16. Do I Deserve Self-Compassion? With Dr. Kristin Neff

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Description

Loving ourselves is not easy. Author Dr. Kristin Neff says in order to actually love yourself you must be willing to turn toward pain, forgive others, and talk to yourself like you would your dearest friend. And most importantly, you must ask yourself: What’s standing in the way of loving myself even more? This episode’s practice is about giving yourself permission to be kind to yourself – on the good days, the bad ones, and especially when you feel like you have to pretend that everything is OK.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Claire, Kristin Neff

Claire

Hi, I’m Claire Bidwell Smith. Welcome to NEW DAY. This week I’ve been thinking about the story I heard once. I can’t even remember where, just how much it impacted me. So there was this woman who was traveling through India when she got really sick, she became so ill that she ended up in an overcrowded hospital out on a cot and a hallway. And eventually she went unconscious. And in that moment, she had an out of body experience. And as she hovered above herself in this dilapidated Indian hospital, she looked down at her dying body, and her only thought was, I never loved you. I still get chills when I tell this story. I don’t even know who the woman was. But I do know that she lived to tell the story. And as the story goes, she also learned to love herself. But for me, when I heard this story, that was the moment I was like, fuck, I don’t love myself. And that’s when I realized that I could do all the self-care, I wanted meditation, yoga therapy, but if it didn’t involve self-compassion, it wouldn’t be worth it. But how do we find compassion for ourselves when we hold ourselves accountable for all of our faults and flaws and mistakes? I’ll tell you that it takes time and it takes work, the kind of work my guest today Dr. Kristin Neff has become an expert in and not just an expert, but a pioneer in the research around self-compassion. You guys she is my Oprah my rock star. I once got in an elevator with Mick Jagger. And that was nothing compared to hopping on a zoom call with Dr. Kristen Neff. Not to oversell it, but to me, she is a huge deal. I’m so happy she could join us.

Claire 

So we start every, every episode with this question, how are you doing today? But how are you really doing?

Kristin Neff  02:00

Not very well. Yeah, I just had a conflict like 10 minutes ago or so and very important to me. So I’m actually not in the best space right now. So I’m going to practice some self-compassion.

Claire

I’m so sorry to hear that. I’ve been going through some conflicts at home or not at home, but in my personal life as well. And it’s not fun at all. Well, so again, you know, I talk about self-compassion all the time. In my work. I’m a grief therapist. So I work with people who are going through loss, sometimes it’s been lost, they’ve been through a decade or two outs, sometimes it’s six weeks ago. And one of the things that I see, my people struggle with more than anything is self-compassion, they are so hard on themselves, they’re going through one of the hardest things they’ve ever been through, they’ve lost someone incredibly important to them. And yet, they’re beating themselves up for how they’re feeling or how they were with their person, or how they’re going to be going down the road. And so this work is so integral to what I do with them. And I’m just so curious how you found your way to self-compassion, like, why is this your work? And how did it become important to you?

Kristin Neff

Well, just because it works, right? So I decided to come up with the idea of self-compassion, I learned about it from a Buddhist Sangha, who taught him the tradition of Thích Nhất Hạnh, and Thích Nhất Hạnh is one of those teachers who talks a lot about the importance of turning self-compassion inward, as well as outward. And I discovered that last my last year of graduate school, and as a really difficult time, for me, I just gotten a divorce, I was under a lot of stress about, you know, my future and everything. And I was just so amazed by the immediate difference it had, it made it my ability to cope with all I was going through. And then, you know, when I finally got a job at UT Austin, and I decided to do research on it, it was it was kind of, you know, I didn’t know if it worked out. I didn’t know if it could be studied, there were a lot of unknowns. But again, the more and more I looked at it, the more and more I just saw Wow, just forks. That’s why I’m such an evangelist about it, because it works. And it’s not actually that difficult to do. We just don’t know about it. We don’t think about it, or we don’t try it. But once we do, it makes a huge difference.

Claire  04:21

It does. I have like 40 questions just based on everything you said. But you know, for me, it was a real turning point in my personal journey. I lost both of my parents young. And so by age 25, I was alone in the world with no siblings and no parents and really went through some difficult times just trying to figure out how to be here and figure out who I was. And I discovered self-compassion through yoga, you know, just yoga classes I was going to, and I would be on my mat and the teacher would be talking about self-compassion, and I would just start weeping. You know, it would just go right into me. That that is what was missing in my journey. How do you define self-compassion? You know, you say you studied it, and you wanted to write and research about it. But how do you where do you even start? Like, what is it?

