Self-compassion – brave care for social connection
by Françoise Gallet, coach & facilitator
July 2024
Lauded achievements, business successes and credentials — sometimes a scroll through LinkedIn is all my inner critic needs to start a diatribe about how I don’t measure up.
Which is why I am grateful for my self-compassion practice. When the self-critic goes rogue, self-compassion is an invitation to root in a more realistic story of what it means to be human.
After all both success and struggle are part of every human life.
Which means, of course, short social media posts celebrating achievements, simply can’t do justice to the full story — the hard work, the investments of time and energy, personal sacrifices.
As well as the inevitable setbacks, mistakes and failures along the way.
Without this backstory, a scroll through social media can provide fertile ground for unrealistic social comparisons — social comparisons which research shows may, for some of us, increase the likelihood of experiencing depressive or anxious feelings.
Social comparisons are
ubiquitous to social life
There’s an important caveat here: It’s not that social comparisons are necessarily harmful.
As a social species, it’s natural that we would look to others for cues about how to think, and feel, and behave. Which is why, regardless of culture, human beings tend to judge and evaluate each other depending on culturally valued traits.
Ironically, despite being a highly social species and social media being highly connected networks, when we post about our successes, we also don’t do justice to all the myriad ways in which any successful achievement ultimately rests — directly and indirectly — on the shoulders of countless others.
Not only are success and struggle inevitable facets of any life, but (forgive the cliché) no one is an island.
Behind any individual achievement are parents, caregivers, teachers, professors, researchers, inventors, other businesses, policy makers, colleagues and even farmers, drivers, entrepreneurs and politicians on the other side of the globe.
As Martin Luther King said: “And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world.”
Which means, from this vantage point, I can read about the achievements and talents of others as a celebration of the human spirit — what’s good about us humans — and an invitation to celebrate my humanity.
Better-than or less-than?
Ironically, when the self-critic gets involved with social comparison, it seems to drive an inner narrative that’s quite egocentric. The self-critic asks: How do I measure up? Am I good enough? Am I better than? Am I worse than? Am I worthy? Do I belong?
These ‘better-than’ or ‘less-than’ comparisons turn life into a something of a rollercoaster ride.
It’s great when you’re coming out top.
But. Well… no one wants to feel ‘less than’.
Then, when stumbling into shortcomings, if your self-critic harshly attacks, blames and berates, that slump is likely to feel worse and is associated with anxiety, depression, body dissatisfaction and other mental health challenges.
This negative self-talk is very different to constructive, supportive and healthy criticism and it’s how our tendency to compare and judge — as a social species — can trip us up.
Conflating our self-worth
with our social status is risky
With ‘me-myself-and-I’ firmly in its sights, the harsh self-critic can erroneously use social comparisons as a gauge of our overall self-worth — a measure of our intrinsic human value and potential.
But our intrinsic human value is not something that’s measurable — or even quantifiable.
So, in individualistic cultures, equating self-worth with our perceived social status can drive a relentless pursuit to be better than others, just to feel good about ourselves.
While, we might convince ourselves we are better than others, or above average, on a certain trait or material outcome, the truth is, there is always going to someone who can do it better. Perhaps not now. But certainly, in the future. Everything changes and nothing lasts for ever.
Then, if we judge ourselves or others lacking, unable to meet cultural markers of success, it can spur a sense of intrinsic inadequacy, unworthiness or of not belonging (for us or others).
This can be is a deeply painful experience and it can have negative consequences – for individuals and others.
More compassion,
less comparison
The problem with all of this, points out self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff, is that we fail to heed the suffering — the sense of pain, isolation, separation or alienation — that these judgements and comparisons can cause ourselves and others.
Self-compassion offers us a different way of relating to ourselves — one that is open to our ever-changing experience, as it unfolds, and the vulnerability of being human.
Contrary to the rollercoaster ride, this is a more stable way of engaging the self. Less preoccupied with scrutinising the self, self-compassion meets the moment-to-moment experience with kindness, concern and understanding for the human condition.
Self-compassion is also a skill set — one that we can learn to use precisely when our sense of self-worth deserts us, or especially when our habit of making social comparisons leaves us feeling like we don’t belong, and when in the throes of loss or inevitable human hardship.
Self-compassion is less: ‘kumbaya’.
More: realism and fortitude
This has big implications for the harsh self-critic.
