Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
—NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, poet
If you’ve been practicing mindfulness for a few weeks now, formally or informally, you’ve probably noticed more peace and contentment in your life. But you might also be feeling discouraged, thinking you don’t have enough time or discipline to make it work. Especially if you’re living in a tough situation, you may doubt whether this approach can help you. If so, please don’t give up yet. Adding self-compassion to the mix is just what’s needed when the outlook is bleak and we have only a faint whisper of hope left. Sometimes it’s better when you have given up hope and just curiosity remains about what could happen next. If that’s you, please proceed gently into the following chapters.
There are three mindfulness-based skills we can use to handle difficult emotions: (1) focused awareness, (2) open-field awareness, and (3) loving-kindness. So far, you’ve learned the first two. Focusing on a single object calms and stabilizes the mind, and open-field awareness helps us respond to daily challenges in an even, balanced way. Those two skills can help us see what’s going on in our lives; then, by applying loving-kindness, we “hold” our experience in a warmhearted, comfortable way.
Loving-kindness is wishing happiness for another person. Compassion is wishing for that person to be free from suffering. We can experience loving-kindness anywhere and anytime, but suffering is a prerequisite for compassion. Compassion is therefore a subset of loving-kindness.
Compassion occurs when “the heart quivers in response” to the suffering of another, giving rise to the wish to alleviate that suffering. When we’re suffering and feel the urge to help ourselves, we’re experiencing self-compassion.
Mindfulness is a subject of rapidly growing interest in academic psychology. Research on self-compassion is following close on its heels. One goal of self-compassion research is to determine how it’s related to other personal qualities, such as life satisfaction, coping with failure, self-esteem, and wisdom. Kristin Neff, a psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin, developed the Self-Compassion Scale that is used in most studies on self-compassion. This scale has six subscales that measure key elements of self-compassion, self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness, and their opposites, self-judgment, isolation, and overidentification. You can access the Self-Compassion Scale, as well as a wealth of related research, on Neff’s website: www.self-compassion.org. You might want to take the test now to get a good measure of your current level of self-compassion, and again 1 month later, to measure the impact of your mindfulness and self-compassion practice.
Self-kindness is the opposite of self-judgment. For example, the statement “I’m tolerant of my own flaws and inadequacies” in the Self-Compassion Scale is the opposite of “When I see aspects of myself I don’t like, I get down on myself.” We have a tendency to judge ourselves when things don’t go our way, adding insult to injury. A self-compassionate person responds to difficulties and setbacks in a warm and understanding manner rather than with harshness and criticism.
When we experience misfortune, we’re likely to feel we’re the only person in the world who’s suffering like that. We also tend to feel shame about our misfortune, as if we alone were responsible for it. Shame isolates. When our intense emotions subside and we see the situation from a wider angle, we’re likely to discover that everything happens as a result of a universe of causes rather than exclusively due to “me” and “my mistake.” All events are flowing and interconnected, at least to a small extent. Our experience is shared by others. That realization of common humanity brings relief from feeling alone and isolated.
When I’m feeling self-compassionate, I’m likely to endorse the statement on the Self-Compassion Scale that says “When I feel inadequate in some way, I try to remind myself that feelings of inadequacy are shared by most people.” When I feel alone and isolated, the following is probably true: “When I’m feeling down, I tend to feel that most other people are probably happier than I am.”
Just as self-compassion is implicit in mindfulness practice, mindfulness can be found in self-compassion. Mindfulness is nonattached awareness—it gives us the ability to accept painful thoughts and feelings in an even, balanced manner. The opposite of mindfulness— overidentification—happens when we lose ourselves in emotional reactivity. Pain narrows perception. Mindful awareness helps us recognize when we’re in pain, when we’re criticizing ourselves, and when we’re isolating ourselves and points the way out.
A mindfulness item from the Self-Compassion Scale is “When I’m feeling down, I try to approach my feelings with curiosity and openness.” The opposite of mindfulness is seen in the statement “When I’m feeling down, I tend to obsess and fixate on everything that’s wrong.”
