what they were modeling.
But like, you know, what I grew up knowing is that women don't like their bodies. And so it would be odd if I did like my body, right? And it would be even more odd if I talked lovingly about my body, right? Like, well, that's weird. And so we're just, we're taught to kind of beat up on ourselves.
We're taught to have these kinds of relationships with ourselves. And so when we start talking about this idea about self-compassion, we can kind of see like how that could be a good thing, because it would improve our relationship with ourselves. Like if I talked nice to me, that'd be helpful, right? And also, P.S., kindness to ourselves, it really helps us to be kinder to other people.
And that is one thing that I've learned over the years, is that the more compassionate and loving I am to myself, the more room I have to do that for other people, right? And so the other thing is like, we can teach this. We can sort of, if we practice being kind to ourselves, we can actually teach this to young people. We can model it for them, right? I try to model for my boys what I'm working on in my life.
Well, duh, because I'm living in the same house as them, so they can totally see me, right? And if I'm modeling self-compassion, this can help them understand what that is, because I got to tell you guys, our young people are suffering. And so I just want to like hit this hard and say like, if we don't start being self-compassionate, we are raising kids that are living in a time and a place that is so much more complicated than how we came up, and it's hard out there. And if they don't know how to have a relationship with themself that is loving and kind, oh my goodness, they're in trouble.
They're suffering. Okay, I'll just stop there. Maybe I could do a whole episode on how young people are suffering.
But when we bring kindness in and are self-compassionate with ourself, it's a technique that requires us to understand that we're not alone, right? And I'm going to talk a little bit about how it helps us feel less alone. But when we tell ourselves, right, that we don't know what we're doing, or like great job on the same mistake you made last time, right, we feel so shitty. And when we feel so shitty, we feel alone.
And so self-compassion helps us feel more human, basically. But, you know, it's hard. It takes practice.
And I want to say like, most people don't know what self-compassion is because they haven't learned it, and they don't know how to do it, right? And when they try, it feels really difficult, and it feels super weird also, right? Like I'm standing in front of a mirror saying nice things about my body, like really? Seriously? That's a thing? Why on earth would I do that, right? We move really fast through the world, you guys. We're moving at a very fast pace, and we're not particularly paying attention to what our dialogue looks like, but our dialogue's really impactful. And what I mean by our dialogue is we're not really paying attention to how we talk to ourselves.
And it's something that like most people that come into my private therapy office, we talk about dialogue with ourselves because it's so important to recognize like, okay, well, what is your relationship with yourself like? How do you talk to you? You know? And so once you start noticing, you just slow down. Then you're like, oh man, not good, not good. But a lot of people don't get to the step of practicing self-compassion because they don't know how to do it.
And so there's basically three areas to self-compassion, and I'll just run through them quickly because I like to keep this short, but I recommend dig in, man. Do some work around self-compassion. The first thing to really do if you want to improve your relationship with yourself through this practice of self-compassion is like you got to slow it down.
You just have to, right? You have to just slow your life down a little bit and pay attention to your thoughts. And if that means like you got to sit and do nothing for five minutes a day and just like watch your thoughts, then learn to do that, right? We're calling this mindfulness. It's just like slowing life down and paying attention to like what's happening around you, what's happening within you, right? And mindfulness is like paying attention in a certain way, but like without judgment, which is, oh, hello, that's hard, right? That is the practice.
The practice is non-judgment, which I have to tell you is very difficult, but also super worthwhile. It's a practice, right? It's a practice, meaning practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. Okay, so mindfulness is kind of the first step to self-compassion because you have to figure out like how your relationship with yourself is and where it could use some change, right? And when I started practicing this, one of the first areas of my life that I noticed that could use some change was my relationship with my body, right? Of course, I think most women would agree with this statement because I'm just a regular lady.
Like I'm not out there running marathons and I enjoy things that are, well, shit, man, I like knit and I like to hang out and read and I love to hike, but like I'm not a super body improving type of gal. Isn't it funny? I'm like defending why my body just looks like a regular old body. So yeah, the first area that I noticed needed a little help was totally like my relationship with my body.
