The Everyday Guide to Self Compassion: Effective Strategies to Increase Self-Love and Acceptance

Today’s episode helps to soothe your exhausted emotions. I spoke with Dr. Laura Silberstein-Tirch, author of How To Be Nice To Yourself. Find out how you can build your own quiver of compassion with techniques and practices to help you ease your worries and fears. 

 FULL TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE

Leann H 0:17
Welcome to shelf aware books podcast today. I am so excited, mindfully excited to talk to you, Dr. Laura Silverstein. She is the director for the Center of compassion focused therapy up in New York in the author of multiple books on my bookshelf and in front of me right now. So if one can mindfully fangirl, that’s what I’m going to be focusing on today. Welcome, Laura.

Dr. Laura 1:13
Thank you so much land. I’m so happy to be here.

Leann 1:15
Great. Thank you. I wanted to start off with, tell us a little bit about the folks that you most often work with, and maybe a bit of who you see the most that caused you to think about writing the book, How to Be nice to yourself?

Dr. Laura 1:34
Well, I’d be happy to well, in, in our practice in New York, I see you have a range of individuals from a range of backgrounds, different struggles, but I think at the core of a lot of human suffering is this inner dialogue, this inner critic that we have, we all tend to be a lot harder on ourselves than we are on others. And that We really struggle with a sense of shame and self criticism. primarily in my practice, I do treat young adults, some adolescents and adults, and then usually kind of somewhere between the age range of 15 to 115. But really kind of a full age range in that in that respect. And across the board, I think one of one of the core realities of our existence as humans is that we all suffer. At some point in our lives, we’ll kind of deal with tragedy or difficulty or illness, or death of a loved one. And in all of these experiences. I think the core remedy is compassion for ourselves and for other people.

Leann 2:53
How did you first come across compassion? How did you come across this? To start to think that this might be the remedy? For so many of the things that we experience,

Dr. Laura 3:03
I think, um, compassion kind of has been at the core of kind of some personal practice for myself. When I started studying and practicing meditation and Buddhism, the practice of loving kindness has always been at the core of an approach to understanding oneself as well as the suffering of other people, as well as finding a pathway to do something actively about it. When I was in graduate school, I came across the work of Paul Gilbert in the UK. He is the founder of compassion, focus therapy, and somebody I studied intensely with and under, and doing kind of compassion focused therapy has been a cornerstone of my approach the work that they do in my practice, at the Center for compassion, focus therapy, I find that it fits so nicely with the approaches that are evidence based in cycle therapy, particularly acceptance and Commitment Therapy in cognitive behavioral therapy. I like to say that compassion focused approaches, shares its toys and plays well, with other approaches to treating human suffering.

Leann 4:14
You mentioned that you practice compassion with some of your Buddhist practices. And I think that’s something we see very often in literature and books is a Western psychotherapy approach that either is finished with or can find commonalities with Eastern practices. Have you ever looked into why these seem to dovetail together so nicely?

Dr. Laura 4:42
I think the adult heart of kind of this overlap if we look at why, why these two kind of dovetail so nicely, is the approach to human suffering is an understanding that we all experience suffering. Suffering is a part of the human condition. And that so often so much of our suffering is a product of our tricky human brains, the minds that can think about thinking, that can take kind of feared stimuli and kind of hold it in our minds for long periods of time, either with rumination or with worry, and that we can’t, the more we try and struggle with it, the more we try and struggle to get rid of it, the more it kind of comes back that much harder and quicker. And so I think in Buddhist approaches, as well as in western psychotherapy, what we’ve learned is, it’s not about trying to get rid of those thoughts per se, because the more we try not to have a thought right, the more likely we are to have them, but to change find new ways of responding to them to expand our repertoire, towards skillful means with more skillful approaches to our private events, to the things we struggle with most to the things that kind of cause us our suffering, whether it be Worried rumination or panic, or self criticism that that voice is very hard to get rid of. But we can find a new way of responding to it. And I think there’s a real overlap to that kind of wisdom when it comes to Western psychotherapy, and Buddhist psychology.

