Tara Cousineau, PhD

Clinical Psychologist, Kindness Warrior

compassion

The Inner Critic Deserves Some Respect

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I have the pleasure of teaching a 10-week workshop series to college students, Overcoming Perfectionism through Self-Compassion. All told, 10-12 hours is not much time. Yet spread over two-and-half months, continuity is cultivated just by showing up. Certain ideas begin to sink in. Originally, I based the series on The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, because I love the 10 guideposts for wholehearted living she delineated.  I threw in some skills from my book, The Kindness Cure, and a few meditations from Making Friends with Yourself, a lovely curriculum based on mindful self compassion practices. I borrowed some concepts from Tal Ben-Shahar’s book, The Pursuit of Perfect. (All good resources for those working on recovering from unhealthy perfectionism). It’s been a mashup of sorts.

My goal was simply to begin a discussion about the tight hold that unhealthy perfectionism can have, how to understand its purpose without self-judgment, and ways to rejigger one’s perception and nervous system for greater acceptance, calm and wellbeing. We need to shine a light on our fears of failure and rejection to offset the false lure of perfectionistic behavior. Every week a core group of undergraduates and grads arrived ranging in age from 19 to 45; and others popped in from time to time, making for lively intergenerational discussion. (Perfectionism is persistent.)

Unhealthy perfectionism is also rather exhausting. We all fall into this trap to some extent because our culture highly values ratings and rankings. Brené Brown’s definition is super helpful to ignite a conversation, especially in a population of high achieving students who are chronically hustling for success and approval.

Here’s what Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection:

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best.  

Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth.  

Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It’s a shield. Perfectionism is a 20-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s a thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight.

Are you onboard yet? Any notion of “Oh shit. That’s me. I’m definitely hustling for worthiness.”  Wait, there’s more.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement.

Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system:  I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect.

And perhaps my favorite point: 

Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve? 

Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?

One of the first things that students are invited to notice is their negative mind loop. After all, each of us has a chorus of naysayers and judges constantly pointing out every perceived weakness or flaw. Sometimes the voice tells you to quit before even getting started. Yes, that imposter syndrome can keep you playing small. This of course can be ruinous if you close off your gifts, talents, interests, or passions. Often students will refrain from taking risks out of some particular fear, causing enormous stress and unnecessary suffering. (See article on the negativity bias).  

Observing the dialog is a first step in extracting oneself from self-flagellation. When you tune in to your inner narrative, often there is surprise, if not shock, at how demeaning or demanding these voices are.  (Tune in for 10 minutes and write down the words or stream of consciousness.)

We’re all pretty good scriptwriters, actors, producers and directors of our own mental movies. It’s pretty impressive, really. It’s quite a skill set albeit for the wrong use.  Here’s the thing:

We can recruit our imagination for our benefit or for harm. 

In my work with college students it has been useful, and actually fun, to name the inner critic. I even have a third chair in my office for it to join us. My willing students are very creative. For instance:

  • One young woman realized her inner voice was like the character “Monica”, on the show Friends. ….pretty tightly wound up about every detail.  Her inner Monica would pipe up whenever she felt out of control with school work, and she’d find every excuse to tidy up or fix something.
  • Another student realized that his compulsion to join every opportunity or club in order to “optimize his resume” – was really about a fear of missing that one key experience that just might hit the jackpot… for getting that coveted internship or job at Goldman Sachs. He was chronically exhausted. He called his inner critic, FOMO.
  • One of my favorites is from a student who realized that her perfectionism, which caused her an almost paralyzing anxiety, including an inability to let herself to socialize or have any fun was, as she put it – “robbing her of joy.” She called her inner critic “Mooch.”

Think about it, whether it’s an inner bully, or a Judge Judy, or a Nagging Ned, what might the voice be protecting you from? 

It’s probably the usual (and very human) suspects:  failure, rejection, or shame. 

It’s there as a signal and as an invitation to notice and befriend it, and perhaps even to silence it — turn down the volume — and assure it that “Hey, I’ve got this,” or “I’m going to try something different this time,” such as practicing to be less harsh — and even kind — when facing failure, rejection or shame. Tal Ben-Shahar advises us to “practice failure.”  I say fail forward with self-compassion and empathy. Over time you’ll learn that you are stronger than you think you are. 

There is resistance, I assure you, in embracing failure. That’s why — in addition to cultivating a thick skin — it is essential to have a soft heart. 

How? As you may suspect, we also harbor a kind and gentle voice. We need to give it more air time. In fact, it deserves a principal role in our inner theater. As with learning anything new, this requires practice to develop a counter narrative.  It also requires allies, like the students who showed up in my group.

You can create messages of kindness to meditate on and repeat, which calms your body and nurtures goodwill toward yourself. This goes for guys too. This is not a girly thing. It’s essential to care for or “coach” the parts of yourself that are scared, vulnerable and critical, as if these unwanted aspects are friends in need. Treat yourself like you would a loved one, friend or buddy.  

