Self-Compassion – The proven power of being kind to your yourself

The Core Components of Self-Compassion

Self-compassion entails 3 core components. We need to achieve and combine these 3 essential elements in order to be truly self-compassionate.

• Self-kindness: this is about being gentle and understanding with ourselves rather than harshly critical and judgmental.
• Common Humanity: this is about feeling connected with others in their experience of life rather than feeling isolated and alienated by our suffering
• Mindfulness: this is about holding our experience in balanced awareness, rather than ignoring our pain or exaggerating it.

Self-kindness

The first element of self-compassion is self-kindness. Self-kindness means that we stop the constant self-judgment and disparaging internal commentary that most of us have come to see as normal. Self-kindness involve more than just stopping self-judgment. It involves actively comforting ourselves, responding just as we would to a dear friend in need. With self-kindness we sooth and calm our troubled minds. We make a peace offering of warmth, gentleness and sympathy from ourselves to ourselves so that true healing can occur. ?

?Common Humanity

The second element of self-compassion is recognition of common human experience. Compassion is by definition relational. It literally means “to suffer with”. Self-compassion honors the fact that all human being are fallible, that wrong choices and feelings of regret are inevitable, no matter how high and mighty one is.

Mindfulness

The third component of self-compassion is mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to the clear seeing and non-judgmental acceptance of what’s occurring in the present moment.

Our minds tend to focus on the failure itself, rather than on the pain caused by failure. The moment we see something about ourselves that we don’t like, our attention tends to become completely absorbed in the perceived flaws. We then don’t have the perspective needed to recognize the suffering caused by our feelings of imperfection, let alone to respond to them with compassion.

The most amazing gift of mindfulness is that it provides us with the opportunity to respond rather than simply react.

The Benefits of Self-Compassion

Emotional Resilience

Self-compassion is an incredibly powerful tool for dealing with difficult emotions; it provided emotional resilience and enhances well-being. Research found that people who are more self-compassionate tend to be less anxious and depressed.

Once our minds latch on to negative thoughts, they tend to repeat over and over again. This process is called “rumination”. It involves a recurrent, intrusive and uncontrollable style of thinking that can cause both depression and anxiety. Rumination about negative events in the past leads to depression, while rumination about potential negative events in the future leads to anxiety.

Self-Compassion and Emotional Intelligence

Self-compassion is a powerful form of emotional intelligence. People who are more self-compassionate have more emotional intelligence, meaning they have better emotional coping skills, and are better to maintain balance when flustered.

Self-compassion doesn’t eradicate pain or negative experiences; it just embraces them with kindness and give them space to transform on their own. Self-compassion is about accepting that life is painful, and we are all imperfect.

Only at that point it is possible to understand that happiness is not dependent on circumstances being exactly as we want them to be or on ourselves being exactly as we would like to be. Rather happiness stems from loving ourselves and our lives exactly as they are by knowing that joy and pain, strength and weakness, glory and failure are all essential to the full human experience.

Self-Compassion versus Self-Esteem

Self-compassion does not try to capture and define the worth or essence of who we are. Self-compassion honors the fact that all human beings have both strengths and weaknesses. Our successes and failures come and go; they neither define us, nor do they determine our worthiness. ?

Unlike self-esteem, the good feelings of self-compassion, do not depend on being special and above average or on meeting ideal goals. They come from caring about ourselves.

Rather than pitting ourselves against other people in an endless comparison game, we embrace what we share with others and feel more connected and whole in the process.

Self-compassion and self-esteem tend to go together. If you are self-compassionate, you will tend to have higher self-esteem. Like self-esteem, self-compassion is associated with significant less anxiety, and depression as well as more happiness, optimism and positive emotions.

As a result, self-compassionate people are better able to accept who they are regardless of the degree of praise they receive from others.

Motivation and Personal Growth

“The curios paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change” – Carl Rogers

Researchers who study motivation have found that our level of self-confidence has a dramatic impact on our ability to reach our goals. Because self-criticism tends to undermine self-efficacy beliefs, self-criticism may harm rather than help our ability to do our best. By constantly putting ourselves down, we eventually begin to lose faith in ourselves, meaning we are not able to go as far as we are capable of going.

Self-criticism must be somewhat effective as a motivator though, otherwise so many people would not do it. If self-criticism works at all, it is only for one reason: fear.

Because it is so unpleasant to be harshly criticized by ourselves when we fail, we become motivated by the desire to escape our own self-judgement.

