A couple years ago I taught an eight-week course on self-compassion. During the first meeting, I asked each of the 19 persons to introduce themselves and to talk briefly about why they decided to take this course.
One person said, “I want to be the kind of friend to myself that I am to my friends.” This connects so well with a common definition of self-compassion: the extension of kindness, care, warmth, and understanding (vs. self-criticism ) toward oneself when faced with one’s shortcomings, inadequacies, or failures.
Dalai Lama
When I teach the loving-kindness or compassion meditations, so many people say that they find it relatively easy to say “May you be happy, peaceful, free, etc.” to a loved one, to a friend, even to a neutral person, but really struggle to say this to themselves. This is actually very common.
Over thirty years ago, the Dalai Lama was speaking in Dharmsala, India (his official residence) to a group of philosophers, psychologists, scientists, and meditation teachers. Sharon Salzberg, a well-known meditation teacher, asked him to talk about self-hatred. The Dalai Lama was baffled by the question, asked for elaboration, talked with his translator, and basically said that he didn’t understand that because Tibetans don’t do that to themselves.
A crucial point from this story is that this phenomenon, which is so common in the United States, is not universal; it’s not part of human nature. It’s a conditioned response which is good news: that which has been conditioned can be changed.
Self-compassion and self-esteem
Before I describe three practices that Kristin Neff has developed to help develop more self-compassion, I want to share what she has written about distinguishing self-compassion from self-esteem.
Self-esteem is a positive evaluation of self-worth.
Self-compassion isn’t a judgment. It is a way of relating to how/who we are with kindness and acceptance, especially when we fail or feel inadequate.
Self-esteem often requires feeling better than others or comparing ourselves: better or worse.
Self-compassion acknowledges that we are all imperfect.
Self-esteem tends to desert us when we fail or make a fool of ourselves.
Self-compassion is always available. Self-compassion is less contingent on conditions like physical attractiveness or successful performance and it provides a more stable sense of self-worth over time.
Stimulus-response and fight-flight-freeze
Before getting into the three practices that Kristen offers, I want to situate these practices in mindfulness and basic psychology.
Mindfulness has been described as being able to have more space between stimulus and response, which happens throughout the day.
A simple example:
Stimulus—see the snow outside,
Response—contentment and fond memories or “I hate the winter. Wake me up when it’s spring.”
When we are faced with our shortcomings or weaknesses,
(1) there is a stimulus: we said something stupid, we were not helpful to a friend, we got a poor rating at work, etc.
(2) there is a response. Self-compassion practices can be helpful when the response is negative.
Kristen describes three kinds of negative responses: fight (self-criticism), flight (isolation), or freeze (rumination).
The three practices
Self-kindness when we’re stuck in fight mode
Fight means we jump right away to self-criticism which involves focusing on our faults, the negative aspects of what we did or said. Instead of recognizing and accepting imperfection, we jump to “bad dog “ and “I’m a bad person.”
Mindful acceptance involves self-assessment: gathering information, investigating, examining. That is, we want this self-assessment to be accurate, which enables us to see clearly.
Self-kindness practices
Put your hand over your heart, feel the warmth of your hand and the gentle touch of your hand on your chest. Take a few breaths.
Acknowledge that you are suffering and see if you can treat yourself with as much kindness as you would a dear friend or child who was struggling. Say to yourself phrases like: May I be kind to myself. May I love and accept myself just as I am.
Common humanity when we’re stuck in flight mode
Flight means that we are isolating, withdrawing, feeling alone. In doing so, we literally sever our connection with other humans. Common humanity involves seeing our life experiences as part of the larger human experience.
Kristen offers phrases that can be helpful:
• Other people feel and have felt this way.
• Millions of people have done or said something stupid today, have forgotten to do something they should have done, etc.
• I’m not alone.
• We all struggle in our lives.
Mindfulness when we’re stuck in freeze mode
Freeze involves rumination, going over and over in our mind what we did. It’s like driving a car that is stuck in the mud on a dirt road and spinning the wheels which only makes the rut deeper.
We begin to identify with what we have done and our language reinforces this: “I am a selfish, inconsiderate person” as opposed to “that was pretty selfish or inconsiderate of me. What happened?”
Kristen points out that when we over-identify with feelings, we start to treat them as permanent states that take control. However, we likely have many other feelings even when we have these afflictive emotions. But over-identifying with one emotion sends the others to the background.
Mindfulness allows us to “be” with powerful feelings as they are; it’s an alternative to suppressing, denying, distracting oneself. Mindfulness is bringing an interested and kind awareness to what is happening. It can be as simple as taking a few breaths mindfully, bringing mindful awareness to prominent sensations in your body, or pausing to bring an open awareness to the information that’s coming in through your eyes, ears, body, and mind.
When we do this, the action that prompted us to beat ourselves up returns to it’s proper size. Referring to the making mountains out of molehills metaphor , we turn that mountain back into the molehill. Referring to the pouring gasoline on the fire metaphor, we realize that we are pouring gasoline on this fire, and instead we pour water or at least stop pouring gasoline.
Resources
If you struggle with self-compassion, I recommend Kristen’s website: self-compassion.org where you can find many excellent resources, including practices, guided meditation, articles, and more.
I highly recommend a book she wrote with Chris Germer: The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook.
She also wrote an excellent article which you can read by Googling the title: “The 5 Myths of Self-Compassion”