[Music] hi i'm chris germer and thanks for your interest in this topic um for the next 25 minutes i'll make a case for self-compassion as an antidote to shame and then after that i'd like to offer a 15-minute practice to give you a felt sense of everything i'm about to say so for starters self-compassion most of you probably already know a lot about self-compassion um however it was not always like that back in 2003 uh kristen neff published the self-compassion scale and her article was the only scientific article on self-compassion in the peer-reviewed psychological literature at that time and now there are over 3000 articles on the subject so there's a lot of interest in self-compassion mostly coming at the heels of mindfulness my own introduction to self-compassion was personal through the doorway of shame i'm a clinical psychologist with a specialization in anxiety disorders and i suffered for 20 years from public speaking anxiety and nothing in my clinical toolbox could fix it i tried everything mindfulness meditation and exposure and beta blockers and cognitive restructuring nothing helped until i learned loving-kindness meditation for myself in other words just repeating phrases like may i be safe may i be peaceful may i be healthy may i live with ease so prior to that i'd actually been meditating for at least 30 years but never explicitly and repeatedly uh offering kindness to myself and then after i started doing that four months later i attended a big conference at harvard medical school and when i got up on stage to speak for the first time in my adult life the anxiety just disappeared and this was an amazing experience for me and also a revelation so i learned a bunch of things um uh one important thing that i discovered at the time was that my anxiety disorder was actually not an anxiety disorder at all it was a shame disorder so um all my efforts to manage or to accept anxiety really didn't work because anxiety wasn't the problem underlying shame wasn't the problem and i wasn't touching it and you can imagine you know i used to get up on stage and talk about mindfulness but i was uh you know so nervous i could hardly get out a word and that would needless to say get me to think or at least to worry that the audience would think that i was incompetent that i was fraudulent maybe a little stupid so these are all uh symptoms of shame um but i wasn't able to address it throughout that whole time but uh loving kindness meditation actually gave me the love and acceptance that i so desperately craved or needed particularly when i was getting up on stage despite being a flawed human being despite having anxiety um and it also showed me what i'd been avoiding so long namely shame and also interestingly self-compassion started to address my shame even before i knew i had shame in other words it was only when i had the resource of self-compassion that i was actually even able to see shame and i also discovered at the time that when we're in the grip of intense and disturbing emotions like shame sometimes we need uh to hold ourselves first before we can hold our experience so that's actually the subtle difference between mindfulness and self-compassion mindfulness is loving awareness of moment-to-moment experience and self-compassion is loving awareness of the experiencer the sense of self and so we all know when somebody else is upset that first we have to pay attention to them until they can calm down enough to be able to address the issue same thing with us so together mindfulness and self-compassion are a powerful combination for managing uh difficult emotions um so uh what is self-compassion first of all i think self-compassion is a rather unfortunate uh term some people like to use the word inner compassion um and it's unfortunate because many people when they think of self-compassion they associate self with selfishness and compassion with weakness but the research really shows quite the opposite people who are high in self-compassion are less self-absorbed and narcissistic than people who are low in self-compassion they're generally more emotionally resilient in other words not weak uh more motivated to achieve their goals generally happier and healthier mentally and physically and also self-compassionate people tend to have more uh compassionate satisfying relationships with others so it's really got nothing to do with selfishness or weakness um what does self-compassion mean and informal definition of self-compassion is when we suffer treating ourselves with the same kindness and understanding as we would treat a dear friend and this is actually a radical act uh research by kristin neff shows that 68 of us are actually more compassionate to others than to ourselves only six percent of people are actually more compassionate to themselves than others and the remaining 16 percent are about even self-compassion is also a humble enterprise we're really just including ourselves in the circle of compassion we are not systematically excluding ourselves and this has enormous uh ramifications in terms of uh health and well-being and not just for us but also for others as i mentioned uh when kristen developed the scale her formal definition of self-compassion had three components mindfulness common humanity and self-kindness so to be self-compassionate we need to number one know we're struggling while we're struggling with some measure of acceptance that's mindfulness we can't be compassionate if we don't know we're struggling right part two component two is we need to feel kinship with others in the midst of our suffering in other words to see our suffering as part of the human experience rather than isolating us and we also need to have a warm and kind attitude toward ourselves and this is the self-kindness aspect so we need all three components to have self-compassion in kristen's model