You yourself, more than anyone else in the universe, deserve your kindness and affection.
—Buddha
One thing we have noticed in our years of working with depressed people is that they are pretty hard on themselves, much harder than the average person, and often at points in their lives when they most need to be nurtured rather than neglected or scolded. Adopting a harsh, self-critical stance when you suffer some type of life setback not only adds insult to injury, but it also can promote long-term sadness and suffering. You’ll recall that rumination is a central experience in depression that involves replaying personal failures and life setbacks over and over again, all the while analyzing your personal flaws, comparing yourself with others and finding yourself lacking, and obsessing about your inability to control your depression. In other words, rumination involves being unkind to yourself.
The alternative, as the Buddha observed, is to treat yourself with gentleness and affection. This is what we like to call self-compassion. When you treat yourself with kindness, you are more able to soften around any emotional pain you are experiencing in the moment. You can relax instead of struggle, knowing in your heart of hearts that failure is just a part of our life tapestry and that there are moments of joy and brief flashes of peace that come into our lives even when life has been very hard on us. With this stance of self-nurturing as the focus, we are more able to notice when the harsh, self-critical narratives of reactive mind show up, as they may do even when positive things happen in life.
For example, when you meet someone new and have the thought that you could become good friends, your reactive mind might immediately say something like, “You are socially awkward, so don’t get your hopes up.” You instantly feel a pang of loneliness and sadness inside, maybe remembering other times when you’ve felt left out, as the pain swells. At this exact moment of pain, you can wrap yourself in the cloak of softness, kindness, and affection for yourself. If you develop these self-compassion skills, you can respond more effectively to the provocations of reactive mind, the reasons it gives, and the familiar lines from your old self-story that could lead you down the path of avoidance. You might instead treat yourself with kindness in a situation like this and say, “Being socially awkward doesn’t make me unlovable. I am genuine and that is a nice quality in a friend. Most everyone worries about being liked and accepted by others, and I am no exception.”
Over and over, life will bring out your imperfections and put them on display for you and others to see. You may be irritable and short-tempered with your children, your spouse, or parents. You might find yourself making excuses so that you can avoid a family get-together, or you back out on a date night with your partner. In this chapter, we teach you to treat yourself with kindness and affection, in hard times and easy times, when you act in accordance with your values and when you do not. Treating yourself with kindness and affection is the seventh step on your journey toward becoming psychologically flexible and able to persist in pursuing the life you want.
The emerging role of self-compassion as an intervention for depression is the result of the pioneering efforts of Kristen Neff (2003; 2016). She describes self-compassion as “being open to and moved by one’s own suffering, experiencing feelings of caring and kindness toward oneself, taking an understanding, nonjudgmental attitude toward one’s inadequacies and failures, and recognizing that one’s experience is part of the common human experience” (2003, 225). According to Neff, self-compassion consists of three interrelated components:
self-kindness, or the tendency to treat oneself with understanding and care rather than with harsh self-judgment in moments of suffering
an experience of common humanity, or the ability to recognize that all humans fail at times, rather than feeling cut off from others when we fail
mindfulness, or being aware of present-moment experience in a balanced way rather than overreacting to emotions associated with failures or setbacks
A self-compassion practice is the perfect antidote for depression. In fact, there are so many benefits to self-compassion (Neff, Rude, and Kirkpatrick 2007) that we recommend you adopt some type of regular self-compassion practice as a long-term feature of your lifestyle, depressed or not. People who practice self-compassion tend to experience lower levels of depression and anxiety (Leary et al. 2007; Neff 2003; Neff, Rude, and Kirkpatrick 2007). Higher levels of self-compassion reduce the frequency and intensity of rumination in people experiencing symptoms of depression (Raes 2010). This is great news because, as we have repeatedly mentioned, rumination—brooding, or pondering personal flaws and failures in a self-focused, negative, judgmental way—is responsible for both producing and maintaining depression.
People with high levels of self-compassion also tend to be more motivated to learn about themselves, are less fixated on gaining the approval of others, and are less afraid of making mistakes (Neff, Hsieh, and Dejitterat 2005). In a highly influential article reporting on five different studies of self-compassion, Adams and Leary (Leary et al. 2007) showed that self-compassion:
Reduced the level of negative emotional and cognitive reactions to negative events in everyday life
Buffered people against negative self-judgments and resulting painful emotions when recalling distressing social events
Moderated negative emotions after people received unpleasant social feedback, particularly in those who struggled with low self-esteem
Led people to acknowledge their role in negative events without feeling overwhelmed with negative emotions
The last bullet point turns out to be an important factor in determining how we respond to the need for positive lifestyle behaviors to promote our health and manage chronic disease. Sirois, Molnar, and Hirsch (2015) showed that self-compassion buffers the negative mental effects of chronic disease by increasing the use of adaptive coping responses such as acceptance and positive emotional framing of health problems. In a study involving more than three thousand adults, Sirois, Kittner, and Hirsch (2014) showed that higher levels of self-compassion were linked to positive lifestyle behaviors such as healthy eating habits, exercise, regular sleep, and use of day-to-day stress-management strategies.
