if you have a daughter in high school
she’s more likely to consider attempting
suicide than to suffer from asthma if
you have a family of four or more
either you or your family member will
suffer from an anxiety or depressive
disorder at some point and every year in
the US alone more than 10 million people
are physically abused by their intimate
partners that means more than 300 people
during this talk we are in the midst of
several epidemics how did we get here
and while it’s important to treat the
millions of suffering individuals
clearly it’s not enough in our pursuit
of happiness we are missing something
important and I want to introduce to you
today
one of the powerful missing pieces which
is compassion and by bad I mean
compassion towards ourselves and
compassion towards others I’ve had the
privilege of caring for a few hundred
amazing patients every year the stories
I’m going to tell you today are based on
a few prototypes from having seen
several patients with similar
presentations so they don’t represent
any one person in particular a few years
ago on a sunny summer afternoon I was in
a session with a high school student
let’s call her Jane Jane was smart and
vivacious that day she was telling me
that she was getting all A’s at school
she was a president of her school’s
geography Club she had good friends and
a supportive boyfriend her parents were
very proud of her and she had been
feeling good but all of a sudden she
started crying I asked her what happened
she paused slowly looked up and said
something that was shocking she said
that if she didn’t win the geography
trivia contest at her school she was
going to kill herself
now suicidal thoughts usually result
from a calm
neck’s interplay of biological and
psychosocial factors so I don’t want to
simplify this or say that addressing any
one factor will make this go away but
like many suicidal teens Jane was not
viewing herself as the invaluable person
she was she was beating herself up quite
a lot and I started to wonder how did
grades or performance gain so much
importance that these things hearted
superceding life itself what if Jane had
learned at school to practice self
compassion that day the next patient I
saw was a 10 year old underweight girl
amber amber was a sweet girl eager to
please everyone she told me how she
couldn’t eat most foods she had gone
through extensive GI testing and
everything had come out normal so this
was not because of any problem with her
GI tract this was because whenever she
saw herself in the mirror she saw fat
hanging from her body
there was no fat hanging from her body
she was underweight she denied any
depressive symptoms so did her parents
but most of the time she worried that
she wasn’t good enough do you know that
7 out of 10 girls believe that they are
not good enough and how many of you
worry about fat when you look at
yourself in the mirror
imagine being 10 and feeling this way so
every day at my clinic presented with
the same theme most patients whether age
7 or aged 77 whether suffering from
depression anxiety disorders eating
disorders OCD PTSD even when these
conditions were in remission were having
a really hard time being compassionate
to themselves and this lack of self
compassion wasn’t only restricted to
patients the other day I went to a
social gathering and when psychiatrists
go to social events one of two things
happens people either really want to
talk to us or they really don’t want to
talk to us
and someone usually says you must be
psychoanalyzing me so at one of these
events I ran into a friend she looked
radiant so I gave her a compliment I
said your skin looks beautiful and she
replied I hate my skin it’s flabby I was
taken aback here I was genuinely
complimenting her and she couldn’t
believe it so I did the most natural
thing anyone would do in that
circumstance I checked my own skin to
see whether it was flabby or not right
this constant pursuit of perfection in
every sphere of life is not helping this
epidemic of lack of self compassion we
want perfect hair a perfect body perfect
grades perfect house perfect clothes the
list goes on but perfection is an
imperfect concept when we chase
perfection and fall short we fault
ourselves then we feel low is it
surprising then that so many people are
struggling to feel good despite the fact
that we have the most modern
technologies at our fingertips at
another social event I ran into the
smart young woman she always looked so
gorgeous as if she just stepped out of a
magazine cover so I said to her you look
amazing and she said really I’ve always
thought my face looks like a cabbage a
cabbage
you mean the vegetable I had never heard
of faces being assessed using a
vegetable scale but I started to wonder
which vegetable my face would look like
potato eggplant bell pepper have you
noticed this we expect compassion from
our family or friends or colleagues our
bosses we are very upset when any of
these people says anything critical to
us aren’t we
but when it comes to treating ourselves
what do we do we give ourselves a
beating so while many treatments for
depression anxiety disorders eating
disorders OCD PTSD and other psychiatric
conditions need to be medication based
or biological or therapy based and we
need to use all the tools we have to
address these impairing conditions but