Although our personal experience may tell us otherwise, self-compassion is the most natural thing in the world. Deep within all beings is the wish to be happy and free from suffering. We’re responding to this instinct when we suckle at mother’s breast, when we cry from loneliness, and when we save up to buy a pink Cadillac. Everything we do, even the good feelings we derive from helping others, seems to derive from the wish to make ourselves feel better. Self-compassion practice is therefore not adding anything special to our behavioral repertoire—it’s just fanning the flames of our innate desire to be safe, happy, and healthy and to live with ease, but in a more helpful way than our tendencies to grasp for short-term pleasure and to avoid pain at all cost.
First we need to recognize that we deserve to feel better. When we feel really bad, most of us engage in self-punishment rather than self-compassion. We heap on self-criticism (“This wouldn’t have happened if I weren’t so stupid”). We act as if suffering always points to a personal flaw rather than being a fact of the human condition. If we remind ourselves that wanting to feel better is a natural instinct, perhaps we’d be less likely to take ourselves to task when things go wrong. Wouldn’t you still clean and bandage a wound when you get injured? Why not do the same for yourself when you’re in emotional pain?
Actually, when bad things happen to us, we tend to have three unfortunate reactions: self-criticism, self-isolation, and self-absorption. Neff’s three components of self-compassion direct us exactly in the opposite direction: self-kindness, recognizing the common humanity in our experience, and a balanced approach to negative emotions.
Why do we react like this? I look at it this way: the instinctive response to danger—the stress response—consists of fight, flight, or freeze. These three strategies help us survive physically, but when they’re applied to our mental and emotional functioning, we get into trouble. When there’s no enemy to defend against, we turn on ourselves. “Fight” becomes self-criticism, “flight” becomes self-isolation, and “freeze” becomes self-absorption, getting locked into our own thoughts.
Scientists have recently identified another instinctive response to stress—“tend and befriend.” During threatening times, some people show a protective response toward offspring (tending) and seek social contact (befriending). Although the fight-or-flight and the tend and befriend responses are common to both men and women, women seem to incline more toward tending and befriending than men do. The tend and befriend response is linked to the hormone oxytocin, and the predominantly female hormone estrogen enhances the effects of oxytocin. It’s therefore likely that women will feel a greater affinity for self-compassion (befriending oneself) than men do. However, since oxytocin is a buffer against the ravages of the fight-or-flight response, self-compassion is a skill worth cultivating by anyone who suffers from stress.
Another group of people who might find self-compassion unnatural or difficult to practice are those who’ve been neglected or abused in childhood—suffered lots of stress in the formative years. The learning process for these folks may simply take a little longer. Many traumatized people feel they don’t deserve to feel good, or they haven’t had much practice feeling good. Furthermore, it may be hard for them to experience emotional pain in safe doses. Painful emotions recruit earlier pains. For example, a relationship breakup can trigger a tidal wave of loneliness and shame stored up from childhood, overwhelming one’s ability to focus and function.
People with early childhood trauma, however, often demonstrate remarkable compassion and kindness toward other people or specifically toward pets or young children. Most everybody seems to have someone or something toward whom they experience natural compassion. As we shall see in later chapters, if it’s hard at first to feel compassion for yourself, you can use compassion for others as a vehicle to bring it to yourself.
Self-compassion can seem quite elusive at times, but since the wish to be happy and free from suffering is innate, it can’t be ignored forever; some measure of success is virtually guaranteed. My own mother, who spent a lifetime raising kids and helping people in the community, has begun practicing self-compassion. She told me, at 83 years old, “I didn’t know I could love myself!” Although my mother is one of those older people who grow softer with age, rather than judgmental and cranky, she is also the first to say that practicing self-compassion helps her take the difficulties of aging in stride.
Most of us feel a little guilty when we pay attention to ourselves. “So many people have it much worse than me! My problems are nothing compared to theirs. I should just suck it up and quit complaining.”
It’s true that there’s always someone who has it worse than you, and it’s true that we should endeavor to help others whenever we can. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t take the time to care for yourself. We all require some maintenance; a little time dedicated to self-care is not a moral lapse. When we become proficient at self-compassion, a few seconds or a minute is all it takes. Comparing our troubles to those of others can also be a subtle way of denying and avoiding personal pain, which makes us hang on longer than necessary to what’s bothering us.
