The Importance of Self-Compassion

In 2019 I published a book titled “Authoring Your Life Script.”  The material here is a chapter from that book.]

In the middle of the 20^th century, Eric Berne developed a psychotherapy system which he called Transactional Analysis.  He published a book in 1958 called Games People Play which provided a number of illustrations of how transactions between people played out.  About ten years later, Thomas Harris brought out a popularized self-help book based on Berne’s theories and the work of a neurosurgeon named Willard Penfield.  This book, described as the most popular self-help book ever written (it’s still in print), was titled I’m Okay, You’re Okay.  In this book Harris suggested that there are four basic transactional styles or positions: 

“I’m Okay, You’re Okay;” “I’m Not Okay, You’re Okay;” “I’m Okay, You’re Not Okay;” and “I’m Not Okay, You’re Not Okay.” He felt that the vast majority of adults find themselves in the “I’m Not Okay, You’re Okay” position.  There has been some debate as to whether that is the position people occupy from birth on or whether people are born into the “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” position (which is then corrupted by social interactions).  

            The theology of original sin seems to go rather well with the more modern concept that human beings by nature are Not Okay.  Some might call this a biologically transmitted feeling of inferiority.  The concept of original sin became a mainstay of the concept of substitutionary atonement in a lot of Christian theology. In the late fourth century, Augustine of Hippo (known to some as St. Augustine) gave clear expression to the concept of original sin, which had been developing amongst Christian theologians for a couple hundred years.  In his view, all of humankind was a mass of perdition and inherited their sinful nature as a result of biological transmission from Adam and Eve, the original human parents, who were portrayed as breaking God’s rules. The Protestant reformers of the 17^th century had a field day with this theory. Early Puritans converted some of this theology into mantras to instruct children; e.g., “In Adam’s Fall, we sinned all.” Some authors have proposed that the negative image of people projected by those reformers actually motivated people to do good and do a lot to demonstrate that they were among God’s chosen (the “elect”) instead of accepting a role as inadequate creatures.    

            Theological and philosophical enterprises are efforts to make sense of things, to explain why things are the way they are.  While modern efforts in these fields try to take advantage of current scientific understanding [see Harris’ use of Penfield’s neuroscience], many of these historic systems are completely disconnected from modern science.  When Augustine advocated for inherited sin, we had no understanding of the dynamics of modern genetics and concepts of what is heritable.   Probably most people could only occasionally observe that a man’s son looked like the father or that all the men in a particular family had oddly shaped ears.  Some of the most important original research in genetics was done by Gregor Mendel in 1865 (about 1500 years after Augustine)—interestingly enough he was an Augustinian monk!

            Our current generations of people can easily assume that what we know has been known for a very long time.  We might be a bit startled to discover that the concept of the human brain being a constellation of inter-connected nerves is a little more than 100 years old and the anatomical drawings made by the discoverer of this reality are still in use in medical textbooks.  [Dr. Ramon y Cajal received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1906 for his work in mapping the nervous system.]  In 2015 we celebrated 150 years of modern genetics.

            Many people who do not accept the concept of original sin (which would include most Jews, probably Buddhists and adherents of Islam), suppose that feelings of inferiority are the results of poor parenting, educational deficits, negative experiences, etc.  Against that background are a plethora of self-help books which basically advocate that because humans are basically good from birth and that they have simply lost the ability to believe “I’m Okay, you’re Okay,” it will take a change in one’s attitude to get over those feelings of inferiority.  Usually these amount to some system about raising one’s self-esteem.

