[00:00:00] Kara: Sick of the fatigue and fog? Fed up with the unpredictable flares? Hangry from the super restrictive diets?
Hello, and welcome to the Crunchy Allergist Podcast, a podcast empowering those who like me, appreciate both a naturally minded and scientifically grounded approach to health and healing.
Hi, I'm your host, Dr. Kara Wada, quadruple board certified pediatric and adult allergy immunology and lifestyle medicine, physician Sjogren's patient and life coach. My recipe for success combines, the anti-inflammatory lifestyle, trusting therapeutic relationships, modern medicine, and mindset to harness our body's ability to heal.
Now although I might be a physician I'm not your physician and this podcast is for educational purposes only. Welcome everyone. I am so excited to welcome you back to this episode of the crunchy allergists podcast. I'm recording this on July 2nd, the official halfway point of 2022.
So both here on the podcast and in a special pop-up event, we are working to refresh refocus and recommit to ourselves. We have named the event the first mid year resolution reset.
In addition to tuning in to these two special podcast episodes, both today and last week's episode, five habits of women who are thriving. You're also invited to join us to gain better clarity on what living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle looks like. Take actionable steps in alignment with your goals and start letting go of the baggage. That's holding you back.
How do you find out more about this awesome event? Click over to crunchy allergists.com and then click on the top banner or visit the link in our show notes from today's episode. Now onto today's show this week. I am so excited to share with you our recent masterclass. I taught this class all about self-compassion and why is it so important that I'm sharing this today?
We were talking about refreshing refocusing and recommitting to ourselves. Because as you will soon find out the research is clear. We are much more likely to achieve our goals when we're able to treat ourselves with loving kindness. Rather than beating ourselves up again. And again. So without further ado, let's all jump in and learn. How we can be a little bit. Better of a friend to ourselves.
Today is part two of our alleviate master class. And today we're gonna talk all about the role of self-compassion and I'm gonna dig in a little bit more about just the science and kind of thing, neuroscience behind what we're going to talk about.
My hope and my bold promise today is that I hope that everyone is able to leave today with a little more warmth, a little more love and a little more hope in your heart as you think about what comes next, whether it's today, tomorrow, or six months from now.
So let's hop in. As I was preparing this presentation I came across this quote. It was actually the opening to Dr. Kristen Neff's research chapter on the science behind self-compassion and it put me in this wonderful frame of mind and I wanted to share it with you as we're opening today.
So when you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness there is as well as how much space. And I think why this probably resonated even more with me at this particular moment in time is a nice segue into sharing a little bit about my background.
I am a practicing pediatric and adult allergy immunology and lifestyle medicine physician, and recently obtained my certification as a life coach, but I'm also a mom to three and I'm a Systemic Sjogren's patient. And why this resonated so much is that we pretty recently welcomed our third little one to the family Oliver.
And I was just reminded of how our hearts have so much ability to grow when something new, like a new life or a new relationship comes into our lives. And so I want to open this up with the idea that we are going to rethink our relationship with ourselves today and how that might look different with more openness, more warmth, and more love.
My wake up call occurred about three years ago, last month. Within two weeks of one another, my daughter Josephine, who soon to before, was diagnosed with an anaphylactic allergy to eggs.
She ate some scrambled eggs and ended up throwing up, having a bad hives rash. And then about two weeks later, I found out that the cause of my ongoing fatigue and body pain, joint stiffness, and really significant eye and mouth dryness was related to systemic Sjogrens. And so that was really this, " Time out what are we doing? This is our one life to live. These are our precious children. This is our health."
This, the speed and the unintentional attitude we had just going about our day to day lives, just stuck in survival mode. It really was this wake up call of, okay what do we want our future to look like?
What do we want our present to look like? And we realized we wanted something different than what we had. We wanted to focus our attention and our decisions and make active decisions towards what we wanted, as opposed to just passively letting life happen before us.
And so three years later, this is the culmination of a lot of that learning and evolution and really realization that, that work is never ending.
It is really the journey and not the destination it's cheesy, but it's a very true saying. I wanted to also reiterate what Jennifer had talked about yesterday, which is this idea of and this philosophy of and, and not, or so, as we talked today, this is just another tool along with nutrition, along with medication therapy medical care that can help with living with chronic illness, living with an invisible illness.
