Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey guys, welcome to A Little Help for Our Friends the podcast for people with loved ones struggling with mental health.

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hey, little helpers. It's Dr Kibbe here. Before we dive into this episode, I wanted to tell you how I could help you navigate the mental health or addiction struggles of the people you love. Cool of Mine is the online coaching platform and community that I built to support you in the moment when you need it the most, like having hard conversations, asserting your needs or setting boundaries, even if you're just curious and want to chat about it. Book a free call with me by going to the link in the show notes or going to coolamindcom K-U-L-A-M-I-N-Dcom and click get started. Thank you, and enjoy the show.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Hello, little helpers. Today we have a different kind of topic. It's called we Care, which is a new term for us, and we're excited to learn more about it. So we have our guest, Dr Jordan Qualia. He has spent over a decade researching and teaching on topics like mindfulness, compassion and boundaries all things that we like here on this podcast. He is an associate professor of psychology at Naropa University, where he directs the Cognitive and Effective Science Laboratory, and is research director for its Center for Advancement of Contemplative Education. He's also co-developed and regularly teaches an eight-week compassion training curriculum for hundreds of individuals. It's actually something that I should probably learn more about, so we're very happy to have you here. Can you tell us what is WeCare?

Speaker 3: 1:28

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be on here and, as we spoke about a little bit in advance, just to be in the presence of two people who are also passionate about the social side of mental health. So thank you both for all you're doing to uplift that topic, and I think that's really what WeCare is about. You know, my journey to WeCare began a long time ago, probably like both of you, I think. I, looking back, see, I was always passionate about the science of mental health and flourishing. But it wasn't until I was a client in psychotherapy myself which helped me sort of overcome panic attacks, actually when I was an undergraduate in college that I became more passionate about mental health and mental health care. And then, as I stayed in psychotherapy as a client not only sort of overcoming mental distress in that kind of more severe way I discovered that psychotherapy could be a vehicle for growing my level of flourishing. And these days at Naropa University, I often talk about how therapy can even be seen as a kind of contemplative practice, and so we might talk about that or a mindfulness practice. So even you know when we're not working on something really specific like healing from panic disorder or panic attacks or something. There's this potential for therapy to still help us on our journey in life. So, anyways, that got me interested in becoming a therapist myself, like you two now do, except I didn't end up going in that direction for reasons that I'll explain. Basically, at a certain point in my training, I was in a master's program in counseling psychology. Point in my training. I was in a master's program in counseling psychology.

Speaker 3: 3:07

At a certain point, and this was 15 years ago now, I started to encounter some unexpected challenges of sitting with clients who were in distress and specifically, I noticed it was really difficult for me to sort of balance my sense of self-attunement with attuning to the other person when they were especially in sort of moments of heightened distress. And I thought, well, this is the whole job. You know I'm supposed to be good at this, and there was a lot of discussion at that time around okay, you need to cultivate healthy boundaries. And I was like, well, how do you actually do that? And so I, in my sort of confused state, I pivoted my career totally in the direction of research and to be honest, I think, to give myself credit, it wasn't just about like kind of getting away from or avoiding becoming a therapist. I also really enjoyed doing research. I had done it in my past and I recognized, I thought that I had a greater potential to sort of offer value, a greater potential to sort of offer value Even to my colleagues. At that time I thought, if I can understand this problem that I'm facing and sort of how to cultivate healthy boundaries, what healthy boundaries are, all of that, then maybe I can, you know, find insights that are going to be relevant to therapists more broadly and helping professionals in general, and maybe you know even everyday kind of life. And so, yeah, I pivoted my career in that direction. I got a PhD in experimental psychology and now I direct a lab at Naropa University that's focused on this sort of well.

Speaker 3: 4:34

Among other things, it's focused on how do we balance self-care with care for others, which I now think about and write about as WeCare. And so one way of understanding we Care is to kind of look at just how self-care has evolved. Already in modern society. The self-care has had such a major impact on society. I mean it's kind of wild how popular and ubiquitous this concept has become, especially when you look at it historically. Self-care evolved initially from being a medical term, right, it was assigned to people like you need to do this kind of if you're a diabetic, you need to, you know, administer insulin or monitor your blood sugar levels that kind of self-care. So you're being a kind of cultural touchstone during the civil rights movement and really an act, or it was seen as a kind of revolution, having revolutionary importance. And then today it's just kept evolving and expanding. You know, it was again like sort of evolved to be something that helped address patterns of imbalanced care in helping professions, which I think it's still useful in that context. But now it's a sort of go-to well-being practice for literally everyone.

Speaker 3: 5:44

And I started to ask myself, you know, is this the end point in the evolution of self-care? Like, have we reached, you know, like peak self-care, or is there something beyond self-care, like what comes after self-care? And so for me, wecare is the answer to that. And we Care is essentially, you know, it expands upon the idea of self-care, so it's not leaving self-care behind, and I think it's really important to clarify that at the outset. Like, we Care is not going to involve compromising the quality or depth of someone's self-care, it's actually going to increase it, it's going to invite you into deeper levels of self-care and maybe even more self-care than you're currently doing.

Speaker 3: 6:26

But yeah, in contrast to self-care, we Care is about caring for a we and, importantly, that we is flexible so it can encompass, you know, just us on this. Call this we that we're experiencing. It could be like the we of your family, the we of your town or community, but it could also expand beyond that and so we can talk about how it's possible to kind of expand our sense of we over time. But it's important to maintain the flexibility of we, because there are certain moments where we needs to sort of come back down to the level of I'm just looking out for myself so that I can care for others. That's a kind of we care as well. Self so that I can care for others. That's a kind of we care as well. So, in essence, we care is about transforming the sense of either or between like either I care for myself or I'm caring for others, from a kind of inner conflict or dilemma into a both and practice in which we recognize that our self-care can energize and uplift our care for others and we also see the connection between our care for others, sort of lending meaning and purpose to our self-care and a metaphor.

Speaker 3: 7:32

I don't know if I'm speaking too much, but I'll just say one more thing might be helpful. A metaphor that I like to use is breathing. So we can mentally divide the breath into in-breath and out-breath and we can conceptually do that. But the in-breath and out-breath are parts of one interconnected system and I think that's a good metaphor for WeCare, in the sense that we can divide care into self-care and care for others. I actually don't think that's such a helpful division and we can get into that. I don't think it's the most important division that we should be making in the concept of care and compassion and so on, but we can do that. We can mentally divide it, but fundamentally they're parts of one interconnected whole and both self-care and care for others are needed to sustain our sense of vitality.

Speaker 2: 8:18

And it's so cool to see you you know all of your work manifesting to this point. I mean we'll plug your book about we Care. And it's just cool because for you, jacqueline, and people listening, I met Jordan Dr Qualia when I was.

Speaker 3: 8:36

I mean.