The instructions for creating these mini-scripts are simple:

  1. Be clear. 
  2. Be authentic and true to your experience
  3. Use a kind tone.

Whenever you need bolstering, you can craft a message by asking yourself: “What do I need to feel calm in my body?” or “How can I bring caring (or kindness or grit or courage) to this moment?” 

The answers are typically universal human needs:  belonging, connection, encouragement, love, patience, protection, respect, tolerance, validation, and well-being. 

Here are some self-kindness kickstarters:

I am strong. I’ve got this. 

I hold myself gently.  

I love myself just as I am.  

I trust in myself.  

I am here for me, I am here for you. 

I am enough.  

Even though this feels hard, I will be kind toward myself.  

I am beginning to feel love and kindness expand. 

I will be okay. 

This [fear] will pass. 

Your self-compassion statements can change over time. It is wise to try them on for size, even if at first a statement may not fit or feels awkward. In this case, a wise inner voice might say, “This is how you take care of yourself. It may take some getting used to!”

While the inner critic deserves acknowledgement, it doesn’t belong on center stage. It has a bit part to play once you notice the motivation it has in stopping you from being hurt or rejected.  These inner characters do not like to be demoted to a cameo appearance, so beware of push back. 

The wise voice, however, deserves center stage. The wise voice also doesn’t want you to be in pain or distress but it has a different approach than the inner critic. It helps you take in the goodness of who you really are and treat yourself with care and respect. Allow it to have airtime throughout the day.  After all, practice makes progress. 

Check out my The Little Deck of Kindfulness as a great kickstarter for cultivating a kind and courageous inner voice.

Resources:

Rx when Parenting a Child with a Chronic Condition

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Heavy Doses of Compassion

A dear friend from ages past texted me that his son, who just graduated from high school, has cancer. My heart broke open in a millisecond. I was standing in a Sunday morning line for coffee. The news about his son stopped me cold. Life is so unfair. I couldn’t stop shaking my head in disbelief. The poor barista thought I was complaining about the service.

I met Tom when we were 17 on a school program to the United Nations. I like to joke that he was on the bus of smart Canadians and I somehow sneaked into the program. To apply to the program I wrote an essay about the former UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, with a quote I found in a library book. I’m fairly certain that I was the only one in my town who applied. Now I find it interesting that the chosen quote conjures up the timeless suffering of mothers (of which I still have written out in my neat teenage handwriting). For a whole week we visited New York City, the UN, and went to the top of the World Trade Center for a view of Lady Liberty. The towers no longer exist, of course, and yet they will always be tied in some small measure to that adolescent flirtation, the ideals of humanitarian efforts, and the fragility of life.


It is said that the tears of one mother are the tears of all and the glory of one man is the glory of all men…

Dag Hammarskjöld, 1953

We now are parents and professionals living full lives in different countries marked by the trials and triumphs of being mere humans—we share the main headlines that might fit in a text message or over an occasional phone call. He’s a school principal. I’m a psychologist. He has boys. I have girls. And I wholeheartedly share in his current optimism: his son has a highly curable form of cancer.

I don’t want to offer up a cliché but I will: Perhaps there are few comparable experiences that collect the kind of battle wounds like the scars you get from child rearing. At the same time, there is nothing like the joy and pride that arise in the smallest of moments in watching your children thrive. You never think your heart can crack open wider and then it just does. It’s that very vulnerability that exposes us to the abyss that is human suffering. Deep love. Deep pain. 

A child’s cancer diagnosis is a shot to the heart.

I sat with my cup of my tea thinking about Tom and his son when I saw a family stroll in. They pushed a daughter, now a young adult, in a wheelchair. I wondered about her. A spinal injury? A congenital condition? Hard to say. Her hair was neatly brushed. She wore a shimmering cherry lipstick. It was carefully and lovingly applied. I was overcome with emotion.

I began to count. 

In my mind I lined up a dozen random parents I know in my community. How many had a child with a chronic or serious illness or condition? I summoned up a list of their children’s conditions: anxiety, addiction, ADD, autism spectrum, clinical depression, cerebral palsy, a congenital heart condition, kidney disease, and post concussion syndrome, including two deaths due to chronic childhood illnesses. That our community has been spared a youth suicide or fatal car accident or death by gun violence seems—statistically—a stroke of luck. I included myself in the line up of parents. We have a daughter with potentially lethal food allergies. Sophie is now 21 and has not outgrown them. I’m only mildly relieved that her boyfriend is an EMT.