Kristin Neff

Yeah, so Well, when I first decided I wanted to research it, I really had to think about how am I going to clearly define this because I wanted to be able to measure it, you know, I mean, in simple terms, is just treating yourself with the same compassion that you show someone you care about, but had to be a little more precise. And so I kind of thought, well, what goes into the experience of compassion more generally, the first thing is, actually you have to be willing to turn toward pain. And if you aren’t willing to look at it, or be with it, you actually can’t give yourself compassion if you just pretend that everything’s fine. Or else if you’re either so lost in the middle of the pain, you have no perspective, in order to give yourself compassion. So really, the first thing we need is mindfulness. So mindfulness is the ability to turn toward and be present with what is even if what is difficult. So that’s really the first element we need. And then of course, you know, instead of just blaming and judging ourselves or being hard on ourselves, because we’re suffering, it means being kind, caring, understanding, warm, about one’s a little more intuitive. But I also realize that I was really concerned with the question, or what’s the difference between self-compassion and self-pity? Because, you know, self-pity isn’t very helpful. And just like, you know, when you pity someone else, like you feel sorry for them, you feel separate from them, maybe even a little better than them. Compassion is like, hey, I’ve been there. Yeah, so a self-compassion. Similarly, there’s a sense of common humanity of like, you know, the shared experience of imperfection and struggle. So it’s not for me, it’s just said, hey, you know, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone struggles, some people more than others. Yes, granted, but this isn’t the abnormal about me for having a difficult time. I’m not alone in this. And that seems to make a really huge difference, because it’s that sense of isolation, in our struggles that just make it so much worse.

Claire

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I’ll say sometimes to people, is I’ll tell them, you know, you didn’t ask for this. And they will just welled up with tears. And it’s interesting to me that they feel like they did, or they brought it on themselves somehow, or they’re responsible for this thing. So helping them take away that prison that they’re in with that is so interesting to do.

Kristin Neff

Yeah, ironically, one of the things self-criticism gives us is the illusion of control. I should have been able to get it right. You know, I didn’t. But if I just been a little have my, you know, you know what, together a little bit more, I would have been okay. And it does give us the illusion of control. Unfortunately, it’s untrue, right? We aren’t in total control, we can’t make things go the way we want to be, we can’t be perfect. And also, we caused ourselves a lot of unnecessary pain and struggle, which actually makes it harder to do our best. But that’s kind of what it’s tapping into. It’s like, well, I want to believe I’m in control. Because that makes me feel safe. And yet, there’s also the beauty of knowing why don’t have to take responsibility for everything. You know. And also, it’s true that we have total control, we can do our best, you know, like Jon Kabat Zinn says, you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. So we can do that. But we know we can’t stop the waves. We can’t, we can’t totally control everything. And that’s scary. But at the same time, when we give up the illusion of control, it’s also very liberating and freeing.

Claire  08:35

Sitting with pain, sitting with discomfort setting with uncertainty, you know, I feel like those are some of the greatest things we must do in our lifetime in order to move through it. But they’re also the hardest.

Kristin Neff

Yeah, like so the only way out is through a geek, you can avoid it, you can’t escape it, you just have to be with yourself as you go through it. Hopefully with as much warmth and support and kindness and you know, wisdom as you can. And then eventually it will pass we have no control over how long it will take. But eventually all things pass.

Claire

I say that about grief to that the only way out is through. There’s no avoiding it. There’s no going around it at all.

Kristin Neff 

You can’t manipulate it. You can’t sugarcoat it, you just got to feel it.

Claire

So why are we so hard on ourselves about this? Why are we so challenged to have self-compassion?

