EXERCISE 1.1

Self-Regard

Lighten Up with Self-Compassion

Purpose

To recognize the power of being compassionate with oneself.

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60 minutes

Participants discuss what it means to be self-compassionate rather than being personally judgmental and harsh. They reflect on their own behaviors by working through the handout and then talk with others to support personal understanding and taking action for positive change.

Outcomes

Audience

Facilitator Competencies image

Moderate

Materials

Time Matrix

Activity Estimated Time
Discuss benefits and challenges of self-compassion 10 minutes
Distribute handout and ask them to fill it in 15 minutes
Get in pairs and discuss their reflections 20 minutes
Discuss as a whole group, including action steps 15 minutes
Total Time 60 minutes

Instructions

1. Discuss key aspects of self-compassion, including the following:

Ask: Do you treat yourself as well as you treat others you care about? Treating ourselves with kindness can bring big benefits, including the much sought after goal of losing weight, as well as possibly less depression and anxiety. Surely a positive interaction with oneself supports the EI skills of happiness and optimism, and this includes the way we talk to ourselves internally. What kind of self-talk do you engage in when you are feeling discouraged? Angry? What messages do you give yourself when you are successful and life is a breeze? Sometimes a significant challenge to our self-regard can be that we don’t remember to speak positively to ourselves and about ourselves when life is going well, but critical internal voices are almost automatic!

A study titled “An Examination of Self-Compassion in Relation to Positive Psychological Functioning and Personality Traits” by Neff, Rude, and Kirkpatrick (2007) examines the relation of self-compassion to positive psychological health and the five-factor model of personality. Self-compassion entails being kind toward oneself in instances of pain or failure; perceiving one’s experiences as part of the larger human experience; and holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness. The study found that self-compassion had a significant positive association with self-reported measures of happiness, optimism, positive affect, wisdom, personal initiative, curiosity and exploration, agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness. It also found a significant negative association with negative affect and neuroticism. Self-compassion predicted significant variance in positive psychological health beyond that attributable to personality.

Ask: What are the obstacles to self- compassion? Give your participants time to discuss. One component is fear. Many believe if they are kind to themselves they will become self-indulgent and lose their motivation. Yet the opposite seems to be the truth. What do you think about this? Have you ever been afraid to be kind to yourself? Is it a deeply ingrained habit to be self-critical? What if you changed your self-talk and emphasized compassion instead?

2. Give each person the Lighten Up Handout and ask them to take fifteen minutes to reflect on how much compassion they give themselves.

3. Then ask them to form pairs and discuss their reflections and desired changes.

4. Bring the full group together to discuss. Emphasize the importance of making sustainable change by committing to specific actions and a time frame. Remind your clients that it helps to agree to tell someone else periodically about your successes and challenges. Often it’s what is scheduled that gets done. Thus, scheduling a talk about your progress in being more self-compassionate can help you actually take those positive steps.

LIGHTEN UP WITH SELF-COMPASSION HANDOUT image

Think of a time you were recently kind to yourself. Write about what happened and what kind of self-talk you engaged in. Why were you kind? How would the outcome and your self-concept be different if you had been unkind?

Think of a time you were recently unkind to yourself. Write about what happened and what messages you gave yourself. Why were you unkind? How would the outcome and your self-concept be different if you had been kind?