Self-Compassion, How Not To Be Hard On Yourself
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for Self-Compassion
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How To Have Self-Compassion
The practice of self-compassion has been gaining increasing interest recently. You may have heard about self-compassion through the work of Dr Kristin Neff, who is a pioneering self-compassion teacher, author and researcher. But what exactly is Self-compassion and how do we tap into it as a powerful resource?
Before we dive straight into self-compassion, I want to start with compassion itself and talk about some of the neurobiology of compassion. Compassion is often the bridge to self-compassion, as many of us find it easier to start with compassion for others.
Compassion is often thought of as being nice or kind, but it is so much more than this. Compassion is also about protecting and defending one another, it’s at the heart of what it means to be human and crucial to our survival and evolution.
One of the benefits of compassion is that it allows us to inhibit some of the fear circuity in our brains. By accessing our compassion we help our nervous system learn how to tolerate some of the challenging or difficult things that cause pain. We also activate the caregiving and reward circuitry in our brains, which means that we may still feel fear and stress, but our caregiving ability actually increases. In this way, compassion is much like courage.
There are four specific ways that the act of compassion can support and benefit us.
1. Compassion inhibits fear and activates our courage
2. Compassion shifts some of the dynamics in our brains allowing us to manage difficult emotions
3. Compassion changes the body through the vagus nerve and helps lower stress
4. Compassion improves emotional health and psycho-social functioning
When our compassion is activated we start to become aware that something is wrong. That little alarm sounds in our brain indicating that something is not right. If we lean into our compassion, we begin to feel a sense of connectedness and care. We feel motivated to do something. Our motivations then gives rise to the desire to take action whilst inhibiting our fear and stress. We believe we can make a difference and we are motivated to do so.
Compassion allows parts of the nervous system to change the fight/freeze response into caregiving. The vagus nerve talks to the heart and in doing so produces oxytocin and progesterone, calming our stress response. We can feel calm, grounded and ready to respond.
Compassion is the skill that allows us to turn towards another person's suffering or pain and not be overwhelmed with it. Compassion transforms our stress responses so that in the future instead of avoiding or escaping painful emotions or challenges we are more able to address and deal with what comes up as well as find resilience to recover from setbacks.
In our willingness to turn towards suffering we invoke courage. We are willing to be present with pain, suffering and challenge because we believe that we can transform a terrible situation into something we can work with. The added benefit of compassion, is that when we activate our compassion we also receive that wonderful warm energy or afterglow that comes with giving compassion to another person. This is that activated state of courage that supports us to be with distress and is what makes caring for others feel so good!
How to be compassionate with others
So how can we display our compassion towards others? What if we dont know what to do?
Firstly, compassion is rarely about “fixing” or giving advice, rather it’s about ‘being with’ (Read more about what it looks like to be with or hold space for someone). Being with someone focuses on helping another person be with their feelings and emotions so that they can integrate them.
So how do we display our compassion in a way that is supportive? We can start by connecting to our motivation and intention. You can silently say to yourself “I’m here to help this person tolerate their distress and uncertainty at this moment” or “I am here to help, what can I do”. Sit with your intention and motivation and open yourself up to compassion. When you start to do this you will also change your physiology.
This allows you to:
Read the emotional cues and expressions on a persons face.
Take in the perspective of the other person
Stay with the other person and what is happening for them
Supports the feeling of hope and that there can be a shift and or positive outcome.
A wise and compassionate response will always be an inquiry of the other person. Simply asking what you can do for another person or what they might need right now is an empathic way to support another person.
What is Self-Compassion?
Now that you know a little about compassion let’s explore self-compassion. We can define self-compassion as being kind and understanding when we are confronted with our perceived personal failings or challenges. Rather simply, self-compassion is to have empathy for our own distress.
The challenge we often face is that we find we can more easily demonstrate compassion for others, rather than giving it to ourselves. The skill of self-compassion is about learning to turn inwards and developing more empathy. By developing self-compassion we build on our inner strength and emotional resilience.
If we break down self-compassion, we can see that 3 key elements are needed.
The three elements of self-compassion
1.Mindfulness: A willingness to see our situation from an objective perspective. With mindfulness, we can develop awareness and observe our negative thoughts and emotions with openness and clarity. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state where we can observe our thoughts and feelings, without trying to suppress or deny them.
2. Common Humanity: To recognise that the experiences we have are common to all human beings. Our suffering and feelings of unworthiness or not being good enough are a part of the shared human experience we all face vs something I go through alone.
3. Self-kindness: Being able to treat ourselves kindly. Being kind with ourselves is accepting that we are perfectly imperfect.
It is the ability to treat ourselves gently in moments of difficulty or perceived failure, rather than responding from a place of fear or anger.
Why Self-compassion is an important practice to cultivate
Self-compassion is really useful when we find ourselves berating or criticising ourselves, for worry or rumination, particularly when we blame or judge ourselves and also definitely great for comparison.
Self-compassion is like a muscle, it needs to be developed.
Depending on our early experiences in our families, the relationships we had as adults and our experiences in the world, we might not have had self-compassion modelled for us and in turn not developed a strong” self-compassion muscle”. The practice of self-compassion is important as it is a skill or a resource we can draw on when we go face difficulty or challenge.
Neuroscience research also highlights some additional benefits.
Benefits of self-compassion
A powerful resource of inner strength
Decreases anxiety, depression and stress
Lowers worry and rumination
Helps us to develop emotional resilience
enhances our wellbeing, happiness and autonomy
Acts as a preventive strategy to avoid self-criticism and low self-esteem
3 ways to develop and increase your self-compassion
1. Meditation
Meditation is a wonderful way to develop mindfulness, which is one of the elements that make up self-compassion. When we practice meditation we can develop mindfulness and self-awareness. Meditation also has the added benefit of helping us to flex our nervous system and bring in more peace and calm to our experience. You can access my free meditation on compassion and self-compassion which can help you in being compassionate in challenging situations as well as helping you mind self-compassion for yourself.
2. Common humanity
Sometimes it can be a simple shift in our perspective that supports us in creating change. Recognising that we are not alone in our experiences and suffering is an important part of the puzzle. Being able to name that we are not alone and that others also experience the same challenges we do, can help us when we face challenging situations or experiences of pain and suffering. Sometimes we have resistance to changing our perspectives and it can be helpful to talk through our challenges in therapy or with other supportive mentors and guides who can help us move through resistance and shift our perspective.
3.Self-kindness.
Again practising self-kindness may be an unfamiliar skill. The good news is, it is something we can learn and with practice cultivate more of. There are simple things we can do by affording ourselves the same kindness we give others. We can start by changing the dialogue we have with ourselves and speaking with ourselves in a kind, gentle and loving way. One way to do this is to imagine how we would speak to a close friend of someone we care about. By creating a self-compassion “script” we can also have go to words that are supportive of us when we are critiquing ourselves or giving ourselves a really hard time.
One phrase that I particularly enjoy is
“May I be helpful, not harmful to myself in this moment.”
You may also like to use the Buddhist Metta meditation: May I be healthy and strong. May I be happy. May I be filled with ease.
Want to learn more about self-compassion?
If you are interested in learning more about the skill of self-compassion and loving-kindness I have created a short online mini-course on Self-Compassion. This course can be done in 5 days and includes a self-compassion meditation + practical exercises to support you. You can access the course for $11 HERE.