we can’t fully resolve these without
addressing this common underlying theme
the lack of self compassion so we are
teaching kids extensive details of
geography history math all of which are
valuable and I remember and use them
every day no I don’t but why are we not
teaching kids self compassion at school
and what is self compassion anyway self
compassion means a non-judgmental
acceptance of self while being aware of
our shortcomings
research shows that self compassion can
improve motivation mastery of goals and
even life satisfaction self compassion
training can even help people accept
responsibility for failures how often
does that happen
with less negative emotion so teachers
if you want your students to accept your
constructive feedback well get them to
practice self compassion first coming
back to Jane our high school student who
was thinking of killing herself with the
help of intensive therapy she learned to
practice compared
towards herself gradually she realize
that crates were only a part of her
experience grades weren’t her she
started valuing and accepting herself as
a human being regardless of her
performance so after all this talk about
compassion let’s talk a little bit about
what compassion is I’ll tell you a
little story about it when I was age
five I used to spend a lot of time with
my beloved now departed grandmother in
India I noticed that she would go to the
terrace every morning and every
afternoon she would go out somewhere one
day I decided to follow her what I found
was interesting that she was spreading
grains for birds on the terrace every
morning and every afternoon she would go
give the cows and dogs in the
neighborhood some bread she had quote I
asked her if the cows were able to
appreciate the taste of her cooking she
replied that there is nobody to care for
these cows these dogs and these birds
they need someone to care for them I
noticed that the cow did look lonely
compassion means noticing someone’s
suffering with a strong desire to
relieve that suffering even 1.5 million
years ago great apes and early humans
showed signs of compassionate behavior
chimpanzees would hug the chimpanzee
that lost in a fight so we were born to
be compassionate and do you know that
compassion can alter neural wiring in E
even in adult brains so let me tell you
a few stories about the other side of
compassion which is compassion towards
others one day a depressed pregnant
woman came to see me for treatment she
had two young children her husband was
having an affair her boss was yelling at
her at her minimum wage job imagine this
lady eight months pregnant dragging
herself to work every day having panic
attacks when she reach work afraid that
she’d get fired if she took more time
off
her young family depended on her job but
every day she would hear from her
husband why was she making a big deal
out of all this she had a serious
medical condition on top of her
pregnancy to be compassionate to her
husband he was probably feeling
overwhelmed himself but despite working
every waking minute she started feeling
like she wasn’t being a good mom or a
good wife or a good employee she started
having thoughts of wishing she were dead
but she didn’t want to act on these
thoughts she wanted to be there for her
children on another day I saw a
middle-aged corporate lawyer he was
struggling with panic attacks as his
client for frequently yell at him to
produce large amounts of work at short
notice he started feeling like a failure
because he couldn’t provide as well for
his wife and his kids on another day I
saw nine-year-old boy he said that he
wasn’t feeling good enough because he
was struggling with math and it was
really hard for him to get past his
belief of not being good enough because
he was constantly hearing from his
parents and teachers that he was lagging
behind he started feeling down he
started becoming quiet and he started
losing interest in his favorite
activities now why did I tell you these
three stories because I want you to
imagine how this pregnant woman this
middle-aged lawyer and this
nine-year-old might have felt
differently if they had received more
compassion from people around them what
if this pregnant woman’s husband had
said to her I know this is really hard
for you I’ll be there what if the
parents and teachers of this
nine-year-old had focused on the things
he was good at such as reading an art
self compassion and compassion towards
others are closely intertwined when
children start believing that they are
not good enough they can turn to
bullying in an unconscious attempt to
make themselves look better every middle
school or high schooler I have seen has
been bullied at some point and you can
think about the last one week in your
life you may have
road rage or when you turned on the news
maybe you heard of some violent event
I’m not saying that there is no
compassion in the world right now we do
hear amazing stories about compassion
all the time but what I am saying is
that we are entire need of more
compassion without compassion towards
others the world cannot survive and
without compassion towards ourselves a
reservoir of compassion towards others
gets drained very quickly so how
powerful would it be if every child
learnt at school to practice compassion
the same way every child learns to read
or write we now know that compassion