Leann 6:18
Well, and you touched on something that I was going to try and bring up later, but you went there first, self criticism, the inner critic, in your book, How to Be nice to yourself, you really dive into detail with what is that inner critic, and you have very practical steps about the inner critic. So I’m going to assume that this is not something that only a small part of the population ever experiences. You must come across this pretty frequently. What do you think, hooks us so much with that inner critic that so many people struggle with it? I think it’s the crux of

Dr. Laura 6:57
kind of our experiences. Our inner critic or the function of our inner critic, is to give us a sense of control, often over things that feel like maybe out of our control, that we tend to assign blame to ourselves for the things that are going wrong in our lives rather than taking responsibility, I mean, toggle, I talk a little bit about this in the book, but there’s kind of a difference between a self blame versus kind of self correction. Right, like in terms of having a more skillful approach to those things that are causing struggle or suffering in our lives. I think when it comes to an our inner critic, we’ve kind of particularly you know, in my neck of the woods, but I think in Western society, we have a very kind of competitive focus, kind of this keeping up with the Joneses mentality, this kind of pressure that we put on ourselves to produce and achieve and to strive for better to be the best versions of ourselves. And often we have this belief that if I can, if I’m hard enough on myself, I can do better. Try harder, be the version of myself I want to be. But unfortunately, what we see is the actual effects the actual function and self critic, critic tends to increase more anxiety, decrease our motivation and increase a sense of hopelessness. So instead, instead of kind of engaging the self parading self criticizing kind of shame based self criticism, compassion offers us an alternative that doesn’t necessarily let us off the hook for our mistakes or struggles with finds a more effective way of getting. So I think, ultimately, you know, it’s a human tendency for us to blame ourselves, to want to have control over the situation and push ourselves to do better but I think when we get into this kind of shame based self criticism, we tend to find ourselves in a lot of trouble

Leann 9:00
So when you talk to people, and you say beating yourself up doesn’t work. And while the attempt is control, it basically has the opposite effect. I’m sure they bring up the thought that well, then what do you want me to be a lazy slug in bed all day?

Dr. Laura 9:18
No, I think that’s it. Yeah, absolutely.

Leann 9:20
How do you reassure people that not beating yourself up does not automatically turn you into a lazy person who never accomplishes anything, but actually is more effective in the long run?

Dr. Laura 9:34
This is one of my favorite conversations to have with individuals I’m working with. And it’s usually this kind of series of Guided Discovery questions where we can take kind of a look at and as a function of their inner critic. So we’ll often start with a question about what would if I were to be able to take away their interpretive right if I were able to wave a magic wand and when they stepped across the threshold In my office door leaving session, they would never be critical of themselves again, what would be their greatest fear? And often that lazy slug response? Right that I would be bad that I would be lazy that I would, I wouldn’t accomplish anything is often the response. So we’d start to take a take a look at the nature of their inner critic together, we talked a little bit about what their critic sounds like to them, what it thinks and feels about them. even do a little bit of kind of imagery work like what is it? Like if, if we could assign an image or form to your critic? What would it look like? What would it sound like? And how do you feel when you come into contact with the way it feels and thinks about you? And often people respond with the sense of it doesn’t feel free, it doesn’t feel good. And then I asked him about, perhaps people in over the course of our lives that got the best performance ever. Perhaps those teachers or mentors or coaches or caregivers that truly supported them that truly had their well being at heart that wanted the best, how they responded to them? What were the what would the ways that they thought and thoughts about what were the things that they said? Or did when they struggled or made mistakes? And for some individuals, you might imagine who this individual might be. And then asking them kind of how it feels to come in contact with that approach. And did those individuals or would those individuals, let them off the hook? Let them be those lazy slugs in bed? Would they hold them kind of to take responsibility, but they walk them through that approach? So I think it’s kind of comparing and contrasting these ways of being with ourselves, right and wouldn’t, how to learn to be that kind of coach or mentor that does get the best performance out of you. That doesn’t let you off the hook, but doesn’t leave you feeling anxious, or full of shame, or sad or angry with you oneself in the ways that the inner critic tends to, or doesn’t take away one’s motivation to do better and try harder as the critic tends to do.