Dealing with the mood disorders like depression, anxiety, and brain fog that can all come about with these conditions. And so I, I can personally say that I take medicine. I really focus on prioritizing sleep as best I can with the six month old and my other kiddos at home. Because I know that those are critical in regulating my mood, but really these aspects of nutrition and managing our mind, which we'll talk about have really been the special sauce that have, has really made a significant difference.
And so that's why we wanted to share those with everyone who's attending today or tuning in to the replay. So what we're going to cover today, we're gonna cover this concept of, okay, what is managing our minds? What when I talk about that? How can we tip the scale more towards our favor? How can we help ourselves out?
And then we're gonna jump into some actual practical application and really understanding and realizing that practice doesn't make perfect practice makes a good habit because all, a lot of self-compassion is this idea that we are imperfect beings and really honoring that as part of our humanity.
So what is managing your mind? It is this really ancient philosophy and phenomenon that has been taught even around taught by Buddha, taught by other longstanding philosophical traditions. But it also more recently has been concern confirmed by neuroscience. And so what we know is that we have over 60,000 thoughts per day, and most of these thoughts are totally unconscious.
They're just happening in the background around we are aware of some of our thoughts. Like I'm thinking right now, I'm a little thirsty, but there's also some thoughts going on of, putting through, okay, I'm a little bit nervous. I'm talking to everyone. This is a virtual presentation. So I don't have your feedback.
Like I would, if we were in real life. So all those are going on in the background. And we also know that these thoughts are what inform our view of the world. We view our world through a subjective lens. Through our experiences through our history, through what life has taught us, this is what makes up our biases.
And our thoughts really are our preexisting beliefs. So what we think about our health or our relationship with our loved ones, with our work, all of those different things make up our thoughts. And as I mentioned, we have these 60,000 different thoughts, but really we are not aware of most of them.
And so really this concept of managing our mind first and foremost, starts with awareness. So beginning to understand what thoughts are going on inside of our brains in part, because if we realize and take note and understand and access more of what those thoughts are, We can then utilize that to our advantage.
So what neuroscience has taught us is that our thoughts are what influence our emotions. Our emotions is what then creates action or in many cases in action in our lives. And it's that action then that ends up with our results. So if I have a thought that I hate drinking water, I don't, but we'll just pretend, cuz I have this here.
And that makes me feel pretty bummed out because I know that I have to drink water for my Sjogrens. I get pretty dry. Then some of the actions I may take out of that is I may drink more soda or drink less fluid overall. And then the result of that is maybe I have more issues with my dentition or I'm less hydrated.
So I have more dry eyes, dry mouth. That's just a simple, really clear cut example of how that works
When we lack awareness of what our thoughts are, that's how we remain stuck in these same vicious cycles or loops or patterns that we see in our behavior. Our actions are fueled by those default assumptions, our beliefs, those lenses that we see the world through, and we don't even realize it.
So why exactly and like how does this relate to self-compassion? So we're gonna jump into that specifically. So our self-worth depends on out competing others or in many cases ourselves. And when that happens, we become more anxious, insecure, and self critical. We also become more defensive and we see others or ourselves as the obstacle to overcome.
So I don't know about all of you, but when we have those moments, when we are really hard on ourselves, it activates our sympathetic nervous system. So that is our fight flight fear, and freeze and fawn response. So that is what we jump into. And that activates then release of catecholamines, which are our fight or flight hormones.
And we know that the release of those substances over the long term really can result in significant health complications. So we can see dry mouth become worsened. We can see our digestion slow down our stop, or in some cases speed up kind of those butterflies in your stomach. We see changes in the types of white blood cells or inflammation cells in the body.
And we can overall see all of these, the culmination of all of this imbalance in our nervous system, a system, when we were back in cave people times this tendency to have self-criticism was really self-protective. This is what helped keep us alive in in those situations where we needed to escape the Sabre tooth tiger or the wooly mammoth.
But now what we see much more often is when we criticize ourselves, it's like an injury to our self-concept. And so even though we're not being chased by the tiger and the tiger going away, when we get into these critical self thoughts, we end up perpetuating and continuing and re re triggering kind of our sympathetic nervous system now the opposite.
