5 steps to start being kinder to yourself | Melissa Robinson-Winemiller | TEDxUTulsa

Key Concepts

• Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. The video distinguishes between emotional empathy (feeling what others feel) and cognitive empathy (logically understanding what others feel).
• Self-Empathy: Extending empathy to oneself, particularly in moments of self-judgment and shame.
• Compassion: The action taken as a result of empathy; what you do after you feel.
• Numbing: Avoiding difficult emotions through distractions like food, alcohol, binge-watching, or excessive work.
• Deflection: Shifting focus away from another person's discomfort to one's own comfort.
• Expectation vs. Reality: The gap between who we believe we should be and our actual experiences, leading to self-judgment.
• Shame Spiral: A destructive cycle of self-judgment, shame, and numbing.
• The Five Rs: A framework for replacing self-judgment habits with self-empathy habits: Recognize, Redefine, Replace, Reinforce, Revise.

Empathy for Others vs. Self-Empathy

The speaker begins by recounting a personal experience where she reacted harshly to her husband immediately after waking up. This incident highlighted a disconnect between her professional understanding of empathy and her personal application of it, leading to feelings of failure and shame. She then clarifies that empathy is not solely about "feeling what you're feeling" (emotional empathy) but also includes cognitive empathy (logically understanding). The core of the talk focuses on self-empathy.

Empathy for Others

When extending empathy to others, especially in situations involving "dark emotions" like death, despair, or grief, we often treat it like a "first aid kit." The discomfort arising from these dark emotions presents three options:

• Lean In: To fully experience the feelings without trying to fix, judge, or stop anything. This is described as "being in the suck" (Brené Brown). Empathy itself is passive; the active response is compassion.
• Numb: To avoid feeling by engaging in activities like excessive eating, drinking, binge-watching, or overworking. This is a common coping mechanism, but problematic when done constantly.
• Deflect: To push away discomfort by focusing on making oneself feel better rather than staying with the other person's feelings. This is about intent – prioritizing one's own comfort over shared feeling.

Self-Empathy

When applying empathy to oneself, deflection is not an option as one is already "in the feeling." The choices are to lean in or numb. Leaning in for oneself is complicated by layers of expectations:

• Expectations: These can be internal or external (from parents, media, society, social media).
• Comparison: Observing differences between oneself and these expectations.
• Judgment: Deciding one thing is "better than the other" based on comparison.

When expectations are unmet, it leads to feelings of failure, self-judgment, and shame. This "dance between self-judgment and shame" is destructive.

The Shame Spiral and Personal Experience

The speaker shares a personal story of being assaulted by a colleague as a French horn professor. The immediate aftermath of the assault was brief, but the resulting "shame spiral" lasted for years. She grappled with questions of self-blame and failure, unable to bridge the gap between her expectation of being a professor and the reality of the assault.

This led to numbing through food and alcohol, which in turn caused weight gain, creating another layer of unmet expectation (societal and maternal pressure to look a certain way). This cycle of judgment, shame, and numbing escalated, leading to a weight of 270 pounds, which she states was "always about the weight on my heart."

The Power of Empathy Over Judgment

A crucial statement is made: "Empathy and judgment cannot exist in the same space." This applies to both external and self-directed empathy. The speaker emphasizes that if we can offer empathy to others, we are equally deserving of it ourselves.

The Five Rs: A Framework for Self-Empathy

To combat the habit of self-judgment and break the shame spiral, the speaker introduces "The Five Rs," a method to replace self-judgment with self-empathy:

1. Recognize Your Habits: Identify the self-judgment patterns. If you can't see it, you can't fix it. The speaker's example was taking on others' bad behavior and judging herself for it, not recognizing the disconnect between her expectations and the reality of the situation.
2. Redefine Your Habits: Understand that habits don't define you. The speaker's habit of taking on others' behaviors didn't make her a failure. This step requires self-grace, similar to what one would offer another. It's crucial for breaking the shame spiral.
3. Replace Your Habits: Habits cannot be broken; they must be replaced. When self-judgment thoughts arise, instead of accepting them, ask "Why am I taking this on?" Repeatedly asking this question helps replace self-judgment with self-empathy. The goal is to reach a point where this becomes automatic. Habits are not "handcuffs"; you can choose to change them to support your growth.
4. Reinforce Your Habits: Practice makes permanent, for both good and bad habits. When the speaker caught herself not taking responsibility for others' actions, she would pause, breathe, and remind herself that she controls her self-judgment, not the other way around. While initially feeling "cheesy," this became a signal of victory and a step towards becoming the person she knew she could be.
5. Revise Your Habits: Continuously evaluate if your habits are still serving you and propelling you forward. This involves asking if they align with the desired version of yourself and if you want to "double down" on them. The goal is to control your narrative and grow into the person you want to be, one habit at a time.

Conclusion: Self-Empathy as Courage

The Five Rs framework helps replace the "vicious spiral of self-judgment with a virtuous spiral of self-empathy." The speaker argues that empathy requires courage, and self-empathy requires even more because we are aware of our deepest vulnerabilities. Research suggests we have numerous opportunities for empathy daily. The speaker encourages the audience to visualize who they've extended empathy to and to include themselves in that list, using the Five Rs to instill self-empathy as a habit.