Leann 12:10
So let’s do a bit of a scenario to give listeners a sense of what this sounds like in real life. I have actually spoken to people, and they’re like, Well, no, I don’t have much of an inner critic, but I am a perfectionist, or they Oh, they can identify with the idea of imposter syndrome. Do you see a lot of that in your work? And what do you say to people to help them with that feeling of imposter syndrome? The if they just found out who I really am, they’d fire me.

Dr. Laura 12:44
Often, there’s a similar kind of series of questions that might show up around this. So for some, it’s not a shame based self criticism, but it is this kind of fear of being found out of not being good enough of not being Who people think they are kind of that imposter syndrome that you’re describing? And I think it starts with like, what would be the greatest fears if somebody were to find out? So rather than trying to challenge the imposter syndrome head on, we might just start with like looking at what’s the function of that? And what would be that greatest fear? What would be kind of the biggest fear for that individual in being found out? So that’s a good one. And kind of looking at the in there. What are some of the values for that individual around that? Or how is that belief trying to protect them? And really looking at kind of, are there other ways to go about meeting those values? protecting oneself is one route that we might take and the other is I think, can we bring some compassion and kindness to oneself around this and look at the bigger picture of oneself? How would they respond to a friend who was in a similar situation is often a common question. We start thinking that because the way we view ourselves is a lot harder, we hold a higher bar for ourselves, and we would others, and would they judge them? Would they judge someone else? The way they’re judging themselves? And why is there a double standard there? What’s, what’s the difference there for them? And can we kind of look at that? Through this other perspective, I think there’s a little bit of using flexible, Flexible Perspective taking around this experience as well. And understanding kind of the way the mind is kind of focusing more on the negative, which tends to do or trippy brains tend to have this negativity bias when it comes to experiences of threat and experiences of ourselves. And so how do we expand that lens a little bit to take in the whole picture?

Leann 14:49
You touched a bit on our tricky brains. And in one of the books that you are a co author on the act practitioners guide to The signs of compassion, which is a little bit heady, not quite as easy to understand as the How To Be nice to yourself book. But in the beginning of it, there is a wonderfully explained and described section that talks about the incentive resource focus system. And there’s a graphic in the book I’m reading it’s page 76. Figure six, about the drive excited and vital, the content safe, connected, and the angry, anxious and disgusted. Can you tell us a little bit about how our brains work and what those three systems are?