Kristin Neff

I think part of it is physiological. So basically, you know, how we’re designed by evolution is when we’re threatened, we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. And when we’re suffering, or especially when we failed or made a mistake at something, we fight ourselves it can somehow again, we’ll control ourselves and then we’ll be safe. Or else we flee in this feeling of shame or we hang our head. It’s like we kind of flee from the perceived judgments of others so that we’ll be safe, or else we freeze and get stuck hoping, okay, if I just don’t do anything, maybe it’ll go away. Right? So these are natural safety behaviors. They don’t come up only for others, of course, because like if your best friend has a hard time you don’t feel personally threatened, right. And so it’s actually easier to use another evolved response that we have, which is also natural, which is the care response, you know, warmth, kindness, support, befriending, but that system seems to evolve primarily to help others like our offspring or group members. And it’s not so natural to do it for ourselves. And so I think it’s in some ways more instinctual, to be critical with ourselves, and to be kind to ourselves when we’re suffering. But once you kind of get over that initial awkwardness, it’s actually pretty easy to be kind to yourself, because you already know how to do it for others, it’s just a matter of really getting in the habit and also giving yourself permission to be kind and supportive to yourself.

Claire  10:48

What are some of the blocks to self-compassion? I mean, you mentioned that we need to be able to sit with pain and face what we’re going through. What about forgiveness, forgiving ourselves for something, forgiving others? Like, what are some of the things? What are some of the hurdles before we can really start to show ourselves self-compassion?

Kristin Neff

Yeah, well, so forgiveness usually is a later step, right? So first, you have to feel the pain before you can forgive. If you forgive others, as a way to avoid the pain or forgive yourself as a way to avoid the pain of harming someone else, that spiritual bypass, you know, you aren’t actually forgiving, you’re just using it as a manipulation strategy to get rid of your pain. So first, you kind of have to really open to the pain either being hurt or hurting someone else. And before you can start to forgive, and it takes its own time, I had also takes a commitment not to harm again, you know, again, or not to be harmed again, it’s also an important part of forgiveness.

Claire 

What are some examples? Not necessarily from your personal life, but in general, that you see people have to go through this kind of chain of events or chain of sequence of working on themselves with that.

Kristin Neff

So let’s say you said something that was really mean to someone, you know, before just saying, okay, well, I forgive myself, I’m only human. Like, if you use self-compassion, oh, I’m only human, no big deal. That’s not real self-compassion. That’s just like trying to manipulate sort of have to feel the pain, but you’ve done in first thing to hold it, you need to feel it. Wow, I feel so badly. So sorry, you have to allow your feel. Maybe some shames gonna come up, some griefs gonna come up, regrets gonna come up, all these things come up. You hold them all. You do remember, for instance, that you’re only human, and maybe you’re doing the best you can at the time. But it’s not a way to avoid the pain as a way to help you open to the pain. And then only after really opening to the pain, can you start to forgive yourself. And again, that forgiveness needs to come with a commitment to prevent harm. Otherwise, it’s just again, just going to be repeating the same cycle.

Claire  12:52

And what is the commitment to prevent harm look like? What does that mean?

Kristin Neff

Well, so I’ll give a personal example. It’s a little Rob, but that’s okay. So my first marriage ended because I had an affair. And it was like, I would have never thought I could do something like that. But I got myself in a situation where it was because I met him very young, I didn’t realize that it was a not a good relationship for me until I met someone who did see who could really, you know, so it just kind of happened. But I felt horrible about it. And that’s actually right. When I learned self-compassion, I just gotten, he divorced me. And yeah, the marriage didn’t work. So going through that. And again, so really holding the pain of what I done. I didn’t I didn’t minimize it. But coming through it, I mean, making a real commitment to honesty. And so it really has ever since then, it’s like, have you experienced the pain of that? It’s never gonna happen again.

Claire 

My first marriage ended similarly. And I went through a similar progression as well. And, you know, I think it’s still hard. I think there are things that we do to people that we cannot ever erase, you know, so how do you sit with that? How do you come up with forgiveness for yourself, for people who hurt you? I mean, some of it, you can’t ever take away.

Kristin Neff  14:15

That’s right. So sometimes the pain, it may subside, or probably subside some, some payment ever go away, you know, feelings of shame or grief. And but really, it’s well, how do you relate to it? Right. So, Chris Germer and I Chris Germer is my colleague, we developed the Mindful Self Compassion program together. And we like to say this paradox of self-compassion, which is that we give ourselves compassion, not to feel better, because we feel bad. In other words, we don’t give ourselves compassion to make the pain goes away or to make everything perfect or to make ourselves perfect or so that you know, we don’t have any problems anymore, is because we hurt, that hurt may never go away. It may. It’s probably more likely to if you give yourself compassion, but it may not, but is that thing going to overwhelm you? Are you gonna think? Well, just because I feel bad and therefore I am bad? Are you just gonna say, Okay, this hurts. Can I be with myself with an open heart and an open mind. And if you if you are, you can cope, you can get through it’s like resilience factor, it doesn’t overwhelm you as much when you open your heart with self-compassion.

