Developing Self-Compassion

I’ve been thinking a lot about self-compassion these days, and why we need it. First, though, let me define it.

Self-compassion is a gentle, positive attitude toward ourselves that includes loving-kindness, acceptance, understanding and forgiveness.

The reason why it’s so important to have self-compassion is that it’s what will enable us to learn, grow, change for the better and be our very best.

Having a gentle, positive attitude toward ourselves makes it so much easier to look inward and confront any counter-productive choices we’ve been making or mistaken actions we’ve taken.

With self-compassion, we’re able to see the truth about ourselves, learn the necessary lessons, and evolve as human beings. With self-compassion, we give ourselves the freedom and the space to change.

In general, we develop self-compassion by experiencing compassion from our care-givers while we’re growing up. Sadly, not everyone gets to have this type of experience.

The good news is that we can still develop compassion toward ourselves, even when no-one has modeled it for us or when there were no obvious templates for it while we were growing up.

Embedded in the term, “self-compassion” is the notion of a relationship with the self. This sounds a bit complicated but it isn’t, really.

We can theoretically divide the psyche into three parts: the adult self we are today: the “I;” the child self that persists within our psyche: the “child within;” and the internalized voices of the parent-figures we grew up with: the “inner parent.”

If our parents and guardians were loving and caring, the inner parent will be a supportive guide to the adult self; like a conscience, but if they were critical or rejecting, the inner parent will be more like an “inner critic,” undermining our confidence and self-worth.

In developing self-compassion, the adult part of us is what attends to the child within. The adult “I” looks upon the child self with loving-kindness, forgiveness, understanding and acceptance.

In order to create this inner relationship, we need to do “inner work,” consisting of positive self-talk, meditations and visualization exercises to connect with this child part of the psyche.

This inner work can be done on our own, but it helps a lot to have the guidance of a coach, counselor or therapist to assist with the process.

The inner work of developing self-compassion has two steps: First, we need to give the child the above four elements of self-compassion; second, we need to protect the child from the harsh criticisms of the inner critic.

So, as well as building a relationship with the child self, the adult must protect and defend the child from any negative, undermining self-talk.

When we spend time doing the inner work, we build the inner relationship and we start to benefit from the loving-kindness, acceptance, understanding and forgiveness that self-compassion brings.

In the absence of self-compassion, every insight we have about ourselves is potentially linked to self-criticism, which will inhibit the process of growth and change, but in the presence of self-compassion, we’re free to see ourselves honestly and make the changes we need to make.

When we have self-compassion, we’re able to grow and develop to our fullest. Nothing can get in the way of us being the very best that we can be.

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