TRANSCRIPT
Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content today. We’re wondering can we be trained to be more compassionate?
And our guest today is Dr. Olga Klimecki who is a neuroscientist and a psychologist who earned her doctorate degree in the University of Zurich Olga’s, a psychologist and neuroscientist who’s interested in understanding the neural mechanisms that shape our social emotions in adaptive ways. Her doctoral research investigated neural behavior and emotional plasticity induced by training social emotions like compassion and empathy.
The results of these longitudinal studies in adults provided evidence for the plasticity of social emotions spanning the levels of neural function, emotional resilience, and helping behavior are her current interests include meditation and [00:01:00] promoting conflict resolution through compassion. Please join me in welcoming the amazing Dr.
Olga Klimecki. Hi Olga.
Dr. Klimecki: Hi. Thank you for having me here. Thank you for the invitation.
Gissele: Oh, thank you for being on the show. I’ve been a big fan of your work for a very, very long time. I was so excited when you published with Tanya Singer, your work on the difference between, empathetic distress and compassion and all of the work that you’re doing on aging.
I mean, it’s just, it’s just phenomenal work. I was wondering if you could tell the listeners what actually got you started on your journey. Like, what drew you to study empathy and compassion?
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. Thank you for the question. it’s a longer journey. It’s started in my student years. I had a friend who was meditating and I found that idea of going to a place and being silent for a week.
Very intriguing and I felt like trying it out myself. And so with my background [00:02:00] interest in psychology and in neuroscience, I finally found a PhD possibility where I could study not only. Psychological mechanisms and the brain, but also with a link to meditation, which I found very exciting. And even though in the beginning of my PhD I tried out different forms of socio-emotional training, including nonviolent communication and others, I was most drawn to the meditation indeed, which I started at the same time practicing meditation as I started investigating meditation.
So That’s
Gissele: beautiful
Dr. Klimecki: background story. Yeah.
Gissele: in terms of your research, how have you found that meditation has helped you
has your meditation practice helped you understand some of the findings
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s really interwoven.
Like sometimes I get ideas through the practice.
Gissele: And also about the [00:03:00] limitations. And sometimes the research I read or I do also informs me about potential limitations. For instance, what I learned from the research, which something I cannot never learn from my own practice, is the diversity of responses in our different participants.
Dr. Klimecki: So in the papers, we always report mean results, whereas the diversity of how people experience it. It’s very large. So in all our studies, there are people who improve, who get worse, who don’t change much. And working with the participants, I really got to hear their different stories, their different angles.
And over time, I, because we all go through different stages in life, I also experienced some of these benefits. Sometimes I experienced some of the adverse effects of meditation and sometimes it doesn’t change my wellbeing or my daily life much so with time I, I feel like I’m getting to that diversity experience, for [00:04:00] instance.
But I’ve, I’ve seen it in the research before and there were other things that I saw in my personal practice before and then I could research it. So, so it’s really a, a bit of an interwoven. Yeah, pattern. And for instance, what I found in my, own practice and something I haven’t really researched yet much, is that it’s really important to start in, in the meditation wherever you are at.
Like, I I once tried to cultivate loving kindness and it was really hard for me. And when I, when I started at the place where I actually was emotionally, then it could, it could develop and evolve and, and flourish. But yeah, it’s, there are different starting paths. This is what I learned through my practice.
Yeah. But it’s, it’s really interwoven.
Gissele: I really appreciate the fact that you mentioned that compassion can sometimes can feel negative. I’ve also been on a long-term com meditation journey myself, and the expectation that it has to feel [00:05:00] good all of the time instead of acknowledging that sometimes difficult emotions will arise and, and to be able to sit with them was definitely something I had to learn.
But I think that’s kind of the belief that meditation and even these practices like loving kindness are supposed to feel good, whereas sometimes it’s really hard to cultivate in the beginning. So, so I
Dr. Klimecki: thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. And something I, for instance, learned in the theory before I learned it in my own practice is that sometimes it’s not the time to meditate.
Yeah. and so I knew this on an intellectual level, but I’ve been able to meditate for many, many years and then I had a period in my life that was particularly difficult and I even. With that knowledge in the back of my head, I could tell myself, okay, it’s fine if you, if you don’t meditate for a few weeks or months, it’s okay.
It, it’s fine.
Gissele: Yeah.
Dr. Klimecki: Sometimes there are times like these, so it’s a diverse experience. Yeah.
Gissele: Hmm. And I love that you do research on compassion, but you [00:06:00] also practice it for yourself because saying to yourself I’m meeting myself where I’m at is one of the most compassionate things you can do.
And so you are living and researching compassion, which I think is so, so powerful. I was wondering if you could, for the audience, describe the difference between empathy and compassion. ’cause I think people use it interchangeably and you know, some of your research seems to indicate that there are differences.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. So there are many different researchers who use very different definitions of empathy and compassion and so on.
Gissele: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Klimecki: And what I find useful is to basically dissociate them a little bit. So when we speak of empathy, we speak of the sharing of another person’s emotion, and it’s a kind of isomorphic sharing, which means it’s the same kind of emotion.
So when I meet a friend and she’s happy, I can share her happiness. When I, sometimes I can even share the anger of a friend. I, I even experienced that there was a friend who was very angry at the, at the [00:07:00] system, and I could really share that anger at the system. So you can share a lot of emotions of other people knowing that the source of the emotion is the other person.
