Understanding Self-Compassion
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Many of us find it easier to show compassion to a friend than to ourselves. When someone we care about is struggling, we might offer understanding and encouragement. Yet when we make a mistake or face difficulties ourselves, our inner voice can quickly become critical and harsh.
Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), developed by Professor Paul Gilbert, helps us understand why this happens and how self-compassion can support our wellbeing.
What Is Self-Compassion?
Self-compassion involves responding to our struggles with kindness, understanding and support, rather than criticism and judgement.
“Compassion is a sensitivity to suffering in self and others with a commitment to try to alleviate and prevent it.” – Paul Gilbert
With this definition, compassion can be viewed as having 2 parts: an awareness and engagement with our challenges (not avoiding or trying to explain them away) coupled with action to address those challenges.
At its heart, self-compassion means recognising that being human involves challenges and difficulties. Rather than attacking ourselves when things go wrong, we can learn to respond in a way that is encouraging and helpful.
Understanding Our Three Emotional Systems
Compassion Focused Therapy suggests that our emotions are influenced by three key systems that have evolved to help us survive and thrive. (Image from https://balancedminds.com/three-system-model/)
The Threat System
This system is designed to keep us safe from danger. It scans for threats and triggers emotions such as anxiety, anger, shame, or self-criticism.
While this system is incredibly important for survival, it can become overactive. When this happens we may constantly focus on mistakes, worry about being judged or feel that we are never good enough.
The concept is closely tied to our fight/flight/freeze response. The way this system appears for us will be determined by our life experiences. Some people might feel like their threat system is activated most of the time and prevents them from accessing other systems.
The Drive System
The drive system helps us pursue goals, achievements and rewards. It motivates us to work, learn and accomplish things.
This system can bring excitement and satisfaction but if we rely on it too heavily, we may start to believe our worth depends on our achievements. We can find ourselves constantly chasing the next goal without feeling content. An overactive drive system, especially if actions are coming from a place of feeling under threat, can result in burnout.
The Soothing System
The soothing system is associated with feelings of safety, connection and contentment. It helps us slow down, recover from stress and feel supported.
Experiences of compassion can help activate this system. However, many people find that their soothing system is less developed than their threat or drive systems, especially if they have experienced difficult life events, criticism or adversity.
Why Self-Criticism Makes Life More Difficult
Many people believe that self-criticism motivates them to improve. While it may sometimes push us to act in the short term, it often keeps our threat system switched on.
When we repeatedly tell ourselves things like:
"I'm not good enough."
"I always get things wrong."
"I should be coping better."
our brain responds as though it is under attack. This can increase feelings of shame, anxiety and stress. Our imaginations are very powerful and our internal voice becomes like a bully and our system responds to this.
Rather than helping us move forward, harsh self-criticism can reduce confidence and make it harder to learn from mistakes. We become focused on protecting ourselves from failure instead of supporting ourselves through challenges.
The Role of Self-Compassion
Self-compassion helps activate the soothing system. It creates an internal environment where we feel safer and better able to cope with life's difficulties.
This doesn't mean ignoring problems or pretending everything is okay. Instead, it means responding to difficulties with honesty and kindness:
"This is hard right now."
"Many people would struggle in this situation."
"What do I need to support myself?"
By approaching ourselves with compassion, we create the conditions for growth and change. Research suggests that people who are self-compassionate are often more resilient. They are better able to recover from setbacks because they are not wasting energy fighting themselves.
Building Self-Compassion
Developing self-compassion takes practice especially if self-criticism has been part of your life for a long time. When we try to be compassionate towards ourselves, all sorts of resistance and difficult feelings can emerge which will explore in the next blog post in this series.
A Final Thought
Our minds were shaped to notice threats and self-criticism often develops as an attempt to protect us from mistakes, rejection or failure. But what keeps us safe is not always what helps us. Self-compassion offers an alternative. By learning to respond to ourselves with warmth, understanding and courage, we can reduce the impact of self-criticism and create space for greater wellbeing.
Reflection Prompts:
Think about a recent mistake, setback, or difficult moment. What did your inner critic say to you, and how did those messages affect your feelings and behaviour?
Looking back over the past week, when did you notice your threat system, drive system, and soothing system showing up? Which system seemed to be most active?
What activities, people, places, or experiences help you feel safe, calm, supported, or content? How could you intentionally create more of these moments in your daily life?
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