Z - Self-compassion

Recognizable questions

- Why am I often harder on myself than on others?

- Why do I talk to myself in a way I would never talk to a friend?

- Is self-compassion the same as giving yourself permission to do anything?

- Can I acknowledge a mistake without rejecting myself as a person?

- Can gentleness actually help me take responsibility?

- Why does being kind to myself sometimes feel selfish or weak?

- How do I learn to support myself when something goes wrong?

What is self-compassion?

Self-compassion means approaching yourself with kindness and realism when you are hurting, failing, or falling short. Psychologist Kristin Neff describes three core components: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Self-kindness means not judging yourself unnecessarily harshly. Common humanity means recognizing that mistakes, insecurity, and suffering are part of being human. Mindfulness means acknowledging difficult feelings without pushing them away, but also without being swept away by them completely.

SELF-COMPASSION

I'm having a hard time
        ↓
I acknowledge what I feel
        ↓
I am not the only
human who makes mistakes
        ↓
What do I need now
to move forward wisely?

So self-compassion does not mean: ‘Everything I do is fine.’ It means rather: ‘I can look at myself honestly without tearing myself down in the process.’

Self-compassion is not the same as giving yourself permission to do anything

A common misunderstanding is that gentleness leads to complacency: if I am not hard on myself, I will never change.
But self-compassion and responsibility do not have to be opposites.

NO RESPONSIBILITY

‘It doesn't matter
what I did’
        ↓
Nothing to examine
        ↓
Nothing to change


SELF-COMPASSION

‘This did not go well’
        ↓
Acknowledging my
part in it
        ↓
Understanding what
happened
        ↓
Making amends and learning

In experiments by Breines and Chen, participants who responded to a mistake or shortcoming with self-compassion were actually more motivated to improve themselves, including by correcting mistakes, studying harder, or working on a weak spot. Self-compassion does not have to remove motivation; it can actually support it.

Why are we sometimes so much harder on ourselves?

Many people apply a different standard to themselves than to others.
A friend makes a mistake and you say: ‘You did something wrong, but you can learn from it.’
With yourself, it may become: ‘What a worthless person I am.’

THE SAME MISTAKE

with a friend:
‘You're human.
What can you learn from this?’

with myself:
‘How could I be so stupid?
Why am I always like this?’

Self-compassion does not ask you to minimize the mistake. It asks why, when it is you, the mistake suddenly seems to say something about your entire worth as a person.
Research by Leary and colleagues showed that self-compassion was associated with more balanced emotional responses to negative and uncomfortable events related to one's own functioning.

Self-criticism can seem useful

Self-criticism can feel as though it is necessary to keep yourself sharp:
‘If I don't speak harshly to myself, I'll never learn.’
A certain critical eye is of course useful. You need to be able to evaluate behavior, take responsibility, and sometimes conclude that something has to change.
But there is a difference between:

‘I DID THIS
NOT WELL’

and

‘I AM
NOT GOOD’

The first is about behavior and leaves room for change. The second easily turns a mistake into a judgment about your whole person.
Self-compassion tries to keep those two apart.

The three components of self-compassion

According to Neff's model, self-compassion consists of three interconnected parts.

SELF-KINDNESS
‘I don't have to
hurt myself more.’


COMMON HUMANITY
‘Mistakes and difficult
periods are also part
of being human.’


MINDFULNESS
‘I acknowledge what I feel
without the feeling
deciding everything.’

Self-kindness is not about putting yourself on a pedestal, but treating yourself with reasonableness. Common humanity keeps a mistake from turning into: everyone can do this except me. Mindfulness helps you acknowledge an emotion without immediately concluding that everything you think about yourself in that moment is true.

Self-compassion is not the same as self-pity

With self-pity, attention can get stuck on: ‘Why is this happening to me?’
Self-compassion instead includes the awareness that difficult experiences do not affect only you.

SELF-PITY

‘Why does this
always happen to me?’


SELF-COMPASSION

‘This hurts.

I’m not the only
person going through
difficult things.

What will help me
move forward now?’

The point is not to feel sorry for yourself, but to support yourself while facing reality.

How can this be recognizable within a strongly norm-driven environment?

When someone lives for a long time in an environment where it is clearly stated what is right, wrong, desirable, or reprehensible, those norms can become part of the inner voice.
This is not limited to religion. It can arise within families, schools, sports, work, culture, or other close-knit groups.
Some current or former Jehovah’s Witnesses may, for example, recognize that a mistake, doubt, or different choice quickly triggers thoughts such as: ‘I should have known better,’ ‘I’m disappointing others,’ ‘I’m not doing good enough’ or ‘What does this say about me as a person?’
That does not prove that the religious environment is the cause. Personality, upbringing, and other experiences can also be important.
The psychological question is mainly:

If I do something wrong...

do I hear:

‘What can I learn
from this?’

or:

‘What is wrong
with me?’