This is called empathy. And then when we speak of compassion, we mean relating to another person’s suffering. So it’s very specific. It’s not for all emotions, but it’s for negative emotions relating to another person’s suffering with care and benevolence and with that wish to alleviate that suffering to contribute to an improvement for that person.
So it’s really titling to that pro-social motivation.
Gissele: One of the things that I discovered in your work is, so this is how I understood it, so correct me if I’m wrong is that empathy is more like the mirror neurons, like you’re mirroring their behavior. But whereas the compassion enables you to sort of, I use the boat analogy to stay on the boat and not drown with people to actually want to, to help people, but also [00:08:00] understand that if they’re not wanting your help, that that’s.
Too. And so it, taps into a different area of the brain, like you were talking about more pro-social, that it extends that caring and love without the judgment. Because I teach social work students and we often talk about how sometimes when you’re in those helping professions, you wanna rescue people, you want to force your perspective on them and say, well, I know best, this is how it’s gonna help you.
And then you tend to drown with them. What are your thoughts about about that difference? Am I on the right track or,
Dr. Klimecki: yeah, yeah, I agree with that difference. That, so in empathy, what we see is that both, well meta-analysis of empathy for pain have shown certain areas in the brain activated, namely the.
Anterior insular, which is the kind of interceptive cortex. So the interceptive cortex means it’s a place of the brain where we feel what we are experiencing so we can feel cold or hot or pain, or [00:09:00] all sorts of bodily sensations. So we tend to activate areas of our brain when we feel with other people that are the same areas as when we feel or experience our own sensations.
So we kind of simulate the other person’s experience. And so this is empathy. But when we, and we have shown that when you train empathy, you can strengthen activations in these brain areas, and the anterior cingulate cortex, which belongs to that empathy for pain network. However, compassion on the neural level is different.
So when we train compassion, we strengthen activations in the prefrontal cortex and in the stratum and the prefrontal cortex is very important for regulating thoughts. Behaviors and emotions. And it’s also important for positive emotions in general. And the stratium is very important for learning, for reward, for feeling affiliated, for feeling close to others, for feeling connected.
So [00:10:00] it’s a different set of brain areas that’s being activated. And then when it comes to the experience, I, I agree that in empathy, sometimes you can merge with that person too much. And then we call it empathic distress when you lose that self other distinction that you usually have when you empathize with others.
And then in compassion, I feel that one of the most powerful forms of compassion, especially when you are in a healthcare professional, when you’re in a caring professional or social worker, or no matter what the situation is, is to just be able to hold the space.
Gissele: Yeah. To
Dr. Klimecki: just be there in a benevolent stance.
Just hold the space. And that’s a very tricky one. It sounds easy, but it isn’t as, I guess all of us have experienced it. Sometimes we want to hold the space and we can manage for a while, and then at some point maybe we want, we just want it to be over and to be better or whatever, but to really be present and benevolent that [00:11:00] sometimes all it, all it takes.
Yeah.
Gissele: Yeah. And I think this is why your work is so powerful, because one of the things I’ve noticed is that I’ve seen so much burnout in social work. I’ve seen so such burnout in like, you know, the child welfare system and all these different systems and we have not been taught. By our parents, by systems, how do you sit with difficult emotions, how to have compassion for ourselves and then be able to hold space for other people.
And so we think that we need to hold space for other people when we are actually have no idea what to do with those difficult feelings. We do run away from them. I know I’ve run away from my feelings for a very long time, and it was only when I was able to sit with them, with the fear, with the anger, with the, with the jealousy, with the everything.
Not make it wrong, that I was then able to hold space for other people’s feelings when they felt those difficult feelings. Right.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah.
Gissele: Yeah. It’s really [00:12:00] interesting. A lot of your work talks about neuroplasticity. So what does neuroplasticity mean for emotions? And can people really change how they respond to others?
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. So the way we can measure neuroplasticity in humans is different than how we can measure it in animals or how it is measured in animals. So when we speak about neuroplasticity in humans, what we mean is either changes in neural functions or changes in brain structure. So in neural functions, we mean that some neurons might communicate more strongly or more weekly with each other.
So the kind of different areas just tend to communicate more or less with different interventions or with time. And then structural plasticity means that the thickness of certain parts of brain increases. And this can also happen as a result of interventions or of training. This is the neuroplasticity that we can [00:13:00] measure.
Gissele: And so, talking about training, what does compassion training look like in practice? can you give us like a short example
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah, so we kind of modify the training every now and then. So not every training is exactly the same, but in general, our participants are in a meditative space.
So we set up a room with cushions and chairs and they can sit on cushions or they can sit on chairs and they are. Instructed to basically first focus their attention on their breath, to stabilize their attention, and they learn basics of mindfulness to really be present for their sensations, for their thoughts, for their experiences.
And then with time they gradually built on that and they learned, or they practice cultivating the compassion that is innate to them. we believe that people are born with that compassionate stance, but we, we invite them to reactivate it. And [00:14:00] very often we invite them to think of a beloved person of a person that has been kind to them.
And this can be a parent, a grandparent, a friend. It can be a spiritual figure. And also for many of our participants, it’s an animal. So they think of their cat at home or their dog or another favorite animal. So any, any being really that evokes the sense of, of care, of love, and, and also maybe of care they have received.
And then we in, after inviting them to visualize this person or this animal they can practice with sentences and either they can practice wishes for that person or animal. Like, may you be, well, may you be healthy, may you be safe. Or they can envision how that person or animal is wishing them well.
