Self-Compassion How-To

If you’ve never heard the term “Self compassion” before, you’re not alone.

The phrase, popularized by Researcher Dr. Kristen Neff, refers to our capacity to treat ourselves with the same kindness and gentleness that we would a good friend who is struggling.

Oftentimes, when we’re experiencing a difficulty of one kind or another, we berate ourselves with relentless self-criticism.

We tell ourselves things like,

“If only I had ______, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“I’m such an incompetent idiot! If only I could figure this out…”

“I’m such a failure and a screw-up!”

Then, to really seal the guilt in, we get “meta” on ourselves, and start getting down on ourselves for getting down on ourselves:

“Why am I feeling this way?! Why can’t I just control my thoughts/emotions?!”

“Come on, why am I so negative?! I just gotta think positive!”

Is it any wonder that self-criticism is associated with a host of different psychiatric issues, like depression, anxiety, stress and debilitating perfectionism?

Conversely, research suggests that high levels of self-compassion -- that is, the ability to treat ourselves with kindness, understanding and compassion amidst turmoil -- is negatively associated with and can powerfully mitigate symptoms of mental illness.

 

Additionally -- and not surprisingly -- self-comapssion has been shown to be a much stronger motivator for positive change than self-criticism.

This makes sense. When we’re looking to make a positive but difficult personal change in our lives, are we more likely to make investments of time, energy and money on something that we love and appreciate, or hate and distrust? For example, it is much easier to stick to an exercise regimen if I love and respect am invested in myself and my own well-being. But too often, we try to criticize our way into self-transformation (Ahem, Jillian Michaels anyone?!) which, unfortunately, often results in more harm than good.

So how do we cultivate more self-compassion?

It’s pretty straightforward, and includes three imperative steps:

1. Recognize that the struggle is REAL.

Become mindfully aware of when you’re experiencing a difficulty, regardless of whether or not you THINK you should be struggling with something. We are so quick to invalidate ourselves and our feelings, telling ourselves things like, “I shouldn’t be feeling this way,” “I should be ‘over’ this by now,” or “come on, shake it off, it’s not a big deal.”

But mindfulness calls us to pay attention, with curiosity and not judgment, to the experiences that arise in-the-moment. This includes physical sensations, emotions and thoughts.

So the first step is to become non-judgmentally aware of the experiences that are arising in relation to a difficulty. You might summarize this by telling yourself,

“This is a moment of struggle. This is difficult. This is painful.”

2. Connect the struggle to Common Humanity

Oftentimes when we’re struggling, we think we’re alone in it, that there’s something inherently wrong with us, that we’re isolated from everyone else. This exacerbates the pain, and is simply not true. An important tenet of self-compassion is the ability to place our struggle in the context of greater humanity.

The degree and flavor of our suffering may vary from person to person, but the general range of experiences is incredibly similar. So take a moment to acknowledge to yourself:

“Pain is a part of the human experience. Everyone experiences this at one time or another. This is actually something that I share with every other person on the planet. I am not alone.”

3. Offer Comfort and Soothing

 

For many of us, our knee-jerk reaction (after denying and invalidating ourselves!) is to try to resist, avoid or numb the pain. This could look like distraction or avoidance of the trigger, or -- in more salient cases -- substance abuse, self-harm or dissociation.

But what would happen if we actually turned towards ourselves in a moment of pain? What would happen if we treated ourselves with the same compassion and care that we would a good friend who is in pain?

What would happen is we would feel more supported, less alone, more self-reliant and better equipped to make helpful decisions about how to move forward.

So, play around with different soothing and comforting phrases. You may find it helpful to imagine what you would say to a friend who is experiencing a difficulty. You might say something like,

“I see your pain. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I’m here for you. Whatever you’re experiencing is safe with me.”

Self-compassion is not a magic wand that will make all your pain disappear. But, it can be an extremely powerful tool that has the potential to significantly relieve the secondary effects of pain, like shame, isolation and self-loathing.

