The Essentials of Self-Compassion

Let’s face it. You have probably found yourself in situations where you didn’t want to do something but did it anyway. For someone else. You didn’t know how to say no or didn’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings. Some reasons that you have done this may be because you describe yourself as an empath, you don’t want to hurt someone else, or you have a hard time allowing yourself to be a priority. 

Unfortunately these experiences are more common than they are rare for a lot of people. Many of us have a hard time finding a way to prioritize ourselves without feeling selfish, guilty, or worrying about losing a friend. Putting yourself first is very tricky. One step in the direction of self-prioritization is self-validation. How do you validate yourself? Self-validation goes beyond awareness of your feelings. It includes accepting those feelings without judgment. 

Good physical, emotional and mental health requires a little bit of understanding and grace for our own experiences. Let’s look at an example:

I recall a commercial from an internet or television company years ago (this obviously shows my age). The point of the commercial was that “moving is a hassle” because you can never find someone to help you move. But this company was going to make it easy to move to a new place and keep them as your television provider.

Emotional Validation

Truth is, helping someone move isn’t fun. It is often inconvenient with more than just time. It is heavy. It is on a day that you either work or during a time you want to be doing anything else. Most of us participate in doing things with others despite the fact that we don’t want to. Step number one is to recognize this (“I don’t want to do this” - awareness). You don’t have to want to help someone move. Or go on a date. Or go to the gym. Or any such thing. You don’t want to and that is totally fine (and normal)!

Avoiding Judgment

Once you have finally given yourself permission to not WANT to do the thing, the second step is to stop being judgmental about our own thoughts and feelings. The statement “I know that this sounds terrible of me but. . . . “ doesn’t help. Neither does “I am such a bad friend” or “I know I shouldn’t feel this way. . . .” All of these statements are small judgments about ourselves compounded over time. All of these judgmental statements added up over a short period of time start to convince us that we must actually be “a bad friend” or “a bad person.” It simply isn’t true. 

If we can become experts at awareness, acceptance of our thoughts and feelings, and learning how to not be judgmental, we have the capacity to reduce guilt, resentment (of others and ourselves), and we may even be able to do the thing we don’t want to do without feeling burnt out! Because here is the thing: we are most likely to continue to doing the things that we don’t want to do. The trick is found in not burning the extra calories around being judgmental of ourselves. We can cut back the energy and mental gymnastics of focusing on it, worrying about it, dreading it! That alone will help us feel less burnout and exhaustion. Enter self-compassion: less worry, exhaustion and judgment of ourselves.

The truth is, helping others (contributing) actually improves mental health. It builds relationships. It generates feelings of accomplishment. The trick is knowing when you can (and maybe don’t want to) and when you can’t so that you can prioritize self and say "no." Putting yourself as the first thing on the proverbial to do list is hard. And sometimes it is necessary for your well-being and for the well-being of others (nobody likes a moving partner who is grumpy). 

Here is our invitation to you: Practice self-compassion. Prioritize yourself. Contribute to others. Here is how: acknowledge your own thoughts and feelings, and don’t do anything with them! Just be aware. Also, stop being so judgmental. After all, it usually isn’t true anyway.