It's time to debunk some myths about self-compassion - Part 1

‘While compassion is extolled as a virtue in Western culture, people are often skeptical of self-compassion and tend to be much less kind to themselves than they are to others (Neff 2003a)’.[1]

Dr Kristin Neff’s research suggests that over 75% of the general population in the USA are more compassionate to others than they are to themselves.  In my experience teaching self-compassion over the past two years mainly in the UK, this number is much higher and the differences between how we treat ourselves and how we treat others is stark and worrying. 

If it’s true that our beliefs determine our behaviour and our habits, then it’s fair to assume that by reflecting on our habits and behaviours we can identify our beliefs. This would suggest that the vast majority of people hold beliefs (consciously or unconsciously) that can be summarised as follows:

         Being compassionate towards others = good and virtuous

         Being compassionate towards ourselves = bad and selfish

In this blog I’m going to show why this belief is mistaken and also how it erodes and undermines our capacity for being compassionate towards others as well as learning from our mistakes. My intuition is that for most of us, this belief is unconscious and to illustrate this I’ll start with sharing my story.

 My professional background is in working with people with learning disabilities and whilst I loved my work, looking back now I can see that over the course of most of my 15 year career, I endured a chronic lifestyle of existing just on the right side of burnout.  This was characterised by believing I needed to work harder, to push myself through difficulties and continually make up for not quite being good enough.  For me this also meant doing what I needed to do to avoid conflict, avoid making mistakes and avoid admitting I needed help and I wasn’t alone in this way of working.  It was actually a habit of self-cruelty which had become normalised in the work culture. This habit is one which I believe is deeply ingrained in our culture and by extension, our workplaces. 

Whilst in the office, we would gently berate each other for consistently working late and although we would ‘speak the language’ of self-care and often engage in ‘self-care’ activities, the underlying unspoken message seemed to be ‘you’re more committed to the organisation than others if you’re the one putting in more hours’.  What’s worse was that the few people who did stick to their hours and held clear professional boundaries were viewed with suspicion, whilst superficially being congratulated for achieving a good work/life balance.  This unconscious incongruence between behaviour and values exacerbated the suffering caused by the underlying self-cruelty - manifesting mostly as shame and/or blame, and in doing so of course made it harder to address.

 Warning signs that things weren’t ok for me showed up as psychosomatic illnesses – severe and chronic IBS and migraines which got so bad at one point I went to see a naturopath who helped me to stabilise my system and suggested that there were emotional / psychological issues that I was avoiding.  I continued to avoid them and instead found alternative ways to cope or more accurately ‘numb’ (alcohol based) which didn’t include facing my self-cruelty.

After around 10 years, I experienced a major acute burnout (turning into) a total breakdown (which then became) a spiritual awakening, characterised initially by clinical depression, severe and acute anxiety and stress.  No-one was more surprised than me when this happened.  How could this happen to me?  I look after myself, eat well, practice yoga, I’m the positive person in the organisation, how can I burnout?  I can still remember the feeling of shutting down, the internal implosion and the frightening sense of numbness accompanied by overwhelming dread, anxiety and shame. It took me a long and painful 6 weeks of counselling, learning how to relate to my anger and learning the fundamental importance of being kind to myself before I was able to return to work.  Although my long-standing meditation practice didn’t prevent me from burning out, I suspect it helped me to recover much more quickly than I would otherwise.   Meditation training included practicing to recognise and directly connect with painful sensations in my body without too much resistance and to understand the connection with my mental and emotional state.

The experience of counselling was the first time I fully realised that being compassionate towards myself is not only a good thing but actually necessary for learning, growth and healing, beginning with simply stopping and accepting what was happening to me.  Allowing myself to feel into my vulnerability, to share what I found and to be heard.  It was also of course the first time I realised that my default way of relating to myself was NOT kind or compassionate.

