Why I believe self-compassion is the game-changer for well-being
May Sarton wrote in her book Journal of a Solitude, “It all comes back to the fact that we are not asked to be perfect, only human” (Norton & Co., 1973, p.123). It is through a practice of self-compassion, being kind to myself inwardly and in daily life that I have found self-compassion to be the means for greater acceptance of what being human, actually means.
What I have found, as have many of my clients, is that a practice of self-compassion is, indeed, the game changer in forging a more sustainable and fundamental sense of well-being in life. Writing this piece for participants on an online retreat focusing on finding one’s wisdom through self-compassion, in the midst of a global pandemic, I still find this practice of self-compassion to be a crucial ingredient for sustaining our spirits and mental health, and crucially for sustaining hope during this upheaval.
The inner structure in our psyche of why most of us need this simple yet life changing ingredient has remained the same from my perspective in practicing psychotherapy through this pandemic. The positive benefits of practicing self-compassion improves and clarifies our relationships, buffers us from burnout, and mobilizes us to be creative in galvanizing meaningful contributions to the world around us, and all of these ingredients are most needed at this time.
In my years in psychotherapy practice and a personal focus on self-compassion, I also found--once I began to get my head around the concept of being kind to ourselves--how deeply rooted are those lurking, vague feelings of being an ‘imposter’ in life. I have heard so many accomplished, caring people struggling with ‘imposter syndrome’. There is such deep, hidden suffering happening inside people’s hearts and minds with feelings of worthlessness, lurking non-specific feelings of guilt, almost crippling shame, a sense of being a somehow failure of a human being. These themes are sometimes hiding behind the belief in the need for self-improvement project, trying to be being a better person, combined with being very hard on oneself and somehow, never quite attaining that ‘self’ we believe we ‘ought’ to be – or that ‘self’ who will be happier, more attractive, more accomplished, more….(fill in the blank).
These themes are so often swirling beneath daily life and rise like swelling tides in the pauses between activities that fill a day, and especially at night, when rest seems elusive and deep healing sleep a rarity. A daily practice of being kind to oneself, as one person said to me recently and most succinctly, “It is so simple….but it is so hard”.
From my own experience, I can offer to you that it is well worth the effort to make it a daily habit to find ways to be kinder to yourself – in actions, in thoughts, in your heart by bringing compassionate care to ‘you’, ‘as is’, in this moment.
Dr. Kristen Neff and Dr. Christopher Germer (2018) have done a difficult but enormously successful job of providing us with the rigor of research behind their skillfully developed theory and practice of self-compassion. If you haven’t used their workbook to begin cultivating your own practice, it’s well worth it.
Self-compassion is a practice I began integrating in my personal life over twenty-five years ago as I developed interest in the practices offered in the Mindfulness movement evolving in the 1990’s. It was bringing in a focus on self-compassion practice that I noticed made the most significant changes in my experience in daily life, in work, in relationships, in mothering, in aging, through loss, trauma and grief; indeed, every part of my life. I am changed and continue to notice a deepening of something bedrock transforming within through a rigorous practice of focusing my attention on being kinder to myself, settling my anxious body and mind, and welcoming the tides of feelings and emotional distress, riding them into their wisdom and drawing forth the tasks I must take up when I connect with the wisdom of my huge feelings.
The feeling world, C.G. Jung (1960) reminded us, is the ocean of our psyche inwardly in which we live and places value upon what’s truly important in our lives and in human life together. Feelings and the world of feeling within come to us as reminders, teachers for robust self-care, healthier boundaries, more genuine, heartful honesty, bodied authenticity, greater emotional courage, more realistic generosity that respects my own limits and capacities. Self-compassion as a way of life is “world-making” (Goodman, 1978) making us co-creators of a kinder, gentler, more courageous life, able to take on vicissitudes, meet them squarely and take strength from them, to carry on while making a genuine difference to our world. Self-compassion mitigates regrets and bitterness, helps us heal from the wounds inflicted in early childhood and rise from them into unique strengths and capacities. It has certainly helped me come to a greater peace with myself as ‘me’.
Mindfulness can spike anxiety
Over my years in health care counselling sessions and support groups with people living with cancer, I kept noticing, like Dr. Neff in her self-compassion research (Guildford Press, 2018) how many people experienced mindfulness practices as challenging and as sometimes intensifying anxiety and feelings of ‘not good enough’. I realized that for many, including myself, pausing and going inwards tends to bring us into a confrontation with the ‘critic’, that inner voice that seems to whisper all the reasons for why we are not good enough in life, why our mistakes are unforgiveable, why we should feel guilty, ashamed; even if we can’t find the crime, the guilt feelings pervade.
Mindful awareness did not always seem to help much with silencing this relentless feeling of ‘imposter syndrome’, that somehow as a human being I was failing and at the same time, endlessly trying to grow, improve, get to some place other than ‘here’ in my life. With self-compassion as a way of relating with myself, I could so much more clearly see that I was unconsciously chasing a ‘future better self’ that someday I could love and accept. Even my psychotherapy with my own therapist was engaging the sessions with this project in mind. “Make me better”, “fix this pain”, “help me avoid all this struggle” was the subliminal message driving my life. Being me, right here, right now, never seemed quite ‘good enough’. This subtle self-improvement project was, I realized, quite the intractable root of the collective and personal problem I was encountering in myself and many others in their psychotherapy sessions.
Self-compassion embraces, kindly, ‘being human’
Working with self-compassion as concept and practice has given me a way, a path with markers, that allows me to approach my all too human, fumbling, messy and imperfect self with kindness. Over time, I have noticed self-compassion is a crucial and most powerful anti-dote to this inner chattering, this critical or seemingly ever-present coach pushing me towards ‘there’ rather than accepting myself ‘as is’, here, right now. It has given me a way into a more gentle relationship with this ‘me’ today, which in turn, has changed my responses, or more truthfully – reactions--to others and the world.
