The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

by Christopher K Germer

  There are also challenges that arise for all types of people while doing self-compassion practice. These are known as the “hindrances” in Buddhist psychology: grasping, aversion, weariness, agitation, and doubt. It helps to know when you’re caught in one of these mind states. You may be skeptical, for example, about whether a person who grew up in your family could ever develop self-compassion— that’s “doubt.” Or you may want to experience the fruits of the practice immediately—that’s “grasping.” Being able to name and work with the hindrances will make the practice go a lot more smoothly. Taken together, knowing your personality style and what’s hindering you from moment to moment can save you a heap of trouble.

  BEING THERE NOW

  When I first learned to meditate in 1976, I felt the most important thing in life was to become spiritually enlightened. I meditated with a vengeance, occasionally becoming quite anxious and irritable. After a few months, I realized I was learning a lot about the mind—not a bad idea for an aspiring psychologist—but I was becoming rather unpleasant to be with. Then I thought, “What’s the point? Why suffer now for rewards in the distant future? Isn’t it a better idea to cultivate well-being gradually, every moment of the day?” Kindness is both the means to and the end of practice. These days, when I find myself struggling too hard at meditation, I simply repeat the metta phrases “May I be happy, may I live with ease.” That immediately softens my body and mind. Your own meditation practice will be in balance when you experience the four cornerstones of loving-kindness—safety, happiness, health, and ease—in this very moment. That’s the goal.

  The beauty of self-compassion practice is that you don’t need to look far to see if you’re on the right track. Are you meeting your daily experiences with kindness? Regardless of whether you’re meditating, putting your kids to bed, or stuck in a traffic jam, the question is “how” you’re doing it. Do you have good will toward yourself or not? It’s that simple. And when you detect discomfort—perhaps struggling for something you want or trying to avoid what you don’t want—can you feel compassion toward yourself and soften into the experience?

  The expectation of well-being is your best teacher. Then, when safety, happiness, health, and ease are not happening, you’ll be alerted. Pay attention to the experience of discomfort. Then decide what to do. Should you focus on the breath to calm your mind? If you feel tense and contracted, should you open your awareness to other sensations? Should you just give yourself love? These options arise more easily when you have a standard of well-being with which to evaluate your mental condition.

  When you experience the same kind of distress over and over— body tension, doubt, loneliness—it becomes time to examine your personality style. Are you striving too hard? Do you expect perfection? Are you lonely because you’re using meditation to avoid social contact? Although uneasiness is a natural occurrence in meditation, prolonged distress is a wake-up call to look at your invisible frame of reference: your personality. We all need to go there from time to time.

  WHAT PERSONALITY TYPE ARE YOU?

  Our personalities are the containers for our attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and actions. They are what we call the individual “self.” Without your personality, you wouldn’t be you! The job of a meditation teacher is to work with each unique personality and find a way to make the practice happier and more fruitful. Usually that requires softening certain aspects of who we think we are. Knowing your personality style can help you become your own best teacher.

  The following 12 personality styles are offered as aids to practice. They are anecdotal rather than scientifically derived. I could have used one of the existing personality typologies (such as the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), but none of those measures speak directly to the kinds of challenges that appear during self-compassion practice. You may see yourself in one or more of the following personality styles. Feel free to make a category of your own if you can’t identify with any of them.

  Our personalities are built primarily around the need to survive rather than to be happy, so rest assured that some aspects of your personality will run counter to emotional well-being and the practice of self-kindness. Try to identify the personality styles that predominate in your own life and examine their impact on your practice.

  As you review these categories, let yourself be good-natured about it. Nobody’s perfect. We all need conditioned ways of being in the world—we need a “self”—so we don’t have to reinvent ourselves every moment of our lives. But what worked for you as a child may not work so well when you’re an adult, and what works when you’re with your lover may not work when you’re trying to bargain down the price of a new car. The purpose of this chapter is not to change or critique your personality, but rather to balance the effect it might have on your self-compassion practice. Start by assuming that we’re continually slipping in and out of balance as we juggle the demands of daily life.

  Caregiver

  Does extending compassion to yourself immediately make you think of someone else who needs it more than you do? Caregivers find meaning in life by caring for others. They’re likely to thrive as a parent, nurse, or counselor. (The intrinsic satisfaction derived from helping others may compensate somewhat for the relative lack of monetary rewards in caregiving professions.) Women are more likely than men to be caregivers. Caregivers are good at compassion—accompanying another person, emotionally and physically, through periods of hardship and distress.

  The main threat to the happiness of caregivers is attachment to the outcome of their labors. They find it hard to give love and not control how things will work out. I heard of one “helicopter parent” who went with her son to his first job interview after college and questioned the interviewer afterward about her son’s interviewing skills! Caregivers can also lose their peace of mind when they overidentify with the suffering of their loved ones, as reflected in the saying “A mother can only be as happy as her least happy child.”

