The Importance of Self-Compassion - Video Transcript

Hey guys, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist, thanks for checking out my vlog today, I'm going to be talking about self compassion. Um this is a concept that is really challenging for a lot of people, a lot of my clients find this difficult because they tend to be very self critical. Um they kind of fixate on their disappointments or failures or things that they perceive they're lacking in.

And um self compassion is the word compassion literally means suffer with. So having self compassion is really no different than having compassion for someone else, and it's very different from self pity, right? You're not just sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, you're being very intentional um and mindful when you're practicing self compassion, this is a concept that has been researched a lot by Dr. Kristen Neff and she has a website book ted talk a lot of resources out there if you'd like to learn more about this concept.

And um she has some exercises on her website that help you develop the skill set, needed to have self compassion. So definitely check out her stuff if you want to learn more about this. Um but there are kind of three components to practicing self compassion. The first is self kindness versus self judgment.

So, um in order to have compassion, we need to demonstrate kindness and understanding towards ourselves or someone else, as opposed to judging the areas in which we might fall short or if we feel like we've failed at something. Um so think about how you might respond to a friend, let's say a friend came to you and they interviewed for a job.

They didn't get it there feeling like a failure. You know, you wouldn't sit there and berate them and call them an idiot. You would show them kindness and understanding and encourage them and reassure them that something better will come along. So you want to do that to yourself as well. But oftentimes, you know, it comes naturally to do this to other people. It just, it doesn't come naturally to do that to ourselves.

The second component is common humanity versus isolation. So suffering is part of the human experience and yes, we vary in um or it varies in degrees and you know how resilient some people are or how some people cope, but overall suffering is sort of um it can be generalized to the human race and just in being human, we are mortal, we're vulnerable and were imperfect.

And so it's really important to take that into account because a lot of times when we are going through something challenging, we do feel really isolated and we can feel kind of targeted or persecuted or have this like why my type of mentality and that feels very isolating and lonely and so it's important to remind yourself that again, suffering affects everyone in some capacity at some point in their lives and um that it can be really helpful to connect with other people about those things. And lastly, um there's mindfulness versus over-identification.

So mindfulness is basically being um very aware and accepting and acknowledging our emotions without judging them. So we're curious as to why they're there, but we're also just allowing them to flow through us versus over identification is when we sort of live in our emotions. So, you know, we're feeling really negative and we sort of set up camp there and wallow and um you know, it's hard to kind of get out of that rut. So it's important that we're mindful of our emotions so that we don't end up denying them or suppressing them, but we also don't want those emotions to be exaggerated.

And for us to sort of over-identify with those emotions. So this is where um being very intentional and mindful about our emotions comes into play, because the more we accept them, the more our emotions will dissipate and be on their way, the more we fight against them, the more they will sort of come on stronger or manifest in other ways.

So basically the process is that you know, we notice suffering, and our heart responds. We feel moved by the suffering. We offer kindness and understanding, and we realize that suffering failure and imperfection is part of the human experience.

And so what we are experiencing is not um not something necessarily unique. It's obvious we all experiencing experience things differently, but the suffering itself, those emotions themselves are not unique and it's something that everybody deals with at some point or another and that it will pass, you know, um that we just have to sort of get through that temporary time period.

So I hope this was helpful. Feel free to ask a question or leave a comment if you are a resident of Illinois or Michigan. Um I do offer free video consultations to see if we'd be a good fit to work together. If you feel like you do struggle with having self-compassion. You know, I'd be happy to chat with you and see how I could help with that.

So I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see you next week.