How to talk to the worst parts of yourself | Karen Faith | TEDxKC

Summary

The speaker challenges the notion that you must love yourself before loving others, sharing personal experiences that demonstrate how love and acceptance can come from embracing others first. Through anecdotes about focus group moderation and inner dialogues, the speaker highlights the importance of unconditional welcome—both for others and for oneself. By accepting all parts of ourselves, even the difficult ones, we can learn to love and understand more deeply. The message encourages us to approach both ourselves and others with curiosity, kindness, and non-judgmental acceptance.

Takeaways

• 💔 'It isn’t true that you can’t love anyone until you love yourself.' The speaker challenges the notion that self-love is a prerequisite for loving others.
• 🗣️ 'Love welcomes everyone unconditionally.' The speaker likens love to a focus group moderator, suggesting that love is inclusive and non-judgmental.
• 👥 'In every focus group, there’s a range of characters.' The diversity of personalities in focus groups mirrors the diversity within one's own mind.
• 🧘‍♀️ 'Moderating rooms of strange and difficult voices is what taught me to welcome all the strange and difficult parts of myself.' The speaker uses her experience as a moderator to illustrate self-acceptance.
• 🤔 'I start every morning meditation with the same opener I use as a focus group moderator.' The speaker applies her professional skills to personal self-reflection and meditation.
• 🤝 'We can be excited about a new job, and also dread going back to work.' The speaker acknowledges the complexity of human emotions and the ability to hold conflicting feelings.
• 🏥 'I have done every kind of therapy I have ever heard of.' The speaker's quest for mental peace through various therapies underscores the struggle with inner turmoil.
• 🔍 'It’s my job to practice empathy with strangers.' The speaker's professional role in people research has honed her ability to understand and empathize with others.
• 🌟 'My early life gave me... super antennas for the emotions of others.' The speaker's difficult past has paradoxically equipped her with heightened emotional awareness.
• ❤️ 'Love is what happens when we stop trying to figure out who deserves it.' The speaker redefines love as an unconditional state of acceptance rather than a reward for deserving.
• 🌈 'I think of my fragmented self less like a broken mirror, and more like a prism.' The speaker views her multifaceted self as a source of strength and diversity, not as a sign of fragmentation.

Q & A

What is the main argument presented by the speaker at the beginning of the script?

The speaker argues against the commonly held belief that you must love yourself before you can love others. She claims that it is possible to love others even if you haven't fully learned to love yourself.

How does the speaker use her experience as a focus group moderator to illustrate her point?

The speaker explains that moderating focus groups involves welcoming diverse perspectives and voices without judgment. This experience taught her how to welcome all parts of herself, even the difficult ones, just as she welcomes the diverse characters in focus groups.

What is the 'unconditional welcome' concept introduced by the speaker?

The 'unconditional welcome' is a practice of fully accepting someone as they are, without judgment or conditions. It goes beyond tolerance or compassion and involves a complete acceptance of the person's current state.

How did the speaker apply 'unconditional welcome' in a challenging situation?

The speaker applied 'unconditional welcome' when she was moderating a focus group with a woman whose views and behavior she found difficult to respect. By imagining a 'bubble' of welcome around both of them, she managed to see the woman more clearly and engage in a meaningful conversation.

What does the speaker mean by describing her mind as a 'focus group'?

The speaker uses the metaphor of a 'focus group' to describe the different conflicting voices and parts of herself that she moderates internally. Each 'self' has its own perspective, and she tries to create a dialogue among them to maintain inner harmony.

Why does the speaker emphasize the importance of welcoming all parts of oneself?

The speaker emphasizes that by welcoming all parts of oneself, including the difficult or unpleasant ones, one can better understand their needs and desires. This process helps in healing and achieving inner peace.

What role does empathy play in the speaker's personal and professional life?

Empathy is central to the speaker's role as a people researcher and focus group moderator. It allows her to deeply understand others and create a space where all voices are heard and respected. This practice also extends to how she treats herself.

How does the speaker challenge the idea that 'love is hard'?

The speaker challenges the notion that 'love is hard' by suggesting that love is easy when we stop judging who deserves it. Love becomes effortless when we welcome people exactly as they are without trying to determine their worthiness.

What practical advice does the speaker give for practicing unconditional welcome in daily life?