This approach works to a certain degree, but it has some serious drawbacks. One of the biggest problems in using fear as a motivator, is that anxiety itself can undermine performances. Anxiety distracts people from the task at hand, interfering with their ability to focus and give their best.

Self-compassion is a more effective motivator than self-criticism, and this is because its driving force is love and not fear.

Love allows to feel confident and secure (by pumping up our oxytocin) while fear makes us feeling insecure (sending our amygdala into overdrive and flooding our system with cortisol). When we trust ourselves to be understanding and compassionate when we fail, we won’t cause ourselves unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Unlike self-criticism, which asks if you are good enough, self-compassion asks what’s good for you? Self-compassion taps into your inner desire to be healthy and happy. If you care about yourself, you will do what you need to do in order to learn and grow.

Many people are afraid they won’t be ambitious enough if they are compassionate about themselves, however research found that self-compassionate people are more oriented towards personal growth than those who continually criticize themselves. People with learning goals are intrinsically motivated by curiosity and the desire to develop new skills. Those with performance goals, on the other hand, are extrinsically motivated to defend or enhance their self-esteem. They want to do well so that others will approve of them and tend to avoid failure at all costs.

Self-Compassion in relation to others

Compassion for others

Research shows that having compassion for yourself is related to having compassion for others in certain context. Self-compassionate people are more likely to focus on helping ad encouraging their friends as well as being more compassionate towards their friends mistakes and weakness.

This is because when we stop judging and evaluating ourselves, we don’t need to worry much about others’ approval and can instead focus on meeting the emotional needs of others.

Having compassion for others, doesn’t just involve being responsive to their suffering; it also involves forgiving those who have hurt us.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean we stop protecting ourselves, it does mean though that we let go of the emotional retaliation of anger and bitterness, which only hurts ourselves in the long run.

Compassion engages our capacity for love, wisdom, and generosity. By being more understanding and accepting towards ourselves, we can be more understanding and accepting towards others. By honouring the limitations of our own human imperfection, we can be more forgiving of others’ mistakes.

Self-compassion Parenting

It is crucial that you don’t harshly criticize children or make them feel ashamed for not living up to your expectations: children of critical parents are more likely to lack self-compassion and suffer from anxiety and depression in adulthood.

Although it is true that parenting style in which children are never reprimanded can hinder a child’s growth and development, you can still set clear boundaries and correct problem behaviours in a kind, compassionate way. It is not just what you say that matters; equally important is your tone of voice. If your tone of voice conveys negative judgment even though your words are neutral, your child is still likely to feel inadequate and ashamed.

Self-Compassion and Love life

Research founds that self-compassionate people were described by their partners as being more accepting and non-judgmental than those who lacked self-compassion.

Rather than trying to change their partners, self-compassionate people tended to respect their partners’ opinions and consider their point of view. They were also described as being more caring, connected, affectionate, intimate and willing to talk over relationship problems than those who lacked self-compassion. They tended to encourage their partners to make their own decisions as opposed of being more controlling, trying to order their partners around and dominate them.

Self-compassion fosters feeling of mutuality in relationship so that the needs of self and others are balanced and integrated.

The Joy of Self-compassion

Self-compassion and Positive Psychology

Research shows that self-compassionate people experience more positive emotions in their lives – such as enthusiasm, interest, inspiration and excitement – than those who are self-critical. They also report being much happier. Ironically, even though self-compassion arises during experiences of suffering, it tends to create joyous mid-states. Again, self-compassion doesn’t erase negative feelings, it embraces them with care and kindness. Because self-compassion makes us feel centred, safe and connected, we can delight in what’s wonderful about our lives rather than dwelling on problems and limitations.

Self-Compassion and Self-Appreciation

When qualities of kindness, common humanity and mindfulness are applied towards the suffering of others, they manifest as compassion. When they are applied to our own suffering, they manifest as self-compassion. When they are directed towards others’ positive qualities, they manifest as sympathetic joy. When they are directed towards our own positive qualities, they manifest as self-appreciation.

Many of us focus much more on our weakness rather than on our strengths.

The sense of common humanity inherent in self-appreciation, means that we appreciate ourselves not because we are better than others, but because all people have goodness in them.

Appreciation for our good qualities is really an expression of gratitude for all that has shaped us both as individuals and as a species.

Self-appreciation embraces all that is good, both internally and externally.

Research shows that people can boost their happiness levels significantly by changing the way they relate to their lives. In other words, it is not so much what happens to you, but your attitude towards what happens that matter.