Self-compassion after leaving a faith

After a major change, people may look back on decisions they made earlier and think: ‘How could I have believed that?’ ‘Why did I do this for so long?’ ‘Why didn’t I see this sooner?’
In doing so, it is easy to judge the person they were then with the knowledge they have now.
Self-compassion can make room for two truths at once:

‘Now I might
choose differently’

        and

‘Then I made choices
with the knowledge,
beliefs, and
options I had’

That does not mean everything in the past was automatically good. You can regret certain behavior and understand the circumstances in which it arose.

Responsibility without self-rejection

Admitting a mistake does not have to mean you must punish yourself.

I did something
wrong
      ↓
What was my part in it?
      ↓
Can I repair anything?
      ↓
What do I want
to learn from it?
      ↓
How can I prevent
it from happening again?

That is different from:

I did something
wrong
      ↓
So I am bad
      ↓
I deserve criticism
and shame
      ↓
I keep punishing
myself for it

Precisely because self-compassion can reduce the threat to one’s self-image, it can sometimes make it easier to look honestly at a shortcoming. The experimental findings of Breines and Chen fit that idea: an accepting attitude toward a mistake did not lead to less, but to more motivation to improve.

What does research on self-compassion say?

Research on self-compassion is now much broader than Neff’s original model. A 2019 meta-analysis of 27 randomized studies of self-compassion-focused interventions found improvements in several psychosocial outcomes, including self-criticism, stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and rumination. However, the studies varied widely, and the authors pointed, among other things, to possible publication bias. So such results do not mean that self-compassion is a miracle cure, but they do support the idea that it can be a psychologically useful point of intervention.

What can you do with it?

Don’t start by trying to convince yourself that everything is fine. Start by formulating honestly and kindly what is happening.
Instead of: ‘What an idiot I am.’
You can say: ‘I made a mistake here.’
Instead of: ‘I always mess everything up.’
You can ask: ‘What exactly went wrong here?’
Instead of: ‘I should never have felt this.’
You can say: ‘This feeling is here. What is it telling me, and what do I want to do with it?’
A simple exercise is:

STOP

What am I saying
to myself now?
      ↓
Would I say this
to a good friend
as well?
      ↓
What is a more honest
and kinder sentence?
      ↓
What responsibility
do I want to take?
      ↓
What do I need now
to move forward?

Self-compassion therefore does not mean less responsibility, but responsibility without unnecessary self-harm.

Questions to think about

• What words do I use toward myself when something goes wrong?

• Would I speak the same way to someone I love?

• Do I distinguish between ‘I did something wrong’ and ‘I am wrong’?

• Am I afraid that gentleness will make me lazy or irresponsible?

• Does my self-criticism really help me change, or does it mainly make me smaller?

• Can I acknowledge a mistake, repair it, and learn from it without continuing to punish myself?

• What would be an honest and kind response to my current situation?

Summary

Self-compassion means approaching yourself with kindness, humanity, and realism when you are suffering, failing, or falling short.
It does not mean:

‘Everything I do
is fine’

but:

‘I can honestly see
what went wrong
        ↓
without writing myself
off as a person
        ↓
and then
taking responsibility’

Self-criticism sometimes seems necessary for change, but research shows that self-compassion does not automatically lead to complacency. It can actually go hand in hand with the motivation to repair mistakes and improve behavior.
The key may therefore be:

I do not have to choose
between

being kind
to myself

and

taking
responsibility

I can do both

Sources and further reading

Kristin D. Neff – Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself, 2003. A foundational article describing self-compassion in terms of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
Mark R. Leary, Eleanor B. Tate, Claire E. Adams, Ashley Batts Allen & Jessica Hancock – Self-Compassion and Reactions to Unpleasant Self-Relevant Events, 2007. Five studies on how self-compassion relates to reactions to negative personal events and feedback.
Juliana G. Breines & Serena Chen – Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation, 2012. Four experiments showing that self-compassion was associated with greater motivation to improve shortcomings, make amends for mistakes, and try again after failure.
Madeleine Ferrari e.a. – Self-Compassion Interventions and Psychosocial Outcomes: a Meta-Analysis of RCTs, 2019. Meta-analysis of 27 randomized studies on self-compassion-based interventions and various psychosocial outcomes.

Read also

Self-blame – When do you take on more responsibility than is actually yours?
Self-reflection – How can you examine yourself without judging yourself?
Learned guilt – Why can guilt persist even when you are not sure you did something wrong?
Rumination – When does thinking about a mistake turn into going around in circles?
Healthy selfishness – Why should your own well-being also count?
Internalization – How do outside norms and judgments become part of your own inner voice?