the opposite of mindfulness is self-absorption or self-identif or over-identification or rumination that's the opposite of mindfulness the opposite of common humanity is isolation uh and loneliness and the opposite of self-kindness is self-criticism or self-doubt what's interesting is that in 2003 when kristen developed this model she wasn't aware that self-absorption uh isolation and self-criticism are actually key features of shame [Music] um but they are so theoretically self-compassion is the opposite of shame and the research also bears this out that is to say whenever scores on this self-compassion scale increase scores on shame scales decrease so i'm a clinical psychologist and i've always been interested in shame and particularly the shame side of self-compassion because shame is associated with just about every psychological disorder including anxiety depression substance abuse eating disorders personality disorders relational conflict if shame doesn't cause the problem shame is often a result of the psychological condition because of the role of stigma anyhow right now i'm writing a book on self-compassion and shame 15 years after discovering the power of self-compassion to alleviate my own shame-based public speaking anxiety so what's shame so in a nutshell shame is a is a self-conscious emotion with negative self-evaluation so shame means i'm imagining in my mind what you are imagining about me and it's not good so shame can be considered scorned in the eyes of another and when we feel shame there's always an attack on the sense of self so for example there's a difference between guilt and shame which most people are aware of guilt means i did something wrong and shame means i am wrong guilt means i made a mistake shame means i am a mistake so there's an attack on the self um but shame is way more common than we think so for example if you want to wake up in the morning at 6 30 a.m and you sleep till 8 you know when you wake up you're proud you might think oh gosh i'm such a lazy person or if you forgot your sister's birthday you might think what kind of a sister am i so these are all attacks on the self or if you drove by a tennis court and had the thought i could never play tennis i'm too uncoordinated in those moments you would actually be unwittingly shaming yourself how often does this go on in their minds in the course of a day frequently so human beings are actually hardwired to feel shame shame served the purpose of keeping the tribe together during our evolution by making it extremely painful when we violated group norms the tribe needed to stick together for survival and it hurts shame hurts really badly emotionally but when we break the rules but this actually meant that we would stop doing what we were doing and that it wasn't the tribe didn't have to hurt us physically in order to bring us back into line we were already hurting emotionally when it was clear that we broke the rules so it has a evolutionary function most shame uh actually comes and goes rather quickly especially when our tribe welcomes us back into the fold um however when we refer to uh shame nowadays we're really not talking about this kind of adaptive shame that makes us stop and then review what just happened we're talking about the shame that we carry with us everywhere we go and that's what's known as trait shame rather than state shame it's in us um so you can say that we're all born with the capacity for shame but we are not born feeling shame all the time that kind of shame results from how we have been treated by others and it is not our fault interestingly research shows that shame is less about doing something wrong than about being devalued by others even when we did nothing wrong so for example so we can be we can feel shame because of how we're treated even if we did nothing wrong um and when we are treated badly by others we internalize those attitudes and then we feel badly about ourselves so we can be mistreated by people in our own families for example in childhood we can be mistreated by others outside the family people whom we know and we can also be treated badly by the culture cultural oppression based on our identities you know such as race ethnicity ability financial status gender gender identity age sexual orientation no fault of our own but if the culture devalues demeans and degrades us that gets inside of us and causes shame fortunately we can collect connect with a collective or with supportive people and we can actually dismantle shame interestingly though even when shame results from our own actions it should not be a life sentence we shouldn't have to carry this around with us for the rest of our lives because our mistakes are really a product of a vast multiplicity of conditions that are beyond our control such as our personal history our emotional triggers whatever is going on at the moment maybe what we had for breakfast yeah so we could say that the only true cause of anything is the universe of interacting causes and that is not under our control stuff happens nobody wakes up in the morning and says gee you know i'd like to do something today that i'm gonna that i'm gonna that's gonna make me feel shame for the rest of my life stuff happens in us and through us we have some control but not as much as we think so therefore we need to find a way of eventually forgiving ourselves for our mistakes in the words of the eminent psychologist uh paul gilbert in the uk shame is not our fault but it is our responsibility um once we feel shame hopefully we can learn to behave in a way that doesn't cause additional harm to ourselves and to others in other words to learn how to work with shame to keep shame from perpetuating itself um and shame can shame can us for example the shame that results from severe childhood abuse and trauma what keeps what makes trauma become