Laura R. Silberstein-Tirch - How to Be Nice to Yourself: The Everyday Guide to Self-Compassion: Effective Strategies to Increase Self-Love and Acceptance

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ISBN: Print 978-1-64152-261-8 | eBook 978-1-64152-262-5

To my warm, wise, and heartfelt partner in work and in life, Dennisfor all you are and all you do, I love you.

CONTENTS

What Is Self-Compassion?

FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, spiritual and meditation traditions have believed that training our minds in compassion can transform our lives. Psychological research is now confirming this, and cutting-edge methods are being developed to help people learn how to cultivate compassion in their everyday lives. As this body of research grows, were discovering that the most important kind of compassion we can develop often is the compassion we feel not for others, but for ourselves. Known as self-compassion, the ability to mindfully turn our caring and supportive nature toward ourselves and our own struggles has been shown to enhance resilience and courage, even in the face of life's toughest challenges. This book is about how you can develop self-compassion to help navigate your life with greater awareness, mindfulness, and kindness for yourself and all you encounter. Its my hope that the skills youll learn in this book will equip you to build a fulfilling, values-driven life, so that when challenges come, youll be able to meet them from a position of strength, acceptance, and self-love.

Life will be challenging for all of us at times; everyone suffers. The only unknown is when and how we will face our struggles, not whether theyll come. Some of us may experience untimely, tragic losses. Others may endure traumatic events. For some of us, our biggest source of suffering may just be a nagging sense that there is something wrong with us, or that we arent enough. In addition to the twists and turns of our individual life, theres the basic fact that we will all know sickness, aging, and death, in ourselves and in those we love. This kind of pain is built into the human experience, which is just one of many reasons we all need compassion.

At its heart, compassion is our ability to be present with and carry the suffering we encounter in others through a supportive bond. In turn, self-compassion is about facing our own difficulties and struggles with the same commitment and open-heartedness that we would bring to a person we love. Self-compassion involves awareness, understanding, and the courage to be with suffering in a supportive way. In this book, well learn how to build self-compassion, and how to use this new strength to treat ourselves better, make healthier decisions, overcome our emotional obstacles, and live fuller, richer lives.

The Elements of Self-Compassion

Self-compassion has a few different elements, and so building the skills and habits in this area will take us down somewhat separatebut parallelpaths. The basic elements include:

AWARENESS & ATTENTION: To be able to provide compassion for yourself, you first should become more attuned to your own feelings and needs. This means training yourself to mindfully notice and acknowledge when you are experiencing distress. With self-compassion, we can acknowledge uncomfortable thoughts and emotions without trying to avoid or change what were feeling. Imagine Im taking my kids to a water park, about an hours drive away. About 20 minutes into our drive, I realize I forgot to pack their bathing suits. Like many of us, I would probably immediately start thinking self-critical things like, I cant believe it! How could you be so stupid?! My chest might tighten with anxiety or shame. To exercise self-compassionate awareness in a stressful moment like this, I would let myself experience these thoughts and feelings as they arise, paying attention to them without being overwhelmed by themand without taking them as truth. After all, forgetting to pack bathing suits doesnt mean Im stupid. My mind might tell me that in the heat of the moment, but most thoughts subside pretty quickly if we dont fight them or cling to them. To practice self-compassion requires attentiveness, sensitivity to our own emotions, and acceptance of our experience.

UNDERSTANDING: Growing in self-compassion allows us to see things as they are , rather than how we tell ourselves they are or should be. This means we can shed light on whats causing our suffering, and what we can do about it. It requires the willingness to turn toward whats causing us pain rather than avoiding it, which can involve appreciating that many of the things we take personally, or blame ourselves for, are simply part of the human condition. When we realize that suffering is part of our shared experience, we can lighten up on how much we shame and blame ourselves. So instead of buying into my self-criticism or struggling to change how I feel about forgetting the bathing suits, I can realize that my intention was to be helpful, to get my family ready for the outing, and that their happiness matters to me. Then I can allow the understanding that forgetting something is just an oversight, the kind of mistake that busy, multitasking minds are prone to make. I can imagine what Id say to a friend in a similar situation, and it definitely wouldnt be Youre an idiot! Instead, Id likely offer reassurance or a practical suggestion. Acting from a place of self-compassion, the next steps are clearer.