The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

by Christopher K Germer

  Our muscles protect the body from potential danger by creating a hard shield against the world. Unfortunately, the brain doesn’t easily distinguish between a threat coming from the inside and one coming from the outside, so even if you’re worried about your performance on an exam, your muscles will become hard like a knot. Over time, tense muscles can put unnecessary stress on all the systems in the body.

  If you’re feeling tense during meditation or while sitting quietly, try softening your belly. Let it be loose and at ease. If you notice another body part that’s tight, allow it to soften too. This is like the “Soften, Allow, and Love” exercise you tried in Chapter 3. With softening you’re not “trying to relax,” which puts pressure on you to feel something you’re not. Just soften.

  Do the same with your breath. When you’re tense, your breath will become short and shallow. Try softening the breath a bit, perhaps by extending your belly outward as you inhale and exhale very slowly. Exhale twice as long as you inhale. Don’t worry if you return to shallow breathing when you’re done.

  Anything you can do to soothe or comfort the body when you’re under stress fits into the category of physical self-compassion. Perhaps you need to take a nap, eat nourishing food, get exercise, take a warm bath, have sex, bask in the sun, go on vacation, pet the dog, or get a massage? Allow yourself a few minutes to imagine what might help tight areas soften.

  Taking care of yourself physically can also clear the mind. Are you sleeping long enough, eating properly, and getting enough exercise? There’s often an inverse relationship between the mind and the body when it comes to exercise: the mind races when the body is inactive, and the mind calms down when the body starts moving.

  Warm Hands, Warm Heart

  In a Yale University study, Lawrence Williams and John Bargh discovered that warm hands enhance a person’s emotional warmth. Forty-one undergraduates were asked to briefly hold a cup of either hot or cold coffee as they rode up an elevator with the experimenter. Afterward, in the study room, the students rated a hypothetical person on ten different personality traits. The people who had held warm coffee in their hands gave warmer ratings (generous, caring) than those who held the cold coffee.

  In a second study, participants were given a bogus instruction to rate the effectiveness of a therapeutic pad—either hot or cold—that they held in their hands. As a reward for participating in the study, they were given treats they could either consume themselves or give to a friend. Those students who held and evaluated the cold pad were more likely to take the reward for themselves and those who held the hot pad were more likely to give their reward to a friend.

  It appears that physical warmth is closely related to mental warmth, perhaps from associations made in childhood between physical warmth and caretaking. Recent research suggests that the insula is involved in the perception of both physical and psychological warmth. Therefore, we’re likely to warm ourselves up emotionally when we drink a cup of hot tea or take a warm bath.

  Some people wonder how taking antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication fits in with self-compassion practice. It’s simple: ask yourself what’s the most compassionate thing to do. Denying ourselves necessary medication can be a form of self-punishment or a way of ignoring our needs out of shame or obsessive concern for a “natural” body. The reverse is also true: medication can be a subtle form of emotional avoidance. Consider whether medication allows you to function better and pursue healthy behavior changes. If you feel you’re ready to live without medication, please discuss it with your doctor.

  The most natural way to practice self-compassion is what you’re already doing. By acknowledging how we care for ourselves now, we can build on our strengths and remind ourselves of our good habits when we’re under pressure. Please think in terms of genuine care—the kind that makes you feel truly good inside. For example, you may enjoy a cup of hot chocolate in the morning more than a cup of coffee, even though more adults drink coffee. Give yourself credit for knowing exactly what soothes and comforts you. Some people love to have a massage, and others would rather take a nap. How about you? Pay special attention to what you need when you’re under severe stress or when things go really wrong.

  How do you care for yourself physically?

  Can you think of new ways to release the tension and stress that builds up in your body?

  Allowing Your Thoughts

  How do you care for yourself mentally, especially when your mind is preoccupied or racing with thoughts? The compassionate response is to step back and “allow” your thoughts to come and go—to stop resisting. We want to create mental space where upsetting ideas can slip in and out of our minds naturally and easily.

  What does it take to let go of unnecessary daily concerns? An ancient strategy is to use a mantra, which literally means “tool for the mind.” You don’t need a foreign-sounding word to benefit from this technique. Familiar mantras are “This too will pass” and “One day at a time.” Doris Day sang the mantra Que sera sera, “Whatever will be will be.” Repeating these phrases calms the mind, due to their meaning and the power of concentration. Whenever we return our attention to a single word or phrase, we’re unhooking from our thoughts. Some people benefit by simply repeating the word “Yes” over and over in their minds. Pessimists seem to especially enjoy the mantra “If it ain’t one thing, it’s another!”

  You can experiment with mantras that allow you to cope with different mental states. For example, a mantra that helps people stop obsessing about important decisions is “Don’t know … don’t know … don’t know.” A mantra for shame is “How could I have known?” A humorous mantra for the fear of disapproval is “So sue me!” Experiment with your tone of voice when you use a mantra. “So sue me” is cocky and “How could I have known?” is humble. To cultivate self-kindness, try “Be good to yourself” or “Be careful with me.”

