Self Compassion

I recently read the book "Self-Compassion" by Kritin Neff, and it brought me a deep sense of calm and warmth. I wanted to share some of it with you.

I know you’re going through a hard time right now—and that’s okay. Life can be hard sometimes. Everyone has these moments. You’re not alone. I am here for you, I care about you. It's not so bad, it will pass.

Step 1: Be gentle and understanding with ourselves rather than harshly critical and judgmental.

Understanding Self-Criticism

• Self-criticism often comes from a place in us that’s trying to protect us. It's associated with the brain area of error processing and problem-solving, which identifies problems and fixes them so that we can survive. This means we often take our good qualities for granted while obsessing about our weaknesses. Rather than running away with an exaggerated storyline about either good or bad, we instead need to honor and accept ourselves as we authentically are. No better and no worse. The key is balance and perspective so that we can see ourselves without distortion.

• Instead of seeing ourselves as a problem to be fixed, self-kindness allows us to see ourselves as imperfect but valuable human beings who are worthy of care.

Honor Complexity

• When we judge ourselves for our inadequacies, we typically assume that there is, in fact, a separate, clearly bounded entity called me that can be blamed for failing. But is this really true? Who we are, how we think, and what we do are inextricably interwoven with other people and events, which makes the assignment of blame quite ambiguous. If we closely examine our personal failings, it soon becomes clear that they are not there by choice. Clearly, you don't have complete control over your feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions, or else you'd only act in ways that you approve of. So why are you judging yourself so harshly for the way you are?

• Judgement defines people as bad versus good and tries to capture their essential nature with simplistic labels. Discriminating wisdom recognizes complexity and ambiguity. We are naturally inclined to judge—it’s a shortcut our brains use to conserve energy—but it often comes at the cost of deeper understanding.

• We are the expression of millions of prior circumstances that have all come together to shape us in the present moment. Our economic and social background, our past associations and conversations, our culture, our family history, and our genetics have all played a profound role in shaping who we are today. When we recognize that we are the product of countless factors that we don't normally identify with, we don't need to take our personal failings so personally. We actually don't have complete control over how we think and act. The illusion of being in control is just that, an illusion.

Offering Yourself Compassion

• A deep understanding of interbeing allows us to have compassion for the fact that we are doing the best we can, given the hand life has dealt us. When we experience warm, tender feelings toward ourselves, we are altering our bodies and our minds.

• When we treat ourselves as a kind friend would, we are no longer totally absorbed by playing the role of the one who is suffering. I am both the comforter and the one in need of comfort. There is more to me than the pain I am feeling right now; I am also the heartfelt response to that pain.

• What I need to do is give myself compassion for how difficult the situation is, and it's ok to feel this way. I need to feel loved and understood, to be seen for who I really am. Using sympathetic rather than judgmental language when we talk to ourselves. The main point is that you validate and listen to what you really need in the moment, and you express empathy towards yourself rather than condemnation.

Step 2: Feeling connected with others in the experience of life rather than feeling isolated and alienated by our suffering.

See the Whole

• A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest, a kind of optimal delusion of consciousness. The delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Shared Imperfection Creates Connection & Belonging

• We often become scared and angry when we focus on undesired aspects of ourselves or our lives. We feel helpless and frustrated by our inability to control things, to get what we want, to be who we want to be. We rail against things as they are, and we cling to our narrow vision of how things should be. Every single human is in the same boat. The beauty of recognizing this basic fact of life is that it provides deep insight into the shared human condition.

• Imperfection is part of the shared human condition. You don't need to fight against the fact that things aren't exactly as you want them to be, because this is a normal, natural state of affairs. Thousands of things can go wrong in life at any one time, so it's highly likely, in fact, inevitable, that we all will experience hardships on a regular basis.

• Sense of insufficiency and insecurity shouldn't create a sense of separation but a sense of belonging. Failure is part of shared human experience. Yes, failure is frustrating. But it's also temporary and eventually yields wisdom. We are just being human among humans. The need to belong, therefore, is fundamental to both physical and emotional health. It has to do with the human tendency to affiliate, to come together in groups in order to feel secure.

• This is why the recognition of common humanity embedded in self-compassion is such a powerful healing force. When our sense of self-worth and belonging is grounded in simply being human, we can't be rejected or cast out by others.

Why We Need Connection & Care

• The capacity to feel affection and interconnection is part of our biological nature. Our brains are actually designed to care. Care was as powerful a survival need as nutrition. If children are consoled and supported by parents when they are upset or frightened, they learn to trust them. 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 inconsistent support or are cold and rejecting, children develop what's called an insecure attachment bond. 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 the belief they can count on others to provide comfort and support.

• Allow ourselves to be vulnerable by allowing others into our hearts. Healthy relationships allow us to realize that, actually, we are valuable and worthy of care, that others can be trusted to meet our needs.

Step 3: Hold our experience in balanced awareness, rather than ignoring our pain or exaggerating it.

No Ignorance Nor Overreaction

• Mindfulness refers to the clear seeing and nonjudgmental acceptance of what's occurring in the present moment.

• We need to stop for a breath or two and acknowledge that we are having a hard time, and that our pain is deserving of a kind, caring response. Otherwise, our suffering will go unattended, and feelings of stress and worry will only mount. When faced with adversity, our first reaction might be to immediately go into problem-solving mode without first stopping to tend to our emotional needs. We risk getting burned out, exhausted, and overwhelmed because we are spending all our energy trying to fix external problems without remembering to refresh ourselves internally.

• Overreactions are especially common when the sense of self is involved. What often drives this type of emotional overreaction is the attempt to avoid seeing ourselves as flawed or bad.

