By Will MacDonald
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
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I was born in 1998, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have many fond memories of my childhood and teenage years. Of course I was picked on, injured, and I failed at times. Yet I was still happy, had friends, and saw success. All in all, I had everything I needed and was pretty content. However, I did have one big bully in my life that I could never get away from. I would get criticized for any mistake, big or small. Anything I did would be exaggerated and the bully just wouldn’t let it go, no matter how many times I begged him to stop. He would often blame me for things that were not remotely my fault. When he saw that his constant criticism and mean words were getting to me, he would increase his criticisms. He always said that I deserved to be bullied and by being bullied he was helping me out by fixing me.
This bully that has followed me all my life is in fact my own critical self.
To be honest, I’m not sure how or when it started, but as I think back on my life I can remember many times I have been very cruel to myself. As you might guess, this is a very unhealthy way of living. Even so, I assumed what I experienced was pretty normal. I heard other people talk about how they are hard on themselves. If I was unhappy, I blamed it on immaturity or the chemical changes of my growing body. As I graduated High School, people around me noticed how my own thoughts were affecting me and got me help. I finally understood that my self critical way of thinking was wrong. A while later when I started college, I fell back into my old habits of self-critical thoughts. Luckily, I soon discovered positive psychology, my way of improving myself again. I have tried many positive psychology strategies to improve my own well-being, all of which have helped me in different ways. As I experimented with positive psychology strategies, I found mindful compassion to be one of the most helpful strategies when it comes to my self-deprecating thoughts.
Mindful compassion combines the concepts of mindfulness and self-compassion. When done together in harmony, the benefits of both are amplified.
Compassion
Kristin Neff described compassion as “concern for the alleviation of suffering of sentient beings”, and that it consists of three components: mindfulness, kindness, and common humanity. Mindfulness is required to notice our pain, kindness allows us to treat ourselves and others with care, and common humanity is to remind us that we do not suffer alone. It may be one thing to exercise this kind of compassion towards others, however it can feel different when aimed at ourselves.
It might feel unnatural to show yourself compassion as it did for me at first. Sometimes we get so used to our self-criticizing brains that changing this pattern feels like giving a speech in our underwear. We might think it’s silly, unsettling, or counter-productive to our progress. As you practice, I promise you’ll start to feel more comfortable with it like I did. I found compassionate meditation helped me feel more comfortable with being kind to myself. I would slow my breathing and repeat phrases such as “I wish peace and comfort to all those who are suffering,” or “I am loved, I am talented, I am capable.” You can make up your own mantra or follow a guided mantra on apps like Insight Timer in the app store. For more information and practices for self-compassion, go to the Self-Compassion page on mybestself101.org
Mindfulness
Neff describes mindfulness as “paying attention to the present moment without judgment.” You may start with a focus on your breath, but then turn to other things like, how you are feeling, what do you see, what can you hear? It’s the process of bringing all of your senses to your attention, one at a time.
Neff breaks mindfulness down into four aspects. First: paying attention to the present moment. Second: relating to the experience without judgment. Third, relating to the experience with a desire to alleviate suffering, which is known as compassion. Fourth: understanding the nature of the experience and the experiencer, which is known as wisdom. To clarify, the fourth step involves knowing that certain experiences will pass, we are not alone in what we suffer, etc.
Mindfulness is not exactly the same as meditation because mindfulness can be done anywhere and without a specific purpose in mind. My first mindfulness practice involves walking to school and applying a mindful state of being. I would follow a guided mindfulness practice on my phone through the Headspace app. It has a few guided meditations for free that I used, but most of its content is based on a subscription. When I got home from school, I would try to do a 5-10 mindful meditation through one app called Muse, which tracked meditation habits and detected my brain patterns. Needless to say, there are a lot of resources out there to help you. To learn more about what mindfulness is and practices to help you develop it, go to the Mindfulness page on mybestself101.com.