Dr. Laura 15:42
Ah, so in the national focus therapy and CFT, we call that model the three circle model. And it’s a really nice straightforward, simplified synopsis of our emotion regulation systems, and that we have these three main ways that are Our minds regulate emotions and kind of operate. And those three circles. So we have kind of, as you mentioned, the drive circle, the insensitive, the threat circle or emotion regulation system, and our contentment, or affiliative system. And so each of these emotion regulation systems organize our brain and our bodies in particular ways. They tend to move us towards or motivate us based on different stimuli. So what I mean by that is that when we’re under conditions of threat, right when we’re feeling anxious or angry or disgusted, our minds and our bodies are going to be organized in particular ways. Often people might refer this to as our fight flight freeze system, that our body amps up to deal with a threat in a particular way. Our heart rate may increase, or our breathing patterns may change. Muscles may tense up, getting us ready to confront a threat And our minds will focus in on threat information only. So, you know, evolutionary psychologists say, you know, it’s, you’re not going to start thinking about lunch when you’re about to be lunch. So it’s kind of a way in our minds focus in and even very narrow just on threat related material, and on information that’s going to be in line with this experience of the conditions of threat we feel with our tricky brains the way that they are and the our human minds. We it’s not just threats in our environment, right, we can take the threatening material that’s around us and hold in our minds for long periods of time. This is at the center of the book, why zebras don’t get ulcers, right, because they light up such a wonderful book and it’s supposed to be so brilliant in his kind of in the approach to looking at and why our minds are different that we have a disability. To hold threat in our mind for long periods of time, and that affects our bodies as well. And so our threat system is this has this ability to organize our brains and our bodies in particular ways that get us ready for threat. And when it comes to our drives, our incentive seeking or resource seeking are in a hunting and gathering. Winning system, it’s very akin to doping don’t mean charged. In that way, we’ll organize our brains and our bodies in particular ways as well. So, you know, if we’re told that we have won a substantial amount of money, right, if we’ve hit the lotto, let’s say, you know, our minds and our bodies are going to be organized and particularly as as well, it’s gonna be very excited might be difficult to sleep, we kind of have a charger a rush of energy that comes over us, our minds might start focusing on the waste of my sender use that kind of newfound wealth. So we have this other drive system that allows us to penetrate move towards and gather more. And we live now in a context of abundance. And we have these competitive brains. So the way that that organizes our minds and our behaviors is please cific as well. And the third circle, that is our soothing system, our ability to down regulate our ability to feel, content, that everything is as it should be, we can feel connected to others. This is very useful, particularly in terms of caregiving and care receiving in terms of our ability to learn how to be soothed and to take care of ourselves and each other. In our family and species. This is very important and a big part of how we raise our young is dealing with having this affiliative focus this caregiving and care receiving system This system is connected to our caregiving in Paris eating repertoire of behavior, often associated with oxytocin or this kind of terms kind of the love drug or our experience of feeling connected with other people’s soothed at ease, and also organizes our minds and our behaviors in particular ways we tend to have a more open field of attention and awareness. When under these conditions, we tend to have more freedom and more free rein, in terms of our behaviors than when we’re focused on winning or driving or achieving or when we’re focused on threat and the other two systems. These I find it these three circles are quite useful when talking to individuals about emotion regulation, about our experience of our tricky brain, and how it can organize our ways of thinking and being in the world in particular ways and start looking at And how much time over the course of our lives we spend in each of these systems. So sometimes we’ll kind of look at and how disproportionate our experience may be when it comes to threat or drive versus soothing and affiliation. And then you look at ways we can kind of build up access to these systems, and how to learn how to use emotion regulation techniques in response to them, and work with them.

Leann 21:27
So it’s possible to intentionally shift between these systems, I’m thinking about different scenarios that might be that fearful, anxious, maybe I’m waiting for test results. And every time the phone rings, I jump up and it’s not the doctor’s office yet. Or I am checking my email and I get an email for a meeting with my boss that I have no idea what it’s about. So I’m sitting in this fearful anxious, oh my god, what’s going to happen state took me a bit about how you work with someone to either work within that state or shift to one I like better.

Dr. Laura 22:05
I think Yeah, sometimes it’s possible to shift and off. But I think it often starts with learning how to be in that state. As you mentioned, I think that’s so important. Because the more we try not to have an experience, the more we fight it right, the more it feels like it intensifies. And that’s particularly true when it comes to experiences of threat. And I think when we begin working with these systems, we often begin bringing awareness to the experience because because they’re so automatic, we tend to get hijacked by these systems, and we’re already into kind of threatened mode before we know it and the heart is racing, and perhaps we’re acting more automatically than we necessarily would like. And so being able to notice, our different selves and we do a lot of a multiple selves work in CFT in the work of kind of notice and what emotional self is arised What are the conditions you find yourself in noticing how it’s playing out in your body? What kinds of emotions are present with thoughts and urges have arisen and becoming kind of more familiar with this sexism as it’s happening from this observer perspective as less than a fused with our thoughts and feelings around our experience. Being able to increase our sensitivity to the suffering in the moment is that first step, and then bringing this understanding and I think this is connected to a lot of the work and self compassion. And then the compassion work in general, is understanding that this is a very human response that there’s nothing wrong with us for having a threat system. In fact, it very much is an advantage that we have, we can learn to master it is it is a superpower in and of itself. It allows us to respond quickly. It allows us to Do things that are needed when there is an actual threat. If there’s if you’re in the in the road and there’s a bus coming moving quickly to get out of the way is very important. So understanding that threat, suffering, our experiences are very much a part of the human condition are really what connects us to other living humans on this planet is a next step in understanding and validating our experience. Like it makes sense if you get that email That’s unexpected from your boss that you’re gonna all of a sudden feel really anxious and threatened. And you can choose and how to respond more skillfully. Once you can understand Alright, this is anxiety. Anxiety wants me to respond in particular what’s going to be most helpful. So allowing ourselves to be able to slow down in the face of these experiences slow down, metaphorically, but also learn how to slow down physically and physiologically. We can notice the rate and the pace of our breath, notice the tension and our muscles and breathe into and out from that experience, we can suddenly change the way we start experiencing threat we started experience, anxiety, and sometimes have more access to our other emotion regulation systems which can be quite helpful in responses.