post-traumatic stress disorder is largely the shame aspect we remove the shame aspect by increasing the self-compassion aspect and then it um we're much less likely to have post-traumatic stress and shame can also hold us back in subtle ways for example if we don't uh speak up as we should or maybe if we work too hard to prove our self-worth because we don't actually feel as much self-worth that's the work of shame or maybe we're angrier than we should be you know everything is perceived as kind of a threat to our self-esteem because our self-esteem is isn't strong right because shame is tearing it down so these are subtle ways that shame influences our lives and also in the workplace you know shame shame can hold us back it um shame reduces our motivation people who are high in self-compassion are more motivated to achieve their goals it reduces our motivation it decreases our authenticity right when we feel shame we don't trust ourselves it robs us of self-confidence it makes it it makes it harder to face our mistakes if a mistake is a critique of who we are as a person harder to face and then we can't learn from them shame also makes us self-absorbed we're thinking about ourselves when we are being attacked right even if it's from within it also makes us less creative and it can lead to all kinds of unhelpful behaviors at the workplace such as isolating ourselves or being overly compliant or or aggression which is not good for anybody so mindfulness of shame is actually the first step to alleviating shame mindfulness is uh as i said knowing what we're experiencing while we're experiencing it with acceptance unfortunately um it's not a given that we recognize shame especially while it's happening within us shame is mostly invisible and it certainly was for me uh during those decades of public speaking anxiety i was only looking at anxiety i couldn't i couldn't see the shame i didn't have the strength to face the shame it was invisible so um but it's actually that it's not that shame cannot be seen it's that we don't want to see it it's just too painful uh denial is a is a intimate part of the shame experience um we also don't want to uh talk about shame you know it's hard to say that makes me feel ashamed but when a person can say i feel shame or i'm feeling ashamed shame has actually already started to loosen its grip it's a hard thing to say but it's a powerful thing to say to to alleviate shame so another reason why shame is invisible is because shame wipes out the observer the the part of us that needs to be engaged in order to see and work with shame it's an attack on the self and it makes the self go small go silent go away just makes us want to disappear or slip into the earth you know and when shame is severe it also leads to dissociation which is the experience of leaving our bodies checking out so that we don't need to feel what we're feeling this is all the work of shame and sometimes in order to avoid our shame to check out we engage in dubious behaviors such as getting angry at others because we don't because the self-blame is so intense it's actually relief to get angry at others when we have shame or numbing our feelings with for example by working excessively or binging on food or alcohol also by throwing ourselves into risky behaviors which is like distracts us from how we feel so all of this makes us not present check out we can't work with shame if we're not there and a lot of these behaviors they even lead to more shame um so for example drinking it to not feel shame then we feel shame about drinking right so these various forms of avoidance may actually feel better in the moment but they actually make shame last longer the principle is what we resist persists but here's the good news avoiding shame is actually more of a problem than shame itself avoiding shame is more of a problem than shame itself and when we stop avoiding shame in other words when we can mindfully see it recognize it make some space for it and when we can meet shame and ourselves with kindness shame then begins to receive so therefore it's good to recognize when we're feeling shame so how do you know when you are feeling shame for example what happens internally what do you feel when you feel shame so just think for a moment internally what do you how do you know it because we do know it don't we if when we're paying when we want to know it so there might be a sinking feeling there might be a sense of like being punched in the gut sometimes there's tightness in the throat or the chest sometimes a sense of hollowness or emptiness in the head region oftentimes there's flushing or in the face or tension or your skin crawls or you feel nauseous these are internal ways of feeling shame like right and then also shame has external physical manifestations so for example one of the most common expressions is a kind of a there's a kind of slumped shoulders averted gaze muted speech maybe there's some fidgeting sometimes people are absolutely still sort of frozen swallowing hard so these are ways that we can actually see when other people are feeling shame but we can also notice in ourselves and then also their mental manifestations of shame so what goes on in your mind when you're feeling shame this is good to know because if you can name shame you're on the path to alleviating it what goes on in your mind so you may notice you're being self-critical like i was saying you know i could never play tennis i'm too uncoordinated could we recognize that that kind of criticism that's shaming so there's self-criticism maybe a sense of inadequacy like i'm not good enough mentally there's often confusion like what or powerlessness vulnerability that's so common with shame we feel profoundly vulnerable naked you know just like adam and eve naked uh mistrust uh sense of unworthiness unworthiness incompetence another thing the