Feeling Self-Critical? Try Mindfulness (Emily Nauman at Greater Good)

This is a brief but useful article from the Greater Good Science Center (UC Berkeley) on using mindfulness to deal with inner critic, although they frame it more in terms of self-esteem.

I would suggest using mindfulness directly in the inner critic by learning to identify its voice, its criticisms, and then be curious about the reasons the critic might be acting this way. What does it want? What are its needs? How is it trying to serve you?

And that last question is crucial - when we begin to understand that all of our "parts," including (and maybe especially) the inner critic, came into existence to help us in some way, then our relationship with them can shift from adversarial to cooperative.

Feeling Self-Critical? Try Mindfulness

New research shows that mindfulness may help us to stop comparing ourselves to other people

By Emily Nauman | March 9, 2014


Our Mindful Mondays series provides ongoing coverage of the exploding field of mindfulness research. Dan Archer
Many of us feel great about ourselves when we focus on how much success we’ve had in comparison to others. But what happens when we don’t succeed? Self-esteem sinks. 

New research shows that developing mindfulness skills may help us build secure self-esteem—that is, self-esteem that endures regardless of our success in comparison to those around us.

Christopher Pepping and his colleagues at Griffith University in Australia conducted two studies to demonstrate that mindfulness skills help enhance self-esteem.

In the first study, the researchers administered questionnaires to undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course to measure their mindfulness skills and their self-esteem. The researchers anticipated that four aspects of mindfulness would predict higher self-esteem:

• Labeling internal experiences with words, which might prevent people from getting consumed by self-critical thoughts and emotions;
• Bringing a non-judgmental attitude toward thoughts and emotions, which could help individuals have a neutral, accepting attitude toward the self;
• Sustaining attention on the present moment, which could help people avoid becoming caught up in self-critical thoughts that relate to events from the past or future;
• Letting thoughts and emotions enter and leave awareness without reacting to them.

The results, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, support the researchers’ predictions: students with these mindfulness skills indeed had higher self-esteem. However, this study did not clarify whether mindfulness causes self-esteem, or whether those with mindfulness also had higher self-esteem because of some other factor.

In order to find out if mindfulness directly causes higher self-esteem, the researchers conducted a second study. They instructed half of the participants to complete a 15-minute mindfulness meditation that focused on the sensation of their breath. The other half of participants read a 15-minute story about Venus fly-trap plants. All of the participants completed questionnaires that assessed their level of self-esteem and mindfulness both before and after they completed the 15-minute task.

Consistent with the researchers’ predictions, those that participated in the mindfulness meditation had higher scores in mindfulness and in self-esteem after meditating, while there was no change in these dimensions for those that read the Venus fly-trap plant story.

Because the only difference between the two groups was whether or not they participated in a mindfulness exercise, these results suggest that mindfulness directly causes enhanced self-esteem.

The authors write that because the effects of the mindfulness exercise on self-esteem in this study were temporary, future research should examine if mindfulness interventions can lead to long-term changes in self-esteem.

However, these findings are promising. The authors write, “Mindfulness may be a useful way to address the underlying processes associated with low self-esteem, without temporarily bolstering positive views of oneself by focusing on achievement or other transient factors. In brief, mindfulness may assist individuals to experience a more secure form of high self-esteem.”

About The Author

Emily Nauman is a GGSC research assistant. She completed her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College with a double major in Psychology and French, and has previously worked as a research assistant in Oberlin’s Psycholinguistics lab and Boston University’s Eating Disorders Program.

Related Articles

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• Fostering Optimism and Confidence
• Better Eating through Mindfulness
• Five Ways to Make Mindfulness More Manly
• Does Mindfulness Make You More Compassionate?
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Tim Desmond - The Fascinating Buddhist Approach to Low Self-Esteem

Dr. Kristin Neff (author of Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind) has been arguing for quite some time that we need to move away from self-esteem as a measure of mental health toward a less ego-centered model of self-compassion. In this article from Psychotherapy Networker magazine, Tim Desmond makes a similar argument.

The Fascinating Buddhist Approach to Low Self-Esteem

One of the main goals of Buddhist meditation is cultivating compassion and love, and several techniques focus on developing these qualities toward oneself. 

March 19, 2012 | Psychotherapy Networker / By Tim Desmond

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

While many therapists have begun to incorporate mindfulness into their work, additional Buddhist practices hold potential for helping clients, particularly those suffering from low self-esteem. One of the main goals of Buddhist meditation is cultivating compassion and love, and several techniques focus on developing these qualities toward oneself.

For example, Joseph, a young software engineer, came to see me to work on disarming his fierce inner critic. As he and I entered the resource-building phase of therapy, I taught him a form of metta (loving-kindness) meditation. This practice dates back more than 2,500 years, and, next to mindfulness, it’s one of the most commonly taught forms of Buddhist meditation.

When I use metta practice with clients, I generally begin by asking them to identify an image that easily inspires feelings of love, compassion, and warmth in them. Traditionally, this practice begins with using oneself as the first object of compassion, but for clients with low self-esteem, that can sometimes be too difficult. Many clients have an easier time picturing a baby, an animal, a religious figure, or a benefactor for this first step. The important thing is finding someone or something that naturally inspires uncomplicated and unambivalent feelings of compassion and love. With help, most clients can find an image that works, and can engage with the process.

Joseph chose his 1-year-old niece, and I asked him to picture her and allow feelings of love and compassion to arise naturally. I had him remain focused on this step for about three minutes, encouraging him to deepen into the experience by repeating the phrases “May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe.” The purpose of these phrases, which are integral to the way metta practice is traditionally taught, is to help the client connect with an experience of a specific form of unselfish love. Love and compassion can mean many different things in our culture, but the type of love this exercise aims at is a deep feeling of acceptance and support.