My observation from traveling throughout the world is that people in the United States are particularly embarrassed when they feel bad. It’s as if they’ve done something wrong—that their personality has failed them in some way. Some religious groups in the United States equate material success with being in favor with God. New Age theologies explain bad luck as bad karma, a result of previous misdeeds. These cultural factors serve to segregate and blame the victim rather than encouraging a kindly response to suffering.
Some people worry that self-compassion is a private cocoon that will close them off from other people by making them selfish and self-centered. The reverse is actually the case: the more openhearted we are with ourselves, the closer we feel toward the rest of life. Self-compassion is the foundation for kindness toward others. When we’re accepting of our own idiosyncrasies, we become more accepting of others. For example, if I’m ready to criticize myself for not dressing stylishly, I’ll probably think unfavorably of poorly dressed people I see on the street. If I feel humble and loving toward myself as I walk out the door, in spite of my flaws, I’ll greet others with a soft smile.
“Lately I’ve been getting into compassion.”
Accepting our flaws doesn’t mean that our behavior can’t or shouldn’t change for the better. Acceptance is in the present moment. Each one of us has room to grow, and grow we must. We start by befriending who we are today, no matter how fumbling, incomplete, or clueless we are. Full acceptance of ourselves, moment to moment, makes it easier to adapt and change in the direction we’d like to go.
Do you have a right to this kind of radical acceptance of yourself? As you’ll see when you practice self-compassion in a deliberate, conscious way (see Chapter 6), sometimes every fiber of your body tells you that focusing on yourself is a violation of a fundamental moral code. A creepy feeling comes up, even without words. This aversion may lessen when you’re in great pain, but the depth of cultural resistance to caring for ourselves is worthy of mindful, that is, curious and nonreactive, introspection. Sometimes an intellectual override is necessary: “There are four people in this family; if I don’t focus on myself occasionally, who will?!”
Some people think that self-compassion means indulging in selfpity. The early stages of self-compassion may indeed include pity. There’s nothing wrong with that. I enjoy the line from Bob Dylan’s song “Thunder on the Mountain”: “For the love of God, have pity on yourself!” Self-pity, however, seems to contract our world around us, cutting us off from others, whereas self-compassion opens us to the universality of suffering among living beings. Self-compassion also has a balanced, mindful feeling to it, neither optimistic nor pessimistic. If you’re sick, for example, self-compassion doesn’t mean catastrophizing about the outcome of your illness. Instead, it means just being sick with a loving attitude.
Empathy and Self-Awareness
Empathy for others and awareness of our own internal states seems to have a common neurological basis in the area of the brain called the insula. The insula is about the size of a prune and is hidden deep within the sides of the cerebral cortex. Hugo Critchley at the University of Sussex in England found that people high in empathy had more gray matter in the frontal part of the right insula. He also found that people who scored high on an empathy scale were good at tracking their own heartbeats—knowing what was going on inside their bodies. The insula seems to bring sensations into awareness, and that awareness can be used to be empathic in social interactions.
Arthur Craig of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, postulates that body sensations enter the rear part of the insula and are turned into social emotions—trust, contempt, guilt, pride—in the front of the insula. Thus, the insula is the “middleman” between our sensations and our emotions, the link between the body and the mind. Modulating the insula through meditation is one possible explanation for how mindful awareness of body sensations can disentangle us from troublesome emotions, as mentioned in Chapter 3.
Finally, self-compassion is not selfish because it’s not entirely personal. In a roomful of people, it makes sense to help the person who’s suffering the most, the one we know best, the one we’re most capable of helping. Sometimes that person is you; sometimes it’s another person. To use an airplane analogy, when cabin air pressure drops, we need to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first.
Self-compassion practice is a special method for whittling away our stubborn tendencies to resist pain and grasp for pleasure. It’s mindfulness from the neck down, emphasizing qualities of heart— motivation and emotion—rather than awareness and wisdom. The common healing element in both mindfulness and self-compassion is a gradual shift toward friendship with emotional pain. Mindfulness says, “Feel the pain” and self-compassion says, “Cherish yourself in the midst of the pain”; two ways of embracing our lives more wholeheartedly.
Mindfulness can lead to self-compassion, bringing in feelings of sympathy, forgiveness, tenderness, and love. In order to open our hearts, first we need to open our eyes.
