Kristin Neff: Fierce Self-Compassion
In this episode...
I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion.
She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.
Kristin and I talk about what she calls fierce self-compassion, how anger can be compassionate, and other questions like:
- Why are men better at self-compassion than women?
- Does the fact that women tend to score lower than men on self-compassion has an impact on the salary gap between men and women.
- Is there a link between so-called “compulsive caretaking of others” and autoimmune disorders and some kinds of cancer?
Kristin leads us in a self-compassion meditation, and I ask her about the infectious positivity and compassion of the television series character, Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis.
"[Ted Lasso] is a little bit like Mr. Rodgers, which is fascinating. Because we do know from the research that compassion is contagious.
– Dr. Kristin Neff, whose research on self-compassion is also contagious, is cited more than 35,000 times by other scholars.
Kristin Neff is an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin’s department of educational psychology.
She has written over 50 academic articles and book chapters on the topic, and has been cited almost 35,000 times by other scholars, in part for her creation of a psychological testing scale to measure Self-compassion about 20 yrs ago.
She is author of the bestselling (2011) book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.
Her newest book is Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.