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

by Kristin Neff

If I have to feel better than you to feel good about myself, then how clearly am I really going to see you, or myself for that matter?

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.

Instead, I was causing myself to feel inadequate and insecure, then taking out my frustration on the people closest to me. More than that, I wasn’t owning up to many things because I was so afraid of the self-hate that would follow if I admitted the truth.

What Rupert and I both came to learn was that 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. And this would mean that we had even more in our hearts to give to each other. We were both so moved by the concept of self-compassion that in our marriage ceremony later that year, each of us ended our vows by saying “Most of all, I promise to help you have compassion for yourself, so that you can thrive and be happy.”

In other words, self-compassion provides the same benefits as high self-esteem without its drawbacks.

Compassion is not only relevant to those who are blameless victims, but also to those whose suffering stems from failures, personal weakness, or bad decisions. You know, the kind you and I make every day. Compassion, then, involves the recognition and clear seeing of suffering. It also involves feelings of kindness for people who are suffering, so that the desire to help—to ameliorate suffering—emerges. Finally, compassion involves recognizing our shared human condition, flawed and fragile as it is.

One of the downsides of living in a culture that stresses the ethic of independence and individual achievement is that if we don’t continually reach our ideal goals, we feel that we only have ourselves to blame. And if we’re at fault, that means we don’t deserve compassion, right? The truth is, everyone is worthy of compassion. The very fact that we are conscious human beings experiencing life on the planet means that we are intrinsically valuable and deserving of care.

Self-compassion provides an island of calm, a refuge from the stormy seas of endless positive and negative self-judgment, so that we can finally stop asking, “Am I as good as they are? Am I good enough?” Right here at our fingertips we have the means to provide ourselves with the warm, supportive care we deeply yearn for. By tapping into our inner wellsprings of kindness, acknowledging the shared nature of our imperfect human condition, we can start to feel more secure, accepted, and alive.

Our thoughts become malevolent, and this is the mental world we then inhabit. Downward social comparisons actually harm rather than help us. By putting others down to puff ourselves up, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face, creating and maintaining the state of disconnection and isolation we actually want to avoid.

self-criticism is a type of safety behavior designed to ensure acceptance within the larger social group.

It’s as if we’re saying, “I’m going to beat you to the punch and criticize myself before you can. I recognize how flawed and imperfect I am so you don’t have to cut me down and tell me what I already know. Hopefully you will then have sympathy for me instead of judging me and assure me that I’m not as bad as I think I am.” This defensive posture stems from the natural desire not to be rejected and abandoned and makes sense in terms of our most basic survival instincts.

As one man told me, “I just can’t shut the voice up. My mom used to pick on me no matter what I did—for eating my dinner like a pig, wearing the wrong clothes to church, watching too much TV, whatever. ‘You’re never going to amount to anything,’ she’d say over and over again. I hated her and promised myself I’d never raise my children that way. The irony is that even though I’m a loving, supportive dad to my kids, I’m a complete bastard to myself. I tear myself to shreds all the time, even worse than my mother did.” 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.

It is not only Westerners who are harshly judgmental toward themselves, of course. We conducted a study in the United States, Thailand, and Taiwan and found that in Taiwan—where there is a strong Confucian ethic—there is also strong belief in self-criticism as a motivating force. The Confucian ideal is that you should criticize yourself in order to keep yourself in line—focusing on meeting the needs of others instead of yourself.

By taking the perspective of the one holding the whip as well as the one quivering on the ground, we are able to indulge in feelings of righteous indignation toward our own inadequacies. And righteous indignation feels pretty good. “At

research shows that highly self-critical people tend to be dissatisfied in their romantic relationships because they assume their partners are judging them as harshly as they judge themselves. The misperception of even fairly neutral statements as disparaging often leads to oversensitive reactions and unnecessary conflicts. This means that self-critics often undermine the closeness and supportiveness in relationships that they so desperately seek.

If you are a habitual self-critic, remember that your behavior actually represents a convoluted form of self-care, an attempt to keep yourself safe and on track.

The best way to counteract self-criticism, therefore, is to understand it, have compassion for it, and then replace it with a kinder response.

When we soothe our own pain, we are tapping into the mammalian caregiving system. And one important way the caregiving system works is by triggering the release of oxytocin.