I’ve visited India many times because I greatly admire its ancient culture, gentle people, and rich tradition of meditation. What I do not appreciate is the begging. Some beggars have truly heart-wrenching problems, like the man I once saw whose nose had rotted away from leprosy. Many beggars, however, are small-time opportunists. Beggars in India always cause me distress, either because of their sad condition or because of the resentment I feel when they manipulate tourists. I’m repeatedly in a quandary: Should I give a few coins? If so, am I supporting fraudulence? If not, am I selfish?
After a number of years of this distress, I recognized how much I was struggling whenever I encountered a beggar. I began saying to myself, “There’s a beggar; here comes tension and confusion.” When I focused in an accepting way on my own body, it relaxed a bit. To my surprise, I found I could meet the eyes of a beggar with a genuine smile. Occasionally I gave money and sometimes I didn’t, but it always felt better than to hold my breath and avert my gaze. For some beggars, receiving a smile seemed to be even more valuable than a few coins.
Mindful awareness helped me to see beggars—those in need and those who weren’t—as ordinary people trying to eke out a living. I stopped judging myself for naively giving money to a false beggar, and my heart stayed open to the truly needy. Awareness of my internal reactions opened the space for me to experience both self-compassion and compassion for others.
Mindfulness practice often leads to self-compassion. For example, in a research study of psychotherapists who participated in Kabat-Zinn’s 8-week mindfulness training program (mindfulness-based stress reduction), significant increases in self-compassion were found after training. But we don’t need to wait for self-compassion to dawn on its own in mindfulness practice. When we’re in intense emotional pain and need a helping hand, we can make the implicit quality of compassion explicit—we can directly deliver kindness to ourselves. The following chapters will show you how to add self-compassion to the practice of mindfulness meditation.
How much self-compassion we integrate into mindfulness practice varies from person to person and from time to time. I’ve known long-term mindfulness practitioners who discovered the power of self-compassion only after decades of practice, having formerly disparaged it as “less rigorous.” I know other people who do mindfulness meditation only after they saturate themselves with self-kindness and dedicate their practice to the benefit of all beings. In my own case, I started meditating back in the mid-1970s, spent many years practicing loving-kindness toward others, and now I practice a blend of mindfulness and compassion with greater emphasis on the compassion side, focusing on compassion for both myself and others.
During meditation, it’s sometimes a relief to work exclusively with focused and open-field awareness, without the loving-kindness element. When we’re in emotional turmoil, knowing how to use attention to disregard disturbing feelings can be a great asset—return to the breath again and again, no matter what we may be feeling. People who’ve experienced trauma are glad to know that they can direct their attention to safe places, externally or internally.
Sometimes we’re too upset, though, to regulate our attention or even to find the breath. Then what? We may feel so bad that being in our own skin is like lying on a bed of nails. In times like these, recognizing our agony is the first and a crucial step toward bringing some kindness to ourselves. The next chapter reviews how to bring care and kindness to ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually.
Self-compassion works more with motivation than with attention. It’s good will toward ourselves. Self-compassion soothes the mind like a loving friend who’s willing to listen to our difficulties without giving advice, until we can sort our problems out for ourselves. We don’t need to be particularly adept at regulating our attention to get benefit from self-compassion practice. We just need to know we’re hurting.
The metaphor of a gracious host captures the exquisite blend of loving-kindness and mindfulness that is self-compassion. Consider the following poem by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi:
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival
A joy, a depression, a meanness
Some momentary awareness
Comes as an unexpected visitor
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture
Still treat each guest honorably
He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight!
The dark thought, the shame, the malice
Meet them at the door laughing
And invite them in
Be grateful for whoever comes
Because each has been sent
As a guide from the beyond.
“Welcome and entertain them all!” Good will creates space for all feelings, good and bad. We’re not favoring one emotion over another—pushing away some feelings, sugarcoating others. Just as a gracious hostess can send her guests home feeling happier than when they arrived, good will has a tendency to shape our feelings for the better.
Perhaps the most significant contribution of self-compassion to mindfulness practice is the attention given to the “self.” When our suffering is great, we become engulfed in the experience and identify with it. The “self” suffers. We need to shift the object of our acceptance from the feelings we’re hosting—“a joy, a depression, a meanness”—to the host, as Linda did.
