Do We Realise When We Are Not Doing Self-Compassion?

I wasn't coping very well with an issue that had been 'creeping' around me for a few weeks. It seemed that all I could do was ruminate on the problem and shine the proverbial light on my failing. I was telling myself off for not coping well. I was comparing my situation with others that I knew who seemed to sail through with smiles. And I was gutted that what I thought I could do seemed to be what I was unable to - I was failing miserably. Why was I having such bloody trouble resolving this problem? What was taking me so long?

In her book, Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, Kristin Neff describes the three components of self-compassion

1. Self-kindness which is our ability to treat ourselves gently and with caring. 'When I'm going through a very hard time, I give myself the caring and tenderness I need.' The opposite is self-judgement. 'I am intolerant and impatient towards those aspects of my personality I don't like.'

2. Common humanity which is viewing our suffering as something that connects us with others, rather than separates us. 'When I feel inadequate in some way, I try to remind myself that feelings of inadequacy are shared by most people - I'm not the only one to think like this!' The opposite is isolation. 'When I fail in something that is important to me, I tend to feel alone in my failure - nobody else feels like this.'

3. Mindfulness is being nonjudgemental about whatever is happening in the present moment. 'When something painful happens I try to take a balanced view of the situation.' The opposite is over-identification - holding on too much to the pain and failure and unable to let go. 'When I'm feeling down I tend to obsess and fixate on everything that's wrong.'

So imagine how doing the opposite of those three components of self-compassion can take you to the point of being your own threat! You are now your own worst enemy! The stories you run about how crap you are, is putting you into a physical bodily stress as well, so that not only do you have your head running away with mean and useless stories, but your heart is crying and your gut trying to figure out how to make it feel better. This is what I was experiencing towards myself. Self-judgment, isolation and over-identification making me not my own own best friend at all!

I would never say or think those things out loud to my best friend, neighbour or child.

Yet I was spending my days finding ways to point out all of my wrong doings. This was a hole into which I had fallen and I wasn't very useful in helping myself out.

When we are happy and relaxed, we have a set of opinions about ourselves, based around self-confidence and self-compassion, but when we are overwhelmed or emotional, we find that we have a complete set of different opinions about ourselves - in the category of self-critical and sometimes self-abusive. So the negative opinions we have when we are stressed add another layer of stress - and we feel more self-critical and the situation escalates. This is like trying to put out a fire with some petrol. And like Deepak Chopra says - Every cell in your body is eavesdropping on your thoughts.They are not therefore going to be happy, healthy cells if they hear this self criticism and abuse!

How many of us fall into that self-loathing hole? When we remember to look up, we realise that we have maybe thought or done some really ridiculous knee-jerk reactive things in a way to make ourselves feel better. To mask the reality of the emotional pain. We have added our own fuel to the fire.

So many people then go into a mindless rampage of self-indulgence. This is NOT self-compassion. Self-indulgence is something we do to numb the emotional pain. Binge eating that chocolate or ice cream, drinking, smoking, exercise, compulsive sex, binge watching Netflix, binge exercise, shopping to extreme. When emotional pain is exhausting it is sometimes ok to numb out for a while but continuing to do so only shoves that pain down deeper and sooner or later it is going to come up with a bang. And believe me the longer your leave it, the messier the recovery and it will usually involves more tears and snot than you will be comfortable with.

Stop putting the fuel on your own fire.

Be compassionate with yourself while you go through the motions of healing. Be patient with yourself when you need a break. This is not a time to bring in self-esteem! Self-esteem is all about self-evaluation, your perceived value as a human being which is usually based upon your sense of personal success in comparison with others. In contrast self-compassion is unconditional and doesn't evaluate. You can be compassionate towards yourself when life is sh*t or you have made a mistake. Forgive yourself.

I took myself away for the weekend. The simplicity of just taking myself somewhere to be with myself. As if I had myself by the hand. It was a weird feeling, just being my own friend.

The whole weekend was about being kind to me.

I felt nourished by the food, refreshed by the sleep and nurtured by the woods I walked in. I came home balanced and refreshed and back to being my own best friend. The problem was not as big as I thought now that those awful ruminations about how useless, worthless or flawed I had been 'indulging' in were gone. Sheesh! What was I thinking?? That kind of behaviour was not going to help anybody.

I coach people to find their own self-compassion. It is there! It sometimes just needs a bit of stillness and recognising, but slowing down and listening to the heart and the quiet messages it has, is liberating! Then, having found the compassion, we let the head know that it is there and that it has valuable and creative ideas in supporting the heart in keeping that compassion. Then, we ask the gut to support the head and the heart in taking the actions required to 'do' compassionate actions. It's a beautiful process.