Speaker 2: 8:36

I don't even remember if I was a grad. I think I was a grad student and I remember I was interested in relationships and emotion regulation and I remember looking around for the people doing similar stuff. I came across your name, I think we emailed back and forth and then I went to the mind and life retreat, which is this awesome conference slash mindfulness retreat, where we're in this like beautiful monastery with gardens and we're just wandering around and doing walking meditation. I think I sat down at breakfast or something with you and chatted with you and I remember thinking like, wow, this guy has a really nice energy. It's like really calm and warm and inviting, saying cool stuff.

Speaker 2: 9:18

And then when we, when I realized who you were, I was like, oh my God, so fast forward. And then you were on my dissertation committee and I just I just really love how you are one of these people who really recognizes that mental health and relationships are a thing Like they, they matter right, like though our relationships actually impact our mental health. So I think that really, this is really exciting. Just in general, I don't want to say that, thank you.

Speaker 3: 9:49

Yeah, and just to say to the context, you know I've always viewed you as a peer of mine and for the same reason, you know, like I recognize, I think we both recognize wow, we're both passionate about similar things here. And yeah, I think I was a grad, I think I was a doctoral student actually, when we were at that together. So, and then somehow, yeah, I ended up on your dissertation committee, which was good fun and you did amazing, of course, so I didn't have to do much labor In that case. That was awesome. But, yeah, thanks for saying all that.

Speaker 2: 10:18

Yeah, so tell us more. So WeCare like. I'm sure you've probably seen and heard about how we all are talking about self-care online and boundaries and all that and we're going to get into all that. It's just funny how so much of the mental health wellness space talks about like we got to do more self-care, self-care, self-care almost like an opposition to know, like burning yourself out by thinking about only about this other person that you care about. So there's really like an either or. But tell us what we care looks like. If it's not this, like giving everything to someone else versus like giving ourselves a few moments to go to therapy or get a massage or exercise. That that's quote, quote, self-care. So tell us like what what we care actually looks like in practice.

Speaker 3: 11:09

Yeah, great question. I think you know the ubiquity of self-care and the way that it's evolved to be pretty much whatever you want it to be is, I think, something that we all recognize is a little bit of a problem, but we don't quite know how to name it. It's like we understand that most of the time self-care is helpful to most people and it's a really valuable part of our mental health journey, and we Care still honors that and it's very much wanting to uplift the value of self-care. But I think on the whole, we Care or self-care is a kind of incomplete lens for assessing something really more fundamental, which is what's the overall balance or harmony in our self-care and care for others in our daily life. And so when you look at actually how self-aware came from and how it was initially, at least one of its instantiations was that it was to address imbalanced forms of care in helping professions, which it's still useful in that context, as I mentioned, we can see that there's this potential for self-care to offer that kind of lens for people to get metacognitive about their care, and I really love that about self-care, like it's an invitation to reflect on how am I approaching care in my daily life and like is it a balanced approach? And okay, it's imbalanced sometimes, like I'm neglecting my needs as a helping professional and that's impacting my clients or my patients or whatever, because I'm not as resourced as I could be. So for a helping profession, that kind of lens of self-care is probably the one that needs to be applied first, because the blind spot I talk about care blind spots in my book the blind spot tends to be neglecting one's own needs as one prioritizes the care of others.

Speaker 3: 13:08

In my opinion that's an incomplete lens because oftentimes that pattern of being other oriented is a habitual strategy. It evolved or was conditioned in a context, you know, throughout childhood or whatever, and it became a kind of personality structure or a kind of pattern we can just say a neutral language that maybe supported well-being early on or supported keeping harmony in the family system or that kind of thing. But it's not necessarily a conscious form of being other oriented. And so helping professions, I think, get a message that in order to correct this imbalance in your care, you should practice self-care and like that's all you need to do. You just practice self-care and now you've got like a kind of balance, you know, in your sense of self-care and care for others, but from a WeCare lens, that's an incomplete solution.

Speaker 3: 13:54

We need to focus on cultivating more conscious care in all the different ways. We need to identify the various kinds of blind spots that we might have in our approach to care, and that includes, you know, whatever our preferences with regard to caring, there are people who have a preference toward other-oriented care and there are people that have a preference towards self-caring probably not the people listening to this podcast or YouTube. You know, helping professions tend to have a preference toward other-oriented care, but we need to cultivate both kinds of care and become more conscious about our relationship to them. And then we can't even stop there. In my view, we need to go to the level where we're sort of learning to blend self-care and care for others. So, to get back to your question, you know in practice how this looks is just being awake to the interconnection between your self-care and care for others as you practice it, and that kind of wakefulness serves as a kind of inner compass, and so I like to say that.

Speaker 3: 14:55

You know, I think the we Care solution isn't like that. We toggle back and forth between self-care and care for others to achieve balance. That's the kind of current narrative. I think that you know, if you are too other-oriented, then at the end of the day you practice self-care, and so you're still in that either-or mindset though in your relationship to care when you're doing that. What would be better and this is the WeCare approach is can I learn to hold both self-care and care for others in my heart simultaneously, like, can I actually deepen my sense of self-care so that it's present even as I'm caring for others, and then vice versa? And if you can hold both of those in your heart at the same time, then it gives rise to what I call a kind of inner compass of care. And this inner compass of care has this kind of natural back and forth to it where we can, you know, emphasize self-care when we need to, without the kind of inner conflict or division that typically accompanies it.

Speaker 3: 15:57

So one real practical example of this is a practice in the book that I call reverse self-care, and so I think it's got a fun name and basically, reverse self-care is that typically, when we approach self-care, we do so with intentions that are primarily about our own well-being, but from a we care perspective, that's in the either or mindset, like we're thinking that self-care time means just caring for myself. But if we just zoom out a little bit, we see that that self-care is embedded in the larger context of how we're caring for our family, our loved ones and our work, you know, whatever our work is in the world. So reverse self-care starts by first identifying a typical self-care activity that you do that's consistently supporting your well-being, and then you reflect who else could this self-care time support in my life, like reasonably, who stands to benefit from me being more resourced?

Speaker 3: 16:57

you know, being more in touch with my vitality and then, rather than doing that self-care activity for yourself, you do it for them. So you actually like source from your intention for that other person's well-being. As you're practicing self-care Now, you don't want to be unnatural about it and lose touch with you know, like your own needs and your sense of care for yourself. But a few times during the self-care activity you try and bring that person to mind and it's a little bit counterintuitive. But often what people find is when they do that they find greater motivation to actually deepen their sense of self-care because they realize that they're not just doing this for themselves. They're doing it now for at least two people, maybe for many more people, and so that's a good, I think, practical example of how WeCare can be started to integrate in daily life.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Yeah, so you see this more as like a mindset shift than a behavioral shift, or like a mindset shift that then creates kind of a behavioral change.