When we experience warm and tender feelings toward ourselves, we are altering our bodies as well as our minds. Rather than feeling worried and anxious, we feel calm, content, trusting, and secure. Self-kindness allows us to feel safe as we respond to painful experiences, so that we are no longer operating from a place of fear—and once we let go of insecurity we can pursue our dreams with the confidence needed to actually achieve them.

Marshall Rosenberg, author of the bestselling book Nonviolent Communication, stressed the importance of using sympathetic rather than judgmental language when we talk to ourselves. He argued that to be at peace with ourselves, we should reframe our inner dialogues so that they express empathy for our basic human needs. Rosenberg’s suggested method for doing so involves asking four simple questions: What am I observing? What am I feeling? What am I needing right now? Do I have a request of myself or someone else?

Even if you’re having trouble calling up emotions of kindness at first, physical gestures of warmth can tap into the caregiving system, releasing oxytocin that will help change your biochemistry. The important thing is that you start acting kindly, and feelings of true warmth and caring will eventually follow.

I saw that relentlessly attacking myself for my weakness and immaturity was a complete waste of time and wasn’t helping myself or anybody else. I realized that by giving myself kindness and understanding, I could start to heal. This new place of inner warmth, peace, and emotional stability not only brought me great happiness, it also allowed me to give more in my relationship with Rupert.

Self-compassion is a gift available to anyone willing to open up to themselves. When we develop the habit of self-kindness, suffering becomes an opportunity to experience love and tenderness from within. No matter how difficult things get, we can always wrap our torn and tattered selves in our own soft embrace.

We become absorbed by our own feelings of insufficiency and insecurity. When we’re in the confined space of self-loathing, it’s as if the rest of humanity doesn’t even exist. This isn’t a logical thought process, but a type of emotional tunnel vision. Somehow it feels like I am the only one who is being dumped, proven wrong, or made a fool of.

That’s why it’s so important to transform our relationship with ourselves by recognizing our inherent interconnectedness. If we can compassionately remind ourselves in moments of falling down that failure is part of the shared human experience, then that moment becomes one of togetherness rather than isolation. When our troubled, painful experiences are framed by the recognition that countless others have undergone similar hardships, the blow is softened. The pain still hurts, but it doesn’t become compounded by feelings of separation. Sadly, however, our culture tells us to notice how we are unique from others, not how we are the same.

One of the saddest consequences of social comparison is how we distance ourselves from people whose success makes us feel bad about ourselves.

long as we recognize that we are interconnected rather than distinct entities, understanding and forgiveness can be extended to oneself and others with fewer barriers in between.

Perfectionists experience enormous stress and anxiety about getting things exactly right, and they feel devastated when they don’t. The unrealistically high expectations of perfectionists mean that they will inevitably be disappointed. By seeing things in black-and-white terms—either I’m perfect or I’m worthless—perfectionists are continually dissatisfied with themselves.

when your entire sense of self-worth is based on being productive and successful, when failure is simply not allowed, then the striving to achieve becomes tyrannical. And counterproductive. Research indicates that perfectionists are at much greater risk for eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and a whole host of other psychological problems.

If we closely examine our “personal” failings, it soon becomes clear that they are not there by choice. Typically, outside circumstances conspired to form our particular patterns without our input. 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?

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent upon the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close.

When we recognize that we are the product of countless factors that we don’t normally identify with, we don’t need to take our “personal failings” so personally. When we acknowledge the intricate web of causes and conditions in which we are all imbedded, we can be less judgmental of ourselves and others. A deep understanding of interbeing allows us to have compassion for the fact that we’re doing the best we can given the hand life has dealt us.

Judgment defines people as bad versus good and tries to capture their essential nature with simplistic labels. Discriminating wisdom recognizes complexity and ambiguity. It acknowledges that life has unfolded in such a way as to cause something to happen, but also allows for the possibility that with a new set of circumstances things might well go differently.

In recognizing the shared nature of our imperfection, self-compassion provides the sense of connectedness needed to truly thrive and reach our full potential. Instead of looking outside ourselves for a sense of acceptance and belonging, we can directly satisfy these needs by looking within.

Perhaps more important, focusing on common humanity helped me to love Rowan for who he was. Once I remembered that having problems and challenges was normal, I could more easily get over the disappointment of not having a “normal” child.

