The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

by Christopher K Germer

  Spiritual self-care usually means taking the time to cultivate the values that we hold dear. If you don’t attend to your values, you’ll unconsciously absorb the values of our consumer culture: pleasure-seeking, materialism. Are you regularly meeting with people who share your faith? If you enjoy connecting with nature, do you get outdoors once a week? Is your religious practice nourishing you, or are you just doing it out of obligation? Are you learning to relate to yourself and others with more kindness and ease?

  Just as a parent tries to attend to every aspect of a child’s life— physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual—we can cultivate those skills toward ourselves. If you didn’t get this kind of care, or if you learned those skills and they fell into disuse after you reached adulthood, you can relearn them now. All it takes is willingness and a little creativity.

  NONHARM

  At its most basic level, the practice of self-compassion means not harming ourselves. It’s often easier to notice when we’re harming ourselves than it is to discover ways of being nicer to ourselves. Consider the following:

  How do you brush your teeth? Gently? Harshly?

  Do you rush around in the morning?

  Does your body feel tense or stiff from lack of exercise?

  Are you fatigued?

  Do you overeat?

  Do you get stuck in front of the computer?

  Do you have sex just because you feel you should?

  Do you resent going to so many social events?

  Do you rage at politicians on TV?

  Do you overspend on the holidays?

  Do you have to speak with your mother every Sunday?

  The devil is in the details. Most of the harmful things we do to ourselves are unconscious habits. We don’t stop and ask ourselves what we want or whether there’s a good reason for it. The first question to ask when you start practicing self-compassion is “Is this harming me?” If it is, drop it. When you know how it feels to feel good, and think you deserve it, a red flag will go up when you’re harming yourself and you’ll probably stop what you’re doing.

  We also have mental habits, mostly unconscious, that cause us trouble. For example, if your attention is unrestrained, jumping from one thing to another, you’ll suffer from mental agitation. And a perfectly good day can be spoiled if you find yourself entangled in disturbing emotions—brooding about the past or worrying about the future. An awareness practice like mindfulness meditation is a useful antidote to these common types of mental suffering.

  One mental habit that can wreak havoc in our lives is self-judgment. If you watch your mind for 10 minutes after something goes wrong, you’ll probably notice that you’re criticizing yourself. It’s undoubtedly useful to know what went wrong and to correct our mistakes, but usually we go way beyond that. What can we do about self-judgment? It doesn’t work to “just stop judging yourself” because you’re likely to judge yourself for judging yourself. (Remember, what we resist persists.) The best solution is simply to “witness” judgments, letting them come and go.

  TRY THIS: Counting Self-Judgments

  Mark out 15 minutes in the course of an ordinary day for this exercise. Choose a time when your mind might wander, maybe while you’re driving a car or eating a meal alone. Say to yourself, “Over the next 15 minutes, I’ll check every minute or so to see if I’m having a self-critical thought.” If you have an electronic device that beeps, you can program it to ring every minute. Don’t worry about remembering the content of your thoughts. Make a mental tally, perhaps counting on your fingers, of how many times you criticize yourself.

  It’s not easy to recognize self-critical thoughts because they happen so quickly. Sometimes it helps to focus on the body; if there’s a little tension in your stomach, perhaps you were having a critical thought. It’s okay to go back a few seconds to what you were thinking a moment before you felt physical tension. Ironically, the intention to be aware of self-judgment starts to eliminate the habit, even if you miss most of what’s happening in your mind.

  SAVORING

  Savoring refers to the “capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one’s life.” It’s a self-kindness to savor. The opposite of savoring is raining on your own parade. Consider the following questions:

  Do you let yourself enjoy a compliment?

  Have you lingered over a delicious meal lately?

  Can you revel in the love you feel for certain people?

  Are you prone to take a deep breath of fresh autumn air?

  Do you let yourself laugh out loud when you’re happy?

  Is it okay to feel pride in accomplishment?

  Do you take pictures to remember great times?

  Do you have friends who really know how to enjoy themselves?

  We shouldn’t cling too tightly to positive experiences because that will cause suffering when they disappear. But we don’t want to avoid happy moments because we’re afraid of losing them either. It takes courage to savor positive experiences.

  Emily Dickinson wrote:

  I can wade Grief—

  Whole Pools of it—

  I’m used to that—

  But the least push of Joy

  Breaks up my feet—

  And I tip—drunken—

  Are you ready to open the door to both positive and negative experiences?

  Savoring is a variation on mindfulness. When we savor, there’s the intention to enter fully into the experience, rather than cling to it or drag it out. The goal of mindfulness is not to get “hooked” by positive or negative experiences—to let things be just as they are, fully and completely. In an advanced state of mind, we can savor grief and sorrow too. Research has shown that the savoring of pleasant experiences can become a habit that elevates our baseline level of daily happiness.

