Me, Myself & I
How to be unapologetically self-compassionate
I choose to be aware of my feelings, to be kind to myself and to remember that others share the same experiences as I do — Self-Compassion.
It’s funny because if most people treated their friends the way they treated themselves, they would have no friends.
Self-compassion is seeing yourself compassionately (all the time) regardless of your personal inadequacies, failures, mistakes and the life situations that are outside of our control.
2020 has been an interesting year filled with life situations out of our control. After months of dealing with COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns and economic woes, in October, the camel’s back broke when Nigerian youths peacefully took to the streets to demand change to police brutality as well as bad governance (the #endSARS movement). Their government met them with guns, knives and hastily announced curfews. Many were injured, many lost their lives — this left the nation feeling sombre and deflated.
It is not a fleeting feeling; many of us are still feeling deflated, hopeless, and cannot stop wondering if there was more than we could have done. However, I have come to realize that this results in a downward spiral. I remind myself that we need to treat ourselves kindly and support ourselves through our struggles. Showing empathy, love and compassion to oneself is not self-indulgent nor selfish, but rather research ties it to psychological strengths such as happiness, wisdom, curiosity, motivation, emotional intelligence and interpersonal functioning. In fact, research has found that self-compassion reduces stress, anxiety, and helps to manage depression more effectively than drugs while also reducing the chances of relapse.
So, what do psychologists recommend we do to increase our ability for self-compassion?
- Keep a self-compassion journal: where you write down the things that happened in your day that caused pain, unhappiness or made you feel judged. Then evaluate each thing based on
a) How it made you feel (Mindfulness)
b) Reassuring yourself that it is ok (Self-Kindness)
c) Reassuring yourself that there are others who share this experience (Common Humanity)
2. Meditation & breathing: engage in some loving, kind, focused and affectionate breathing
3. Give yourself emotional breaks: it is ok to say ‘no’ to people, activities and events
4. Engage in positive self-talk: speak to yourself using positive words like you would a friend
Self-compassion teaches us to embrace the negative emotions we feel (fear, panic, anxiety, depression, stress…) which then allows us to move past them and achieve positive action.
Contact Versa Research, your trusted research partners!
https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/germer.neff.pdf
https://www.editage.com/insights/which-of-these-six-types-of-self-care-do-you-practice
