Why Self-Compassion?

I’ve read so many self-help books, and upon reviewing the most helpful ones, I keep saying, “that’s another way of saying to have self-compassion”. The concept that ties all the ideas in these self-help books boils down to self-compassion.

I also recommend The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for a roadmap on how to organize your life in a practical manner, as a very effective and powerful way of doing your to-do lists, and so forth. I summarized the book here in two parts, this is the first part.

But it's really self-compassion that can motivate you to be effective in the first place, and to really stick to your goals! I wasn't able to follow any sort of positive habits for long when I read The 7 Habits in college, because of being easily demoralized.

Therefore, in this post, we’ll explain why self-compassion is such a powerful concept. Practicing self-compassion is personal and isn’t applied in a “cookie-cutter” way. In fact, having self-compassion is extremely challenging and difficult, as you have to find out what works for you.

In this past post, I superficially touched upon a self-compassion exercise, so in this post, we’ll explain why self-compassion is key, by summarizing Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself  by Kristen Neff, Ph.D., who is the foremost authority on the subject.

In the horrible Harry Harlow experiments, he nevertheless proved that love and connection are more basic than food and water. The poor baby monkeys were taken away from their mothers, and had to choose between the fake cloth mom with no food/water, and the fake wire mom with food/water.

Harlow himself thought that the babies would stick with the wire mom the whole time because of the food and water, but found out the exact opposite. The babies clung to the cloth mom and when hungry, run toward the food/water, and then immediately run back to the cloth mom.

What this experiment proved is that the basic need of all humans is love and connection, more so than even food and water. When you don’t have love and connection with others, it can lead to depression, anxiety and even suicide.

This sense of belonging is primary and deep, even in the most “macho” rituals, American football. By being a diehard fan of one team, you embrace other fellow fans. You see strangers hugging each other, sharing food and beer in these “tail-gate” parties. There’s a huge sense of connection if you ever participated in one of these parties.

Having self-compassion sounds soft and fluffy, but in reality, it can be very tough and painful at times, as we will see down the road.

PROBLEM ONE: Comparing ourselves to others leads to disconnection and suffering

At least in the Western world, we live in an extremely competitive society where we must excel, and it’s not “good enough” to be average, you have to be above average.

This is so illogical, because we can’t be above average in all things, and there are always going to be people who are more beautiful, smarter, more successful than us.

Sadly, by comparing ourselves to others and being competitive in wanting to be above-average, people tend to look down upon others to feel better about themselves.

We may get a rush from having higher self-esteem when we mistakenly feel that we are more “successful” than another person.

However, if we meet someone who is more “successful” than us, then our self-esteem plummets, and we feel like crap.

Therefore, comparing ourselves to others leads to this emotional see-saw. If we find we’re better, we get elated, if we don’t measure up, we get depressed.  Even worse, when we protect our self-image to avoid feeling bad about ourselves, we don’t acknowledge our faults, rather blaming the other person, even though “it takes two to tango”.

This leads to ongoing conflicts, which causes disconnection from your loved ones. Further, by not seeing our flaws, that leads to stagnation and lack of growth, because how can you improve if you don’t acknowledge your faults?

The solution to prevent these comparisons is self-compassion. Stop judging and evaluating ourselves altogether! Don’t label ourselves as “good” or “bad” but rather accept ourselves openly, and treat ourselves with kindness like a best friend.

Does this work? Yes! By having self-compassion you accept yourself because you’re like everybody else! Everyone has flaws, we’re no different. By accepting ourselves for who we are, then we can accept others as well, and there’s no reason to compare.

When you love and truly accept yourself, you’re not going to look down on those who are less fortunate. Likewise, you’re not going to have that sinking feeling that you’re not doing enough when you see others drive fancy cars.

Caveat: There are many people who are rather harsh with themselves, but would never be that way with others. However, by being nasty to yourself, you’re not going to feel good about yourself.

