Balancing Self-Compassion and Relationships, with Dr. Kristin Neff

(electronic music) Headspace Studios. (meditative music) Hi everyone, it's Dr. Kristen Neff here. Welcome to Radio Headspace, end of Friday. Thanks so much for having me as your guest host this week. It's been such a pleasure to share tools, science, and stories about how to have more self-compassion. So today we're gonna talk about how to care for others without losing yourself in the process. Some people actually worry that self-compassion is selfish, it's not, self-compassion is actually the most generous thing we can do for the others we care about. Self-compassion is additive. In other words, the more compassion that flows inward, the more compassion we have available to flow outward. So the research shows that self-compassion helps our relationships in two main ways. One, it actually increases the quality of our relationships with others. In other words, if we're in a better mind state, then we're more able to be intimate with others. We're more able to be our authentic selves with others. So the other way that self-compassion works is helping us to care for others without burning out. Let's face it, it's pretty stressful and draining if we're caring for our elderly parents or for our children, or maybe even our spouses. And if we don't fill our own cup, eventually our cup will run dry. (meditative music) And so part of the way this works is through something called mirror neurons, that means that we're impacting each other's mind states constantly. When we're caring for others in pain, their pain impacts us. We actually feel the pain of others. And so when we're feeling the pain of others and we aren't giving ourselves compassion for maybe how hard it is to be a parent or to take care of our parents, then we're just gonna be further drained. But when we give ourselves compassion for our empathic pain, you might say, it actually gives us the resources to hold that without being overwhelmed and drained. But here's the cool thing. Empathic resonance or our mirror neurons, they work both ways. If we're kind of burnt out or depressed or depleted, the people we interact with are gonna pick up on that. But if we feel more calm, more kind, and loving to ourselves, then we are a kinder and more loving presence to everyone we interact with. And actually, I have a little story of how self-compassion really helps in my relationship with my son, Rowan, is autistic. And what I would find is that when Rowan used to have these terrible tantrums when he was little, that I couldn't actually help him directly because he was just lost in his tantrum, but if I would give myself compassion for how hard it was to be with his tantrum, I would put my hands on my heart, I would say, "You know, I'm here for you, Kristen." I would calm and soothe myself. By calming and soothing myself, Rowan would actually kind of feed...