Speaker 3: 17:56

That's right, yeah, so I really emphasize that every person's version of we care is going to look and feel different, like I have no idea, you know, when I look from the outside, whether someone's practicing self-care or, you know, in touch with interconnected care, and so it's really important not to judge someone else, you know, for their decision around what might be their form of WeCare. And also because we're all working with the start and we can talk about this in more different care blind spots, what we actually need to address and focus on is going to differ from person to person, and you know our sort of conscious care practices need to, I think, take into account what our care tendencies and care blind spots and care patterns are. So ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, our version of WeCare is going to, yeah, look very different. But, like, just like you said, we care is not just about changing our internal experience. It starts there where we're more in touch with this interconnected sense of care.

Speaker 3: 18:52

But that inner compass that I talked about, that is really the result of this kind of union of self-care and care for others in your heart, what I call an undivided heart, gives rise to a direction, you know, a sense of alignment in different social situations, where you have maybe a sense of agency.

Speaker 3: 19:13

That's not just sourcing from your inner self. But that is actually like taking into account the context, and I like to think about how the context is. Often, you know like we talk about being context sensitive, but I think for people that are too other oriented that kind of language can be problematic because you think I'm supposed to sort of be a chameleon and adapt to all these different situations. So, in contrast, I talk about context integrative care, and so context integrative is a term I use. That's one step beyond being context sensitive, and the integrative piece is really how do I maintain my sense of goals in the situation and stay awake to them but still take into account the context and then find like that compass needle pointing in the direction of actions that are going to be ideally mutually beneficial, but at least not harming self or harming others, you know. So we care kind of as protecting from those extremes.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Can we hear these blind spots?

Speaker 3: 20:19

Blind spots. Yeah, so I actually have a resource online that people can take a quiz. It's called the Care Pathways Quiz. They can find it on my Instagram, which is at Mindful Boundaries.

Speaker 2: 20:33

It's linked there or it's on my website.

Speaker 3: 20:36

It's definitely an incomplete solution. It's not a scientifically validated assessment tool by any means, and in fact, I think it's really important to mention that my intention in creating the Care Pathways quiz was really for the quiz itself to be a practice, and so my passion and my reason for writing my book. Or if you were to ask me, like, what do you want people to take away from your book?

Speaker 3: 21:01

Which maybe is a question that you two would ask me. I really want people to have that more complete lens for themselves to look at their care through. So, rather than just looking through the partial lens of self-care and using that as a barometer for am I balanced in my care or not I would love for people to look through this more comprehensive lens, which is actually a set of lenses, through the WeCare approach, and so the Care Pathways Quiz is one way of kind of doing that, and it has 35 questions that ask you about different care tendencies or patterns that you engage with. There are questions about your relationship to self-care or care for others or boundaries and things like that, and at the end of it you get one of seven possible outcomes. And then you can go on my website and you can read about all the different seven outcomes and decide for yourself. You know which one best fits you, if any of them at all.

Speaker 3: 21:51

You know care is so complex that any one sort of assessment tool like this would never do. I think everything that's needed to sort of identify your blind spots and so on, but as part of the outcome of that you get to, you get a blind spot. You know what's a possible care blind spot for yourself. So there's the typical blind spots, which is, like you know, you care for others so much that that's comes at the expense of yourself, right? That's probably the most common one among helping professionals. Then there's also the alternative, the opposing one, where maybe this one's actually kind of interesting to get into with you two. You know people who celebrate self-care so much that it becomes, like you know, maybe imbalanced in the direction of too much self-care, that it becomes, like you know, maybe imbalanced in the direction of too much self-care and this was part of my passion in writing. We Care is that's actually undermining their well-being over time, because they're kind of, maybe, without realizing it, prioritizing self-care in a way that's working against our social nature as human beings. And so when we uplift self-care too much or we lean into self-care too much, it's possible that we're undermining our own personal well-being in that process, right? So that's another possible care blind spot.

Speaker 3: 23:06

Then there's something that's called care chameleon, which is like between those two, and this one's really interesting to me. It's like you know, if we're, if our care is driven extrinsically by the environment around us, then we're going to toggle back and forth between self-care and care for others, and there's this wonderful potential in that for us to recognize the flexibility that we have like people that do that naturally they're really flexible in their approach to care and they're like right on the edge of what I would call we care. But unfortunately they're kind of going back and forth, toggling right either this or that, and there's a sense of when they're in one mode they're forgetting the other, and so they're still kind of in that either, or mindset, in contrast to, you know, holding both in your heart simultaneously and emphasizing one direction or the other. So those are three possible blind spots and then the last one I'll mention. There are more, but the last one I'll mention is really provocative and interesting to me personally. This is probably my care blind spot at this point.

Speaker 3: 24:09

I was going to ask yeah, yeah, and maybe yours as well. I like to think of it as more subtle and nuanced, but I'm not sure it is, and it has to do with preferring both and outcomes. So you know like sometimes you have to be either, or in your approach to care, sometimes you have to be a little bit what we would say, you know, dualistic I like to use that term divided, you know, not so divided that we divide ourselves internally, but externally our behavior maybe needs to fiercely emphasize self-care or really strongly prioritize care for others. And you know, as a result of writing this book and just like my own passion for these topics, I definitely have this bias in the direction of wanting to find creative solutions that honor both my care for self and others simultaneously. And that's not always the best thing. Sometimes, in a given moment, you need to emphasize strongly one or the other and that, when you zoom out over the long term, is going to be what's most beneficial for everyone else.

Speaker 2: 25:19

So there's, that's interesting. I'm wondering okay, what do you think about this? This from the situation, from a we care framework? So I have this issue with my ex. I know that a lot of people since I've been talking about this have experienced similar things.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Okay, my ex was in a helping profession, he was a doctor, and he felt burnt out from being so other oriented that when we got together he quit his job and just like hanging out doing a lot of self care, and so he's saying's, saying like I'm so burnt out, I want to focus on me now, I want to focus on my own health, and I'm like that's awesome. But then after a while that looked a lot like he was kind of doing his own thing and then not really helping me out or like contributing in other ways, like he was just like fully into self-care, um, and so I don't know. Sometimes it is kind of in in a couple. Sometimes there is like a gender bias where, like, at least in my life, I've had friends say like the, their dudes are a little bit more into the self-care, and then the and then the women are, you know, doing the emotional labor.

Speaker 2: 26:37

You know, taking care of the household and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 26:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:40

What, what, how would you look at something like that in a in a weak care sense? If you have, like, let's say, a guy who's burnt out from helping others, that he does a lot of self care, but then that puts a lot of burden on the family. Yeah, that's a wonderful question, it's like an equation of like how many people are cared by him smoking weed in my basement? Well, there's complexity. Yeah, I love the question.

