“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
Self-Compassion Strategies Menu
What follows is a collection of research-based exercises for practicing self-compassion. Try out as many of these as you can, knowing that some will feel more natural or impactful than others. Feel free to modify and personalize these exercises to help them meet your needs. Over time, you’ll likely notice a few of these exercises that really resonate with you. Make note of these and practice them consistently to increase your self-compassion and overall wellbeing.
Guided Self-Compassion Exercises - Using the free Insight Timer mobile app, do a search in the guided meditations for “self-compassion,” experiment with many of the options you’ll find, and bookmark your favorites for later use. Check out one or more of these exercises to get started:
Lisa Abramson: 10 Minutes of Self-Compassion (10 min)
Kali Green Yogini: Sowing the Seeds of Love Within (13 min)
Meg James: RAIN of Self-Compassion (16 min)
Compassion from Others - Either as a thought (meditation) exercise or a written exercise, ponder on the compassion that others have for you, including parents, mentors, friends, or deity figures. You can pick one specific person, a group of people, or more than one individual. How do they feel about you? How do they act toward you? Most importantly, how do they treat you when you are struggling or hurting? What would they say or do in that instance? Now try to see yourself through their compassionate eyes. Say the things to yourself that they would say to you. Imagine how it would feel if you always reacted this way to yourself when you are hurting.
Natural Compassion - Almost everyone seems to have something or someone toward whom they experience natural compassion. This can be a helpful vehicle in bringing compassion to ourselves. Is there someone or something you feel compassion toward, who you want the best for? Someone whose suffering you want to ease? It could be your child (or any child), a close friend, your spouse, or even an animal or pet - anything you care deeply for. How do you feel about them? Most importantly, how do you treat them when they are sad or hurting? What would you say to them or do for them? Now replace that person with yourself. Do you feel any resistance to doing or saying those same things to yourself? If so, notice the resistance, and then try to let it go. Try to treat yourself the way you would treat this person.
Labeling your Emotions - Learning to label your emotions is a great first step to working with difficult feelings. Labeling specific emotions helps us see them as just emotions - not as reality or as something too all-encompassing to handle. Labeling can put enough distance between you and the feeling to no longer be drowning in it. Labeling is simply a way to learn to resist difficult emotions less. Neuroscience research shows that finding words for what you’re feeling deactivates the part of the brain that produces a stress response. You want to choose words that describe the root or core feeling (for example, your anger might be driven by disappointment or embarrassment) and that capture the feeling as accurately as you can. Once you’ve named the emotion, say its name 2-3 times. Remember that, like all emotions, it is just an emotion, and that emotions are never permanent; they are ever-changing.
Finding Emotions in your Body - Just as helpful as learning to label emotions is learning to find them in your body. Emotions always express themselves in the body, and often the physical component is easier to tackle than the mental component. When you feel a strong emotion (or any emotion), try to locate the sensation in your body. For negative emotions, it may be in the form of tension, pain, stomachache, dizziness, or clenched muscles in the face, hands, or elsewhere. Observe the physical feeling. Breathe into that space, and see if you can allow that area to soften a little with each exhalation. If you can soften into the physical feeling, it can begin to bring mental relief. (You can also practice finding positive emotions in your body!)
Soften, Soothe, Allow - Once you can find emotions in your body, you’re ready for soften-soothe-allow. Below is the guided meditation version of this exercise. It involves taking the emotion you’re feeling in your body and softening it (at the physical level), soothing it (at the emotional level), and allowing it (at the mental level). This is about being your own loving companion and wanting to alleviate your own suffering. You can even repeat the three words (soften, soothe, allow) to yourself as you’re mindfully observing the emotion in your body. [Kristen Neff: Soften, Soothe, Allow Exercise]
Self-Compassion Phrases - Metta meditation (from which self-compassion originates) focuses on using words to cultivate lovingkindness. Specifically, it uses short metta phrases to increase good will first for ourselves and then for others. For example: "May I be happy, may I be at peace, may I live with ease, may I be free from suffering" (and then those phrases are extrapolated to others). Using these phrases or writing others that resonate with us can be helpful for cultivating self-compassion. Our phrases can be tailored to our needs and circumstances (ex: "May I accept myself just as I am") but shouldn’t be too specific (ex: "May I get into the college I want"). Once you’ve written your phrases, try to use the same ones every day. Meditate on them formally or say them to yourself throughout the day or in difficult moments. What matters most is the attitude behind the phrases. Through these phrases, you are not trying to generate a specific outcome or circumstance; you are just trying to cultivate a kind and loving attitude. The point of the practice is to feel the warmth of loving intention and good will toward yourself.
Formal Metta Meditation - The school of meditation from which self-compassion is drawn is called lovingkindness or metta meditation, and teaches lovingkindness and compassion for yourself as well as others. If you are interested in pursuing this more rigorously or formally, search for practitioners or teachers in your area. See the Resources section that follows for links to several online guided metta meditations.
The Self-Compassion Break - This is a short guided meditation that can be done in a moment of difficulty or struggle, or simply throughout the day to stay grounded and compassionate. It brings you all the benefits of self-compassion in only 5 minutes and is easy to learn how to do without guidance. The core phrases of this practice are: This is a moment of suffering (Mindfulness). Suffering is part of life (Common humanity). May I be kind to myself in this moment (Self-kindness). May I give myself the compassion I need (Self-compassion). http://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/self-compassion.break_.mp3
Self-Compassion in All Areas of Life - Take some time to write about ways that you can be self-compassionate in different areas of your life, including physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. Go slowly through each of these and ask yourself: how can I increase self-kindness and self-care in this area? How can I reduce any suffering in this area? This exercise can really expand your view of the ways that self-compassion can be brought into your life.
Twenty minute self-compassion meditation by Kristin Neff: http://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LKM.self-compassion_cleaned.mp3
Self-Compassion Journal: http://self-compassion.org/exercise-6-self-compassion-journal/
Practice self-compassion, however that looks for you! What can you do today to be kind to yourself?