In general, these studies suggest that self-compassion buffers our reactions to negative life stresses or interpersonal events in ways that are distinct from, and possibly superior to, other coping strategies. In addition, self-compassion—due to its association with a nonjudgmental, self-accepting attitude, as well as positive emotional coping strategies—seems to promote positive, healthy lifestyle behaviors, a topic we will examine in some detail in section 3 of this book. In this chapter, we will help you begin to practice new skills that will quickly strengthen your self-compassion muscles!
For well over a decade, neuroscientists have been examining the effects of compassion and mindfulness-based training on neural structures and mental efficiency. One exciting discovery is that practicing compassion for self and others reduces activation of the amygdala, the brain center involved in producing negative emotions (Schuyler et al. 2014). In other words, being compassionate toward self or others down-regulates neural pathways in the brain responsible for producing negative emotions. When you put yourself in a space of compassion toward self and others, your emotional experience will soften.
Another exciting finding is that compassion training increases the density of gray matter in those areas of the brain involved in learning and memory processes, as well as emotional control, self-awareness, and perspective taking (Holzel et al. 2011). Interestingly, social self-awareness (seeing yourself as affiliated with others) appears to be supported by a set of neural circuitry that’s distinct from, yet overlapping with, the brain circuitry that supports empathy. This is so in regard to the ability to mentally visualize and compare different problem-solving approaches that have social consequences (Quirk and Beer 2006). In other words, when you practice compassion, it influences the amount of weight you give to social considerations in attempts to solve personal problems. As you become more self-compassionate, you are more likely to be tuned in to the impact your problem-solving actions have on others.
Research also suggests that, with practice, you can develop greater skills in this potent area of psychological health in a fairly short period of time. After brief self-compassion training, participants in a recent study demonstrated more altruistic attitudes toward the suffering of others and less impairment from their own negative emotions in response to suffering (Weng et al. 2013). In this study, participants practiced only thirty minutes daily for two weeks, with the support of a mindfulness-based compassion exercise on the Internet. The participants who exhibited the most significant changes in altruistic responses also showed the greatest changes in brain activation in response to suffering. In the most altruistic participants, activation increased in the inferior parietal cortex (a region of the brain involved in empathy and understanding others), in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (a region involved in emotional control), and in the nucleus accumbens (a region involved in producing rewarding emotions). These unique patterns of neural activation suggest that compassion practice increases detection of others’ suffering through neural circuitry involved in empathy and imagining the perspective of others.
If you are interested in downloading a free guided audio version of the compassion training exercise used in these studies, go to http://centerhealthyminds.org/well-being-tools/compassion-training. We also provide downloadable guided self-compassion brain training exercises at the end of this chapter.
Assess Your Self-Compassion Skills
Now it’s time to take a look at your self-compassion skills. Fortunately, there have been substantial advances made in both defining what self-compassion is (and isn’t) and developing ways to measure it (Neff 2016). In this section, you will complete a shortened version of the Self-Compassion Scale originally developed by Neff (2003) and revised by her and colleagues (Raes et al. 2011).
First of all, before your reactive mind gets on its high horse, remember that this is not a test. There are no good or bad scores on this scale. The assessment is meant to give you a baseline of where you are now. As we mentioned, low levels of self-compassion tend to be associated with higher levels of depression, so if you discover some low spots in your self-compassion profile, don’t be surprised—and don’t beat yourself up for it. With practice, you will notice that your score improves and, even more important, that it is easier and easier to be gentle with yourself.
How I Typically Act Toward Myself in Difficult Times
Please read each statement carefully before answering. To the right of each statement, indicate how often you behave in the stated manner, using the following scale:
For the six items with a “6-”: subtract the score associated with your answer from 6. The result will be your score for that item. For example, if your answer to item 1 using the scale is 4, then subtracting that from 6 would equal 2 as your adjusted score for item 1. You do not need to record anything in boxes that are shaded, as higher numbered responses indicate increased levels of self-compassion in those cases.
Total scores range from 12 to 60, and higher scores indicate greater skill in self-compassion. Make a note of today’s score on your smartphone or daily planner. If you can, set a reminder for you to repeat this assessment in two or three weeks to see if your score has improved. Yes, that’s right—you can change your level of self-compassion in a very short period of time with regular practice! That’s how the brain works; if you ask it to do something over and over again, it will get better and better at doing what you ask it to do.
Joan’s Story
Joan is a thirty-six-year-old divorced single parent of three children. She works as a manager at a local bank. Joan was one of three sisters who grew up on a wheat farm in the Midwest. The family heritage she grew up with emphasized not showing emotions openly and being a person of few words. From early childhood, she heard comments from friends, family members, and teachers about her quiet, reserved personality. Over time, Joan felt more and more self-conscious and ashamed of this feature of her personality. Social situations were always her least favorite activity, because making small talk and social chatter was not her forte. Although she did well in school, she never really joined a social group, preferring to focus on her studies and piano lessons.