The way you speak about compassion is so grounded and practical. Yet you also co authored a book Buddhist psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy a clinicians guide which I have to admit even I found, Hetty will say so the next couple of books that you have out like at experiencing act from the inside out self practice, self reflection workbook for therapists, and of course the How To Be nice to yourself. All become more and more and more grounded in Here are the steps someone can take to work with all of this knowledge, all this preamble to ask, as someone with all of this knowledge, and the titles and the education, do you still find yourself struggling to be self compassionate, even with all of the knowledge in your head?

Of course, of course, I am certainly just as kind of yet subject to suffering as kind of as everyone else. I think I’ve had a lot of practice. I you know, I think what I really like about this work and like about my approach and my partner’s approach to applying this stuff from the inside out, doing the practice that I asked all the people with whom I serve to do, has allowed many hours on the cushion per se, a lot of opportunity. And I think that one of the things I really like like to say that compassion is the more you become available to your compassionate mind, the more it becomes available to you. And I have direct evidence of that being so that the more time I’ve spent in this work, the more it feels available, the more there’s a part of me that continues to show up, even when the critic is still banging down my door and telling me you know, something isn’t good enough or I that I’m not good. But there’s a voice that shows up with that ridiculousness. Alright, slow down. All right, kiddo. What’s going on here? Why, why? Why do you think this critic showing up for what’s the struggle and suffering? How can you be more skillful? You got this it’s going to be okay. Those kinds of messages that kind of voice, that version of myself that is me at my most compassion and I’d like to say even those versions of myself Because depending on the nature of the struggle, I’ve developed a bit of a quiver of my compassionate selves. So depending on the need in the moment, the version of myself that might be more strong or fears, or courageous might show up or the one that’s more warm and loving and supportive show, and maybe kind of a combination of the two. We work in training, the Compassionate mind, we do a lot of imagery work, a lot of clinic creating your ideal compassionate self, creating your ideal compassionate other, those teachers and coaches I was speaking about earlier. And as we start developing these images, these parts of ourselves can start showing up helping us respond to the very human nature of our suffering in our struggle of our inner critics. That you all find ourselves here with these tricky brains. We don’t choose the conditions that caused our suffering. But this training this approach I have found personally in the research I like seeing the research coming out to support this but in my own speaking to your question and my own personal experience, that we tend to start showing up with our compassionate selves to these experiences. Passion often isn’t about taking away the suffering, but it’s about bringing in a compassionate approach to meet yourself in the context of it.

Leann 29:30
That is beautiful. And now I want to develop a quiver of compassionate selves myself. So if anyone also wants to develop their quiver, the everyday guide to self compassion, how to be nice to yourself, I want to give a quick outline of how the book is structured. And reading from page eight nine. What I really liked about is how well you have organized you have bring self compassion to your emotions. bodily experiences, bring self compassion to your thoughts and bring self compassion to your actions in each of those are built upon in the book. And she has a path for each of these at the end of each chapter in order to build your self compassion path. This is a very creative book. It is even visually stunning, with watercolors and just the artwork throughout it. Was that something that was important to you?