After some practice, Joseph was able to get in touch with strong feelings of warmth and care toward his niece. Once we’d accomplished this, the next step was to help him direct some of those positive feelings inward. I sometimes think of this practice in terms of fighting a fire: at this point, the client knows how to open the faucet; now it’s time to learn how to aim the hose.

Helping clients with low self-esteem direct warmth and compassion inward is often a tricky process. I’ve found that different interventions work for different clients. For Joseph, we began by having him get in touch with strong feelings of love toward his niece and then turn that love toward himself while saying the phrases, “May I be happy,” and so forth. As soon as we started this, however, he was immediately overwhelmed by his inner critic. This is a common occurrence with clients who suffer from low self-esteem.

I asked him to tell me what his critic was saying. He said it was saying things like, “How could you ever deserve love? You’re despicable.” Rather than trying to argue with this voice or ignore it, we did exactly what this type of meditation traditionally recommends in cases like this: we made the inner critic the object of Joseph’s love and compassion. This tactic is a departure from how many therapists have been trained to deal with self-criticism, but I believe that it can be an incredibly useful tool.

In Buddhism, it’s said that true compassion and true love are impossible without understanding, so when I help a client shift the focus of compassion to an inner critic, I always start by asking the critic a few questions to create a foundation for the compassion. With Joseph, I said, “I want to understand that self-critical part of you more deeply, so I’ll be asking it some questions. I’d like for you to just listen to how it responds and tell me.”

In most styles of Buddhist meditation, connecting with the body is important for connecting with feelings. To transform a feeling, we start by bringing it up and sensing it in the body. Once it’s present in our awareness, we begin to inquire into its nature. There are many ways to do this, but with therapy clients, I’ve found that asking questions or offering sentence completions can be highly effective. The skill of asking the right question or offering the right sentence completion takes a great deal of practice, but from a Buddhist perspective, the most important thing about the exploration process is that you’re coming from a place of compassion toward that feeling.

I started with the question, “Is there anywhere in your body that you feel that inner critic?”

Joseph said he felt it in his chest.

Once he was present with his feeling, I said, “Now, I’d like you to ask that part of you, that critical voice in your chest, ‘How are you trying to help me?’”

Joseph was quiet for a moment, and then reported, “It says, ‘I’m protecting you from Mom.’”

I praised him and prompted him to ask it, “How do you protect me from Mom?” He answered, “If I feel good about myself, Mom will attack me. If I hate myself, I’ll be safe.”

Asking questions that assume the feeling has a positive purpose is part of inquiring with compassion. Before this, I’d learned that Joseph’s mother had been diagnosed bipolar and had been highly emotionally unstable; however, I didn’t fully understand exactly how that fit together with his self-criticism. I asked Joseph if there were any specific memories coming up for him, and he told me about a time when he was 5 or 6 years old, when he’d proudly showed his mother a good report card, and had been ridiculed by her. His mother said he thought he was better than everyone else. I empathized with Joseph, and we then spent some time just sitting with all of the feelings coming up in him.

Once he felt ready to move on, I asked him to get back in touch with the self-critical voice in his chest. When he said he could feel it, I asked him to try saying, “Thank you for trying to keep me safe from Mom. I know you’re trying to help me.” He immediately started crying, and said he felt a huge relief. He talked about feeling reunited with a part of himself that had been cut off. I suggested that, between sessions, every time he noticed the self-critical voice, he express this kind of gratitude for its desire to protect him.

As we continued therapy, we’d spend time each week with this practice. He’d begin sending love to his niece, and then shift to himself. When his inner critic flared up, he’d say, “Thank you for wanting to protect me from Mom,” and after just a few minutes of repeating this phrase and listening for any response, it would fade. Then he’d return to sending love to himself. Over time, he became adept at using compassion to disarm his inner critic, and had a much easier time loving himself.

Metta practice is an important and helpful part of the way I work with clients. Observing its potential to help clients move through problems that had appeared intractable has convinced me that the practice of offering love and compassion to problematic inner parts could be a significant contribution to the way we conduct therapy, both for our clients and ourselves.

~ Tim Desmond, L.M.F.T., is a Buddhist scholar, a therapist in private practice, and the director of a mental health day-treatment center for children. He was ordained into the Order of Interbeing by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in 2005, and offers training and consultation to therapists around the world. Contact: tim@psychresources.net.

LIve Webcast with Dr. Kristin Neff - The Science of a Meaningful Life: Self-Compassion and Emotional Resilience

This looks great - Dr. Kristin Neff is a leader in the field of self-compassion.  Dr. Neff is the author of Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind. The title sounds pompous, but it is a good book.

CEUs are available for professionals, although it seems LAC or LPC credits are questionable (might be a way around this if you contact them). Here is the fee schedule:

	Online Registration	$109.00
	Standard Registration (By mail, phone or fax)	$119.00
	Student/Intern Registration (no CEU's)	$99.00
	Group Registration (3+ people registering at the same time)	$99.00

The Science of a Meaningful Life: Self-Compassion and Emotional Resilience

March 23, 2012, 9 am-4:30 pm
International House, UC Berkeley Campus
OR Live Webcast | Map It

This day-long seminar and live webcast will offer strategies for cultivating self-compassion and reducing stress, led by Dr. Kristin Neff.

Register now!

Check out the Greater Good Events Calendar.

This day-long seminar will offer strategies for cultivating self-compassion and reducing stress in yourself and others. It will be led by Dr. Kristin Neff, a pioneer in the study of self-compassion.

Self-compassion is a skill that can be learned by anyone. It involves generating feelings of kindness and care toward ourselves as imperfect human beings, and learning to be present with greater ease during life’s inevitable struggles. It is an antidote to harsh self-criticism, making us feel connected to others when we suffer, rather than feeling isolated and alienated. Unlike self-esteem, the good feelings of self-compassion do not depend on being special and better than other people; instead, they come from caring about ourselves and embracing our commonalities.

A large and growing body of research, much of it conducted by Dr. Neff, suggests that self-compassion reduces anxiety, makes us more resilient in the face of challenges, and improves overall mental health.