Joan didn’t think she would have a relationship until she met Sam in college. He was much more socially inclined than she was and enjoyed being the talkative one in social settings. After college, they eventually married and had three children. Sam was absent from the home frequently for job-related travel. When he wasn’t working, he didn’t spend much time around the house. He was an avid golfer and had a lot of male friends he liked to hang out with.
Five years ago, without any warning, Sam told Joan that he was leaving her, packed up his stuff, and left the area. Joan later discovered that he had been having an affair for several years and was now living with his new partner in a nearby city. She replayed pieces of their relationship over and over again in her mind, wondering what she did wrong. This played into her self-story about being a “plain Jane” and not entertaining socially. She thought a lot about this and worried about her children and finances. She focused on her job and being a good mother to her kids.
Sam only saw the children every couple of months during the first year after he left the marriage. Then he announced that he was starting another family with his new partner and, although he would continue to pay child support, he would have very little time to be involved in the lives of their children. He insinuated that the children weren’t really that entertaining to be with and made a snide comment that the “nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Joan took this to mean her children were also going to have bland and uninteresting personalities. She felt even worse thinking that maybe her flaws might be damaging her kids’ social development. This left her lying awake at night trying to figure out some way to become more dynamic and engaging as a person. She also spent a lot of time blaming herself for choosing a guy like Sam, who could be so heartless.
Joan completed the Self-Compassion Scale and was concerned about her relatively low score. She talked to a friend about it, and the friend stated that Joan was a very caring friend and that she saw her as a kind and thoughtful person. Joan considered this and reviewed her answers again; she saw a pattern of being pretty intolerant of making mistakes. She decided to focus her attention on practicing kindness and acceptance toward her flaws, rather than getting lost in her attempts to analyze and eliminate them. She realized that trying to criticize herself for her weaknesses really wasn’t helpful and, at this point, really hurt a lot.
In this section, you will practice a series of exercises designed to strengthen your self-compassion skills. We invite you to test-drive them all to see what skills benefit you the most. Like most people, you will likely have several areas in need of greater attention—definitely focus on the exercises that target those areas. But don’t overlook exercises that help you grow stronger in areas where you already have some strength, as all of the skill areas are highly connected.
Supporting self-kindness involves enhancing your ability to take a loving, caring stance toward yourself all of the time, particularly when the chips are down, so to speak, and you are feeling a lot of emotional pain. This can be difficult to do, particularly if you didn’t receive this kind of acceptance and encouragement from a nurturing parent during your formative years. Moreover, if one of your parents suffered from depression, he or she may not have noticed your pain or may not have had the energy or skills to respond with concern and encouragement.
Loving-Kindness Practice
There are a variety of meditation practices associated with the development of compassion, and these are sometimes referred to as loving-kindness meditation practices. We recommend that you start with a brief daily practice. The following table outlines the key components for a practice, phrases (or compassion wishes) that may be helpful, and the amount of time recommended for practice.
Typically, your first practice efforts will be in using key compassion phrases directed toward a benefactor, or someone who showed a strong interest in you and went out of his or her way to help you learn and grow—someone who was gentle with you when you made mistakes and curious and encouraging about your potential as a human being. Not everyone can identify a benefactor, so you might select a friend instead. It’s best to choose one with whom you do not have a sexual relationship and one who is generous and loving toward you. It is best to choose someone who is alive, but it is okay to choose someone who has passed on as well. Spend a few days or up to a few weeks practicing the compassion wishes for this chosen person.
Next, begin directing statements toward strangers. You might try the first person you see on a morning walk. Do this for several days. Finally, direct compassion statements toward yourself.
Whoever is the focus of your compassion (benefactor, friend, stranger, or self), always try to conclude your brief practice by directing your wishes for compassion to a larger group (the people on your block, the people in your city, all beings in this world). For most people, it is easier to be compassionate toward others, so this approach helps you take advantage of that.
Practice daily at whatever time is convenient and for 5 to 30 minutes, focusing on the wishes and the target of those wishes. Concentrate your efforts on creating images, emotions, and sensations consistent with your wishes. And feel free to use your own words to express your love and kindness!
Self-Kindness Skill Building
The following two-part exercise will help you develop strength in self-kindness. It involves learning to be intentionally kind to yourself when you are suffering, to be tolerant of your shortcomings, and to be patient with parts of yourself that you do not like.
To build skill in these areas, stay mindful of your day-to-day painful inner experiences. The goal is to identify specific events and times when you are self-critical. Use the form below to track your results. We recommend that you keep a copy of this worksheet with you and review it three to four times per day so that you can catch the contexts where you could really use self-kindness but usually don’t provide it.
Kindness and Criticism: When and What
Further Exploration. After doing this for a few days, can you identify patterns in the time of day when you are triggered to be either kind to or critical of yourself? Do you see patterns in various social contexts, like being at work, at home with your partner, or during interactions with friends, people at church, and so on? Do you notice whether the triggering events for kindness or criticism center around a theme? You may be able to identify daily behaviors that function as a pathway for self-criticism or self-kindness. For example, you might realize that you actually experience feelings of kindness toward yourself at night when you apply lotion to your feet. Alternatively, you might notice that you are highly critical of yourself every Thursday afternoon before a weekly meeting at work. Your goal is to build on your kindness and let it spill over to the moments when you need more love and patience.