We all have the capacity to treat ourselves with love. I invite you to meet that part of yourself with openness and curiosity -- and watch what unfolds!

Yours in wellness,

Heather

The Mental Health Benefits of Yoga

I recently conducted a series of workshops at a community event highlighting the mental health benefits of yoga. There are many! I wanted to share some of the highlights here: 

• Yoga has been shown to yield major mental health benefits by reducing stress, symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as promoting overall wellbeing, body satisfaction and quality of life.
• What sets yoga apart from other forms of exercise (which are also powerful, natural antidepressants and antianxialytics)? 

As it turns out, the research points to 3 key features of yoga that yield the greatest brain benefits. And the good news is that you don't have to go to an hour-long sweat session to get these benefits! You can take them off the mat and carry them into other areas of your life.

1. Breath.

Conscious breath work, such as the kind engaged in yogic practice, has a very nurturing effect on the Central Nervous System. More specifically, diaphragmatic breathing stimulates the Vagus Nerve, the 10th cranial nerve located at the base of the spine, which acts as an activating agent for the parasympathetic nervous system (the body's relaxation response). So breathing into difficult postures in yoga can serve as practice for breathing into difficult moments off-the-mat, too.

2. Body Awareness.

For many of us, we complete traditional forms of exercise (cardiovascular, strength training, etc.) by tuning out of our experience via music, magazines, TV shows at the gym, etc. But yoga calls us to tune into our inner experience, in a way that cultivates a deep, conscious awareness of our internal climate. This is important on two levels: 1. It helps us naturally attune to our internal emotional/physical state, so we become better aware of our needs, and 2. It helps us respond effectively to those needs, which results in better emotion regulation skills, less physical pain, more intuitive lifestyle choices, etc.

3. Mindfulness.

Because we are tuning into our bodies in yoga, we are inevitably tuning into the present moment. By really accessing our senses directly -- the feeling of our fingers spreading wide on the mat, the sense of the breath in the belly, the softening of the muscles on the face -- we are aligning ourselves with the present moment not only in body but also in mind. This has its own set of profoundly positive effects, both on and off the mat.

So, how can you apply these benefits to life off the mat?

The next time you're feeling stressed, agitated or unenergetic, try this brief exercise:

1. Start with the body. Sit in an upright, lifted posture. Allow the muscles of the face to soften. Sense the posture and carriage of the body as a whole.

2. Tune into the breath, down in the abdomen. Feeling the stretch of the abdomen wall on the inhale and the softening back down on the exhale. 

3. Call to mind the thing that's most bothering you right now. Really let yourself imagine it, in either words or images. 

4. Drop the awareness back down into the body. Where do you feel this emotion in the body? Where do you feel the stress, irritability, disappointment, etc.? Where is it showing up?

5. Allow the awareness to rest in this identified area by gently sending the breath there. In the same way that you would breathe into a difficult yoga pose, see if it's possible to breath into the location where you feel the emotion the strongest. Not to change it, but to be with it. To explore it. To open to it, and turn toward it. 

6. Allow the breath to gently hold and caress the edges of this sensation for a moment or two, before bringing the awareness back to the room and opening your eyes.

I hope this was helpful for you! Let me know how it went for you!

Yours in wellness,

Heather 

4 Skills to Stop Taking Things so Personally

When I was a kid, I got it all the time.

"Stop taking it so personally!" 

"You take things so personally."

"You're so sensitive!" 

Or, my personal favorite, "Not everything is about you." (As if I was asking to be insulted by someone's remarks).

Not surprisingly, I would take that comment personally, and the vicious cycle continued. 

I remember feeling really frustrated as a kid, thinking to myself, "I don't want to be so negatively affected by others' words...I just don't know how to not!" 

As Don Miguel Ruiz puts it in his best-selling book The Four Agreements, 

Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally…Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

Excellent point, but easier said than done. And one of the reasons this is difficult is because it's telling us what not to do, not what we actively can do to shift our perspective. 

