Wholeness Healing Center

The Gift of Self-Compassion

Self-Compassion, according to researcher and expert Dr. Kristin Neff in her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself (2011) is learning to treat ourselves with the same consideration, kindness, and compassion that we would provide to a close friend—or even a complete stranger, for that matter—is the foundation of self-compassion. Unfortunately, though, we treat ourselves far worse than we do practically everyone else.

Neff elaborates by saying, “First, it requires that we stop to recognize our own suffering. We cannot be moved by our own pain if we don’t even acknowledge that it exists in the first place” (Neff p. 10). This concept, of course, is easier said than done. Recognizing hurt feelings cannot occur if a person is rushed and cannot take the time to sit with those emotions. We must set aside time to slow down and notice our feelings. It also means there needs to be a capacity for experiencing those painful emotions, which some of us have not had demonstrated in our upbringing and therefore we must acquire those abilities through intentional self-exploration and with the aid of therapy. In American culture, we are often taught to be tough, shake it off, or pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Values such as these can also interfere with the acknowledgement of painful emotions.

We may finally stop questioning ourselves, “Am I as good as they are?” because self-compassion offers a haven of peace and quiet away from the raging waves of unending positive and negative self-judgment. Am I adequate? We have the resources at our fingertips to provide ourselves the kind, encouraging care we so desperately need (Neff p. 9).

To work towards self-compassion, Neff provided an exercise to grow these skills: Consider a quality that is a key component of your self-definition and for which you frequently criticize yourself. For instance, you might believe that you are a shy, lazy, irate, and so forth person.

Next, pose the following queries to yourself: How frequently—frequently, occasionally, or mostly—do you exhibit this trait? When you don’t exhibit the trait, who are you? Are you still who you are?

Does the feature appear to be evoked in specific situations? What complex factors—such as early familial experiences, life circumstances, etc.—led to the trait’s emergence in the first place?

Did you decide to possess this trait, and do you have a lot of control over whether or not you exhibit it?

What occurs if you reinterpret your self-description so that the feature is no longer how you define yourself? For instance, what happens if you say “sometimes, in certain circumstances, I get angry” rather than “I’m an angry person”? Does anything change if you don’t identify with this trait as much? (Neff, p. 13-14)

Self-compassion offers the sense of community required to genuinely flourish and realize our full potential by acknowledging the commonality of our imperfections. We can directly meet our wants for acceptance and belonging by looking within rather than searching outside of ourselves (Neff, p.7).

Works Cited
Neff, Kristin. (2011) Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. New York: HarperCollins.