  Interventions for Happiness

  Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, and colleagues tested the effectiveness of five different strategies to increase happiness. Five hundred seventy-seven participants volunteered on the Internet to do an exercise for 1 week. There were six groups, including a comparison group, each with a different assignment. Two of the assignments significantly increased happiness and decreased depression. They were:

  Using signature strengths in a new way. Participants took an online test to learn about their top five personal strengths— “their signature strengths.” Examples are “humility,” “playfulness,” and “love of learning.” Participants were then asked to use their strengths in a new and different way every day of the week.

  Listing three good things in life. Participants wrote down three good things that happened to them that day and were asked to consider why they happened every night for a week.

  Interestingly, the largest initial increase in happiness came after yet another strategy, the “gratitude visit,” in which participants wrote a letter to someone who had been especially kind to them (and had not been thanked), and they delivered it. However, this emotional boost didn’t last beyond 3 months. The other two techniques still had a positive effect 6 months later. Many participants continued to do their happiness interventions beyond the first week, even though they promised not to, and they were rated the happiest of all.

  You can also savor your own personal qualities. Enjoying what you do well doesn’t mean you have to be arrogant about it. If you wish, you can take a scientifically valid inventory of your “signature strengths.” Please go to www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx and click on VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire. It’s free of charge, and your strengths will only be ranked against one another for yourself, so you needn’t be worried about what you might learn.

  After you’ve identified your strengths, you can intentionally apply them in your daily life. For example, if you’re naturally “curious,” create opportunities to learn new things. If “humor” is your strength, let yourself be entertained. Also, when you’re going through a tough time, remind yourself of your stre
ngths. If “bravery” is your strength, use that special quality when you’re in need. If it’s “humility,” find your way through with humility.

  CULTIVATING POSITIVE EMOTIONS

  Our emotional landscape consists of positive emotions—those that make us happy—and negative emotions—those that make us suffer. Cultivating positive emotions is therefore a compassionate thing to do for ourselves. But let’s do it mindfully—not pushing negative emotions away, not clinging to positive ones. As you’ll see, it’s good to understand the value of positive emotions and to enjoy them.

  What Are Positive Emotions?

  Positive emotions have at least two noteworthy qualities: they feel good and they reach beyond the individual. Examples include affection, cheerfulness, zest, hope, surprise, and awe. Happy people feel connected to their environment, and unhappy people feel separated from it. Most positive emotions include regard for other people. Compassion, for example, is an emotion that keeps us in touch with others even when it’s difficult to stay connected.

  Negative emotions feel bad, and they separate us from others. Examples include hatred, anger, disgust, guilt, sadness, shame, anxiety, and pity. Anger pushes people away, and sadness disconnects us if our response is to curl up within ourselves. Pity, for example, is a slightly less positive emotion than compassion because pity implies a feeling of separateness from the suffering individual. When we “take pity on” someone, we’re moved to help, but we probably don’t feel as if we’re equals—on the same level.

  Sadness is a “soft” emotion—there can be an opening to others, a readiness to receive help. Anger and hatred, in contrast, are “hard” emotions that flatly reject others. Soft feelings—sadness, guilt, rejection, embarrassment—require that we befriend them and go through them, feel them until they pass on their own. Hard feelings like anger require different treatment. We “let go” or “abandon” anger and hatred, whereas soft feelings become workable when we pass through them. When we let go of hard feelings, we usually discover soft feelings underneath. For example, beneath anger is often longing for connection, fear, sadness, or loss.

  Negative emotions serve a useful function by alerting us to a problem. Our emotional or physical well-being might be in jeopardy when we feel negative emotions, and we should take heed. For example, bodyguards know that a sense of fear is a better defense against getting mugged than a black belt in karate. Fear will tell us where not to go and when to run. Likewise, sadness can alert us to a disconnection in relationship that could, left undetected, jeopardize the well-being of our families. We don’t want to eliminate negative feelings—we just don’t want to get stuck on them.

  Feeding Positive Emotions

  It appears that positive emotions have ample benefits. A review of over 225 published papers showed that positive emotions are related to happiness, and happy people are more likely to be successful in life and resilient in the face of misfortune. They’re often more creative, less racially biased, more likely to succeed at work, and have more satisfactory relationships.

  The Emotionai brain

  Emotions originate in the midbrain, in the limbic system.

  The limbic system developed in mammals, which needed to bond with their young, work together in groups, and communicate in elaborate ways with one another. Contrast this to the emotional displays of a crocodile, whose survival depends mainly on fear, hunger, and sex. Reptiles have rudimentary elements of the limbic system, but not enough to add emotions to instinctual urges. Humans have the most elaborate brain, including a layer of nerve cells covering the entire brain—the neocortex—that allows us to think rationally and experience consciousness.

