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Self-compassion, do you have it?
Building on certain Buddhist principles, psychologists are learning that being kind to yourself can bolster resilience levels, act as a buffer against stress and even improve relationships!
Self-compassion involves treating yourself to the same kindness and understanding that you would give to friend. This trait has been found to increase the motivation required to persist in a task after any initial failure and even seems to enhance our resilience to challenging or traumatic events.
Which of these statements apply to you?
- I can see my failings as part of the human condition.
- When I’m going through a tough time, I recognise the need to maintain my balance, emotionally.
- I do my best to understand and be patient towards those aspects of my personality that I don’t like.
- When I fail at something important to me, I become consumed with feelings of inadequacy.
- When I’m feeling down, I tend to feel as though most people must be happier me.
- I am quite disapproving and judgemental about my own flaws and limitations.
The above is a small sample, taken from the full-length assessment tool. As you may have guessed, the first three statements are typically associated with people demonstrating highs level of self-compassion, whilst the bottom three are linked to people possessing low levels of self-compassion.
Research indicates that most self-destructive behaviour stems from growing up with intense parental pressure to excel, pressure that may have taken the form of emotional or even physical abuse. Anxiety and depression may also find their root causes here. People who struggle being kind to themselves may, ironically, find it easy to be kind to others. They tend to hold themselves to much higher standards than they would expect of anyone else. Developing self-compassion for these people will do wonders in terms of finding peace of mind and harmony in relationships as the process allows them to recognise and accept their own feelings rather than challenging themselves to always do better.
In the past few years, the concept of self-compassion has become much more mainstream, so much so that compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is hailed now as the intervention of choice!
If you’re one of those people who keeps giving yourself a hard time and doesn’t know what to do about it, give yourself a break and take a look at the tips below on how to cultivate some real self-compassion:
- Realise self-flagellation does nothing to help achieve your goals, in fact it holds you back.
- If self-compassion scares you, perhaps because of some past abuse, consider turning to a trained counsellor in CFT, compassion-focused therapy.
- If you are an employer, parent or teacher, remember to strike a balance between celebrating achievements and providing an opportunity to accept mistakes as part of the process of improvement or learning.
- Everyone is different, so explore which self-compassion practices you want to focus on: is it your inner dialogue and self-talk that needs to change, or is it that you need to find a way to become better disciplined so that you actually find time for that long, hot soak in the bath?
- And lastly, if you’re struggling with these, or any other, self-compassion exercises, be patient and more forgiving with yourself, even if that means NOT practising self-compassion at all!?!