How many of these parents suffer quietly with the plight of their child’s condition, or keep to themselves for the sake of privacy, or simply are heads down with caregiving that others don’t even know to reach out? I also imagine parents in other communities who don’t have the privilege of a well-resourced school system or medical access or aren’t able to rally funds for research or costs of care. The bottom line is that more needs to be done for families to foster the kind of resilience that may be needed for a long haul. Two colleagues (Lorraine Hobbs and Kimberly Arthur) and I recently published a journal article about the need to support parents with children with chronic conditions: The Role of Compassion and Mindfulness in Building Parental Resilience When Caring for Children With Chronic Conditions: A Conceptual Model. (Please read and share it. E-Book here.)


…both mindfulness and compassion have significant potential to support this process of working through adversity and finding ways to develop inner resources to cultivate acceptance, find meaning in the context of complex parenting challenges, and respond to the child and oneself with kindness in the face of persistent stressors associated with children’s chronic conditions.

Cousineau, Hobbs & Arthur, 2019

A Silent Suffering

We couldn’t write about our personal experiences in this kind of academic platform yet our hearts were totally in it. We have children with various conditions requiring different levels of care and attention. So we try to walk the talk and wrote the article. Here’s why: 

Parenting a child with an illness or disability is very common yet remains a silent plight for many. 

Close to 20% of parents have a child with a chronic condition or disability, which is defined as any condition that has lasted or is expected to last for at least 12 months. Personally, I think this is an underestimate due to under reporting and stigma. But let’s just say that 1 in 5 parents/families has a child with some sort of chronic affliction. (There are 83M families in the US and 15M single mothers.) Assume for the sake of my argument that you are in a room full of parents. The next time you are in a meeting at work or a school PTA meeting, or at a place of worship, or on a commuter train imagine that for every 4 seats the 5th seat has a parent facing a difficult illness challenge with a child—no matter the age of a child. Imagine yourself in his or her shoes. 

One memory that comes to mind is when my daughter Sophie was three years old and at preschool. She took a cracker out of a snack jar. Apparently another child with sticky peanut butter fingers had also done so. Her face blew up like a balloon immediately. The EMTs were called. She chugged some liquid Benadryl. She recovered. The school eventually became “peanut/nut free” to the chagrin of other parents. It was a common battle cry across American schools: “Why should my child give up his PB&J?” “That’s the only thing he eats and he has the right to have peanut butter.”  “Why should my kid starve?” Parents of the afflicted child would counter, “This could be a life or death situation. Surely you can see that?” “You’d rather see a child risk her life than to find something else for your kid to eat?” “Try carrots instead.”

Later the solution in the elementary school was to separate the food allergy kids from the others at lunch time, leaving Sophie at a table all by herself. She became a pariah, a social outcast. The social stigma was an unintended consequence, of course. And it was unacceptable.

BFFs on a Hot Summer Day

Then guess what happened? God bless the children to find solutions that parents or administrators can’t see. Her friends began to sit with her. Over time they became little vigilantes monitoring who had what in their lunch boxes. The girls made sure their parents knew about Sophie’s food allergies for birthday parties and sports events. They educated themselves. They watched the Epi-pen injection video and practiced puncturing an orange with a plastic model pen. Although we were all in a state of anticipatory anxiety, organically we cultivated a “community watch.”  Eventually, we all relaxed. When a local 15-year old girl died from anaphylaxis after a severe allergic reaction just days before her 16th birthday, despite the family’s careful precautions, the threat became all too real once again. (See Project Abbie at Harvard.)

Compassionate Action

My daughter’s situation may not compare to the plight of others. A food allergy is an episodic condition that is largely reliant on prevention and avoidance, yet can have a fatal outcome. Yet that’s not my point. Millions of parents are managing some sort of childhood condition every single day. Of course, the medical conditions and potential outcomes vary among children: Children may be hospitalized for depression or suicidal ideation, or suffer a physical illness or condition; or a child may be contending with developmental delays, mobility issues, aggressive outbursts, or chronic pain. There are IEPs and accommodations, specialists, and regular medical monitoring, and concerns about independent living in adulthood. It can be all consuming at times.

What is common is the persistent fear and distress felt by a mom, dad or caregiver. Whenever a child needs specialized care or attention, there is a slow wear-and-tear in the fabric of parenting. An unraveling may occur in parallel with a kind of constant mending, in attempts to emotionally or pragmatically hold it together. There is also the mental “code switching” between taking care of a child’s current needs and the anticipation or planning for the future “what ifs.”  It’s hard to be present when the mind is in a ricochet of tending tasks. Let’s not forget that many parents inevitably put their personal needs and goals on hold and may also be economically impacted. Even the most optimistic or well-resourced parents will find themselves in moments of despair or panic. That’s the only natural response. 

