The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

by Christopher K Germer

  Self-kindness is the opposite of self-judgment. For example, the statement “I’m tolerant of my own flaws and inadequacies” in the Self-Compassion Scale is the opposite of “When I see aspects of myself I don’t like, I get down on myself.” We have a tendency to judge ourselves when things don’t go our way, adding insult to injury. A self-compassionate person responds to difficulties and setbacks in a warm and understanding manner rather than with harshness and criticism.

  Common Humanity

  When we experience misfortune, we’re likely to feel we’re the only person in the world who’s suffering like that. We also tend to feel shame about our misfortune, as if we alone were responsible for it. Shame isolates. When our intense emotions subside and we see the situation from a wider angle, we’re likely to discover that everything happens as a result of a universe of causes rather than exclusively due to “me” and “my mistake.” All events are flowing and interconnected, at least to a small extent. Our experience is shared by others. That realization of common humanity brings relief from feeling alone and isolated.

  When I’m feeling self-compassionate, I’m likely to endorse the statement on the Self-Compassion Scale that says “When I feel inadequate in some way, I try to remind myself that feelings of inadequacy are shared by most people.” When I feel alone and isolated, the following is probably true: “When I’m feeling down, I tend to feel that most other people are probably happier than I am.”

  Mindfulness

  Just as self-compassion is implicit in mindfulness practice, mindfulness can be found in self-compassion. Mindfulness is nonattached awareness—it gives us the ability to accept painful thoughts and feelings in an even, balanced manner. The opposite of mindfulness— overidentification—happens when we lose ourselves in emotional reactivity. Pain narrows perception. Mindful awareness helps us recognize when we’re in pain, when we’re criticizing ourselves, and when we’re isolating ourselves and points the way out.

  A mindfulness item from the Self-Compassion Scale is “When I’m feeling down, I try to approach my feelings with curiosity and openness.” The opposite of mindfulness is seen in the statement “When I’m feeling down, I tend to obsess and fixate on everything that’s wrong.”

  IS SELF-COMPASSION NATURAL?

  Although our personal experience may tell us otherwise, self-compassion is the most natural thing in the world. Deep within all beings is the wish to be happy and free from suffering. We’re responding to this instinct when we suckle at mother’s breast, when we cry from loneliness, and when we save up to buy a pink Cadillac. Everything we do, even the good feelings we derive from helping others, seems to derive from the wish to make ourselves feel better. Self-compassion practice is therefore not adding anything special to our behavioral repertoire—it’s just fanning the flames of our innate desire to be safe, happy, and healthy and to live with ease, but in a more helpful way than our tendencies to grasp for short-term pleasure and to avoid pain at all cost.

  First we need to recognize that we deserve to feel better. When we feel really bad, most of us engage in self-punishment rather than self-compassion. We heap on self-criticism (“This wouldn’t have happened if I weren’t so stupid”). We act as if suffering always points to a personal flaw rather than being a fact of the human condition. If we remind ourselves that wanting to feel better is a natural instinct, perhaps we’d be less likely to take ourselves to task when things go wrong. Wouldn’t you still clean and bandage a wound when you get injured? Why not do the same for yourself when you’re in emotional pain?

  Actually, when bad things happen to us, we tend to have three unfortunate reactions: self-criticism, self-isolation, and self-absorption. Neff’s three components of self-compassion direct us exactly in the opposite direction: self-kindness, recognizing the common humanity in our experience, and a balanced approach to negative emotions.

  Why do we react like this? I look at it this way: the instinctive response to danger—the stress response—consists of fight, flight, or freeze. These three strategies help us survive physically, but when they’re applied to our mental and emotional functioning, we get into trouble. When there’s no enemy to defend against, we turn on ourselves. “Fight” becomes self-criticism, “flight” becomes self-isolation, and “freeze” becomes self-absorption, getting locked into our own thoughts.

  Scientists have recently identified another instinctive response to stress—“tend and befriend.” During threatening times, some people show a protective response toward offspring (tending) and seek social contact (befriending). Although the fight-or-flight and the tend and befriend responses are common to both men and women, women seem to incline more toward tending and befriending than men do. The tend and befriend response is linked to the hormone oxytocin, and the predominantly female hormone estrogen enhances the effects of oxytocin. It’s therefore likely that women will feel a greater affinity for self-compassion (befriending oneself) than men do. However, since oxytocin is a buffer against the ravages of the fight-or-flight response, self-compassion is a skill worth cultivating by anyone who suffers from stress.

  Another group of people who might find self-compassion unnatural or difficult to practice are those who’ve been neglected or abused in childhood—suffered lots of stress in the formative years. The learning process for these folks may simply take a little longer. Many traumatized people feel they don’t deserve to feel good, or they haven’t had much practice feeling good. Furthermore, it may be hard for them to experience emotional pain in safe doses. Painful emotions recruit earlier pains. For example, a relationship breakup can trigger a tidal wave of loneliness and shame stored up from childhood, overwhelming one’s ability to focus and function.

