Self-Compassion: This One Skill Can Transform Your Life with Julie and Willow

HSPs are some of the kindest, most compassionate people in the world, toward others, and yet It’s common for HSPs to have a lot of negative self-talk and lack healthy self-compassion. This can be particularly damaging during times of high stress when we need to be a compassionate, caring friend to support ourselves through intense emotions.  We will talk about how this brain-training skill development of self-compassion can improve every aspect of our life and even help us through a global crisis. We need this skill now more than ever.  Self-Compassion decreases cortisol (stress hormone) and increases the release of oxytocin (creating a calming effect). Self-criticism, common in HSPs triggers the amygdala’s fight/flight response sending out an alarm bell system: releasing the stress hormone cortisol, adrenaline (racing heart) and increased blood pressure fight/flight response designed to protect us from physically threatening situations response also gets activated with emotional attacks (even from when we are emotionally hard or unkind to ourselves  We already have more activation in our fight/flight so have a stronger need to counter this alarm bell response. Research shows us self-compassion actually decreases our cortisol levels and can deactivate the stress response and activate a calming response We can even change our body chemistry, recover more quickly from emotional wounding, improve health both short term and long term.  Warm, loving physical touch can release the feel-good hormones (oxytocin), reduces cortisol (stress), and blood pressure. (Self-hug, loving gestures (lotion lovingly applied to your body), hand on chest sending loving energy to your heart)  Learn about research from Kristin Neff showing that self-compassion is one of the key features of improving mental health and what life looks like without self-compassion and what improves when we have it.  Julie and Willow share our journey of developing self-compassion and how it transformed our life.  Practice the self-compassion technique with us!  Please share this episode and review our podcast which helps more HSPs find our episodes.   Check out Julie's HSP blog showing the video of her teaching the 3-step self-compassion technique: https://www.juliebjelland.com/hsp-blog/a-self-compassion-technique-for-hsps  Explore all our podcast episodes and learn about Julie and Willow at HSPpodcast.com  For information about Julie's Sensitivity Quiz, books and courses visit: juliebjelland.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/julie-bjelland/support