  Signals from the emotional brain are analyzed by the neocortex, which communicates back to the emotional centers. For example, the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the middle of the brain, may quickly analyze a piece of rope lying on the road as a dangerous snake. The amygdala signals the body to flee, as it also sends a message to the neocortex for further analysis. If the neocortex determines that the snake is only a rope, it communicates back to the amygdala to turn off the alarm. In this way, our rational mind can control emotional reactivity.

  Human beings are not built for happiness; we’re built for survival. Those of us with uncommunicative limbic systems probably did not live to see another day. The limbic system signals us to resist and avoid physical discomfort at every turn. Unfortunately, it does the same for emotional discomfort. We need a substantial intellectual override— activation of the neocortex—to teach our limbic system that resisting emotional pain is counterproductive.

  This was the challenge that faced the Buddha 2,500 years ago. When he taught that resistance to pain multiplies our problems, he was trying to overcome 5 million years of human evolution. His life goal was to discover a practical psychology that would lead to freedom from suffering. Buddhist psychology and the science of mindfulness and acceptance-based psychotherapy prime the neocortex to take emotional discomfort “under advisement” rather than slavishly try to eliminate it. Neuroscientific studies by Sara Lazar, Richard Davidson, Norman Farb, and their colleagues demonstrate how mindfulness and compassion meditation can change the functioning and structure of the limbic system.

  Smile Your Way to Happiness

  Psychologists LeeAnne Harker and Dacher Keltner wondered whether emotional differences between people shape the outcome of their lives. They measured the intensity of smiles of 21-year-old women from their 1958 and 1960 college yearbook photographs. An intense smile had crinkled skin in the corners of the eyes, like crow’s feet, and an upturned angle of the lips. Later, at ages 27, 43, and 52, the women were asked about their health and well-being. Women with intense smiles in their college yearbooks were happier at every age point. (The effect of physical attractiveness, which is related to happiness, was controlled in the data analysis.) Strong smilers were “more organized, mentally focused, and achievement oriented and less susceptible to repeated and prolonged experiences of negative affect.” They were also more likely to be married by age 27 and to have satisfying marriages 30 years later.

  In another surprising study, Deborah Danner and colleagues at the University of Kentucky examined autobiographies of 180 Catholic nuns, written when they were about 22 years old as they entered the convent in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Their handwritten life sketches were coded according to positive or negative emotional content. For example:

  Sister 1 (low positive emotion): “I was born on September 26, 1909, the eldest of seven children, five girls and two boys…. My candidate year was spent in the Motherhouse, teaching Chemistry and Second Year Latin at Notre Dame Institute. With God’s grace, I intend to do my best for our Order, for the spread of religion and for my personal sanctification.”

  Sister 2 (high positive emotion): “God started my life off well by bestowing upon me a grace of inestimable value…. The past year which I have spent as a candidate studying at Notre Dame College has been a very happy one. Now I look forward with eager joy to receiving the Holy Habit of Our Lady and to a life of union with Love Divine.”

  Sixty years later, the researchers discovered that 54% of the nuns with relatively few positive emotion sentences in their autobiographies had died, compared to 24% of those with mostly positive emotion sentences. Positive emotions in early adulthood appears to be strongly associated with longevity.

  The research also shows that positive emotions allow us to see the big picture. Our vision is not narrowed by survival-based self-interest. This suggests that if we want to be mindful of whatever arises in our field of awareness, a minimum standard of happiness must exist. Meditation teachers know this: they often give love and support in personal interviews before sending students back out to meditate. Psychotherapy operates similarly—it makes a person a little happier and supplies the courage (from the French coeur, meaning “heart”) to explore and master life’s problems.

  The question is how to mindfully shift the balance of emotions towa
rd the positive. There’s a story to illustrate this.

  One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.

  “One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

  “The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

  The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

  How do we feed emotions? An emotion is essentially a habit that we can either strengthen or weaken. It’s not a “thing” or a “substance.” For example, the hydraulic model, where anger is a reservoir of emotion waiting to be siphoned off, simply doesn’t fit the data. Research shows that expressing anger actually increases the likelihood that we’ll get angry again. The only way to reduce anger is to stop practicing it—to stop feeding the emotional habit.

  So how do we unwittingly feed a negative emotion like anger? When we struggle with anger by obsessing why such-and-such happened and what we’re going to do about it, we’re feeding it. When we turn away in denial, but it lingers in the back of our minds, we’re feeding it. When we hang on to anger because it makes us feel strong and certain, we’re feeding it. In sum, resistance feeds negative emotions. They weaken if we stop regurgitating them in our minds and maintain a mindful, compassionate attitude.