#Selfcompassion
Myth 1: Self-compassion is a form of self-pity
One of the biggest myths about self-compassion is that it means feeling sorry for yourself. In fact, self-compassion is an antidote to self-pity and the tendency to whine about our bad luck. This isn’t because self-compassion allows you to tune out the bad stuff—in fact, it makes us more willing to accept, experience, and acknowledge difficult feelings with kindness, which paradoxically helps us process and let go of them more fully.
Research shows that self-compassionate people are less likely to get swallowed up by self-pitying thoughts about how bad things are. Instead of feeling poor me, there’s the simple recognition that life is difficult for everyone, including me. We can accept our struggle as normal and feel connected to others in our pain, at the same time that we commit to emotionally supportiving ourselves. That’s one of the reasons self-compassionate people have better mental health.
Myth 2: Self-compassion means weakness
John had always considered himself a pillar of strength—an ideal husband, an excellent high school math teacher and provider. So he was devastated when his wife left him for another man. Secretly racked with guilt for not doing more to meet his wife’s emotional needs before she sought comfort in someone else’s arms, he didn’t want to admit how hurt he still felt and how hard it was for him to move on with his life.
When John’s colleague suggested that he try being compassionate to himself about his divorce, his reaction was swift: “Don’t give me that hearts and flowers stuff. I had to be hard as nails to get through the divorce with some semblance of self-respect, and I’m not about to let my guard down now.”
Myth 3: Self-compassion will make me complacent
Perhaps the biggest block to self-compassion is the belief that it will undermine our motivation to push ourselves to do better. The idea is that if we don’t criticize ourselves for failing to live up to our standards, we’ll automatically succumb to slothful defeatism. But let’s think for a moment about how educators successfully motivate their students.
When a student receives a failing grade on a test even after studying, the teacher could look disgusted and hiss, “Stupid loser. You’ll never amount to anything. I’m ashamed of you.” (Makes you cringe doesn’t it? Yet that’s exactly the type of thing we tell ourselves when we fail to meet our own high expectations.) Educators don’t do this because they know a torrent of shame will just make students lose faith in themselves and eventually stop trying altogether.
Myth 4: Self-compassion is narcissistic
In American culture, high self-esteem requires standing out in a crowd—being special and above average. How do you feel when someone calls you an average teacher, average parent, or says your intelligence is average? Ouch! The problem, of course, is that, Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone not withstanding, it’s impossible for everyone to be above average at the same time.
While there may be some areas in which we excel, there’s always someone more attractive, successful, and intelligent than we are, meaning we feel like failures whenever we compare our selves to those “better” than ourselves.
Myth 5: Self-compassion is selfish
Many people are suspicious of self-compassion because they conflate it with selfishness. Rachel, for instance, spends her days caring for her students, her evenings prepping for class and caring for her family, and her weekends volunteering for the two charities she supports.
Raised in a family that emphasized the importance of service to others, she assumes that spending time and energy being kind and caring toward herself would automatically mean neglecting everybody else for her own selfish ends. Indeed, many people are like Rachel in this sense—good, generous, altruistic souls, who are perfectly awful to themselves, all the while thinking this is necessary to their general goodness.
You can refer to this:
resiliens.com/resilify/program/self-compassion
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