Research found that many factors make a difference in maximising happiness. Some of the most important are being grateful for what you have, looking at the bright side of difficult situations, not comparing yourself to others, practising acts of kindness, being mindful and savouring joy. All those factors fall withing the larger concept of self-compassion.

Researchers define gratitude as recognising and acknowledging the gifts we are given, either by other people, God or by life itself. Studies show that grateful individual tend to feel happier, hopeful, vital and satisfied with their lives, while being less materialistic and envious of other’s success.

It appear that gratitude changes both our emotional and physical experience for the better.

Keeping a daily gratitude journal is one of the best and most reliable ways to increase happiness.

Self-Compassion Practices

Keeping a Self-Compassion Journal

Journaling is an effective way to express emotions and has been found to enhance both physical and mental health.

At some point in the evening review the days’ events.

In the journal you can write anything you felt bad about, anything you judge yourself for, or any difficult experience than caused you pain.

For each event, use mindfulness, a sense of common humanity and kindness to process the event in a self -compassionate way.

Mindfulness

This is mainly about bringing awareness to the painful emotions that rose due to your self-judgement or difficult circumstances. Write about how you felt.

As you write, try to be accepting and non-judgemental of your own experience.

Common Humanity

Write down the ways in which your experience was connected to the larger human experience. This might include acknowledging that being human means being imperfect and that all people have these sorts of painful experiences (“Everyone overreact sometimes, it’s only human”)

Self-kindness

Write yourself some kind, understanding words of comfort. Let yourself know that you care about yourself, adopting a gentle, reassuring tone. Something long the line “it’s OK. You messed up, it is not the end of the world. I know how much you value being kind to other people and how badly you feel about that right now”)

Changing your critical self-talk

This is an exercise that should be done over a number of weeks and will eventually form the blueprint for changing how we relate to ourselves in the long-term.

Step 1: The first step toward changing the way you treat yourself is to notice when you are being self-critical. Try to be as accurate as possible, noting your inner verbatim. ?

Step 2: Make an active effort to soften the self-critical voice., but do that with self-compassion, rather than with self-judgement.

Step 3: Re-frame the observations made by your inner critic in a kind, friendly and positive way. If struggling with the right words to use, you might want to imagine what a compassionate friend would say to you in this situation. While engaging in a supportive self-talk, try gently stroking your arms. This physical gesture of warmth can tap into the caregiving system, releasing oxytocin, which will then help changing your biochemistry. ?

We have the power to live with joy and contentment by responding to our suffering with kindness.

Cultivating Loving-kindness

Love-kindness meditation is a traditional Buddhist practice designed to develop good-will towards ourselves and others. Phrases that invoke benevolent feelings are repeated silently and are aimed at various targets.

A variant of the traditional loving-kindness phrases which targets the feeling of compassion and suffering more directly and helps people generate more self-compassion, is given below:

• May I be safe
• May I be peaceful
• May I be kind to myself
• May I accept myself as I am
• May I accept my life as is.

It is key to recognize that love-kindness practice works on the level of intention. This is not a wishful thinking exercise, nor it is about ignoring the reality that suffering exists. The idea is that by cultivating the intention for us and others to experience well-being, corresponding feeling of love, concerns and compassion will eventually arise.

Developing a self-compassionate mantra

A self-compassion mantra is a set of memorized phrases that are repeated silently whenever you want to give yourself compassion.

They are most useful in the heat of the moment, whenever a strong feeling of distress arise.

Example of a mantra:

• This is a moment of suffering (mindfulness component – awareness of being in pain)
• Suffering is part of life (connected humanity – remind that imperfection is a shared human condition)
• May I be kind to myself in this moment (self-kindness help bringing the sense of caring)
• May I give myself the compassion I need (set the intention to be self-compassionate and remind yourself you are worthy of receiving self-compassion)

Dealing with Difficult Emotions in the Body: Soften, Soothe, Allow

The next time that you experience a difficult emotion, try processing the emotion in your body by trying to locate the difficult feeling in the body (e.g. your head, your stomach?).

Once you feel in touch with the painful emotion in your body, send it compassion, buy telling yourself how difficult it is to feel this right now, and let yourself know that you are concerned about your well-being. If you find yourself carried away by thinking about the situation driving your painful feeling, bring your awareness back to the physical sensation in your body. Remind yourself to accept the feeling as it is, softening any resistance to it while actively soothing and consoling yourself for any discomfort you feel.

With practice, you will find yourself able to cope with difficult situations without having to delve deeply into thinking or problem -solving mode.