Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind

The Costs of Self Judgment

Continually feeding our need for positive evaluation is a bit like stuffing ourselves with candy. We get a brief sugar high, then a crash. And right after the crash comes a pendulum swing to despair as we realize that – however much we’d like to – we can’t always blame our problems on someone else. The result is often devastating. We look in the mirror and don’t like what we see, and the shame starts to set in. Most of us are incredibly hard on ourselves when we finally admit some flaw or shortcoming. "I'm not good enought. I'm worthless." It's not surprising that we hide the truth from ourselves when honesty is met with such harsh condemnation.

In areas where it is hard to fool ourselves – when comparing our weight to those of magazine models, for instance, or our bank accounts to those of the rich and famous – we cause ourselves incredible amounts of emotional pain. We lose faith in ourselves, start doubting our potential, and become hopeless. Of course, this sorry state just yields more self-condemnation for being such a do-nothing loser, and down, down we go.

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. The result of this line of thinking is sobering: millions of people need to take pharmaceuticals every day just to cope with daily life. Insecurity, anxiety, and depression are incredibly common in our society, and much of this is due to self-judgment, to beating ourselves up when we feel we aren't winning in the game of life.

Another Way

I had known that Buddhists talk a lot about the importance of compassion, but I had never considered that having compassion for yourself might be as important as having compassion for others. 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.

After getting my Ph.D., I did two years of postdoctoral training with a leading self-esteem resesarcher. I wanted to know more about how people determine their sense of self-worth. I quickly learned that the field of psychology was falling out of love with self-esteem as the ultimate marker of positive mental health. Although thousands of articles had been written on the importance of self-esteem, researchers were now starting to point out all the traps that people can fall into when they try to get a sense of high self-esteem: narcissism, self-absorption, self-righteous anger, prejudice, discrimination, and so on. I realized that self-compassion was the perfect alternative to the relentless pursuit of self-esteem. Why? Because it offers the same protection against harsh self-criticism as self-esteem, but without the need to see ourselves as perfect or as better than others.

Compassion for Ourselves

Compassion 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.

Self-compassion, by definition, involves the same qualities. First, it requires that we stop to recognize our own suffering. We can’t be moved by our own pain if we don’t acknowledge that it exists in the first place. Of course, sometimes the fact that we are in pain is blindingly obvious and we can think of nothing else. More often than you might think, however, we don’t recognize when we are suffering. Much of Western Culture has a strong “stiff-upper-lip” tradition. We are taught that we shouldn’t complain, that we should just carry on. 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-judgement – 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 moments as suffering.

Many people are resistant to the idea of self-compassion, however. Isn’t it really just a form of self-pity? Or a dressed up word for self-indulgence? I will show throughout this book that these assumptions are false and run directly counter to the actual meaning of self-compassion. As you’ll come to see, self-compassion involves wanting health and wellbeing for oneself and leads to proactive behaviour to better one’s situation, rather than passivity.

Ending the Madness

Before examining self-compassion in more detail, it’s worth considering what our more habitual, unhealthy states of mind look like. As we begin to see the workings of our psyches more clearly, we start to recognize how much we skew our perceptions of the world in order to feel better about ourselves. It’s as if we’re continually airbrushing our self-image to try to make it more to our liking, even if it radically distorts reality. At the same time, we mercilessly criticize ourselves when we fall short of our ideals, reacting so harshly that reality is equally distorted in the opposite direction.

… So why do we vacillate between self-serving distortions and ruthless self-criticism? Because we want to be safe. Our development, both as a species and individuals, is predicated on basic survival instincts. Because human beings tend to live in hierarchical social groups, those who are dominant within the group are less likely to be rejected and have more access to valued resources. In the same way, those who accept their subordinate status also have a secure place in the social order. We can’t take the risk of being outcast by the people who keep us out of harm’s way. Not if we want to stay alive. Surely this behaviour need not be judged – how could the desire to be safe and secure be anything other than normal and natural for any living organism?

A Means to an End

If we look more closely, we see that harsh self-criticism is often used as a cover for something else: the desire for control. Given that parents of self-critics are usually overly controlling, the message is received early on that self-control is possible. When parents blame their children for making mistakes, children learn that they are personally responsible for all their failures. The implication is that failure is an option box that need not be checked. That falling short of perfection is something that can and should be avoided.

Ironically, there is also a way in which our desire to be superior is fed by the process of self-criticism. Our self-concept is multi-faceted, and we can identify with different parts of ourselves at any one time. When we judge and attack ourselves, we are taking the role of both the criticizer and the criticized. 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.