Self-compassion is not a ‘self-improvement’ project
Self-compassion, as a way of being in relationship with myself, has given me a path to find my way in taking heed of a stark caution that Marion Woodman (1998, Coming Home to Myself), world renowned Jungian Analyst and author, wrote many years ago. For years this quote was discreetly taped to my desk in my oncology practice, as I strived to build a Spiritual Care Program that I hoped would make a difference in the often far too biomedical focus in cancer treatment.
The quote and its words and images jumped off the page and into my soul like a knife, piercing me to the quick for their resonance with my endless striving for ‘something else’, ‘something more’, ‘be someone that was better, more loveable and likeable’, ‘more skilled,’ ‘more actualized,’ ‘more visible,’ ‘more impactful,’ ‘more polished and less, well…me’, and oh the guilt and feelings of failure I suffered - most definitely a ‘better mother for my children’… on and on went the list. Much of it, really not conscious, yet a compelling force driving me, converged in criticisms in my head at night of how I’d failed, in all kinds of ways, during the day.
Marion Woodman’s (2001) quote on my desk was this:
As long as we try to transcend ourselves
reach for the sky
pull away from ground and into spirit
we are heroes carved in stone.
We stand atop the pillar alone
blind to the pigeon’s droppings.
Do not try to transform yourself.
Move into yourself
Move into your human unsuccess
Perfection rapes the soul
(p.65)
The book’s editor, Jill Sellick, introduces the chapter this quote is taken from and writes, “When our standards are so high that we deem ourselves unacceptable unless we meet them, we are in trouble…As a goal, perfection is usually lethal because it is never met and our failure leaves us with the pain of comparison” (p. 64).
She comments later that the anti-dote to perfectionism is love. I have found self-compassion to be like the stepping-stones to understanding this experience we call ‘love’. Self-compassion helps us to move into ourselves and our unsuccesses, and to embrace ourselves with fondness for what Dr. Neff names as being “a compassionate mess” (Neff & Germer, 2018, pp. 98-99).
But won’t self-compassion make me feel or seem selfish?
Sometimes people worry that self-compassion leads to self-absorption and selfishness. I have personally experienced the exact opposite. This is also a key finding in Dr. Neff’s twenty years of research, discussed in Chapter 2 of her workbook (2018) that deepening self-compassion galvanizes a more spacious and fierce compassion for others.
I have found I can show up to the world and its complicated relationships with healthier boundaries, robust self-care practices, a greater courage for the difficult conversations, and thankfully, far less reactivity. I take difficulties less personally, I don’t turn rejection from others into a story about myself self or evidence to support the lurking inner critic’s accusations of deserving rejection, hostility, indifference, exclusion, failure, unworthiness, shame. Self-compassion brings relief to my aching heart: a wellspring of support in grieving loss; more restfulness for my ruminating, perseverating, and scared mind. It has given me a sense of foundation within myself, and an unshakeably deep certainty that being human is not something that is a problem and is definitely not something that needs ‘fixing’. Being human is complex, messy. Can we not have compassion for that in ourselves?
With a fabric of self-compassion woven into my being, I have experienced a growing sense of a deeper wisdom, within, sourced by that nameless, mysterious wisdom in life that supports, guides, nourishes, comforts and empowers. I notice that I can better accept my limits, my failings, my fundamental messy humanity with so much more gentleness.
Self-compassion changes our parenting & models something our kids need badly
Perhaps most transformational, self-compassion as a way of life has sourced so much comfort in the endlessly challenging role of being a mother. Raising children in this world is at times like a constant heartbreak, grappling with many lurking fears as to what lies ahead for them, and my impotence to protect them from the unseen, unknown future. No more so than right now, in this year of 2020 and all it has brought to us globally. I have been working with teachers to bring these practices and this ‘way of living’ into the classrooms, online and in person, with masks on because truly, is this not a much needed ‘curriculum’ our children need – to feel a sense of innate value and worth without being graded on it?
We raise children in a world that is often less than kind to parents, quick to make us see our failings and faults and endlessly shows us standards and curated social media of other’s lives that feeds a gnawing feeling of struggle, failure about our less than perfect parenting. We raise children in a world that is slow to affirm, nourish, guide, support us in this immense and truly fundamentally crucial task of raising children.
Self-compassion provides a different world, inwardly, that sources a sense of hope in myself and hope for them. This changes the relationship deeply – my relationship with myself as a mother and, in turn, with my children. It feeds a sense of solidarity with them that we are in this life together, rowing in our little boat on huge waves or becalmed waters – together. None of us perfect, none of us getting it ‘right’ all the time or even some of the time, but somehow muddling through and loving each other in it all. This gives a sense of peace, of being somehow ok, and a sense of hope, for today… and perhaps even more importantly in this time of global uncertainty, for tomorrow.
Take breath, right now
place your hands on your heart
breathe deeply
say a kind thing to yourself, as you would a friend
do a kind thing for yourself
then you may have the energy to offer a kindness to another
kindness spreading kindness
One drop in the pond
changes the whole pond
Citations
Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of World-Making. Hackett Pub Co Inc; UK ed. edition.
Jung, C.G., M.D. (1960). The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Collected Works, volume 8, Bollingen Press, Series XX.
Neff, K., PhD & Germer, C., PhD. (2018). Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook. Guildford Press.
Sarton, M. (1973). Journal of a Solitude, Norton & Company.
Woodman, M. (2001). Coming Home To Myself. Ed. Sellick, J. Conari Press.