The speaker advises starting with the person next to you, whether you know them or not, and simply letting them be present. This approach encourages letting go of judgments and opening oneself to love and understanding.

What does the speaker mean by saying 'love is a house you can crawl in through a window'?

By saying 'love is a house you can crawl in through a window,' the speaker implies that there are many ways to experience and practice love. Even if one struggles to love themselves, they can still start by loving others or welcoming them, and eventually, this will lead to self-love.

Outlines

00:00

💬 The Power of Unconditional Love and Welcome

The speaker, Anggiasti R W, challenges the notion that one must love oneself before loving others. They argue that love is unconditional and welcomes everyone regardless of their state. Drawing from their experience as a focus group moderator, they illustrate how diverse groups of people can share perspectives and be heard. The speaker humorously describes the various characters found in focus groups, emphasizing the importance of creating a space where everyone feels valued and heard. They then relate this to their own internal dialogue, acknowledging the many 'voices' within themselves, each with different characteristics and opinions. The speaker shares their journey of self-acceptance and the realization that conflicting feelings and thoughts are a natural part of being human.

05:01

🧘‍♀️ Embracing Inner Diversity Through Unconditional Welcome

Anggiasti R W continues by discussing their personal struggle with self-acceptance and the various methods they've tried to silence their inner critic, including numerous therapies and spiritual practices. They recount their career as a people researcher, where they developed a deep empathy for others, which was a symptom of their complex post-traumatic stress. The speaker shares their realization that everyone has faced difficulties and that every path to overcome them is honorable. They introduce the concept of 'unconditional welcome,' which they use in their research to connect with subjects, even those they initially find unlikable. Through a vivid example, they demonstrate how this approach allowed them to see past their judgments and connect with a subject on a deeper level, leading to a profound understanding and instant love.

10:10

🤔 Internal Dialogues and the Focus Group of the Self

In the final paragraph, the speaker describes how they applied the concept of 'unconditional welcome' to their own internal dialogues. They recount a particularly challenging interaction with a part of themselves that was persistently negative and demanding. Instead of suppressing this voice, they embraced it, leading to a transformative conversation. The speaker likens their mind to a focus group with diverse characters, each contributing to their understanding of themselves. They emphasize the importance of gratitude and kindness towards all parts of oneself, even the most challenging. The speaker concludes by suggesting that if we can welcome others with the same curiosity and openness as a focus group moderator, we can improve our capacity to love, both others and ourselves.

Keywords

💡Unconditional Welcome

Unconditional welcome refers to the act of fully accepting others as they are, without judgment or conditions. In the script, the speaker emphasizes that this concept helped her connect with others, especially in challenging situations like moderating a focus group. The idea extends to self-acceptance, where she learns to welcome all parts of herself, even the difficult ones, which is central to the video's theme of love and acceptance.

💡Focus Group

A focus group is a gathering of diverse individuals who share their opinions and perspectives on a specific topic, often used in market research. In the script, the speaker uses focus groups as a metaphor for internal dialogue, where different parts of her personality come together like participants in a group. The focus group serves as a setting for learning empathy, understanding, and practicing unconditional welcome.

💡Inner Dialogue

Inner dialogue refers to the ongoing conversation a person has within their own mind, involving different thoughts, feelings, and voices. In the video, the speaker talks about the various 'selves' that make up her inner dialogue, each with its own perspective. This concept is crucial as it illustrates the internal conflict and eventual self-acceptance that the speaker experiences.

💡Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. The speaker highlights empathy as a skill she developed through her work as a people researcher and focus group moderator. Empathy is portrayed as a tool for connection and understanding, both in interactions with others and in the speaker's relationship with herself.

💡Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance is the practice of embracing all parts of oneself, including the difficult and uncomfortable aspects. The speaker's journey towards self-acceptance is a key theme in the video, as she learns to welcome and listen to the different voices in her mind, rather than trying to silence them. This process mirrors the unconditional welcome she offers to others.

💡Complex Post-Traumatic Stress

Complex post-traumatic stress (C-PTSD) is a mental health condition that can result from prolonged exposure to traumatic events. The speaker mentions C-PTSD as part of her background, explaining how it shaped her hypervigilance and deep empathy. Understanding this concept is important for grasping the origins of her fragmented self and her journey towards healing.