And so just being kind there, this is sort of the first act, right? It's like kindness. And when I ragged on myself, just saying, oh yeah, like that's hard. It's hard not to do that, you know, just being compassionate and caring with myself and understanding like, oh yeah, that's how it's been, right? And then just being nice and saying, you know, like it's okay, you're okay, right? And then, you know, just understanding, I think the kind of other place about self-compassion that we have to kind of use in the practice is this idea about shared humanity and like a lot of women feel bad about their bodies.
If we just stay with my little example, my little, you know, cultural epidemic example, we can move to like this feeling of like, oh right, this is how it is to be a human and it's okay, right? This is something that people struggle with. So whether it's like, you know, the difficulty of being a parent, right? Or maybe you have negative self-talk around your ability to provide, you know, for the family. And so like just understanding that these are all really common human things and joining, just sort of like joining up with other humans in the difficulty is the way we practice self-compassion.
So again, like slowing things down and practicing mindfulness, exercising like compassion, care and kindness in your interactions with yourself. And then again, just bring it out and understand that like, you are a human being, right? And we were just like out here slogging it out, you guys, it's real hard, you know, sometimes and it's okay in the tough moments to just like dial it back and be nice. And so I'll just sort of tell you kind of how I do this in tough moments in my own life when I'm either having a conflict or I'm all twisted up about something or I've just had a bad day or whatever, there's something that I do.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret of my routine. So I really like getting in water. Water is something that it feels really healing to me.
So like I'm a bath person, I got all kinds of bath shit, you know, I got a whole like shelf of stuff. And then also like I am lucky enough to have a hot tub that we keep running for most of the season. So I will submerge in water when I'm really suffering.
And sometimes when I'm not, because it's there and I love it. And it helps me come into my body, right, which is like being mindful, like when we arrive in our body, and like when you get in a hot thing of water, you can feel that, right? Like that has a feel to it where you're just like in your body, you're like, Oh, that feels so good. It's quite lovely.
I know you're all running your bath right now, since I'm just talking about this. I'm like, I have to go because I'm gonna get in the bath now. So you know, that's my routine, I get in the bath, and then I'm, I arrive in my body.
And I just, and I just like, ask myself, what's happening? What's going on, friend? Right, just like I would ask a friend, like if my sister was sitting with me, I'd be like, what's going on, you know? And so then just like, listening, right, and just having compassion, like, Oh, that was such a hard day. Right? And just kind of asking myself, like, what would be helpful right here? Yeah, what would be helpful? And sometimes, like, I'll just place my hand over my heart. Or sometimes I'll just like, take a couple nice deep breaths.
And sometimes I just say something nice, right? Like, Oh, that was a tough day. And I think that you did the best you could. Right? Or like, you're just showing up in a way that feels vulnerable right now.
And like, good for you. Right? And then to just really, for me, I just think like, about how I'm supported. That is how I practice shared humanity in tough moments.
I just think about the people that really care about me. Right? And that helps so much. Because of course, like, even though maybe it's a conflict with my husband, john, but like, he totally loves me.
Right? And so I can just be like, okay, okay. That's a resting place, shared humanity. Right? Just thinking about who cares about you.
So anyway, that's just a little example about how I show myself self compassion in hard moments. And so hopefully that will help you show yourself compassion in hard moments because we needed my friends. It's hard out here.
So I hope that helps. Have a great week. Thanks so much for listening.
This podcast is meant to be helpful to help you learn some stuff and grow as a person. And to help me fulfill my mission of opening the doors to the therapy office a bit wider. So we can get rid of some of this stigma.
Life is challenging, and we need all the help we can get. This podcast is not meant to be a substitute for therapy. But I do recommend getting some professional guidance whether you're struggling or not.
It can be a great way to learn about yourself so you can navigate life a bit easier. I'm really excited to be a part of some change. If you like what you heard today, head on over to my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com or go ahead and follow me on social media.
I'm Rebecca Hunter and this is Take Out Therapy.