Speaker 3: 27:10

And yeah, I'm sorry you had to deal with that. It's your ex, so we can talk about it, you know. Now no problem. But yeah, I think there's a couple things to note that highlight the complexity of this whole conversation. One is that we all go through seasons with our care, right. So like there are times when we really strongly are going to be emphasizing care for others, like you know, a new parent, for example, right? So, really having to care for kids for years and years, you know, maybe decades or something like that be more other oriented than they might be naturally inclined, and so there is that possibility of these longer term arcs in our life, I think, where we're leaning in one direction or the other in a way that is imbalanced, you know, and to some effect. So we care isn't about like maintaining that perfect equilibrium of balance across all situations all the time. Sometimes we care is about seeing what season you're in and emphasizing that, and I think that initially it sounds like your ex partner started in that direction, like hey, I'm, I'm burnout, I've reached this point, you know, in the healthcare system which is totally reasonable and understandable that my output just got unsustainable and I need to take a break, and so I think that it was. There was wisdom maybe that initially informed that decision of I'm going to take a break and emphasize self-care for a while. Break and emphasize self-care for a while, but from a WeCare perspective, then what occurred maybe was that it became this kind of toggling in that direction, so it's still stuck in the either or mindset where and this is part of the problem or issue with self-care, in my opinion in general is that it triggers, activates and reinforces an either or mindset about our care cares, activates and reinforces an either or mindset about our care, which is that we get to do just one at a time, and life is rarely that way Like. If you want to be a skillful human being and you want to genuinely help people, you need to learn to hold both self-care and care for others in your heart simultaneously.

Speaker 3: 29:11

And it sounds like what happened in that situation is they went so far in the direction of self-care that it became what I call a divided mode of care, and all the research you know on this topic is really interesting. It suggests that when we're in a divided mode of care, that's when care undermines our well-being, but that happens in either direction. So we could be in an either or mindset around our care in the direction of self-care, like you're highlighting, and that's undermining his own well-being. At a certain point it sounds like he was like maybe more depressed than you know actually practicing self-care. In some sense he had lost touch with his sense of vitality. We could put it that way, right Depressed, maybe not the best term. And then, on the flip side, you know, we can go so far in the direction of caring for others that we're undermining our own well-being. So it's at those extremes of divided modes of care that we see the unhealthy aspects of care.

Speaker 3: 30:19

Shifting into that mode of self-care for a little while is, yes, you can shift into that as an emphasis, but you really have to stay wakeful to the fact that you're still going to have to show up for others at times. You're still going to have to prioritize your social life, and if you don't do that, then you're actually undermining not only those people's well-being but your own well-being. In the process, you're weakening your social support system, which is going to be needed again in the future. There's all sorts of deleterious effects right Of that kind of divided mode of self-care.

Speaker 3: 30:45

And then the same thing, yeah, on the flip side. So we care is like how do we stay in that healthy middle where we can emphasize without polarizing? So I talk about emphasize, don't polarize your care. And if we can do that, then I would say that you know that situation would be transformed, like he could do all that stuff and still emphasize himself, but when you needed help he would be there to support you, or when your family needed him to show up, you know, for this family gathering, he maybe reluctantly would do that, but he could do it and over time maybe he would see that that's actually supporting his self-care. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 31:24

Thanks for the question.

Speaker 1: 31:25

So when we think about boundaries I mean I'm guessing boundaries we're going to talk about how they allow us to maintain a healthy state of mind so that we can provide other oriented care, in a sense. But can you kind of speak to what you think the role of boundaries are here?

Speaker 3: 31:46

Absolutely yeah. So boundaries is another one of these really ubiquitous terms, and so, yeah, it decided in my book, which here I'll hold it up, maybe because we haven't done that yet. So this is my book. It's out on May 6th, which I don't know if this podcast will come out before or after that but from self-care to we care, the new science of mindful boundaries and caring from an undivided heart. And I was very fortunate Daniel Siegel if you know who that is very famous author in this space wrote the foreword to the book, so just mentioned that too. I'm very grateful to him for that.

Speaker 3: 32:19

But, yeah, I decided to take on, you know, kind of both of these concepts self-care really ubiquitous concept, I think, needs updating how we think about it and speak about it but also boundaries. So one of the things that I noticed about over a decade ago maybe, kibbe, when you and I initially connected or something is, boundaries was being used everywhere, like it was maybe just becoming even more of a buzzword at that time, and it's only continued since. And yet nobody seemed to agree on what they were like. What are boundaries, how do we define these? And so I sort of set out on a quest. You know you could say it that way. I think I read about that in my book, but it was true more or less. I set out on a quest to understand what healthy boundaries were like, how to cultivate them, what are they? And, as I said, it was tied to my own personal journey, like could I actually figure out how that I could have, as a counselor, been able to balance self-attunement to others, to others and maybe, you know, in ways that somebody, if they had had that knowledge, could have taught me at that time and I might have become a therapist instead of, you know, doing all this research kind of stuff. And so I'm happy to say that, even though it took me a lot longer to get that kind of clarity than I initially expected, I feel like I have a good sense of what boundaries are at this point scientifically, and so on.

Speaker 3: 33:38

I'm still working on a few publications on this topic that haven't been peer reviewed yet, so I won't sort of like get into all the science you know at this point, but what I can say is very consistent with what's in my book and with my scientific research on this topic that my view on boundaries is different. It differs because, as I started to look at what they actually are. I realized that part of the confusion was we were one using the term for many different phenomena, you know, so like. There's informational boundaries, like how much do you divulge in a social situation. There's social role boundaries, like between a therapist and their client, like not having dual relationships, right. There's self boundaries, so like where is the edge of myself and where does the other person begin, and that's actually interestingly very up in the field of psychedelics research. You know, that kind of self boundaries or the boundaries of the mind boundaries or the boundaries of the mind.

Speaker 3: 34:39

But what I'm interested in, and I think what you all are maybe mostly focused on, is social boundaries, or what I call interpersonal boundaries, as a way of distinguishing them, which is a kind of definition we can think of, for that generally is actions that we take, deliberate actions that we take to modify social situations or relationships so that they're more aligned with our own needs, values and goals, right, and so that does a few things. By approaching boundaries in this way, one, it sort of takes us out of thinking about boundaries as nouns. So I think that it's important. You know, we talk about boundaries as like limits or expectations that we have. But part of the difficulty of that is that that's like. I think that's a subset of boundaries and it's a really healthy and good one. And especially if people are first on their boundaries journey, that kind of language can be really useful if they're in like a toxic relationship or a really difficult relationship, like what won't I tolerate from these other people, you know, and getting clear about that in advance as a kind of rule. Toxic relationship or a really difficult relationship like what won't I tolerate from these other people, you know, and getting clear about that in advance as a kind of rule. But the problem is that most of our social life is so varied and diverse that when we calibrate those kind of rules and expectations to the context of our most unhealthy relationships, of our most unhealthy relationships, they don't work well in the context of other relationships. They become sort of too, either, or again so too kind of all or nothing or something. So by broadening and thinking about boundaries as actions, as verbs, I think there's this possibility of kind of fluidly adapting them across diverse relationships and social situations. That's one thing that the definition does.

