Self-Compassion: Why, What, and How?

For some time now, we have been hearing the word compassion. We’ve been told, “It is important to be compassionate with ourselves”; “we would encourage compassion towards others.” Do we know what it means? 

A few months ago, our staff had the opportunity to develop a workshop based on the theory of compassion for women. The participants shared a Hispanic background and brought different experiences, pains, wounds, and motives. We started the group by exploring what is meant by the words “compassion” and self-compassion and we were able to notice that although the majority handled a fairly accurate definition, we could see in the process that achieving self-compassion is a great challenge. But being able to achieve it little by little every day generates a wonderful impact on our lives. In April, we are launching a workshop called “Finding myself after Immigration.” 

What does it mean to have self-compassion?

Kristine Neff’s definition sums it up perfectly. “To have compassion for others, you must notice that they are suffering.” Compassion involves feeling moved by others’ suffering so that your heart responds to their pain (the word “compassion” literally means to “suffer with”). When this occurs, you feel warmth, caring, and the desire to help the suffering person in some way (Neff, K., 2022).

Self-compassion implies acting in the same way but in relation to oneself. Being able to accept our challenges, our mistakes, our emotions, and what I can do for myself in a difficult moment.

Kristine Neff (Brown, B., 2020) identifies three elements as part of self-compassion:

• Self-Kindness: be empathetic with our pains and with our mistakes.

• Common humanity: all people go through moments of pain, and suffering and experience different emotions. This is something we share as part of our human nature.

• Mindfulness: it is important to maintain control of our emotions, and pay attention to how we are feeling. If we are hyper-alert or hypo-alert, we will perceive our environment in a different way. Being in a state of regulation allows us to grow and project ourselves. When we are emotionally regulated, we can face the demands of the environment in a more assertive or healthy way.

Self-Compassion and Perfectionism

We live in a world where perfection is a synonym for happiness. We live seeking to have a perfect life, deviating from the path of the present moment, to enjoy what we have today, embrace our imperfections and recognize our challenges.

We forget to be compassionate with ourselves. We do not allow ourselves to think about our real needs, we do not allow ourselves to fail. We criticize and judge ourselves constantly, as we do with others too.

Having self-compassion is related to accepting your emotional states, and accepting your experiences. Understand that if you feel sad, depressed, or anxious, it is not because you decide to; the important thing is to find those reasons or motives that are generating those emotional states. It is important to work on ourselves to avoid getting stuck in the past or worrying about the future. Try to live in the present.

As Brene Brown (2019) says, being a perfectionist is not the same as seeking auto-improvement. In this sense, it is very important to introduce the concept of compassion into our lives. To free ourselves from this “shield” of perfectionism, embrace our imperfections and be authentic. Embrace yourself with all your imperfections and try to understand that perfection is unattainable, so more than a reason to continue, it is a reason for suffering.

How to do it?

• It is important to adjust our levels of demand.
• Imperfection is not a limitation.
• Practice self-compassion. A widely used example of using the compassion approach is asking yourself the question, “If a friend or loved one was going through the same situation, what would you tell them?” Would you be just as hard on that person, or would you seek to ease their pain?” So, why couldn’t you do that to yourself?