Why not pursue Win/Win where you’re compassionate towards yourself and others?

I notice that I tend to feel sour when someone I dislike becomes more successful (comparing), and I get down on myself for not being that successful. Then I feel bad that I can’t forgive the person and let go. It’s an absolutely awful feeling, it doesn’t do me any good, and certainly not to the more successful person. I really hate that pinched soul feeling.

Next, I continue to feel bad about myself for not being charitable, and this spirals downward to being angry with myself, “why can’t I just forgive!”.

However, when I have self-compassion and realize that forgiveness is something I struggle greatly with, and indeed a lot of people have the same issues, I can be more patient with myself and move toward being less judgmental.

Allowing yourself to be kind to yourself humanizes you (as you suffer just like everyone), as well as humanizing others because you understand deep down that they’re going through same and/or different struggles as well.

In other words, as part of humanity, you are a worthy person, just like everyone else. When you see yourself as different than others, that again leads to feeling disconnected and not belonging to humanity.

Indeed, dehumanizing others leads to disconnection, which has led to unspeakable crimes against humanity. By seeing “non-Aryan” groups as other and less than human, it was easy for an entire nation to exterminate and torture people “because they’re not like us”.

PROBLEM 2: Feeling lonely and isolated

We looked at the first part of self-compassion which is self-kindness: gentle understanding of ourselves, rather than being critical and judgmental.

The second part of compassion we briefly touched upon. Why should we be kind to ourselves? Because we’re all part of humanity. As we’re kind to others, then it makes logical sense to be kind to ourselves.

The concept here is “we’re all in this together”. We recognize this common human experience of suffering, acknowledging the interconnected nature of our lives (Harry Harlow experiment), indeed life itself.

Therefore, compassion is relational. By seeing people as part of humanity, rather than “other” as the Nazis did, we feel connected.

As explained above, our deepest need is to belong, but when you compare yourself to others, this disconnect leads to loneliness. The KKK feel superior to others because they’re white, and the “other” is not. The same can be said of Men, Women, Democrats, Republicans, Americans, Russians, Christians, Muslims, and the list goes on. We’re part of this group, therefore, we’re superior to this other group. Fanatical group identity is dangerous as it leads to disconnection and even genocide. 

However, if you refuse to hold this view and have compassion toward yourself and others, regardless of group affiliation, you have connection. Instead of seeing differences, you reframe and see how we’re so similar to one another. We all want love and connection; that’s our similarity.

So when our sense of self-worth and belonging is grounded in simply being human, we can’t be rejected or cast out by others. It makes no sense to say that you’re rejected by humanity, because you’re human.

Remember your shared humanity. That can help you to have compassion for who you are. It helps to have others be kind toward you, but they can’t be there with you 24/7. However, you can be with yourself 24/7, so you might as well be kind to yourself using the “best friend” approach discussed in this post.

PROBLEM 3: Suffering

This is the hard part of self-compassion. Self-kindness and common humanity we discussed above. The third and last step is mindfulness.

You must be aware of your suffering, but in a balanced way, where you neither diminish, or make it out to be worse than it is. I tend to make a mountain out of an ant-hill.

Therefore, in this third part of self-compassion, you need to be mindful - clear seeing and nonjudgmental acceptance of what’s occurring in the present moment.

You’re facing up to reality, neither underestimating or over-exaggerating things. First step is to recognize when you’re suffering instead of suppressing it, because you can’t heal what you can’t feel. Be aware of your pain. By stuffing and ignoring pain, it can explode.

A good analogy of awareness is thus: Awareness is the blue sky. Your feelings and thoughts are the birds flapping around. Identify with the sky, instead of the birds. If you remain in awareness (i.e. sky) and not react to the thoughts and feelings (birds), you can be calm and centered as the sky doesn’t shift and change in a feckless manner.

You can’t change your thoughts and feelings very well, but you can change your reactions to them. There are many meditation techniques, but the key here is to hold and be aware of the pain, and don’t numb it.

