On Self Compassion

Geri: 00:00:05

Welcome to Changing Academic Life.

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I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this is

a podcast series where academics and

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others share their stories, provide

ideas, and provoke discussions about what

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we can do individually and collectively

to change academic life for the better.

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In this short in between episode,

I thought I'd pick up on one of

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the themes of the conversation

with Mark Reed last week.

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And that was about self-compassion.

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And, uh, As it so happens.

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I had a personal experience this week.

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That required me actually

to draw on self-compassion.

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As a practice to help deal with it.

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And that was.

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About getting some.

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Feedback from some work that I had

done where, you know, how it is with

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say teaching evaluations, there'll

be in the 80%, 90% that are good.

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And they'll always be some

that are a little bit critical.

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Um, And of course I focused on the

ones that were a little bit more

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critical and found that challenging.

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So before I go on and talk

about self-compassion,.

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I just want to replay a little

bit of what mark had to say here.

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Mark: One of the exercises I do is.

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To get people to think about and discuss

how they deal with challenges around

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imposter syndrome, perfectionism,

people pleasing, things like that.

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To just normalise the fact that,

oh, we all struggle with at least

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one of these, at least from time to

time, and many of us struggle with

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multiple of these, a lot of the time.

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And for a lot of people

just opening that up.

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having some discussion about that.

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The biggest eye opener is the

fact that we're not alone in this.

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And Kristin Neff talks about this

from University of Austin, Texas.

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Um, that actually the first step towards

self compassion is realizing that you

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are not alone, realizing that actually

part of the human experience to suffer

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and actually now I'm not beating myself

up and saying I shouldn't feel like this,

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actually this is normal and this is okay.

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Geri: Now I appreciate that this

whole concept of self-compassion

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can sound very soft and mushy and.

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Even self-indulgent.

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But it's anything, but, and there's

a really strong evidence-base behind

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it, about its effectiveness for, uh,

How general health and wellbeing.

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And I'll go into some of the details

of the studies later on about this.

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But if we pick up on Kristin Neff's

definition of self-compassion.

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She talks about self-compassion.

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Uh, referring to being

supportive towards oneself when

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experiencing suffering or pain.

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And whether that's caused by

personal mistakes or inadequacies

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or external life challenges.

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And in academia, we certainly have

plenty of opportunities for that.

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Don't we, or, and in

professional life generally.

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Um, we're dealing with

a lot of rejections.

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Of papers and grant proposals.

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There's competition for funding

and for jobs there's job precarity

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and uncertain career paths.

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There's the increasing

performance metrics and pressures.

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And we've heard in the last couple

of conversations with people,

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how this has also led to a lot of

stress and mental health issues.

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And burnout

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.

just for all of those reasons, it may be worth just giving

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self-compassion a bit of a go.

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So Kristin Neff and her collaborators

talk about self-compassion as being

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composed of three components that mark

alluded to, I talked about earlier.

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To reiterate on those, the first

component is self-kindness.

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And that's really simply about not

beating ourselves up and not judging

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ourselves really harshly when we make

mistakes or have difficult experiences.

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But being kind to ourselves and talking

to ourselves as if we would talk to a best

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friend or someone that we really loved.

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So self-kindness is the first.

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Component of self-compassion.

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The second component is that

issue about common humanity?

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That we're not alone,

that we all make mistakes.

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We all have bad things happen to us.

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And.

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In recognizing the common humanity.

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It also points as a little sidebar to the

importance of us sharing our experiences.

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To really make it clear.

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We're not alone as I'll let

mark say later on as well.

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And the third component of

self-compassion is mindfulness.

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And this is about not getting

caught up in the dramas of it all.

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And not getting overwhelmed by it and over

identifying with the emotions going on.

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Or as an alternative,

not running away from it.

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So it's really about.

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Just noticing.

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What it is that we're feeling

and thinking right now.

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And bringing, almost like

a detached curiosity to it.

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So it's about accepting

what we're feeling.

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And it may mean that we do feel

it a little bit more because these

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sort of rejections or getting some

critique, it does hurt we do react.

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But in sitting with it.

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And being curious about it, it allows

us to interrogate it a little bit

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more , and move on to sort of say,

what's this about, what's it telling

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me, what can we learn from it?

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And.

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Uh, moving it into more of a

learning and a growth opportunity.

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So those three components of

self-compassion that self-kindness the

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common humanity and the mindfulness.

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And, now what might be some practical

practices for doing self-compassion?

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Well Kristin Neff has a web page that

spells out some really basic simple

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practices, that support self-compassion.

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So there are a whole lot of guided

practices as audios that you can download.

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And she also has a list of,

description of particular exercises.

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Some examples here, then.