What I love about compassion-focused approaches to parenting is the recognition that biologically we are wired to protect and ward off threat. That basic understanding can begin to shift how we communicate and respond. I can’t blame the pro-PB&J parents. They want their children to have what they need to survive. They aren’t thinking about the other tribe of parents who also want their children to survive by avoiding PB&J at all costs. Our perspective narrows when we are threatened. The single focus is on survival. The emotions that drive defensive behavior include anger, anxiety, fear, or disgust. As I wrote in my last post, Lead with Love, when we notice which emotion regulation systems are activated (threat, thrive, care/connect), we can begin to respond to life’s experiences in more beneficial and grounded ways. We can respond in a more balanced way.  This is where mindfulness and compassion comes in. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01602/full

The approach we proposed in the article emphasizes relational compassion and self-compassion. All too often the sole or primary focus is on child medical outcomes rather than parental resilience. This is understandable but to use another cliché—the one about the oxygen mask on a flight—we have to help the caregivers put on the oxygen mask first. The point in our article is we believe that cultivation of safety, connection, and caring is essential in any communication, intervention, or resource created to support parents when caring for a child with a chronic condition. This helps to get parents out of the constant threat/survival mode and offer relief from the exhaustion that can come from empathy fatigue, persistent uncertainty, constant caregiving, or social isolation. This means growing both inner strengths and outer strengths.

We consider the mindfulness and compassion skills as a way to “bounce forward” rather than “bounce back”—because life will never revert to a previous way of parenting. Resilience is inherently about caring, connection and community. It also requires a kind of deep knowing that we all belong to one another. In this way we are responsible for the welfare of the collective “we.”  Parenting is hard under optimal circumstances. No family is immune from threat, loss, or disappointment. It can take some emotional courage to turn toward what is difficult and reach out to a family in helpful ways—especially when vulnerable children face challenges. The default is to respect privacy, or not impose, or keep a safe distance, or drop off casseroles. I get it. But we also have to stretch ourselves and connect with parents. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Take the risk: Ask them.

How may I be of help? Is there something specific I can do? What is important for us to know? Is it Ok if I check in every once in a while? We are here for you.

Interested in more? Watch this beautiful Ted Talk. Heather Lanier tells her story of having a daughter with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a genetic condition that results in developmental delays.

My colleague and friend Susan Pollak, EdD, just published a beautiful book called Self Compassion for Parents: Nurture Your Child By Caring for Yourself (The Guilford Press, 2019).  What’s on the cover? Two slices of PB&J!  That got me hooked. She wrote it for every parent, of course, who deals with the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of parenting. I particularly love the “Fierce Compassion” meditation and “Soothing Touch in the Heat of the Moment.”  I highly recommend it.  

Photo by Thais Morais on Unsplash


Lead with Love

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There’s a funny thing that happens when you start walking the kindness talk.  People seem to crave it. Recently, I’ve been asked to speak at various companies and organizations — from accounting companies to human services, from high net worth investment firms to public schools.  What’s the common denominator? I’d like to think this trend is about how we each can be more of the human we want to be: caring, wholehearted and generous. That’s part of it, of course. That’s the bright side of such a talk. But underneath is a deep need to understand what gets in the way. That’s the shadow side. 

We need to become friends with the shadow side. 

This is easier than you might think. The dark side of corporate culture reveals itself in the face of fear and threat — meeting deadlines, KPIs, profits, career advancement, and all the usual suspects that arise when real or imagined survival is at stake — at the expense of human connection and compassion. 

The paradox at the heart of this matter is that it’s okay to be competitive AND cooperative at the same time.  It’s more than okay. It’s necessary. It requires awareness in how humans respond to the world, through three emotion motivational systems espoused by the British compassion researcher and psychologist Paul Gilbert. I wrote about it in The Kindness Cure in chapter 10 (Emotional Paradox).

The paradoxes you can experience in your own mind are clashes between the “old brain/mind” and the “new brain/mind.” Your “old brain/mind” is the “base model” of human emotional regulation and hasn’t changed much over millennia. Its job is to serve your basic survival instincts as soon as possible and to seek out pleasure and comfort. It is speedy and reactive. The three main emotion regulation systems operating within it are:

• A threat and self-protection system that senses threats quickly and activates the fight- flight-freeze- faint response in your limbic system. This is like your home surveillance system.

• An incentive and resource-seeking system that propels you to seek pleasure, consume, play, strive/achieve, and mate. It’s like an Energizer Bunny scurrying about, looking for fun or success in life.

•  A soothing and contentment system that seeks balance, rest, and connection, and is strongly linked to affection, bonding, caregiving, kindness, and compassion. This is the calm and connect system, and it is a bit slower to come online, but when it does, it gives you a sense of overall wellbeing—like a baby’s snuggly or a rocking chair.

Your “new brain/mind” developed later in human evolution. It’s really smart. The newer model is more complex and allows you to work things through, compare, contemplate, mull things over, create, innovate, imagine, seek knowledge, strive for goals, and develop an identity. This allows for quick learning, exchanging information from among groups, and passing on these adaptive genes to future generations. Importantly, this sophisticated upgrade allows you to be aware that you exist and have a sense of self. Thanks to your “new brain/mind,” you can be aware of your awareness, unlike any other animal, and observe your own mind. This is, of course, both a blessing and a curse.

