When we are self-critical we have difficult feelings, but what actually are feelings?
The last post considered self-esteem. The research now shows that self-compassion, being kind to yourself, is a surer fire method to improve you’re your own mental health (Neff, Rude, & Kirkpatrick, 2007) and reach your goals. So exactly what are the components of self-compassion and secondly, really, isn’t all a bit difficult to be swanning around being self compassionate or self kind? I guess we all may have some ideas about what self compassion is so in this blog I will look at some of the components of self-compassion, exactly what a feeling is and one or two common myths about it.
There are three components of self-compassion in Neff’s 2003 definition and I tend to think of them in a certain order:
Mindfulness that we are currently in emotional or physical pain, that we have some suffering.
Awareness that everyone has these types of things happen, it is part of our common humanity.
To bring a deliberate act of self kindness to ourselves in a constructive and non-harming way.
We end up bring ourselves directly to our suffering and this is very different from the way we mostly try and deal with suffering. Everyone I do this with in my office to date has been surprised – when we do an exercise to come directly to our suffering, it dissipates, at least a bit, and we find we do not need to be so scared of it. However, most people stay away from the physicality of their feelings and stay with their thoughts. This is problematic as thoughts will circulate and very soon you can have stories circling you attacking this and that like flies converging of a piece of meat. With these thoughts we will often not say anything about them and the three pillars of low self- esteem start to act – secrecy, silence and self-judgement. We will talk about thoughts more in another blog. In the end most people get trapped in their thoughts or distract themselves by drinking, eating, having sex or look at and / or shopping. Many people it seems these days will also try and improve their personal appearance as way to distract themselves (and they do that by using comparisons).
However, many people do not know the difference between a feeling and thought. I almost think we need an extra step in there amongst the three points above that says “work with your physical sensations, not your thoughts. A feeling of suffering will have some sensation in the body, usually in the form the hips and above. If your suffering is words, then it mostly it is in your mind. When you have miserable thoughts you need to find out what your related feelings are, and feelings are sensations in the body. Generally, according to Bruno Cayoun (Cayoun, 2011) at the University of Tasmania, there are four types of sensations associated with feelings – constriction or tightness, temperature, weight or movement. It can take a bit of time to re-learn how to come back to our feelings rather than be carried away with our thoughts.
However once we come to the feeling in our body directly it can feel terrible but we quickly learn it doesn’t hang around if we let go the thoughts. At this early stage we need though some way to keep our selves feeling calm and / or safe. Do this exercise now! Wherever you are, take a mild (i.e. not deep) breath and let it out very SLOWLY, saying the word ‘relax’. Say it calmly, soothing yourself.
Check: Breathe through your nose; use your stomach, your diaphragm – not your chest.
Breath in 1 – 3, (1,.. 2, .. 3)
HOLD (1 second)
Breath out counting slowly to 5. (1.., 2.., 3.., 4.., 5..,)
Then repeat breathing cycle until you gain a sense of calmness.
In practicing do this for two to three minutes.
This is centred breathing and will help return you to a state of safe calmness – the out breath is always longer than the in-breath.
Some myths:
Self-compassion is for wimps
“Grow up!” will often be said to boys or pull yourself up by your bootstraps!
Our community will more than not reward “toughing it out” behaviour. I remember as a child in year 2 I will be the one who would get smacked with the ruler first in class as I didn’t cry. The teacher would speak proudly about that to the other boys saying things like “You have to be able to take your punishment” things out more than it does being kind and nurturing to yourself.
Overall we are not kind to ourselves and our community does not teach us how to be kind or how to nurture ourselves. Subtly and not so subtly it teaches us to have a co-dependence on the perceived and actual comparison to other people, and this will tend to get us to constantly be worried about approval.
The truth is that the strongest people are also the ones who can buck cultural norms and feel genuine compassion for themselves and their circumstances. This means they are not so dependent on others for approval, they have real choice.
I won’t be motivated if I don’t criticize myself.
You, and I, might actually believe that we need that inner critic to keep us motivated in life; that without it, we too easily stray outside the box. It is also possible that the critic also evolved to help keep us safe from harm.
But in today’s society we simply don’t need it anymore. Being compassionate with ourselves allows for a much healthier, kinder motivation.
As Kristin Neff notes “While the motivational power of self-criticism comes from fear of self-punishment, the motivational power of self-compassion comes from the desire to be healthy, to reduce our suffering.”
References
Cayoun, Bruno. (2011). Mindfulness Integrated CBT: Principles And Practice. Australia: Wiley-Blackwell.
Neff, K. D., Kirkpatrick, K., & Rude, S. S. (2007). Self-compassion and its link to adaptive psychological functioning. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 139-154.