Indeed, people who suffer from PTSD tend to numb their emotions, as a very understandable mechanism to avoid feeling the immense pain of trauma.

But by having this numbing of emotions, they can’t feel the positive emotions of joy, creativity, love. When you numb, you numb all emotions. Often, people who suffer from PTSD say that they’re living zombies and they don’t know how to have fun anymore.

The hard work in PTSD involves working through the painful memories in a safe, secure environment. The acknowledgment, and being one with the pain, is the really difficult part of self-compassion.

One example that makes us all feel bad about ourselves is when we hear a baby crying which irritates us, but we judge ourselves for having these thoughts, “what a horrible person I am for having that thought, it’s only a baby, a nicer person would feel sympathy rather than being triggered”.

However, if you have self-compassion, you stop the judgment. You become aware (sky) of the irritation (birds) you’re having, you acknowledge the negative thought, while recognizing that surely a lot of people would feel the same way, and the thought will eventually pass!

A silly example is when I went to a party. I tend to need at least 5 large glasses of wine and/or beer to feel socially comfortable. The extremely uncomfortable feeling of being socially awkward has been too hard for me to deal with.

However, at a recent party, I decided not to drink - this wasn’t too daring, because there were only 3 people at the party that I don’t know that well. I decided to practice self-compassion, since I just completed reading the book.I decided to be one with being socially awkward.

What helped me was chanting exactly how I felt, “socially awkward, socially awkward, socially awkward”. However, after 1 hour (I’m “slow to warm up”), I stopped feeling awkward, and I ended up enjoying being in the moment and having meaningful connections.

I’m not sure if this strategy would work if I’m in a party with people I barely know, but this is a small step to being aware.

Dr. Neff recommends that when you feel suffering, to have a mantra, in your words, along this line:

This is a moment of suffering
Suffering is part of life
May I be kind to myself in this moment
May I give myself the compassion I need

I kind of like Brene Brown, Ph.D. (author of Daring Greatly) mantra where one of her interviewees, when in pain would simply say, “pain, pain pain”. Or you can say “ouch, ouch, ouch”, to acknowledge the pain, as well as the rest of the mantra as suffering being part of humanity, and to give yourself kindness and compassion. It’s best if it’s in your own words.

On a positive note, when you have awareness, you’re going to have awareness of positive emotions too! In this situation, you can hold it in loving awareness and really make that feeling bloom! You can experience love and joy with more awareness and rejoice in it - it actually overflowed to my coworkers and strangers!

Using the three part component of self-compassion as a way toward love and connection, it helps you to deal with pain and suffering.

I then chuckled at Dr. Neff’s stages of self-compassion, because I went through the same thing. Initially, as I had self-compassion, I had this outpouring of love toward my coworkers, and work was light - I actually made some rather creative suggestions which surprised even me. I was enamored with self-compassion.

However, I then saw the hard work of self-compassion. It doesn’t take the pain away at all, rather it helps you to be more resilient and deal with pain in a more effective way.

Instead of numbing or burying your feelings, which will pop up again, as survivors of trauma would all attest, in the form of disturbing intrusions, horrific nightmares and flashbacks, rather self-compassion holds you in awareness.

With self-compassion, you gain the resilience to work on painful emotions, feelings and thoughts head on. While having compassion for yourself that you’re suffering like the rest of the world, and being aware of the pain, you can wait for the pain to pass. You can weather these negative emotions. This leads to emotional resilience, and with practice, you become better and better at it.

PROBLEM 4: Being successful

If you think about it, if you see someone more successful than you, and he brags to you about all the things he bought, where you “only” have a run of the mill sedan, it’ll be hard to be friends with him.

Therefore, what if you’re highly successful, does this mean you’ll be disconnected from others? If you have self-compassion, no! As part of humanity (principle 2 of self-compassion), you’ll have shared joy.

