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

by Kristin Neff

So what’s the answer? To stop judging and evaluating ourselves altogether. To stop trying to label ourselves as “good” or “bad” and simply accept ourselves with an open heart. To treat ourselves with the same kindness, caring, and compassion we would show to a good friend, or even a stranger for that matter. Sadly, however, there’s almost no one whom we treat as badly as ourselves.

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. This is the opposite of oneness, interconnection, and universal love—the ultimate goal of most spiritual paths, no matter which tradition.

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?

Most of our self-critical thoughts take the form of an inner dialogue, a constant commentary and evaluation of what we are experiencing. Because there is no social censure when our inner dialogue is harsh or callous, we often talk to ourselves in an especially brutal way.

Floccinaucinihilipilification, defined as the habit of estimating something as worthless, is one of the longest words in the English language. The mystery of why we do it is as baffling as how to pronounce it.

You don’t want to beat yourself up for beating yourself up in the vain hope that it will somehow make you stop beating yourself up. Just as hate can’t conquer hate—but only strengthens and reinforces it—self-judgment can’t stop self-judgment.

Rather than relentlessly cutting ourselves down when we fall, even if our fall is a spectacular one, we do have another option. We can recognize that everyone has times when they blow it, and treat ourselves kindly. Maybe we weren’t able to put our best foot forward, but we tried, and falling flat on one’s face is an inevitable part of life. An honorable part, in fact.

Because thoughts and emotions have the same effect on our bodies whether they’re directed to ourselves or to others, this research suggests that self-compassion may be a powerful trigger for the release of oxytocin.

Loneliness stems from the feeling that we don’t belong, whether or not we’re in the presence of others.

Group identity lies at the root of most violent conflicts—whether it’s a scuffle between two local high school football teams or a full-scale international war.

But 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.

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.

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.

Because Shinzen was a bit of a Buddhist “nerd” (he even wore horn-rimmed glasses), 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.” His point was that we can distinguish between the normal pain of life—difficult emotions, physical discomfort, and so on—and actual suffering, which is the mental anguish caused by fighting against the fact that life is sometimes painful.

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.

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.

The attempt to suppress unwanted thoughts causes them to emerge into conscious awareness more strongly and more frequently than if they were given attention in the first place.

Or as the Buddha said, all emotions are “liable to destruction, to evanescence, to fading away, to cessation.” Painful feelings are, by their very nature, temporary. They will weaken over time as long as we don’t prolong or amplify them through resistance or avoidance. The only way to eventually free ourselves from debilitating pain, therefore, is to be with it as it is. The only way out is through. We need to bravely turn toward our suffering, comforting ourselves in the process, so that time can work its healing magic.

As long as they’re receiving the attention and admiration they believe they deserve, narcissists are on top of the world. The problem comes when their position of superiority starts to slip. When confronted with bad reviews, the narcissist typically responds with feelings of rage and defiance.

“Contingent self-worth” is a term psychologists use to refer to a sense of self-esteem that depends on success or failure, on approval or disapproval. Several common areas of contingent self-worth have been identified, such as personal attractiveness, peer approval, competition with others, work/school success, family support, feeling virtuous, and even God’s love.

Trying to continually prove your mettle in areas where your self-esteem is invested can also backfire. If the main reason you want to win that marathon is to feel good about yourself, what happens to your love of running in and of itself? Instead of doing it because you enjoy it, you start doing it to get the reward of high self-esteem. Which means you’re more likely to give up if you stop winning races.

But happiness—real, lasting happiness—can be best experienced when we are engaged in the flow of life—connected to rather than separate from everything else.

Not only does self-criticism create anxiety, it can also lead to psychological tricks designed to prevent self-blame in the case of failure, which in turn makes failure more likely. The tendency to undermine your performance in ways that create a plausible excuse for failing is known as “self-handicapping.” One common form of self-handicapping is simply not trying very hard.

So why is self-compassion a more effective motivator than self-criticism? Because its driving force is love not fear. Love allows us to feel confident and secure (in part by pumping up our oxytocin), while fear makes us feel insecure and jittery (sending our amygdala into overdrive and flooding our systems with cortisol).

Research shows that in the long run, learning goals are more effective than performance goals. Learning goals propel people to try harder for longer, because they enjoy what they do. They also enable people to ask for the help and guidance they need, because they’re less worried about looking incompetent for not already knowing the right answer.

In sum, the study found that self-compassionate people are better able to create close, authentic, and mutually supportive friendships than those who are self-critical.

Because we are so emotionally vulnerable in close relationships, because our inner selves are laid so bare, we often feel insecure about whether others are judging us. When we stop judging and evaluating ourselves, however, we don’t need to worry so much about others’ approval and can instead focus on meeting the emotional needs of others.

The hardships of being a caregiver are just as valid and worthy of compassion as the hardships of being a trauma victim. Certainly there are differences in how debilitating and intense the pain is, but all pain deserves to be held in the warm embrace of compassion, so that healing can occur.

I had just continued a cycle of bad decisions based on an intricate web of pain. He encouraged me to have compassion for my mistakes and to stop judging myself. I had done the best I could at the time.

Of course, teens are sometimes resistant to the idea of self-compassion at first given that it sounds a bit hearts and flowers-y. Not cool when your favorite band is Napalm Ghost Slayer.

If you can compassionately validate your own feelings, gently reminding yourself that it’s only natural for you to feel the way you do, you won’t have to speak louder and louder in order to feel heard.

We also fear letting go of the devil we know. If we’re in the habit of cutting ourselves down, recognition of our positive qualities will feel alien to us. Our sense of self may be so infused with feelings of inadequacy that it becomes frightening to see ourselves as worthy and valuable. Ironically, this can feel like a sort of death to us, and our negative sense of self will therefore fight hard to survive.