training decreases anger decreases
depression and anxiety improves
pro-social behavior and improves ability
to cope wouldn’t it make sense to teach
something that improves all aspects of
emotional health like compassion does we
all have an inner child longing to feel
understood accepted and loved we often
expect this love or acceptance to come
from others but we haven’t learned to
give this child our own acceptance let’s
do this little exercise this exercise is
often practiced by compassion focused
therapist it’s going to be relaxing for
me if you like close your eyes now think
of yourself at age five think of this
five-year-old child standing in front of
you think of an incident in the last one
week where you beat yourself up about
something or where you were
self-critical imagine this five-year-old
child experiencing that criticism and
feeling miserable because of it what
would you say to this child you can open
your eyes did any of you feel like
telling this child you’re stupid you
made a huge mistake I doubt it many of
you may have felt like giving this child
reassurance or giving this
hugg when our inner child feels
invalidated or is suffering we will see
the effects of this invalidation seep on
to our outside world but compassion
allows us to move ahead it allows us to
fully realize our potential it allows us
to get past this suffering when I see
patients the most common reason they
come back to see me is not because I
give them a certain medication or a
unique intervention that can’t be found
anywhere else it is because they know
that I will be there through their pain
through the silence through the
suffering through the disappointments
through the victories through their
journey they can sense my deep wish that
they heal and recover and you my friends
deserve your own compassion you deserve
your own acceptance grades performance
or appearance cannot define you
you’re already precious just by virtue
of being a human being
the main limiting factor in your pursuit
of happiness is going to be whether you
treat yourself with love or whether you
beat yourself up compassion will play a
key role in how happy and peaceful you
feel and if you want to stop these
epidemics of abuse violence bullying
from taking over you need to start
acting now we can’t afford to lose more
time my favorite prescription is a dose
of compassion three times daily because
every child every human being every
living being deserves compassion and
every child deserves to learn compassion
that is the way to spread happiness in
this world and that’s what makes this an
idea worth spreading thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
she’s more likely to consider attempting
suicide than to suffer from asthma if
you have a family of four or more
either you or your family member will
suffer from an anxiety or depressive
disorder at some point and every year in
the US alone more than 10 million people
are physically abused by their intimate
partners that means more than 300 people
during this talk we are in the midst of
several epidemics how did we get here
and while it’s important to treat the
millions of suffering individuals
clearly it’s not enough in our pursuit
of happiness we are missing something
important and I want to introduce to you
today
one of the powerful missing pieces which
is compassion and by bad I mean
compassion towards ourselves and
compassion towards others I’ve had the
privilege of caring for a few hundred
amazing patients every year the stories
I’m going to tell you today are based on
a few prototypes from having seen
several patients with similar
presentations so they don’t represent
any one person in particular a few years
ago on a sunny summer afternoon I was in
a session with a high school student
let’s call her Jane Jane was smart and
vivacious that day she was telling me
that she was getting all A’s at school
she was a president of her school’s
geography Club she had good friends and
a supportive boyfriend her parents were
very proud of her and she had been
feeling good but all of a sudden she
started crying I asked her what happened
she paused slowly looked up and said
something that was shocking she said
that if she didn’t win the geography
trivia contest at her school she was
going to kill herself
now suicidal thoughts usually result
from a calm
neck’s interplay of biological and
psychosocial factors so I don’t want to
simplify this or say that addressing any
one factor will make this go away but
like many suicidal teens Jane was not
viewing herself as the invaluable person
she was she was beating herself up quite
a lot and I started to wonder how did
grades or performance gain so much
importance that these things hearted
superceding life itself what if Jane had
learned at school to practice self
compassion that day the next patient I
saw was a 10 year old underweight girl
amber amber was a sweet girl eager to
please everyone she told me how she
couldn’t eat most foods she had gone
through extensive GI testing and
everything had come out normal so this
was not because of any problem with her
GI tract this was because whenever she
saw herself in the mirror she saw fat
hanging from her body
there was no fat hanging from her body
she was underweight she denied any
depressive symptoms so did her parents
but most of the time she worried that
