122: Self-Compassion for Parents

In this episode we draw together threads from across a number of recent episodes. Most obviously it picks up on our interview with Dr. Moira Mikolajczak where we discussed parental burn-out (https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/burnout/). After that episode concluded, Dr. Mikolajcak and I emailed a bit about tools that could potentially help parents and the primary one she found useful and important was self-compassion – so that’s what we’re going to discuss today. This topic also picks up on the Hunter Clarke-Fields shared with us recently. (https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/mindfulmama/) And here to do all this with us is Dr. Susan Pollak, who is a psychologist in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a long-time student of meditation and yoga who has been integrating the practices of meditation into psychotherapy since the 1980s. Dr. Pollack is cofounder and teacher at the Center for mindfulness and Compassion at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance, and has just stepped down as President of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, a position which she held since 2010. She also writes regularly for Psychology today on the topic of integrating mindfulness into daily life.   Some key points from the interview: 4:08  Many of us, present company included, we're not raised to be kind to ourselves. 10:47 Mindful self-compassion acknowledges that we need to start with mindfulness. (I've been teaching this course for over a decade, and I've seen that) a lot of people just can't start with compassion because it's foreign for most of us to treat ourselves kindly. 53:59 Allow yourself to rest for a moment feeling that you have distance from the storm, some space from the turbulence to recognize that you are not the storm. (paraphrased) 59:03  It's such a common misconception about mindfulness that you have to sit still and not think about anything. And, you know, people are relieved to know t