Dr. Laura 30:31
It was something that was very important to me and something that I was so grateful. I think the my editors and all the creative team, and I’ll see a press and Callisto publishers were amazing and really helped bring this, this whole package to life on the page and the colors as well as kind of the appearance of it to make it something that you want to pick up an engagement was important to me and also that allows me To activate the different senses, I mean, that is kind of the practice of compassion is to activate all of yourself in the context of these experiences not just going to thoughts or feelings or, or your body one at a time, but to bring all of it to life. So I think they did a really amazing job. And I’m just so, so proud of and so grateful to the work that went into creating this the appearance of the book, in addition to the contest,

Leann 31:27
as a reader, but not an author. I love to ask authors a couple questions about the writing process. Well, are you a planner or a pantser? Do you plan your books? Or do you kind of write by the seat of your pants?

Dr. Laura 31:45
I would say it’s a both and I think, you know, I’m writing is about rewriting. And that that’s something that I learned early on was often it’s, you know, I can do a lot. I can pants it and then I can plan And then pancit and then planet and there’s a little bit of a dance that goes between those two because sometimes the best laid plan leads into kind of a moment of an aha or brilliance or just something that’s kind of inspired off the cuff, improvised even. And that becomes kind of some of the greatest pain of ways of describing or explaining these concepts. So I love to kind of lay out a really good outline to have some nice structure there and then to get really playful.

Leann 32:34
Were there any playful techniques he used are tricks Do you suffer from writer’s block often?

Dr. Laura 32:42
There, there were, I think, for me, particularly there is, um, there’s kind of some very old school approaches to writing that I really enjoy like the you know, just keep writing don’t stop. Don’t take the pen off the paper or your fingers off the keys. See what emerges when I’m feeling really blocked or stuck. I love the idea and something my partner and some other co authors in the past have introduced me to, which is kind of keeping a word count per day, you know, trying to get at least a certain number of words, a certain number of pages done on a particular day doesn’t mean you’re going to use all of it, but kind of keeping up so it does, because the more it stacks up those long periods of time under a deadline that takes the fun out of the writing. And writing can be a lot of fun. If you kind of make it a daily habit, if you make it kind of something that you want to you can’t wait to get back to your keyboard and dive back into that doesn’t mean every time you’re really excited to dive back into it. But it should be something you want to pick up where you left off, or keep going when you have the time to this book was kind of interesting in the sense that I was when I was finishing up I was about Eight months pregnant with my first child. So there was a lot of exhaustion and a lot of other things that were taking up my time and attention in the moment, but I think what was kind of cool is that the subject matter really lent itself to where I was at. And so to be able to practice alongside my writing, and applying this work in in new ways to a very new experience to myself, allowed for some really cool writing experiences in itself and also some kind of moments of really having to push through and and get through and meet some some deadlines, which you know, where it was trickier given some of my new new experiences.

Leann 34:42
What inspired you to write this book and why did you decide it was the right time to do it now?

Dr. Laura 34:49
I think because I had done so much writing, as you mentioned, finance on theory, and that was kind of heady. And that was written for clinicians, I wanted to have something that I could that anybody could access and could read and would want to read. And that had these steps in place that could that they could take and run. You know, over. Over the years, I’ve collected lots of writing and handouts and sheets that I use with my my clients that I wanted to have all in one fleets, and or at least have a lot of them, please, um, and particularly when it came to compassion, and I think this is something again, as we were speaking earlier, compassion and self compassion is a gift I want to give all the clients and individuals I work with. And beyond that, for those individuals that don’t have access to individual psychotherapy or don’t have access to the the time and the privilege in the space that therapy provides to be able to take a book like this and be able to use it on your own and think it’s something I wanted to put out there. Make more available to anybody who anybody could use.

So obviously, you value being able to help people through books, what books have you found? most enjoyable, most helpful and you can include childhood books throughout the span of your lifetime.