she wasn’t good enough do you know that
7 out of 10 girls believe that they are
not good enough and how many of you
worry about fat when you look at
yourself in the mirror
imagine being 10 and feeling this way so
every day at my clinic presented with
the same theme most patients whether age
7 or aged 77 whether suffering from
depression anxiety disorders eating
disorders OCD PTSD even when these
conditions were in remission were having
a really hard time being compassionate
to themselves and this lack of self
compassion wasn’t only restricted to
patients the other day I went to a
social gathering and when psychiatrists
go to social events one of two things
happens people either really want to
talk to us or they really don’t want to
talk to us
and someone usually says you must be
psychoanalyzing me so at one of these
events I ran into a friend she looked
radiant so I gave her a compliment I
said your skin looks beautiful and she
replied I hate my skin it’s flabby I was
taken aback here I was genuinely
complimenting her and she couldn’t
believe it so I did the most natural
thing anyone would do in that
circumstance I checked my own skin to
see whether it was flabby or not right
this constant pursuit of perfection in
every sphere of life is not helping this
epidemic of lack of self compassion we
want perfect hair a perfect body perfect
grades perfect house perfect clothes the
list goes on but perfection is an
imperfect concept when we chase
perfection and fall short we fault
ourselves then we feel low is it
surprising then that so many people are
struggling to feel good despite the fact
that we have the most modern
technologies at our fingertips at
another social event I ran into the
smart young woman she always looked so
gorgeous as if she just stepped out of a
magazine cover so I said to her you look
amazing and she said really I’ve always
thought my face looks like a cabbage a
cabbage
you mean the vegetable I had never heard
of faces being assessed using a
vegetable scale but I started to wonder
which vegetable my face would look like
potato eggplant bell pepper have you
noticed this we expect compassion from
our family or friends or colleagues our
bosses we are very upset when any of
these people says anything critical to
us aren’t we
but when it comes to treating ourselves
what do we do we give ourselves a
beating so while many treatments for
depression anxiety disorders eating
disorders OCD PTSD and other psychiatric
conditions need to be medication based
or biological or therapy based and we
need to use all the tools we have to
address these impairing conditions but
we can’t fully resolve these without
addressing this common underlying theme
the lack of self compassion so we are
teaching kids extensive details of
geography history math all of which are
valuable and I remember and use them
every day no I don’t but why are we not
teaching kids self compassion at school
and what is self compassion anyway self
compassion means a non-judgmental
acceptance of self while being aware of
our shortcomings
research shows that self compassion can
improve motivation mastery of goals and
even life satisfaction self compassion
training can even help people accept
responsibility for failures how often
does that happen
with less negative emotion so teachers
if you want your students to accept your
constructive feedback well get them to
practice self compassion first coming
back to Jane our high school student who
was thinking of killing herself with the
help of intensive therapy she learned to
practice compared
towards herself gradually she realize
that crates were only a part of her
experience grades weren’t her she
started valuing and accepting herself as
a human being regardless of her
performance so after all this talk about
compassion let’s talk a little bit about
what compassion is I’ll tell you a
little story about it when I was age
five I used to spend a lot of time with
my beloved now departed grandmother in
India I noticed that she would go to the
terrace every morning and every
afternoon she would go out somewhere one
day I decided to follow her what I found
was interesting that she was spreading
grains for birds on the terrace every
morning and every afternoon she would go
give the cows and dogs in the
neighborhood some bread she had quote I
asked her if the cows were able to
appreciate the taste of her cooking she
replied that there is nobody to care for
these cows these dogs and these birds
they need someone to care for them I
noticed that the cow did look lonely
compassion means noticing someone’s
suffering with a strong desire to
relieve that suffering even 1.5 million
years ago great apes and early humans
showed signs of compassionate behavior
chimpanzees would hug the chimpanzee
that lost in a fight so we were born to
be compassionate and do you know that
compassion can alter neural wiring in E
even in adult brains so let me tell you
a few stories about the other side of
compassion which is compassion towards
others one day a depressed pregnant
woman came to see me for treatment she
had two young children her husband was
having an affair her boss was yelling at
her at her minimum wage job imagine this
lady eight months pregnant dragging
herself to work every day having panic
attacks when she reach work afraid that
she’d get fired if she took more time