And then we also pay, invite them to pay attention to their sensations as they cultivate compassion and sometimes they put their hands on [00:15:00] their heart or we modify this a bit and we also invite them to. Be present with difficult emotions with compassion and care. And then we move through a series of people.
So usually we have this benefactor this can be this animal or person that they love and care about. And then we do the practice for oneself.
Gissele: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Klimecki: And then sometimes we also add other people, like a friend, a neutral person, a difficult person. But in the latest studies we have mainly focused on the benefactor, on the self, and then on all beings.
Gissele: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Klimecki: And then basically we go through it step by step. And we also do include practices that include walking, meditation, or everyday practices, like wishing people well, while you stand in the queue at the supermarket or while you wait for the bus. And, we try to make it. [00:16:00] Fun and diverse because people in my experience also react to different aspects of the training.
So some really like the sentences and some like the physical touch and some like the visualization of the person. And for some it’s enough to focus on their own experience. So it’s very diverse and we try to offer a range of practices to really speak to people as broadly as we can.
Gissele: Yeah. And I just wanna emphasize how powerful these exercises are. because even having people think about people in the supermarket. What you’re doing is decreasing that emotional distance.
Like what creates the distance is seeing people as other, but when you start to connect with them on a heart level and start to send them good wishes, you start sort of breaking that separation. The other key part is when you’re inviting people to think about a loved one, and especially allowing people to focus on a pet when people have a hard time with other people, right?
Like I’ve had [00:17:00] PE conversations with people where they’re like, I don’t feel it. I can’t feel love for my parents. I can’t feel love from anybody. But then when you say something like a pet, immediately, it’s that connection. It’s there. There doesn’t seem to be those blocks. And so you are using that as the gateway.
Get them to then expand to other people. It starts with your pet, and maybe they can start thinking of an aunt or uncle, and then maybe you can expand that circle of care, which I think is so important. Yeah,
Dr. Klimecki: yeah, yeah. Maybe I can, I can tell one little story about
Gissele: Yeah. That
Dr. Klimecki: be phenomenal. First time I tried this exercise of practicing wishing others well on the street.
It was, it was quite funny. we were doing a study in the Netherlands, in the City of Maastricht, and the teacher had included this exercise where we just were invited to go out in the streets and we were basically being there during the training. So I also went out in the streets and I also tried out this exercise [00:18:00] of just sending good wishes to another person.
And so the first person I saw on the street was a drug dealer, and I was pretty like, Ooh,
Gissele: nice.
Dr. Klimecki: I could see the shift, like as I approached him and I, I was like, may you be, well, may you be happy, may you be safe. And I really felt like hugging him when, when I walked past him actually. So I I also agree it is a powerful exercise and it’s also fun to include it in everyday life.
So when, when you’re queuing in the supermarket or when you’re in your car, in the traffic jam, it’s a really good exercise.
Gissele: So if I may also share my own example, I’ve found people shift, like that has been my personal experience. Like when I’ve had conflict with people, rather than contribute my negative energy to the conflict, I will do that.
I will actually say, you know, out of this situation, only good will come. And I envision, I send like love to that other person and then I envision it resolving. [00:19:00] And there’s been so many times when the things just naturally resolve. And there was like. On the physical level, there was conflict. Like the person had sent me a really nasty email and they’re like, well, I don’t want this, I don’t like that.
Then just even the practice of me sending the love and I did it not to alter them, but to alter myself so that I wouldn’t make things worse so that I could come at them and, and responded in a way that was like, look, you, this is important to me. Like the relationship is more important than being right, right?
I’m willing to talk about this. I’m willing to get together and there’s softening that happens. Like even if I don’t physically do anything, there’s a softening that happens, I think, ’cause I soften and therefore they soften and it’s been a really powerful tool in my experience, even just practicing, because even if you, if the other person doesn’t wanna soften, that’s okay.
How you approach them is different, so you don’t escalate things. To me, that’s why that those kind of practices are so powerful. And I hope our listeners start to practice even at the grocery store, even at the gas [00:20:00] station, even wherever they are and especially to themselves. So often we are our own worst enemies.
So often it’s ourselves that we are treating with that disdain, with that judgment, with that lack of forgiveness. And so to be able to transform just even how we treat ourselves, I think is so powerful.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. we see these transfer effects, right? So we did one study, Patricia another my former PhD student did this study on the impact of compassion on conflict.
And we just did the very simple training, just, you know, compassion for a loved one for yourself and for all human beings, nothing to do with any conflict whatsoever. And then people chose their own difficult person so they could choose a person they were in conflict with. And we measured it there.
Attitudes towards that person before and after the conflict. And we saw that just by practicing compassion for themselves and for a beloved person and for all beings shifted [00:21:00] how they felt towards that person they were in conflict with. So it’s not even necessary to practice with that person you have, you’re having a conflict with.
Yeah. But you can just practice for yourself and trust that this will also contribute to shifting things in a conflict situation. And we find this transfer effect very powerful because people then felt closer to that difficult person and they reported feeling more compassionate towards them. And they reported feeling less malicious joy when they imagined something bad happened to that person.
Is, is
Gissele: that short and frog? Sh I’m not saying it
right.
Dr. Klimecki: And yeah.
Gissele: Shout and frog joy of somebody suffering. Do you think that you’re tapping into forgiveness?
Dr. Klimecki: Maybe not yet. So I’m not sure we tap into forgiveness because forgiveness is a complex issue and I haven’t researched it yet. I Okay.