mind does as i mentioned before is ruminate rumination and self-absorption actually it's interesting when people are feeling guilty they're actually less self-absorbed and they're more likely to be able to repair a relationship if they cause somebody harm when people are ashamed they're just self-absorbed and they're actually less likely to do anything about it to fix it so um most of this kind of trait shame is actually not good for social relations um so this is what goes on in us we start to ruminate become self-absorbed so the amazing thing about shame is that shame after all this said is mostly an illusion it's an illusion shame feels really terrible it can ruin our lives it can ruin other people's lives this is definitely a fact but uh like in the film the wizard of oz uh when when we pull back the curtain on shame when toto pulled back the curtain on the wizard what was left there was a benign showman holding a few levers you know so shame is like that when we pull back the curtain of shame when we see it through new eyes the terrifying aspect actually withers away so what do we find when we look more closely at shame especially through the eyes of self-compassion what does shame look like so we discover that there are actually three paradoxes about shame three insights there's there's an illusion and there's an insight so the first is that shame feels blameworthy but it's actually an innocent emotion that that calls for kindness shame and innocent emotion it's innocent because it arises it arises from the wish to be loved the energy of shame is the wish to be loved it is innocent the second insight is that although shame feels isolating it's actually a universal emotion everybody knows what shame is it's universal it actually connects us when we remind ourselves and the third insight is that shame feels permanent and all-encompassing it's like my this is like who i really am you know it feels like we've this is some truth about us it feels all-encompassing it feels permanent but it's just an emotion shame is just an emotion it's a temporary emotion we don't always feel shame it's a temporary emotion and it is all it only represents a burden that part of us is carrying it is not who we are so these are three insights through the eyes of uh self-compassion these insights correspond to the three components of self-compassion namely self-kindness the one about it's feels blameworthy but it's uh innocent emotion self-kindness second common humanity and third mindfulness and we can uh this um when we discover these insights in other words not just intellectually but feel them in our own direct experience shame can never be quite the same again we actually pierce the illusion so what i'd like to do now is just to speak about the first illusion and that is that shame feels blameworthy but it's an innocent emotion that calls for kindness and then after that we'll do an exercise the self-compassion break for shame which will give you a direct experience of all three paradoxes of all three insights and how self-compassion uh can help okay so uh the first insights [Music] uh when we use the word innocent when i say that it feels blameworthy but it's an innocent emotion we are not denying that shame can have tragic consequences we're simply suggesting that shame arises from the universal wish to be loved so reclaiming reclaiming the wish to be loved is the first and most courageous act of many people on the path to self-compassion and it can also by the way kick up a lot of difficult emotions but the innocence the innocence of the wish to be loved also makes self-compassion more accessible so it's so much easier to feel compassion for innocent beings easily we feel compassion for children pets dolphins including ourselves when we connect with our innocence so uh some people don't like the idea of the wish to be loved maybe they prefer the need to belong or the need to be appreciated to be respected to be included to be connected so this is all fine you can use whatever language feels right um just the other day i saw a brand new study that showed that children as young as three years old will override their own preference preferences in terms of what activities they're doing in order to follow the norms of a group so already at three years old children are behaving like others they want to follow the rules this is this is instinctive in us through evolution i like personally the the state the the phrase the wish to be loved because it captures a a deep uh primordial vulnerable need that we have and actually to heal shame we need to go to this vulnerable place in other words out of the conceptual and into the visceral and we are all born with the wish to be loved so infants are incapable of actually of doing much for themselves we know this when an infant is born it can't do anything it needs to be fed it needs to be touched it needs to be kept warm food clothing shelter touch it needs everything so how does an infant get its needs met it's really quite simple an infant gets somebody to love the child to love it and then everything flows naturally parents often throw themselves in front of a bus in order to protect their child give their child what they need not always of course you know some parents are not very good parents at all but um that's how children survive they they have others take care of them so with their first breath not only are they inhaling in order to make the body survive but they also have a wish and that is love me okay and this wish love me is is well known daniel ledinsky um wrote a poem based on the poetry of hafez the 14th century persian mystic and the poem is called with that sweet moon language and it goes like this admit something everyone you meet you say to them love me of course you don't do this out loud or someone would call the cops still though think about it