Drawing on a decade of her trailblazing research, Dr. Neff will provide simple tools for giving ourselves the support we need whenever we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate. She will provide an introductory overview of self-compassion, weaving together lecture, scientific research, video presentations, small group exercises, and discussion. Her seminar will offer valuable resources for mental health professionals, but her emphasis on personal practice makes this seminar appropriate for the general public as well. For more background about Dr. Neff’s work on self-compassion, check out her Greater Good essay, “Why Self-Compassion Trumps Self-Esteem.”

This event will be webcast live! Attend in-person or online.
With the webcast, you’ll watch real-time video of the event, including slides, be able to submit questions to the presenter online, and receive CE credits—all from the comfort of your home, office, or anywhere with an Internet connection. You must have a hard-wired connection to the Internet. You will be emailed prior to the event with course materials and a login and password for the webcast.
*Attendees can receive 6 CE credit hours for attending in-person or online.*

Workshop Topics:

• Self-compassion involves generating feelings of kindness and care toward ourselves
• Self-compassion reduces anxiety, making us more resilient in the face of challenges
• Self-compassion motivates us to make positive changes in our lives not out of self-judgment, self-criticism and comparison with others, but out of caring for ourselves as we would a loved one
• Research suggests that self-compassion offers all the benefits of self-esteem without the drawbacks
• Self-compassion can be acquired through simple tools to give ourselves the support we need whenever we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate
• Research suggests that self-compassion is not a fixed trait; it’s a skill that can be learned by anyone and cultivated with practice

Agenda
(All sessions led by Kristin Neff)
8:30 - 9:00 a.m. - Registration and check in
9:00 - 10:30 - Self-compassion and well-being
10:30 - 10:45 - Break
10:45 - 12:00 - How to practice mindfulness, loving-kindness, and self-compassion
12:00 - 1:00 p.m. - Lunch (on your own)
1:00 - 2:30 - Using self-compassion for motivation and managing difficult emotions
2:30 - 2:45 - Break
2:25 - 4:30 - Self-compassion, positive emotions, and happiness

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the three key components of self-compassion
• Understand the difference between self-compassion and self-esteem
• Describe key research that highlights the benefits of self-compassion
• Practice techniques to increase self-compassion in oneself and others
• Develop self-motivation using kindness rather than self-criticism

Continuing Education:
This seminar is approved for 6 CE hours. 
Course approval for Psychologists, Social Workers, Therapists, Counselors and Nurses. More details on continuing education here. Continuing Education is co-sponsored by R. Cassidy Seminars.

Presented by the Greater Good Science Center
Co-sponsored by the International House at UC Berkeley

The Science of a Meaningful Life seminar series is made possible through a generous grant from the Quality of Life Foundation.

Register now!

Kristen Neff - Self-Compassion: The Key to Psychological Well-Being

A while back I posted a video presentation by Dr. Kristin Neff on The Science of Self-Compassion. I am a fan of her work, so I thought I'd post this interview from Noetic Now, conducted by Dr. Cassandra Vieten, who is also quite cool (saw her at the Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference here in Tucson in 2010).

The Noetic Now people are strict about quoting their articles, so here is one especially important section of which I think a LOT more people (especially in education) should be aware.

Self-Compassion: The Key to Psychological Well-Being

by Kristin Neff, PhD and Cassandra Vieten, PhD

Self-esteem is judging yourself positively—“This is me; I am good.” Self-compassion has nothing to do with judgment or evaluation. It’s a way of relating to yourself kindly and with concern, in an interconnected way.

Vieten: What's the difference between self-compassion and self-esteem?

Neff: I can talk for a long time about this one. One of the reasons I got interested in studying self-compassion is because it changed my life personally when I started learning about it in my Buddhist meditation group. As luck would have it, I did a postdoc with Susan Harter, one of the country’s leading researchers on self-esteem. I learned that psychology has fallen out of love with self-esteem. Certainly if you don't have it, you’ll be depressed and anxious, which is not a good thing, but the big question is how do you get it? There’s an epidemic of narcissism in our culture. All the emphasis on self-esteem over the last twenty years or so has led to the highest levels of narcissism ever recorded, especially among college students—and this is a problem. People who are prejudiced, for example, have very high self-esteem; that’s how they get their self-esteem—“I’m better than you.” Bullies often have high self-esteem, which they get in the same way.

There’s something called the better-than-average affect, which refers to how everyone needs to feel special or above average just to feel okay about themselves. For example, let’s say I meet up with you, Cassie, and say, “Oh wow, your outfit looks really average today,” you’d be horrified, right? You’d be insulted. If someone calls us average, it feels like a blow to our egos. What that shows is that we all have to feel better than average in order to feel okay about ourselves. How do we do that? We subtly put other people down, and we subtly puff ourselves up. We subtly find ways to feel we’re better than others to maintain our self-esteem. Self-esteem is actually problematic, and the research is now very clear on that.

Self-esteem is judging yourself positively—“This is me; I am good.” Self-compassion has nothing to do with judgment or evaluation. It’s a way of relating to yourself kindly and with concern, in an interconnected way. Self-compassion isn’t about good or bad—in fact, when you fail, that’s exactly when self-compassion is needed. That’s one important difference: self-esteem is a kind of judgment, while self-compassion is a way of relating.

I think the research is encouraging because it shows that self-compassion does all the good things self-esteem does. In other words, if you have high levels of self-compassion, or self-esteem, you won’t be depressed or anxious, and it’s unlikely to get so bad that you would fall into a psychological abyss and think about suicide. But self-compassion doesn’t include the problems self-esteem brings. Self-compassion is not at all associated with narcissism. It’s associated with interconnectedness as opposed to feelings of isolation. People who are self-compassionate don’t feel better than other people. Self-compassion also manifests better in relationships than self-esteem does. If you think about the fights we have, they’re often about our egos, right? And they’re often with the people we love. I could go on and on, so to sum it up, I would say self-compassion has the benefits of self-esteem without self-esteem’s drawbacks.