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One that is really, recommended

and really simple, is

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just using physical touch.

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So that might be putting your

hand on your heart or if that

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feels uncomfortable or a bit

weird, just rubbing your arm or.

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Touching your hand or, giving yourself

a little hug, uh, that issue of touch

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and the oxytocin connection and care.

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Back to ourselves can be really important.

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And part of that is then also

the practice of the self-talk.

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That we can say to ourselves.

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It's okay.

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I know that it's really

hard right now or whatever.

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We'll get through this.

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And then there are some other particular

practices that you might do which

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can also be things like just, uh,

she talks about it in terms of a

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breathe in, breathe out compassion.

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So you might take a breath in

and think about breathing in self

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compassion and kindness for yourself.

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And.

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Just a breath out, breathing

out compassion for other people.

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And, uh, there's another

practice that's mentioned.

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That's got a lot of

evidence-based behind it.

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It's the practice of journaling.

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To sort of process the

difficult experiences or events

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by just writing about them.

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So I said about my, my,

uh, experience this week.

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So I was just going to talk about

this in terms of, um, related work

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and what it's all about, but I can.

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I can share my own story.

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So yeah, so I found, myself sort

of feeling doing that, wanting to

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crawl into a little ball and feeling

sort of reactive to some of the.

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Critical comments or

what sort of feedback.

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That I received

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so I really had to work hard

at just saying it's okay.

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You can feel disappointed.

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And, and.

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Just give myself a break that it's.

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Um, I'm not going to be

perfect . I am not perfect.

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And I am also not going to please

everybody all of the time, especially

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when you're working with a bigger

group with lots of diverse challenges.

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And then just going back and looking at

the feedback and actually reflecting on

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the fact that yeah, there were actually

some really good points there and.

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And, you know, there were some things

that I could improve on and that I

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could take as learnings for next time.

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And one of the ways I also helped

process that was, um, using that as

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a focus for my, my morning journal

practice, where I just sat there

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and wrote about how it felt and.

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What I might take away from it.

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And as part of that

interrogating, I guess.

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Why it was sort of, I felt bad that

yes, there is a little bit of ego there.

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Like, oh, I haven't done as well.

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I haven't lived up to my own

standards and I haven't done as well

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as I wanted to do or be seen to do.

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But also I connected to this was

able to connect to something a little

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bit deeper, and it was why I was

doing this work in the first place.

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And it's because I really

want to make a difference.

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Um, I want to us to help

create a more sustainable.

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Collegial.

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Uh, academia where we can really do

great work without burning out and so on.

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And so it was really about the

difference that I wanted to make.

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And that may be.

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I did fall short, a little bit in

making the different sort of wander

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to make in this particular instance.

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And that really helped me reorient to

go back and to pick up those learnings.

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, that mind shift was really important

to connecting to why I was doing

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this and why I wanted to learn and

why I can always get better and

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take the learnings from feedback.

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The good feedback and the negative

feedback and remind myself that

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there is also good feedback, but,

you know, it's, it's, um, there are

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things to be learned from that as

well, in terms of what does work.

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So it was just curious that I had

to have my own personal experience

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this week in talking about it.

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I will link in the show notes to

some example, papers that point to

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some of the evidence base for this.

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If you want to sit and

just hear about some of it.

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Now I will briefly run

through some of this.

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So for example, there've been

a couple of meta analyses that

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have looked at the relationship

of self-compassion and wellbeing.

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So there was a 2015 meta analysis

by Zessin and colleagues.

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And their findings were

clearly highlighting the

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importance of self-compassion

for wellbeing, for individuals.

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And that the relationship was particularly

stronger for cognitive and psychological

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wellbeing compared to affective wellbeing.

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A, later 2021 meta analysis by

Phillips and Hein focused, particularly

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on physical health and on health

promoting behaviors and to read from

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their findings, they talk about the

strongest effects were observed on.

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Global physical health, functional

immunity, composite health behavior,

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sleep and danger avoidance.

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And also that actually doing

some deliberate interventions

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over multiple sessions.

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Really were effective for boosting

self-compassion and increasing.

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Uh, physical health and,

positive health behaviors.

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Another 2021 meta analysis

by Christina Ewart and.

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And co-authors.

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Uh, again, just reading

from their findings.

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Talk about self-compassion is important

for understanding the mechanisms

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involved in coping with stress and with

demanding life events and that the size

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and direction of the correlations depend

on the coping strategies considered.

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With protective effects of self-compassion

with respect to maladaptive

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coping, being most pronounced.

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So helping us just develop

better coping strategies or

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avoiding bad coping strategies.

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There has also been quite a few

studies within the academic context.

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And a lot of these studies focus more on

student experiences, learner experiences.