💡Love

In the context of the video, love is portrayed as an act of acceptance rather than something that requires prerequisites, like self-love. The speaker challenges the common belief that one must love themselves before loving others, instead suggesting that love is accessible to all and begins with welcoming others as they are. This idea ties into the broader theme of unconditional welcome.

💡Fragmented Self

The fragmented self refers to the speaker's experience of having multiple 'selves' or voices within her mind, each representing different emotions and thoughts. This fragmentation is a result of her traumatic past, but she reframes it as a spectrum rather than brokenness. The concept is key to understanding her journey of self-integration and acceptance.

💡Moderation

Moderation, in this context, refers to the speaker's role as a focus group moderator and as a mediator of her own inner dialogue. She uses the skills of moderation, such as creating space for all voices to be heard, to manage both external groups and her internal self. The concept of moderation is central to her method of achieving balance and harmony within herself.

💡Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the willingness to expose one's true self, including weaknesses and fears, in the pursuit of connection and understanding. The speaker discusses vulnerability both in her work with others and in her relationship with herself. Embracing vulnerability allows her to form deeper connections with the people she studies and to confront and accept her own difficult emotions.

Highlights

Love doesn't care which way you come or what state you're in when you get here. Love welcomes everyone unconditionally.

Focus groups are a unique cultural experience where diverse individuals share their perspectives, moderated to ensure everyone is heard.

The practice of unconditional welcome is key to connecting with and understanding people, even those we initially dislike or judge.

Moderating focus groups taught the speaker to welcome all parts of herself, leading to a more compassionate inner dialogue.

The speaker describes their mind as a round table of different selves, each with a voice that is welcomed and valued.

A pivotal moment was learning to respond to negative inner voices with kindness and boundaries, rather than trying to silence them.

The speaker emphasizes that love is not difficult; it is what happens when we stop trying to determine who deserves it.

The speaker uses a metaphor of a prism to describe their fragmented self, which is seen as full spectrum rather than broken.

Unconditional welcome helps turn difficult inner voices into allies, revealing what is needed to feel better and learn.

The speaker recounts an experience with a judgmental mindset, which shifted after imagining a bubble of unconditional welcome.

The speaker encourages everyone to start with the person next to them if they find it hard to love themselves, emphasizing welcome and acceptance.

The practice of moderating focus groups influenced the speaker's morning meditation, which begins with a welcome and gratitude.

The speaker's early life challenges led to a hypersensitivity to others' emotions, which became a valuable skill in people research.

The speaker explains that conflicting feelings are normal, like loving and hating camping, and that these experiences are part of being human.

The speech concludes with a powerful message: Everyone is worthy of welcome, and this practice can help us do a better job of love.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Anggiasti R W Reviewer: Zsófia Herczeg

It isn’t true what they say,

that you can’t love anyone until you love yourself.

Have you heard that?

People say you have to learn to love yourself

before you can love anybody else.

But it’s not true.

I loved everybody before I loved myself.

Love doesn’t care which way you come or what state you’re in when you get here.

Love welcomes everyone unconditionally.

Oddly, so do focus group moderators -

(Laughter)

which is how and why I learned to do it.

If you’ve never been a part of a focus group,

you’re missing a really special cultural experience.

So, in every focus group, there’s a range of characters, right?

There’s always a shy one and a chatty one,

a grumpy one that doesn’t want to do any of the exercises,

and a very excited mom with a notebook,

who wants to get an A plus in all of the exercises.

(Laughter)

There’s a student who lied on the intake because they need the money,

and a dad full of jokes who can’t read the room.

(Laughter)

And usually,

there’s one ex-military guy

who keeps staring at the two-way mirror suspiciously.

(Laughter)

It’s a situation

where a group of people that may not otherwise ever meet

have the chance to share their perspectives.

And it’s my job as the moderator to make sure that they all get heard.

Now, it’s not quite a classroom.

It’s not group therapy.

And while the community feel has some elements of holiness,

probably no one would call it a spiritual experience.

I mean, no one else.

Because moderating rooms of strange and difficult voices

is what taught me to welcome

all the strange and difficult parts of myself.

No kidding.

I start every morning meditation

with the same opener I use as a focus group moderator:

“Thanks, everyone, for being here.”

(Laughter)

“Your input is valued.”

(Laughter)

“I’m going to hear from each of you. I’ll give you all the chance to speak.