this great pull in us to connect why not be the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying with that sweet moon language what every other eye in this world is dying to hear admit something everyone you meet you say to them love me anyhow most of us have forgotten this this is true isn't it but most of us have forgotten this universal wish to be loved that is beating in our hearts at this time in fact in this moment as you're looking at me in the screen you're hearing all about shame and self-compassion do you see in my eyes the wish to be loved it's there can you see it in your own eyes you know um so all of us have uh forgotten and why have we forgotten we've forgotten because it hasn't worked right we've been hurt we've been we've reached so many times we've reached out to people intimate people more distant people to be loved just as we are and it didn't work so we kind of had to forget if we continued to seek to be loved in every interaction consciously we would be wounded over and over again so we've actually sort of started to specialize i'll i'll be like strong or intelligent or charming or who knows what in order to be loved right we're not open for this all the time but still we wish it and what would it be like if we remembered this wish to be loved in other words what if what if you woke up in the morning put your hand over your heart and said to yourself something like just as all beings wish to be loved so do i to now and throughout the day wish to be loved what would be like if in your mindset you knew this and then you walked out into the kitchen you saw your children or your spouse or you walked down the street you saw a stranger and you knew that you wished to be loved what would you see so inevitably you would also see that person also wishes to be loved and when you see that in other people would it change your relationship to another person definitely you would feel much closer at a vulnerable level not so afraid this is an amazing insight this is part of who we are but we have long forgotten what does this have to do with shame well shame is the belief that something is wrong with us that renders us unlovable unworthy uh too flawed to be accepted just as we are that's shame and when we look deeply at the nature of of shame we see we can see that um we would never feel shame if we didn't wish to be loved so shame is the that the wish to be loved is the energy that sustains shame if you didn't wish to be loved you wouldn't care what other people were thinking about you you would have no shame so it's this energy this primordial wish to be loved it actually sustains shame so here's the deal shame and the wish to be loved are like two sides of the same coin one side is shame the other side is the wish to be loved and when we turn over in the midst of shame if we can turn over the coin and see the wish to be loved if if you notice when you're feeling shame gripped with shame and you can recognize you know i wouldn't feel like this unless i wish to be loved when you can see that in that moment you will start to slip through the web of shame because in that moment you're going to slip into a kind of into your primordial innocence the innocence with which we were born that primordial wish so connecting to the wish to be loved actually opens the door to self-compassion more specifically it opens the door to innocence which in turn opens the door to self-compassion the next step is to give ourselves the compassion that we need especially in a moment of shame which is the trickiest of all situations to uh to receive compassion so what i'd like to do now is to uh lead you in a brief exercise called uh self-compass self-con the self-compassion break for shame and it's based on the three components of self-compassion mindfulness common humanity and self-kindness in that order uh before we do this exercise please ask yourself if this is a good time to touch shame in your life so maybe your cup is full maybe you've heard a lot already and you need to digest what you've already heard or maybe you're going through some stress in your life and you actually don't need this right now this exercise so please take really good care of yourself you can always listen to this recording at another time and if you decide to go ahead with this practice please know that you can also disengage stop the practice anytime you like so please take good care of yourself in this exercise that too is self-compassion so if you'd like to do this please find a comfortable position you can do it sitting you can do it lying down and then gently close your eyes and i'd like you to think of an event in your life past or present that makes you feel embarrassed or somewhat ashamed as to say about a three on a scale of one to ten so for example maybe you feel ashamed that you haven't returned a friend's phone call for over a year now or maybe someone at work is more successful than you and makes you feel less than or maybe you don't have enough money to do fun things with your friends and feel embarrassed when you have to say no or maybe maybe you're getting a divorce and you think it reflects badly on you so please think of an event that's kind of mild to moderately embarrassing somewhat shameful but not anything traumatizing because this exercise won't work the first time you do it something mild and also let it be an event that you would prefer not to share with others and of course you don't have to uh because you imagine that someone would think less of you if they knew about it or thought about it and if you go from three you know again you want this to be about a three on a scale of one to ten if you go from a three to a ten in intensity during the exercise which can happen then please just just go ahead and let go of the exercise just disengage from the instructions you can always come back to