Self-compassion
Self-compassion is one of the foundational values of my work as a therapist. By this I mean that I personally believe that any lasting positive change that a person will make must come from a place of compassion extended towards themselves. Not a change that is driven by shame. Not a change driven by fear. Not a change driven by revenge, or anger, or a chaotic impulse. You have to start with compassion for yourself.
If you’re new to this, it might feel really weird. It might feel like you are coddling yourself. Your internal self-critic will lose it.
When I was 22, I had just moved to San Francisco and I was working at a *gourmet* hot dog stand in Union Square owned by a very exacting man. He did not play when it came to his hot dog stands and demanded a high caliber of performance from his vendors. Well, one day, I accidentally spilled a very large container of water all over the cart and made a huge mess. The guy was right there and I expected to be criticized, or at least that he would be irritated with me. I was already apologizing and frantically trying to clean it up while inwardly berating myself for my clumsiness. Much to my surprise, the owner stopped me and cleaned it himself.
“You already feel bad about it, I am not going to make you feel worse by making you clean it up. Don’t worry, it was an accident,” he told me.
His unexpected compassion changed something for me. And practicing compassion for yourself will change something too.
Me at the hot dog stand in 2014. Union Square, San Francisco.
When you practice self-compassion, you can zoom out a little bit and see that a mortifying mistake is not the end of the world. You can understand that a choice you made that had a bad outcome was nothing but the inevitable result of your level of awareness at the time. You can see that you learned to survive in a world that is often harsh and shaming. That you encountered judgment and punishment and were misunderstood as a child by adults in your home and at school and in sports, so that now you brace yourself when you fall short of your own expectations.
Ok, great. Now how can you find some self-compassion when your inner critic doesn’t miss a thing?
A few things can help. One, figure out what that inner critic is so scared of. Being laughed at? Getting fired from work? Partner breaking up with you? Looking stupid? Not being good enough in some abstract way? Beneath the self-criticism is often a deep-seated fear. Figuring out what those fears are can be a good starting point.
You can also come up with a mantra. My three-year-old daughter’s is “Accidents Happen,” which she adopted from a children’s show. Cookies are spilled? “Accidents happen.” Block tower crashes down? “Accidents happen.” Note that this mantra doesn’t always stave off a tantrum or a glass-shattering shriek, which is ok, because feelings are natural, but it does keep her inner critic from becoming too harsh.
Other phrases you can use when you are feeling bad about a past error or if you’re just being hard on yourself:
“I am always doing my best with where I’m at”
“I accept myself where I am at today”
“I am worthy of good things even when I mess up”
You can come up with your own. You can write it down several times to really drive the message home, you can repeat it to yourself throughout the day, or whatever else you think is a good idea to help you remember that you are a good person, worthy of good things, even if you made a poor choice or feel undeserving.
Incorporating a self-compassion practice into your life is a must in order to nurture healthy growth and make lasting changes. But let’s be clear: it isn’t necessarily enough. Usually we have to dig deeper and get real familiar with those deep-seated fears we talked about, revisiting the painful moments and complicated relationships that led you to carry around a merciless inner critic.
This is where therapy can be helpful. It’s a space to unpack some of the heavy emotional burdens that that inner critic is holding with the help of someone who won’t judge you or freak out. You can learn to tune out the noise and ground yourself in the awareness that you are enough, right now, and you have always been enough.
From there, anything is possible.