Working with Emotional Pain

One of the most powerful aspects of self-compassion is the strength it provides to experience emotional pain without being overwhelmed. Difficult feelings like shame, anger, fear, sadness, or confusion can spiral into debilitating mind states like depression or anxiety if we aren’t able to hold them with compassion.

Living a Fulfilling Life

Most of us work hard at home or at our profession, but how many of us stop to ask ourselves what makes us truly happy? One of the most consistent findings of the research literature is that self-compassion leads to greater life satisfaction and contentment. It does so in part by encouraging us to ask ourselves what brings us joy in life.

Compassion for Our Parts

The term “self-compassion” suggests that we give compassion to a “self” that is a single entity. In fact, the term should probably be “selves-compassion” (if Webster’s dictionary would allow it), because we have different parts of ourselves that suffer in unique ways.

Balance in Relationships

Self-compassion involves being caring and supportive toward ourselves, so that we give ourselves what we truly need to be happy. But that leaves the question – what about our relationship partners? Don’t we also want them to be caring, supportive, and meet our needs?

The Power of Self-Appreciation

Think about what happens when you get some sort of written evaluation and there are nine positive comments and one negative one. Which do you focus on? As Rick Hanson likes to say, the mind is like Teflon for positive information and Velcro for negative information.