off
her young family depended on her job but
every day she would hear from her
husband why was she making a big deal
out of all this she had a serious
medical condition on top of her
pregnancy to be compassionate to her
husband he was probably feeling
overwhelmed himself but despite working
every waking minute she started feeling
like she wasn’t being a good mom or a
good wife or a good employee she started
having thoughts of wishing she were dead
but she didn’t want to act on these
thoughts she wanted to be there for her
children on another day I saw a
middle-aged corporate lawyer he was
struggling with panic attacks as his
client for frequently yell at him to
produce large amounts of work at short
notice he started feeling like a failure
because he couldn’t provide as well for
his wife and his kids on another day I
saw nine-year-old boy he said that he
wasn’t feeling good enough because he
was struggling with math and it was
really hard for him to get past his
belief of not being good enough because
he was constantly hearing from his
parents and teachers that he was lagging
behind he started feeling down he
started becoming quiet and he started
losing interest in his favorite
activities now why did I tell you these
three stories because I want you to
imagine how this pregnant woman this
middle-aged lawyer and this
nine-year-old might have felt
differently if they had received more
compassion from people around them what
if this pregnant woman’s husband had
said to her I know this is really hard
for you I’ll be there what if the
parents and teachers of this
nine-year-old had focused on the things
he was good at such as reading an art
self compassion and compassion towards
others are closely intertwined when
children start believing that they are
not good enough they can turn to
bullying in an unconscious attempt to
make themselves look better every middle
school or high schooler I have seen has
been bullied at some point and you can
think about the last one week in your
life you may have
road rage or when you turned on the news
maybe you heard of some violent event
I’m not saying that there is no
compassion in the world right now we do
hear amazing stories about compassion
all the time but what I am saying is
that we are entire need of more
compassion without compassion towards
others the world cannot survive and
without compassion towards ourselves a
reservoir of compassion towards others
gets drained very quickly so how
powerful would it be if every child
learnt at school to practice compassion
the same way every child learns to read
or write we now know that compassion
training decreases anger decreases
depression and anxiety improves
pro-social behavior and improves ability
to cope wouldn’t it make sense to teach
something that improves all aspects of
emotional health like compassion does we
all have an inner child longing to feel
understood accepted and loved we often
expect this love or acceptance to come
from others but we haven’t learned to
give this child our own acceptance let’s
do this little exercise this exercise is
often practiced by compassion focused
therapist it’s going to be relaxing for
me if you like close your eyes now think
of yourself at age five think of this
five-year-old child standing in front of
you think of an incident in the last one
week where you beat yourself up about
something or where you were
self-critical imagine this five-year-old
child experiencing that criticism and
feeling miserable because of it what
would you say to this child you can open
your eyes did any of you feel like
telling this child you’re stupid you
made a huge mistake I doubt it many of
you may have felt like giving this child
reassurance or giving this
hugg when our inner child feels
invalidated or is suffering we will see
the effects of this invalidation seep on
to our outside world but compassion
allows us to move ahead it allows us to
fully realize our potential it allows us
to get past this suffering when I see
patients the most common reason they
come back to see me is not because I
give them a certain medication or a
unique intervention that can’t be found
anywhere else it is because they know
that I will be there through their pain
through the silence through the
suffering through the disappointments
through the victories through their
journey they can sense my deep wish that
they heal and recover and you my friends
deserve your own compassion you deserve
your own acceptance grades performance
or appearance cannot define you
you’re already precious just by virtue
of being a human being
the main limiting factor in your pursuit
of happiness is going to be whether you
treat yourself with love or whether you
beat yourself up compassion will play a
key role in how happy and peaceful you
feel and if you want to stop these
epidemics of abuse violence bullying
from taking over you need to start
acting now we can’t afford to lose more
time my favorite prescription is a dose
of compassion three times daily because
every child every human being every
living being deserves compassion and
every child deserves to learn compassion
that is the way to spread happiness in
this world and that’s what makes this an
idea worth spreading thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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