Kristin Neff is the first psychologist to study self-compassion, and she has made an enormous contribution to how the field has developed. She proposed three elements of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness (mindfulness). These three building blocks are profoundly helpful, whether as concepts for understanding self-compassion or as something to put into practice in everyday life. The most important action in self-compassion is to be kind to yourself; common humanity is the reason we should practise self-compassion; and mindfulness is the attitude we should hold while we do so. Self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness are interlocking, together forming a complete framework for self-compassion.
Before we talk about self-kindness, I want to set out some of the reactions we often have when we run into setbacks. We blame failure on our own lack of ability; we resent that we are not as good as others; we ignore our own feelings, and then, when those feelings boil over, we decide we are simply bad at managing them. This pattern of criticising and doubting our own abilities can be called "self-judgement". Rather than judging ourselves, what we should do is be kind to ourselves. Being kind to yourself means caring for yourself as you would for a friend. As someone offering comfort, you would not jump straight to blaming them for what went wrong; you would try to understand them with an open heart. You would not dismiss their pain; you would see their emotional ups and downs as reasonable, and you would let them release those feelings. You would hope they could face the problem head-on rather than run from reality. Self-compassion asks us to be kind to ourselves, to care for the self that is struggling with an accepting attitude. We know how to be kind to a friend, yet when we face our own failures we criticise ourselves without even realising it. There is no need to be so harsh on yourself; being kind to yourself can instead open up a path you never imagined.
Choosing to be kind to yourself even in failure, you might question whether this is really the right attitude with which to face hardship. This is where I want to bring in the idea of common humanity. When we discuss human nature — what it even means to be a person — we often say that people possess benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom; that people have consciousness, a capacity for thought that goes beyond that of animals, and the ability to reason about abstract concepts. We tend to talk about people's strengths, but we habitually overlook their weaknesses. Everyone is imperfect; no one is all-powerful. We all have emotions, we all have impulses, and there are times when we simply cannot cope. In life, things rarely go our way, and meeting difficulty, distress and failure is an entirely normal, universal experience — there is no reason to blame or punish ourselves over it. When you go through a setback, you might feel you "should not" have made a mistake. Yet once you can understand human nature from a broader perspective, you can recognise that making mistakes or failing is, for human beings, an utterly common thing. You are just like everyone else: you will have failures, and you are imperfect. Common humanity lets us see that we need not blame ourselves for our own setbacks, and it gives us a reason to be kind to ourselves.
In the process of self-compassion, we all have to deal with complicated negative emotions. Mindfulness can cultivate in us an attitude of non-judgement and acceptance towards difficulty and the emotions or sensations it brings. When we go through a setback, we feel grief, disappointment, fear and the like. We should not force these feelings or thoughts down; mindfulness is precisely what allows us to face these feelings with an accepting, open attitude. To work through pain, we first need to accept a fact: difficulties, problems and emotions all genuinely exist. An open and accepting attitude also lets the thoughts we have suppressed surface, so that we can confront what we truly feel. At the same time, mindfulness teaches us to live in the present, to place our attention on what we feel in the here and now, and to lessen the impact those emotions have. When, without noticing, we again begin to criticise ourselves and blame ourselves for our failures, mindfulness can bring our minds back to the reality of the present moment, so that we do not get pulled into a whirlpool of self-judgement. Through mindfulness, we can return to the present, so that our minds are ready to practise self-compassion.
Self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness correspond, respectively, to the action, the reason and the attitude of self-compassion. Common humanity may seem the easiest to grasp, but in practice we need to understand and internalise all of these concepts before self-compassion can have its fullest effect.
Want to understand yourself more deeply? MindForest — a self-exploration app that combines psychology with AI helps you explore your inner world and manage your emotions, anytime and anywhere.
If you are struggling with your emotions, the professional team at TreeholeHK can help — we offer psychotherapy and counselling services led by clinical psychologists, counselling psychologists and counsellors.
Comments
No comments yet — share your thoughts.