  People with early childhood trauma, however, often demonstrate remarkable compassion and kindness toward other people or specifically toward pets or young children. Most everybody seems to have someone or something toward whom they experience natural compassion. As we shall see in later chapters, if it’s hard at first to feel compassion for yourself, you can use compassion for others as a vehicle to bring it to yourself.

  Self-compassion can seem quite elusive at times, but since the wish to be happy and free from suffering is innate, it can’t be ignored forever; some measure of success is virtually guaranteed. My own mother, who spent a lifetime raising kids and helping people in the community, has begun practicing self-compassion. She told me, at 83 years old, “I didn’t know I could love myself!” Although my mother is one of those older people who grow softer with age, rather than judgmental and cranky, she is also the first to say that practicing self-compassion helps her take the difficulties of aging in stride.

  IS SELF-COMPASSION SELFISH?

  Most of us feel a little guilty when we pay attention to ourselves. “So many people have it much worse than me! My problems are nothing compared to theirs. I should just suck it up and quit complaining.”

  It’s true that there’s always someone who has it worse than you, and it’s true that we should endeavor to help others whenever we can. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t take the time to care for yourself. We all require some maintenance; a little time dedicated to self-care is not a moral lapse. When we become proficient at self-compassion, a few seconds or a minute is all it takes. Comparing our troubles to those of others can also be a subtle way of denying and avoiding personal pain, which makes us hang on longer than necessary to what’s bothering us.

  My observation from traveling throughout the world is that people in the United States are particularly embarrassed when they feel bad. It’s as if they’ve done something wrong—that their personality has failed them in some way. Some religious groups in the United States equate material success with being in favor with God. New Age theologies explain bad luck as bad karma, a result of previous misdeeds. These cultural factors serve to segregate and blame the victim rather than encouraging a kindly response to suffering.

  Some people worry that self-compassion is a private coc
oon that will close them off from other people by making them selfish and self-centered. The reverse is actually the case: the more openhearted we are with ourselves, the closer we feel toward the rest of life. Self-compassion is the foundation for kindness toward others. When we’re accepting of our own idiosyncrasies, we become more accepting of others. For example, if I’m ready to criticize myself for not dressing stylishly, I’ll probably think unfavorably of poorly dressed people I see on the street. If I feel humble and loving toward myself as I walk out the door, in spite of my flaws, I’ll greet others with a soft smile.

  “Lately I’ve been getting into compassion.”

  Accepting our flaws doesn’t mean that our behavior can’t or shouldn’t change for the better. Acceptance is in the present moment. Each one of us has room to grow, and grow we must. We start by befriending who we are today, no matter how fumbling, incomplete, or clueless we are. Full acceptance of ourselves, moment to moment, makes it easier to adapt and change in the direction we’d like to go.

  Do you have a right to this kind of radical acceptance of yourself? As you’ll see when you practice self-compassion in a deliberate, conscious way (see Chapter 6), sometimes every fiber of your body tells you that focusing on yourself is a violation of a fundamental moral code. A creepy feeling comes up, even without words. This aversion may lessen when you’re in great pain, but the depth of cultural resistance to caring for ourselves is worthy of mindful, that is, curious and nonreactive, introspection. Sometimes an intellectual override is necessary: “There are four people in this family; if I don’t focus on myself occasionally, who will?!”

  Some people think that self-compassion means indulging in selfpity. The early stages of self-compassion may indeed include pity. There’s nothing wrong with that. I enjoy the line from Bob Dylan’s song “Thunder on the Mountain”: “For the love of God, have pity on yourself!” Self-pity, however, seems to contract our world around us, cutting us off from others, whereas self-compassion opens us to the universality of suffering among living beings. Self-compassion also has a balanced, mindful feeling to it, neither optimistic nor pessimistic. If you’re sick, for example, self-compassion doesn’t mean catastrophizing about the outcome of your illness. Instead, it means just being sick with a loving attitude.

  Empathy and Self-Awareness

  Empathy for others and awareness of our own internal states seems to have a common neurological basis in the area of the brain called the insula. The insula is about the size of a prune and is hidden deep within the sides of the cerebral cortex. Hugo Critchley at the University of Sussex in England found that people high in empathy had more gray matter in the frontal part of the right insula. He also found that people who scored high on an empathy scale were good at tracking their own heartbeats—knowing what was going on inside their bodies. The insula seems to bring sensations into awareness, and that awareness can be used to be empathic in social interactions.

  Arthur Craig of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, postulates that body sensations enter the rear part of the insula and are turned into social emotions—trust, contempt, guilt, pride—in the front of the insula. Thus, the insula is the “middleman” between our sensations and our emotions, the link between the body and the mind. Modulating the insula through meditation is one possible explanation for how mindful awareness of body sensations can disentangle us from troublesome emotions, as mentioned in Chapter 3.

  Finally, self-compassion is not selfish because it’s not entirely personal. In a roomful of people, it makes sense to help the person who’s suffering the most, the one we know best, the one we’re most capable of helping. Sometimes that person is you; sometimes it’s another person. To use an airplane analogy, when cabin air pressure drops, we need to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first.