Joan was intrigued by the idea that she had moments of both kindness and criticism in her day. She found it helpful to look for moments of kindness, as she really wanted to grow these moments. Below are the results of her work on the Kindness and Criticism worksheet.
Kindness and Criticism: When and What
Building More Moments of Kindness
Another way to create more moments of kindness involves developing a plan to practice specific self-compassion actions. To do this, start with identifying one or more contexts where you want to practice more kindness, and then develop a cue to prompt you. The cue could be a written note, a photograph, or even a special alert on your phone—anything that will serve as a signal to be kind to yourself. Place the cue in situational contexts that might trigger self-criticism and be an opportunity to practice self-kindness instead. It’s fine to also target a moment when you already show kindness toward yourself, with a plan of embellishing the kindness or spending a little more time savoring the moment.
It’s important that your new plan involves a behavior that you or someone else could observe. This doesn’t mean someone has to observe it—the action just needs to be something you do in the world, as opposed to something you think in your head. The rationale for this is that we exert far more influence on our thinking and emotions when we vary our behavior.
After she had identified several ripe moments for practice in her daily routine, Joan was ready to develop a plan to bring more kindness into her life. This was her plan.
Joan had been practicing the loving-kindness meditation for a few days, with a focus on a college professor who had been a very helpful mentor. She liked the practice and decided she wanted to add an element of it to her morning routine. Joan had enjoyed painting as a hobby before she had children, so she decided to paint a picture for her bedside table to serve as a cue for her new kindness behavior upon waking.
For her nighttime practice, Joan decided she would briefly write about positive aspects of her quiet and reserved personality for a few minutes. It was the single moment during the day when she practiced loving her reserved, low-key nature. She painted a cover on an old notebook and then wrote, “May you give and receive respect; may your mind be open.” She placed the journal by her bedside table.
Her “I love you” note on the bathroom mirror would be her cue to spend a few minutes writing kind words to herself about herself. She persevered in both changes and noticed more spontaneous moments of self-kindness in her days during the following two weeks.
Judging ourselves comes naturally for most us, beginning early in our lives as children. We judge ourselves a lot in social situations (“Was I thoughtful? Did she think my responses were helpful?”). It’s a pretty automatic behavior for us, so it’s challenging to change. Our self-judgments often reflect our experience with significant individuals who were important in our upbringing. For instance, if you had a parent who was critical of you, or who tried to motivate you by always finding some fault with your performance, it is highly likely that you will use that same approach with yourself. The good news is that you can change this. Here are several strategies for addressing runaway negative self-evaluations:
Ask yourself, “Am I a good person? When we invite our clients to answer this question, almost all answer with an affirmative. You do have kindness in your heart; you are well intentioned. But you’re struggling right now and don’t feel good, even though you know deep inside you are good. To bolster your belief that you are a good person, place little reminders in your environment, like posting sticky notes with positive messages on your toilet seat or refrigerator. Remember: the love of your life is the person you see when you look in the mirror.
Address your problematic behaviors. Come up with a new protocol for addressing behaviors that are ineffective. This involves being able to respond to a list of standard questions, even while your mind is scolding you. Ask yourself: “What was the behavior? What was my intention? Did the behavior produce the results I hoped for?” Many times, when we answer these questions, it is clear that we meant no harm and that our behavior was simply ineffective. The goal is to eventually be able to identify alternative behaviors that might work better.
Develop a new perspective on making mistakes. One vulnerability that contributes to depression is having exceedingly high standards or being perfectionistic. But even if you aren’t a perfectionist, you can still be hard on yourself when you make mistakes. If you have this vulnerability, then think of an alternative perspective on the situation. For instance, instead of judging yourself harshly, cultivate a sense of humor. Keep in mind these aphorisms: Perfectionism is perfectly silly. Make mistakes perfectly. Fail often and early. The idea is to add in new ideas that lighten the impact of failing to meet your high standards. In addition to adding in lightness, we recommend that you develop an attitude of curiosity about your mistakes. When you are curious about something, your interest will often result in a slight smile. That slight smile can change what’s happening in your brain and promote a sense of calm—a state from which it is easier to see what you did and what else might have been possible.
Soften Self-Judgment
This exercise will help you formulate a plan for treating yourself with kindness in the face of a future triggering situation. The objective is to come up with a soft statement that you can say to yourself in place of a judgment.
In the space provided, first describe a situation in which you are likely to start judging yourself. Include the key features of the situation that are likely to provoke self-criticism. Second, check in on how you are feeling. To do this, it is important to get in the present moment. Imagine the feelings you might start with, then write them down. Third, imagine what behaviors would help you to soften and treat yourself with kindness. Write down what you could say to yourself; this is your soft statement. Next, write down how your feelings might change with this new self-compassionate approach.