When we notice ourselves being harshly self-critical, or judging ourselves unworthy, we mindfully recognise this as a moment of suffering and alienation — from ourselves and others.
And, instead of continuing the harsh diatribe, we remind ourselves of what it means to be human. We step into our humanity. There’s not one among us invincible to illness or loss. We all make mistakes and experience setbacks from time to time.
This is why self-compassion isn’t “poor me” or egocentric. Self-compassion recognises that the human experience is, by nature, hard for us all. This reminds us that we’re not alone in our pain. When we see ourselves in the human story, it can offer a sense of belonging.
Shifting a stream of negative self-talk towards a more realistic stance on what it means to be human is a psychological process called cognitive re-appraisal. It’s a process that, research shows, can help us ‘regulate’ our emotions in certain situations.
Think about it: What feels better? Blaming and berating yourself? Or a sense of acceptance, understanding and belonging?
Self-compassion feels good;
which helps us do good
Which is, in part, why self-compassion is associated with a subjective sense of wellbeing. And probably also why it’s mistakenly thought of as self-indulgent — an easy way to blow off accountability with some self-soothing.
But self-flagellation, as we’ve discovered, leads to inaccurate and damning assessments of one’s human potential. Meanwhile, getting defensive to take the sting out of failure, isn’t helpful either. It undermines the potential for learning.
Research shows that self-compassion helps us to acknowledge our roles in negative events without feeling overwhelmed by negative emotions.
When it’s not psychologically damning to take responsibility for our failures or mistakes, we can see ourselves more clearly – as well as our relationships to others — which, in turn, supports taking responsibility for where we may have messed up.
This is a growth mindset in action.
Seeing ourselves more clearly is a reckoning not only with our imperfections, but also a perspective broad enough to acknowledge our strengths, talents and opportunities.
No one is good at everything. But everyone is good at something.
Practice makes pathways
Raised by parents very invested, with the best of intentions, in my self-esteem and achievements in life (academic, sporting, social, financial), my early adult life was something of a pursuit of perfectionism.
When my kids arrived and, as infants, wailed and wailed (despite all my efforts at soothing), the reality that I was not in control of life — that I couldn’t sidestep pain with perfectionism — really hit home.
So, a few years later as my daughter struggled to cope with the rigours of academic life, we purposefully swopped out the word ‘perfect’ with ‘practice’, turning the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’ into the phrase ‘practice makes pathways’.
It was our chosen salute to the brain’s neural plasticity and her intrinsic human potential.
She might not have been blessed with a genetic propensity for numbers, but with practice, she could lay down the supportive and necessary neural pathways.
Worksheet after worksheet, she forged her way to mathematical academic prowess. But more importantly she learnt the value of a growth mindset and consistent practice.
So, while in the first chapter of my life, I practised a tendency to berate and harshly criticise myself, my daughter is now my inspiration to keep practising at laying down a different neural architecture – that of self-compassion and compassion.
We can all learn to mindfully recognise suffering, without turning away from it, or being overwhelmed by it. We can all learn to use our body’s felt-sense of ease to help regulate our emotions. We can all learn the art of cognitive re-appraisal.
And with practise, we can make the shift from harsh self-criticism to supportive and constructive self-talk more automatic, spontaneous and authentic.
thrivelife would love to share the journey of learning how with you.
The three components of self-compassion
Kristin Neff’s research into self-compassion suggests that self-compassion has three interacting components, each of which has a positive and negative pole:
- Self-kindness versus self-judgment: instead of attacking, blaming or berating ourselves in a harshly judgemental way, self-compassion brings warmth and unconditional acceptance, or caring and understanding, to one’s experience.
- Common humanity versus isolation: self-compassion is a more realistic appraisal of what it means to be human and an acceptance of the fact that all humans make mistakes, fail, experience illness, loss and hardship. We feel less isolated when we recognise our pain in the human story.
- Mindfulness versus over-identification: bringing mindfulness to our thoughts and feelings allows us to be aware of our painful experience without over identifying with it. As we practice mindfulness, we notice that thoughts and feelings are temporary mind states or reactions. As we hold thoughts and emotions in awareness, without getting carried away by them, we see that they appear and disappear, shift and change. Thoughts and emotions, have a beginning and a middle and an end.
This insight offers us some mental flexibility. As we use this capacity for mindfulness as part of a self-compassion skill set, we can recognise our painful experience in a balanced way that neither ignores or avoids the suffering or exaggerates and exacerbates painful thoughts and emotions.