Read the whole interview.

About the Authors

Kristin Neff, PhD

Dr. Neff is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin. She is one of the world's leading researchers on self-compassion. In addition to authoring numerous academic articles on self-compassion, she is the author of the recently published book, Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind (William Morrow, 2011).

Cassandra Vieten, PhD

Dr. Vieten is Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and presenter.

What is optimal functioning? - Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics

Too much of our current health system (physical and mental) is focused simply on the elimination of disease, not on health, and especially not on optimal health. This article looks at some of the ways people can attain optimal health - and just what exactly optimal health entails.

This article point indirectly at an integral approach to optimal health - "environmental opportunities and on an individual’s capacity to significantly master his or her own experiences" - and this also includes genetic factors. Interiors and exteriors, individuals and communities/cultures - all must be aligned for optimal health.

What is optimal functioning?

01 December 2010 Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics

This study demonstrates that emotional and social self-efficacy beliefs may contribute on strengthening major expressions of positive orientation. The more people draw, from experience, their beliefs to be able to properly handle their emotions and their relations with others, the more they can preserve and enhance a positive evaluation of self, life and the future.

Self-esteem, life satisfaction and dispositional optimism have often been associated with well-being and success across various domains of functioning, such as health, academic achievement and job performance. Genetic studies converge with longitudinal and cross-sectional findings in pointing to positive orientation as a basic predisposition that accounts for an individual’s adjustment and achievement. The realization of a potential, in terms of self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism, depends both on environmental opportunities and on an individual’s capacity to significantly master his or her own experiences. Thus, interventions designed to nurture and strengthen a positive view of oneself, one’s life and the future represent a major challenge for researchers, clinicians and health psychologists. Earlier studies have demonstrated the contribution of emotional and social self-efficacy to positive orientation. However, the contribution of positive orientation to self-efficacy beliefs was not directly assessed. Also, the role of self-efficacy beliefs in fostering change in self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism was not assessed after the stability of positive orientation was controlled. This study used data from ongoing longitudinal research to examine a nonstandard structural equation model. In this nonstandard model, the ‘specific effects’ reflect the contribution of self-efficacy beliefs to what is unique about self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism. In the application of this model, positive orientation at the age of 17 years contributes to self-efficacy beliefs in the domain of affect regulation and interpersonal relations at 19 years of age. In turn, self-efficacy beliefs at the age of 19 years contribute to self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism at 21 years. Positive orientation at 17 years was posited as a basic predisposition affecting emotional and interpersonal self-efficacy beliefs from 17 to 19 years. Emotional and interpersonal self-efficacy beliefs were posited as mediators affecting self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism. Stability of positive orientation, the common core component of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism, was controlled for 195 adolescents (47% males) who constituted the final sample. Participants attended the 10th grade at time 1 (age 17 years; 2000), 12th grade at time 2 (age 19 years; 2002), and most attended college at time 3 (age 21 years; 2004). Positive orientation was moderately stable from 17 to 21 years of age. Moreover, positive orientation at 17 years was closely associated with emotional and interpersonal self-efficacy beliefs at 19 years. Self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative affect at 19 years contributed to the specific variance in self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism at age 21 years, which was not explained by the latent factor of positive orientation. Self-efficacy beliefs in expressing positive emotions instead contributed to self-esteem and optimism, whereas social self-efficacy contributed only to life satisfaction. All the mediated effects of positive orientation through self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative emotions were statistically significant with associated coefficients. Likewise, both the mediated effects of positive orientation on self-esteem and optimism through self-efficacy in expressing positive emotions were significant as well as the mediated effect of positive orientation on life satisfaction through social self-efficacy.

These findings corroborate previous results pointing to the contribution that emotional and social self-efficacy beliefs may exert on strengthening major expressions of positive orientation. Yet the more people draw, from experience, their beliefs to be able to properly handle their emotions and their relations with others, the more they can preserve and enhance a positive evaluation of self, life and the future. These findings suggest that even basic predispositions that are largely inherited can be modified, at least in part. To this aim, social cognitive theory provides unique directions to identify strategies suitable to enable people to make choices and to engage in pursuits that serve mostly to promote their sense of mastery and fulfillment.

• Full bibliographic information
• Caprara, G.V., Alessandri, G. & Barbaranelli, C. (2010). Optimal Functioning: Contribution of Self-Efficacy Beliefs to Positive Orientation. Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics;79:328-330.

Tags: What is optimal functioning?, Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Caprara, Alessandri, Barbaranelli, Optimal Functioning, Contribution, Self-Efficacy, Beliefs, Positive Orientation, mastery, fulfillment, Psychology, mental health, self-esteem, personal growth, positive orientation, life satisfaction, optimism

Van Tongeren & Green - Combating Meaninglessness: On the Automatic Defense of Meaning

Cool article - free for registration until October 15 (today). It seems that when people's sense of meaning is challenged, they will find other ways to generate self-esteem (reporting religious feelings, perceived immortality, reduced need for others) through a process called "fluid compensation."

Their "Meaning Maintenance Model" is composed of four interchangeable domains: self-esteem, closure and certainty, affiliation, and symbolic immortality. These are ways that we generate and re-establish meaningfulness in our subjective experience.

Or to put it more clearly, humans seek (or re-establish) meaning in "positive conceptualizations of the self, resolving personal uncertainty and situational ambiguity, nurturing close relationships, and linking themselves to larger, longer lasting entities (e.g., a nation or religion) or striving for personal significance (e.g., publishing a groundbreaking manuscript) that may “live on” after they die."

When their sense of meaningfulness is challenged, they go toward one of those four areas to re-establish meaning.

