I want to welcome everybody back to the Counseling and Psychological Services podcast series. I'm Dr. Derek Vigon, Staff Psychologist at CAPS. Today we're going to be talking about, Mason Chooses Kindness and Empathy, and the Impact of kindness on Mental Health. My name is Philip Wilkerson. He, him, his, I work at George Mason Career Services and I'm a Mason alum. Mason Chooses Kindness is a campus-wide initiative which is led by the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, and it's chaired by Lewis Forrest and Nance Lucas. What they've done is invited everyone across the campus to participate in this very large committee. Why do you think that kindness is important and how does it represent the values of George Mason University? I was thinking how kindness directly infuses with diversity, equity, and inclusion. What I've come to think of is, diversity is representing differences, seeing differences, equity is making sure that there's fairness, equal access, and everyone is at the same playing field or has the opportunities, and then inclusion means everyone feels like they belong. Kindness is embedded in every single one of those. Kindness means, I respect you and your differences I still love you. Equity means, if I'm really kind, I treat you the same, when I mean the same, I try to provide equitable access and that's a form of kindness. Inclusion, straight up is, I see that you're here, I want you to be here, I want you to feel like you belong here. Kindness is embedded in that. The efforts that we do can reflect that at the George Mason community. Philip, if you could think through why kindness and empathy might be linked with mental health? Empathy from what my understanding is that I have not lived your experiences, but I can understand or try to comfort you and in that understanding, and then compassion is I feel for you, but I'll take action. Kindness is embedded through all of that, like, "I feel for you, I know your life experiences, I can't understand how that feels, but I want to be there for you." That's empathy. Then kindness really to the next level is like, "I feel for you, I see you are in a situation, what can I do to take action to help you?" Now with mental health, I think there's so many times where we see people that are experiencing things such as depression, anxiety, all these other things, and you can say, "Well, I in this space don't understand what it feels like, but as a person that exhibits kindness, while I may not understand it, what actions can I take to help or assist?" Maybe it's like a non-action, which is just act of listening. Maybe it's referring someone to say, "Hey, I don't know how to help you, but you need to go to CAPS or you need to go to the counselor. Let me take you there at least or walk you there." Then maybe other forms of action which is low effort with social media is like, sharing graphics, sharing awareness, you're not alone, we'll build a community around you. I think kindness and mental health is so intertwined. This Mason Chooses Kindness thing really came out at 2021, where we knew that there was an uptake in isolation, uptake in mental health, uptake in anxiety. I believe Nance and Lewis were like, "Okay, we've been doing lots of different efforts, what can we do to make it a very systemic effort to really tackle the mental health and isolation and systemic racism?" Philip, how can Mason continue to meet the needs of the diverse students on our campus? What I really like about the Mason Chooses Kindness, being kind doesn't take world-changing events. It can be very small actions, at your level actions. You don't have to have a doctorate in kindness. The part to bring it to marginalized groups or bring it to everyone is just like really recognizing that and then saying, "You did it, you did kindness, wasn't that sophisticated?" For instance, we have a program called Pats for Pats. What it is is that people submit someone that did a small, large, whatever act of kindness, and then we send them an E-card, where it's anonymous that the person that submitted someone they don't know who did it, but they recognize it and we identify it, they say, "You received a pat on the back and this was the direct action that you did, congratulations. Please continue, pay forward." For student's perspective like, "I saw that you organized our notes when we did a presentation." What that shows is that one, people are going to be keeping their head on a swivel and be like, "I'm doing kind stuff, people are looking, let me just always be on that mode of exhibiting, I don't know who's looking at me to be kind." On the other end, if someone identified you for doing a small act of kindness, the likelihood is, you're going to do it again because you know that it has even a small impact. It's so clear to me the impact that kindness has on mental health. I also think about self-kindness or self-compassion. I was hoping you can speak to that. I love it because you said kindness self. Even we were going do it, we probably we'll do it later in the semester. But we were going to do a program where we said kindness to yourself because we also know exhibiting negative self-talk, that people are probably way worse than themselves than they are to others. You wouldn't throw shade at other people, you're like "No, that's rude, I wouldn't do it." But why do you do it to yourself all the time, that negative self-talk? We were going to do a thing where people took a Polaroid selfie of themselves, and on the bottom of the Polaroid you're going to write, "I like an aspect that they like about themselves, to be kind, self-compassion." Self-compassion like self-care is mean, remember we say compassion is taking action, so kindness to yourself is like, well-being, as in self-care, like, would you harm your temple? Your body is a temple. Exercise, which is good for mental health. Positive self-talk, journaling. We definitely want people to be kind to others, but we also want people to be kind to themselves. How do students sign up and engage in Pats for Pats? Great. Pats for Pats, we have a website, kindness.gmu.edu. Then it says [inaudible 00:06:51] Microsoft form. They put the person in and then on the back-end we send E-card. Students go to Mason Chooses Kindness, you can see our events, kindness.gmu.edu, and then they can do to form, we have a downloadable toolkit, stickers, all kinds of stuff. Philip. It sounds like you're really doing some amazing work here with Mason Chooses Kindness. I'm curious to know about the way that kindness has impacted you and your multi-dimensional identities. Ideally, I consider myself a positive person, but obviously, I'm human, there's days where I'm sad or whatever. I'm not toxic positive. Being a part of this committee has reaffirmed that identity for me. If I go out and navigate in the world and say, "I'm a positive person," being a part of this committee has been a tangible way for me to actually exhibit that and practice it and allow myself to feel sadness, grief, anxious, whatever. But then when I take these actions, it brings me back to who I really believe I am, who I believe. In my core or some of my core values, kindness is one of my core values, resilience is one of my core values, all those things. But just doing this a lot because I have the belief that is making an impact. It infuses purpose. I'm doing something that directly affects a community that I care about. I really like being here. I like being at Mason. If I like being at Mason, I want to make it a place that others like too, with tangible actions. If you have more questions, checkout kindness.gmu.edu. Thank you so much. I love this man. Podcast is my thing. Wanted to say thanks again to all of our listeners for checking out the new podcast as part of the counseling and psychological services podcast series. Just a reminder that CAPS is a free and confidential mental health support service on campus. We would love to see you.