Speaker 3: 36:21

But kind of the bigger insight for me around boundaries is not so much about what boundaries are as what healthy boundaries are. So when I started to kind of investigate that more and interrogate it as a researcher, I realized that what I was studying or what I was interested in was actually something much broader. And so I write about and we care how. One day, as I was preparing for this compassion training class that we offer here at Naropa, I had this insight about care and compassion and how we're approaching them scientifically. That sort of rotated all the other thoughts that I had about this topic. Like it was, like, you know, one of those moments that you I wish somebody could have like zoomed in on my thoughts in that moment. But it really felt like that, like whoa, okay, I've actually been looking at this wrong the entire time, not entirely wrong, but all these puzzle pieces that I had gathered over the years to understand what healthy boundaries were, I realized were about something bigger, and that's what led me to write the book we Care and so we Care.

Speaker 3: 37:30

For me is my answer to what it takes to cultivate healthy boundaries from the inside out. And so this is another kind of difference in my approach to healthy boundaries is that I think that a lot of approaches that focus on boundaries are like outside, in approaches like how do I memorize the right thing to say? Or you know, there's, you know. You go online. You'll find so many Instagram accounts with you know, and it's no problem. I think this is great stuff, by the way, but with so many scripts that you can download for those difficult conversations, for me, as someone who can't remember in the moment especially in the heat of the moment you know what to say and struggles with. You know words, you know just in general, like saying the right thing, those scripts never landed for me. I can never actually adopt them in a way that felt authentic for myself across different social situations, and so I was like is it possible maybe that we could cultivate healthy boundaries from the inside out in a way that becomes a kind of authentic expression for us personally and isn't something that it feels like we have to learn from the outside? And so that's really what we cares about is that we can cultivate this kind of care based inner compass, and that care-based inner compass protects us, first of all, from the extremes. So this is really important.

Speaker 3: 38:46

When we look at kind of the most egregious instances of a collapse of boundaries, they're in those extreme territories. So we're caring for others and we abandon our self-care and we prioritize their needs and what they're wanting in that moment so much that it's undermining our own well-being to do that. That's one way that we lose boundaries and that we have unhealthy boundaries right. And then that can happen in the other direction as well, where people prioritize themselves so much that they're not able to perspective take and they're not able to sort of have that sense of warmth and affiliative emotion for others. That's so critical for actually cultivating social well-being.

Speaker 3: 39:31

And so if we cultivate strongly self-care and care for others and there's different practices to do that self-compassion and compassion for others, and we can get into that a little bit more if we want to but we really deepen that internal sense of like, I will not lose sight of the fact that I need to look out for my own needs and I will not lose sight of the fact that your needs are tied to mine, right. It may not be the needs of the person directly in front of us that we're setting the boundaries with, but the broader system and support system of our life needs us right. So if we can cultivate those things very strongly, then, in the midst of a difficult situation like a conflict, we are much less likely to collapse our care in one direction or the other. And when we collapse our care in one direction or the other, that's when the real kind of harm happens, in my opinion. You know, either we disrespect the other, that's when the real kind of harm happens, in my opinion. Either we disrespect the other person or we violate ourselves. And so that's the first thing about WeCare is that it protects us from those sort of most difficult kinds of collapsing of our care.

Speaker 3: 40:37

And then ideally, our boundaries can be an expression of care for both ourselves and others in ways that cultivate mutual benefit. So a lot of the discussion around boundaries is like the boundaries are expressions of our self-care, and even the definition I offered earlier kind of leans in that direction, because I said that it's about aligning with our own needs, goals and values. But the truth is our needs, goals and values are bound up with the needs, goals and values of those we're surrounded by and those that you know our loved ones and are in our intimate circles, and so on. So there's no way to do healthy boundaries without kind of understanding the effects of our behaviors on others, and so, ideally, wecare helps us to emphasize ourselves again, emphasize without polarizing, and that, ideally, we care helps us to emphasize ourselves again, emphasize without polarizing, and that, I think, gives rise to these naturally healthy boundaries.

Speaker 3: 41:30

There's one more thing I'll say in this in terms of practical tips and why this works in my opinion, which is that when we cultivate care based boundaries, when our boundaries are rooted in care fundamentally, or we care ideally, in my opinion, then the language that we use to express those boundaries is care-based.

Speaker 3: 41:51

And when the language we use is care-based, we balance protection and connection when setting our boundaries, so we stay connected to ourselves and maybe the other person, or at least we stay connected to the wider social fabric of our life, and that offers us a kind of strength, inner strength, that we wouldn't have if we felt like I'm doing this, for me, like this, this is an act or expression of self-care.

Speaker 3: 42:19

Yes, in this moment you're needing to maybe fiercely emphasize your self-care, but you're doing that in order. I think most everyone is doing that to protect their energy, so that they can care for other people in their life. And when we have that kind of broader perspective and it may be even that we're doing it to promote deeper connection in the relationship of the person that we're setting boundaries with. When we have that view of boundaries, then the boundaries we set will be more likely to be well received. There's still going to be social friction and we can talk about the reasons for that, but there's probably going to be less social friction and the boundaries we set are going to, you know, deepen both protection and connection over time.

Speaker 2: 43:04

You know, deepen both protection and connection over time. That sounds like I'm I'm absorbing what you're saying. And if you, let's say a couple of people that we work with in Cooler Mind who are like, how would you, how would you suggest what this would look like in, let's say, someone who's taking care of a loved one with mental illness or addiction? So I have, we're working with a couple people who are saying, well, I'm getting so overwhelmed because, um, we're kind of walking around eggshells with my like my son or my brother, whoever with addiction. I don't want to upset him because it might.

Speaker 2: 43:45

They might relapse and then, also, when he does like, I have to take him to the hospital and try to get them into treatment, and then I'm like overwhelmed and burnt out, so I want to set my boundaries a little bit better. So there always is this kind of like, you know, like what, what happens when it comes to someone who's really struggling and we love them, we want to support them. What does the boundary look like? Or how does you know setting boundaries from a weak care perspective. In that sense look like.

Speaker 3: 44:13

Yeah, it's a wonderful question and yeah, I think that your question highlights Fortunately I think we need to keep highlighting this in this discussion just the complexity of care in our lives, like for people who are caregivers of someone with addiction or some kind of chronic illness or something like that care becomes really complex and how to navigate it moment by moment becomes, I think, the task. So we can kind of globally talk about, you know, strategies that they might take to emphasize and prioritize themselves in that situation. But unless they're kind of like on an ongoing basis, in touch with that sense of compassion for themselves in that situation, then they might miss out on those small opportunities here and there where the other person's like kind of distracted and at peace and kind of off doing their own thing and they actually have that moment to kind of slip out and prioritize, you know, their self-care during that time. I think for people who are in that situation, one is I think we need to validate the complexity of their situation. Like we need to validate how difficult it is for them to actually maintain this sense of balance and that they are being other oriented and that is a good thing.

