3 strategies to cultivate self-compassion
3 strategies to cultivate
self-compassion
It’s the inescapable bully that has haunted you since middle school, or perhaps even earlier. It taunts you about your body, the way you keep your home, or criticizes your efforts at work.
Everywhere you go, the voice follows. It feels as though there’s no getting away from it…
Of course, the voice is you.
why is
self-compassion is so damn hard?
That damn voice has been honed over time, across experiences and eras of your life. This is the inner critic, our own personal bully, or our internal drill sergeant.
This voice or part plays an important role; we often subconsciously believe that if we weren’t absolutely eagle-eyed towards our own perceived flaws and quick with our own internal judgments we could really go off the rails.
As painful as this voice is, we seem to believe that our lives would be more difficult, less disciplined, or even that we are doomed without it.
For many of us, this belief that being hyper-critical of ourselves was reinforced by messages from the rest of our world. But the tides seem to be shifting all over our culture.
Parents are learning that punishments rarely seem to tame their teenagers wild behavior, dog owners have embraced positive training methods, and the social science research on self-compassion is clear:
the way we talk to and think about ourselves impacts our mood and sense of well-being.
Moreover, the inner critic in our heads that we employ to beat ourselves up—before anyone else might have the chance to—isn’t as effective or useful as we think it is.
In fact, the research on negative self-judgment shows that when we put ourselves down, we are making life more painful for ourselves and it increases our suffering.
reducing suffering through
self-compassion
I am often humbled and in awe when witnessing the compassion of the people I work with. They are often so generous, forgiving, and understanding of others in their lives. And yet, this well of compassion runs dry when they try to be compassionate towards themselves.
This is a stuck place for many of us.
Compassion is a muscle we regularly exercise when it comes to others in our lives, but something we rarely practice with ourselves. As with all new skills or strategies, it often feels awkward, unfamiliar, false, weird, or hokey. So awkward that it might even feel uncomfortable.
But that’s how learning works!
When we learn anything new, it often brings up feelings of discomfort, vulnerability, and awkwardness. This is especially true in adulthood, where we try to build lives safe from discomfort or change.
As you begin to exercise this new muscle of self-compassion, know that it’s going to be uncomfortable and might feel undeserved or weird or wrong—that’s fine! it’s expected even—and do it anyway!
We have to feel the discomfort so that we can reap the benefits of compassion, because it’s not just everyone else in your life who deserves your compassion, you deserve it too.
And if you doubt that you deserve any compassion? You deserve it even more! That’s the thing about compassion, there are no boxes to check or hoops to jump through or exclusions; we give it freely, to all beings engaged in the messy business of life.
As Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist monk is often-quoted as saying:
“if your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete”
So if you want to increase self-compassion, how the heck do you even start?
strategies for increasing
self-compassion
We don’t need to wait for the perfect moment or feel like we deserve compassion or understanding before we can begin practicing self-compassion.
Self-compassion is not a reward we give ourselves when we feel particularly deserving, it is a need that we meet, when we think we deserve it and especially when we feel we don’t.
We begin by simply being willing to tune into and notice our experience: our thoughts, our feelings, the sensations we notice in our body, and especially any judgments that may come up from doing so.
strategy 1: talk to yourself like someone you love
When judgement inevitably comes up, we can choose to respond to ourselves compassionately, like we might with a family member or a friend.
Some people find responding to their inner critic like they would to a small child (“that’s mean!) or a loved one can be helpful. Most of us would never dare talk to another person the way we casually talk to ourselves. And we certainly wouldn’t put up with it if other people called us the kinds of things we call ourselves!
If your best friend was struggling, how would you talk to her? What would your voice sound like? Soft and comforting? Understanding? Would you be accepting of her and her experiences, her humanity? Would you validate her feelings or would you try and make her feel worse? Talk to yourself like you would a loved one.
Alternatively, you could view yourself like your favorite character from a book or tv show; full of flaws and yet still inherently lovable. The internet is full of long think-pieces of fans lovingly dissecting the choices of their faves, not shaming them, but rather seeking to understand them. What if you treated yourself like a fan--or stan?--does? With acceptance, understanding, and perhaps even admiration?
In addition to talking to yourself in your mind like you would a loved one or your faves, there are a few other strategies to highlight.
strategy 2: catch and replace judgmental thoughts
When we begin to notice our judgmental thoughts, we can practice self-compassion (“self-compassion is a practice and I’m learning how to do this. Judgement happens, though it’s not helpful, what would be more helpful?) and try to replace the judgment with more neutral statements or ideas.
For instance, perhaps you missed a deadline at work, the inner critic starts in with, “you’re such an idiot! How could you blow this?”
Before you begin to beat yourself up for beating yourself up (God! I’m so bad at this non-judgmental thing!) pause, recognize changing patterns is hard (“Learning to be more compassionate is a process, it won’t happen overnight!”).
Then see if you can reword that same initial thought from the inner critic in a more neutral-just the facts-absent judgment way (I missed the deadline for the presentation and I’m feeling anxious and frustrated.”) Take care to not judge yourself for judging--that’s a never ending trap!
Our judgments are so heavy, and we can lighten situations when we practice replacing them with more neutral descriptions of events.
strategy 3: use validation to increase self-compassion
Validation is an important part of compassion. When we validate something we acknowledge the truth in it and demonstrate that it makes sense. Essentially when we are validating we are seeking to understand. We seek to understand the feeling, thought, or behavior in context and recognize that if we dig down deep, it makes sense that someone would feel/think/or act in a certain way--even if we might ultimately disagree with the feeling/thought/action.
We can practice being compassionate with ourselves through validation. As in the examples used above--is the reason you missed the deadline at work because of the raging insomnia you’ve been experiencing or because your kid has been home sick from school?
All behavior has causes. When we are validating ourselves, we try to non-judgmentally understand what might be contributing to our thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. If we zoomed out our perspective, we’d likely see the cause and effect patterns that we tend to see in others that causes us to respond with understanding and compassion. Try to zoom out on yourself and see if doing so increases your understanding of and compassion for yourself.
putting self-compassion into practice with loving kindness/metta meditation
Another way to practice being more compassionate towards ourselves is to practice metta or loving-kindness meditation. You may have come across a version of loving kindness meditation in a yoga class (I did—shoutout for the amazing Donna Rae Jones!) or on youtube. Metta meditation comes out of the Buddhist tradition and aims to increase compassion for all beings--including ourselves.
As a guided meditation it can be a few quick minutes or it can be a longer, more involved meditation. Frequent metta meditation has been found to have positive effects on participants' sense of well-being and compassion for others and themselves. Check out a few of my favorite loving kindness meditations.
Making an intention to practice loving kindness is a great way to start incorporating more self-compassion in your life. And if you find it a struggle—look!—you have another opportunity to practice self-compassion too ;)
self-compassion as needed and necessary
Life is hard. Like really hard. And seems to get more difficult with each passing day, month, and year. Being hard on ourselves achieves nothing besides more shame. Self-compassion is the antidote to a life filled full of shame.
Self-compassion is necessary and needed for us all.
If you’re noticing that you need less judgment and more self-compassion and you’re interested in working together, reach out here.