Claire 

What about showing yourself self-compassion when others around you are not extending that to you?

Kristin Neff 

Well, you really need it. You get it, right. Yeah, it helps when others give you compassion. But they aren’t always capable of it, you know, whatever they’re going through at the time, they may be just too overwhelmed or whatever. But you aren’t dependent on other people giving you the compassion, you need. Self-Compassion practice, you have this resource, to give yourself what you need. So you’re so it really is a type of freedom because you weren’t contingent on other people. You weren’t contingent on other people liking you, you aren’t contingent on things going the way you want them to? Or things working out. So your sense of safety starts to rest in the ability to open your heart, as opposed to whatever is happening at the moment.

Claire  16:48

So what does the self-compassion practice look like?

Kristin Neff 

So it can look a lot of different ways, right? Sometimes we like to say physical touch can be very useful. And that’s because really touch is one of the primary ways that parents communicate to infants care even before language that’s in so our body is designed to interpret touch, as a signal of care to put your hands on your heart, your hands on your face, you can give yourself a hug, perhaps you can hold your solar plexus, right. So what happens with physical touch is you’re actually working through the level of physiology, you’re activating your parasympathetic nervous system and deactivating sympathetic activity, right? And so that can be very useful because often, our minds are so full of the storyline of how awful we are, how awful the situation is, that we can’t really access self-compassion, mentally, the sentence, we can access it physically. So that’s, that’s a good way. Also, there’s lots of little practices. First of all, there’s meditations we’ve developed a lot of meditations that can help kind of thing about meditation is that really is a type of brain training and you do something over and over again, you can actually form new neural pathways. We know that through the through the research. And so you can practice meditating and thinking good thoughts for yourself, you know, kind thoughts, warm thoughts, that can help develop the habit. But also little things that can be as simple as you know what I say what I just said to myself to a good friend. Probably want it, okay, well, what would I say to good friend and then you can try saying that to yourself. So we’ve developed a whole plethora of exercises and practices to give yourself compassion and they really work.

Claire  18:36

Yeah, no, I send a lot of people to your websites to find meditations there. There’s amazing stuff that you have put out and it’s so helpful. I think it’s like I think you said earlier that it’s really quite simple. Once you get once you start to do it, it’s so rewarding. I think it’s hard to get to the place of feeling ready to show yourself self-compassion. I think that’s the hard part. But once you’re there, and you’re showing yourself the self-compassion, and you’re making it a practice, it starts to come I think much more easily as right

Kristin Neff 

It does. Absolutely, becomes for me, it’s second nature, right? I think about it. And it does get more easy. It feels it does feel a little weird at first, like who’s talking to who and I don’t believe you, you know, but it’s about just setting your intention to be warm and supportive and eventually, it does start to feel more natural.

Claire 

What was that Saturday Night Live skit, you know, like Stuart Smalley or something where he has affirmations in the […].

Kristin Neff 

Yes, not positive affirmations because it’s actually opening to the pain. positive affirmations are quite the opposite. Everything was great. Well, maybe they aren’t. You know, and so can I open to what’s ugly. Or what’s you know, full of shame or grief or hurt or pain? And self-compassion is what gives you the ability to do so. You know, it’s by definition, self-compassion. is aimed at suffering. But you might say the engine of self-compassion is really just love and love can also have gratitude and joy. So it’s really you might say, when love meets suffering and stays loving, then it becomes self-compassion.

Claire  20:16

I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of toxic positivity in the last year, I saw a lot of shaming during the pandemic, like grief shaming, people would be talking about having a hard time in their lives during the pandemic, and other people would come in and say, Oh, we you know, you don’t have it as hard as these other people. And, and, and you need to be more positive, you have so much and they were taking away from people kind of sitting in their own pain. And I and I was seeing that everywhere. And I think that’s interesting, because that’s kind of what you’re talking about that this positive affirmations don’t work. Because you have to allow yourself to experience pain.

