Dr Jenna Macciochi

And as much as it's helpful, it has a bit of a collateral damage, you know, that's flowing through your blood vessels.

That's going to be like causing a bit of oxidative stress.

Like there's a sort of collateral damage to unwanted inflammation.

But by teaching self-compassion, and I think this intervention was done over six or eight weeks, they found that they could help people lower unwanted inflammation.

Because if your thoughts are wrapped up in how your body is physically behaving, then your mental health and physical health are, to me now, one and the same.

I almost can't speak of them separately.

And if you think of the nervous system...

is there to protect you and keep you safe.

Your immune system is there to protect you and keep you safe.

These two systems are integrated and working together.

So if you're always in fear, always like speaking in the negative voice to yourself, your immune system's getting that message that there's something bad, like I need to be prepared for danger or damage.

I need to keep this person safe.

The only weapon I've got is inflammation.

I'm going to whip that out.

Yeah.

Whereas when we're more compassionate, we get a sense of safety and the immune system can calm down and come back into balance.

Yes.

And I think when we get that awareness and then it feels really kind of icky to change that because you're so used to this sort of negative self-talk and then to switch to something more positive.

But it's just...

iteration over time, keep doing it.