Linda had just received a diagnosis of breast cancer. Remarkably, she was not particularly afraid of dying, nor did she worry much about the possibility of surgery. A single mom, she worried only that her 19-year-old daughter might have to go through life without a parent. Linda could hardly bear the thought, yet she was preoccupied by it. She was afraid for her daughter. When Linda was able to recognize how much she suffered whenever these thoughts passed through her mind, she could exhale and relax a little bit. Simply noticing her stress level helped her start to let go of her fears. Linda began to think creatively about how to prepare her daughter for the worst. Perhaps her daughter’s favorite aunt would take her in? Perhaps her daughter would find a partner of her own before the worst happened?
Keeping ourselves in the picture in the midst of emotional chaos is the first step toward finding a solution. This is not easy to do. When we’re in the grip of strong emotions, our attention narrows to what’s in front of our noses, not what’s behind them: “That’s a problem.” “He’s a pain.” We’re unable to give ourselves the loving attention we need.
When couples are in conflict, for example, each person becomes absorbed in the struggle to be seen by the other. Relational conflict often comes down to “Look at me, look at me!” Each partner seeks validation for how much pain the other person has caused. This is a fruitless quest because when we start accusing one another, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get recognition. A better option is to redirect our attention and compassionately respond to our own suffering first, and then listen to our partner’s suffering.
Each of us has personal vulnerabilities that flare up when times are tough. When we don’t recognize our tender spots, they may wreak havoc in our lives. For example, if I lose my job and unconsciously think I’m a “failure,” coping with being a “failure” may become a bigger challenge than finding a new job.
Self-compassion is most effective when the underlying issues associated with emotional pain are acknowledged. And it’s not always easy to recognize our vulnerable areas, especially in the heat of the moment. The psychologist Jeffrey Young of Columbia University has done some of the legwork for us by identifying 18 personal “schemas”—intertwined bundles of intense emotion, body sensations, thoughts, and behaviors—that usually can be traced back to early childhood. Some schemas lead with behavior, perhaps a tendency to be controlling or inhibited, and others lead with feeling, such as mistrust or fear of abandonment. When we recognize the schemas we’re dealing with, they start to lose their grip. Tara Bennett-Goleman wrote a fine book, Emotional Alchemy, about working mindfully and compassionately with our schemas.
If you’d like to take an inventory of your schemas, please go to www.schematherapy.com and order the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ). Otherwise, see if you can identify your vulnerable areas from the list below.
TRY THIS: My Schemas
Please review the following schemas and identify the ones that relate to you most closely. Sometimes two or three schemas exist together.
Abandonment/Instability:My close relationships will end because people are unstable and unpredictable.
Mistrust/Abuse: I expect to get hurt or be taken advantage of by others.
Emotional Deprivation: I can’t seem to get what I need from others, like understanding, support, and attention.
Defectiveness/Shame: I’m defective, bad, or inferior in some way that makes me unlovable.
Social Isolation/Alienation: I’m basically alone in this world and different from others.
Dependence/Incompetence: I’m not capable of taking care of myself without help on simple tasks and decisions.
Vulnerability to Harm and Illness: Danger is lurking around every corner, and I can’t prevent these things from happening.
Enmeshment/Undeveloped Self: I feel empty and lost without guidance from others, especially from people like my parents.
Failure: I’m fundamentally inadequate (stupid, inept) compared to my peers and will inevitably fail.
Entitlement/Self-Centeredness: I deserve whatever I can get, even if it bothers others.
Insufficient Self-Control/Self-Discipline: I have a hard time tolerating even small frustrations, which makes me act up or shut down.
Subjugation: I tend to suppress my needs and emotions because of how others will react.
Self-Sacrifice: I’m very sensitive to others’ pain and tend to hide my own needs so that I’m not a bother.
Approval-Seeking/Recognition-Seeking: Getting attention and admiration are often more important than what is truly satisfying to me.
Negativity/Pessimism: I tend to focus on what will go wrong and mistakes I’ll probably make.
Emotional Inhibition: I avoid showing feelings, good and bad, and I tend to take a more rational approach.
Unrelenting Standards/Hypercriticalness: I’m a perfectionist, am focused on time and efficiency, and find it hard to slow down.
Punitiveness: I tend to be angry and impatient, and I feel people should be punished for their mistakes.
