self-compassion

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Do you have self-compassion? Or are you self-critical when faced with difficulties?

From an article in ScienceDaily.com:

"Why do some people roll with life’s punches, facing failures and problems with grace, while others dwell on calamities, criticize themselves and exaggerate problems?

The answer, according to researchers from Duke and Wake Forest universities, may be self-compassion - the ability to treat oneself kindly when things go badly. The results of their research, one of the first major investigations of self-compassion, were published in the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Life’s tough enough with little things that happen. Self-compassion helps to eliminate a lot of the anger, depression and pain we experience when things go badly for us,” said Mark R. Leary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke and lead author of the paper, which includes five peer-reviewed studies.

“Self-compassion involves three components.
They are self-kindness (being kind and understanding toward oneself rather than self-critical);
common humanity (viewing one’s negative experiences as a normal part of the human condition);
and mindful acceptance (having mindful equanimity rather than over-identifying with painful thoughts and feelings)."

So, when things get tough, be kind to yourself.

The researchers found that:

> People with higher self-compassion had less negative emotional reactions to real, remembered and imagined bad events.

> Self-compassion allowed people to accept responsibility for a negative experience, but to counteract bad feelings about it.

> Self-compassion protects people from negative events differently - and in some cases better - than self-esteem. In addition, the positive feelings that characterize self-compassionate people do not appear to involve the hubris, narcissism or self-enhancing illusions that characterize many people with high self-esteem.

> Being self-compassionate is particularly important for people with low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem who treat themselves kindly in spite of unflattering self-evaluations fare as well as, if not better than, those with high self-esteem.

> For self-compassionate people, their view of themselves depends less on the outcomes of events, presumably because they respond in a kind and accepting manner toward themselves whether things go well or badly.

The study also notes that many of the positive benefits typically attributed to high self-esteem may, in fact, be due to self-compassion.