            It seems to me that some recent developments in the study of the brain may offer us some important insights into the persistence of low self-esteem.  In order to explain this, I need to give my readers a brief overview of brain morphology.  Our brains, which are thought to be the product of eons of evolution, clearly show older, more primitive areas and more recent, more sophisticated areas.  Deep within the brain is the limbic system (which includes the amygdala) which seems to be responsible for much of our emotional life.  A part of the more primitive brainstem is called the Reticular Activating System. The abbreviation for this system is RAS.  The more primitive aspects of our brains are driven by forces that want to preserve life and reproduce life.  The conscious mind can only focus on a few things at any given time.  If we had to be totally aware of everything that is stimulating our physical bodies, we wouldn’t be able to function.  The RAS acts as a filter to screen out background stimulation and does respond to some degree to directions from the higher cognitive functional areas of the brain.  For example, my RAS screens out the feeling generated by my wedding ring or my watch band;  however, if I ask what either of these things feels like the RAS will allow that information to make it to my conscious awareness.  Since the primitive brain is survival-driven, the RAS will forward any alarming stimulation to the amygdala, which triggers the fight or flight response.  Robert Cooper points out that the RAS “. . . has evolved over millennia with an inherent tendency to magnify negative incoming messages and minimize positive ones.” [Cooper, Robert K. (2010-02-06). The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life (Kindle Locations 421-422). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]  Cooper also points out that “[a] few well-intended words of criticism—not a life-threatening communiqué, to be sure—are nonetheless amplified by the RAS into a simple message: Danger! Danger! We bristle up and get anxious and defensive. Conversely, a genuine compliment is usually deflated by the RAS to not much more than a whisper. Which is why, at the end of a typical day when a hundred things have gone quite well and one has gone slightly wrong, nearly all of us become preoccupied with the one thing that went slightly wrong.” [Ibid, location 426-429] 

I would suggest that we often are confused by the way the negative bias of the RAS contradicts our more logical observations.  We don’t know what to make of this confusion and so we allow it to generate those feelings of low self-esteem which make it easy for us to suppose that we are “Not Okay.”  That RAS background feeling that all is not well finds fluent explanation in the doctrine of original sin. People who embrace this concept have a way of blaming God for the way they feel and to confuse this even more, end up believing that they are supposed to feel bad about themselves. This gets complicated by the fact that both the RAS and the amygdala don’t seem to know when or how to turn off the alarms,  so any and all danger is felt to be mortal danger. These systems are like a home smoke detector which cannot tell the difference between burning toast and burning curtains. Perhaps this biology is background for the familiar assertion that “I am a mistake” instead of the honest, “I made a mistake.”

            To many folks it has seemed that the way to deliver us from this plague of self-defeating dynamics is to raise peoples’ self-esteem.  When Garrison Keillor talked about the mythical city of Lake Wobegon and describes all the children there as “above average,” he is teasing us a bit about our notion that we can raise everyone’s self-esteem.  Indeed, some researchers are asserting that our efforts to raise self-esteem have resulted in record high levels of narcissism in our society.  Narcissism is the attempt to look good and usually develops at the expense of emotional awareness or authenticity.  I once knew a little girl (about 12 years old) who described her narcissistic father to me as like “one of those super-fancy Easter eggs that look great on the outside but have all the insides blown out.” My readers might remember those expensive, fancy Russian Easter eggs bedecked with expensive jewelry which are preserved because the contents of the egg have been blown out.  When everyone is trying hard to be above average, competition gets encouraged and human relationships really take a nosedive.  I wonder if our efforts to maintain high levels of self-esteem put us into a perpetual battle with the RAS.  Hear what Cooper has to say here: “Let’s assume you’re getting angry at one of the many things that may cause you to become frustrated or off balance. It’s likely that deeply set habits or patterns are at work. The RAS is primed to magnify feelings of impending threat or lost control, instantly priming you for an outburst or, if you manage to suppress that reaction, increased tension or resentment.”  [Cooper, Ibid, (Kindle Locations 439-442).]  It is clear from current research that efforts to resolve issues of negative self-esteem by raising self-esteem are a failure. 

