Growing Self-Compassion

For many people, the old adage, “You are your own worst enemy” rings unfortunately true. You may find your thoughts circulating back to a self-defeating pattern in which you blame yourself and see all of your shortcomings. This pattern of self-criticism may lead to various mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, emotional shut-down, avoidance, and low self-esteem. It is difficult and frustrating to stay in this loop, but thankfully there are strategies to cope with this dilemma. Here are a few techniques to try to work through your mindset:

ONE: PRACTICE SELF-COMPASSION

A helpful first step to healing is paying close attention to your thoughts. Say that you make a small blunder at work and your boss corrects you: what is your initial reaction? What kinds of thoughts do you have about yourself after this situation? Times of stress, confusion, or emotional intensity may reveal your default thought patterns, which may either be self-compassionate or self-critical. It can be helpful even to write down the types of thoughts you tell yourself. Building awareness around these automatic thoughts can help you then change your internal dialogue, allowing you to grow in self-compassion.

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TWO: EXPLORE THE ORIGIN OF YOUR SELF-CRITIC

Either in therapy or in your own processing, practicing curiosity is key. If you have a lot of insecurity around your looks, for example, explore where this may have come from. What sorts of messages did you receive from parents, peers, and the media growing up around body image? We are shaped by our early experiences, so it makes sense that you may carry around disapproving voices from early on. 

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THREE: CONNECT WITH YOUR INNER CHILD

For many of us, shame and self-criticism developed from an early age and we have years of experiencing a self-shaming narrative. To change this narrative, practice connecting with your childhood self. Think of a time in your childhood that was particularly important, impactful, or challenging. It might be helpful to select a picture of yourself from this time period and print it out or make it your phone screensaver. Whenever you notice yourself speaking harshly to yourself, look at the picture of you as a child. What are your feelings towards this child? Can you feel compassion for this child? This exercise can help you grow compassion for yourself both in the past as well as the present, as you carry your child self in the present.

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FOUR: CHALLENGE YOUR THINKING

The last route for coping with negative self-talk is to take a Cognitive-Behavioral route in which you can challenge your own thinking. You might notice negative self-talk such as “I am such an idiot; I can never do anything right”. Take a moment to stop and put the negative thought on trial: what are all the pieces of evidence that support your thought? What are all the pieces of evidence that go against your thought? Once you list the evidence for and against your negative thought, you can then decide if you’d like to replace it with a new one. For example, you may realize that you actually do a lot of things well in your life and yet are very hard on yourself for making small mistakes. The alternative to “I’m such an idiot for messing things up” would then become something like, “Everyone makes mistakes, and this small mistake does not say anything about my worth or identity”. 

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Choose one of these avenues to practice self-compassion this week and pay attention to how your self-talk starts to change!

Ride the Wave

“Stop crying over spilled milk!”

“It’s bad to feel anger, you should work on that”

“Get over it, it’s not that big of a deal”

“Why are you being so emotional?”

Some of us have grown up hearing phrases like these from our caregivers, friends, teachers, and leaders, and we now internalize these messages for ourselves. In moments of anxiety, depression, or anger you may experience a strong desire to escape your negative emotions as quickly as possible, just as you were taught. It may feel scary or even wrong to feel certain emotions. However, I want to invite you into a new challenge: sitting with and accepting emotions as they come. This exercise draws from mindfulness techniques and allows you to grow distress tolerance as well as self-acceptance.

To start, do a quick body scan: are you holding pain anywhere throughout your body? Notice your bodily sensations from head to toe and take note where your anxiety or depression is the strongest. Next, notice the emotions that are currently surfacing. If you can, name the specific emotions arising. Try not to judge these emotions, but rather observe them with curiosity and openness.

Try to sit in this state of observation for a couple of minutes. The goal in this exercise is not necessarily to change your emotion or make it end sooner, but to simply be with your emotion. It may be helpful to think of your emotions as friends whom you can befriend: what would it be like to grow comfortable with your friend, Sadness, who comes to sit with you every so often?

It may be helpful to think of this exercise as riding a wave – pushing against an ocean’s wave is exhausting and largely ineffective, but in choosing the rise and fall with the wave, you can allow it to pass. In the same way, rather than pushing against your emotions, you can choose to ride them out, accepting them as they come and go.

How to Prepare for Therapy

Picture this: You’ve done the hard work of finding a counselor you connect with, and now a few sessions in, you are searching for things to talk about each week. You have continued moments of anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties, but by the time you sit down on the therapy couch, your mind draws a blank. You may even begin to feel a bit of stress or even dread before your therapy sessions, because you don’t know where to start. 

If you relate to this experience, you are not alone! Life can feel like it is moving in fast motion, and it can be easy to lose sight of our emotions and self-reflective thoughts in the midst of work and life priorities. As a therapist myself, I have encountered this experience many times and stumbled into counseling sessions feeling jumbled and confused about what to talk about. 

To this experience, I will first say that you can be assured your therapist is trained to handle the ambiguity and rollercoaster of human emotions. Feel free to tell your therapist that you are unsure of where to start, and they will be more than happy to help you sift through the experiences and emotions coming up that can help you choose a path to go down. 

However, it can be extremely helpful to have guiding questions to return to throughout the week to help you prepare for your therapy appointment. It may be helpful to run through a few of these questions in the day or hours leading up to your appointment. Save this list to return to if you ever need help checking in with yourself:

1. Do a quick body scan: take a few deep breaths and work your way through your body, from your feet, to legs, to abdomen, up to your chest, arms, face, and scalp. Notice if you are holding any tension in any areas of your body. Notice if this tension is tied to any particular emotion.

2. Think through the time that has passed since your last therapy appointment. Did you have any upsetting, emotional, or significant moments happen over the weekend, at work, with a family member or friend? 

3. How are you currently coping with negative emotions like anger or sadness?

4. Think through the past couple of years – are there any experiences that you have not processed in therapy that continue to impact you?

5. How was your self-talk this week – compassionate or shaming?

6. What types of thoughts or thought patterns do you wish you could change?

7. Have you been ruminating on any thoughts this week?

8. Have you noticed yourself using any defense mechanisms, such as avoidance or denial? 

9. When did you feel most yourself this week, and what was different about this time?

10. Are there any relationships in your life currently that you wish were different?

May these questions help guide you towards understanding what might be currently happening in your body, mind, and life that counseling can help you unpack and process.