You are concerned for your own well-being as well as others, so you want both to succeed! By recognizing our inherent connectedness, Dr. Neff writes, “When we’re part of a larger whole, we can feel glad that ‘one of us’ has something to celebrate”.

You celebrate with exuberance in the success of others with self-compassion. In fact, with self-compassion, you can genuinely feel that way, instead of grudgingly when you see your friends being more successful than you.

Instead, armed with self-compassion, you become aware of other people’s positive traits and fully appreciate them, not taking them for granted. You rejoice in yourself, just as you rejoice in others.

PROBLEM 5: I’m not going to be successful if I have self-compassion

The opposite is true. So many psychological studies have shown that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic motivation.

If you’re stuck in the self-esteem, need to prove myself trap, you’re doing things to be successful, to look smart, athletic so that you can be admired, which strokes your ego. This is extrinsic motivation.

Let’s say the activity is very grueling, streaming as a career. With extrinsic motivation, your self-esteem increases when your viewer numbers go up, and then it crashes when your number goes down.

I know this very well. In the early stages of streaming, I actually got depressed when my viewer number went from 10 to 9, WTF!

But you still stream for those numbers because when you grow, your self-esteem does as well, and I did get emotional high’s when I got an average of 20 in one month - it’s like a drug!

However, during summer, when many are off on vacation, your numbers tend to be lower for the next 3 months. Since you’re streaming for self-esteem and those numbers, you may be demoralized and then give up.

Further, by wanting to be successful so you can prove yourself as the “better” streamer (stroking your ego), you’re afraid to take creative risks, make mistakes, for fear of losing viewers. You then look “wooden” which is the death-knell in entertainment. You keep to a regular script which can get stale, also another way to make yourself bored and not wanting to stream anymore.

However, if you have self-compassion, which leads to awareness of what you truly want in life, you decide to stream because you love the process as well as your viewers.

You enjoy the connection and the challenge of negotiating chat and gameplay, and finding new creative angles to be entertaining.

This is intrinsic motivation, you’re doing something because you want to do it. You don’t care if you fail and your numbers drop like flies, because your self-esteem isn’t harmed in any way, because you have self-compassion.

If you do something "dumb" while streaming, you’ll be able to do your “ouch” mantra, hold the embarrassment, and move on, with emotional resilience. You can take enormous risks (historically leading to major advancements in technology and innovation) because you simply don’t care about social rejection or judgment, or low viewer numbers. You are authentic and free.

If you’re stuck on an issue with streaming, you’re not afraid to ask for help for “fear of looking stupid”. In other words, you’re not controlled by societal pressures when you have self-compassion.

You do your own thing with utmost courage, authenticity, honesty and integrity, screw the rules! Contrary to what people think, self-compassion isn’t “wimpy”, but bad-ass! What's more bad-ass than being true to yourself and a "rebel".

At any rate, it appears that those who do something they absolutely love tend to be more successful than someone who’s doing it to prove themselves.

When you love something, you never get tired of doing it, to the point where you may have to work on self-care issues such as eating regular meals and getting enough sleep (I’m thinking specifically video gaming).

When you’re doing something to prove things, you’re going to be demoralized when there’s a glitch, a temporary obstacle, and failure, and you may quit altogether.

The person who’s spending and practicing that many hours because of the enjoyment will tend to be better at the activity than someone who quits in fits and starts due to obstacles in the way.

I wanted to outline the three components of self-compassion here, and present the major arguments for self-compassion.

There are many exercises in the book that I won’t outline here, so if you feel that the concept of self-compassion makes sense and can make a difference in your life, I highly recommend Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. 

I found the concept of self-compassion jump started me on being way more pro-active in self-care and fulfilling my specific goals. Perhaps borrow the book from the library or look through the book at the bookstore. Do the exercises that resonate with you. Above all have self-compassion!

Note: I have been including the How of Happiness link in the bottom of all my posts, but I found Dr. Neff's Self-Compassion equally important, so I'll be alternating posts with these books.