Combating Meaninglessness: On the Automatic Defense of Meaning

Daryl R. Van Tongeren Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA, vantongeredr@vcu.edu

Jeffrey D. Green Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

Abstract

Research has found that a substantial portion of human cognition occurs beyond conscious awareness to satisfy the superordinate goal of maintaining meaning. Three experiments used a newly developed method to examine the features of meaning and how individuals automatically defend against threats to meaning. In Experiment 1, individuals who subliminally processed meaninglessness-related words, relative to those in a control group, reported being more religious and having more meaningful lives. Experiment 2 extended these results, as individuals whose meaning was threatened bolstered alternative domains of meaning (termed fluid compensation) by reporting higher self-esteem, need for closure, symbolic immortality, and a reduced need to belong. Experiment 3 ruled out an alternative explanation and clarified the effects of threatened meaning on one’s need to belong. These findings elucidate the processes of meaning maintenance in sustaining psychological equanimity. Implications for the automatic defense of meaning are discussed.

This was actually a very interesting study - here is the introduction:

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
~Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Humans demonstrate a remarkable penchant for constructing meaning. Few would disagree that a life without meaning would be unpleasant, not to mention difficult to navigate. If words had no connotation, money had no value, or relationships were devoid of significant exchanges, the world would be an unbearable and unmanageable place to exist. Is the existential revelation by Tyler Durden, an anarchist soap entrepreneur who arranged clandestine meetings for men to pummel one another, correct? Regardless of the epistemic veracity of the claim, individuals are likely to react against this statement that disrupts their long-standing assumption that their lives are meaningful.

Meaning has been defined in different ways and at different levels. Some argue that it is the cosmic specialness one adopts to manage existential concerns (Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Martens, 2006), whereas others define it more broadly as predicted or expected relationships or properties such as water being wet or money possessing purchasing power (Baumeister, 1991; Baumeister & Vohs, 2002; Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006). To be sure, meaning is a central feature of social life (Baumeister, 1991), and human life is saturated with various meanings. The function of meaning has been posited by some researchers to be a penultimate motivation aimed at allaying the existential terror associated with an awareness of one’s own mortality (Landau et al., 2006), whereas others have asserted meaning to be the primary source of motivation that coheres subservient social processes into a singular drive (Heine et al., 2006).

Because meaning constitutes a central role in social cognitive processes, we propose that individuals automatically engage in defensive maneuvers aimed at restoring meaning when disrupted. The current research explores the automatic defense against threats to meaning: In three experiments, we explore how individuals ardently combat the threat of meaninglessness.

The Meaning Maintenance Model
The meaning maintenance model (MMM; Heine et al., 2006) posits that the creation and maintenance of meaning is a primary social motivation. According to the MMM, one’s meaning system is composed of four interchangeable domains: self-esteem, closure and certainty, affiliation, and symbolic immortality. That is, individuals find meaning in positive conceptualizations of the self, resolving personal uncertainty and situational ambiguity, nurturing close relationships, and linking themselves to larger, longer lasting entities (e.g., a nation or religion) or striving for personal significance (e.g., publishing a groundbreaking manuscript) that may “live on” after they die. Despite some criticisms of the MMM (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, & Maxfield, 2006), the model provides a fecund theoretical approach for investigating the human desire to preserve meaning (cf. Proulx & Heine, 2006).

The MMM posits that disruptions to one domain of meaning elicit a domain-general bolstering of the alternative sources of meaning in an attempt to preserve meaning and regain psychological equanimity, a process termed fluid compensation. The MMM is hydraulic in nature, asserting that decrements in one meaning domain lead to increments in other, sometimes unrelated, sources of meaning. Such theorizing is consistent with previous work suggesting that various selfprotective mechanisms such as social comparison and selfesteem are easily substitutable (Tesser, Martin, & Cornell, 1996) because they serve a unitary goal. Initial tests of the recent fluid compensation hypothesis have demonstrated that implicit change detection (e.g., unease resulting from a slight change in the environment) elicits greater bolstering of moral schemas (Proulx & Heine, 2008): The subtle switching of experimenters midtask prompted participants to set higher bond for a moral transgressor (i.e., prostitute). Similarly, individuals who read absurdist literature (e.g., Kafka, 1915/1996) subsequently reaffirmed meaning, including reporting a greater preference for structure (Proulx, Heine, & Vohs, in press).

These meaning maintenance findings suggest that threats to meaning are common, encompass disruptions of assumed associations as well as larger existential threats, and elicit defensive reactions. The current investigation extends previous MMM research by directly examining implicitly processed threats to meaning on each hypothesized source of meaning (i.e., self-esteem, closure, belongingness, and symbolic immortality) and illustrates how vigorously individuals defend meaning.

Meaningfulness and the Pursuit of Meaning
Individuals are motivated to maintain meaningful conceptualizations of themselves and the world (Heine et al., 2006). Although meaning seems to be of chief importance in determining one’s psychological equanimity, disruptions to one’s meaning system can be common. Discovering that Santa no longer exists would likely elicit defense (e.g., denial) by a surprised child (e.g., “Santa does exist—I saw him at the mall!”) or a reconfiguring of his or her constellation of meanings (e.g., “My family must really love me, because they work hard to maintain my belief in jolly Saint Nick.”). Because meaning is an essential element in structuring and organizing one’s social world, individuals likely react defensively to threats against meaning in an attempt to sustain meaning. According to the MMM, fluid compensation is the primary mechanism in the preservation of meaning.

Meaningfulness is important for one’s psychological equanimity and existential security; however, the pursuit of meaning may be particularly unsettling in times of threat. Previous research has distinguished between the presence of meaning and the search for meaning (Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006). We propose that, following threats to meaning, the presence of meaning is indicative of a solid meaning constellation (as well as a result of successful fluid compensation), whereas searching for meaning suggests, to some degree, a lack of certainty about one’s meaningfulness or a state of longing for meaning. Because certainty is an important feature of meaning, disruptions to meaning should elicit defensive bolstering of one’s meaningfulness but may likely decrease the uncertain search for meaning—as such, pursuing meaning would not be as effective a compensatory strategy as simply claiming that one’s life is filled with meaning. Insofar as preserving a sense of meaning is an important social motivation, the search for meaning, which implies a lack of meaningfulness, is unsettling in the wake of threats of meaninglessness. Thus, strategies that affirm certainty and meaningfulness are likely to be employed over those that permit uncertainty and the search of meaning.