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But some of those issues.

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would suggest that they would

translate to all of us dealing

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with things like failure.

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So there's an early 2005 paper by

Kristin Neff and her co-authors on

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a self-compassion achievement goals

and coping with academic failure.

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Um, And to read from that paper

over all the findings from the

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studies that they conducted.

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Uh, not a matter analysis, they were

just reporting on two studies, suggest

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that self-compassion helps to facilitate

the learning process by freeing

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individuals from the debilitating

consequences of harsh self-criticism.

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Isolation and overidentification

in the face of failure.

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And instead provide students with

self kindness, a sense of common

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humanity and emotional balance.

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This constructive attitude towards the

self appears to help students focus on

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mastering tasks at hand, rather than

worrying about performance evaluations.

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To retain confidence in their

competence as learners and to

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foster intrinsic motivation.

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Results also suggest that self-compassion

is associated with lower anxiety

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levels and that self-compassionate

individuals are more likely to adopt

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adaptive coping strategies when

confronted with academic failure.

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So while those studies were

reporting on university students.

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We can certainly see that.

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There could be some.

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Benefits that we would also

want to see for ourselves in

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dealing with, academic failure.

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there was Another study that focused on.

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Senior university level students that

showed that self-compassion, had a

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possibility of moderating the development

of depression from academic burnout.

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This was a 2022 study by Lee and Lee.

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So again, while it was on.

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Advanced, university level students.

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You know, given what we've been

hearing from our colleagues in

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previous conversations about burnout.

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At the fact that there is this moderating

effect on the development of depression.

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Suggests that it's something

that could be worth trying.

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And one of the few studies that I

could find that was specifically

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about people within academia,

as in lecturers and so on.

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Um, there was a 2023 paper

by Dreisoerner et al . On

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self-compassion as a means to improve

job-related wellbeing and academia.

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And here they particularly drew

attention to the challenges we face,

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like rejections, competitive funding,

uncertain job, outlooks, and so on.

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So their study was a diary

study with 317 academics in

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Germany, Switzerland, and the US.

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And.

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To read, from their findings.

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They talk about self-compassion in

academia is a resource that enables

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emotion oriented coping during

difficult times, or in challenging

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situations that may benefit academics.

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Job-related wellbeing.

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The study highlights both the

importance of discussing wellbeing in

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academia and ways to strengthen it.

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So I'm going to finish up now with some

more words from Mark Reed , where he

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talks about the importance of, Actually

discussing wellbeing and academia

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of role modeling, coping and so on.

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And, I will link in the show notes

too, as I said, those papers also

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to Kristin Neff's great web page,

that's full of useful resources.

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That's self-compassion dot org.

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And, just encourage us to give ourselves

permission to be kind to ourselves

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to recognize that we're not alone.

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And that we can face the difficult

feelings and maybe work our way through

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them, by paying curious attention.

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So finishing up with Mark here.

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Mark: And, um, and surprisingly, actually,

it's, it's often new professors who, uh,

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who I find struggle most with imposter

syndrome because imposter syndrome

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ultimately is about a gap between how you

see yourself and how the world sees you.

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And so it is often, uh, once we reach

those milestones that we've been striving

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for and thought, yes, if I can just

get to that point, then I'll feel like

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I'm worth it, that I deserve this.

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That all of a sudden that gulf opens up

again, um, and, and I think especially,

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I think it's particularly powerful when

more senior colleagues open up about these

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kind of struggles and how they've dealt

with them, uh, because, uh, ultimately

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yes, we come back and reflect on this.

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What I encourage people to do is

to realize that they've taken the

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first step towards self compassion.

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And that place of self acceptance

and self compassion is actually,

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I would suggest, the foundation

for compassion towards others.

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And so, for me doing this in a group

setting, whether that's in a training

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with me, in a research group setting,

just talking openly about these things.

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And it can be in a really positive

way about how you tackle, how you

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deal with, how you've overcome.

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It doesn't have to be overly

vulnerable if you don't want it to be.

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But that can just normalise the fact that,

yeah, we all struggle with these things.

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We all give ourselves self compassion,

and we start to see our colleagues

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with more humanity, understanding that,

yeah, perhaps you're having a hard day.

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Perhaps I can see now, based on what you

said, that that's maybe what's going on.

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Maybe I can help build you

up when everything else

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seems to be tearing you down.

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Geri: And so a call to action for all

of us, for how we can build ourselves

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up and how we can build each other up.

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You can find the summary notes,

a transcript, and related

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links for this podcast on www.

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changingacademiclife.

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com.

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You can also subscribe to

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Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

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And you can follow

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And I'm really hoping that we can

widen the conversation about how

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we can do academia differently.

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