Speaker 3: 45:28

Like that there's benefits to being other oriented and in our life life and even though our society tells us it's all about self-care and what you do personally and you know all that kind of stuff I think that unfortunately, that narrative has sort of gotten away from us a little bit and we maybe lose sight of the fact that caring for others is a deeply meaningful thing. It's part of almost everyone's journey while they're here, you know, on earth, and for many people I think that it provides, you know, some of the most meaningful moments of their life. But then the question is like how do I transition that from something that's undermining my wellbeing into something that is kind of? Maybe it's not mutually beneficial in the sense that it's equal, but at least I'm not getting harmed in the process, right?

Speaker 2: 46:15

So that's.

Speaker 3: 46:16

I think the discussions kind of transitions from from yeah, that of kind of maintaining equilibrium or finding mutual benefit, to not getting harmed, and the practical advice I would say is that, from a WeCare perspective, boundaries are social phenomena and when we get really clear, on example, like we all need support in our boundaries journey and we need a support system for that, and sometimes it needs to be formal forms of support, like a therapist or someone who can help us specifically navigate the complexity of our situation. The reason for that is that I've never met anyone without a care blind spot. The reason for that is that I've never met anyone without a care blind spot, like I've never met someone who doesn't have a blind spot or preference or tendency in one direction or the other. And often they're highly idiosyncratic, like for me, like one of my care blind spots. A different one is like if I'm working on something I'm really passionate about, I'll just like work and work and work, and I'll like forget to drink water and like even have my coffee sometimes and I'm like, oh my God. So I think that everyone has their own idiosyncratic care blind spots, and the thing about a blind spot is it's really difficult to see Right. And so it sounds like these people, fortunately, have connected to you at this time in such a way that you're able to help them navigate with a nuanced approach, finding this balance and gradually cultivating and building in that self-care aspect so that they're not resentful, you know, of this other person or so that they don't lose touch with that broader sense of purpose or meaning that they might find, if they feel you know, more sustainable care over time.

Speaker 3: 48:06

I was going to say one other thing on this topic which, in terms of practical tips and advice, I really strongly recommend that everyone finds a kind of high impact WeCare practice. So what I mean by that is a practice that we can return to in micro moments. Like we can do it in a few moments, like, okay, I've got a couple minutes right now between meetings, you know something like that, for if it's at work, like I can stretch out and do yoga in this time right. Or like I have an hour this upcoming weekend where I'm not having to care for this loved one who is really struggling with mental illness or something like that, I've got a full hour. I can go to that yoga class and do a deeper dive into yoga at that time. So yoga, in my opinion and I don't actually practice yoga that frequently, but I think it's a high impact we care activity, or it has this potential in this way that it's got a number of benefits. One it can fit into micro moments, you can do it flexibly at home, you can do it in a class, it can also be done solo or social, and I think that's really critical.

Speaker 3: 49:11

So I actually know someone who was needing to be a caregiver of their mom who had a stroke and they adopted. They had practiced yoga previously but they had kind of lost sight of it and this process. They were growing resentful of needing to be caring for their mother, you know, during that time. And they remembered this yoga practice and they were like, oh, I'll just roll out the mat and do it for a little bit. You know, they were home with their mom and they found, oh my gosh, I forgot how much this resources mean. And they started going to yoga class. They found that there was a yoga class, there was somebody else who could care for their mom each weekend for about an hour or whatever, and they actually met their new romantic partner, you know, by going to the yoga class. And so it's like I think an example of these gradual shifts in the direction of self-care can kind of snowball over time if we take this mindful approach in ways that ultimately lead to that sense of we care.

Speaker 2: 50:10

Totally.

Speaker 1: 50:11

So I think you were mentioned in your book. I mean that you noticed a pattern in compassion science. I was wondering if you could talk about that.

Speaker 3: 50:22

Thanks. I love talking about this topic because, uh, yeah, it's one of my starting points for um, for getting into the week air topic to begin with. So basically, uh, when I had that insight about compassion a number of years ago, before we were going to teach on it, basically the insight was that, wow, we, we are framing compassion, which is this quality that's meant to support our social side, it's meant to support our connection needs. We're now reframing it by putting this self dash word in front of it, from something that's meant to prioritize our connection needs into something that's supporting our autonomy needs. And so that's really interesting, like from an evolutionary standpoint and other perspectives.

Speaker 3: 51:08

You know there's different frameworks for understanding our basic psychological needs, but almost all of them sort of converge, that we have connection needs and we have autonomy needs and we need to balance those two, and our ancestors did as well. But modern life is almost all about autonomy needs. You know, we're almost always talking about our autonomy needs and self-care is kind of an artifact of that, and self-compassion is too. And so these qualities that are meant to compassion is meant to sort of not dissolve but sort of lessen the sense of difference between my suffering and your suffering. But now, instead of compassion being something about overcoming the sense of difference between my suffering and your suffering, but now instead of compassion being something about overcoming the sense of distance or gap between self and other, it's now becoming something through self-compassion, that's reinforcing my autonomy needs and keeping in some sense potentially a sense of barrier between myself and others, where I use it as an excuse to not socialize or not go out and, you know, be more other oriented. So there's this kind of like interesting flip of taking something that was has a social essence and subtly undermining it through the terms self-care and self-compassion.

Speaker 3: 52:19

And so I went into the scientific literature on this and I found that we did this comprehensive review of all the studies that have been done in compassion science on compassion training, and I found that there was this dichotomy within the field. I mean, it's like we have presented in the paper this bar graph and you basically see there are studies that strongly emphasize self-compassion and there's studies that strongly emphasize compassion for others, and there was basically none in the middle. So what I mean by that is there was no studies examining relationships between self-compassion and compassion for others. We talk about it a lot. There's a lot of sayings out there like in order to be compassionate toward others, you need to be, you need to have self-compassion.

Speaker 2: 53:01

I don't agree with that. By the way, Someone else?

