Psychologist Kristin Neff identified three core elements essential to self-compassion:
- Self-kindness vs. self-criticism
- Common humanity vs. isolation
- Mindfulness vs. over-identification
By intentionally strengthening these elements, we can become less self-critical and more supportive of ourselves during difficult times.
What is Mindful Self-Compassion?
Mindful self-compassion (MSC) blends traditional mindfulness skills with the emotional practice of self-compassion to improve mental health and emotional well-being. While mindfulness aims to increase awareness of the present moment, self-compassion specifically teaches you to treat yourself with acceptance, love, kindness, and forgiveness.
The Core Conflict: Mindfulness vs. Over-identification
Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive state of mind. It allows you to observe negative thoughts without “drowning” in them or trying to suppress them.
- Mindfulness (The Goal): A non-judgmental and receptive state of mind. It lets you observe and label your emotions without reacting or becoming overwhelmed. You acknowledge your suffering and treat yourself with kindness rather than responding with self-criticism.
- Over-identification (The Trap): This happens when you feel “swallowed up” by a feeling. You attach more weight to the emotion than is necessary, believing it controls and determines your life. This leads to rumination on failures and exaggeration of your imperfections.
How to Achieve Mindful Awareness?
As a non-judgmental, receptive state of mind, mindfulness lets you sit with and observe negative thoughts and emotions with openness, rather than over-identifying with them or suppressing or denying them. This state of mind can help you notice your thoughts and feelings without constant self-evaluation.
When you can give your emotions full attention without resisting them or drowning in self-pity, self-kindness will surface and inspire you to think and act toward yourself with more compassion.
Suppression of feelings is a method of emotion regulation. We tend to use emotion suppression as a mental defense mechanism to remove painful memories of socially unacceptable thoughts from our conscious mind, so we don’t get overwhelmed by painful emotions. However, consistent emotion suppression can cause an array of mental and physical disorders such as anxiety, depression, or high blood pressure. It is therefore important to learn to express our negative feelings, as this helps us accept ourselves and put our situation into a larger perspective.
On the other hand, sometimes a feeling affects you so profoundly that you feel swallowed up by it. You may attach more weight to this feeling than necessary and start believing that it controls and determines your life. In other words, you may over-identify with the feeling to the point that it negatively affects other areas of your life. When you over-identify with your feelings, they may become unproductive and affect your well-being. Over-identification leads to ruminating on your failures, limitations, and imperfections, increasing the risk of exaggerating their importance.
8 Ways to Practice Mindful Self-Compassion Every Day
Self-compassion is something you can learn and practice. So, here are eight ways to improve your life by practicing mindful self-compassion daily.
1. Know When to Let Go
Freeing yourself from shame, guilt, and self-criticism is essential to mindful self-compassion. Self-forgiveness means knowing when to let go. It is a deliberate decision to release negative emotions aimed at yourself.
So, pay attention to your shame, resentment, and guilt. By actively identifying self-defeating ideas without judgment, you will begin to understand rather than blame yourself. After you acknowledge unpleasant feelings, let them float away. Then you can replace these negative feelings with empathy, compassion, and self-love.
2. Silence Your Inner Critic
Most of the time, we are our own harshest critics. Noticing your self-judgmental thoughts is the first step to breaking free from them. To silence your inner critic, learn what triggers these self-critical thoughts. Then question their validity without passing judgment. Once you learn to detach from these thoughts, your inner critic will lose its power over you.
3. Keep a Daily Journal
Journaling can help you identify what triggers your inner critic. When you write down your thoughts, you can assess their validity and become more aware of how they make you feel. Self-acceptance and self-compassion both start with this kind of awareness.
4. The “How Would You Treat a Friend” Exercise
Consider what you would say to a loved one in your exact situation. Compare that supportive reply to your own inner dialogue.
5. Embrace & Express Gratitude
Think of the good things in your life as “gifts.” Don’t take anything for granted. When you make it a habit to be thankful, you show appreciation for what is important to you. This may motivate you to improve yourself, become more optimistic, and quiet your inner critic.
6. Adopt a Growth Mindset
A professional life coach can teach you to reframe mistakes as learning opportunities, live with your inner critic, and use self-compassion to encourage you to be a better person.
7. Stop Fearing Failure
Failures teach us valuable life lessons. You will no longer fear failure when you learn to treat yourself with kindness. Mindful self-compassion will motivate you to turn your shortcomings into opportunities for self-development.
8. Practice Forgiveness
Understanding common humanity is critical to forgiving others and yourself. Considering the bigger human picture might help you overcome self-criticism and offer yourself kindness and empathy.
Why Is Mindfulness Important?
Mindfulness helps you avoid becoming over-identified with your feelings and thoughts and being overwhelmed by negative reactions. It can help you to observe and label your emotions without reacting to them.
However, mindfulness is a skill that takes practice and time to master. Being fully aware of and open to your emotions, without trying to deny or suppress them, helps you stay receptive to what you are experiencing in the moment, without over-identifying or getting caught in negative reactions.
Self-compassion is a powerful tool that can help manage your inner critic and handle stress better. Being self-compassionate means acknowledging your feelings and moving on, rather than over-identifying with them.
Mindfulness is the first step in that process – focusing on a difficult experience, thought, or emotion without self-judgment allows for self-compassion to arise and brings a gentle awareness to ourselves.
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