I’ve meditated with forgiveness though. Yeah. And one thing I learned [00:22:00] from my, from my meditation teacher is not to force forgiveness.
Gissele: Yes.
Dr. Klimecki: Agreed. So this was a powerful teaching that great. Sometimes it’s sufficient to just practice, may I forgive this person one day and then when it becomes too hard, just leave it aside for a bit.
Focus on other things and not to force forgiveness. Yeah.
Gissele: Yeah. I just wanna go back to what you said, if I understood you correctly. You don’t have to practice compassion for a difficult person. It’s enough to practice for yourself and for your loved ones.
the fact that your research seems to indicate that you don’t even have to go there, it just naturally happens when you fill your own bucket, like it overflows and then that kind of impacts those difficult people.
I think that is extraordinary. Extraordinary.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. It’s a much simpler way. Oh yeah. Because you don’t have to go through all these difficulties of remembering the situation of. [00:23:00] Reliving it, et cetera. Yeah.
Gissele: Re-traumatizing yourself. Right?
Dr. Klimecki: Exactly. Exactly.
Gissele: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I know my listeners are gonna ask me, how long does the training need to be before people notice change?
Like how long on average were your trainings in your research?
Dr. Klimecki: They were a very different duration. So the shortest trainings we have done are about a week long. So a full day followed by several evening sessions, and even after this relatively short timeframe we see changes in the brain functions.
We see changes in behavior. We see changes in participants’ wellbeing and their resilience to difficult situations. So. This is very fast, so to say. And then on the other hand, we’ve had very long trainings. We’ve had everything ranging from one week to 18 months where participants practice for one and a half years, weekly.
And they had half day retreats and, and so on. So we studied very diff [00:24:00] different durations, but in general, I think what we can say is that even the short. Interventions, they help shifting attitudes, feelings, et cetera. So even if you do a like one month course or two month course, you might feel the benefits.
And if you don’t feel the benefits, I think maybe it’s not the time to practice meditation, maybe there will be another time to practice it or there might be a different strategy for you. And, and this is, I think also what we learned from our interventions is a different reactions of people and at different times as well.
Gissele: Yeah. Great. Great. Thank you for that. Are there limits to compassion? I know again, my listeners will be asking that. Are there limits,
Dr. Klimecki: are there limits to compassion? I think it, it depends right who you are. If you are a mortal normal practitioner like me, there are limits and I’m constantly bouncing [00:25:00] into my limits.
You know, there are a few supposedly enlightened masters who report that there are almost no limits. And, and I also have witnessed some people who never meditated and who were extremely compassionate and forgiving and extraordinary persons who seemed boundless in their capacity to care for others for themselves.
So there certainly are examples. I guess that most of us find that there are limits and that the. Really fun of the practices to just work on these limits and to face them every now and then to see, okay, this is my limit today and maybe it’ll be different tomorrow. Maybe my limit will be more tight tomorrow.
Maybe it will be my limit will be larger and it can really change. and I think the beauty of it is that we are alive and that things are changing and it’s very exciting to be with that.
Gissele: Yeah, [00:26:00] definitely. I know in my meditation and compassion journey for me, like, you said, there was times when I could sit with myself and sit with those emotions.
There’s times when I couldn’t. But I noticed something really strange. And because I’ve been meditating for like over 20 years. Something shifts. You don’t know what date. So it’s sort of like planting seeds when you meditate and something happens on the nth day, but I can’t tell you what day.
And so I remember having an experience where I woke up in the middle of the night and I just felt so whole and complete and so loved and worthy and I had been meditating and trying to get there and all of those things. And, it’s not like I fully arrived, but in that moment I managed to, or to awaken something in me that I hadn’t before.
They couldn’t tell you what day it was. And, so I think for some people, practice could awaken something in them like very quickly. Other people, they could be meditating for like 50 years and still [00:27:00] potentially not arrive or, maybe arrive the next day. I don’t know. it’s hard to tell it.
Dr. Klimecki: Have you had that experience I, yeah. Yeah. I think we experience it a lot in, in the people we study with in the community. And I really enjoy the book of Jack Kornfield after the Ecstasy, the laundry where, where he’s describing this phenomenon.
Sometimes in the meditation practice you might have that experience of being very far. And I’ve certainly had these moments where I’ve felt connected with everything, with the trees, with the flowers, with like, I felt like there was no boundary between me and things and life around me. And then, you know, years later, I’m in my everyday life and yes.
I, it’s only a memory I can tap into. And living with that with these shifts is sometimes challenging, but it’s also exciting in this book after the [00:28:00] Ecstasy of the Laundry, he describes many of these stories where people have these extraordinary experiences and then they come back to their lives and they’re like, okay, now I have all this work and I have all these, yeah, exactly.
I gotta clean my
Gissele: house. I gotta
Dr. Klimecki: do laundry. Yeah. And, and how, the other challenge is to really incorporate it in our daily lives and to, to be okay with not being perfect and to find a way that sustains the practice. Yeah, but it’s a journey.
Gissele: It is the, it’s definitely a journey. And I think that’s what I know going into the meditation in the beginning, I did it like a job.
I committed to it like a job. I showed up every day and I’m like, why am I not changing? It was like, I should see immediate results. I put in this work. When’s it gonna change? And it was when I allowed myself to just be with the experience without judgment, without needing to have a mystical experience, without needing to have change, without needing to fix [00:29:00] myself, without needing to even be more compassionate to myself and other people.