Once you have formed your plan, take a few minutes to mentally rehearse the entire sequence as if you are actually in the situation. Think about the intentions you have as you enter into this situation. Now that you are free of the need to judge yourself, what values are going to guide your actions? What do you want to do differently, if your behavior is not being controlled by fear and self-judgment?
As you go through this mental simulation, can you think of other behaviors that might promote an even greater posture of self-kindness? Write down your answers, and don’t hesitate to modify your plan if you discover something new that tickles your fancy. Consider downloading the worksheet from http://www.newharbinger.com/38457 so that you may revise and adjust your approach as you discover new ways to promote self-kindness.
Soften Self-Judgment: Skill Practice Plan
1. Describe a situation that is likely to trigger a self-judgment.
2. What would my immediate feelings be?
3. What could I do differently that would promote self-kindness? What would my soft statement be?
4. How might my feelings change after softening self-judgment?
5. Would my behaviors be consistent with my intentions and values?
6. What behaviors might promote greater self-compassion?
Further Exploration. Were you able to work through this exercise in a way that might prepare you to act with self-compassion in an upcoming risk situation? The more you mentally prepare yourself to be self-compassionate, the easier it will be to get into that mode if the difficult situation materializes in your life. Stay with this practice, as you can add in one soft statement after another, building up your kindness reservoir for tricky situations. Of course, the next step is to enter into tricky situations and practice soft statements in the heat of the moment. In time, your softening self-judgment plan will help you love yourself even when you are making mistakes.
For her plan to soften self-judgments, Joan decided to start with a small but persistently troublesome situation at work. Because she is usually quiet, the other members of her team at work would complete projects without really seeking her input. This fed into her narrative that she didn’t have much to contribute. She would then get frustrated and angry inside and blurt out some type of criticism that would catch her coworkers by surprise. She would then feel bad about coming in at the last moment and changing things.
Joan decided to take a few minutes for the next few days around 6:00 p.m. to develop her softening self-judgment plan. She chose this time because it was when she tended to obsess about her personality shortcomings. Joan’s plan for addressing the problem at work involved curbing her impulse to blurt out a negative judgment of the team, because she actually liked them and respected them. Instead of judging herself, she decided she would show kindness to herself when she was frustrated. She would remind herself that it was okay to feel the way she felt and that it was understandable.
She also planned to think through and identify the value that she wanted to inform her behavior when she was angry. This involved showing respect for her team by asking questions, rather than making judgments, and letting them draw their own conclusions about how to finish the project.
Joan’s Soften Self-Judgment: Skill Practice Plan
1. Describe a situation that is likely to trigger a self-judgment.
Finally getting up the courage to speak out at a meeting at work and then saying something critical about a decision made by the team. My supervisor looks hurt. I start thinking, “I’ve really blown it this time. I should just keep my opinions to myself like I always have. Maybe I really don’t have anything to add anyway.”
2. What would my immediate feelings be?
I am feeling tired, angry, and frustrated with myself.
3. What could I do differently that would promote self-kindness? What would my soft statement be?
I could tell myself that it is natural to feel angry or frustrated at times because I care about the results.
4. How might my feelings change after softening self-judgment?
This would leave me feeling calmer and less on edge.
5. Would my behaviors be consistent with my intentions and values?
I want to help my team make the best decisions possible because they affect a lot of people. I care about my coworkers, and I care about my supervisor too. She has been there for me in my darkest times. My value is to show respect to her and everyone else on the team. They are all very dedicated to doing a good job. So, being critical isn’t really where I want to go with this.
6. What behaviors might promote greater self-compassion?
I can think that it’s okay for me to feel uncertain about my role in the group, and that is one way to improve my contribution to the group. It helps me do my job better, not worse. Uncertainty is not the problem; it is what I do when I’m uncertain that I can improve at. This is one of the challenges of working with a group of people.
A couple of days later, Joan ran into the same work situation that she had developed the plan for. She noticed feeling much calmer and more centered inside. She also felt less of a need to express her skepticism about how the project was going. Instead of being bombarded by self-criticisms from her reactive mind, she had a sense of clarity and could more easily relate to others’ points of view. After the meeting, a team member remarked that she seemed to be more supportive of each person’s efforts.
The world is full of suffering, and it can be difficult to keep that in mind when we are suffering from depression. The result may be that we may not see how our suffering connects us with others; you may recall that about one in ten people in America is depressed. There are many things we might share in common with others that depress or challenge us: problems with our loved ones, financial problems, drugs and alcohol, poverty, unemployment, currently living in danger, and so forth.
The well-worn saying “Life is a vale of tears” suggests that suffering is a necessary and normal part of life. It is resisting suffering, and failing to see its potential for strengthening our bond with others and its changeable nature, that limits our self-compassion. Knowing that we cannot make our suffering last any more than we can make it go away, and that we are a part of a world where many suffer, contributes immensely to our ability to care for ourselves.
There are several strategies for strengthening your connection with humanity:
Understand that suffering is not failing. Suffering is actually proof of your humanity. At any given moment, you and many others are in pain. Rather than criticize yourself for suffering, try acknowledging it and recognizing its impermanence. Say to yourself, “I am suffering and this will change… I am suffering, along with millions of others… I acknowledge my suffering and release it.” Pema Chödrön (2012) said it well in her book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, “When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.”