The Way Out

Although it’s important for us to see our psychological patterns clearly, it’s equally important that we do not judge ourselves for them. If you are a habitual self-critic, remember that your behaviour actually represents a convoluted form of self-care, an attempt to keep yourself safe and on track. 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 ... The best way to counteract self-criticism, therefore is to understand it, have compassion for it, and then replace it with a kinder response.

The best way to counteract self-criticism, therefore, is to understand it, have compassion for it, and then replace it with a kinder response. By letting ourselves be moved by our suffering we have experienced at the hands of our own self-criticism, we strengthen our desire to heal. Eventually, after banging our heads against the wall long enough, we’ll decide that enough is enough and demand an end to our self-inflicted pain.

Fortunately, we can actually provide ourselves with the security and nurturance we want. We can recognize that weakness and imperfection are part of the shared human experience. We can feel more connected to our fellow life travellers who are just as flawed and vulnerable as we are. At the same time, we can let go of the need to feel better than others. We can see through the self-serving distortions that inflate our own egos at others’ expense.

Being Kind to Ourselves

As I’ve defined it, self-compassion entails three core components. First, it requires self-kindness, that we be gentle and understanding with ourselves rather than harshly critical or 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.

The Path of Self-Kindness

Self-kindness, by definition, means that we stop the constant self-judgement and disparaging internal commentary that most of us have come to see as normal. It requires us to understand our foibles and failures instead of condemning them. It entails clearly seeing the extent to which we harm ourselves through relentless self-criticism, and ending our internal war.

… Sadly, however, many people believe that they shouldn’t be kind to themselves, especially if they received that message in childhood. And even among those that want to be kinder to themselves, who would happily do away with their inner tyrant if they could, there is often the belief that change is not possible. Because they’ve developed such a strong habit of self-criticism, they don’t think they are actually capable of self-kindness. Luckily, however, being kind to yourself is easier than you think.

We’re all in this Together

The second fundamental element of self-compassion is recognition of the common human experience. Acknowledgment of the interconnected nature of our lives – indeed of life itself – helps to distinguish self-compassion from mere self-acceptance or self-love. Although self-acceptance and self-love are important, they are incomplete by themselves. They leave out an essential factor – other people. Compassion is, by definition, relational. Compassion literally means “to suffer with,” which implies a basic mutuality in the experience of suffering. The emotion of compassion springs from the recognition that the human experience is imperfect. Why else would we say “it’s only human” to comfort someone who has made a mistake? Self-compassion honours the fact that all human beings are fallible, that wrong choices and feelings of regret are inevitable, no matter how high and mighty one is.

… When we focus on our shortcomings without taking the bigger picture into account, our perspective tends to narrow. 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 exist. This isn’t a logical thought process, but a type of emotional tunnel-vision.

Being Mindful of What Is

The third key ingredient of self-compassion is mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to the clear seeing and non-judgmental acceptance of what’s occurring in the present moment. Facing up to reality, in other words. The idea is that we need to see things as they are, no more, no less, in order to respond to our current situation in the most compassionate – and therefore effective – manner.

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obyvatel said:

I found this book helpful too. I agree that it is a bit skewed in the direction of self-calming but it does not detract from the overall message within the context of self-compassion. The author does describe narcissism and mentions narcissistic rage - so she does not completely ignore pathology. This book is really applicable to normal people as pathological types do not seem to have much issues with beating themselves up.

Thanks for posting the excerpts, Turgon.

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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 to create a plausible excuse for failing is known as self-handicapping.

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Self-Compassion said:

Suffering stems from a single source--comparing our reality to our ideals. When reality matches our wants and desires, we're happy and satisfied. When reality doesn't ... we suffer.

I once went on a meditation retreat with a wonderful teacher named Shinzen Young, who gave me words of wisdom that I'll never forget. He said that the key to happiness was understanding that suffering is caused by resisting pain. We can't avoid pain in life, he said, but we don't necessarily have to suffer because of that pain. Because Shinzen was a bit of a Buddhist "nerd" ..., 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.
.....
Mindfulness allows us to stop resisting reality because it holds all experience in nonjudgmental awareness. It allows us to accept the fact that something unpleasant is occurring, even if we don't like it. By mindfully relating to our difficult emotions, they have the chance to take their natural course, arising and eventually passing away, IF we can wait out the storm with relative equanimity, we wont make things any worse than they already are. Pain is unavoidable, suffering is optional.

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The Attachment and Caregiving System

Our brains and bodies have the innate capacity to both give and receive care. It's part of our genetic inheritance. Not only does survival depend on the fight-or-flight instinct, it also depends on the "tend and befriend" instinct. In times of threat or stress, animals that are protective of their offspring are more likely to pass their genes on successfully on to the next generation, meaning that caregiving behaviour has a strong adaptive function.

For this reason all mammals are born with an "attachment system" - a set of behaviours that allow for strong emotional bonds between caregivers and their young. Unlike reptiles, who could care less about their offspring once they've slithered out of their eggs - often eating them, in fact - mammals spend considerable time and energy nurturing their young, making sure they are adequately fed, warm, and safe. Mammals are born in an immature state. They can't take care of themselves as newborns, and they rely on parents to be their lifeline until they are ready to leave home. Evolution ensured that mammals could both give and receive nurturance, so that parents wouldn't abandon their children after birth and children wouldn't wander off alone into the dangerous wild. The emotion of care comes naturally to us, because without it our species would not be able to survive. This means that the capacity to feel affection and interconnection is part of our biological nature. Our brains are actually designed to care.The well known psychologist Harry Harlow was one of the first to examine the development of the mammalian attachment system back in the 1950s. In a series of clever (if ethically questionable) experiments, Harlow studied the behaviour of newborn rhesus monkeys who were separated from their mothers and reared alone in a cage. The question was whether the baby monkeys would spend more time with a soft, terrycloth pretend mother - who at least offered some degree of warmth and comfort - or a stark, wire-mesh figure that held a milk-dispensing bottle but provided little comfort. The answer was clear. The baby monkeys clung to their cloth mommies as if their life depended on it, only moving to the stark wire-mesh figures long enough to take a quick drink. What's striking about this finding is that the emotional comfort offered by a snuggly cloth appeared to create a stronger drive in monkeys than food itself. Care was as powerful a survival need as nutrition. As the Bible says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." Harlow interpreted his experiments as providing evidence for the biological underpinnings of the attachment system.

John Bowlby, another influential psychologist working in the same period, took the study of attachment a step further - to humans. He proposed that infants develop a secure attachment bond to parents when their needs are constantly met. If children are consoled and supported by parents when they're upset or frightened, they learn to trust them. Every time a mom picks up and rocks her crying baby, the baby starts to feel that the world is a safe place, that he or she can turn to mommy for support when needed. This then allows children to use their parents as a "secure base", meaning they can safely explore the world around them because they know help is always at hand. If parents provide inconsisten support, however, or are cold and rejecting, children develop what's called an insecure attachment bond. This insecurity means that children can't trust their parents to soothe their distress - to kiss the boo-boo and make it go away. They learn that the world is really not safe, that their parents can't be relied upon. This tends to impair children's confidence in exploring the world - an impairment that often extends to adulthood.

Bowlby argued that early attachment bonds with parents affect the formation of our "internal working model" of self in relation to others. This is an unconscious, deep-seated mental portrait of who we are and what we can expect from other people. If children are securely attached to parents, they feel they are worthy of love. They typically grow up to be healthy and happy adults, secure in their belief that they can count on others to provide comfort and support. But if children are insecurely attached, they tend to feel they are unworthy and unlovable, and that other people cannot be trusted. This creates a pervasive feeling of insecurity that can cause long-term emotional distress and affect the ability to form close, stable relationships later on in life.

It probably comes as no surprise then that our research shows people who are insecurely attached have less self-compassion than those who are securley attached. In other words, our internal working models of self have a significant impact on how we treat ourselves - with compassion or contempt. And if our internal working models tell us that we can't rely on others to be there for us in times of need, we will not allow ourselves to depend on them. Just like Emily, the professional dancer whose story was told in the last chapter we may find it easier to assume the worst and act accordingly rather than make ourselves vulnerable by allowing others into our heart. But in doing so we cut ourselves off from human happiness.

The good news is that our internal working models are not etched in stone - they can be changed. Because the ability to give and receive care is inborn, our attachment buttons can be reset. A person who is insecurely attached as a child but somehow manages to find a loving, supportive romantic partner as an adult can eventually learn to become securely attached. Healthy romantic relationships allow us to realize that actually, we are valuable and worthy of care, that others can be trusted to meet our needs. Skilled therapists can also help change insecure attachment bonds by providing unconditional support to their clients. The safe space and deep listening provided by a therapist allows access to the deep-rooted patterns formed in our childhood, bringing them to the surface so they can be re-formed.

Of course, there are problems with depending solely on other people to change how we feel about ourselves. Romantic relationships may end, therapists may move away or become unaffordable. And those we rely upon often have their own dragons to slay - sickness, depression, job stress - that prevent them from being there for us when we need them. Fortunately, we don't have to solely rely on others to change our self views. When we consistently give ourselves nurturance and understanding, we also come to feel worthy of care and acceptance. When we give ourselves empathy and support, we learn to trust that help is always at hand. When we wrap ourselves in the warm embrace of self-kindness, we feel safe and secure.

Luckily, Emily was finally able to learn this. She came to realize that unless she had compassion for the feelings of insecurity woven deep within the fabric of her personality, she would keep driving men away with her defensive reactions. So Emily started to practice being kinder and more accepting of herself. Every time a wave of insecurity came over her she would silently say, "I love and accept myself exactly as I am." Every time she started to criticize herself, or to interpret someone else's actions as deliberate rejection, she would repeat, "I love and accept myself exactly as I am." Eventually, deep wells of grief arose as she let herself experience the full extent of the pain caused by her mother's rejection and disapproval. But as long as she repeated her phrase, she found she could feel her emotions without being overwhelmed by them.

Finally, as her pain started to subside, she began to trust others once more. She started to realize how much she had to offer others, and that her past no longer had anything to do with her present. The last time I heard from her, Emily was engaged to a wonderful man who deeply loved and appreciated her, and whose love and appreciation she could finally allowe herself to receive.

The Chemicals of Care

The power of self-kindness is not just an idea - some feel-good but insubstantial notion that doesn't really change anything. It's very real. 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. Researchers have dubbed oxytocin the "hormone of love and bonding" because of the important role it plays in social relationships. For instance, one study found that levels of oxytocin meausre in pregnant mothers during their first trimester predicted the strength of mother-child bonding after birth. Research has also shown that increased levels of oxytocin strongly increase feelings of trust, calm, safety, generosity, and connectedness and also facilitate the ability to feel warmth and compassion for ourselves. Oxytocin reduces fear and anxiety and can counteract the increased blood pressure and cortisol associated with stress. Interestingly, the party drug MDMA (otherwise known as Ecstasy) mimics the actions of oxytocin, which is why people report feeling more relaxed, loving, and accepting toward themselves and other when taking the drug.

Oxytocin is released in a variety of social situations, including when a mother breast-feeds her child, when parents interact with their young children, or when someone gives or receives a soft, tender caress. Because thoughts and emotions have the same effect on our bodies whether they're directed to ourselves or others, this research suggests that self-compassion may be a powerful trigger for the release of oxytocin.

Self-criticism appears to have a very different effect on our body. The amygdala is the oldest part of the brain and is designed to quickly detect threats in the environment. When we experience a threatening situation, the fight-or-flight response is triggered: they amygdala sends signals that increase blood pressure, adrenaline, and the hormone cortisol, mobilizing the strength and energy needed to confront or avoid a threat. Although this system was designed by evolution to deal with physical attacks, it is activated just as readily by emotional attacks - from ourselves and others. Over time increased cortisol levels lead to depression by depleting various neurotransmitters involved in the ability to experience pleasure.

There is also neurological evidence showing that self-kindness and self-criticism operate quite differently in terms of brain function. A recent study examined reactions to personal failure using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technology. While in a brain scanner, participants were presented with hypothetical situations such as "A third job rejection letter in a row arrives in the post." They were then told to imagine reacting to the situation in either a kind or a self-critical way. Self-criticism was associated with activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate - areas of the brain associated with error processing and problem solving. Being kind and reassuring toward oneself was associated with left temporal pole and insula activation - areas of the brain associated with positive emotions and compassion. Instead of seeing ourselves as a problem to be fixed, therefore, self-kindness allows us to see ourselves as valuable human beings who are worthy of care.

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.

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obyvatel said:

Self-criticism leads to an assessment of a dangerous environment by the neuroception process. This would either lead to an internal physiological fight-or-flight response or immobilization response. While self-criticism is often triggered by failure of willpower, it is self-defeating as physiologically this response leads to lower HRV and less willpower.

Such self-sabotage and self-hurting is baffling when viewed objectively. Don Juan's comment about the predator's mind being a foreign installation seems to make sense in this context. It is a foreign aggressor which we have identified as "self" that is the source of this internal attack of harsh self-criticism; and its object is to drain energy and keep us in our place.

In the Work, intentional suffering is undertaken for specific aims - and to suffer intentionally requires willpower. If self-criticism is brought into this picture, willpower is reduced and suffering becomes mechanical and reactive rather than intentional and conscious. Self compassion on the other hand would work towards increasing willpower and thus help in the pursuit of Work aims. OSIT

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You are not experiencing suffering. You are suffering your experience.

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