Being human is not about being any one particular way; it is about being as life creates you—with your own particular strengths and weaknesses, gifts and challenges, quirks and oddities. By accepting and embracing the human condition, I could better accept and embrace Rowan and also my role as the mother of an autistic child.

I like to term this process “overidentification.” Our sense of self becomes so wrapped up in our emotional reactions that our entire reality is consumed by them. There’s no mental space left over to say, “Gosh, I’m getting a bit worked up here. Maybe there’s another way to look at this.” Rather than stepping back and objectively observing what’s occurring, we’re lost in the thick of it. What we think and feel seems like a direct perception of reality, and we forget that we are putting a personal spin on things.

There’s another reason I call this process overidentification. Extreme reactions—or perhaps more accurately, overreactions—are especially common when the sense of self is involved.

for a shopping list, so it wasn’t really lost after all. Rather than lambasting him, which I probably would have done if I was still wrestling with the self-judgment that I was incompetent, I was able to laugh at the whole situation.

Mindfulness entails observing what is going on in our field of awareness just as it is—right here, right now.

I had gained insight into one of the most fundamental truths of life—that conscious awareness only exists in the here and now. Why is this important? Because this insight allows us to see that thoughts about the past and the future are just that: thoughts. The past doesn’t exist except in our memories, and the future doesn’t exist except in our imagination. Rather than being lost in our train of thought, therefore, we can take a step back and say—ahh, this is what I’m thinking, feeling, and experiencing right now. We can awaken to the reality of the present moment.

Mindfulness is sometimes seen as a form of “meta-awareness,” which means awareness of awareness. Instead of simply feeling anger, I am aware that I am now feeling anger. Rather than just feeling the blister on my heel, I am aware that I now feel the blister on my heel. Not only am I thinking about what I’m going to say at the meeting tomorrow, I am aware that I’m now thinking about what I’m going to say tomorrow. This may seem like a vague, insubstantial distinction, but it makes all the difference in the world in terms of our ability to respond effectively to difficult situations. When we can see our situation with clarity and objectivity, we open the door to wisdom. When our awareness narrows and gets lost in our thoughts and emotions, we can’t reflect on our reactions and question whether they are out of line. This limits our ability to act wisely.

We can train our brains to pay better attention and become more aware of what’s happening to us moment to moment. This skill offers a big payoff in terms of allowing us to be more fully engaged in the present, and it also provides us with the mental perspective needed to deal with challenging situations effectively.

he chose to express these words of wisdom with an equation: “Suffering = Pain x Resistance.” He then added, “Actually, it’s an exponential rather than a multiplicative relationship.”

Mindfulness allows us to distinguish between those aspects of our experience we can change and those we can’t.

If you’re upset because you’re lost in self-judgment or are feeling isolated from others, it will be much harder for you to be mindful of your painful emotions. If you are able to calm and soothe your feelings by giving yourself kindness or by putting things into the larger human perspective, however, you can give yourself the space needed to break out of your melodrama, and therefore your suffering. Realizing that you’re overreacting isn’t so difficult when you feel cared for and connected.

Whenever you notice you are in pain, you have three potential courses of action. You can give yourself kindness and care. You can remind yourself that encountering pain is part of the shared human experience. You can hold your thoughts and emotions in mindful awareness.

The relationship is a strong one, with self-compassion explaining one-third to one-half of the variation found in how anxious or depressed people are. This means that self-compassion is a major protective factor for anxiety and depression. As discussed earlier, self-criticism and feelings of inadequacy are implicated in the experience of depression and anxiety. When we feel fatally flawed, incapable of handling the challenges life throws our way, we tend to shut down emotionally in response to fear and shame. All we see is doom and gloom, and things go down from there, as our negative mind-set colors all our experiences. I like to call this mental state “black goo” mind.

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.

negativity bias. In one study, researchers asked participants to identify the emotions displayed on people’s faces in a series of photos. Half were given a nasal spray that contained oxytocin; the other half received a placebo spray (the control group). Volunteers who had received the oxytocin spray were slower to identify fearful facial expression in the photos, and were less likely to mistake positive facial emotions for negative ones, as compared with the control group. This means that oxytocin lessens the tendency of our mind to immediately latch on to negative information. Relating to our negative thoughts and emotions with compassion, then, is a good way to lessen our negativity bias. Compassion stops rumination in its tracks, engendering a hopeful outlook that asks “How can I calm and comfort myself right now?”