What is Self-Compassion?
“You know my whole life I focused on treating others how I would want to be treated. I’m just now realizing that I need to treat myself how I treat others.”
Anonymous Training Participant
Have you ever noticed how critical a friend is of themselves after they make a mistake? As a friend you can listen, provide support, and remind them they are a good person. While it’s often easy to extend this care to our loved ones, it can be extremely difficult to show ourselves the same care in tough situations.
In her book ‘Onward,’ Elena Augilar explains, “Compassion is how you respond in the face of someone’s suffering. You cannot proclaim love and care for others without extending that to yourself. If you don’t feel that you deserve to be free from suffering, how can you believe that your compassion for others is true? Is their suffering justified at times? It would seem that if you aspire to hold compassion for all, you must include yourself among the “all.”’
The idea that Aguilar was explaining is called self-compassion. Dr. Kristin Neff is one of the world’s leading researchers on self-compassion. In her work, she identifies three components of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
Self-kindness: Treating ourselves with the same kindness and understanding that we would treat a friend.
Common humanity: Recognizing that suffering is part of the human experience and that we are not alone in our struggles.
Mindfulness: Observing our thoughts and feelings with kindness and curiosity, without judgment.
When I explain the concept of self-compassion, sometimes people interpret the idea as “being soft” or not holding ourselves accountable for wrongdoing. We always want to be accountable for our mistakes, but the reality is we often go too far. We beat ourselves up and ruminate on the mistakes we make over and over. Instead, approaching our errors with self-compassion allows us to cope more easily with difficult emotions, learn from our mistakes, and be resilient in the face of challenges.
Many of the clients that we see at The Haven Wellness Center have experienced trauma. Trauma changes our brain and our nervous system responses. It increases how quickly we move into a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. Often it makes it more likely that we view ourselves through a lens of self-criticism or shame. For those that have experienced trauma, self-compassion may be especially challenging. However, once we are able to practice it well it can be particularly powerful because it allows us to remember our own worthiness and also create some distance from overwhelming emotions.
Whether you have experienced trauma or are just working to become kinder to yourself, we can all benefit from practicing self-compassion. Being kinder to ourselves helps us to show up more fully and more capably to face the struggles of being human.
If you are interested in learning more about self-compassion, check on this article here:
The Five Myths of Self-Compassion
Interested in building your own self-compassion skills?
Try out a self-compassion journaling exercise here: Self-Compassion Exercise 1: How would you treat a friend?
Until we see you,
Tara & The Haven Team
