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Being Kind to Yourself
Self-criticism is often seen as a virtue. But psychologist Kristin Neff says there’s a better path to self-improvement — self-compassion. She says people who practice self-compassion are more conscientious and more likely to take responsibility for their mistakes.
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[A white boy with blond hair and a blue shirt sits on a bench with his elbows propped up on the back of the bench, and his head in his hands.]
Being Kind to Yourself
/ September 4, 2023
Self-criticism is often seen as a virtue. But psychologist Kristin Neff says there’s a better path to self-improvement — self-compassion. She says people who practice self-compassion are more conscientious and more likely to take responsibility for their mistakes.
If you like our work, please consider supporting it! See how you can help at support.hiddenbrain.org. And to learn more about human behavior and ideas that can improve your life, subscribe to our newsletter at news.hiddenbrain.org.
Additional Resources
BOOKS
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Kristin Neff, William Morrow Paperbacks, 2015
Fierce Self-Compassion: How women can harness kindness to speak up, claim their power, and thrive. Kristin Neff, HarperCollins Publishers, 2021
The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A proven way to accept yourself, build inner strength, and thrive. Kristin Neff, Guildford Press, 2018
RESEARCH
Compassion, Well-being, and the Hypo Egoic self, Kristin Neff, Emma Seppala (in press). In K.W. Brown & M. Leary (Eds), Oxford Handbook of Hypo-egoic Phenomena: Theory and Research on the Quiet Ego. Oxford University Press. 2016
The role of self-compassion in romantic relationships, Kristin Neff, S Natasha Beretvas, Self and Identity, 2012
The relationship between self-compassion and other-focused concern among college undergraduates, community adults, and practicing mediators, Kristin Neff, Elizabeth Pommier, Self and Identity, 2012
Self-Compassion versus global self-esteem: Two different ways of relation to oneself, Kristin Neff, Roos Vonk Journal of Personality, 2008
A pilot exploration of heart rate variability and salivary Cortisol responses to compassion-focused imagery, Helen Rockliff, Kirsten McEwan, Paul Gilbert, Stafford Lightman, Clinical Neuropsychiatry, June 2008
The Development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion, Kristin Neff, Self and Identity, 2003
Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments, Justin Kruger, David Dunning, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000
GRAB BAG
The space between self-esteem and self compassion: Kristin Neff at TEDxCentennialParkWomen, February 2013
Transcript
*The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode.
Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.*
Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. When you take the wrong turn off the highway or fumble a presentation at work, do you get mad at yourself for making a mistake? Do you silently kick yourself or maybe actually kick yourself? Self-criticism is often seen as heroic, maybe even noble. Many people think it's the shortest path to self-improvement. But is it?Kristin Neff: The belief that we need to be hard on ourselves, criticize ourselves to succeed or reach your goals or make a change is actually the number one block to self-compassion we found in the research. People are afraid that if they're kind to themselves, they just won't get anything done.Shankar Vedantam: This week on Hidden Brain, the story of a psychologist who learned to stop beating up on herself, and how you can convert your harsh inner critic into a friend.Kristin Neff: People who are more self-compassionate, take more responsibility for their mistakes, they're more conscientious, and more likely to apologize. Ironically, even though the word self is in self-compassion, when you take that approach, it means you don't have to be so self-focused.Shankar Vedantam: Kristin Neff's father left the family when she was a very small child. It was the late 1960s, and he decided he was going to be a hippie. He picked up and moved to Hawaii.Kristin Neff: One of my first memories is going to visit him when I was about six years old, in Maui, and him telling me, "Please don't call me Dad, call me Brother Dionysus. Because we are all God's children." I was incredibly uncomfortable. And he said that to my brother as well.Kristin Neff: And so we couldn't call him Brother Dionysus, that was just absurd. But he didn't want us to call him dad. So for many, many years, both my brother and I were like, "Excuse me, could you pass the salt please?" Without using any sort of name for him because we didn't know what to call him. So that was the backdrop of feeling unwanted and rejected.Shankar Vedantam: As she grew up, Kristin's insecurity about her dad shaped her romantic relationships.Kristin Neff: And I always felt insecure. And so there was always that sense of, if any boy liked me enough to want to be with me, I should go for it because there aren't a lot of options. And that actually played into my first marriage.Shankar Vedantam: Kristin married young. Her husband was a guy she met in college.Kristin Neff: He was a good guy. He was intelligent, he was handsome. And up until then, my boyfriends had all been jerks. And so I thought, "Okay, I've got a good one, I'll say yes when he asks me to marry him, that's amazing that someone would actually ask me to marry them, I'll just go for it." And I didn't have the larger understanding to realize what is it that I actually want in a man. It was like, if it was somebody that was good enough.Shankar Vedantam: Kristin entered graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. She assumed her marriage was good. Her husband was committed to her.Kristin Neff: But there wasn't a lot of passion. But I didn't really know what I was missing until the man I worked for as a research assistant in graduate school at UC Berkeley, I found out I did have a lot of passion with Peter and I started to realize, "I see, this is what I'm missing."Shankar Vedantam: Kristin refers to this man as Peter, although that's not his real name.Kristin Neff: First of all, he was much older than me. He was about 15 years older than me. And so looking back, it's probably played into some of my father issues, right? And so we just started developing this intense attraction towar
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📄 Neff.Pommier.pdf
📄 NeffVonk.pdf
📄 empirical.article.pdf