Self-Compassion
How to be kinder to yourself
Hello Everyone,
As always, I hope that all of you are doing well during this difficult time in our history. As I mentioned in my last post, the vaccine is clearly on its way and many of my colleagues, clients and friends have already gotten their first vaccination and many have gotten the second as well. My wife got her first shot last week and if all goes well I should be in line to get my first shot this coming week.
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Self-Compassion
As many of my clients struggle to maintain their composure/emotional balance during this challenging period, it occurred to me that a reminder about the value of being kind to ourselves might be in order. And beyond just coping with the current pandemic, self-compassion is a very useful skill in coping with life’s challenges in general. There are now a number of studies documenting the effectiveness of self-compassion to help us navigate through difficult times and so I thought I would write this post about what is self-compassion and how do we develop it.
Self compassion is often confused with being weak, being too easy on oneself and avoiding taking on life’s challenges. When in fact, I think nothing could be further from the truth. When faced with the inevitable challenges any well-lived life will bring, I think self-compassion is a helpful coping tool to better navigate these difficult times and helps us to tackle whatever challenges we face as we pursue our life’s goals. Imagine for a moment what it would be like if, as you face a challenge of some sort your “coach” was saying things to you such as “You’re not strong enough, you may as well give up!” or “You never do anything right and you’re nothing but a failure!”. It is probably easy for us to recognize that these types of comments from our “coach” would not be helpful and would either have us just give up and be careful to avoid any similar challenges in the future to avoid further criticism, not a good prescription for a satisfying successful life. But I invite you to pay attention to what your mind is telling you when you face a difficult task or some type of life challenge. You may be surprised to discover that your “mind” is like the above coach and is saying things to you that are not very helpful. The tendency to be hard on ourselves is very common and a problem many of my clients struggle with (and if I’m being completely honest something I sometimes struggle with as well).
Most of us can recognize the unfortunate results of being too hard ourselves, but most of us don’t know how to change this way of responding to ourselves. This is where I think practicing self-compassion can be most useful. If you take on the challenge of becoming more self-compassionate you may not feel the difference immediately or even a change in the first several weeks but with consistent practice, I think we can all learn to be more consistently kind to ourselves.
How to Practice Self-Compassion
Self-Compassion has three parts. The practice is remembering and using all three parts when you are in the midst of some type of struggle:
1. Recognize and accept that you are suffering in this moment. Be open and willing to feel what you are feeling. Turn toward the suffering.
“This is a moment of suffering”
2. We’re all in this together. We all suffer. A sense of common humanity.
“Suffering is a part of life”
3. Offering yourself some kindness in the midst of the struggle. What would you say to a good friend or loved one who was in the same situation?
“May I be kind to myself”
“May I be strong”
“May I forgive myself”
“May I learn to accept myself as I am”
“It’s going to be OK”
“I’m here for you”
Some Potentially Helpful Resources
Kristin Neff, PhD and Paul Gilbert, PhD are probably two of the world’s leading experts on self-compassion. Here is an audio clip of Kristin guiding you through what she calls a Self-Compassion Break and here is a written description of the same exercise.This is a great way to practice self-compassion so when you start to struggle/suffer you’re better prepared. And here is a podcast from the OCD Stories where Stuart Ralph interviews Paul Gilbert about applying self-compassion to the treatment of OCD. I really like Dr Gilbert’s suggestion in the podcast to imagine or create the most compassionate person you can imagine and then turn toward that person when you need help. If you’re interested in becoming more self-compassionate (and I suggest you do!) you couldn’t go wrong by following up on the above resources. Additional resources are Kristin Neff’s book Self Compassion and Paul Gilbert’s book The Compassionate Mind.
(The above links are affiliate links and if you buy any of the books I recommended I will receive a small portion of the price)
As always I hope you find this post useful and I welcome any comments or questions. Good luck learning to be kinder to yourself.
Best,
Dr Bob