Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a parent whose child comes home from school to tell you they have failed their exam. You turn to them and say, “I told you before that you’re a complete failure. I always knew that you were inadequate and worthless”. Maybe that sounds a little harsh. But our own critical self-talk can sometimes sound just like this. We can find ourselves saying things to ourselves that we would never say to someone else – even our worst enemy.
When you observe your negative thoughts, you may well hear something like a running commentary, as if someone who dislikes you is looking over your shoulder, continually making critical comparisons and judgements. When we identify with negative thoughts, it erodes our self-esteem and self-worth. Self-esteem is the subjective evaluation of our self-worth compared to others. As we develop, we learn to promote and protect our self-esteem. Having high self-esteem is seen as healthy in Western cultures. While having low self-esteem can cause difficulties, there are also issues with having high self-esteem.
Interestingly, psychologists discovered a cognitive bias called illusory superiority, or the above-average effect, in which people consistently rate themselves as above average, even though this isn’t always true. The hidden cost of boosting our self-esteem is that it sometimes relies on feeling better than others to feel good about ourselves. This might mean we see ourselves as better educated, more attractive, more successful, or holding a more senior role at work. Relying on self-evaluation for self-esteem is always temporary and ultimately unsatisfying. For example, we all grow older, our appearance changes, or a neighbour might buy a new car that’s better than ours.
So, is there a better way to support a positive sense of who we are without the negative self-evaluations we make when comparing ourselves to others?
Part of the answer is to practise self-compassion. All of us know what it is to feel compassion and understanding for others. Feeling compassion is not dependent on any characteristics, such as being attractive, rich, or clever. Of course, compassion can be amplified and easier to experience when we see others in extreme situations, like an injured child in a war zone, but this is not about feeling better than they are, so we feel good about ourselves. Self-compassion is about bringing these feelings and attitudes to yourself. It’s about befriending yourself and treating yourself with the same unconditional kindness and care you would give to others.
In addition to habitual negative thoughts, we can experience emotional patterns from the past that reduce our self-worth. You may find yourself in a situation that resonates with some past vulnerability, maybe from your childhood. For instance, this could be the isolating social anxiety that you experienced as a child attending a new school, but this time at a party where there are not many people you know. As an adult with awareness and emotional intelligence, you can notice a drop in self-worth and refocus your energy outward toward others, while also bringing self-compassion and care to the vulnerable child within who is part of your life.
It’s interesting to ask when we stop being children and become adults. For humans, there is no caterpillar-to-butterfly event. Maturing cognitively and emotionally is a gradual process. Recent research argues that adulthood is just an idea and that evidence shows it can take up to 3 decades for someone’s adult brain to mature. As adults, we often feel we have left our childhood behind us, as we are now “grown-ups”. Yet, psychotherapists demonstrate that our early experiences are woven into the fabric of who we are. We carry our childhood experiences with us in our memory and deeply embedded habits and beliefs.
Self-compassion is about accepting ourselves just as we are, our weaknesses as well as our strengths. After all, we’re only human. Sometimes, at low points, we think we’re the only ones to experience loss, make mistakes, and feel inadequate and vulnerable. The fact is that these thoughts and feelings are common to the shared human experience across history and geography.
Self-compassion is also about being aware and mindful – seeing life as it unfolds; noticing patterns of thought and behaviour that no longer serve us well and bringing acceptance, kindness, and care to ourselves. So next time you find yourself feeling inadequate, that “something is wrong with me”, let go of any comparisons and judgements and practise self-compassion and see what difference that makes.
Suggested weekly practice
- When you notice your inner critic, use curiosity to hear the tone of voice, the words that are used, and how familiar the voice seems, to gain insight and awareness of how you sometimes talk to yourself.
- Respond to your inner critic with care and kindness in the same way that you may do with a good friend or child who was reacting negatively to a difficulty.
- Many of us spend a lot of time caring for others. Make sure you give yourself some special time to meet your own needs during the week and do something you enjoy, like catching up with a friend, watching a film, or attending a yoga class.
Guided practice
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware. There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes or lower your gaze while the meditations play.
- Play the settling practice, then read the session content, which you can print off if that helps
- Then play the second audio to explore self-compassion