Self Compassion

 

 

 I have been thinking alot about compassion for self lately. I find a common theme among those I counsel. The theme of shame, self loathing and the inability to be patient and merciful with ourselves. Some of us are great at being merciful and kind to others -but when it comes to ourselves we are not so good. I think the greatest sign of emotional healing is the ability to have compassion for ourselves.

The Savior was the greatest example of compassion. He loved the sinner and the imperfect. Compassion means to feel love and mercy towards a person. The Lords love for us is not conditional on our behavior. It is not earned. He cherishes us even if we stumble. And we all do stumble.

Compassion means to have sympathy and desire to relieve suffering. It means to show kindness and tenderness. Christ healed the sick and afflicted and we often read of him being  “moved with compassion”.   When he saw that people were hungry-he fed them. When they were sick-he healed them. When they were in need of spiritual enrichment-he taught them. He met their needs. Too often we are not even aware what our needs are -let alone do we take time to meet those needs. Although we may think of this as "selfless behavior" it is not really. Our needs don't go away just by ignoring them. Instead they find ways of creeping out and we end up unknowinlgy meeting those needs in unhealthy ways; such as various addictions (food, drugs, anger, work)

When we are compassionate with ourself, studiess have shown that that we have less anxiety, less depression and less conflict.

Kristin Neff, PHD has made it her work to study self compassion. You can learn some of what she has found, by watching above. Being compassionate with ourselves does not mean we are are not aware of our weaknesses or that we aren't trying to improve. Kristin Neff says that it is to accept ourselves with an open heart-treating ourselves with kindess and caring. Her work over the last decade has shown that self compassion  is a powerful way to achieve emotional health and contentment and helps in avoiding destructive patterns of fear, negativity and isolation.

She says that self compassion entails three core components.
"First, it requires self-kindness, that we be gentle and understanding with ourselves rather than harshly critical and judgmental. Second, it requires recognition of our common humanity, feeling connected with others in the experience of life rather than feeling isolated and alienated by our suffering. Third, it requires mindfulness—that we hold our experience in balanced awareness, rather than ignoring our pain or exaggerating it. We must achieve and combine these three essential elements in order to be truly self-compassionate.

This means that unlike self-esteem, the good feelings of self-compassion do not depend on being special and above average, or on meeting ideal goals. Instead, they come from caring about ourselves—fragile and imperfect yet magnificent as we are. Rather than pitting ourselves against other people in an endless comparison game, we embrace what we share with others and feel more connected and whole in the process. And the good feelings of self-compassion don’t go away when we mess up or things go wrong. In fact, self-compassion steps in precisely where self-esteem lets us down—whenever we fail or feel inadequate."

She continues:

"Recently, my colleague Roos Vonk and I investigated the benefits of self-compassion versus self-esteem with more than three thousand people from various walks of life, the largest study to examine this issue so far. We hypothesized that self-esteem would be associated with relatively unstable feelings of self-worth, since self-esteem tends to be diminished whenever things don’t turn out as well as desired. On the other hand, because compassion can be extended to oneself in both good times and bad, we expected the feelings of self-worth to remain steadier over time among self-compassionate people. As expected, self-compassion was clearly associated with steadier and more constant feelings of self-worth than self-esteem. We also found that self-compassion was less likely than self-esteem to be contingent on outside factors like social approval, success in competitions, or feeling attractive. When our sense of self-worth stems from being a human being intrinsically worthy of respect—rather than being contingent on reaching certain goals—our sense of self-worth is much less easily shaken.

We also found that in comparison to self-esteem, self-compassion was associated with less social comparison and less need to retaliate for perceived personal slights. It was also linked to less “need for cognitive closure,” which is psych-speak for the need to be right without question. People who invest their self-worth in feeling superior and infallible tend to get angry and defensive when their status is threatened. People who compassionately accept their imperfection, however, no longer need to engage in such unhealthy behaviors to protect their egos. Self-compassion was found to be completely unassociated with narcissism, meaning that people who are high in self-compassion are no more likely to be narcissistic than people low in self-compassion...........

Research suggests that 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?” 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"

How can you become more compassionate with yourself? Less judgmental. See yourself with the love and compassion that our Savior sees you with? On the flip side -what are you doing that is not compassionate to yourself? and how do you think that might be negativly affecting your life?