  MINDFULNESS AND SELF-COMPASSION

  Self-compassion practice is a special method for whittling away our stubborn tendencies to resist pain and grasp for pleasure. It’s mindfulness from the neck down, emphasizing qualities of heart— motivation and emotion—rather than awareness and wisdom. The common healing element in both mindfulness and self-compassion is a gradual shift toward friendship with emotional pain. Mindfulness says, “Feel the pain” and self-compassion says, “Cherish yourself in the midst of the pain”; two ways of embracing our lives more wholeheartedly.

  Mindfulness can lead to self-compassion, bringing in feelings of sympathy, forgiveness, tenderness, and love. In order to open our hearts, first we need to open our eyes.

  I’ve visited India many times because I greatly admire its ancient culture, gentle people, and rich tradition of meditation. What I do not appreciate is the begging. Some beggars have truly heart-wrenching problems, like the man I once saw whose nose had rotted away from leprosy. Many beggars, however, are small-time opportunists. Beggars in India always cause me distress, either because of their sad condition or because of the resentment I feel when they manipulate tourists. I’m repeatedly in a quandary: Should I give a few coins? If so, am I supporting fraudulence? If not, am I selfish?

  After a number of years of this distress, I recognized how much I was struggling whenever I encountered a beggar. I began saying to myself, “There’s a beggar; here comes tension and confusion.” When I focused in an accepting way on my own body, it relaxed a bit. To my surprise, I found I could meet the eyes of a beggar with a genuine smile. Occasionally I gave money and sometimes I didn’t, but it always felt better than to hold my breath and avert my gaze. For some beggars, receiving a smile seemed to be even more valuable than a few coins.

  Mindful awareness helped me to see beggars—those in need and those who weren’t—as ordinary people trying to eke out a living. I stopped judging myself for naively giving money to a false beggar, and my heart stayed open to the truly needy. Awareness of my internal reactions opened the space for me to experience both self-compassion and compassion for others.

  Mindfulness practice often leads to self-compassion. For example, in a research study of psychotherapists who participated in Kabat-Zinn’s 8-week mindfulness training program (mindfulness-based stress reduction), significant increases in self-compassion were found after training. But we don’t need to wait for self-compassion to dawn on its own in mindfulness practice. When we’re in intense emotional pain and need a helping hand, we can make the implicit quality of compassion explicit—we can directly deliver kindness to ourselves. The following chapters will show you how to add self-compassion to the practice of mindfulness meditation.

  How much self-compassion we integrate into mindfulness practice varies from person to person and from time to time. I’ve known long-term mindfulness practitioners who discovered the power of self-compassion only after decades of practice, having formerly disparaged it as “less rigorous.” I know other people who do mindfulness meditation only after they saturate themselves with self-kindness and dedicate their practice to the benefit of all beings. In my own case, I started meditating back in the mid-1970s, spent many years practicing loving-kindness toward others, and now I practice a blend of mindfulness and compassion with greater emphasis on the compassion side, focusing on compassion for both myself and others.

  During meditation, it’s sometimes a relief to work exclusively with focused and open-field awareness, without the loving-kindness element. When we’re in emotional turmoil, knowing how to use attention to disregard disturbing feelings can be a great asset—return to the breath again and again, no matter what we may be feeling. People who’ve experienced trauma are glad to know that they can direct their attention to safe places, externally or internally.

  Sometimes we’re too upset, though, to regulate our attention or even to find the breath. Then what? We may feel so bad that being in our own skin is like lying on a bed of nails. In times like these, recognizing our agony is the first and a crucial step toward bringing some kindness to ourselves. The next chapter reviews how to bring care and kindness to ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, relat
ionally, and spiritually.

  Self-compassion works more with motivation than with attention. It’s good will toward ourselves. Self-compassion soothes the mind like a loving friend who’s willing to listen to our difficulties without giving advice, until we can sort our problems out for ourselves. We don’t need to be particularly adept at regulating our attention to get benefit from self-compassion practice. We just need to know we’re hurting.

  The metaphor of a gracious host captures the exquisite blend of loving-kindness and mindfulness that is self-compassion. Consider the following poem by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi:

  This being human is a guest house

  Every morning a new arrival

  A joy, a depression, a meanness

  Some momentary awareness

  Comes as an unexpected visitor

  Welcome and entertain them all!

  Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows

  Who violently sweep your house

  Empty of its furniture

  Still treat each guest honorably

  He may be cleaning you out

  For some new delight!

  The dark thought, the shame, the malice

  Meet them at the door laughing

  And invite them in

  Be grateful for whoever comes

  Because each has been sent

  As a guide from the beyond.

  “Welcome and entertain them all!” Good will creates space for all feelings, good and bad. We’re not favoring one emotion over another—pushing away some feelings, sugarcoating others. Just as a gracious hostess can send her guests home feeling happier than when they arrived, good will has a tendency to shape our feelings for the better.

  TENDING TO THE “SELF”