“It’s like a mother, when the baby is crying, she picks up the baby and she holds the baby tenderly in her arms. Your pain, your anxiety is your baby. You have to take care of it. You have to go back to yourself, to recognize the suffering in you, embrace the suffering, and you get a relief.”
The Paradox
Neff describes a paradox that exists between mindfulness and compassion. Mindfulness accepts all feelings, while self-compassion seeks to alleviate pain. To avoid this paradox, she defines the purpose of mindful compassion as the need to give compassion not to feel better but because you are feeling pain. We need to accept the pain we are going through, and instead of trying to force it out with self-compassion, we cradle those emotions with self-compassion. Having a base of self-compassion as we practice mindfulness will allow us to go deeper into our mindfulness practice, helping us feel more secure as we dig out more raw and possibly more painful emotions.
While Neff explains well what mindful compassion is, she does not say why we are so self-critical in the first place. Thankfully, psychologists have figured out how the human mind became so self-critical. In a book called Mindful Compassion by Paul Gilbert and Choden, they describe how the human brain has evolved to make us so capable for mindfulness and compassion, yet at the same time capable of beating ourselves down.
The Old Brain and New Brain
Gilbert and Choden explained how we have evolved to survive and reproduce in the most advantageous ways possible. We automatically do that through what they call the old brain, or our primitive brain that we share with all animals. The Old brain is constantly attentive to our motives, such as opportunities for sex, food, danger, etc. It also looks for social motives such as status, closeness, belonging, respect, etc. Emotions are used to guide our motives. For example, fear and anxiety help us know what to avoid while lust and joy help us to know what to seek out.
The new brain is what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. The new brain allows us to think, imagine, reason, contemplate, etc. Gilbert and Choden give the example of a zebra at a watering hole. All of a sudden, the Zebra is chased by a hungry lion. However, the zebra escapes, does not think about the occurrence again, and returns to the watering hole later. If a human were to be suddenly attacked by a lion and survive, they would play the situation repeatedly in their head, be scarred for life, and probably never return to that watering hole. We are able to think about the consequences of our actions and anticipate the actions of others.
Eventually, people will experience a glitch in how their brains process thoughts and emotions. The old brain’s motives and emotions can stimulate thoughts in the new brain, which in turn generates thoughts which feed the emotions—just like the human who is chased by the lion. Another way we might experience a glitch is by trying to avoid the motives of the old brain. One may be ashamed of sexual thoughts that come up from the old brain or try to avoid painful emotions. This leads to the suppression of emotions and thoughts, which in turn makes them stronger.
Our Multiple Selves
Our motives are able to coordinate multiple things at once, ie. our actions, thoughts, and attention. For example, someone who is caring acts to alleviate pain, thinks about how they can help people, and seeks out opportunities to help. This is called a social mentality. Social mentality involves interactions with others as well as internal motives. When you look for care, you receive it, or when you look for a sexual pass it may be reciprocated. Emotional disturbance can happen when we have negative experiences with our social mentalities. You may seek for a sexual pass but get humiliated instead, or look for care and received belittlement instead.
The mind can switch between many social mentalities, which are also called different selves. One self might be a stern and angry football coach on the field, and switch to a calm and understanding teacher in the classroom. We develop problems when we are not able to switch between these different selves, our different selves conflict, or we become too attached to a certain self.
One such self that causes problems is the shameful self. Shame, the opposite of compassion, is very common in western culture. The shameful self worries that others will criticize us and it also criticizes ourselves. We may become too attached to the shameful self seeing it as a part of our identity, blocking the compassionate self entirely.
We may not always choose the self that we embody for many reasons like how we were raised or not knowing any better. However, we are able to cultivate different selves such as a compassionate self through the use of the smart brain.
The Smart Brain
Gilbert and Choden describe the smart brain as using the old and new brains to our advantage. The first step is to form a habit of mindfulness as I already discussed. Mindfulness can disrupt the pattern of over thinking we get trapped in. Next, you need to have compassion as a basic motive in the old brain. This allows us to reorganize our minds into a more helpful way of thinking. Once you have those two things established, the loop starts with compassion as a basic motive in the old brain which lays the foundation for positive qualities. As the process moves towards our new brain, we are able to think, contemplate, and empathize compassionately. We may start to overthink or worry. Mindfulness allows us to clear out the clutter in our new brain so we can be able to organize it again with compassion.
