 maybe there might be some some logic in there is trying to calm him down though there's probably some heated emotion as well but it is that is the drama of an emotional theater that has to happen between the between the fictional character of your word of self and your word of self to be basically to go through all the arguments and say are we done can I move forward now I have you said everything that you needed to say to me great I'm moving forward what's up everybody and welcome to the show today we drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends well that's such an interesting point of wanting to fight the pain and many in our audience will say they want to fight their inner critic and they want to get an argument with it and try to overpower it with logic in hopes to to get it to quiet down and we know from the science that that just doesn't really work no actually I don't know if you have had dick Schwartz on here internal family system therapy but so in many ways we have we can say we have different parts of ourselves we I should probably call it selves compassion technically because we have an inner critic we've got a compassionate part we have a wounded child part we've got a mature wise part we have all these different parts and so what happens if you try to shut down the inner critic because remember the inner critic is trying to keep you safe the whole reason the inner critic is there is because you know it's maybe trying to protect you from your the criticism of your father or trying to get you into shape so you don't make mistakes or trying to you know shame you so that you won't be so wounded by others it doesn't work very well but the the motivation of the inner critic is always to keep you safe and if you try to shut it down it will just scream that much louder but if you say so we have a whole exercise in the in the mindful self-compassion program we developed where we actually give compassion to the inner critic we say you know I see you're trying to help me hasn't been working out very well but you know thank you so much for your efforts I hear you and then once you have come kind of some understanding and appreciation for your inner critic then it can say okay she hears me finally all right well okay I can let this other voice in which is the more compassionate voice but what will you resist persist and grow stronger I mean acceptance and commitment therapy it's really all about that I mean there's a lot of self-compassion especially implicitly and acceptance and commitment therapy I think now they're starting to bring it in more explicitly you guys probably more know about know more about that than me but it's definitely totally imbued in the whole approach at least implicitly well certainly for all the interviews that we've done I mean the folks who always come off the most confident and the most successful all have a great working relationship with the worst aspects of themselves to the to the degree they'll even may even have a pet name for the worst aspects of themselves of that inner of that inner critic and they will have that dialogue they will see that dialogue through to its end and maybe there might be some some logic in there is trying to calm them down though there's probably some heated emotion as well but it is that is the drama of an emotional theater that has to happen between the between the fictional character of your worst self and your self to be basically to go through all the arguments and say are we done can I move forward now yeah have you said everything that you needed to say to me great I'm moving forward well sometimes we need to be draw a fierce boundary with their inner critic right so sometimes we need to use fierce compassion also and we're not only protecting ourselves from others but sometimes from those parts of ourselves maybe just draw a boundary and say that's enough I'm not going to listen to this right now but then we also want the tender self-compassion when we're able to that kind of more accepting side that warm side that's really the healing power of self-compassion is that accepting nurturing energy but there is also a place for drawing some pretty fierce boundaries I call that mama bear self-compassion there's mama and mama bear and both are really important aspects of being a caring person well it's interesting that you bring up boundaries and with our clients those who seem to be their worst critics also for whatever reason it's always correlated that they have they don't have boundaries drawn up from friends and family who are taken advantage of them so then they get put in this cycle then they realize I've got to take advantage again so now the inner critic comes out to beat them up and of course they're always going to rationalize it with I'm being kind I have infinite amount of time and and opportunities to help everybody but without setting up those boundaries you're giving your so much of yourself out and you're not focusing on the things that matter so that you are able to help people at your best we drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends yeah exactly and also the reason for help so a lot of the reasons people don't say no the we you know some people say yes because they really authentically want to help that's great that's wonderful it's admirable but often we say yes because we don't want other people to dislike us and when we're doing it because we're afraid of the judgments of others or we want other people to like us or we want them to think we're a nice person it's actually not authentic and that's that's where you get that correlation because we're we don't feel it's confident enough in ourselves we don't like ourselves enough to risk you know maybe they won't like me as much if I say no well that's okay like myself you know this is important to me I'm going to do what's authentic for me and to be able to do that to draw boundaries there needs to be some sense of self-worth that comes from the inside as opposed to just the approval of others which is one another thing self-compassion gives us non-contingent self-worth less need for social approval it's one of the big important benefits of it yeah I'd like to unpack that a little bit more because I feel like social approval is really a big driving force for many people listening to the show and that that want and need to be accepted in the community no one wants to be in the out group so we find ourselves bowing to others expectations of us going outside of our own needs and wants to please them becoming people pleasers etc so how does this all come together one way I've talked about this distinction is really the distinction between self-esteem and self-compassion so self-esteem is an evaluation of self-worth self-compassion is giving yourself like unconditional kindness and support whether or not you're worthy you know it's just kind of like whether you failed or you succeeded it's just you know being kind to yourself regardless so self-esteem this there's healthy self-esteem there's decommuniment unconditional self-esteem but usually self-esteem is contingent it's contingent on through the three main areas actually they find in the research our social approval perceived attractiveness and success whether that's business or sports whatever is important to you and that contingency is a problem because again if people don't approve of us or if we don't succeed or if we don't look the way we want to look we feel badly about ourselves we hate ourselves and we start self-criticizing and it's it really is this downward spiral so one of the things we know from the research is that self-compassion reduces the contingency of self-worth right again because you're you're whether you succeed or fail you're still worthy whether you're looking like you want to or not you're still worthy you know whether other people like you or not you're still worthy because again your worth is it comes from this just from being a human being who suffers like that's all you gotta do to have self-compassion to be a human being who suffers and that's a box that could always be checked and so because you have this more inconditional stable source of self-worth your self-esteem doesn't need to be so contingent on these outside sources I think that's a big piece of why it's so difficult for somebody who hasn't set up boundaries in the past to then all of a sudden know that they have to put these boundaries up and they're going to be terrified of how it's going to be taken because those people have always had that that access and so now they're being told no for the first time and that can be a shock because that reaction that person has now changed they're not the same person they're not as open as they used to be to these requests and that's why self-compassion is so important every step of the way so self-compassion helps you draw the boundary because you care about yourself self-compassion also helps you deal with the fear of drawing the boundary oh well I'm really afraid this is hard and if you do get a bad reaction and let's face it you might you know how do you hold the pain with it how do you relate to yourself when your mother's mad at you because you didn't do it you know you have to be able to relate to that pain so self-compassion is really needed every step of the way and also sometimes you know someone may make a choice well actually I really don't want to say yes but in this situation maybe it's your boss you know maybe sometimes you don't have the choice you you would like to have sometimes people it's kind of a some people aren't able to draw the boundaries that they'd like to because they aren't as privileged you know maybe you're discriminated against or you're in a tenuous situation or a lot of external factors come into play so we also don't want people to think that if I don't if I don't draw a boundary I'm a wimp you know that's that's not good either we just want to like do the best we can given our circumstances with as much kindness and support and care as we possibly can and no one on the outside can tell you what's right for you