When your “new brain/mind” is pulled by the fears and passions of the “old brain/mind,” you can get stuck in unkind behaviors (toward yourself or others). This is the unfortunate bug in the system, so to speak.

Workplace Woes, Compassionate Action

This came up in a recent conversation. I was a guest on a podcast summit created by Mari-Lyn Harris, founder of Heart@Work, who I met via Linked In through what I call kindness spotters.  (We kindness warriors just find each other.)

Mari-Lyn has been figuring out ways to share the news about leading with kindness, to assist leaders in cultivating better productivity, profits and a happier workplace culture. She created a Virtual Kindness Conference and you can watch it (it’s free). The interviews include short and sweet conversations with experts about workplace culture. You can watch the interviews at Heart@Work or on YouTube.  I talk about befriending the inner critic at work and gathering positivity allies to counteract the negativity that even one nasty person can evoke. It takes commitment.  Of course, it helps when leadership/management adopts and embodies the values of caring and compassion as integral to company goals, even if you are selling widgets or crunching numbers. You might enjoy the series and have something you would like to offer to an ongoing conversation on kind leadership.

Here’s to growing a kind mind.

21 Days of Kindfulness: Get daily notes to your inbox for just three weeks — which is about the time it takes for a new habit to take root. I invite you to kickstart kindness in your life and share with a friend. It’s free. 

A Little Deck of Kindfulness: The card deck is here! (See the sample image above). Cultivate more kindness and compassion for oneself and for others. Order now! (in continental USA).


Finding Inner Momentum

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If you are human, and I imagine you are, there are times when you have just really had it.  With a friend. A family member. A co-worker. The world. You may even get judgy. Like, why can’t he just move on? Why does she make it so complicated? Why are they doing this?  As if, somehow, they can magically read your mind and do the right thing.

Yeah, well. We can get caught under our own spell. And the truth of the matter is you will miss out on the things that are actually ok, the tiny beautiful moments in a day, and noticing that right now you are fully alive. I have found that one of the most helpful things with life’s hassles is to simply breathe. Breathe in some peace and quiet. When you notice your reactivity, try taking a deep inhale for yourself and a long exhale for the other. As Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes in The Sacred Art of Loving Kindness, “It is a way to take upon oneself the pain of the world and transform it into love.” Remember, even the difficult, exasperating people in your life are struggling. This doesn’t mean it’s ok to be on the receiving end of an insult. Boundaries are important. But it can help to imagine this person when they were small, maybe before their own challenges or conditions took hold. Glimpsing a sweet soul, deserving of love and belonging (as we all are).

The image I like to hold in this mini-meditation is of a see-saw or swing, with a childlike quality of putting in the effort to get going and then relishing the momentum.

It takes a few tries for the rhythm to kick in. And then… freedom.

Sit quietly and comfortably, perhaps with a hand on your heart.
Breathe in and out in a comfortable way.
As you breathe, bring to mind a sense of warmth, comfort, and ease,
or whatever you need in the moment. Inhale this soothing feeling.
Then bring to mind a person who is struggling and needs compassion.
After you inhale a comforting breath for yourself, on the exhale offer
the other person feelings of kindness, caring, comfort, and ease.
Then return to yourself, breathing in warm sensations.
Then switch back to the person you are visualizing.
In an even flow of in- and-out- breaths,
receive and give warmth and kindness.
Like a see-saw.
Back and forth, back and forth.
One breath in for me, one breath out for you.

Give it a try. Peace.

Kinder Workplaces? A Hard Sell (But Better for the Bottom Line)

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Truth be told, kindness is a good prescription for a life well lived. Kind actions and a compassionate attitude bode well for both physical and mental health. And let’s face it:  We might try to be kinder than we think we are — especially at work.

Why? For one, according the Global Happiness Policy Report 2018, the majority of people are miserable at their jobs even if they say they’re happy to have one. Two, we spend over 30% of our lives working. Might as well try to enjoy it, right? Third, when we behave in kind ways, the positivity that arises spreads to others. It’s just like that old 1970s bumper sticker: Kindness is contagious.

Yet, the topic of  kindness can be a non-starter for most businesses and HR executives. Many organizations operate on the principles for survival, namely finding self-serving ways to get ahead and stay ahead.  In spite of the billions spent in workplace wellness and leadership training, something isn’t sticking very well. It may be that we’ve been conditioned by entrenched beliefs that it’s a dog-eat-dog world. We don’t truly recognize that thriving, instead of surviving, is the key to success. Charles Darwin, after all, observed that we have a stronger instinct for caring and cooperation than for trampling over one another. It just didn’t make the headlines. Thriving means taking care of each other by focusing on wellbeing and cultivating resilience in our relationships — whether in family, at work, or in the greater community. After all that’s how the human species continues to survive.

