We're often our own worst critics. The negative self-talk can be cruel, it gives depression power and eventually, we start to believe the things we tell ourselves.

We invited one of the world’s leading experts on self-compassion, Dr Kristin Neff, to teach us a thing, or two, about being kind to ourselves.

Some questions we ask:

Why is self-compassion important and what role does in play in our mental health?Why do some people find it so hard to practice self-compassion?How do we work through, and breakdown, the resistance we feel?

Want to learn more about Dr Kristin Neff? Here you go:

Kristin studied communications as an undergraduate at the University of California at Los Angeles (B.A., 1988). She did her graduate work at University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D., 1997), studying moral development with Dr. Elliot Turiel. Her dissertation research was conducted in Mysore, India, where she examined children’s moral reasoning. She then spent two years of post-doctoral study with Dr. Susan Harter at Denver University, studying issues of authenticity and self-concept development. Her current position at the University of Texas at Austin started in 1999, and she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006.

During Kristin’s last year of graduate school in 1997 she became interested in Buddhism, and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically.

In addition to her pioneering research into self-compassion, she has developed an 8-week program to teach self-compassion skills. The program, co-created with her colleague Chris Germer, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, is called Mindful Self-Compassion. Her book, Self-Compassion, was published by William Morrow in April, 2011.

Website: http://self-compassion.org/Twitter: @self_compassionFacebook: /selfcompassion