  Visualizations also help us to let go of disturbing thoughts. For example, imagine your thoughts as leaves flowing down a stream, with each leaf carrying away what is on your mind. Or imagine yourself as the sky, with your thoughts as passing clouds, some dark and foreboding, some light and airy, all passing by.

  A powerful strategy to hold our thoughts more lightly is to contemplate death. “How would I feel about this if I had only 1 month to live?” In the context of death, very few of our concerns seem to matter. Similarly, if we ask ourselves what we value most in life—happy kids, good health, peace of mind—we can let go of the small stuff.

  How do you care for your mind, especially when you’re under stress?

  Is there a new strategy you’d like to try to let your thoughts come and go more easily?

  Finally, when we suffer from troubling thoughts, we can cultivate compassion for our brains. The brain comprises only 2% of our body weight, but it works so hard that it needs 25% of our oxygen. Sometimes our overactive brains keep us awake at night simply to complete the work of the day. I know a physician who alleviated his obsessive-compulsive tendency by cultivating compassion for his overworked brain. Whenever he had an obsessive thought, he said, “Poor brain, it’s happening again—so much hard unnecessary work!”

  Befriending Your Feelings

  How do you care for your emotional state? The compassionate way is to befriend painful emotions—to stop fighting them. There are many words for this: empathy, concern, kindness, care, forgiveness, mercy, benevolence, thoughtfulness, tolerance, supportiveness, acceptance, understanding, friendliness, sympathy.

  Brian was a middle-aged guy who worried obsessively about his health. He went straight to the doctor whenever he felt pain. To manage his anxiety, Brian learned mindfulness meditation from a local meditation center. I taught him self-compassion techniques. After a few months of what his wife and I thought was steady progress, Brian declared to me, “You know, none of those things I’ve learned do me any good!”

  So I asked him, “How are they not helping?” He responded, “Well, I’m just as anxious about every ache and
pain, expecting it’ll kill me! And my wife is getting sick of it, since I go to her for reassurance every time.”

  This led us to a much deeper discussion about Brian’s anxiety, touching on the following important points:

  He came by his anxiety naturally, due to severe health problems in his childhood and obsessive-compulsive disorder in his family history.

  Anxiety happens in life whether we like it or not.

  Brian’s favorite form of anxiety is obsessing.

  We can’t argue with emotions—that will only make them worse.

  Everyone suffers in life—health anxiety is his particular hardship.

  Our therapy goal was to become more accepting of anxiety, not to have less anxiety per se.

  He needed to learn to hold anxiety with more kindness and less aversion.

  Then Brian said, “You mean I should just let myself feel sorry for myself?” I replied, “Well, yes, that’s a start.”

  Brian had a moment of “creative hopelessness,” as psychologist Steven Hayes might say, and the road to recovery began with tenderness toward his own plight.

  Like the sympathy Brian learned to give himself, forgiveness is an important aspect of emotional self-care. Many of us find it hard to forgive ourselves when we make mistakes. We extend no mercy to ourselves. One way to forgive oneself is to ask, “What would my best friend say?” Or, as the saying goes, “What would Jesus [Buddha, Krishna] say?” By taking the more benign perspective of others, we can extract ourselves from our ruminations.

  Most of this book is about how to become friendlier toward uncomfortable emotions, and toward ourselves. Treating ourselves to enjoyable activities can help. Examples are:

  Listening to music

  Going on vacation

  Flying kites

  Going to church

  Thinking about sex

  Reading a novel

  Buying CDs

  Driving

  Working in the garden

  Riding a bike

  Going to the movies

  Cooking delicious food

  Collecting shells

  Engaging in activities that are intrinsically enjoyable, rather than those that feel like work, is a way to care for ourselves emotionally.

  How do you already care for yourself emotionally?

  Is there something new you’d like to try?

  The following two chapters will introduce a core practice for caring for ourselves emotionally—loving-kindness meditation—that you can practice anytime, night or day.

  Relating to Others

  Connecting with others is another form of self-care—to stop isolating. Remember that feeling connected to other human beings is a component of Neff’s definition of self-compassion. We can feel isolated from others whether we are actually alone or not.

  A sense of isolation can turn even ordinary unhappiness into despair or minor anxiety into dread. This is how elderly people often feel when they live alone and encounter health problems—each new symptom is a sign of imminent disaster. We may not notice when our support network is growing thin because isolation is an error of omission—it’s a problem you can’t see. Therefore, we should give special attention to our relational world.

  How we relate to others has a huge impact on how we feel inside too. For example, we’re unlikely to have a good night’s sleep after a day of lying, stealing, and cheating. Such behavior may promote survival in the short term, but it does little for our emotional well-being. For starters, it puts us at a distance from ourselves—makes us argue with ourselves—which puts us at a distance from others.

