What Compassion Is Not: Part One
You want to roll your eyes when you think about therapists wanting you to be nice to yourself. Like Cher from Clueless says, “as if.” While, yes, in theory you understand that being nice to yourself is a thing, but it feels like it applies to other people and not to you. You don’t need to be compassionate with yourself. In fact, you thrive on the criticism you tell yourself. (But let’s just agree that it’s not really constructive criticism, but bullying, okay?) So what gets in the way? When talking about self-compassion and validation, there is this belief that validating or understanding is a sign of either:
Automatic forgiveness
Coming up with an excuse for the behavior (essentially, getting away with it)
It feels like you have to forgive right away
When you make a mistake, you’re a pro at beating yourself up for that mistake. It might be days, weeks, months, or years where you’ll hold that mistake over your head because there is this fear that if you don’t, you’re going to do it again. So you shame yourself.
However, compassion does not mean forgiveness. Compassion is having understanding, empathy towards yourself or others. It doesn’t mean that you’re letting yourself off the hook or that you have to forgive and forget. It just means you’re not going to treat yourself like shit for mistakes or regrets of the past.
Why is this important? It’s important because it’s hard to move about through life holding mistakes against yourself. If each mistake is used as evidence that you suck, then it’s pretty risky to make any moves about in life. Especially if you have this creative energy in you: how are you supposed to express yourself or try new ways of expressing if by doing that is leaving you open to being harmed? It makes it really difficult for you to be vulnerable with yourself and others.
And, yes, this might have been an effective way of keeping you safe throughout your life when the adults or other kids in your life would harm you for the mistakes you made or for being yourself, but you’re not that same person. You’re in a different space. Sure, the world is still full of its -isms that are actively harming people in this moment, but not every moment is that and you deserve to be safe for yourself.
Self-Compassion is not the same as making excuses
Self-compassion does not mean that you are not taking responsibility for your actions. Again, you're treating yourself with respect, understanding, and validation. Responsibility is you taking accountability for your actions.
It can almost feel like bullying yourself is a way to make sure you’re accountable, but that’s not actually true. You beating yourself up does not help others feel healed if there is damage nor does it help provide a soothing interaction with yourself when you’re hurting. This is what I like to call adding salt to the wound. It doesn’t make it feel any better and may make the problem bigger. It’s making it about you rather than the person who was hurt or harmed.
Being compassionate is taking the time and space to let yourself feel your feelings without judgment and with understanding. You’re probably a very caring person who feels deeply hurt when you accidentally, or intentionally, hurt someone. Which means that you really struggle when there is a mistake. Especially if you have high expectations for yourself. You’re allowed to feel that guilt and shame and it doesn’t mean you have to put yourself down for it. You’re not less deserving of a person nor does it impact your worth or value. It just means you’re human. Let yourself feel the feelings, validate that experience, and come up with ways to do better.
Self-compassion is the first step to anything
When you’re nicer to yourself, when you’re more understanding, it is so much easier to make amends, try something new, or just learn from your experiences. So this is going to be learning to view kindness as a way of helping you improve your life and relationships rather than as a cop out for not taking responsibility.
As with most things, judging yourself has been something you’ve been doing most of your life and so it will not stop overnight. What you can do is acknowledge that it will take time to unlearn that and learn something new. It will be messy, but what isn’t messy in life?
If you are wanting to work more on being self-compassionate, you can contact me to schedule your free consultation for individual therapy or to be placed on the wait list for group therapy.