See suffering as helpful to your evolution as a person. In implementing this strategy, it is important to recognize that you are like many others in learning life’s lessons through suffering. Truly, it is not possible to learn some lessons without feeling sad, frustrated, or fed up. Putting these lessons in the context of “being a part of being human” puts them in a whole new light.
Our failures are not proof of our aloneness but of our common humanity. This is a key principle of self-compassion, because we tend to feel alone and cut off from the world when we fail at something or run headlong into a painful personal flaw. Because we are taught that failure is abnormal, the corollary idea is that we must be different from others if we fail. But failure need not cut us off from the world—it can actually strengthen our connection with others. An example of this is the Alcoholics Anonymous program, where fellowship is central to the work of addressing the problematic use of alcohol. Another example is various weight-loss groups, where fellowship is a critical aspect of releasing a painful relationship to the body and embracing healthier lifestyle behaviors.
Common Humanity Skill Building
The worksheet below invites you to explore your suffering in a broader context than might be familiar for you. The objective is to identify ways to connect your suffering with others and to see it as purposeful and temporary as well. If you tend to minimize your connection with humanity and have a difficult time seeing suffering as a part of life, we recommend that you use this form daily or several times a week to develop stronger skills for accepting pain as part of the human condition.
First, describe a life event, situation, or interaction that causes you to suffer. Then, broaden your perspective on this situation by trying to imagine all of the people in the world who, at this very moment in time, are struggling and suffering in this same type of situation. If your suffering is not an aberration and actually serves a purpose in your life, try to describe what that purpose is. Finally, instead of seeing suffering as unending, try to think of it as occurring at a fixed point in your life journey. See if you can put yourself in the mindset of “This too shall pass.” Describe how that mindset might alter how you currently react to this difficult or challenging life issue.
Common Humanity: Skill Practice Plan
Develop a plan to behave differently when you are hurting and not feeling connected to your common humanity. Ask yourself, “What is it that I am suffering with?”
1. Describe the painful event, situation, or interaction.
2. Do other people in the world suffer in this way?
3. Can my suffering teach me something?
4. Will this suffering pass?
Further Exploration. How did you do with this exercise? The idea that you are part of humanity can be a little hard to get your arms around at first. It is challenging to imagine that others are suffering from the same types of flaws, disappointments, life setbacks, or failures that you are, but it’s true. And once you realize that everyone has a burden to bear, you can bear yours in the context of being a part of humanity.
When we have no choice but to live with a challenging situation, such as having a child with a health problem, we may find value in connecting with others who are suffering from challenging situations too. At times, we may find meaning in volunteering to work with others who suffer from problems similar to our own—or different from our own. For example, you may struggle with caring for a spouse with dementia but find that volunteering at a food bank or tutoring at an elementary school gives you a huge sense of connection with the challenges of being human and being together. You don’t have to work directly with people who are suffering in the same way you are in order to reap benefits. You can build your connection to humanity and your skills for seeing your suffering in the context of being human by offering your help to people who suffer in a completely different way.
While Joan did not identify this area as a priority, she used the Common Humanity worksheet to further develop skills in acknowledging shared suffering. She found value in being able to use the word “boring” and to see it as a word rather than a sentence to misery. Joan also liked the sense of connection she felt with others who struggle in a similar way. She was able to see some choices she could make in response to her suffering and to connect with its impermanence.
Joan’s Common Humanity: Skill Practice Plan
1. Describe the painful event, situation, or interaction.
At a social gathering after work with a colleague and couldn’t engage in small talk. Eventually, colleague started talking to a person right next to me. I had the thought, “I’m dull and uninteresting.” Like so many other times, I had this feeling of being alone and disconnected.
2. Do other people in the world suffer in this way?
Of course, lots of people like to keep to themselves and probably feel like a fish out of water in social situations. I imagine being there to comfort them.
3. Can my suffering teach me something?
My suffering is teaching me to be okay with my differences. I am different in how I react to things. When I try to be the same as others, then I suffer.
4. Will this suffering pass?
I can let go of thinking that I have to talk more. If and when I do that, I will find more peace.
A cornerstone of self-compassion is the ability to walk a middle path—the perspective from which you can see yourself and what has happened in your life in a balanced way. On the middle path, when something happens that upsets you, you see it from a perspective that promotes mental and emotional balance. Rather than exaggerating the significance of a problem or mistake you make, you simply describe the problem and let it be. Cultivating this middle-path perspective strengthens the neural circuitry of your wise mind and helps you see life with soft eyes. If we are all swimming in the same river of life, and we all possess an assortment of positive and negative qualities, there is no reason to get bent out of shape when one of your negative qualities shows up. As the title to the popular self-help book by Richard Carlson so poignantly states: “Don’t sweat the small stuff…and it’s all small stuff” (Carlson 1997).