Fluid Compensation as a Self-Defensive Process
The preservation of meaning is one of many self-defensive processes and is situated among a host of motivations aimed at protecting the integrity of the self. Social behavior has been posited to arise from motivations aimed at protecting the self, such as allaying existential anxiety related to death (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1997), procuring and maintaining self-esteem (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004), reducing personal uncertainty (McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001), and avoiding interpersonal and existential isolation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Pinel, Long, Landau, Alexander, & Pyszczynski, 2006). Thus, motives stemming from self-protection have been cogently argued as wellsprings for social behavior.

Taken together, self-defensive processes, such as fluid compensation, serve integral functions to preserve one’s psychological equanimity, and such mechanisms may be interchangeable (Tesser et al., 1996). In concert with the MMM, we assume the same for meaning (cf. Proulx et al., in press). The goal of fluid compensation is to restore a sense of meaningfulness (Heine et al., 2006), which is accomplished by bolstering domains of meaning following a threat or disruption. However, we may not always be consciously aware of those stimuli that disrupt our meaning. The extent to which humans engage in nonconscious meaning maintenance not only underscores the importance of meaning in social cognitive processes but also emphasizes the flexibility and applicability of self-defensive processes in protecting the integrity of one’s meaning system, even when threats go unnoticed.

The Automatic Defense of Meaning
Research on automatic processing in social cognition is widespread (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999) and has been catalogued into unified theories (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald et al., 2002), spurred the creation of diverse methodologies aimed at uncovering nonconscious processes (Greenwald, McGee, & Schwartz, 1998), and catalyzed the investigation of existential concerns (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). The nonconscious processing of one’s social world has considerable effects on preferences (Zajonc, 1980), mental processes (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000), and behavior (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). Previous research has established the efficacy of subtle construct activation in producing reliable effects (Draine & Greenwald, 1988; Greenwald, Klinger, & Schuh, 1995), most pertinently when threats of death are presented outside of conscious awareness (through subliminal priming; Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997) or naturally made salient without conscious recognition (such as proximity to a funeral home; Jonas, Schimel, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2002). Thus, individual behavior and cognition are affected by stimuli in the environment of which individuals are not aware, including stimuli that affect one’s sense of meaning.

One direct route to test whether individuals engage in an automatic defense of meaning is to employ an implicit, or nonconscious, priming technique. Though priming frequently leads to assimilative activation via “spreading of the nodes” (Greenwald et al., 2002), a growing compilation of research has demonstrated that defensive reactions may be elicited by nonconsciously processed threats (e.g., Arndt, Cook, & Routledge, 2004; Arndt et al., 1997; Heine et al., 2006; Proulx et al., in press; Proulx & Heine, 2008; Pyszczynski et al., 1997, 1999). Notably, recent research has demonstrated that threats to moral identity elicit moral behavior as an avenue toward regaining a moral self-concept (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). In addition, research has suggested that motivational factors affect automatic social behavior (Cesario, Plaks, & Higgins, 2006).

Similarly, because individuals are motivated to maintain meaning (Heine et al., 2006; Yalom, 1980), we find it likely that threats to meaning will evoke reactionary compensation (i.e., fluid compensation) rather than simple assimilative effects, as was the case for moral reaffirmation following threats to morality. Consistent with this notion, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski (2004) argued that the importance of a particular psychological construct is directly related to the defense it elicits; thus, strong reactions following threats to meaning suggest a primary role of meaning in the life of an individual. According to the MMM, threats to meaning should produce behaviors aimed at restoring equilibrium through bolstering relevant sources of meaning. That is, meaning threats should prompt individuals to reaffirm meaning in primary domains of meaning rather than report decrements in meaning.

Furthermore, according to the MMM, the four primary wellsprings of meaning are self-esteem, closure, affiliation, and symbolic immortality. The current research employs a nonconscious priming methodology to put the claims of the MMM to empirical scrutiny and extends previous theorizing on the nature of meaning by identifying those sources of meaning that are bolstered (as a result of fluid compensation) following threats of meaninglessness. In addition, the present research disentangles the presence of meaning and the search for meaning by suggesting that the former is indicative of successful fluid compensation after meaning is disrupted whereas the latter is ineffectual in restoring psychological equanimity following threats to meaning.

Tags: Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Jeffrey D. Green, Combating Meaninglessness, On the Automatic Defense of Meaning, meaning, consciousness, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Psychology, self-esteem, meaninglessness, religion, fluid compensation, higher self-esteem, need for closure, symbolic immortality, reduced need to belong, Meaning Maintenance Model, social motivation

Jenny Cole - Why Would Praising Other People Make Us Feel Better About Ourselves?

Interesting article from Big Questions Online. Jenny Cole responds to the question, "Why Would Praising Other People Make Us Feel Better About Ourselves?" The question comes from this piece at the British Psychological Society website (emphasis added at the key point):

It's good to gossip - but be nice!

Gossiping has some benefits - at least for the person doing the gossiping.

Gossipers feel more supported and positive gossip - praising somebody - may lead to a short-term boost in gossipers' self-esteem.

These are the findings of research conducted by Dr. Jennifer Cole and Hannah Scrivener from Staffordshire University, who present their preliminary findings today, 7th September 2010, at the British Psychological Society Social Psychology Section annual conference at the University of Winchester.

To ascertain the consequences of gossiping on the gossiper 160 participants completed questionnaires relating to their tendency to gossip and measures of their self-esteem, social support and satisfaction with life.