So if we switch into self-compassion mode, we actually can trigger our nurturing and soothing response. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Self-compassion has a lot of data behind it, and I have some references listed on the last slide, but it's been associated with greater happiness, improved life satisfaction, increased motivation, better relationships, improved physical health and less anxiety and depression.
So if you're going to take, another 10 minutes out of your day to incorporate something into your life, I really encourage you to consider and to incorporating a self-compassion practice. And we'll jump into a sample practice in a few minutes. So I wanna do a little more interaction now that we have set the stage.
I wanna know who in the group was taught. That being competitive or critical of ourselves made us better, maybe either raise your hand or I think in the so definitely Vicky, Jennifer Meredith. I was a total competitive like maniac. Honestly, I think back to high school, I was like trying to join every club.
I knew that my parents didn't have money saved for college. So I was trying to get any, and every like potential scholarship that I could to help pay for school. And even like up to the last few years internally, I would want to bring the best dish to like a potluck. That meant like a, that was a big deal to me.
Like bringing the best tasting dish or the best looking dish, like it was a competition. And now I think of that and giggle, but it's just how I was brought up. You were expected to get good grades and and certainly do your best, but there definitely was a competitive spirit in our house and a thought that made me worth something and a better person.
So who here, maybe when you're feeling down, starts to fixate on things, anyone else ? I'll ruminate, that's something that really will get me get me going. Especially if something goes wrong or if I don't please someone, as I would expect, this happens in the office a little more often.
I'll ruminate on that and think on that for a while. And that is something that really can eat up a lot of mental energy. It's a good way to use up some spoons or to have trouble falling asleep. That's another time when it really can hit you when you're trying to put your hat on the pillow and it just continues.
Or you're really struggling. And you look at, maybe for me, it's been my sister or a good friend, or maybe a colleague, and you're like, why is it so easy for them kind of that comparison. And then you're just feeling like really isolated and alone and like, excuse me, like crap. And talking about this a little bit more about how incredibly lonely it can feel when you don't live up to your own standards or you failed to hit some sort of mark or measure that someone else was expecting of you. And this is just taking home that point of really that rumination letting your entire day or week or however long, get ruined by those feelings of anger or frustration that are coming out because of your thoughts about a particular situation or circumstance that you've encountered.
And then you act out of that emotion, right? Maybe you say some words to someone that you end up regretting or you're, short with someone or maybe affects your driving right. More easily use some unspoken language or on the horn. Okay. So we end up standing in our own way when we are self critical.
And so let's get out of our own way. So one of our more modern philosophers Ravi Shankar has shared the state of your life depends on the state of your mind. So be kind to yourself. So let's take a few minutes and work on that.
So we're gonna talk a little bit first before we jump into the exercise about what self-compassion is and what it isn't, it's the act of treating ourselves with warmth, caring, and it's the desire to help when we fail or make mistakes. And it's not self pity self-indulgence or self-esteem, this is a different ballgame.
There really are three elements of self-compassion and we're gonna address each of these. And I think you'll see some of these resonate with some of the things we were just talking about. So it's this idea of getting out of that mode of self judgment and really flipping into self kindness, honoring our imperfections with warmth and understanding. Maybe treating ourselves like we would a good friend when we're in our, when we're at our best. In seeing our own common humanity versus feeling isolated. So seeing our imperfections and suffering as just part of that greater shared human experience, we all go through it. We all have crappy days and that's okay. We all have moments that we are not our best and really honoring that as part of our humanity coming together as more of a whole, as opposed to going off by ourselves, feeling isolated and lonely in that self judgment.
And it's embracing some mindfulness being open to experiencing our negative thoughts and emotions rather than suppressing them, sweeping them under the rug or getting swept up in them and in that rumination cycle.
So here are some little warning signals for some of us. When we start a self-compasion practice, it may be painful when we give ourselves unconditional love. Sometimes we discover those conditions where we weren't loved. And so for some folks that can really be a little jarring, but I think it's helpful to go into this understanding that can happen, then that is a possibility.
And then honoring that. And so if you are noticing some pain or sadness and grief coming up, I would welcome you to focus on your breath, focus on that inspiration and exhalation, do a little grounding exercise. Put your feet on the ground or feel your bottom on the chair and just really lean into that sensation of the weight of your body against whatever surface you're on.