  Being compassionate with oneself is an effective balm for vicarious suffering, but caregivers often feel they’re abandoning their loved ones if they attend to themselves. Taken to an extreme, a caregiver may feel that she’s not a “caring person” if she isn’t struggling at the edge of her capacity. The thought is “If I worry enough, my son will be safe!” Some mothers find self-compassion comes more easily when they say, “Just as I wish that my daughter be safe and happy, so may I be safe and happy.” That comforts both sides of the worry equation—both subject and object—in the caregiver’s mind.

  Caregivers may also deny their own suffering by saying “Yes, but he has it so much worse than I do.” Minimizing one’s own pain by comparing it to others interferes with self-compassion because we have to feel our pain in order to evoke compassion. How do we love others without losing ourselves? We start by practicing mindfulness of our own discomfort (“This hurts!”). Then we soften into the physical feelings and treat ourselves kindly in both word (“I love you!”) and deed (for example, a warm bath, a walk along a river). Embracing ourselves during hard times protects us from fatigue and resentment and gives us the energy to be present for others.

  Intellectual

  Does self-compassion practice seem too touchy-feely, requiring you to take leave of your mind? Intellectually inclined people use their rational minds to regulate emotions and solve problems. A fine example is the Dalai Lama, who recommends that we think about pain and suffering in the following way: “If there is a method of overcoming suffering or an opportunity to do so, you have no need to worry. If there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, worrying cannot help you at all.” Such clarity of thought can be a comfort to more emotionally reactive people, especially in times of crisis.

  But intellectuals can get out of balance through too much thinking (the Dalai Lama excluded!). Lama Surya Das says, “The intellect is a good servant but a poor master.” When intellectuals are upset, they take the elevator to the top floor and can get stuck in their heads. Rational tho
ught is an intellectual’s most reliable means of solving problems, but sometimes the problem must be handled lower down. For example, traumatic memories are often locked in the body, and the body needs to be soothed to release them. Obsessing can provide short-term relief from emotional pain—it’s a kind of escape—but it can also keep emotional problems simmering for a long, long time.

  I’ve known a few intellectuals who never feel quite comfortable with loving-kindness practice. The phrases, such as “May I be safe,” didn’t seem credible. “Safe, you say? We’re all going to die, so no one is safe!” It’s especially difficult for the intellectual to grasp the difference between wishing and the object of wishing. Wishing is experienced in the chest region, not the head. It’s an attitude that we feel rather than a thought process. Fortunately, the sense of simply wishing, without being bound to the object of the wish (health, happiness), can be experienced by anyone after sufficient practice.

  Some intellectuals recognize the value of self-compassion practice when they’re in dire distress—when thinking has not helped them escape their predicament. Even the most intellectual person is a sucker for love when he or she feels terrible. That’s when the intellectual settles for “care,” rather than “cure.” Other intellectuals develop a gradual appreciation of self-compassion through mindfulness practice. They discover that they need to add loving-kindness to the mix when confronted with deeply disturbing feelings or else they can’t think at all.

  Intellectuals are also likely to have a problem with the notion of “self” in self-compassion. “Aren’t we reinforcing a fiction,” they ask, “that makes us feel even more separate and lonely? Isn’t it better to focus on moment-to-moment experience as it arises, without superimposing a ‘self’?” This point of view is entirely correct when we’re feeling good. When the sense of “self” is in pain, however, the healthiest response is to go where the pain is located. Our attention will automatically move beyond the limited “self” when disturbing emotions have subsided.

  Perfectionist

  Are you frustrated by how un-self-compassionate you are, or by the stubbornness of old emotional habits? Perfectionists reap the benefits of high standards, but they continually fall short of their own expectations. When is “good enough” good enough? Probably when you’re younger, prettier, smarter, richer, stronger, healthier, and happier. The self-help industry is based on the cultural assumption that we’re never good enough. Women, in particular, are assaulted on all fronts by their supposed inadequacies.

  Perfectionism begins in childhood. If a parent has excessively high standards for giving approval, the child can carry a sense of inadequacy long into adulthood. Alternatively, if there were no standards and the parent was emotionally distant, the child may develop unrealistic standards for him- or herself about what is required to receive love.

  The main difficulty perfectionists have with self-compassion practice is their relentless need to improve: “I must be doing this wrong!” Remember that meditation is an even playing field; the only “experts” are those who are willing to return again and again to the practice. You’ll never meditate properly or be sufficiently self-compassionate, but you’ll also never fail as long as you stick with it. One extra moment of self-kindness during the day is enough. Criticizing yourself is the opposite of self-compassion. I’ve found that perfectionists become the most ardent practitioners of self-compassion once they break out of the self-improvement trap.

  The only prerequisite for receiving compassion is suffering, and perfectionists suffer all the time from feelings of inadequacy. Perfectionists can start the practice right there, in the pain of never measuring up. Perfectionists can also balance their tendency to criticize themselves by forgiving themselves for their shortcomings, by training themselves to feel gratitude, and by savoring positive experiences (see Chapter 5). Those are all learnable skills.