Let’s see, what books have I found most helpful. I was gonna think early on in my experience with reading. It was a difficult one, you know, I was diagnosed dyslexic. When I was quite young, I had difficulty with writing and reading. I would, you know, have periods where reading out loud was kind of the worst experience and one of my least favorite things to do. Sitting down and writing was torture for many years, and learning how to organize my thoughts and to read words off the page and take them in to Have some training and I did some work with some tutors. And I remember tons of sitting at the kitchen table having my parents had me read out loud to them and felt like torture. So for a long time, I had a very tortured relationship with reading. And it wasn’t I think until adolescence that I started to really appreciate the process of reading, I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird and that really opening my eyes. And like so many people have reported that book is kind of life changing in terms of perspective taking and understanding human suffering, as well as kind of a universal kind of variance, um, experiences that are so happy described in that book. That that I remember being kind of a turning point for me, in terms of of writing and or in terms of reading, rather. And then as I became more interested in psychology, as well as Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist psychology started To read books by ROM das as well as jack kornfield, and Steven Levine, these are all individuals that have had kind of really powerful approaches to transforming human suffering and to kind of waking up to our experiences and our capacity as human beings and to care for one another. You know, a path with heart by jack kornfield was one of my favorites for a long, long time. And then his next book, after the ecstasy, the laundry were two books that I really enjoy. Sharon Salzberg was another inspirational author and figure for myself and her books. Tara Brock’s radical acceptance in her recent book, which I’m just starting radical compassion are other books that were, like transformative for me. And then throughout graduate school, kind of the seminal text in terms of acceptance of Commitment Therapy, and all that Gilbert’s human nature and suffering as well as the compassionate mind, or books that had a huge impact on my approach as a psychotherapist and the way that I work in the room.

Leann 39:14
Now that you’re a parent, what books did you turn to?

Dr. Laura 39:18
Well, right now we were, you know, good night Moon is a big favorite in our house right now. As well as kind of pet Bunny and a number of kind of picture books but particularly pictures of other babies. Our daughter is very fascinated with kind of faces of babies, but we I’ve gone to revisit some of my own favorites from childhood and ones that I remember memorizing and bought and bought reading back to my, to my parents as a young kid. So I think we’re having Yeah, a wonderful kind of reintroduction. Two childhood books together. It’s been it’s been a real blast and storytime at night is a mix of reading stories as well as making up stories for our daughter, and looking forward to her telling a few of her own in the years to come.

Leann 40:18
Isn’t it amazing to see the books that you logged in grown up with and are basically, you know, embedded in the back of your mind through the eyes of your child?

Dr. Laura 40:29
Oh, absolutely. It’s really it’s been a wonderful kind of perspective shift and also time traveling. And there is something about, you know, memory senses around these experiences and pictures and textures of these books that have been real. It’s really amazing to watch her discover them and for us to rediscover these books.

Leann 40:53
So what’s on the horizon for you next? I know you have a young daughter. I know you’re working. Do you have any projects In the works

Dr. Laura 41:01
Well currently, I’m writing another one of those heady books. My myself and my partner Dennis Parrish, and Chris irons was another compassion focused therapist or writing a book on CFT and making kind of creating a comprehensive text around compassion focused therapy. And that’s been kind of the writing projects as of right now. And we’re doing some you know, we do some trainings for for psychotherapists, which are which are ongoing. Hopefully next month we will be in Montreal, doing a training for a group up there, and hopefully in the next couple months, and depending on life and childcare and everything else I have, hopefully we’ll be getting kind of a blog together on our website, which is mindful compassion, calm and where post a lot of our, which is our practice website but also where we post recorded meditations as well as some writing that we will hopefully get up there as well. As much as I can kind of get out there to give away for free from this material is our goal for this coming year.

Leann 42:18
And that website, I have used your guided meditations and absolutely love your voices. So if you’re listening, go to that website, download them, use them, love them,

Dr. Laura 42:29
Please do they’re they’re there for all to use and get it get a taste of some of the compassionate mind training exercises and meditations that we use in CFT. And in our practice, and are there for Yes, prefer for all to use.

Leann 42:46
Thank you and thank you Dr. Laura for talking to us today. Again, her book is how to be nice to yourself effective strategies to increase self love and acceptance. Available now also out on audience No, which is a great reading of it as well. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

Dr. Laura 43:06
Oh, thank you so much. This was my pleasure. Absolutely.

Leann H 43:09
Great. Take care. You too. Take care.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcribed by https://otter.ai