Although not associated with self-esteem or life satisfaction, higher levels of gossiping were associated with feelings of greater social support. In a follow-up study, 140 participants were asked to talk about a fictional person positively or negatively. Those who described the fictional character positively felt greater self-esteem than those asked to talk about them negatively.

Dr. Cole said: "Gossiping is usually seen as a bad thing. Our findings suggest some forms of gossiping- particularly of the type where people praise others- could be linked with some desirable outcomes for the gossiper despite the fact that gossipers are not generally approved of."

So, why does saying nice stuff about other people make us feel better?

Why Would Praising Other People Make Us Feel Better About Ourselves?

Jenny Cole answers.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Our research measured feelings of positive emotions and self-esteem and found that both were raised following praise, especially self-esteem. The finding that the act of praise modestly raises positive emotions and reduces negative ones can be explained by a priming effect. That is, sometimes merely thinking about positive things can lead us to experience positive mood and emotions.

The results for self-esteem were more pronounced, and the explanation may be less straightforward. One possibility is linked to the finding in psychology that self-esteem increases when we participate in helping behavior. When we gossip, we can exert some control over how others see the person we talk about. Praising others may therefore make us feel like a “Good Samaritan,” which may make us feel better about ourselves.

What is interesting in our study is that participants were instructed to do this and had never seen the person they were asked to describe. It would be really fascinating to see what happens when we ask them to gossip about someone they know and to choose whether to say something positive or something negative. Firstly, the positive effects of helping on well-being are more marked when the behavior is voluntary, as demonstrated by a recent study by psychologists Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan. However, sharing information about someone you know without their knowledge may not have such a positive effect on well-being. We may actually feel bad because of feelings that we are violating the privacy of the person we are talking about. Until we have more data, we will not know which way it will go.

There are a host of other variables that affect how we feel about our gossiping behavior: whether the person we talk about is a member of our social group or a rival one, our personal attitudes toward gossip, the consequences of our actions, and our motivations for gossiping. All of these factors make for a very interesting area of research!

Jenny Cole is a lecturer in social psychology at Staffordshire University.

Tags: Psychology, gossip, self-esteem, culture, Jenny Cole, Hannah Scrivener, Why Would Praising Other People Make Us Feel Better About Ourselves?, British Psychological Society, Big Questions Online

Jane Bolton - Shame Release and Buddhism

["shame" by Roberta Cavalleri]

Nice post from Jane Bolton at the Psychology Today blogs. Bolton, Psy.D., M.F.T., is a supervising and training analyst and adjunct professor at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles - her blog is Your Zesty Self: New perspectives on freeing yourself from shame and building self-esteem.

It's important that we define shame and distinguish it from guilt - while guilt is about our actions and can be useful, shame is about who we are and is very toxic to our lives. This nice definition comes from Beyond Intractability:

Guilt is a feeling that everyone is familiar with. It can be described as "a bothered conscience"[1] or "a feeling of culpability for offenses."[2] We feel guilty when we feel responsible for an action that we regret. There are several types of guilt. People can feel ashamed, unworthy, or embarrassed about actions for which they are responsible. In this case, we refer to true guilt -- or guilt that is appropriate. However, true guilt is only one form of guilt. People can also feel guilty about events for which they are not responsible. This false guilt can be equally destructive, if not more so. Feeling guilty for events which are out of our control is often unproductive and detrimental.

Although shame is an emotion that is closely related to guilt, it is important to understand the differences. Shame can be defined as "a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety."[3] Others have distinguished between the two by indicating that "We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are."[4] Shame is often a much stronger and more profound emotion than guilt. "Shame is when we feel disappointed about something inside of us, our basic nature."[5] Both shame and guilt can have intensive implications for our perceptions of self and our behavior toward other people, particularly in situations of conflict.

Now that we have cleared that up, on to the article.

Bolton recommends a book by Charlotte Kasl, which she is riffing on in this article, but I am a big fan of Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within by Byron Brown, who builds his approach on A.H. Almaas's Diamond Way Approach. I found this book useful in my own life. Brown treats shame as a part, not as who we are, and offers some very detailed explanations for where it comes from and how to heal it.

Shame Release and Buddhism

One Buddhist perspective on how to ease shame, increase self-esteem

Published on April 10, 2010

I'm taking a course of study that includes training to assist people who are dying and their grieving families and friends. Part of the study includes study of Buddhist practices for the dying and dead. I was delighted to find material for dealing with feelings of shame in the book If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path by Charlotte Kasl. Below I add to, subtract from, and rearrange many of steps she mentions to help "ease" the feelings of shame.

While the experience of shame can be an excruciating personal experience, it usually interferes with relational harmony too. When we are self-focused on the pain that shame arouses, we are not present to others, who can feel abandoned or lonely in our presence.

1. Recognize it. Name it. Observe it.
When you start to feel depleted, inferior, not good enough, defective that's shame. Learn to recognize its energy. Merely naming it makes it less intense. (Just as naming anything, say the beauty of the sunset, compressed into "sunset" makes it less intense.)

Then look back and see what happened (you lost a job, didn't get a return call, some form of what feels like rejection, etc. ) or what you said to yourself, (I never get it right, no one will ever love me because I'm too old, etc.) right before feeling the shame.

2. Realize or remind yourself that YOU are not the feeling of shame. You are much bigger than any feeling. You contain the feelings. You also contain, joy, peace, love, etc. All of the feelings are temporary; you are not stuck in any feeling; they pass by.

3. Take a nurturing stance toward yourself. You can say something to yourself like, "This feeling is hurtful, toxic, intrusive! I learned to feel this way when I was abused, left, hurt, shamed, teased, neglected, scolded, or not allowed to voice my thoughts or feelings.

4. Think of what you haven't done for yourself because of your shame and commit to doing it anyhow. I'm thinking of one musician client who felt shame for something hurtful she had done to her husband while performing. She then stopped performing for six months until she recommitted to her growth. She's now cutting CDs. And her husband is happy with her.