• How often do we create the illusion that things are worse than they really are? If we can be mindful of our fears and anxieties rather than overidentifying with them, we can save ourselves from a lot of unwarranted pain. Conscious awareness only exists in the here and now. This insight allows us to see that thoughts about the past and the future are just that: thoughts. The past doesn't exist except in our memories, and the future doesn't exist except in our imagination.

• When we notice our pain without exaggerating it, this is a moment of mindfulness.

Awareness of Awareness

• When our attention rests in awareness itself, rather than the particular thought or emotion arising within that awareness, we can stay calm and centered. Rather than having our sense of self caught up in and carried away by the contents of awareness, our sense of self remains centered in awareness itself.

• Mindfulness provides incredible freedom, because it means we don't have to believe every passing thought or emotion is real and true. Rather, we can see that different thoughts and emotions arise and pass away, and we can decide which are worth paying attention to and which are not.

• Be aware of your feelings without being hijacked by them, so you can make wise choices.

Deal With Negative Emotion: Acknowledge, Validate, Honor, no Judge, Experience

• The key to happiness is understanding that suffering is caused by resisting pain. We can't avoid pain in life, but we don't necessarily have to suffer because of that pain. Our emotional suffering is caused by our desire for things to be other than they are. The more we resist the fact of what is happening right now, the more we suffer. If you allow it to just be there, freely, it will eventually dissipate on its own. Pain is unavoidable; suffering is optimal.

• We often take the positive for granted while focusing on the negative as if our life depended on it. Rumination about negative events in the past leads to depression, while rumination about potentially negative events in the future leads to anxiety. This is why depression and anxiety so often go hand in hand; they both stem from the underlying tendency to ruminate. If you are someone who tends to ruminate or who suffers from anxiety and depression, it's important that you don't judge yourself for this way of being. Remember that rumination on negative thoughts and emotions stems from the underlying desire to be safe. Even though these brain patterns may be counterproductive, we can still honor them for trying diligently to keep us out of the jaw of that crocodile.

• There are prior causes and conditions that have come together to produce our current mental and emotional experience. Conditions beyond our conscious choosing. We can't control thoughts and emotions that pass through the gates of awareness and which do not. If our particular thoughts and feelings aren't healthy, we can't make these mental experiences go away. However, we can change the way we relate to them. A simple statement of fact, with no blame attached.

• Practice meditation to observe whatever arises without judgment, describe it gently, without trying to push any particular experience away or else hold on to it. Allow thoughts and feelings to come and go in a friendly and nonjudgmental way. Acknowledge and validate the emotions. You can hold them, accept them, and be compassionate toward yourself when you feel them. Hear and validate yourself. Accept and care for yourself.

• When we experience our emotions on the physical level, rather than thinking about what's making us so unhappy, it's easier to stay present. It allows you to fully experience what's arising in the present moment without being caught by it.

• We don't prolong or amplify the negative emotions through resistance or avoidance. The only way to eventually free ourselves from debilitating pain, therefore, is to be with it as it is. The only way out is through. We need to bravely turn toward our suffering, comforting ourselves in the process, so that time can work its healing magic.

• While we ultimately want happiness in our lives, achieving this state requires feeling all of our emotions, the highs and the lows, the leaps forward as well as the setbacks. Emotions such as sadness, shame, anger, and fear are as necessary an dintegral to life's drama as joy, pride, love, and courage. It allows us to celebrate the entire range of human experience, so that we can become whole.

Compassion for Others

• Each conscious being rests at the nexus of a vast number of interwoven causes and conditions that influence their behavior. This insight is often the key that allows us to forgive ourselves and others, letting go of anger and resentment and engendering compassion for all.

• It understands that people often act out of ignorance, immaturity, fear, or irrational impulse, and that we shouldn't judge people for their actions as if they had full conscious control over them.

• Being human involves doing wrong at times. To judge one person is to judge all the world. But to forgive one person is to forgive all the world, ourselves included.

• By honoring the limitations of our own humanity, we can be more forgiving of others' mistakes.

• Validating the emotions of others before presenting your own point of view.

Self-Worth, Ego, Self-Appreciation

• Our successes and failures come and go; they neither define us nor do they determine our worthiness. They are merely part of the process of being alive. Our true value lies in the core experience of being a conscious being who feels and perceives.

• Rather than competting ourselves against others in an endless comparison game, we embrace what we share with others and feel more connected and whole in the process. Instead of evaluating yourself as an isolated individual with boundaries that are clearly defined in contrast to others, you see yourself as part of a greater, interconnected whole. To be accepted as we are, an integral part of something much greater than our small selves. Unbounded. Immeasurable. Free.

• Wrong effort comes from concern with the ego, with proving oneself, with the desire for control. This type of effort actually increases suffering, because it makes you feel separate and disconnected from the rest of the world and sets up the expectation that things should always be as we want them to be.

• Accept who we are, regardless of the degree of praise we receive from others. Compassionately accept our imperfections. The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. Luckily, we can meet our deep need to be appreciated without depending on other people to approve of us. We can acknowledge our own beauty. Not because we are better than others, but because we are human beings expressing the beautiful side of human nature. You are a wonderful manifestation; the whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. If you take the notion of interbeing seriously, then celebrating your achievement is no more self-centered than having compassion for your failings.

• The ability to realize our potential depends partly on where our motivation comes from. Is it intrinsic or extrinsic? Intrinsic motivation occurs when we are driven to do something because we want to learn, grow, or because the activity is just plain interesting. Even when rewards and punishments come from within, like the reward of self-esteem or the punishment of self-criticism, our motivation is still extrinsic because we are engaging in an activity for ulterior motives.

• By losing our fear of failure, we become free to challenge ourselves to a far greater degree than would otherwise be possible.

• A brave, confident, curious, and resilient mindset. Compassion engages our capacity for love, wisdom, and generosity. We need to feel calm, secure, and confident in order to do our best.