Strategies that help you build a middle-path perspective may include mental exercises that foster psychological flexibility as well as lifestyle practices that enhance your sense of mental balance. The worksheet that follows provides structure for an exercise that helps you curb the impulse to overreact when you are faced with an emotionally charged situation. Often, all that is needed is for you to recognize the impulse to overreact—and then be able to imagine what the overreaction would look like, along with what the middle path would look like. By seeing the difference between the two, you can wisely choose to travel the middle path.
Middle-Path Skill Building
This exercise invites you to identify an activity that you believe will support you in developing less reactivity and more balance in your day-to-day perspectives on life.
First, describe a recent emotionally triggering situation or event. Then imagine what an overreaction to that event would look like. Next, report from the perspective of the middle path—describe just the facts in a nonreactive way without injecting or attaching to your judgments. Finally, think about a lifestyle activity that would act as a regular cue for you to practice taking the middle path. These types of activities may include becoming a part of a spiritual community, such as a church; joining a yoga or meditation group; or participating in a sports activity involving self-discipline and mental focus.
Middle Path: Skill Practice Plan
Develop a plan to take the middle path when you are triggered to overreact, whether toward yourself or others.
1. Describe the challenging event, situation, or interaction.
2. What would it look like if I overreacted?
3. What would it look like if I took the middle path?
4. What would promote better middle-path perspective taking in my life?
Further Exploration. What happened when you tried to imagine taking the middle path, instead of being emotionally reactive and judgmental? Did you feel the burden of suffering lift a little bit? Did you feel a sense that it might be easier to roll in this situation if you stayed focused on the middle path? After all, if it is all “small stuff,” then you can conserve a lot of your mental energy by going to the middle!
Joan wanted to strengthen her ability to take a middle-path perspective, because she felt that she often overreacted—not just in relation to her insecurities about her work performance and value, but also in other social situations in which she felt like a fifth wheel. One situation that stood out for her was being more socially integrated at her place of worship, where she had met a lot of people she liked but with whom she didn’t initiate any follow-up contact.
Middle Path: Skill Practice Plan
1. Describe the challenging event, situation, or interaction.
Performance evaluation from my supervisor. She was positive, but I did not receive a raise or a promotion.
2. What would it look like if I overreacted?
They don’t value me. They think I’m a social misfit and are just being nice to me. I should get a new job.
3. What would it look like if I took the middle path?
It’s been a tough year for the company, and they still got me a better benefits package than last year. It could have been worse; it could have been better. No need to overthink it.
4. What would promote better middle-path perspective taking in my life?
Try to join a women’s group at church, just to give me a chance to take some social risks.
As Joan continued to practice self-compassion in daily living, she noticed that she was not as preoccupied with her quiet, reserved nature as she used to be. She received social invitations from several members of her women’s group, took advantage of the opportunities, and soon was drafted as chair of one of their charity events. Her anxiety level during performance reviews at work steadily decreased, and she received feedback that she was being more of a team player who contributed value to her work group. One particularly powerful exercise she developed on her own was to stand for a few minutes in front of the mirror every morning. When her reactive mind would show up with harsh evaluations of her being dull and uninteresting, Joan would soften her focus and connect with her innate goodness as a person.
During one of these morning moments, she had a thought about her ex-husband and his seemingly insatiable need to point out her supposed personality flaws. She realized that he too must be struggling with his own fears, inadequacies, and imperfections, and perhaps it was fitting that they had ended up on separate paths. Joan decided it was time to close this chapter of her life and open a new one—one that included the possibility of finding a new life partner. Joan was on the journey to living a vital life!
Of all the mindfulness skills we have taught you so far in this book, practicing compassion for self and others is one of the quickest ways to promote a positive emotional aura in your life. We normally don’t take the time in daily life to work out the brain’s reward and positive emotion circuitry, and so we forget how powerful these particular mindfulness muscles are!
Feeling Loved
Can you remember a time in your life when you felt totally loved and cared for? Can you remember what it felt like to bask in the warmth of being accepted for who you are? In this audio-guided exercise, we want you to put yourself in full contact with a moment when you truly felt loved.
To start, see if you can recall and describe some peak moments in your life when you felt really loved. Then, choose perhaps one or two of these moments to use during this exercise. We will help you re-create the actual physical, emotional, and mental experience of receiving love.
Now, get seated comfortably, close your eyes, and take a few deep cleansing breaths. Let your breath get both longer and deeper with each cycle of inhaling and exhaling. Get your mind clear, focused, and ready to imagine the moment in time when you truly felt loved. Put yourself into it; don’t spare any details about the various feelings, thoughts, memories, or physical sensations that thisexperience created in you. You might remember being held or gently touched by a parent when you were small. Or you might recall moments with a partner, such as holding hands and watching a beautiful sunset. Perhaps you have a memory of being hugged by someone who was very glad to see you after a period of time apart. Feel the warmth in your heart and mind as you just let yourself bask in love as it washes over you.