  Kindness in relationship means that our actions are guided by the wish to help others and refrain from harming them. The Dalai Lama calls this “wisely selfish” because it inspires people to be kind to us in return. The memory of a warm interaction can also give us lasting happiness.

  I’m reminded of a story about a 9-year-old girl named Shanti from a well-to-do family in Mumbai, India. Shanti was walking along the beach with her father on her birthday. There are always poor people begging and doing tricks on the beach there for money. Shanti asked her father for a treat—an ice cream—since it was her birthday. Her father agreed. As they were walking toward the ice cream stand, a beggar cried out to them. Shanti then asked her father to give money to the beggar. Her father gave her a choice: spend the money on an ice cream or give it to the beggar. Shanti thought for a moment and then asked her father to help the stranger. Later that evening, as her father was putting her to bed, Shanti said sweetly, “You know, giving to the beggar was the best part of my day!” She had discovered at an early age the long-term happiness in kindness to others.

  Our behavior has an impact on others—for better or worse—in many different ways. For instance, our survival depends on killing and eating other living beings or plants. I knew a psychiatrist from Kansas who treated immigrants who worked at a slaughterhouse. He told me that his patients are traumatized from killing animals all day long, 5 days a week. When we eat, we usually don’t think of the emotional impact that providing our food might have on the people who do it. But since we’re part of the cycle of life, we should try to reduce suffering whenever we can and forgive ourselves for how we harm others, intentionally and inadvertently. We do this for our own good.

  How or when do you relate to others that brings you genuine happiness?

  Is there any way that you’d like to enrich these connections?

  Spending Money on Others

  Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist from the University of British Columbia in Canada, and colleagues reported in Science that spending money on others makes us happier than spending it on ourselves, once our basic needs are met. They explored this hypothesis in three ways: in a national survey, in a survey of people who received a profit-sharing bonus from their company, and by giving people money to spend and measuring how they felt at the end of the day.

  In the survey study, 632 Americans were asked to rate their general happiness, declare their income, and identify what they spend their money on. Money spent on others (charity, gifts) was correlated with happiness, and money spent on themselves (bills, expenses, gifts to oneself) was unrelated to happiness, regardless of how much money people earned. In the study of people who had an economic windfall, employees who contributed more of their bonus to others experienced greater happiness 6–8 weeks later, and how they spent the money was a stronger predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself. Finally, when people were given $5 or $20 to spend on themselves or others by 5:00 P.M. the same evening, giving away as little as $5 a day made a significant difference in how happy they felt.

  Trying to be helpful to others can become a habit and even bring happiness at the time of death. A Zen master once gave the following advice on how to die without fear: Ask the question “How can I help?” with your very last breath. Imagine having no concern for yourself in your final moments: How peaceful would you feel?

  Nourishing Your Spirit

  By “spirituality,” we typically mean the intangible aspects of our lives: God, soul, values (love, peace, truth), or sacred connections. For most people, spiritual practice is about cultivating closeness to an ideal transcendent being, a process that, one hopes, reduces our selfish desires and personal limitations. That’s a top-down approach to spirituality. Others take a bottom-up approach, where intimate contact with the miracle of daily life—the imperfect reality happening right in front of our noses—is the way. Most spiritually minded people see the need for both approaches in their lives: to be uplifted by a transcendent ideal and yet to remain grounded in ordinary reality.

  These two approaches share a common process: taking ourselves more lightly. The “self” gets whittled away by loving God as well as through deep appreciation of the precious, fleeting nature of worldly existence. The result is that we have less “self” to protect and promote in the world. What a relief that can be, to ourselves and others. The principle behind spiritual self-care is
commitment to our values—to stop “selfing.”

  Some people believe it’s against their religion to care for themselves. Most religious traditions emphasize the importance of compassion for others: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But even the man who spoke those words escaped into the mountains when the crowds became too big. We read in Proverbs 11:17, “The merciful man does himself good, But the cruel man does himself harm.”

  What’s implied in most religions is that you already love yourself. In the words of the Buddha:

  On traversing all directions with the mind

  One finds no one anywhere dearer than oneself

  Likewise everyone holds himself most dear,

  Hence one who loves himself should not harm another.

  In fact, loving oneself is often given as an example of what it means to love others. It’s the standard: “In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:28).

  But people feel ambivalent about themselves nowadays. It can’t be assumed anymore that we love ourselves. This book was written to fill that gap. Perhaps a better example of spontaneous, unqualified love might be how we naturally feel toward a beloved pet or an innocent child. Tracking this feeling can teach us how to love ourselves better. Once we’ve relearned to love ourselves, we can extend it more fully to others.

  What do you do to care for yourself spiritually?

  If you’ve been neglecting your spiritual side, is there anything you’d like to remember to do?