That’s when I noticed the shift, because I was open. I was open to what was happening in the moment, and I was honest with myself about what I was feeling. And that’s the other thing. Instead of trying to hammer in like a puzzle piece, I was actually just showing up for myself. And I think that probably is what led to the most transformation in my life.
Rather than trying to, okay, I’m showing up every day, this better work.
One of the things I love and appreciate about your work is the, social and political implications. You know, it seems like there’s so much division in the world and there’s so much conflict. I love the idea that potentially training on compassion, that we don’t have to necessarily believe that we are compassionate beings from birth or, or whatever.
The fact that we can actually train the brain to be more caring, I think has incredible implications. Can you share a little bit more about your other work in terms of the, the [00:30:00] disliked person?
Dr. Klimecki: Yes. Yes. I mean, we have done work on conflicts in different settings, so we have also done it in couples, for instance.
So we’ve had couples who either both joined compassion meditation training also five weeks, or they did a five week training in regulating their emotions. So when something bad happens, you can also appreciate the good sides of it. Like when it rains, you can appreciate the plants who get watered.
And we also had another group of couples who did an Italian training. Wow. And then we, they, they learned a foreign language as a control group, and then we invited them to the lab and told them, okay, now you’re having a conflict discussion. And we measured how how they were on that conflict discussion.
And we saw that participants in the. Compassion group, they were more satisfied. But importantly, and I think most [00:31:00] importantly for me, they were also more able to defend their own priorities in the conflict discussion. And that’s really important in couples that when you’ve try to find solutions for difficulties that it’s not one person who, who says, okay, we’re going to do it like this.
And the other person just saying, yes, yes, yes to every suggestion that is being made. But for a solution to be really durable and long lasting, it’s important that you find a good compromise. And so it’s also important to stand in for your own interests, and we were very happy to see. That the compassion training actually strengthened participants’ capacity to stand in for their own interests in that conflict discussion.
Yeah, so this was, this was in that context, and we also studied the Israeli Palestinian context. So this was during the pandemic actually, so 2020 [00:32:00] before the current conflict, but still we know that it’s, it’s a region with ongoing tensions. And so we wanted to know whether a group that.
Cultivates compassion for themselves, for a beloved person and for all beings will change their attitudes and their readiness for helping behavior in the form of humanitarian support for Palestinians. And the control group did a memory training. And so what we saw is that in and of itself, if we had only researched a compassion group, we did see an improvement in attitudes towards Palestinians of the Israelis who did the training.
But when we compared it to the active control group who did the memory training, this difference was no longer significant, which is interesting. So, oh wow. We actually yeah. The lines were pretty parallel. And then we also only saw a trend towards more support for humanitarian action [00:33:00] and support for Palestinians.
And it was not significant either. So it seems that potentially it could work in these intractable conflicts, but it doesn’t seem to be as strong as in everyday conflict. And but again, we think that our approach, the basic approach of just practicing something for yourself and then letting, giving it the possibility to transfer might be promising.
And then also our trainings were just three weeks long and we had to do it online because the pandemic just broke out. So who knows, maybe with a different format. It could contribute to changes. Of course, it will not solve everything, but it could contribute to changes potentially.
Gissele: Yeah. So I just also wanna point out something again, very powerful that you’re mentioning which is, you know so I’ve interviewed many different people, some people that have done some extraordinary things on this podcast, and one of them is my friend [00:34:00] Rukiye Abdul Mutakallim, who not only forgave her son’s killer, but also chose to love him and help him in any way that she could.
one of the most powerful things she said to me was, so many people wanna resolve war and didn’t wanna resolve this conflict on a large scale. But so many of those same people are having so much war within themselves and with their people in their own lives
So most people can’t resolve the conflicts in their homes, and they’re wanting to go out there and resolve things like war resolve the inner. The, the inner compassion, the, the conflicts within families, and then that will lead to the resolution on a larger scale. And so I think what you’re saying is so interesting to me because that’s what popped into my head and it lives in my head especially when I talk to her she talks about how, you know, we worry so much about the war out there, but there’s an inner war that’s happening within our hearts and in our lives that we’re not addressing.
And we can’t fix the war out [00:35:00] there until we fix the war in here. And so, and from my perspective, I feel like that’s what you’re doing with your work as you’re helping us fix the war in here and in our lives with our loved ones, so that then you, we can do the heavy work of looking at ourselves and seeing who are we as a humanity and why do we need to fight and have that, that kind of war.
But I dunno if we can go there without going internally. If you know what I. Yeah. Based on what you said.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah.
Gissele: Yeah. Are there cultural differences in how compassion is expressed or cultivated?
Dr. Klimecki: Yes. I mean, probably there are very many cultural differences. I think one we tend to notice over and over again when we compare the more original teachings from Asia to the way compassion is being taught in Europe and Northern America.
And the main difference we see is that in Asia it seems to be [00:36:00] very easy to start with oneself. There, they don’t start with a benefactor, they start immediately Okay. Just feel compassion for yourself or just feel kindness for yourself, depending on what they train. And people seem to do it more naturally than in the so-called Western countries where we all, always, in our trainings, we tend to go either through the benefactor or through an animal to even reactivate this emotional stance of benevolence and care.
Yeah.
Gissele: You’re blowing my mind a little bit. The reason being is because I know like in Japan in particular, they’re very collectivists, right? I know people that live in Japan, and the perspective really is about the collective. I mean, you have individual rights, but they kind of stop at the collective, I mean, Japan is super clean and they’re very respectful and have all these rules to restrict rights.