Here are 4 alternatives to taking things personally. (Wish I'd had these as a kid!)

1. Consider the source.

Remember that a person's words always reflect the speaker, not the spoken to. If I say, "The cake was good, but a little dry," that is a direct reflection of my own opinion, not of your culinary skills. It is reflective of my personal preference, which is for more moist cakes.  

In particular, it might be helpful to ask yourself, "What is this person saying about himself? What is he revealing about his own limits, insecurities, anxieties or values?"

2. Listen to the message, not just the words. 

This is a huge one, and it follows naturally from #1. This is a good one to use in work situations, especially between supervisor-supervisee relationships. For example, if you're new to a job and your boss corrects a minor error by saying, "You don't remember me teaching you this before?" it may feel like she's insulting your memory, skills or intelligence. But it could also be screaming of her own insecurity. She very well might be telling herself, "Shoot! Did I forget to include this in her training?" or "Maybe I didn't break it down well," or "I was kind of rushed, I should have budgeted more time for that training." Oftentimes, the most targeting and blame-shifting remarks stem from the speaker's own insecurity.

3. The 3-Alternatives Rule

We've all had that friend whom we text and don't hear back from for what seems like an eternity. And while we may be tempted to take that personally, an active alternative is to practice compassion by imagining 3 possible alternatives for why your friend didn't respond.

Maybe her phone broke. Maybe she has the stomach bug and has been lying in bed all day. Maybe she thought she hit "Send" But she accidentally hit "End." BOOM. Three potential alternatives that all have absolutely nothing to do with you. 

Such imaginations may even conjure up feelings of compassion that incite your empathy, rather than hurt, offense or resentment. 

4. The 3-person rule
 

While it is important to remember that anything a person says speaks more of them than of you, it is also important to pay attention to patterns of messages you receive. 

I had a professer in undergrad who used a 3-person rule for self-improvement. The rule stems from an old adage that teaches,

"If one person tells you you have a tail, ignore them. If two people tell you you have a tail, laugh at them. If three people tell you have a tail, go home and check yourself in the mirror." 

This can be a helpful barometer for receiving feedback across different settings. For example, if at work, school and social gatherings, people are constantly teasing you about being late, they're likely pointing at a true area that you could afford to work on. 

As with everything, don't be too hard on yourself. Because when you choose love over self-loathing, you do more good in the world. And we all can get on-board with that.

Yours in wellness,

Heather 

Stop thinking you have to stop thinking!

Whenever I tell people that I'm a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, I am usually met with one of two responses. Either the person cringes back, saying something like, "I'd better stop talking now!" and changes the subject, or (and this happens more frequently) their posture shifts, gaze becomes more focused, and they lean in, suddenly markedly more engaged and interested in what I have to say. As our conversation unfolds, I become distinctly aware that many folks think I have some major secret to mind-control, like I've dedicated 6 years of post-secondary education to mental wellness, so I must have some secret potion that, if drunk, will release all pain and bestow ultimate mind-and-emotion control. 

I have some hard news and some empowering news.

The hard news first: You cannot control your thoughts and feelings any more than you can control the sounds of construction outside your office that your ears are receptive to, or the sting on your tongue when your coffee's too hot. These are natural, instinctual, inbred reactions that are ultimately designed to keep us safe.

The empowering news: you can choose how you respond to your thoughts and feelings, but this is where most folks get tripped up.

That's because this is where our analogy of the construction noises and hot coffee departs from the reality of thoughts and emotion. In the aforementioned circumstances, you can pretty easily reduce the "pain" induced by these experiences via avoidance -- for example, by putting in earplugs, or sucking on an ice cube. 

But you can't put earplugs on thoughts like, "There's something fundamentally wrong with me," or the hurt incurred by a loved one's betrayal. 

In fact, research has consistently shown that avoiding the inevitable pain of these experiences actually exacerbates and prolongs the suffering. 