My Experience and Practice
Much of what I have learned about mindful compassion has come from Doctor David Erekson, my professor in my Individual Development class at BYU. He has taught me many ways in which I can practice mindful compassion. The following video is one practice that has made a difference in my life:
This practice starts with a basis of mindful breathing. Take slow and steady breaths. You need to focus on your breathing, if any thoughts come into your head, stop any self criticism and let the thoughts go. Once you have a rhythm to your breathing, you can start noticing how you feel in your position. Your weight, the smells, how your skin feels, etc. Most importantly, you can notice your emotions or even your other selves inside your mind.
Now that you have done that, you will have to work on your compassionate self. A lot of this involves noticing compassion, exercising compassion for yourself, and challenging non-compassionate thoughts. This will establish compassion as a basic motive. Then you’ll be better able to imagine your compassionate self. You will need to start your mindful breathing. As your eyes are closed, imagine your happy place. Now, imagine a representation of compassion. This could be someone you know, an object, or even something that doesn’t exist. Imagine something that completely embodies compassion. How would it react if you told it about your problems? What kind of comfort would it give you? What are the words it would say and actions it would take?
Now, after you have practiced doing that a few times, you can try to confront your critical self. Go into the breathing practice and then imagine yourself in a room. Now think of what your self-critical self would look like. Project that image next to you and imagine what I might say and want to do to you. Then, project your compassionate self next to it. Imagine the look on your compassionate self’s face and their concern for you. Now you must embody your compassionate self. Imagine it coming over you and adopting their compassionate traits. Now that you have adopted a compassionate self, address your self-critical self. Just like the video, you may thank it for all that it does for you, try to understand why it is so aggressive towards you, and assure it that everything will be alright. Address the self-critical self in any way you think is the most compassionate.
You can use this new compassionate self to address your many selves throughout the day, just like the man in the video. For me, this has really changed how I react to a lot of daily stressors. I no longer view my emotions as good or bad; instead they are all helpful to me. I am able to find more peace as I go throughout my day. Before I started this practice, I didn’t have a very good way of challenging my self-deprecating thoughts. I tried to fight them logically saying, “you have done this before, you can do it again,” or “I know this isn’t a big deal, it just feels like a big deal.” I didn’t think about how I invalidated myself by saying those things. As I took a compassionate approach to my feelings, it felt like all my feelings were smoothed out. If I was anxious, I could practice mindful compassion; I would still feel the anxiety but it would not control me and cloud my mind. In a way I sympathized with my anxiety and I would know it was ok to feel anxious, but not ok to let it control me.
Stand up for yourself! Don’t let yourself continue to be bullied. Adopt a compassionate self that can coexist with all the different emotions, motives, and selves inside you. Read the literature of all the people I mentioned here (look at list of references). Try to follow along with the strategies I suggested. Since you’re here, check out the mybestself101 pages about Self Compassion or Mindfulness. I wish you the best of luck on your journey to self acceptance, self awareness, and self love.
“It is a beautiful experience being with ourselves at a level of complete acceptance. When that begins to happen, when you give up resistance and needing to be perfect, a peace will come over you as you have never known.”
REFERENCES
D. Erekson, personal communication, September 28, 2021
Gilbert, P., & Choden. (2014). Mindful compassion. New Harbinger Publications.
Heriot-Maitland, C., & Anderson K.(23 February 2015). Compassion for voices: A tale of courage and hope [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRqI4lxuXAw&ab_channel=King%27sCulturalCommunity
Neff, K. (7 October 2013). Kristin Neff: Mindfulness and self-compassion [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqQHhF4CaKQ&ab_channel=GreaterGoodScienceCenter.