Self-compassion

“You’ve been criticising yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”  Louise Hay

This week’s topic for discussion is self-compassion and this can be a difficult thing for many of us and for many reasons.

Cambridge dictionary provides this meaning of compassion; a strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for the suffering or bad luck of others and a wish to help them.

Therefore, self-compassion is being aware of our own pain and suffering and being able to direct the care and kindness to yourself.

As humans, we are wired negatively and this means that when something happens to us, we revert back to this negative mode as a form of survival.  It can be difficult to be kind and caring whilst feeling under threat. 

We may have grown up in an environment that did not encourage being compassionate to ourselves.  Not knowing that it is possible to be kind and caring to yourself is a much-needed option at times.

For me, self-compassion is the ability to soothe and care for myself when life goes pear shaped.  It is the first step in healing and often occurs after an event in which I have been hurt.  It usually begins with the ability to laugh at my errors and not belt myself up over the mistake I made.  Being kind, rather than judgemental and realising that all humans make mistakes along the way.

Whilst researching about self-compassion, I came across the work of Dr Kristen Neff – in which she describes three parts of compassion: mindfulness, common humanity and kindness.  She describes self-compassion as doing a U turn and turning what you would provide to a friend to yourself.  Learning that life does have its frustration, and we are all human, mistakes will be made along the way.  The ability to self soothe and be kind (self-compassion) allows us a healthier and happier life along the way, despite our failings of being human!