Kristin Neff

And apparently, they work better with people, for people with high self-esteem them low self-esteem, low self-esteem, like backfires and makes you just feel worse. That’s funny. But yeah, so that’s, this is true. A lot of people get stuck here, because the common humanity element of self-compassion, saying that everyone suffers, and you aren’t alone does not mean that just because other people suffer more, that somehow your suffering is less important. Some people think, Oh, does that mean that? You know, they think that self-pity is maybe the only way to really validate their own pain? It’s not true. Every moment of suffering is worthy of a compassionate response. Yeah, but it also can, it can help to have some perspective as well. I mean, sometimes we over dramatize things. And maybe it’s actually not as bad as we may fear given the bigger picture, right? So it’s all a matter of balance.

Claire 

Where does spirituality and religion tie into self-compassion?

Kristin Neff 

Well, I don’t think Well, it depends to each person’s. So I learned about it in Buddhism, some people consider Buddhism religion, some people don’t the way I practice, it isn’t religious, it’s not really a belief system. It’s more of a philosophical approach to the world of spirituality.

Claire  22:02

Religion isn’t good for it. I don’t know, I’m just kind of curious, like how they play into it, I guess?

Kristin Neff 

I think, I don’t know. I mean, I remember I taught a self-compassion workshop to a bunch of nuns once. And I just, I used to imagine Jesus is talking to you, you know, and it worked great for them. Awesome. So I think it kind of depends on what type of religion and your particular sect of it and how you know, it’s, it can be all over the place from emphasizing sin to emphasizing love. So I think it really just depends. But I do think it’s a spiritual practice, ultimately. Because what self-compassion does, if you really take it far enough, is it actually starts dismantling the sense of separate self. So even though it’s aimed inward, also, we’re being self-critical and full of shame, got a very strong sense of self, and we’re judging that self. But when we’re saying, hey, you know, I’m a human being doing the best I can this moment. And also, compassion is really a type of wisdom that sees all the interconnected causes and conditions that lead to our you know, whatever’s happening in the moment. And that’s why we don’t have to blame ourselves so harshly. Because, again, really, there’s a lot of things outside of our control, that are influencing our ability to make good decisions in the moment. When we do that, we act, the sense of separate self-starts receding, and a sense of interconnectedness with all things starts expanding, and our heart starts expanding. And really, it can be a spiritual experience. If you define that as kind of a transcendent experience of going beyond the separate self to see an interconnection with all things or you can even call it God if you wanted. So I think it’s, it is a spiritual practice.

Claire  24:10

Tell me about self-compassion and children and parenting. I mean, kind of both how do we teach self-compassion to our children? And how do we have self-compassion for ourselves as parents? Because we’re, you know, never perfect as parents?

Kristin Neff

Yeah. Well, one important way to teach self-compassion to children is through modeling. Right? We know that, that when we hear other people be more compassionate to themselves, we kind of get the ideas. Oh, I see. That’s how I’m supposed to talk to myself. Whereas if you hear you know, if you drop the glass in front of your kid, he’s an idiot. Then your child gets the message. Oh, I see. That’s the way I’m supposed to talk to myself. So modeling is a very good way to teach children how to be warm and supportive to oneself. Also, you know, you can talk about self-compassion in the context of friends. By about age seven kids kind of understand what it means to be a friend. And so you can talk about the importance of being a good friend to yourself as well as other people and what that means and what that might look like. Right. Also, just being a compassionate presence, what we know about the human brain is, you know, through our home mirror neuron system, we actually feel the emotions of others at a pre verbal level, you can kind of pick up on other people’s emotional state, just through again, the brain is actually designed to do that. So for instance, my son is artistic, right? And although he has trouble perspective taking is actually very empathic and the sense he’s very sensitive to the emotions of others. And I found that I could actually kind of regulate his moods by regulating my own mood. So if he had a tantrum, for instance, you know, at times I would get frustrated or irritated or maybe think I did something wrong. And of course, that would inevitably make him more irritated and agitated. And when I could give myself compassion, for the difficulty of how, like, if he was having a tantrum, this is so hard. You know, I’m here for you, Kristin, you know, what do you need right now I’m so sorry, this is happening, kind of opening my heart that you had to calm down. So he was actually getting the benefit of my self-compassion practice. So his mirror neurons. So that’s another thing that makes a really big difference. I mean, it really breaks my heart that people think it’s selfish, but it’s actually the biggest gift you can give to others as well to be self-compassionate. Because you bring that into every interaction you have.