The reason for this has to do with a complex matrix of mind-body feedback loops involving tension created from avoidance and resistance to what already is. 

This is where mindfulness comes in. 

If we can learn to accept what is happening as it unfolds, by dropping the awareness into the body and tuning into the sensations themselves, then we simultaneously begin to detach meaning from the sensations. Then, we are positioned to make much healthier and more nurturing choices moving forward. 

Not sure how to start? Here are a few tips to turn to the next time you're facing difficult thoughts or feelings:

1. It's already here.

As Mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn says so poignantly, our painful experiences are already here. They've already happened, so we are only over-exerting ourselves if we dedicated our energies to trying to suppress them down or push them away. Instead, see if it's possible to name the experience itself ("hm, this sounds a lot like an anxious thought," or "this sinking in my heart feels a lot like sorrow,") and allow it to be, as it is. Make space for it. It's already here, so allowing it to be here. 

It might help to set a judgment-free timer. Set up a timer on your phone and tell yourself, "For the next 10 minutes, I'm going to allow myself to feel this feeling/have this thought floating in my mind, and I'm not going to judge myself, resist or avoid it." 

Note: This doesn't mean you're wallowing in your painful emotion or distressing thought. It means that you're allowing it to be there, while neither engaging with it nor suppressing it. 

A script that I like to give my clients is this: "Oh, hello (painful thought/emotion). I see you! You're already here, so come on in and join me as I shift my attention to (activity you're doing, sensation in the body, etc.)."

This can be remarkably powerful exercise. 

2. Assign it a character.

We have been conditioned to believe that certain thoughts and feelings are "positive" and others are "negative." While this may serve us in some circumstances, it often seems to do more harm than good. 

To help neutralize our reactions to powerful or intense thoughts and feelings, it can be helpful to think of them in visual and sensory terms. 

Try assigning it a color. If this pain were a color, what would it be?

Assign it a shape. Is it a tight ball? An untamed fire? A rigid, heavy rock?

Drop the awareness into the body. Where do you experience this sensation? For example, does your stress feel like a red, pulsing flame behind your temples? Is your anxiety an orange, clenched ball in the throat? Is your hurt a grey rock sinking in your chest? 

The details of what you assign it are not important, what matters is that they accurately represent your experience. Once you neutralize your experience, you can shift from a state of tension, resistance and avoidance to curiosity, kindness and nurturing.

3. Offer it some love.

I want to make a distinction here. Choosing to nurture and offer care to your pain is not the same thing as trying to kiss it away. Again, we're not trying to avoid the pain itself, but rather, turn toward it -- with softness, kindness, and love.

So once you've identified what you're feeling, and where in the body you're feeling it most strongly, try closing your eyes, brining your awareness to this place in the body, and offering some kindness, warmth and softens to the pain. You might imagine giving yourself a soothing "mental massage" by caressing the region with the breath. Again -- you're not doing this to make the pain go away, but rather, to be there for yourself in the midst of pain.  

I'd love to hear how these steps worked for you. Let me know what helped you help yourself!

Yours in wellness,

Heather 

The Counterintuitive Key to Change

I had a workout buddy a while back who would join me for classes at our local gym. One evening, as we were getting ready for class, she made a comment about seeing a picture of herself that made her cringe. 

"I know I need to lose that weight, so I put the picture on my fridge to motivate me when I'm tempted to reach for the pizza."

At that point, her words made me cringe. It hurt me to see someone I love, respect and admire not love, respect and admire herself.

Self-loathing and criticism are the #1 derailers of success. Why? Because nobody wants to invest time, energy, money and hard work into something they hate.

Eau contraire, we are much more likely to place success bids on things we believe in, things we trust, things we like. And we're much more likely to act on those bids in productive and fruitful ways.