Try to keep those sensations present. Notice the unconditional quality of this love; it isn’t something earned; it is given freely. Your imperfections are part of this experience of love. Now, try to see if you can shower yourself with this same feeling as was shared with you by someone else. See if you can make that slight U-turn and start reflecting that positive energy on yourself. The experience of loving yourself may come in many forms: it may lie more in the realm of sensation or perhaps color. Let whatever inner experiences show up just be there, and attach your loving energy to them. If you run into a moment of doubt, try to shower that doubt with love as well. Anything that comes your way is perfect; you can let your love wash over it.
When you hear the meditation bell, you can slowly bring yourself back into the present. And when you are ready, move on to the next brain training activity.
Further Exploration. What happened when you just let yourself be showered with love? Did it feel awkward at first, like you didn’t deserve it or that it seemed artificial? That is a pretty common experience, which speaks to how as adults we gradually learn that we must earn love from other people. How sad, when you think about it, that you somehow have to prove that you deserve love. Love is the most powerful expression of human attachment there is! This quote by Steve Hayes, one of the cofounders of ACT, says it best: Love isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. However you experience it, love is love, and it primes our brains to be compassionate toward others as well as toward ourselves.
You Are Flawsome!
This exercise requires you to practice self-compassion for your personal flaws, both real and imagined. There are two basic types of flaws that figure prominently in our negative self-stories that we tend to beat ourselves up about. The first is some attribute we have that we find unacceptable, be it a receding hairline, stuttering under stress, or not being as interesting as other people. The second type of flaw is something we believe we lack, like good looks, confidence in social situations, or public speaking ability.
Take a few minutes now to identify the flaws you most dislike about yourself in both areas. Try to clearly describe the flaw and what you don’t like about it.
Now that you have identified your flaws, it is time to practice being flawsome! Read each of your flaws out loud, and at the end of each statement add in “and I love this part of me too!” As you recite this statement, put yourself into it.
Further Exploration. Were you able to genuinely extend loving energy toward those things you dislike about yourself? If your reactive mind tells you that your flaw can’t be accepted, practice detachment and gently redirect your attention to loving yourself. You could even take what your reactive mind told you and write that down as a flaw and make that part of your flawsomeness! The fact that you have a reactive mind that is unwilling to stop judging you is also a part of your flawsomeness. How cool is that? During this practice, try to create a mental space in which you relax, let go of attachment to self-rejection, and truly love what you dislike about yourself.
Express Gratitude
One way to experience self-compassion is to make contact with and express the experience of gratitude or thankfulness. One exercise we like to use is called One in the Beginning and One in the End. Upon waking, express gratitude for whatever enters your awareness. If you hear a dog barking, your beginning line might be, “I am thankful for dogs.” Or you might become aware of the feeling in your eyes—that they are rested and ready to begin the day—and say, “I am thankful for my eyes.”
“One in the End” refers to the same practice when you lie down at night to sleep. If your awareness is of a soft, favorite pillow, express gratitude by softly saying, “I am thankful for my pillow” or simply “I am thankful for the end of the day and the opportunity to lie down. While you may benefit from simply thinking these thoughts of gratitude, you may also want to experiment with saying them aloud or writing them in a gratitude journal.
Promise Yourself
Practicing self-compassion is not an accident; it is an intention that you need to reaffirm every day. Try starting your day by repeating this simple affirmation to be self-compassionate:
When I experience suffering today, I will acknowledge the moment of suffering.
I will remind myself that suffering is part of being human.
And I will treat myself and others with kindness in this moment of suffering.
Wish Yourself Well
Another way to cultivate compassion each day is to wish yourself well in the most important areas of daily life: physical safety, physical health, mental health, and ease of being. This short audio-guided exercise will help you connect with your most self-compassionate intentions.
Get comfortably seated, close your eyes, and take several deep cleansing breaths. Allow your breathing to get longer and deeper with each breath cycle until your attention is completely focused on the here and now. Don’t rush yourself; just take the time to be with yourself and come into full contact with your consciousness. Now, to start with, you will slowly repeat each phrase softly and out loud. Take your time and really ponder each word in each phrase.
May I live in safety.
May I have physical health.
May I have mental health.
May I have ease of being.
Each time you repeat this sequence, try to form a deeper and deeper, earnestly felt self-compassionate intention. You truly wish yourself the best. Continue softly repeating this sequence until you hear the meditation bell.
Further Exploration. How did it feel to wish yourself the very best in today’s life? Did some part of you think that you don’t deserve any of these things? Reactive mind is capable of putting you into a space where that can easily happen. If that showed up during this exercise, make a self-compassion game plan for what you intend to do the next time that happens…and recommit to practicing this brain training exercise as often as you like!
Self-compassion is the perfect antidote to the harsh, self-critical, self-rejecting chatter of the reactive mind.
Self-compassion involves being kind and affectionate toward yourself, even when your flaws or imperfections are exposed, or when you are in a moment of inner pain.
It is easier to be self-compassionate when you remind yourself that all humans have flaws, that all humans have moments of suffering, and that you are not alone in your suffering.
Practicing self-compassion skills on a daily basis will allow you to short-circuit the tendency to be hard on yourself when you run into inevitable life disappointments or setbacks.
Being self-compassionate also promotes your ability to be compassionate toward, and to improve your connection with, others.
