10 ways to improve self-compassion written by Tania Taylor. Plus a free body confidence hypnosis track!
Self-compassion is the practice of noticing when you are being critical of yourself and changing your internal dialogue to being kind and caring instead. It’s certainly a tough nut to crack! But it is absolutely possible. You deserve your inner voice to show you compassion.
The first step is beginning to notice your inner critic. Perhaps you just trapped your finger in a door and the first thing you say to yourself. After saying OUCH! Is “How stupid can you get?!” Or maybe you find yourself scrolling on social media and the saucepan boils over. And you criticise you for being distracted. It may be one last look in the mirror before you leave the house for a special occasion, and you say: “You’ll have to do!” Or possibly you are driving and accidently find yourself in a precarious position with other drivers beeping their horns at you. You’re crunching your face up cringing and beating yourself up for having made the mistake.
There may be other times you find your inner critic coming out too that feel a bit more serious and self-loathing. Questioning whether you were at fault because a relationship came to an end. Blaming yourself for someone else’s mistakes. Blaming yourself for your own mistakes even though they were certainly not intentional.
So, now we have gotten to the point of recognising when we could do with showing ourselves a little more compassion. Let’s start looking at ways to help us begin to introduce it into our lives. Think about when you were a young child. Really young. Before life battered and bruised your soul. A time when you were carefree and the most important person in the world was you. At that age you recognised how to get your needs met.
If you hurt yourself, you asked for a cuddle. When someone shouted “no” you opened your big, beautiful eyes as they filled with tears and showed that you were hurting and needed to be cared for. You self-soothed by using a dummy, your thumb, or perhaps cuddling a teddy bear. At no point did you ever berate yourself for making a mistake or when you looked in the mirror. In fact, when you looked in the mirror you probably smiled, cheered, laughed, and played happily with your reflection. Why don’t we do that anymore?
Going slightly off topic for a moment . . . I have a new hypnotherapy relaxation all about body confidence when looking in the mirror and beyond. Completely free just click to listen below.
Self-compassion can come in many formats. But perhaps one of the easiest ways we can be compassionate to ourselves is by giving ourself a BIG, bear hug. Some might refer to it as a butterfly hug. Place your hands on opposite shoulders with your elbows crossed at the middle and feel you, hugging you. Research shows that when doing it for a few moments your body releases chemicals that are released when we get a hug from someone else. These are soothing chemicals that help you to cope better. Rubbing your shoulders and arms with your hands at the same time can gift even more comforting sensations. Another variation of this is to hug a teddy bear, a pet, or another human.
Next time you notice you be critical of you, stop for a moment and gift yourself a hug.
When self- criticism comes more easily, we tend to question our actions and behaviours more frequently. We might reflect on something we have done and worry about whether we did the right thing. Moreover, we might start questioning what we did wrong, even when we didn’t do anything wrong. At times like this a positive statement that is meaningful to you can really help. Some examples are below.
“Believe in your own judgements and values”.
“You were doing what you thought was best with the information available to you”.
“You are trying to be the best you can be and that is enough”.
“You are not responsible for other people’s reactions or behaviours”.
“Perfection is an impossible place to be, recognise that”.
“I am perfectly imperfect, and I love myself”.
Next time you notice yourself questioning your actions, try using a positive statement that resonates with you.
Top tip: Write it down and place it on a mirror you look in every day.
When did you last stop for a moment and do something for you? Something that didn’t benefit anyone else at all. Just you. We often find ourselves run right into the ground. Not because everyone else has made us do that, but because of the inner critic within us. We have mostly placed these pressures upon ourself. Not only that, but if it’s been happening for many years, we may find our actions have enabled others to expect that this is what we will keep doing too.
It can be really tricky to get out of the habit of meetings others’ expectations, especially if you feel they rely on you. In some instances, for example, if you are in a caring role for a family member, this will be important. But I wonder if when you reflect on something specific, whether there may be any changes you might be able to make?
Changing others’ expectations of your behaviour can be difficult and your inner critic is likely to come out more frequently as it questions whether you are doing the right thing. Maybe you have decided your teenage children can learn to use the washing machine and do their own laundry. Perhaps you have chosen to contact a neighbour’s family and ask them to give a bit of extra support as you have found yourself doing more. Maybe you utilise a service like the local council refuse waste collection for people who are unable to take out their own wheely bins. All actions that may relieve you of an additional task whilst enabling someone else to learn to do it for themselves, or (if available) accessing a service that can do it for them.
Being compassionate to ourselves can be really difficult. Changing that inner critic dialogue to something kind and nurturing can feel tough. One way that may help is to externalise the compassionate nurturing part of you. For example, you could create a character (never a real person). This could be an animal, a cartoon character, a teddy bear.
Being compassionate with yourself is an ongoing learning process. By creating a regular time initially to practice, it can help you to insert self-compassion into your daily routine. From there, you can use self-compassion whenever you feel it would benefit you. The character you create is a version of you that exists, it just doesn’t always know when to show itself. This is a great way of learning how to be kind and caring to you.
If you find yourself being critical in a way that is detrimental to your life and want support to live in a way that is kinder to you. You can find out more about the therapies I offer here. If you’d like to book a free initial consultation by phone, you can do that here.
You can read through so many of my various mental health and well-being blogs here. But today I thought it might be useful to consider some of the ways you can improve your mental health and well-being that you may never have thought of before. It is incredible just how much we can improve our mental health by using the techniques below.
I love the fact that this can include absolutely anything! From learning a new language for free using an app like Duolingo (I can highly recommend by the way). To deciding you are going to learn to read upside-down. Every time you put your head to learning something new you encourage new growth of neural pathways in your brain. Research shows that not only can this support you to feel good, it can also help lower the risk of some health conditions such as dementia.
Research shows that the act of growing and nurturing gives us lots of internal rewards. This could be a plant in your home. Or perhaps some vegetables.