But so them starting with themselves blows me away considering how individualist North America is [00:37:00] and yet the, the challenge in being able to go inward, that blew my mind a little bit.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. I gotta
Gissele: be honest,
Dr. Klimecki: I feel it’s an, it’s an individualistic culture that is very performative.
I mean, I grew up in Europe as well, so it, I feel okay, it’s individualistic, yes. But it’s tied to a performance and it’s very hard to be. Caring and benevolent just no matter what. Right. So this is something I, I was facing for many years in my meditations as I was, would kind of like bump into that performance wall over and over and over and over again.
I’d be like, why are you not more performing? Why? And until it started to soften. But it really took a very, very long time and I’m not sure it’s gone. So I think it’s still, it’s still there, but it’s not as, as present as it used to be, but I am.
Gissele: Wow. I love that you said that because it’s so true. in my journey, I’ve [00:38:00] discovered how we’re not living our authentic selves.
we’re performing so much thinking about what, who we should be, what we should have, what our life should look like, that we’re not really tapping into who we really are and what we really love and enjoy. Yeah, I think that’s so true. And I think that’s be, yeah, yeah. How we should be, be natural.
Yeah. I forgot to ask, I was gonna ask about your recent research with young people in compassion training to include people in the outer group. ’cause I think that’s sort of built, the lessons you learn about othering, the lessons that you learned about, in groups and out groups.
I was wondering if you could share a little bit about the work that you’re doing with young people.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah, yeah. I can share about our work with young people. So we, here with the young people, we worked with an approach that centered on humanitarian values. So these values are adopted by over 190 countries and they include values like [00:39:00] humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.
And so the main idea was to train. Young people in these values because they have been adopted by so many cultures. And we did then research. So there was a two year training for the teachers and educators who basically learned how they can transport these values in their classrooms or in their communities.
And then we followed them in different countries. So we did a study in Russia, in Belarus, in Armenia, in The Gambia, in South Sudan and in Zambia. we wanted to see whether this kind of training would affect the young participants’ readiness to help people from a minority.
And this minority could be immigrants or it could be a local minority within the country. And to really be there for them and spend time helping them. And what we saw is that on average the training did [00:40:00] not have an effect compared to the control group who did not receive the training. But what we saw is to the degree that the training increased compassion, so this sense of care and benevolence for the other being to that degree, it also increased the helping behavior.
And yes, there were differences between countries. However, currently we don’t know yet whether these are truly between country differences or whether they are due to that particular setting. We chose because we only measured one kind of community per country and with one educator or teacher. So we’d have to really sample across different places in each country and so on to be sure about the country effect.
But we saw many differences between countries. But the overall message, I think is that emotions. Are a strong motivator for social behavior and especially for pro-social behavior.
Gissele: Hmm. Yeah. So just to [00:41:00] clarify so the training led to just greater compassion and greater benevolence but not necessarily helping behavior.
Can you just, can
Dr. Klimecki: you just give that a result of it? Maybe I should say it differently. So, to the degree that the training increased compassion, it increased helping behavior. So again, the responses of participants were very different. Some participants, as a result of the training increased their compassion.
Some participants did not increase their compassion as a result of the training. And for those participants where it increased the compassion, they were then more pro-social. So it really seems important to have that feeling shift before you have the behavioral shift.
Gissele: Hmm. Okay. Thank you. That’s, very helpful.
I’d like to go on the other side of it, which is with the aging population. ’cause I know you’ve done some research on the aging population. How might compassion benefit some of these older adults?
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah, so we conducted a series of studies [00:42:00] in Europe where we looked at a combined training, mindfulness and compassion in older adults.
And what we see is the following. For instance, we did one study in four countries, in four European countries with people who have subjective cognitive declines. So they report having memory problems, but they are not measurable yet on tests. So they certainly have memory problems but they’re not very strong.
And so what we saw is that in this population, eight week training helped to decrease anxiety. anxiety is also a risk factor for then developing dementia later on, for instance. And it’s in general also not great when you’re very anxious. So it helped to decrease anxiety and this decrease in anxiety was lasting.
So we measured that this decrease was maintained at six month follow up. So this was great. And it also, the training also increased cognitive skills in participants. And the increase in [00:43:00] cognitive skills was also maintained. However, I should say, we compared the mindfulness and compassion training with an active control group who learned about health behaviors.
And that control group also improved. So they also improved their cognition and they reduced their anxiety. So this is why. I think our recommendation would be okay. Meditation is certainly useful also for promoting healthy aging. But when you feel like doing something else, when you feel like doing sports or when you feel like working on your health in general, this is also a very good way to go because there are several risk factors and there are also sometimes specific pathways.
So we, we observed for instance, that the meditation training increased self-compassion, so this capacity to be caring towards yourself also in the older adults and that the health education increased physical activity. So when they learned about what’s good for your health, they exercise more.
So it can impact [00:44:00] healthy aging through different routes and sometimes through the same route as we saw, for instance, with the cognition or with anxiety. And then we also did this study in just one country in France. With older adults, and there we train them for 18 months.
And we also see certain benefits like reduced loneliness after 18 months of meditation training, including mindfulness and compassion. However, we also see a reduction in loneliness after 18 months of learning and non-native language. So of course, you know, doing things in a group is fun and then they, they get to know other people.
