This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

When you take the wrong turn off the highway or fumble a presentation at work,

do you get mad at yourself for making a mistake?

Do you silently kick yourself or maybe actually kick yourself?

Self-criticism is often seen as heroic, maybe even noble. Many people think it's the

surest path to self-improvement. But is it? The belief that we need to be hard on ourselves,

criticize ourselves, to succeed or reach our goals or make

a change is actually the number one block to self-compassion we found in the research. People

are afraid that they're kind to themselves. They just won't get anything done. This week on Hidden Brain,

the story of a psychologist who learned to stop beating up on herself

and how you can convert your harsh inner critic into a friend.

People who are more self-compassionate take more responsibility for their mistakes.

They're more conscientious. They're more likely to apologize.

Ironically, even though the word self is in self-compassion, when you take that approach,

it actually means you don't have to be so self-focused. Kristen Neff's father left the family when she was a very small child.

It was the late 1960s, and he decided he was going to be a hippie.

He picked up and moved to Hawaii.

One of my first memories is going to visit him when I was about six years old in Maui,

and him telling me, please don't call me dad, call me brother Dionysius, because we are all

God's children. I was incredibly uncomfortable, and he said that to my brother as well.

And so we couldn't call him Brother Dionysius. That was just absurd, but he didn't want us to call

him dad. So, you know, for many, many years, both my brother and I were like, excuse me,

...