What Is Self-compassion? Keys To Develop It And Its Importance
Self-compassion is a skill that can help us foster good self-esteem and mental health. But what is it and how can we develop it?
Human beings are born equipped with a series of basic emotional responses, which allow us to develop successfully and forge emotional bonds with our peers. Thanks to basic emotions, we can acquire, through interaction with the environment, other emotions of greater complexity, which usually have a marked social character. Among other skills, human beings learn to connect with others and develop that quality we know as empathy, which helps us get out of our egocentrism and understand that others can also think and feel things. Thanks to this, we are capable of feeling sorry for each other When we observe that they suffer, provide support and bring out our most human side to help.
Although we have widely standardized the experience of feeling compassion towards those next to usthings change when it comes to connecting with our own suffering. Often, when we feel bad or things get difficult, we are highly critical of ourselves and we do not give ourselves the support that we would give to others in our same situation.
In this sense, psychology has been developing an entire field of study around a concept known as self-pitywhich can be key to understanding people’s emotional discomfort and how to navigate it in the healthiest way possible. Surely the term self-pity leads you to think of a certain victimistic attitude towards oneself. However, feeling sorry for ourselves has nothing to do with regretting or becoming entrenched in suffering. Rather, it has to do with aspects such as the following:
First of all, self-compassion implies, just as if we feel compassion for another person, notice that there is an experience of suffering. In other words, to feel compassion externally and internally, we must connect with all our emotions, even the most unpleasant ones. If we do not give ourselves permission to feel sadness, anger, guilt… it is difficult to adopt a compassionate attitude.
Secondly, the compassion has a component of kindness and affection. Far from reacting as the most critical judge, self-compassion allows us to welcome pain with care and warmth. The aim is to provide support and accompany, not to crush or lash out.
Finally, self-compassion also It requires normalizing the experience of suffering. Making mistakes, feeling ambivalent emotions, experiencing failure… is not perceived as a negative sign but as a natural part of human nature. That is, there are no trials involved.
The self-pity It has been positioning itself as a key element in the field of clinical psychology. This attitude of understanding, acceptance and kindness towards oneself becomes particularly relevant in difficult moments in which suffering appears.
When we feel well it is relatively simple for us treat us with love and respect. However, when we make mistakes, fail, or experience pain we quickly react with large doses of judgment and contempt. We talk down to ourselves, we set unrealistic goals for ourselves, we forget about self-care, and we even take away our permission to feel certain emotions.
Self-compassion is necessary, and research indicates that it is a fundamental attitude for promote emotional resilience. Self-compassionate people deal better with life’s obstacles and are therefore less likely to develop mental health problems.
How to develop self-compassion?
Although there are many people who barely put into practice self-compassionOne positive thing about this skill is that it is possible to train it if we set our mind to it. Some keys that can help are:
Recognize your achievements: We often beat ourselves up when we make mistakes, while we take for granted everything we do well. Get into the habit of acknowledging your successes without minimizing them or attributing them to external factors.
Take distance from your thoughts: Sometimes it is possible that our mind plays tricks on us, generating negative thoughts about ourselves and others. Try to see your thoughts as hypotheses and not as absolute truths, since not everything you tell yourself is true to reality.
Encourage kinder self-talk: The way you speak to yourself is more important than you think. Analyze the things you say to yourself and ask yourself if you would say those kinds of things to your friends or family. Try to talk to yourself as you would to someone you care about.
Practice self-care: Try to do at least one thing for yourself every day. Self-care can be expressed in many ways, such as doing some exercise, doing a fun activity, talking to someone, resting… Don’t forget to reserve a moment each day for yourself.
