Self-Compassion Extremely Important, Psychologists Say

The psychologists have recently discovered that self-compassion is extremely important, as it is the only way in which one can live a fulfilling life.

Sure, helping other people is very rewarding, as it gives you a self of worth, but that isn’t enough, the psychologists say. We should be able to appreciate and to love ourselves just as we appreciate and love other people. More and more psychologists have started to study more the area of self-compassion, which is represented by the kindness in which people see themselves. The psychologists have discovered that in the majority of the cases, the compassion for other people is matched by a very low self-compassion. It seems that the more one cares about the other people, the less he cares about himself. There are numerous people who praise the other ones in their lives, but who constantly criticize themselves. They consider themselves to be failures because they are overweight, because they do not do enough exercises; they are not married, and so on. The interesting thing is that these people do not see these aspects as flaws in the case of the other people. They see them as flaws only in their case.

The psychologists have stated that this mentality is very bad for our health. The harsher we are on ourselves, the higher are the chances for us to suffer both from a psychological point of view, as well as from a physical one. We are humans; we are not perfect, which means that we should accept ourselves as we are. Sure, this does not mean that we should not try to improve ourselves and to make compromises. Improve every aspect of your life that you can, but do not criticize yourself for things which you can not change. Even the things you can change should be changed at a slow pace. Do not try to change all of those things at once, and do not try to change them all of a sudden. You should do it with baby steps, as this is the best approach.  The psychologists have discovered that the people who have a very high self-compassion have very low chances of becoming depressed, or of suffering from anxiety. On the other hand, the ones who constantly criticize themselves and who indulge in self-hatred or self-pity have high chances of suffering from depression. The reason for that is the fact that they see only their flaws, and the negative aspects of their lives. Since they see the negative things, they believe that they have no positive things, and thus they start to become depressed. They consider themselves worthless.

The psychologists have also discovered that the self-compassion can influence other aspects of one’s life, such as his weight for example. People who have a higher self-compassion might be able to lose weight easier than the ones who have a worse opinion about themselves. Over the course of the years, numerous doctors and psychologists have stated that the best way of reaching happiness would be to have willpower and self-discipline. They said that if one wants to have high willpower and self-discipline should try to take matters into their own hands if they want to be successful. However, Kristin Neff, who is an expert in the domain said that people often make the wrong connections. If they hear that they should accept themselves as they are, they stop caring about their situation. Neff also said that there are cases when people are afraid to be more self-compassionate, because they identify self-compassion with self-indulgency. They believe that if they will take it easy on themselves they will stop working as hard as they do, and so on. These people believe that they are who they are because they are very self-critical. Neff said that being self-critical does not represent one’s success. Self-criticism only leads to stress, which then leads to various problems.

She said that there is a very big difference between the way in which people react to other people and to themselves. For example if one person misses a few workouts, it is very likely that he will blame himself for this, and that he will try to work extra harder. Now, if one of his friends would miss the workouts, and would feel bad about it, it is very likely that this person will try to encourage that person, telling him that it is nothing, and that there are no reasons to worry. The harsher one is on himself, the higher are the chances for that person to remain the same. These people are usually blinded by self-criticism and because of that they can not change. They try to do too many things at once, and they end up being unable to change any of those things. Neff said that the only way of becoming a better person is to have self-compassion. We do certain things for certain people because we care about them, but we do not do things for ourselves because we do not care too much about our own persona.

She has even developed a scale in order for people to be able to identify their level of self-compassion, and to find out the things they need to do in order to improve themselves at this aspect. She said that the people who have self-compassion should always try to convince themselves otherwise. Written words are stronger than verbal ones, so people should write letters to themselves in which they should state their qualities, and the things which they enjoy about themselves. However, they should also write the negative things, in order to remind themselves that they have flaws, just like any other person. No one is perfect, I am not perfect, you are not perfect, the movie or music stars are not perfect. It seems that the diet of a person can be highly influence by the opinion he has about himself. The ones who have a high level of self-acceptance and self-compassion were able to maintain a diet for a longer period of time than the ones who constantly criticized themselves.

The ones who criticize themselves often eat because of they way they feel. They engage in emotional eating, and that backfires against them. The more they try to diet, the harder it is for them to do so.