We’ve just got things a bit mixed up in our heads.

For the skeptic out there, here’s a workplace study that was conducted at Coca Cola Iberia in Madrid, Spain. The researchers randomly assigned over 100 employees into three different groups and the employees weren’t aware of their assignment to the groups or the true purpose of the study. The employees were assigned to be Givers, Receivers, or be in a Control (people who don’t do anything).

The Givers practiced five acts of ordinary kindness a day from a specific list ideas of kind gestures (see below). This was not about flowers, balloons and cake. The Givers could choose when to do the kind acts, and for whom from a list of fellow employees assigned (unbeknownst to them) as Receivers. The Givers did this for four weeks.  Examples of the kind activities included:

  • Bringing someone a beverage
  • Cheering up a coworker who seems to be having a bad day
  • Speaking up on the behalf of another
  • Emailing a thank you note

The people in the Receiver or Control groups were not asked to do anything at all during the course of the study. It was just work as usual for them. All three groups filled out surveys before and after and two months later.

Here’s what the researchers found: Givers and Receivers mutually benefited in well-being in both the short- and long-term. They showed improvements on weekly measures of feelings of competence and autonomy, for example, acting in alignment with core values. Receivers remained happier a full month after the study and Givers became less depressed and more satisfied with their lives and jobs. They also noticed the changes in workplace. Givers’ prosocial acts inspired others to act: Receivers paid their acts of kindness forward with 278% more prosocial behaviors than Controls. That’s right, just like that ‘ol bumper sticker said so.  Surely, this is a prescription for happier workers and workplaces.

Why does this matter?  The most common contributors to low job satisfaction and causes for absenteeism include but are not limited to: bullying and harassment, burnout, stress and low morale, stress of childcare and eldercare, depression, disengagement, illness, and not surprisingly, looking for another job.  I will never forget when I was a psychology intern and was told to forge medical documentation that previous staff had failed to sign. An accreditation was at risk. I refused. My supervisor reprimanded me, “Don’t you know? Shit flows downhill.” I stood my ground and almost left the profession before I barely got started. Later I learned his wife had stage 4 cancer. He was desperate. But still.

Consider that kindness, a prosocial skill that needs to be practiced in order to grow, is about connecting with other people in genuine and transparent ways. Yes, most of us are caring and want the best for others. But life poses daily challenges and we can be easily distracted. So we have to put in the effort. All the co-opted leadership buzz words of today apply: compassion, grit, emotional intelligence, empathy, mindfulness and wisdom. Yet, practicing these skills at work is another matter entirely. 

Moreover, there is a multiplier effect when you do try. Your kind and caring action and the corresponding upswell of positive emotions will spread,  influencing at least three other people like a happy virus.  It’s likely that each of those three people will positively influence others in their social circles. A little kind intention can go a long way. It’s not all that different from raising well adjusted kids, which of course, takes time. It requires courage, consistency, calm, and true connection — no matter the successes and failures along the way. That’s the caring advantage. It flows uphill. If we can’t model such genuine attention to the people we work with every day it will be hard to expect retention, innovation and longevity. 

Survive or thrive. What would you rather do?

*

A version of this article originally appeared on the Whil blog: http://blog.whil.com/make-work-virtuous-viral.

My new book is “The Kindness Cure: How the Science of Compassion Can Heal Your Heart and Your World.” Drawing on research in psychology and neuroscience, this book will help teach you the benefits of practicing kindness from the inside out. Check it out today! https://www.taracousineau.com/book/

@taracousphd

Photo Credit:

Johnson Wang

Nathan Dumlao

Empathy Hurts. Empathy Heals.

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“It all your fault,” my daughter sniveled as we shared an entire box of tissues. “I inherited this from you.” She was accusing me of endowing her with an overabundance of empathy as we watched the film adaptation of the young adult novel Wonder by R.J. Palacio. Auggie Pullman is a 5th grader who was born with a facial deformity. He’s a Star Wars geek. He hides under an astronaut helmet that is as publicly conspicuous as his face, but at least allows him some measure of safety from the stares and cruelty of others. The story heartbreakingly shows the complexity of being human, what it means to be different from the norm, and serves up the usual suspects of friend and foe on the cusp of coming of age. The story also evokes—for  anyone with a beating heart—the essentiality of love, belonging, and the healing energy of kindness.

By midnight my daughter and I were surrounded by a sea of twisted white tissue and debris. The film obviously worked the story’s magic for both of us and served as an emotional release. It was another tumultuous week of emotional highs (teens rising) and emotional lows (a federal proposal to arm teachers with concealed weapons)—at least for us.