You may want to select one schema that predominates in your life and write down a situation in which it’s likely to play out. Then list (1) the sensations that arise in your body, (2) the emotions that go with the schema, (3) what you’re likely to be thinking, and (4) how you typically act when the schema is engaged. (If none of the schemas given above quite fit you, make up your own.)
Here’s where you can get a fix on self-destructive thinking— identify the mental themes that lead to bad feelings. For example, if your schema is “pessimism,” ask yourself what you say to yourself over and over that supports your pessimism, such as “Why bother?” and “Waste of time!” Or if your schema is “social isolation,” perhaps you think, “Fine for her, but I’m different” when a great opportunity presents itself to you. It’s nearly impossible to track all your thoughts in meditation, but repetitive themes are easier to recognize once we’ve identified them. Just observe these thoughts arise and disappear in spacious awareness.
Recognizing our schemas is mindfulness, and being kind to ourselves in the midst of an active schema is self-compassion. I’ve found that labeling schemas, like labeling emotions, is a remarkably effective way of managing emotions—it dissolves a whole cluster of destructive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in one burst of kindly awareness: “Oh yes, there I go again, expecting failure!” or “There’s my dependency schema again!” This practice is taught in Tara Bennett-Goleman’s book.
When we understand exactly how a schema shows up in our lives, we’re more likely to catch it. If I hear myself saying, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” because I’m afraid of making someone upset, I know I’m in “self-subjugation” mode. If I can’t stop proofreading a report before I give it to my boss, I may be in the “unrelenting standards” mode. If I feel scared before I go to a party, I might be into “social undesirability.” We want to see schemas, feel schemas, and then let them go.
Schemas are part of one’s personality. We each have a unique personality—a sense of self—that feels distinct from those of others. A personality gets assembled as we grow up, and it appears to have some consistency over time. Just recall how easily you could relate to an old friend at a class reunion, as if time stood still, even if you didn’t recognize him or her at first from across the room. Some things about us change, and other things stay the same.
Interestingly, most neuroscientists agree that there is no “self” to be found in the brain. In the words of Wolf Singer from the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, the brain is an “orchestra without a conductor.” The brain is bursting with activity in all directions, but where and how a sense of separate consciousness arises from this blooming, buzzing confusion remains an open question. Additionally, through the lens of inner contemplation, a careful look at our mental activity is likely to reveal only brief moments of experience, arising and falling away. No self—only this thought, that sensation, this feeling, that impression. Even the experience of consciousness comes and goes. Who, then, am I?
A sense of “self” seems to arise spontaneously when we’re in emotional pain. For example, if you’re afraid to die, you might ask fundamental questions about “who” or “what” you are—who actually dies. When your feelings are hurt by others, you may wonder if what you’re hearing is actually true. “Who am I?” The reverse is also true: when we’re in “flow”—calmly, joyfully, and productively engaged—there’s very little sense or care for who “I” might be.
This makes sense if you think about it. The “self” is almost always associated with the body, and our bodies are built for survival. When we’re in physical danger, we fight for survival. When we’re in emotional trouble, we try to defend our egos. The problem with an overly rigid sense of “self” (“I’m young, I’m smart”) is that it interferes with our well-being as life changes, and the ability to adapt to changes in our lives—failure, sickness, old age—is what determines whether we’ll be peaceful and happy in the long run. Trying to continually prop ourselves up against insult and injury can be very stressful.
Ironically, we need a “self” to make progress on the path of self-compassion. If there were no one around to feel the pain of a self-critical or self-isolative attitude, no change would be possible. We can cultivate a kind, gentle attitude—not rejecting, not overly prizing—toward the “self” until it no longer suffers and has no reason to assert itself.
The idea of “no-self” is a hopeful message contained in Buddhist psychology. It really means there’s no fixed self. Even our schemas arise and disappear. The notion of “no-self” doesn’t mean that we’re “nobody,” either. We’re really part of everything. To become happier and to adapt better to changing circumstances, the task is to soften our fixed self-images and behavior patterns that reduce our freedom. Can you occasionally allow yourself to feel like a child when you’re with a child, like an old man with an old man, or like a young woman with a young woman? We become everybody at one time or another, either through empathy or through the many roles and situations of our lives: young/old, bright/dull, pretty/ugly, good/bad, successful/unsuccessful. Can we let that be so, or must we cling to a favorite version of ourselves, adding an extra burden to our lives?