Or one thing that I really find very helpful is putting my hand on my heart and feeling my heartbeat, feeling my chest, go up and down as I breathe. Another position is putting your hand on your heart and one hand on your stomach, especially if you're taking some deep belly breaths
And this can repeat to yourself, this is sadness. It's okay to feel sad. We're gonna go through more of this, but, and just sitting with that emotion emotions are vibrations in our body. At their core emotions are nerve impulses in our brain. They're just vibrations. And with time they will pass through us and each person takes a little more time.
But sitting with that is opposed to things that I've done to suppress that those emotions are, getting a snack, scrolling, having a glass of wine, all those things are for many of us ways that we buffer so that we don't have to feel some of those uncomfortable emotions.
So the reason we focus on touch is because caring touch can a, has actually been proven to release oxytocin. So oxytocin is the love and bonding hormone. This is the hormone that's released every time I am fortunate enough to nurse Oliver. And it's can cover little ears, but it's also the hormone that's released when we're in love or in after an orgasm, when you start acting kindly towards yourself.
And if you're having kind of trouble with the getting into that head space of warmth and compassion, starting with touch can be really helpful. Because that action can then help influence our emotions and our thoughts as well.
So Jennifer shared healing happens with others and not in isolation. I did some breath work this morning with an accountability group of women. I'm a part of, yeah. That and I have to say one of the things that's been really, I think healing for me too, is being part of one support group in particular is of women, physicians who all have autoimmune conditions.
And having that group of folks that I connect with and have kind of some of the understanding with in addition to some of the other autoimmune support groups, I'm in have really been incredibly healing and helpful.
And we know the meaningful connection with other human beings is biologically healing for us. We are social species. And when we become self critical and we go into isolation mode and that fight or flight mode, it's all going away from that biological need for us to be a community and to work together and to help the collective group survive.
All right. So practice makes a habit rather than practice makes perfect because we're all imperfect and we are making that conscientious effort starting today to remember that we're all imperfect and to try to welcome that imperfection.
Alright, so we are going to take a self-compassion break today. One thing I neglected to mention at the beginning. But in the reminder email there is a journal template and workbook that you can download in there and I will make sure that gets sent out again with the recording. If you don't have that handy, just grab like a little scratch paper or pull up the note section on your computer or you can do this kind of mentally too.
We are going to take a self-compassion break together.
So I want you to take a few moments and bring to mind a situation in your life that's difficult situation that's causing you stress in your life. And I want you, if you feel comfortable and if you feel safe to close your eyes or you can just lower your gaze away from the screen. And I want you to try to bring to mind and bring to your body where you feel that stress or that emotion or discomfort in your body. And if anyone feels comfortable, And wants to do this exercise with us. You're welcome to raise your hand and if no one feels comfortable, that's a, okay. I think you can hit raise your hand on the participants tab.
will say one place that I tend to feel that discomfort there's actually a couple. So one is I'll tend to feel tightness in my chest, especially if I'm feeling anxious. If I'm feeling stressed up in my shoulders. I say it's like the weight of the world on your shoulders. It's very true other places.
Some people will feel in their neck tension in their hips, sit with that. This is that element of being mindful. And as you're sitting with that sensation, you can pick what resonates for you. But just to say, this is a moment of suffering, this is a stress, or this hurts saying it out loud helps your brain process that in a different, in a different way than just thinking it.
And you can just keep saying that to yourself. This is a moment of stress.
This is a moment of stress.
Now we're gonna recognize our common humanity.
Suffering is a part of life where maybe other people feel this way. I'm not alone. We all struggle in our lives. So you can pick one or a couple kind of whatever resonates with you and just focus on that communal aspect of our humanity and that this is part of that human that's part of the human experience.
I'm not alone. I'm with all of you today. We all struggle. Now I want you to ask yourself.
What do I need to hear myself say right now?
What do I need to hear myself ex to express kindness to myself?
So you can continue to use your gentle, loving touch. And Jennifer shared. I am enough. I think that is fantastic. One to add to this list. May I be kind to myself? May I give myself the compassion that I need? May I forgive myself? May I learn to accept myself as I am.