Here’s the thing: Empathy hurts. We feel sadness or anger or pain when another person feels sadness or anger or pain. That’s emotional empathy. These feelings can lead to empathic distress. We can also mirror uplifting emotions like joy, care, pride, love, and compassion for another’s suffering. This can lead to empathic concern. As such, empathy can tie us together in ways that illuminate our deep connection. Similarly, we can imagine the feelings of another person without necessarily being caught up in heightened emotional states. That’s cognitive empathy. Evoking the imagination is what allows us to be moved by real and fictional stories, too. That’s why reading novels helps promote empathy. We can picture ourselves in the shoes of another person and taking on roles.

But empathy is tricky. We need a good balance of both the emotional and cognitive elements to ignite motivational empathy, or the kind of empathy that allows us to reflect on our reactions without being flooded by difficult emotions. This takes some emotional muscle. There is an art and skill to rumbling with empathy that allows us to calm ourselves and, if and when possible, choose compassionate action. I describe this in detail in my book, The Kindness Cure.

So if you are feeling upset or distressed by recent events, that’s totally understandable. The experience of empathic distress maps to neural networks in the brain similar to that of physical pain. It hurts. I’d be concerned if you weren’t (on some level) moved by yet another school shooting or by any suffering for that matter, even if how you and I decide to respond is different.

The sobering truth is that my daughter and I could finish watching Wonder with relative feelings of safety. We could tuck ourselves in and imagine how we’d stand up to those mean 7th graders that roughed up Auggie. We can also decide what, if anything, we want to do about current events. In this way we are privileged, blessed, lucky—or all of the above. We have freedom to choose a course of action. Of course, that privilege can change at any moment. That’s why it is so important to be present to the unfolding of life and to recognize our inherent responsibility in caring for one another—in spite of differences in how we look, where we come from, or in what we believe—because we can.  Empathy also can heal us.

Maybe that’s why the rising voices of young people is so refreshing: they are unapologetic, demanding, and focused on putting compassion in action. They care about the basic needs of children to feel safe and loved. They’re putting up a fight. They’re demanding respect.  They feel empowered. And they are demonstrating a universally understood imperative of the Golden Rule. There’s a quote in my book from a spiritual master that’s worth repeating here:

True kindness does not have an agenda or ulterior motive; it is an instinctual response that can feel highly energized and even fierce. Yes, kindness can be fierce. Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, goes so far as to say that a compassionate mind is a warrior’s mind. ‘To understand our self-nature, as well as the self-nature of humanity, we should focus on what has beauty and dignity among humankind. Doing so will rid you of a fearful mind, and change it into a spiritual warrior’s mind.’ To overcome your fears of living in a world where painful things happen, expand your compassionate nature. Because it is innate. Know that what you do matters to others, so be caring and careful about your actions. Be a kindness warrior.

The challenge today is that we have an overexposure to negativity and underexposure to the goodwill in the world. Our attention is constantly diverted away from ordinary moments of kindness. We forget that there is so much we can appreciate and love. Let’s try looking a little closer.  We might just see the beauty and dignity among humankind. And that’s worth fighting for.

 

  • Coming in March is Palacio’s newest work, a picture book for younger children called We’re All Wonders. It introduces Auggie and the themes of kindness, empathy and tolerance.
  • The book Wonder inspired the Choose Kind Campaign and there is also an app for that! It’s called Daily Wonder. 
  • To be human is to be kind—at all stages and ages—including creating caring cultures at work. Join in the conversation in an upcoming webinar for the workplace hosted by Whil.com:  The Kindness Cure: A Prescription for Engaged and Successful Workplaces.  Tell your colleagues and co-workers. You can register here: http://bit.ly/2EuecOL

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

Illustration of Auggie: Wonder by R.J. Palacio

No More Guns and Roses

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“Do you know that there have been 239 school shootings since Sandy Hook?”

“Mom.”  My younger daughter’s voice cracked, “One of the boys got his acceptance letter into a college the day before.”  

She stood in the shadow of a door in the one corner where she could charge her smartphone while scrolling the deluge of messages and postings from teens all over the country about Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. She will graduate in a few months.

We stared at each other. It’s hard to come up with words in such a moment. Sometimes there aren’t any. Her long hair was loose and wavy from a run in the rain. In the dim light she looked like one of those ephemeral paintings by J.W. Waterhouse. A mythological maiden. An image of worry and wonder. Fragile yet fierce.

She stomped off to study for a calc quiz in a flurry of anger—and I imagine also a wave of guilt and gratitude that she can even be angry about homework when 17 kids can’t. I’m with her. Those precious lives cut short. I think of the grieving father who couldn’t remember if he told his daughter “I love you” when he dropped her off at school that day.

No words.

I silently asked myself: What is the next best thing I can do right now? It seems that the grown ups are failing their children. Yet I sense a vibe. These kids won’t stand for it. This generation is going to do something about it. Two decades of a public health crisis in schools and they will use their common sense, pure and simple. They could care less about lobbyists and special interests. They care about each other.