  Individualist

  Is it uncomfortable to explore your feelings when things go wrong or to share them with others? Individualists prefer to be independent and to conduct their lives without interference from others. They don’t expect to be helped when they’re in trouble, nor do they feel obligated to help others. “Each person is responsible for his or her own destiny,” they say. Individualists don’t need or want anyone’s pity.

  Individualists are attractive to people who admire self-reliance. They take on seemingly insurmountable challenges without complaining. Since individualists don’t actively seek out comfort and support, they can secretly feel lonely or unappreciated when their efforts aren’t recognized. Loved ones often struggle to feel close to individualists and may eventually give up trying.

  Individualists need to be strong and in control. I’ve known some individualists who take up self-compassion practice specifically so they won’t need to rely on other people. This doesn’t usually work because there’s a limit to how much we can let go internally if we think there’s no one to assist us in times of need. Many people have told me they wept after a loved one died only while in the company of others. If you’re an individualist, reflect on the people who rely on you and who might be honored to help you if you needed it. You might be less alone than you think.

  Softening in response to pain is a foreign concept to the individualist. If you’re an individualist, remember that it’s not a sign of weakness to feel the gravity of your own struggle. Even the toughest characters can be broken-hearted and need support. There’s always another day to soldier on.

  Survivor

  Do you feel you don’t deserve love and attention? Survivors suffer from what a pioneer in the field of self-compassion, Tara Brach, calls the “trance of unworthiness”; they don’t trust the validity of their own feelings or feel entitled to feel good. Some survivors have been neglected or abused as children and are struggling to create a life worth living. Survivors are often soulful individuals on a lifelong quest for deeper meaning. They can be quite compassionate toward others who suffer harm and injustice, acutely aware of the cruelty and suffering that people inflict on one another.

  Many of the challenges that survivors face on the path to self-compassion have been mentioned earlier. Self-criticism is a common consequence of years of neglect or abuse (“I felt bad; therefore I am bad”), which can make it difficult to even start self-compassion practice. It’s obviously quite difficult to extend love to yourself if your mother said, “I wish I had never taken you home from the hospital.” An open heart can also cause “backdraft”: a burst of repressed memories. These memories can be intense and unpredictable, overwhelming our awareness. To make matters even worse, the survivor may shut down emotionally when feeling good, instinctively fearing punishment for not suffering. Love can be both unfamiliar and dangerous to the survivor.

  Nevertheless, a therapeutic dose of self-compassion is balm for a survivor. Compassion is ready to flow because pain is a constant element in the life of a survivor, but it helps to first direct it toward others, especially a child or a pet. The survivor can eventually redirect kindness back to herself—tuck herself into the circle of love—in a safe and timely manner.

  Workhorse

  You can’t find time for self-compassion practice? “Work” refers to what we do for extrinsic goals, like money, power, or fame; “play” refers to what we do for its own sake, like enjoying flowers or reading a novel. On rare occasions, work is play: Confucius said, “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Self-compassion practice should be understood as a time to enjoy being yourself—more like play than work.

  Americans are a culture of workhorses. Twice as many Americans as Europeans work more than 50 hours a week. In our spare time, we try to improve ourselves as well—the self-improvement industry is worth over $9.6 billion annually. Workhorses plan every minute, multitask, and feel annoyed when their schedules are interrupted. They generally overwork despite the cost to their health and relationships.

  The main challenge to a workhorse is stopping o
r slowing down. There’s never a good time for the workhorse to practice self-compassion, either formally or informally. When time allows, other goal-directed activities will immediately take priority: replying to an e-mail, catching up on world events, doing the laundry. Meditation is about “being.” Workhorses will turn “being” into “doing”—they will stress themselves while doing loving-kindness meditation.

  The workhorse needs to get off the treadmill just long enough to feel the stress of the time-intensive lifestyle. Such moments come to everyone, perhaps on the occasion of one’s 50th birthday, when the doctor says it’s time to start blood pressure medication, or after a heated argument with an inconvenient teenage son. Mindfulness of “urgency”—the feeling of toppling forward—can be the first step toward reestablishing balance. Then we apply loving awareness to the difficult emotions that arise during quiet contemplation, perhaps feelings of anxiety, loneliness, or fear of dying. Self-compassion is a relatively safe way to meet these demons lurking in the heart of the workhorse.

  The workhorse will try to achieve the goal of freedom from suffering in record time. Once the workhorse has begun to practice self-compassion, he or she should guard against becoming overly zealous about it. The workhorse needs to find a healthy balance between striving and leisure.

  Butterfly

  Will you likely grow tired of self-compassion practice soon after starting? Butterflies are charming, enthusiastic people who become easily engaged in new ideas. They’re delightful company because they devote their full attention to the people and situations in which they find themselves.