this later okay so with your eyes closed partially or fully fully is probably a little better if you can do it please allow yourself to in your mind to return to this situation and recall how it feels if it's a present situation or how it felt at the time if it's a past situation see if you can visualize the situation the people there any words that were shared but most importantly how it felt in your body at that moment this is a mindfulness practice so this takes some courage nobody wants to feel shame but it's also [Music] it's also liberating to be able to say oh this is what shame feels like this is shame so right now validating for yourself the experience of shame you know just saying silently to yourself ah shame this is shame this is how shame feels and doing it in a kind way as you would for a friend oh you're feeling shameful and now seeing if you can discover where in your body you feel shame the most is it in your head your neck chest gut and also allowing the experience to be there just as it is perhaps making a little more room than usual for the experience of shame in your body so that's mindfulness the reason we're making a little more room for it is because shame is part of the human experience so this is common humanity right now just reminding yourself that what you're feeling is part of the human experience everyone feels shame and not only that most anybody in the same situation as you would probably feel shame as well and in fact probably at least large percentage of people watching this particular video right now have a similar experience so in this feeling of shame you are not alone you may be feeling isolated and alone that's the nature of shame but you are not alone shame is a universal emotion so allowing yourself to feel this knowing that this is a universal emotions and while you're feeling it i'd like you to consider for a moment that you only feel like this because you like everyone else on this planet just wants to be loved or just wants to be appreciated [Music] to be respected to belong that shame happens we worry about whether we're accepted or whether we fit in or whether we're liked or loved we worry because this is so important to us this wish springs eternal can you feel it springing eternally in you can you feel how this energy this wish to be loved is what leads to this worry this concern this shame can you allow yourself to drop deeply into that innocent wish perhaps just saying yes i like every living being just want to be loved i want to be appreciated want to belong can you give yourself permission to connect with that universal wish and as you do that what happens to your shame stay with the wish that tender vulnerable yearning in us all and now let's see if we can respond to shame in a new way so beginning to give yourself kindness simply because you feel this kind of distress as we all do so what you can do if you like is you can go ahead and put a hand on the part of your body that feels shame you know if you like if it's comfortable it could be your face your neck your chest your belly and just feel the warmth of your hand if it's warm or definitely the gentle touch even if you even wish you could if you wish you can even gently rub that part of your body just taking it in another thing you can do is bring to mind the really compassionate being in your life it could be a dog it could be a grandparent it could be a friend and i'd like you to visualize their eyes and their face gazing at you a compassionate way and just allow yourself to bathe in that gaze and finally are there any words that you would love to hear or would have really or need to hear or would have needed to hear at the time that you were feeling like this so if somebody you know came into the room and just whispered in your ear or something that felt was felt just right to you what would that have been whereas like oh i feel for you i'm here for you i believe in you i trust you you're a good person i love you what words would be like honey nectar medicine in that moment [Music] and now if you like offering those words to yourself saying those words over and over again in a gentle way now putting it all together just noticing how that the hand feels on your body visualizing compassionate eyes and offering yourself these kind words this is all the self-kindness component of self-compassion okay so now i'd like you please to release this whole practice and just allow yourself to rest in your own experience knowing just let it go let yourself rest knowing that you can return to this practice anytime you like especially in a moment of shame you can name shame this is shame feel it in your body make some room for it remind yourself you're not alone connect with the universal wish to be loved and then you can be kind to yourself in some way so before you open your eyes just allowing the whole experience to settle allowing this exercise for you to have been just as it was and if for only one moment for this moment allowing yourself to be just as you are just like this and then when you're ready to slowly open your eyes so i want to thank you thank you for listening to this talk thank you for participating in this exercise so uh we have gone where angels fear to tread you know shame is the most difficult human emotion but we can go there with mindfulness and with self-compassion if there's any residue from this exercise that continues to linger after a while please take really good care of yourself in some behavioral way some way that's familiar to you drinking a cup of tea taking a warm bath listening to music just taking really good care of yourself that too is self-compassion so i'd like to uh thank you for listening um to this uh wisdom for life uh series on mindfulness and compassion uh two perhaps two of the most important inner resources that we could ever learn thank you so much