5. Work against the tendency to hide and isolate yourself. Shame often leads us to withdraw from the very human closeness we want and need. So instead of allowing yourself to pull back from contact, reach out and call someone you know you can count on to be understanding.

Kasl recommends keeping a list of those understanding people by the phone because in a shame state "you will probably forget that you have any friends."

5. Practice in your imagination some alternative responses to shameful situations. Here are some examples.

Please ask me for what you want, rather than tell me what I didn't give you.
This conversation isn't feeling good to me right now, so I'm going to hang up.
That sounds like a shaming statement, did you meant to do that?
Would you mind telling me what you meant by that?

6. Avoid arguing with shaming opinions about you. If someone says, "That dress makes you look fat," if you agree, say something like, "I was afraid it might, but I just felt like wearing blue." Or, if you don't agree, "Really? (laughing at your own joke) You have no idea how fat I'd really look without the dress on."

To see more about Dr. Bolton, go to www.DrJaneBolton.com

Tags: Buddhism, shame, Psychology, self-esteem, Jane Bolton, If the Buddha Got Stuck, A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path, Charlotte Kasl, Psychology Today, Soul Without Shame, Byron Brown, Your Zesty Self, Roberta Cavalleri

BPS Research Digest - Your left brain has a bigger ego than your right brain

Makes sense - the left hemisphere is associated with more positive emotions, while the right hemisphere is associated with negative emotions - although these associations are not set in stone.

Your left brain has a bigger ego than your right brain

Psychologists have used an inventive combination of techniques to show that the left half of the brain has more self-esteem than the right half. The finding is consistent with earlier research showing that the left hemisphere is associated more with positive, approach-related emotions, whereas the right hemisphere is associated more with negative emotions.

Ryan McKay and colleagues used a version of the self-esteem 'implicit association test' (IAT). This compares how readily participants associate themselves or other people with positive words like 'capable' and negative words like 'boring'. Forty-six participants used keyboard keys to categorise words as self-related (e.g. 'me', 'myself'), other-related ('they', 'themselves'), positive or negative. To take one example, people with high self-esteem should be relatively quicker when the same response key is used to categorise self-words and positive words, than when the same key is used to categorise other-related and positive words.

A key twist to this study is that McKay's team used an auditory version of the IAT - the first time this has ever been done. Specifically, they used so-called 'dichotic presentation' such that when a word was presented via headphones to one ear, the same word was played backwards to the other ear. This has the effect of ensuring that the word is only processed by the hemisphere opposite the presenting ear, thus allowing the participants to perform the IAT test with just one hemisphere at a time.

As you'd expect, a participant's self-esteem as measured via one hemisphere tended to correlate with their self-esteem as measured via the other hemisphere. More intriguingly, however, a consistent finding was that participants clocked up higher self-esteem scores when hearing words via their right ear (processed by the left hemisphere) compared with via their left ear (processed by the right hemisphere).

Critics may point to the language dominance of the left hemisphere as a major confound, but actually this is not relevant - even if the left hemisphere were faster overall, there's no reason it should have shown a specific advantage for associating the self with positive words.

The researchers said further investigations are needed to build on this initial discovery, including lesion studies and brain imaging techniques, which 'would be useful in providing a more fine-grained assessment of the relative activation of the left versus the right hemisphere in the representation and processing of self-esteem and in providing detail concerning anterior/posterior and cortical/subcortical involvement.'
_________________________________

McKay, R., Arciuli, J., Atkinson, A., Bennett, E., & Pheils, E. (2010). Lateralisation of self-esteem: An investigation using a dichotically presented auditory adaptation of the Implicit Association Test. Cortex, 46 (3), 367-373 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2009.05.004

Tags: Psychology, brain, emotions, self-esteem, BPS Research Digest, left brain, bigger ego, right brain, McKay, Arciuli, Atkinson, Bennett, Pheils, Lateralisation of self-esteem, neuroscience

John M Grohol - Positive Thoughts Make Things Worse for Those with Poor Self-Esteem

Curious article from John Grohol at World of Psychology. Makes sense when you think about, but it's somewhat counter-intuitive.

Positive Thoughts Make Things Worse for Poor Self-Esteem

By John M Grohol PsyD
June 22, 2009

You think positive self-talk would always result in feeling more positive about yourself.

New research suggests that may not always be the case.

If a person has poor self-esteem to begin with, and then tells themselves something like, “I am a lovable person,” they actually end up feeling worse about themselves than those with good self-esteem. Why does this occur? Because the positive statement contradicts their own self-image, reminding them of the fact they do not see themselves as a “lovable person.”

So positive self-talk is positive only when the person who’s doing it really believes it. If one’s pre-existing beliefs contradict the positive self-talk, it appears the pre-existing beliefs will usually supersede (and overrule) the self-talk.

The new study was published earlier this month in the journal Psychological Science and was led by Joanne Wood:

Dr Wood suggests that positive self-statements cause negative moods in people with low self-esteem because they conflict with those people’s views of themselves. When positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, she argues, there is not mere resistance but a reinforcing of self-perception. People who view themselves as unlovable find saying that they are so unbelievable that it strengthens their own negative view rather than reversing it. Given that many readers of self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, they may be worse than useless.

I’m not sure about that last statement, since self-help books are usually filled with exercises and techniques for helping a person try different strategies for dealing with a specific psychological component in their life (such as relationships). A strategy to encourage positive self-statements is rarely done in a vacuum, but as a part of something bigger.

And low self-esteem itself, while perhaps sometimes overrated, is still an issue that is a legitimate focus that folks may want to change. Combating negative self-talk is one way to do that. But this new research suggests that perhaps positive self-statements may not be the best way to do it.

Read the full article: Positive thinking’s negative results: Words of wisdom

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues, and the intersection of technology and psychology since 1992.

Tags: John M Grohol, Positive Thoughts, Poor Self-Esteem, World of Psychology, Psychology, self-esteem, self image