But at 10 o’clock at night there is only so much a mom can do. There is an Eastern compassion practice called tonglen, which is a giving and receiving reflection to use in difficult times. As Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes in The Sacred Art of Loving Kindness, “It is a way to take upon oneself the pain of the world and transform it into love.” That’s what I choose to do in the moment.

Here is a simple version that I offer in my book.

Sit quietly and comfortably, perhaps with a hand on your heart. Breathe in and out in a comfortable way. As you breathe, bring to mind a sense of warmth, comfort, and ease, or whatever you need in the moment. Inhale this soothing feeling.

Bring to mind a person who is struggling and needs compassion. After you inhale a comforting breath for yourself, on the exhale offer the other person feelings of kindness, caring, comfort, and ease.

Then return to yourself, breathing in warm sensations. Switchback to the person you are visualizing. In an even flow of in- and out- breaths, receive and give warmth and kindness. Like a see-saw. Back and forth, back and forth. One breath in for me, one breath out for you.

It’s an uneven see-saw. All those kids. Parents. Friends.

Some say prayers are not enough. This feels true. But where would we be without them?

A sacred pause. A deep breath. One for me, for you. An infusion of air inviting a sliver of hope. Maybe even a dose of faith. When we start from a place of loving awareness a smidge of space opens up. It’s here where we can discern the next best thing to do. It can reveal a path to compassionate action.

Call a congressperson. Support sensible gun policy. Vote at the midterms. Volunteer. Donate. Speak up. Say I love you.

Make every moment count.

Are you concerned about Gun Violence in Schools and communities?

It is time for a kindness revolution. Kindness Cure Sightings:

 

 

Credits:

Getty Images, 2018

Tara Cousineau, 2018, Guns & Roses Multimedia

Love & Resist: Anniversary of Women’s March

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As we come upon the anniversary of the game changing Women’s March, I am in awe of what transpired over the last year. The most curious thing of all is what I found so despicable about our elected leader of the free world was, in fact, a very odd blessing. Light was cast on the dark shadows lurking around for so long. Not all my friends might agree with me or hold similar views, but it’s quite hard to ignore what happened over the year. #MeToo, #TimesUp, and Oprah’s amazing speech at the Golden Globes.

The times they are a-changin’.

One year ago my husband and I marched in Boston. It was nothing short of transformative. First, that my man went with me (he got into designing posters and he even gave one away to a mother and her kid on the subway so she’d have something). Second, that we became part of a peaceful tribe 175,000 strong, forming a “radical kinship” as Father Greg Boyle likes to say. Third, that we took tons of selfies together and sent them to our daughters—not only so they can confirm how their “awkward” parents are, but to see their core values in action (and what a good guy is all about).

I still have our posters in the family room and will dust them off this weekend. I didn’t get my hand-knitted pussy hat in time for last year’s march, but that hat has not seen the dust. I still wear it—and I will as long as it’s cold outside and this president is in office.

It’s not a time to be complacent. It’s a time to address the dark side with a legion of light workers. It’s not a comfortable time and nor should it be. We need to feel irritated enough to take action. The other day I was clearing my office and out of a book fell a prayer card my mother had given one of my girls: Joan of Ark. How apt!  The Novena begins: “Glorious St. Joan of Arc, filled with compassion for those who invoke you, with love for those who suffer, heavily laden with the weight of my troubles I kneel at your feet and humbly beg you to take my present need under your special protection.” The image on the front is of the armoured French girl of the 1400s, a spiritual warrior across the ages, holding her flag and sounding the call for compassion, social justice and new leadership. I believe Joan of Arc is at our sides protecting us and emboldening us right now, but mostly we have each other. Saints, angels, whistle blowers, courageous women and men… and those contrarian naysayers, too. We all belong. And we all need to evolve humanity. We can do better.

Be a kindness warrior.

My protest sign last year was on kindness. It’s been my calling and so I’ve been studying it, collecting science and story. The basis for my upcoming book has been the view that kindness is strong, not weak. It is courageous, not cowardly. It is heartful, not heartless. It’s not about being nice, agreeable, or virtuous. It’s about understanding, having boundaries, and taking reasonable action. It’s moving from empathic distress to motivational empathy. Taking a kind stance doesn’t mean giving in. One of the protest slogans seen all over the world last year was: “Feel the Rage, Be the Love.” These six small words perfectly capture both the challenge and the solution when facing difficult persons, places, or things. The meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg asks, “Why can’t we both love and resist at the same time?” This is a perfect question for our life and our times, and it forms the basis for reimagining kindness.

We all have something to stand for. For me it’s giving kindness the gravitas it deserves in the landscape of humanity. After all, we can’t survive without it. I invite you to join me. How are you going to rock your world with kindness?  

Get a FREE Rock Your World with Kindness Guide (PDF).