So, in other words, the key to change is, ironically, acceptance. Acceptance of who we are, where we're at, the choices we've made to get ourselves here and acceptance that we're not where we want to be. But if we don't have the honesty and (as my sister so eloquently puts it) "self-vulnerability" to look at ourselves objectively and compassionately, then we'll never get the real changes we're looking for, because we're launching from a place of denial, resistance, hardness and ultimately fear. The antidote, then, is to shift our perspective in the direction of acceptance, openness, softness and ultimately love. 

At this point, if you're like most people, your flags are going way up. "Wait a second! If I love myself as I am, won't I just become complacent?! Then I'll REALLY never see the changes I want!"

The counterintuitive truth, which is backed by an impressive body of research conducted by Dr. Kristen Neff (pioneer in Self-Compassion advocacy), is that acceptance and self-compassion provide a much more stable foundation and motivation for change than denial and self-criticism. This is because, if we truly have compassion for ourselves, we are recognizing the discrepancy between where we are and where we want to be. And if we truly accept ourselves -- meaning we are willing to take a courageous look at our own choices, skills and capabilities -- then we have much more stable footing on which we can build up our skill sets for change. 

So, next time you're tempted to "hate your way" into change, remember what the science says...if you have the choice between fear and love, always choose love.

Yours in wellness,

Heather 

Ps. If you're not sure how to get started, check out any of the "Self Compassion Break" meditations on the main page. These 5-minute powerhouses pack a punch of the benefits from Dr. Neff's research. 

The Overlooked Secret to Revitalizing Self-Care (Spoiler alert: it's not a massage!)

When most people hear the term "Self care," it often conjures up images of green face masks, bubble-baths, meditating on a mountain top (as if!) or getting a mani-pedi. 

These practices, though expensive and inaccessible to many people, are not inherently valueless; it is important to nurture our bodies and minds on a regular basis, to keep us on our game so we can put more good out into the world. But the problem with focusing only on behaviors as a mechanism for self-care is that it grossly overlooks a whole other key component to effective self-care: the attitude that we bring to ourselves in challenging situations.

Think about it: when you're stressed, you're likely experiencing tightness and contraction somewhere in the body, you may be feeling sensations of anxiety and overwhelm in the temples, throat, chest or stomach, and are likely witness to racing thoughts like, "I shouldn't have put this off so long," "How on Earth am I going to get this done?!" or "My boss shouldn't have dropped this on me last-minute!" 

What would it look like if, instead of berating ourselves (or others) for things not going our way, we offered ourselves some understanding and compassion, instead? 

What if -- when that to-do list looks Herculean, or we don't get the promotion we applied for -- we treated ourselves with the same kindness, warmth and encouragement that we would offer a friend?

Would our train of thought shift from "You lazy, unaccomplished waste! You'll never get this done!" to "Wow, this is a really hard thing. I can feel that it's difficult, because I can feel the struggle in my body. Everyone has moments of overwhelm, stress, and disappointment. You're not crazy for feeling this way -- in fact, it's completely normal!"

Maybe we go so far as to put our hands on our heart, like a hug from a good friend. "Hang in there. This is tough. You've done tough things before -- I believe in you!"

What we know from both research and experience is that the mind-body feedback loop can be a really powerful agent for change - meaning that, if you intervene at one level or the other (mind or body,) you can expect to see some shifts all-around. 

Note: Offering self-compassion is different than "positive thinking" and trying to replace negative emotions with positive ones. When this happens, there is a distinct resistance to the current experience of pain and struggle. And what we know -- at a physical and psychological level -- is that resistance causes tension, and tension usually leads to more resistance and pain, thereby begetting a vicious cycle. It's ultimately a turning-away gesture in our time of need.

By contrast, self-compassion is an inherent acceptance of the current experience of pain and struggle. It's saying, "yes, this is happening right now, you're not alone and you'll be okay." It's ultimately a turning-toward gesture in our time of need. 

So, the next time you're overwhelmed, stressed, sad or otherwise distressed -- instead of abandoning yourself in your time of need, try "turning toward" yourself, with some good ol' self-compassion. And watch what happens!

Yours in wellness,

Heather