May I be Kathleen? I just caught that your hand was up. I'd love if you're willing to unmute yourself and maybe share how that went, or maybe you have a question.
[00:32:56] Kathleen: I think self Compassion's very important. I think that correcting a mistaken belief. It's good to challenge that and replace it with a healthier, more adaptive way of thinking. But when it trigger is associated with someone who behaves very badly and it, that I think is really more complex , because there's bullying in our culture and sometimes there's bullying in extended families.
[00:33:36] Kara: Absolutely. Yeah. That's and we know that so many of us, especially those dealing with all forms of chronic illness, when you look at the data, many of us have histories of. They call adverse events in our childhood or in our upbringing. And certainly bullying and trauma all fall into that.
One of the things that we've worked on in our, our bigger coaching program is how to reconcile those past events and what we make those mean in our present tense. And as we look to the future, and that's definitely some challenging work that that so many of us undertake and can find new understanding of those past events, through, looking at what our thoughts are about them.
And how we process what that brings up. Thank you so much for sharing sharing that. So in in your work buck, at least we don't have time to go through the other exercises, but there are a couple other exercises that I share, and these are exercises taught by the leader in self-compassion Dr. Kristen Neff so attribution to her, but one is how to counter being your own worst critic. So how do you call yourself out with love and kindness but to recognize and become more aware of when you are hopping into that critic mode, as opposed to being your own hype woman. The second exercise is looking at how you can really be your own best friend, taking yourself through an exercise of thinking through, how do you treat your best friend when they're having a bad day and how do you treat yourself and how did those differ? So that's another exercise you can walk through and then there's space for you to start a self-compassion journaling experience.
So taking a few minutes at the end of each day to really go through those three elements of self-compassion that we talked about, so that mindfulness recognizing that common humanity, and then looking at what we need in that moment to love on ourselves.
So we talked a little bit today about managing our minds about how we can tip the scale in our own favor, as opposed to being our own worst critic. And then looking at how practice can really make a habit in our everyday lives. So one image I did not include in the slide deck that I probably should have. I'm gonna add it for next time. Is this idea of tiny gains and the power of tiny gains. If you haven't read the book atomic habits yet it's by James Cleary. It is a pretty quick and interesting read and it talks about how we can encourage ourselves in different ways to reinforce good habits, to break bad habits, all those sorts of things, using how our brains are inherently wired, but he talks about the role of 1% improvements.
We don't have to completely turn our lives upside down or do a complete 180 to see measurable success and measurable improvement. It's really those little, 1% improvements over time. Even in the setting of a few bad days that really end up leading towards exponential improvements. And so I would really encourage you to think about just taking a couple minutes every, every day and connecting this work maybe to part of your routine.
So maybe it's part of, after you hit snooze, instead of falling back asleep, thinking about how you're going to love on yourself today or at the end of the day. Okay. What maybe was a struggle and how can I be mindful of that? Recognize my common humanity and love on myself some more And that's where that journaling can come into play.
So I would love for everyone to take a moment and just reflect on what we learned.
Thank you so much for taking your time out of your busy week and. Having a little bit of a break in love and compassion for yourself. So congratulations on taking an hour out of your day to focus on you. I applaud you. It's awesome. We'll talk soon. Take care.
If after listening to today's masterclass on self-compassion, you are energized and ready to take serious action toward living a sustainable anti-inflammatory lifestyle. To those of you who are looking to reject diet culture. Who aren't looking for the quick fix for those of you who are ready for an uncomplicated, sustainable science supported approach to health and healing or those who are ready to break up with their own worst critic. Jan, and I would love to welcome you to our private pop-up event over in the Facebook group for two weeks of anti-inflammatory living fund, where we get to hang out and just have fun with some really cool people and learn so much about how living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle doesn't have to be expensive or complicated. You can attend live group coaching sessions. To start breaking through those limiting beliefs and work through our exclusive mid-year resolution retreat workbook, where you will assess where you are aspire to your wildest dreams and ascend step-by-step to reaching them. To register, visit crunchy allergists.com and click on the banner or visit the link in the show notes.
Thank you again for tuning in and I can't wait to talk to you again next week. Take care.
