The Missing Piece in Your Wellness Routine? Self-Compassion
I had a particularly impish graduate school professor—a very wise, well-lived Freudian analyst. She taught us the famed neurologist’s theories and goal of psychoanalysis: to relieve the misery of hysteria and neurosis and return patients to the level of normal human unhappiness. She shared that she had learned in her 80+ years to shake her head and laugh at herself when her neurotic behavior flared up and say, "There you go, doing that thing that you do." She giggled and shrugged as she said it. I was stunned.
I was an overachieving daughter in a family of good-at-everything overachievers; I was on a quest for excellence. I went down diverging paths along the way, but the solution was always to readjust and push harder. As a youngish graduate student studying to become a therapist, I remember thinking upon hearing her take on self-compassion, “But aren’t I supposed to fix the problem? Aren’t I supposed to fix people?”
The Maladaptive Need to Fix and Control
It is part of human nature to want to control, to innovate, and to strive. In my work, I have noticed this need only intensifies as our world feels increasingly unpredictable. Even in the best of times, our ability to control and strive has its limits on the external environment. Sometimes that need gets redirected toward ourselves.
We imagine that if we can control our bodies, our frame of mind, our choices down to the minutiae, then we can exhale, find peace. But what if we are living in a collective limbo, and change remains elusive? What if our tenderness or wounds persist beyond our efforts to tend to or rise above them? We must grant ourselves grace. We cannot control what unfolds, yet we can control how we treat ourselves as we move through the world.
It is hard to feel unstable and not have an immediate solution. People often come to therapy expecting me to fix them, as if they were a car and I were a mechanic. They want therapy to excise the parts of themselves they dislike or that cause them pain.
“We imagine that if we can control our bodies, our frame of mind, our choices down to the minutiae, then we can exhale, find peace.”
But the work of therapy isn't about excising parts of ourselves; it's about incorporating them in a way that brings us more balance and peace. We have well-built defenses and over- and under-functioning ways of navigating the world, shaped by our experiences. Healing involves understanding the complexity of these patterns and how they formed in response to our environment. I believe the best way to do this is through self-compassion.
The Self-Optimization Trap
We all experience self-criticism. Depending on your trauma history, nature, and relationships growing up, you might find yourself battling an intense inner critic. This is reinforced by a pervasive cultural practice of treating ourselves like a never-ending improvement project.
We are sold a story—that we must optimize our time, do better, feel better, be better. We think that, if we can only get rid of A, try more of B, and do C, we will be on our way. And while action is certainly an antidote to suffering, what if you moved with more tenderness?
What if it were true that you are not a problem to fix?
Our pursuit of wellness does not need to revolve around optimization or the search for a perfect formula for success. As we strive to achieve our goals and fill our lives with meaningful accomplishments, we can loosely hold the notion that we are often in pursuit of arriving at an imagined desired place—a job, a partner, a life goal, a phase of life—yet life is constantly changing, as are we. This imagined, desired place will also continue to evolve, so it’s best to practice appreciating where we are and our efforts to muddle through.
“We are sold a story—that we must optimize our time, do better, feel better, be better. We think that, if we can only get rid of A, try more of B, and do C, we will be on our way.”
Now, nearly two decades into my clinical practice, I understand and lean into the wisdom taught to me: we aren’t problems to be solved. Yes, we have problematic behavior that needs attending to. Yes, we have unfulfilled desires and longings that need to be looked at. Yes, we have relationship issues that require us to honestly evaluate ourselves and the dynamics in our lives.
Imagine reframing the therapy, the workshops, nutritional cleanses, the lotions and potions—not in service of optimizing our character or performance, but rather to understand ourselves: learning how we move through the world and what supports us.
Typically, our growth isn’t linear, but cyclical. Our life’s work, our wellness work, isn’t about perfecting ourselves, but really about learning where our soft spots are, what our struggles are rooted in, and how we can better take care of ourselves.
What Self-Compassion Actually Looks Like
This embrace of self-compassion is not to avoid painful change or accountability. I’m not suggesting you avoid feeling bad, spiritual bypass out of self-responsibility, nor Pollyanna your felt sense of the objectively brutal things unfolding around you. In fact, studies show that self-compassion actually reduces our tendency to avoid honest reflection. That alone improves our psychological health in myriad ways.
Self-compassion is about holding yourself gently as you explore your shortcomings, your aspirations, and any pain you feel.
When you struggle to have compassion for yourself, imagine someone you care deeply for and how you would respond to their harsh perfectionism. In turn, how would they respond to yours? It is not only possible but entirely appropriate for us to love ourselves the way a benevolent person in our life loves us.
As we bump up against our rough edges, bad habits, perceived deficits, and old wounds, hold them lightly—instead of treating ourselves with discipline, saddling ourselves with shame, adding another to-do to our list. Offer yourself a gentle, “Oh, there I go doing that thing that I do. This is hard. I’m trying to do it differently and yet here I am.” Or as I often say to myself, “You can’t be good at everything.” (And maybe, like my old professor, even try to laugh at yourself.)
Life is hard. It’s hard even when you’ve got it really, really good. What’s the harm in treating ourselves with kindness, to say I’m doing my best, even when our best is disappointing? How can we expect the world to treat us with kindness and care if we don’t treat ourselves that way?
Being generous with ourselves supports psychological health and makes room for our inevitable imperfections—our humanness. It helps us to try again, to adapt, and to feel more at ease with the unexpected, ever-changing nature of our lives. In my experience, people who handle themselves with compassionate care—and a little humor—are the ones who make the most meaningful long-term change, with more ease and grace.