So there are different ways of promoting healthy aging and meditation can be one of them. if you’re prone to meditation, because again, we always see a big diversity of responses, some people improving, some people not changing much, and some people reporting even feeling worse after the training.
So if you, if you feel that meditation is not for you, maybe just try something else.
Gissele: Hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that [00:45:00] many of your studies, did you use a wait list control?
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. So in the, in the study with 18 months meditation intervention and the non-native language training, we also have a wait list control.
Gissele: Oh, okay. But so the wait list control had no impact, I love what you’re saying in terms of, there are other options that people can do to, to have the same effect. Right. Which I think is important for people ’cause they think it’s a meditation or nothing.
Not necessarily. There’s so many different things that you can do to help yourself feel more connected, feel more, compassion, more, positive feelings.
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah.
Gissele: So I think, I think that’s really, really great. I wanted to ask about your intellectual or spiritual role models in this work that you’re doing.
I mean, you mentioned Jack Canfield. Is there anyone that you’re really kind of modeling your work after?
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. I think there have very many people who have inspired my work. [00:46:00] Of course, yeah. Jack Kornfield Sharon Salzburg.
Gissele: Mm.
Dr. Klimecki: Then in Switzerland, of course, Catherine Feida. there’s a whole series of spiritual people. And then on the intellectual level, I mean in the conflict world, Ken Cloak, for instance, who’s a mediator in California, and, also my colleague. I really admire her. So we’ve been working on this aging project together.
Yeah, and I, I really admire her for her capacity to lead very huge trials and teams. And there other colleagues Susanna Graf, who was inspiring the humanitarian education work. And yeah, I think I could go on it on, but
Gissele: yeah,
Dr. Klimecki: very many people who, who inspired this path.
Gissele: I I love the fact that you’re also looking at the aging population because I think we tend to forget people.
Who are aging until we’re aging, right? we kinda have this [00:47:00] created this interesting world where we no longer live in communities. We no longer live with our elders, and we don’t live, you know, we don’t raise our children together. Like, at least in North America, it just feels so separated.
Every, you know, the home is in nuclear family, but that really doesn’t extend much and so to think about how we can reconnect with one another and reconnect a community and reconnect as individuals and our elderly people how can we help them have healthy aging, have a healthy end to their life that doesn’t necessarily have to mean like dementia and all these other like, negative things, I think is really, really powerful.
Yeah. Do you have any recommendations for schools or workplaces in terms of how they could start incorporating some more compassion training? To help maybe their students or in the workplace?
Dr. Klimecki: Hmm. I would do it on a voluntary basis, I guess if I was running a workplace or a school, I [00:48:00] would offer places or groups where people could practice meditation, but also offer a huge variety of other choices.
So I think sports is important. I think other group activities that are a bit more communicative are important. So for instance, we have last year we have started an intervention or we completed the study, but we included dance and music and movement with mindfulness practices because we think it’s, also maybe important to move and to incorporate it in your, in your daily life.
So I think workplace and schools could offer meditation, but I wouldn’t. Make it mandatory. I would really just make it one of several possibilities of connecting with oneself and others that is entirely on a voluntary basis and that is not being monitored by whoever is your superior or supervisor or a teacher.[00:49:00]
Yeah. To make it an optional.
Gissele: Yeah. Thank you. What do you think about shifting the, the focus on systems, for example, school systems to be more heart-based rather than content-based? ’cause my perspective is like, you know, AI is gonna take care of the content. So could we shift into more heart based like learning for students?
Dr. Klimecki: I’m not sure about art based per se, because again, I think I would offer it in a modular way. I have, I have a son who doesn’t like arts. He’s like, why do I have to do arts and music? I think people are very different and, and I mean, if it was up to him, he would be playing soccer the whole day. And of course playing soccer the whole day might not be the good solution.
But I think really offering a range of activities and inviting children to try out a range of activities. Art, even for those who don’t like arts music, even for those who don’t like music, but just to give them different options. And I think in general [00:50:00] for the future, social and emotional skills will become important.
So we are currently collaborating with the PISA team who are evaluating children’s progress they are mainly known for evaluating children’s. Competencies on hard subjects like math or languages, but they also started evaluating social and emotional capacities. And I think this is really where we should go to cultivate more social and emotional skills in school, because of course it’s important to have an understanding of math and of languages and so on, but also to have an understanding of how can we resolve conflicts in a constructive way.
How can we regulate our emotions? And I think there are huge differences between countries with some countries being very advanced in these subjects and and really incorporating them in their curricula and other countries not being [00:51:00] as advanced in these subjects. And, I think this is a future of our education.
Gissele: Which one are some of those countries that are more advanced? Would it be like Finland or,
Dr. Klimecki: yeah,
Gissele: yeah. Yeah. I wanted to know what is the most surprising thing you’ve learned from doing this long-term research on compassion and empathy?
Dr. Klimecki: What’s the most surprising thing? Mm. I think there are different things that, that were surprising to me. One is that empathic distress is also important. And I think I, what I learned with time is that all emotions have their place and they’re importance.
Gissele: Mm.
Dr. Klimecki: So for instance, in that study with young people, we also saw that as empathic distress increase their helping behavior for.
Others of different cultures increased. So this was also a predictor. and there many different surprises I’ve had. Also, one of the big [00:52:00] surprises was that initially when, when I started doing the work on conflict resolution, I thought, okay, I’ll just tell people to empathize with each other. And it sounds as naive as it was because it totally backfired.