It took me much longer to integrate the learning from this experience and to develop habits of being kind and compassionate to myself, including in particular the importance of boundaries and how to create, hold and maintain them.  I learned many things from this experience and whilst I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, the shift in perspective it forced me into has literally transformed my relationship to myself and in doing so transformed my life and the way I relate to others – hence the reframing of ‘burnout’ to spiritual awakening.

One of the most surprising consequences of the recovery for me was a strong desire to talk to other people about what I had experienced (as you can see!).   Surprising because I realised I no longer felt any shame about my illness and the things that had led me there.  Brené Brown says that shame hates being spoken, it ‘thrives on secrecy, silence and judgment’.  The antidote to shame is empathy – ‘if we reach out and share our shame experience with someone who responds with empathy, shame dissipates’.  Brené also says that self-compassion helps us move through shame and is often the first step to healing shame – ‘we need to be kind to ourselves before we can share our stories with someone else’.

To start with, let’s get clear what we mean when we talk about self-compassion - here’s a simple definition:

Compassion is made up of three things:

     1. The wish that a person or being be free from suffering,

     2. A willingness to witness the suffering

        (instead of ignoring, suppressing, refusing to acknowledge it) and

     3. A willingness to act to remove the cause of the suffering.

Self-compassion is the exact same but turned inwards, so it becomes the wish for ourselves to be free from suffering, a willingness to witness our own suffering (instead of ignoring, suppressing, refusing to acknowledge it) and to act to remove the cause of the suffering we experience.  

So, with that in mind, let’s debunk some of the myths about self-compassion.

Here are some of the most popular ones:

‘Self-compassion is self-indulgent, it’s about just doing whatever we want and blowing off any effort to make changes.  It’s about making ourselves feel good’.

No it’s not.    

Self-compassion is not usually concerned with short term comforts or transitory wants – because often this leads to problems in the long run.  Instead, it’s concerned with long term wellbeing, learning and growth, because this is what we actually need AND want!  Sometimes this can even involve short term discomfort – think about getting a splinter in a finger.  We know that it’s going to be painful taking it out but in doing so, we avoid much more serious problems (and pain) in the future.  

For me suffering in burnout, self-compassion meant making room for uncomfortable sensations and emotions, and building the courage to turn towards them with kindness and acceptance, knowing that this was necessary as the way out of suffering. 

It’s clear then that self-compassion is definitely not lazy or passive, and it’s also absolutely NOT about letting ourselves off the hook, in fact it’s quite the opposite.  In cultivating self-compassion, we create the psychological safety we need to admit our mistakes and ignorance, and to take responsibility because we realise this is what we need to motivate ourselves and to learn from our experiences.  Studies have shown[2]for example that people who are more habitually self-compassionate are more likely to take personal responsibility and to apologise if they have offended someone and less likely to get stuck in shame for having done so.

“Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions.  Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance” (Tara Brach)

Now when Tara says ‘releases us’, it’s important to think of this as a habit we repeat; a process we practice, rather than an outcome to achieve or destination to arrive at. Learning self-compassion doesn’t mean we completely stop habitual ‘self-cruelty’, it does mean however that whenever we notice that this is what we’re doing, we’re able to short circuit this vicious cycle and over time we do this more quickly and more effectively.

In my next blog post which you can find here, you can read in more depth about the definition of self-compassion, shining a light on each aspect of it and how these help us.  We will also be exploring some of the other common objections to self-compassion, including the belief we need to be critical to ourselves, that self-compassion is somehow selfish or narcissistic, and the belief that self-compassion is an element of our character that we can’t really change.   You will also find out about more insights gained from my life experiences to illustrate these misconceptions.

If this blog post has resonated and you are interested in finding out more about how you can develop your own self-compassion practices, emotional literacy and courage; for your own good and for the benefit of your organisation, you might be interested in the updated ‘Thriving’ courses, due to start on the 20th April 2023.   You can read more about the course in an earlier blog post which you can find here as well as links to much of the research that informs it.

[1]https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Neff.Knox2017.pdf

[2]https://self-compassion.org/does-self-compassion-mean-letting-yourself-off-the-hook/