Speaker 3: 53:06

There's some truth in it, but I don't agree totally. People can be really compassionate toward others without having cultivated self-compassion. But basically there was this dichotomy, or the either-or mindset was present in the field of compassion science as a whole and it had sort of organized itself in one direction or the other. And then we looked at trainings themselves and we found the same pattern that there was trainings that either were self-compassion trainings or that really strongly emphasize compassion for others, like they might've had a module on self-compassion, but like seven out of the eight weeks were other oriented and only one of the eight weeks was self-compassion, and then it was the opposite, you know, with the self-compassion stuff. And so I became really passionate about this and after writing that and publishing that review and kind of you know, criticizing this, this pattern in the field, I decided to do some research on how do people actually naturally experience compassion in daily life. So even without training, like in the midst of daily life, how do people experience this? And so we used a technique called ecological momentary assessment, which is kind of smartphone-based surveys I think, kibi, you used that, maybe even in your dissertation, right and so smartphone-based surveys centered around social interactions. So when people were in the midst of a social interaction. Right afterwards they were to complete one of these surveys, or I think maybe in this case we did it as a daily diary, so they reflected on their daily social interactions and we asked them when you were in the social interaction, were you in touch with care for yourself? And then they would check you know yes or no Care for the other person that you were in the interaction with, yes or no People beyond the social situation? So you know yes or no Care for the other person that you were in the interaction with, yes or no People beyond the social situation. So you know it's maybe two people in interaction. What about others who are not even present? And the yes or no?

Speaker 3: 54:53

And we found that, like a lot of the time, like something like you know, 30 to 40% of the time, people were checking that they were caring for themselves deeply and for the other person that they were interacting with or for others outside the situation. And then we asked these follow-up questions to get more specific and we said, okay, were you toggling back and forth Like, were you experiencing self-care? And then you know, when the other person was speaking, you were caring for them? No, that's not what was happening.

Speaker 3: 55:22

The majority of the time they actually reported that they were experiencing one integrated feeling state, like a field of care, and we measured care, by the way, and we defined it so that it was consistent with the conceptualization of compassion, like it was focused on suffering, and so they were experiencing this field of compassion that encompassed them, the other person they were interacting with and then frequently others beyond the interaction, and this is what's naturally happening for people in daily social interactions. And yet our field of compassion, science, is making this dichotomous distinction between compassion for self and compassion for others and reinforcing this idea that you either are doing one or the other. So that made me even more passionate and it eventually made me, you know, write this book that we're kind of failing people if we're not teaching them about this more interconnected experience of compassion. Not only is that a natural thing, but it's probably the healthier alternative to just doing one or the other.

Speaker 2: 56:25

Yeah, I love that. Just so, simply like, instead of just focusing on am I caring for you or am I caring for me? It's like we're caring for we.

Speaker 2: 56:33

Yes exactly Like caring for the relationship versus like you or me, and I always liked the idea that, especially when you see on social media or any kind of place where it's kind of stripping the nuance, it's like are you the toxic one? Am I the toxic one? Am I caring for me? Am I caring for? Is this good for me? It's all. It's like a either or instead of like no. Two people are making the toxic dynamic. Two people are caring for each other. It's like it's like a combination or emergent property of two people coming together.

Speaker 3: 57:02

Right.

Speaker 2: 57:03

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3: 57:04

And there's complexity there. You know we could, we could talk about probably that would be a longer conversation of like well, what if it really is like the other person that's just causing all of the issues? And then you know, but um.

Speaker 2: 57:14

You have a more me problem, right, right.

Speaker 3: 57:17

And we care, by the way, relates to that as having an adaptable we. Um, I have a practice. Just like I talked about reverse self-care earlier, I have a practice that I call reverse self-compassion, and so this arose for me as a response kind of to some of the issues that I was just raising, that self-compassion is often taught in a sort of more divided way. By the way, I have great respect for the self-compassion literature as a whole and for that construct. I think, just like self-care, we need to integrate self-compassion literature as a whole and for that construct. I think, just like self-care, we need to integrate self-compassion into our compassion practice. So I'm not trying to get rid of self-compassion, I'm just trying to emphasize it in a more interconnected framework and keep that really front or peak of mind. My experience is that people often struggle with the self-compassion practice. So I don't know if you two have you ever done a self-compassion practice before, like loving, kindness for yourself?

Speaker 1: 58:06

Yeah, that's a very common one.

Speaker 3: 58:09

So this is sort of rooted in that. But what we experience in our compassion training is that that week tends to be the most difficult for people. So when they're practicing compassion for themselves it's more difficult than compassion for others. And we could say you know many different interesting reasons and come up with many different interesting stories for why that might be. That relates to their own background and childhood and so on. You know, and that's true probably for almost everyone, that there's complexity in how we relate to ourselves.

Speaker 3: 58:39

But I think there's a deeper issue which is really that we've removed self-compassion sometimes from this more interconnected frame and it's actually not natural for us to practice compassion toward ourselves in that way. So it is. It brings up guilt and so on for people when they're not in touch with that more interconnected framework and they feel like it's something idiosyncratic about themselves and they think, oh, I need to practice self-compassion more because I'm really struggling with this. But actually we need to put it in a more interconnected frame because everyone's struggling with that. And actually, you know, if you go back to our evolutionary history, these complex forms of compassion evolved to be other-oriented, so they evolved to be directed toward others, and that flow directed toward others first, and it was only in modern history that toward others and that flow directed toward others first, and it was only in modern history that we began directing that flow of compassion toward ourself as a kind of unique entity.

Speaker 3: 59:31

So this practice is meant to put that back into an interconnected frame. So there's two kind of steps to begin the practice before we actually dive into it. One is to identify what I call your compassion spark. Okay, so I'll guide you to in that. Your compassion spark is something that when you bring it to mind you immediately feel in touch with a sense of inner warmth and affiliative emotion or, you know, a sense of care. So I'll give some prompts or pointers. Sometimes it's like a memory of the holidays for people or of a loved one you know who's really precious to them, but often it's a pet.

Speaker 1: 1:00:09

Okay, I was like I'm going to go with my cat.

Speaker 3: 1:00:12

Yeah, it's good, perfect. So people actually research on this. People find it much easier to get in touch with affiliative emotions for an animal than they do another human being, unfortunately, you know. But we can use that knowledge to spark compassion. So if that helps people, no shame in that. That's what I use. I actually don't have a pet myself at this point in my life, but my brother has a dog and I think about my brother's dog as a puppy and it's still an enduring compassion spark for me. So if that works for people, you can think about somebody else's pet too. My wife. She works in hospice care and she thinks about her patients, you know, who are elderly. I think the elderly also evoke a similar sense of, you know, natural affection and care in many people. So once you've got that compassion spark identified, that's the first step and we'll come back to that in a moment. But you can drop that for now. Kibbe, you have your compassion spark. I do, I'll pick my dog.

Speaker 2: 1:01:06

Okay, perfect, awesome.

Speaker 3: 1:01:08

All good. And then the second thing is to identify someone in your life who would stand to benefit just like I was talking about earlier from you being more in touch with gentleness and kindness toward yourself. Like who in your life would benefit if you were less self-critical, or, another way of saying it, if we wanted to be more outcome oriented is if you were more in touch with love for yourself and you were more in touch with your sense of vitality. So try and identify someone specific in your life who would benefit from you having that kind of relationship with yourself. It might be your romantic partner or your family or someone like that.

Speaker 2: 1:01:47

Yeah, good, there too.