If we look at the multiple brain theory advanced by Soosalu and Oka, [Soosalu, Grant; Oka, Marvin (2012-04-09). mBraining – Using your multiple brains to do cool stuff] we don’t find high self-esteem as a characteristic of the aligned, integrated personality.  Instead, we discover that the highest expression of the heart brain is compassion.  We are discovering that self-compassion is the cure of choice for low self-esteem. The usual attempts to raise self-esteem seem to foster the notion that the individual is in competition with others and that s/he is winning.  That takes us to the un-sane conclusion that it is possible for everyone to be above average. Self-compassion allows us to admit our mistakes (from which we will learn), affirm that we are valuable and acceptable the way we are, and celebrate the notion that other people’s successes don’t detract from our own. Several studies tell us that self-compassion does not foster narcissistic perspectives but instead helps people to be more compassionate toward others.  We have learned that we all have specialized neurons called mirror neurons.  These neurons enable us to understand how other people are feeling.  It seems logical that developing and improving self-compassion would help these mirror neurons to decipher what’s going on with the others that we encounter and make it even easier for us to be compassionate.

V.S. Ramachandran has speculated that mirror neurons may provide the neurological basis of human self-awareness. In an essay written for the Edge Foundation in 2009, Ramachandran gave the following explanation of his theory: “… I also speculated that these neurons can not only help simulate other people’s behavior but can be turned ‘inward’—as it were—to create second-order representations or meta-representations of your own earlier brain processes. This could be the neural basis of introspection, and of the reciprocity of self-awareness and other awareness. There is obviously a chicken-or-egg question here as to which evolved first, but… The main point is that the two co-evolved, mutually enriching each other to create the mature representation of self that characterizes modern humans.” [From Wikipedia entry on Human Self-Awareness]

            Here is modern neuroscience telling us what Jesus and Buddha said a long time ago that it is important to love others the way we love ourselves.  The theological systems which have specialized in emphasizing original sin have made us unlovable in our own eyes—which makes it much more difficult to love other people.  Many religions which focus on negativity often get violent—like the Taliban. Those judgmental religions which seem to emphasize what is wrong with other people are not far from the horrid practices of the Taliban—and the ancient Christian crusaders!  This seems to be linked to focusing on the alarms from the RAS instead of the self-compassion the higher parts of the brain understand and promote.

Loving ourselves actually impacts our neural wiring and the ways our brains function.  This will affect our perception of reality:  compassionate people are more likely to see the universe as a positive, life-friendly reality.  Self-compassion improves our ability to be compassionate to others.  Andrew Newberg has learned, through his brain research efforts, that positive spiritual practices alter the neurochemistry of our brains and “. . . bestow a sense of peace, happiness, and security, while decreasing symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress.”

Here’s what’s surprising: a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that faith may indeed bring us health. People who attend religious services do have a lower risk of dying in any one year than people who don’t attend. People who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than people who believe in a punitive God. No less a killer than AIDS will back off at least a bit when it’s hit with a double-barreled blast of belief. “Even accounting for medications,” says Dr. Gail Ironson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Miami who studies HIV and religious belief, “spirituality predicts for better disease control.” [Time, 2/12/2009]. Research is also showing that fear-based beliefs can be hazardous to one’s health, leading to shortening of the life span, increasing of a variety of illnesses, prolonging of recovery rates, etc.  Fear-based belief focuses on that old, reptilian brain and pushes fear and anger responses.  The more we focus on that aspect of our physiology, the more we will configure a brain that is involved with fears constantly and which as a result may even exhibit a fair amount of paranoia.  We are discovering that the brain likes a balance and resists anything that will disturb that balance.  If we have a fear-filled brain, we will have a brain that specializes in maintaining a fearful balance.  That will require us to get better and better at identifying enemies, to be supersensitive to threats, and to use our logical ability to explain all this turmoil.  That will leave less and less energy to develop self-compassion as well as enhancing resistance to compassion. 

Changes in how our brains are configured will change the way we perceive reality.  Developing self-compassion will help us see things differently.  Jesus made an assumption that people do actually love themselves when he asked us to love others as we love ourselves.  To me this means that Jesus is promoting self-compassion and is suggesting that developing self-compassion is the right thing to do.  The self-compassionate person will see more good in others and indeed in the universe. 

