Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself

by Kristin Neff

Even if we do manage to get our act together, the goalposts for what counts as “good enough” seem always to remain frustratingly out of reach. We must be smart and fit and fashionable and interesting and successful and sexy. Oh, and spiritual, too. And no matter how well we do, someone else always seems to be doing it better.

From the Buddhist point of view, you have to care about yourself before you can really care about other people. If you are continually judging and criticizing yourself while trying to be kind to others, you are drawing artificial boundaries and distinctions that only lead to feelings of separation and isolation.

But I slowly came to realize that self-criticism—despite being socially sanctioned—was not at all helpful, and in fact only made things worse.

instead of relying on our relationship to meet all our needs for love, acceptance, and security, we could actually provide some of these feelings for ourselves.

If we’re in a difficult or stressful situation, we rarely take the time to step back and recognize how hard it is for us in the moment. And when our pain comes from self-judgment—if you’re angry at yourself for mistreating someone, or for making some stupid remark at a party—it’s even harder to see these as moments of suffering.

Where is that written contract you signed before birth promising that you’d be perfect, that you’d never fail, and that your life would go absolutely the way you want it to?

self-compassion is a powerful way to achieve emotional well-being and contentment in our lives.

It’s unacceptable to be average in our society, so pretty much everyone wears a pair of rose-colored glasses, at least when they’re looking in the mirror.

When mothers or fathers use harsh criticism as a means to keep their kids out of trouble (“don’t be so stupid or you’ll get run over by a car”), or to improve their behavior (“you’ll never get into college if you keep getting such pathetic grades”), children assume that criticism is a useful and necessary motivational tool.

People with critical parents learn the message early on that they are so bad and flawed that they have no right to be accepted for who they are.

One of the downsides of living in a culture that stresses the ethic of independence and individual achievement is that if we don’t reach our ideal goals, we feel that we only have ourselves to blame.

If we look more deeply, we see that harsh self-criticism is often used as a cover for something else: the desire for control. Given that the parents of self-critics are usually overly controlling, the message is received early on that self-control is possible.

Rather than framing their imperfection in light of the shared human experience, they’re more likely to feel isolated and disconnected from the world around them when they fail.

And even when we’re having a painful experience that is not our fault—perhaps we’ve been laid off our job because of an economic downturn, for instance—we often irrationally feel that the rest of the world is happily employed while it’s only me sitting at home binge-watching TV all day. Or when we become ill, it feels like sickness is an unusual, abnormal state (like the dying eighty-four-year-old man whose final words were “why me?”).

Once we fall into the trap of believing that things are “supposed” to go well, we tend to think something has gone terribly amiss when they suddenly don’t.

By simply shifting our frame of reference from distinctiveness to similarity with others, we can dramatically alter our perceptions and emotional reactions.

Let’s say you have an anger issue that you habitually criticize yourself for. What are the causes and conditions that led you to be so angry? Perhaps inborn genetics plays a role. But did you choose your genes before entering this world? Of course not, your genetic makeup stems from factors completely beyond your control.

If you had control over your maladaptive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, you wouldn’t still have them. You would have already jettisoned your dark, anxious, neurotic persona and become a calm, confident ray of sunshine. Clearly you don’t have complete control over your actions, or else you’d only act in ways that you approved of. So why are you judging yourself so harshly for the way you are?

“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.”

When reality matches our wants and desires, we’re happy and satisfied. When reality doesn’t match our wants and desires, we suffer. Of course, we have about a snowball’s chance in hell of our reality completely matching our ideals 100 percent of the time. That’s why suffering is so ubiquitous.

Our emotional suffering is caused by our desire for things to be other than they are. The more we resist the fact of what is happening right now, the more we suffer.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

(It’s okay. You messed up but it isn’t the end of the world. I understand how frustrated you were and you just lost it. I know how much you value being kind to other people and how badly you feel right now.

Rumination about negative events in the past leads to depression, while rumination about potentially negative events in the future leads to anxiety. This is why depression and anxiety so often go hand in hand; they both stem from the underlying tendency to ruminate.

Remember that rumination on negative thoughts and emotions stems from the underlying desire to be safe. Even though these brain patterns may be counterproductive, we can still honor them for trying so diligently to keep us out of the jaws of that crocodile.

“Soften, soothe, allow.”

This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.

First, given that people who don’t know us very well aren’t able to make well-informed judgments of us, why should we be so swayed by their opinions? Second, how well do we know their opinions in the first place?

Understanding the narcissism epidemic is important because its long-term consequences are destructive to society. American culture’s focus on self-admiration has caused a flight from reality to the land of grandiose fantasy. We have phony rich people (with interest-only mortgages and piles of debt), phony beauty (with plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures), phony athletes (with performance-enhancing drugs), phony celebrities (via reality TV and YouTube), phony genius students (with grade inflation), a phony national economy (with $11 trillion of government debt), phony feelings of being special among children (with parenting and education focused on self-esteem), and phony friends (with the social networking explosion). All this fantasy might feel good, but unfortunately, reality always wins. The mortgage meltdown and the resulting financial crisis are just one demonstration of how inflated desires eventually crash to earth.

Research shows that the more your overall sense of self-worth is dependent on success in particular life areas, the more generally miserable you feel when you fail in those areas.

Our research indicates that self-compassionate people tend to be more authentic and autonomous in their lives, whereas those who lack self-compassion tend to be more conformist because they don’t want to risk social judgment or rejection.

“My goal isn’t to be thin. My goal is for my body to be the weight it can hold—to be strong and healthy and fit, to be itself. My goal is to learn to embrace this body and to be grateful every day for what it has given me.”

If one is cruel to himself, how can we expect him to be compassionate with others?

“There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.”

First and foremost, it’s crucial that you don’t harshly criticize children or make them feel ashamed for not living up to your expectations.

children of critical parents are more likely to lack self-compassion and suffer from anxiety and depression in adulthood.

The program is called MAP, which stands for Mindful Awareness Parenting. The goal of the program is to help parents improve their ability to make wise decisions in difficult parenting situations.

When your child is expressing big feelings or is out of control, you can take a “time-in” to help her get back on track.

We can’t always rely on our partners to make us feel good about ourselves because at the end of the day, for acceptance to truly penetrate our hearts, it has to come from within.

“Are you upset because you feel afraid and out of control? Why don’t you take a moment to give yourself some compassion, then we can talk about what happened.”

Rather than relying on your partner to give you exactly what you need, try meeting your own needs first. Identify what you’re craving (validation, care, support, etc.) and see if self-compassion can help give it to you. This will help take the pressure off your partner to be a mind reader and react in the exact manner you want.

There are four main problem behaviors in conflicts that typically indicate a doomed relationship—what Gottman calls the “four horsemen of the apocalypse.” They are, in order of importance: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

As Helen Keller said, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”

Imagine if the only songs you ever heard were your top ten favorites, and that was it. Forever and ever. You’d soon want to jump out of a window due to the relentless boredom. To keep things interesting we need contrast and variety in our lives.

As Carl Jung once wrote, “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

Thich Nhat Hahn wrote, “You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible.”

Self-appreciation humbly honors all of creation.

If I could only lose fifteen pounds, she told herself over and over again, blithely ignoring her youth, good health, intelligence, successful career, and loving family.

Self-esteem tends to be predicated on separation and comparison, on being better than others, and therefore special. Self-appreciation, in contrast, is based on connectedness, on seeing our similarities with others, recognizing that everyone has their strong points.

Self-esteem stems from thoughts about who we are, rather than simply being who we are.