How to Reduce Shame and Self Criticism

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Self-compassion is a way of giving yourself permission to feel good about yourself. It's saying you don't need to earn the love that you give yourself. We can physically self-soothe and create that same reaction by doing things like placing one hand over our heart and the other hand over our shoulder, just giving a tight squeeze or caressing our own face. There have been so many experiments that have shown self compassion reduces the negative effects of shame and self criticism. And it's even created its own therapeutic practice called compassion focused therapy.

So often in life, we are our own worst enemies. The meanest and loudest voice in our head is our own. So why are we so hard on ourselves? In this episode we break down the psychological underpinnings behind our inner critic, from the proposed evolutionary role of negative self talk, to the influence of our upbringing including the distinction between conditional and unconditional positive regard, parental expectations and childhood bullying. We examine how social comparison and overthinking can contribute to a poor self perception but, also, how we can adopt the methods of radical self compassion and cognitive diffusion to silence that inner voice and be free from self judgement. Listen now!

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Harvard Business Review article: https://hbr.org/2021/05/stop-being-so-hard-on-yourself

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