We have learned over generations that an orderly society requires us to modify the expression of many primitive brain mechanisms. We might consider the biological drive to reproduce.  The rather primitive urge to copulate runs head on into our awareness that human babies have a very long period of dependence on parental care.  We have devised particular social customs to limit copulation to chosen mates and keep the resulting marriages together to care for children.  While I certainly would not argue that society’s interest in restricting the number of sexual copulations has been overwhelmingly successful, it does seem to me that we have an example of how social interactions, pressures and individual needs have modified the basic biological reproductive urges.  If we can develop customs to modify the primitive drive to reproduce, then we can also develop practices and customs to minimize the self-defeating elements of the RAS.  Amongst healthy adult human beings there is nearly universal success at toilet training—which is a process of teaching the primitive brain not to defecate or urinate whenever and wherever it feels like it.

There has been a plethora of articles (complete with graphs) which show that the rate of change in society has been accelerating for some time.  We are being told that change is happening at an exponential rate.  This is probably contrary to the ‘speed’ with which components of human physiology change.  Our amygdala has evolved over hundreds of years and it is not likely to change quickly to accommodate the realities of 21^st century life.  This means that we have to be deliberate and intentional about how we manage our physiology in order to make sense of contemporary life and avoid making messes by reacting like our primitive ancestors needed to react to avoid the dangers of the saber-toothed tiger.

“Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.” Dalai Lama

Emma Seppala crafts a compelling summary of the science that shows why compassion is healthy. Seppala points to leaders in the positive psychology field, Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, who suggest that connecting with others in a meaningful way helps us enjoy better mental and physical health and speeds up recovery from disease. Further, research by Stephanie Brown at Stony Brook University and Sara Konrath at the University of Michigan shows that experiencing compassion may even lengthen our lifespans.  With the intention of answering the big question of why leading compassionate lives is good for us, Seppala reveals:

“The act of giving appears to be as pleasurable, if not more so, than the act of receiving. This is true even with very small children.

People living lives rich in compassion, altruism, and meaning tend to experience less inflammation.

Stress predicts mortality in those who do not help others. Therefore, it appears that compassion buffers against stress.

Depression and anxiety are linked to self-focus. Therefore, compassion lifts moods by shifting attention to others.

Compassion tends to increase our sense of being connected to others. Strong social connections have been associated with longevity, strong immune systems, and faster recovery from disease. Connected people also appear to have lower rates of anxiety and depression.

Given the contagious nature of compassion, we are left with the thought that acts of compassion can change the world.”

It clearly appears that increasing self-compassion also increases overall compassion toward others.  Given the benefits of being compassionate (see the above quote), it would appear that it is in our best interests, both personally and socially, to become more self-compassionate.  “.  .  . [O]ne of the most important applications of compassion is with yourself. Your relationship with yourself is the platform from which you relate to others.”  Soosalu, Grant; Oka, Marvin (2012-04-09). mBraining – Using your multiple brains to do cool stuff (p. 232).  Kindle Edition.

There is plenty of research from, among other sources, the positive psychology movement which indicates that self-compassion is key to resolving the nearly innate self-criticism most Western adults harbor. Here is a portion of the Wikipedia entry about self-compassion:

“Self-compassion is extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. Dr. Kristin Neff has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main components – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

“Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism.

“Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience.

“Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one’s negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. Conversely, mindfulness requires that one not be over-identified with mental or emotional phenomena, so that one suffers aversive reaction. This latter type of response involves narrowly focusing and ruminating on one’s negative emotions.

“Self-compassion has been considered to resemble Carl Rogers’ notion of ‘unconditional positive regard’ applied both towards clients and oneself, Albert Ellis’ ‘unconditional self-acceptance,’ Maryhelen Snyder’s notion of an ‘internal empathizer’ that explored one’s own experience with ‘curiosity and compassion,’ and Judith Jordan’s concept of self-empathy, which implies acceptance, care and empathy towards the self.