Claire  26:39

I love those ways of teaching self-compassion. And do you think that parents struggle with self-compassion as just in their parenting lives? You know, I feel like I see a lot of young moms who are just so afraid they’re doing everything wrong.

Kristin Neff 

Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah, we’re think was listed, you know, have it all and be great parents and great partner, if we have a partner or a great work and all this stuff, and the pressure is tremendously high. Right? So […] I like it helps take some of the pressure off is that the goal of practice is simply to be a compassionate mess. Right. In other words, self-compassion, practice is not going to make you perfect, you know, you can kind of give up this goal of being perfect. And if your goal actually becomes comes to be self-compassionate, to open your heart, then you can always be a compassionate mess. You know, you have to self to practice it. But you don’t have to get it right. You simply have to open your heart. And that takes a lot of the pressure off.

Kristin Neff 

Lastly, kind of ask you like, how do you start do is it a daily practice that we’re doing, you know, if someone listening right now is like, I really need to infuse my life with this more, this is what I am missing? Is it meditation every day is it you know, following a spiritual path, where are people starting?

Kristin Neff

Well, it’s really just a dream, you know, anytime you suffer, remembering, oh, I can try some self-compassion. Meditation works. But what we find in our research is it doesn’t matter if you meditate. Or if you know, every time we were having some emotional pain, you put your hand on your heart and say, I’m so sorry, you know, I’m here for you or you don’t care. So some words of warmth or kindness. Or, by the way, self-compassion isn’t always like soft, and sometimes it’s tender and accepting. But sometimes it’s like fierce Mama Bear. Sometimes it means drawing boundaries or standing up for yourself. That’s also a really important expression of self-compassion. So you can just do it again, any your trigger for practicing self-compassion is any moment of emotional or physical discomfort or pain, which and by the way, if doesn’t happen to you at all, then maybe you don’t need self-compassion, but happens to all this eventually, and usually more often than we would like.

Claire  28:58

Talking to Kristin was a humbling experience for me. For years now. I’ve recommended her books and our meditations to my clients more than any other resource, because I see it every person I speak with. This difficulty in simply loving ourselves and being kind to ourselves. But it’s self-compassion. That’s the gateway to growing as human beings. So for this week’s practice, I want you to take a look at yourself in the way that women in India did. Obviously, not in an out of body experience kind of way. Or if you can do that too. That’s cool. Either way, ask yourself this question. Do you love yourself? How much? How little? What’s standing in the way of loving yourself more? And remember that just because you feel bad doesn’t mean you are bad. Remember that practicing self-compassion is a form of resilience. Try to set an intention to be warm and supportive of yourself. Give yourself permission to be kind to yourself. Practice the basics. Give yourself what you need, food quality, time, rest, physical touch. Compassionate thoughts.

Claire  30:01

Talk to yourself the same way you would to your dearest friend. And for parents out there, watch how you talk in front of your kids. Dr. Neff gives an example of what you say after dropping or breaking something. Your child will interpret that reaction as a way to respond when they’re in a similar situation. So if you’re kind to yourself, they will pick up on that and model it for themselves. For more on Dr. Neff, check out her book fear, self-compassion, and her mindful self-compassion workbook. Her website is self-compassion.org. And she offers guided meditations, exercises and more. As always, thank you for listening. Maybe you should think yourself, too. Tell me about your journey toward self-compassion. Send me an email at New Day at LemonadaMedia.com. Tell me how it’s going. I look forward to hearing what you find. We’ll be back next week with my good friend Lien Ta to talk about feeling invisible as an Asian American woman fighting for her livelihood and being a restauranteur in the midst of COVID.

CREDITS

NEW DAY is a Lemonada Media Original. The show is produced by Jackie Danziger, Liliana Maria Percy Ruiz and Erianna Jiles. Kat Yore is our engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, Lily Cornell Silver and Claire Bidwell Smith. NEW DAY is produced in partnership with the Well Being Trust, The Jed Foundation and Education Development Center. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me at clairebidwellsmith.com. Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow NEW DAY listeners at facebook.com/groups/newdaypod. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium. You can subscribe right now on the Apple podcast app by clicking on our podcast logo and then the subscribe button. Thanks for listening. See you next week.

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