Just do your best to be completely present, honest,

and try to make any requests reasonable.”

So I don’t know about you, but there are a lot of me in here,

in the mind of Karen Faith.

I’m not referring to psychiatric illness specifically,

but I don’t exclude that.

(Laughter)

My mind has plenty of quirks,

but what I have to share is for anyone with an inner dialogue.

Though I admit, it’s especially for those of us with a really noisy one.

So I noticed some time ago that I was arguing with myself.

And then I wondered:

If I didn’t agree with me,

who is I, and who is me in that scenario?

And it turned out that there are quite a few of me.

There’s a really sentimental, emotional me,

an intellectual, analytical me.

Those two argue a lot.

There’s a me who loves being on stage.

There’s another one who is pretty shaky at the moment.

Some of us - at this time, I include you -

some of us regard these as feelings or thoughts.

And maybe we’ve done our personal homework,

accepting that we can have conflicting feelings at the same time.

We can be excited about a new job

and also dread going back to work.

We can be tired and want to stay up.

We can adore someone who also annoys us.

We can love someone who has badly betrayed us.

We know this.

And when we’re honest and rational,

we can see that these are common experiences.

But we’re not crazy to both love and hate camping.

(Laughter)

It does me no harm to embrace that I feel both ways about it.

But what about the thought that I’m worthless,

that I don’t belong here?

The mistakes I’ve made are unforgivable,

that the bad things that happened in my life were my fault.

Those thoughts are just as real as the rest of them,

but they're harder to live with.

And they send many of us to therapy or to yoga or the nearest bar,

which more or less describes my daily commute for many years.

(Laughter)

Because I wanted to silence those thoughts completely.

And let me tell you: I tried.

I have done every kind of therapy I have ever heard of.

I have done talk therapy, energy healing,

body work, hypnotherapy, soul retrieval,

the tapping stuff, the thing with the lights.

I did seven kinds of yoga.

I drank the “special tea” with the shaman in the forest.

(Laughter)

I admit I did pass on the acupuncture they do with live honeybees -

(Laughter)

people do that.

(Laughter)

Suffice to say, I tried.

And still sometimes, when I was alone, I would hear myself shouting: “Shut up!”

or worse to my own mind.

In my work as a people researcher,

it’s my job to practice empathy with strangers,

to receive everything I can about their world

in order to understand them as deeply as possible.

Now, it’s noteworthy

that I found this career at a temp job, writing meeting notes,

when my supervisor noticed

that I wasn’t just paraphrasing conversation,

I was recording body language, micro-expressions, tonal shifts,

specific verb choices.

What neither of us knew then is that the qualities

which made me seem skillful

were the symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress.

The most reasonable results of an appalling upbringing,

and a fact I share not to set me apart from you

but to welcome you in here with me.

Everyone in this room has walked through something difficult

in order to be here.

And I want you to know that whatever path you’ve taken

to get through it is honorable.

Whether you never talk about it, or you write bad poetry about it,

whether you make tons of money prosecuting it,

or if you just hit the gym like a champ to sweat it out of your body,

there is truly no wrong way.

There are some ways that cause other problems.

You know the ones.

(Laughter)

I’ve done some of those.

I still do some of those.

And I don’t judge those either,

because gifts and curses are “buy one, get one.”

And mine were no exception.

My early life gave me heaps of shame and a splintered sense of self -

hence all the different mes -

but it also gave me super antennas for the emotions of others.

This hypervigilance made me a certified mess of a person

but a damn near-wizard-level observer.

So I got to work.

The last 20 years I’ve shadowed people in their homes, at their jobs,

while they shop and drive,

and go on dates.

I ask them to be honest and vulnerable with me,

and to do this, I practice something that I call unconditional welcome,

which is like a researcher’s neutrality, but a little extra.

The day I discovered it, I was sitting in the living room of a research subject.

She was a very unpleasant woman, if I’m honest.

Feeding french fries to an infant, as she snapped at me

that she would never have her children vaccinated,

not even to protect them from polio

because she didn’t know it was in those shots.

Now never mind that she said this

an inch of ash deep into a Virginia Slim, right.

(Laughter)

I was judging her, I know.

I’m not proud of it, but at least one of me is a jerk.