“Self-compassion is different from self-pity, a state of mind or emotional response of a person believing to be a victim and lacking the confidence and competence to cope with an adverse situation.

“Research indicates that self-compassionate individuals experience greater psychological health than those who lack self-compassion. For example, self-compassion is positively associated with life satisfaction, wisdom, happiness, optimism, curiosity, learning goals, social connectedness, personal responsibility, and emotional resilience. At the same time, it is associated with a lower tendency for self-criticism, depression, anxiety, rumination, thought suppression, perfectionism, and disordered eating attitudes.

“Self-compassion has different effects than self-esteem, a subjective emotional evaluation of the self. Although psychologists extolled the benefits of self-esteem for many years, recent research has exposed costs associated with the pursuit of high self-esteem, including narcissism, distorted self-perceptions, contingent and/or unstable self-worth, as well as anger and violence toward those who threaten the ego. It appears that self-compassion offers the same mental health benefits as self-esteem, but with fewer of its drawbacks such as narcissism, ego-defensive anger, inaccurate self-perceptions, self-worth contingency, or social comparison.”

Kristin Neff is a major researcher in the study of self-compassion and she tells us that “Mindful Self-Compassion [MSC] combines the skills of mindfulness and self-compassion, providing a powerful tool for emotional resilience. A randomized controlled trial demonstrated that MSC significantly increased self-compassion, compassion for others, mindfulness, and life satisfaction, as well as decreased depression, anxiety and stress.” From “Center for Mindful Self-Compassion,” Website for Kristin Neff, Ph.D.  See her website:  http://www.self-compassion.org    

The unidentified editor of another website on the RAS has this to say about how we can utilize the filtering nature of the RAS to make changes: “Over 30 days, if you think about it and imagine yourself experiencing something new, or affirming an additional, recent belief like ‘the world is full of amazing and incredible people’, slowly but surely you are molding your filter so that this new statement is having access to your mind and a new mindset is taking place. As you give access to your mind for new convictions, new thoughts are making their way in your subconscious. We all know that no matter [what] our beliefs [are], especially where they normally deal with other persons, there are plenty of opinions to prove one right or wrong out there in the world. If you believe people are jerks, there will be plenty of people around that can prove you right. If you believe people are great, there are just as many people out there waiting to prove that belief right. In the end, it is about what belief you choose to embrace and impress upon your subconscious.”

Also see pages 42-3 in this book [Authoring Your Own Life Script] for another author’s perspective on what’s involved in rewiring the brain.  Tschannen-Moran estimates that it takes six months of combined “unlearning” and “learning” to make permanent change in neuronal firing patterns.

Most of us will have to get rid of old filters in order to change the RAS successfully.  This is a place where mindfulness can help.  If we insist that the only reality is NOW, that yesterday is NO LONGER and that tomorrow is NOT YET, then we can rightfully assign those old negative and dangerous filters to the day that is no longer.  The affirmations we use to make the changes probably will be more effective if they begin with the phrase, “right now.”  “Right now, the world is full of amazing and incredible people.”  “Right now, I am loving myself and celebrating my gifts.”  “Right now, I am doing amazing things (like reprogramming my brain!).”  We can also avoid passing the buck to tomorrow and refuse to say things like “tomorrow I will be more powerful or better or smarter or more creative.”  Any time we are tempted to delay the action to the NOT YET, we can restate those actions in terms of NOW.

Kristen Neff also invites us to: “Think about the times you’ve been lost in the throes of self-criticism. Are you self-focused or other-focused in the moment? Do you have more or fewer resources to give to others? Most people find that when they’re absorbed in self-judgment, they actually have little bandwidth left over to think about anything other than their inadequate, worthless selves. In fact, beating yourself up can be a paradoxical form of self-centeredness. When we can be kind and nurturing to ourselves, however, many of our emotional needs are met, [it leaves] . . . us in a better position to focus on others.”  [October, 2015, Greater Good e-newsletter.]  Neff enumerates five common ideas about why self-compassion is often said to be a bad thing and is able to offer solid research reference in each case to refute these assumptions.   The refuted assumptions are: (1) self-compassion is a form of self-pity; (2) self-compassion means weakness; (3) Self-compassion will make me complacent; (4) Self-compassion is narcissistic; (5) Self-compassion is selfish. [See the above cited newsletter.] 