Speaker 3: 1:01:49

Okay, let me guide you then in this practice. So, if you'd like, you can take a posture that's comfortable for sitting, meditation or something like that. You could close your eyes if you'd like, and we're going to start with just calling to mind our compassion spark. Mind, our compassion spark, so bringing to mind your cat or your dog or someone else's cat or dog, if that's supportive, or, again, it could be a cherished memory. Sometimes for people it's a song or a phrase or a gesture, like putting their hand on their heart, like putting their hand on their heart, but as you hold this in mind, allowing it to begin circulating the sense of warmth in your body and in your mind, and you can rely on the breath to help you circulate that feeling and then, when you're ready, see if you can allow some of that feeling of warmth and care to be directed toward yourself, that flow of care to come back inward into your inner self. You might pair this with the in-breath, so maybe on each out-breath you remember your compassion spark and then, on the in-breath, you're allowing some of that care to come back toward yourself. But as you do this, see if you can remember that you're allowing this care toward yourself, not as an expression of self-compassion per se, but as an expression of your care for this other person that you identified as well. Knowing that you receiving this kind of care and support in this moment, you offering yourself this mindful and compassionate pause is likely to support not just you but others, and you can express this silently, internally, in the form of a wish, saying something like this May this compassionate pause nourish me in ways that support you too, thinking about that other person. May this compassionate pause nourish me in ways that support you too.

Speaker 3: 1:04:41

Thank you both for trying that out with me. I wish I had my bell. I don't have my bell to sort of ring and close the meditation session. But yeah, do you want to say anything? How was that for you? Any sense of difficulty or, you know, was it awkward in some kind of way? Sometimes people experience it that way at first because there's kind of a few moving pieces. But I'll just emphasize that if you try this out over a few sessions, it gets easier and it feels more natural to both evoke your compassion spark, allow that flow toward yourself and then still be in touch with this. You know other person so.

Speaker 2: 1:05:17

Jacqueline want to go.

Speaker 1: 1:05:19

I mean, I was at first I went with my dead cat Scipio, and then I was like I think there's too much guilt attached here.

Speaker 1: 1:05:24

I don't know if this is because then I was starting to send compassion towards myself. I was like, am I sending guilt towards myself? I'm not sure I just switched Right, I don't. I was trying to think if I struggled to send compassion towards myself, I mean I was trying to do it with body image. It was just something that I've talked about a lot and how that would support my boyfriends not going crazy, uh, by my 4 million comments about myself, um, and that was kind of that was kind of interesting Um, but I kind of noticed that I'm willing to send that compassion towards myself. I think.

Speaker 2: 1:05:58

Beautiful In these moments.

Speaker 1: 1:06:00

I think I struggle maybe more when I'm not in these moments.

Speaker 3: 1:06:06

When you're already in the self-critic or something right.

Speaker 1: 1:06:10

When I'm intentionally sending compassion to myself, I can do it. I think I certainly forget to do that when it comes to body image specifically.

Speaker 3: 1:06:20

Right. Right, that highlights something really, uh, specific that we talked about, which is how idiosyncratic care blind spots can be Right. So it can just be domain specific, like you know what you're speaking to. So I think that it's good for people to keep that in mind, like your blind spot isn't just in self care or care for others, but it can be highly specific to just one domain or some kind of content or something like that. And it sounds to me you know, fortunately, I think most people are already awake to the interconnection between their self-compassion and compassion for others, and it sounds like you might already be awake to that. So, for you to offer care and compassion toward yourself, you probably already, due to what you're doing here and all sorts of studies and so on that you've looked at, understand that offering yourself that care and compassion is going to benefit your community too, and so, yeah, I love hearing that there wasn't as much friction for you with that.

Speaker 1: 1:07:15

I do think I'm pretty self like, I'm pretty self-care oriented. I mean, I notice I think that's how I think of myself more I notice that behaviorally I can be pretty other oriented. But I do think I have a pretty active like sense of self care and believe in that as as a resources myself for others.

Speaker 3: 1:07:34

Yeah, nice Balancing those, those autonomy and connection needs, that's good.

Speaker 2: 1:07:40

Yeah, the practice was interesting because I feel like just in my whole life I I I'm totally bought into the week care model, cause I'm, like you know, things that I do for me, like caring for others, really nourishes me and hopefully vice versa. The practice was I was thinking of my dog, mindy, and then, you know, just kind of getting some warm fuzzies from that, and then thinking of my husband and how I can, you know, extend more love and compassion towards him and I just found myself thinking about like, maybe like an intellectual exercise of a oh yeah, we should have Mindy cuddle with Alex more and a lot of like love from her. So it didn't go, yeah, at some point it was just like I was like oh, I identified a thing that I love and gives me a lot of joy. I should have give that to him so so you know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

It's over the self-compassion.

Speaker 2: 1:08:35

It's just skipped over me. I don't need the goodness I'll give it to him.

Speaker 1: 1:08:39

Yeah, that's a brand for her.

Speaker 2: 1:08:40

Interesting, interesting. I know we're my blind sponsor.

Speaker 3: 1:08:45

Yeah, I love that. Thanks for being honest and sharing both of you about your experience during the practice. And I'll just say that you know all of these practices, including all the there's like 10 practices in my book. The point of them is really to get us to get that metacognitive awareness on our care, and maybe this is a good closing thought. I don't know if we're reaching that point in the conversation. I think so.

Speaker 3: 1:09:05

It's just that you know, a weak care perspective, I think is powerful in the sense of getting metacognitive about our care, trying out these practices that get us to notice potential blind spots that we may not have been totally attuned to or awake to before. And the wonderful thing about getting metacognitive about our care is that, unlike getting metacognitive about some other things, when we care more about our care, then the things that we care for also benefit, right. So whatever we're caring for already, we're trying to care for it, to promote its well-being, to nourish it in ways to reduce suffering, whatever you know the expression of care might be in that moment. And so when we get better at caring, when we get curious about our care and we get more reflective about our care, then those things stand to benefit too. Yeah, Love that.

Speaker 1: 1:09:59

I want to do that exercise next time I'm leading DPT team.

Speaker 3: 1:10:05

Oh, wonderful, yeah, please, please, share it. And if you, if you want to reach out, you know I can provide some more notes on it, or something like that too.

Speaker 1: 1:10:12

Sure, yeah, all right, well, I think, provide some more notes on it, or something like that too Sure, yeah, all right. Well, I think that's a great note to end on. Thank you so much, jordan, and for our little helpers, if we care, then maybe we can leave some five-star ratings on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and we'll see you next week.

Speaker 3: 1:10:31

Thank you so much. Thank you both so much and we'll see you next week. Thank you so much, thank you both so much and thanks to everyone listening. And yeah, maybe I'll just say this one more time If you're interested in this topic, check out my book. It's out soon. And yeah, hope everyone has a wonderful day.

Speaker 1: 1:10:46

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