So when I invited participants to the lab to discuss issues around immigration, and one of them was pro and the other was against immigration, then telling them to empathize with each other just make the conflict worse. So this is why then we moved in our research to work with these indirect regulation techniques where you.
Train compassion for yourself and for loved ones, and then we, you can transfer it to the difficult situation whenever you are ready as a participant. So this, this seems to work much better. And then also another thing I learned through my research is the diversity of participants responses. So that really, it’s not one size fits all.
And the more I’ve been doing this, these intervention studies, the [00:53:00] more I realize it’s so important to train participants in a trauma sensitive way. To give them options of pausing the meditation of not, also not meditating at all. And not to sell meditation as a panacea for everything because it isn’t, and it’s hard work sometimes, and it can bring up difficulties to really yeah, create a space that is safe.
And I think for the future I think very diverse. Offers would be better. This is why we have started incorporating music and movement and dance with the meditation because some people might respond to the meditation and some people might respond to music and others to movement. And then I think if we offer a broader range of options, maybe then people can pick whatever aspect suits them in their current situation and they still have the other aspects to explore later on if they wish to do so.
Gissele: Hmm. Yeah. Thank you. I love that you said [00:54:00] that. Having worked in the child welfare system many people do not feel safe in their body. So to ask them to sit with their body is just not gonna be not gonna be good. And so for them meditating on something distant or even like doing it in different strategy, so we’ve had young people that were transformed by having an indigenous walk, with an elder who’s teaching them about nature.
Or horse therapy, so things that are necessarily body focused aren’t always for people with trauma. But finding a way to make that connection can. And so you really have to know who you’re working with and work in a way that is gonna help them feel safe. Because especially people with trauma, they’re working to feel safe in our body and to go straight to the body and say, sit with all of these unsafe feelings can feel very triggering and they won’t do, once you get to the point where you’re so dysregulated, you’re out, you’re not gonna be able to sit through.
it’s not the growth zone is the danger zone. Right?
Dr. Klimecki: Yeah. And, and another thing I’ve learned is the [00:55:00] prevalence of trauma is really high. I mean, the prevalence of trauma is very high, but even the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder is very high. So, I think there are some estimates that it’s around 30%, and I can confirm that when I included mindfulness in my university teachings, I sometimes had questionnaires where I check just for some symptoms, like, I can’t sleep at night or I can’t focus because something is really stressing me out so much.
I, I cannot focus at all for days and days. And I find that even among students at university, it’s about one third who self-report having PTSD symptoms. And so it’s a very large proportion even in places where I would not have expected this proportion to be so large. Yeah.
Gissele: Yeah. I agree with that.
Yeah. I also teach mindfulness and. Compassion practices for my students, it’s optional. Like, so we’ll do a little tiny practice in the beginning because I [00:56:00] teach ethics, but I also teach research. And some social work students get very stressed out about research.
They’re like, oh my god. And so I will do a little tiny practices, but if they don’t wanna practice, they don’t move too. But I can’t tell you the number of times the students come up to me and they’re like, oh my God, I’ve been having such horrible experiences. Or even just like the things that will email me or, or let me know in assignments about how much, how much trauma our students are carrying and how difficult, yeah.
And how sometimes our systems in terms of like even the schooling system, the punitive ways that we mark that, the way we discount marks and so on and so forth. Sometimes that inflexibility adds to their feelings of stress instead of making it more flexible. that’s obviously person dependent.
But I think sometimes. as an educator, trying to find a way to extend that compassion and the flexibility, I think, goes a long way to helping students
Dr. Klimecki: yeah.
Gissele: Yeah, yeah. So last two questions. I asking all of my guests what [00:57:00] their definition of self-love is.
Dr. Klimecki: Okay. That’s an interesting one. I haven’t thought about it yet. What is my definition of self-love?
I guess for me it would include
loving all aspects of myself the bright ones, the dark ones, the ones maybe that I wouldn’t list among my top favorite, but loving them as well, nonetheless. I think that would be important for me. And then
it would also include a sense of shared humanity. I feel that the times when I feel truly connected with myself, I also feel truly connected with [00:58:00] others and with other human beings and with nature. And so for me, self-love is linked to this sense of Oh, like connectedness and, community.
Gissele: Yeah.
Oneness. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah. Last questions. where can our listeners learn more about you, more about your research many of our listeners that wanna find out more about your work. Where can they find that information
Where can they, get in contact with you?
Dr. Klimecki: Okay. I have a website, http://www.olgaklimecki.com, where I try to put links to some of the podcasts that exists with me or some of the YouTube videos of my talks. And of course there is a list of our publications there, and sometimes there are direct links to them and sometimes not, I think.
But in general there is a list of publications and there’s an overview of, of [00:59:00] radio and
Gissele: Beautiful
Dr. Klimecki: video material that. People could listen to or tap into. And I think I also have one or two things on Inside Timer, but not much,
Gissele: Thank you. Thank you.
I know our listeners are gonna be checking that out. Thank you. Thank you Olga, so much for your time. This was like jawdropping at the same time. it just filled my heart and I’m so, so grateful for your work and for the impact that it’s making. The fact that we’re even considering thinking about how can compassion be trained and possible implications of that in our world, I think is so powerful.
So thank you for the work that you’re doing. Thank you on the behalf of my listeners. And thank you to those who listened to this episode for joining us here at Love and Compassion with Gissele
Dr. Klimecki: Bye. Thank you for inviting me. Bye.