Soosalu reminds us that: “Dr. Robert Ornstein, a noted Psychologist and Neuro-Scientist, makes the point in his many pivotal books, that we become what we repeatedly do. Our personalities and identities are influenced by repeated behaviour and experience.” This suggests that developing exercises and mantras to use regularly can help us to become more self-compassionate.  In keeping with this observation, several exercises are presented for you to use in beginning to become more self-compassionate.

            The first exercise is a breathing exercise.  It is suggested that you use about six seconds for each inhale and each exhale. However, the idea that the time for both inhale and exhale is about the same is more critical than the actual number of seconds involved.  The goal is to develop a process of balanced breathing with a particular focus.

Breathing Exercise

EXHALE:                    INHALE:

            Confusion                 Clarity

            Doubt                        Confidence

            Puzzlement              Understanding

            Uncertainty              Courage

            Familiarity                 Creativity

            Fear                            Compassion

            Mediocrity                 Excellence

Say, line by line “exhale ….”  “inhale . . ..”  About six seconds between each inhale and exhale. If this exercise generates any internal conflict, then pay attention to what that is about.  My hunch is that conflict might arise either because you are asking yourself to give up a familiar thing (like “doubt”) or you are challenging yourself to show some new behavior (like “confidence” or “excellence”.)    Since we know that our brains like things to stay the same, pay attention to the details of any discomfort because it might give some clues to use in the next exercise.

A Mantra Exercise

The idea here is to identify negative, familiar mantras that you repeat often.  An example might be “I’m really stupid.” Or “I never do anything right.”  Then construct positive mantras that contradict the negative ones and/or which invite a shift in your perspective.  Examples might include: “I’m really brilliant.”  Or “I get things right most of the time.”  Including some humor in these statements will help: e.g., “I’m really a closet genius.”  Or “I am a great philosopher waiting to be discovered.”

Negative, familiar mantras:  these might be ones you’ve made up or some you inherited from your family of origin.

1._______________________________________

2.______________________________________

3._______________________________________

Positive mantras that can take the place of those negative ones:

1._______________________________________

2.______________________________________

3.______________________________________

Self-Compassion Habits I Would Like to   

Develop

Here you have a chance to detail several habits that you could practice regularly which would be focused on being compassionate toward yourself.

            There are several things I want to do regularly for myself: (Examples—include some playtime in every day, get enough sleep every night, create a self-care fund to allow me to indulge myself occasionally.)

1.______________________________________

2._____________________________________

3.______________________________________

4.______________________________________

5.______________________________________

6.______________________________________

Here is a list of habits that get in the way of self-compassion that I will abandon as I put my new habits in place.

1.______________________________________

2.______________________________________

3.______________________________________

4.______________________________________

5.______________________________________

6.______________________________________

  “ . . .there’s now an impressive and growing body of research demonstrating that relating to ourselves in a kind, friendly manner is essential for emotional wellbeing. Not only does it help us avoid the inevitable consequences of harsh self-judgment—depression, anxiety, and stress—it also engenders a happier and more hopeful approach to life. More pointedly, research proves false many of the common myths about self-compassion that keep us trapped in the prison of relentless self-criticism.” —Kristin Neff

“Thich Nhat Hahn, Buddhist teacher and activist, makes the point that compassion does not stop with letting our hearts feel the suffering of others. ‘Compassion is a verb,’ he stresses. Compassion and action go hand-in-hand.”

“When we’re motivated by a true spirit of generosity, we benefit as much as those on the receiving end. Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello says it this way: ