Self-compassion: Kindness towards the person you already are

​Self-compassion is becoming a key aspect of mindfulness in the West. It is also, in my opinion, one of the greatest gifts you could give yourself.

What is it?

It involves:

• deliberately treating yourself, with your mixture of faults and virtues, with kindness and understanding and
• accepting that you share your painful experiences and your failings with many millions of others.
• And it is underpinned by the practice of mindfulness.

Here is how one the major researchers on self-compassion, Dr Kristin Neff describes it:

“Self-compassion, therefore, involves being touched by and open to one’s own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, and generating the desire to alleviate one’s suffering and to heal oneself with kindness,” she writes in her contribution to the book Mindfulness in Positive Psychology.

“Self-compassion also involves offering nonjudgmental understanding to one’s pain, inadequacies, and failures, so that one’s experience is seen as part of the larger human experience.”

More benefits

Some more points from that chapter:

• Self-compassionate people ruminate less. In other words they are less likely to keep repeating and repeating negative thoughts to themselves.
• People who are compassionate towards themselves have lower levels of depression, anxiety and stress.
• Self-compassionate people feel less negative about the past even though they are more likely to take personal responsibility for what has gone wrong in the past.
• When self-compassionate people fail, they are more likely try again. This might be because they know that if they fail again they won’t subject themselves to fierce criticism.
• Self-compassionate people are more likely to stick to their diets, to exercise  and to succeed in reducing alcohol use. Why this should be is not entirely clear but it may be that a self-compassionate motivation is more helpful than a self-critical one.

(The book is Mindfulness in Positive Psychology: The Science of Meditation and Wellbeing edited by Itai Ivtzan and Tim Lomasmeans)

If you believe you would benefit from greater self compassion my online course True Friend (payment by donation) can make the difference.

Resources for self compassion list.