(Laughter)

I needed to connect with her, and I didn’t want to.

I didn't like her. I didn't respect her.

I didn’t want to spend a single moment with her.

And the project required that I spend hours.

And that I used that time to get to know her:

what she values, what she believes, where she finds strength.

Researcher neutrality was unavailable to me at the time,

so I had to get out the big guns.

I called up my New Age visualization skills,

and I took a deep breath,

secondhand smoke and all.

And I imagined that my breath was inflating a shiny soap bubble

filled with unconditional welcome.

Not tolerance.

Not even compassion.

Total welcome as is - no comments, no notes.

And as I inflated the bubble,

it became big enough to contain my whole body.

And then hers.

And in that moment,

I saw a mother feeding her baby in a world that she didn’t trust.

I told her that I could see that she cared about protecting her son,

and I asked her if she got that from her parents.

And then we had a conversation.

And I learned about her.

I learned why she was afraid and angry,

and how she fought through that fear to make a family.

When I welcomed this woman unconditionally,

I saw her more clearly,

but I also loved her instantly.

We have been told too often that love is hard.

It’s not.

Love is what happens when we stop trying to figure out who deserves it.

It’s right there

when we stop trying to figure out who deserves it,

and we welcome someone, anyone, exactly as they are, in the moment.

It’ll be two more years before I learn to do this with all the parts of myself.

But it started just as simply; a part of me had become very chatty -

a part that was afraid and angry,

whiny, demanding,

unreasonable and relentless.

She told me that we were never going to get better.

She wanted out of here.

I asked her what I could do.

She only told me she wanted to die, over and over and over and over.

I begged her to shut up, and she did not.

Finally, after weeks of harassment,

whether out of exhaustion or epiphany,

instead of shouting back, I took a deep breath.

I became my own moderator.

I said out loud in a voice that surprised me:

“Thank you for sharing.

I’m going to remind you of our agreement to be honest and reasonable.”

And she answered me - that voice.

Now, don’t get spooked. This is all just thinking happening.

(Laughter)

But the part of me asking and the part answering

did in fact seem like different parts.

She told me that she was in a lot of pain. And I told her: “I know.

And I promise you I’m going to take care of you.

But I need you to get on board.

I will listen to you, but I will not obey you.”

And as clearly as I’m speaking to you now, she said okay.

And then we started to talk.

As I continue the dialogue with myself, I found more of me,

more voices with more points of view,

some of them more fun than others.

And the imagined landscape of my mind began to look a lot like a focus group.

This round table of wildly mixed characters

and one moderator keeping some kind of order

with honesty, boundaries, kindness,

and most importantly, gratitude.

I thank my selves for their contributions.

No matter how bonkers or twisted they may seem,

because we’re all me.

I think of my fragmented self less like broken mirror

and more like a prism.

We’re full spectrum.

Today, there isn’t a voice in my head that I don’t welcome.

And while some of us are occasionally unreasonable,

we’re not mean.

Even my whiny, shamey voice is trying to help in her weird way.

But when I ask her to be clear and kind,

she tells me exactly what I need to know:

what she needs to feel better and what she’d like for me to learn.

But just like the scared and angry mother,

she only does this when I accept her exactly as she is in the moment.

So while my openings for self-talk and focus groups sound almost identical,

the closings are a little different.

At the round table, I would hand out parking validation,

remind everyone to sign for their cash,

but when I’m with all of me, I say:

“I love you.

Thank you for helping me see what you see” -

which is why this practice is so useful

for all of us here with our different perspectives,

inside and outside of one another.

If we can receive one another

with the curiosity and welcome of a focus group moderator,

perhaps we can do a better job of love.

Because it is not true what they say:

that you can’t love anyone until you love yourself.

Love is a house you can crawl in through a window.

If you can’t start with yourself,

start with the person next to you right now

whether you know them or not.

All you have to do is let them be here.

It's easy, isn't it?

Wherever they’ve been, whatever they’re carrying,

whatever talents they have or don’t have,

whatever mistakes they’ve made,

can you just welcome them here?

Can you welcome you?

We’re here right now, like this.

We’re beautiful and strange and complicated and scared

and sometimes kind of horrible.

But all of us are worthy of welcome.

And everyone that you show unconditional welcome

may show you a part of yourself to love.

You are welcome.

Thank you.

(Applause)