Ironically, the more compassion we give to the suffering “self,” the more flexible it becomes. For example, if I give a lackluster speech and afterward find myself regurgitating every word in my mind, it may help to hear a loving remark such as “Well, it was just after lunch. What do you expect? Everyone would rather be napping!” Compassion from others or from within ourselves helps us accept ourselves in our discomfort. We begin to see the complexity of factors that made things go wrong, and we don’t need to be the center of the universe. In the words of Simone Weil, “Compassion directed toward oneself is humility.”
Research on self-compassion is demonstrating that it softens the impact of negative events in our lives. Self-compassionate people are more likely to recognize when their efforts turn out badly and to take responsibility for their part. They’re even more likely to recognize undesirable aspects of their own character, but they don’t obsess over them so much. For example, when a self-compassionate person experiences academic failure, he or she is likely to see it as an opportunity for improvement.
Interestingly, self-compassionate people have high self-esteem, but their self-esteem is not particularly related to how others evaluate them. Self-esteem derived from self-compassion comes from how we respond to evaluations. Receiving a bad evaluation is an occasion for sympathy and comfort, not rumination and self-criticism. People who are self-compassionate are therefore less afraid of failure and rejection. High self-esteem seems to be correlated with narcissism, but self-compassion isn’t related to narcissism. Self-compassionate people don’t need to become grandiose to feel good about themselves.
Self-compassion is a relatively stable way to regulate emotions. We don’t need to build ourselves up when we’re feeling down, such as by using positive affirmations (for example, “Every day I’m feeling better and better about myself”). Rather, self-compassionate people enter into the truth of their experience with softness and kindness, which takes the struggle out of it.
Kristin Neff and colleagues found that self-compassion, as assessed by her scale, correlated even more strongly than scores on a mindfulness scale with measures of wisdom, personal initiative, happiness, optimism, positive affect, and coping. Self-compassion is also related to life satisfaction, emotional intelligence, and social connectedness and inversely related to self-criticism, depression, anxiety, rumination, thought suppression, and perfectionism. It’s pretty plain that self-compassion predicts psychological well-being.
Dieting through Self-Compassion
A leading researcher on self-compassion, Mark Leary at Duke University, along with Claire Adams at Louisiana State University, found that self-compassion helped people avoid unhealthy foods. They gave all participants a test of “restrictive eating” that measured their desire to avoid “forbidden food” like doughnuts. The participants were then divided into different groups, and some were asked to eat a doughnut. Afterward, a bogus story was given for why they should eat a candy or more than one candy if they so wished. Between these activities, some participants were told, “I hope you won’t be hard on yourself [for eating the doughnut]. Everyone eats unhealthily sometimes, and everyone in this study eats this stuff….” Highly restrictive eaters who heard this compassionate message after eating a doughnut had less distress and ate fewer candies afterward. Self-compassion appears to be a healthy way to respond to lapses in dieting. When dieters’ heads are “not cluttered with unpleasant thoughts and feelings,” they can focus on their dietary goals rather than trying to improve their mood by eating more food.
Clinical scientists are now exploring whether self-compassion training can make important changes in people’s lives. Paul Gilbert, a psychologist in the United Kingdom, developed a 12-week program of compassionate mind training (CMT) to help people suffering from high shame and self-criticism. A pilot study showed promising results. CMT works on the assumption that self-critical people have difficulty generating positive feelings through self-soothing, perhaps because they weren’t comforted enough as children and didn’t feel safe. Oxytocin and the opiates are activated by social affiliation and care: stroking, holding, and social support. Gilbert is currently exploring whether those neurohormones underlie the soothing effects of self-compassion training.
The research on self-compassion is currently in its infancy compared to mindfulness research, but the future of self-compassion research is promising and bright.
So far, we’ve learned that self-compassion is a healthy and natural response to suffering. The more we struggle emotionally, the more likely we are to be hijacked by self-criticism, self-isolation, and self-absorption. The path to emotional freedom starts with kindness toward the suffering “self.” In the next chapter, we’ll start to explore the many different ways we can bring self-compassion into our lives.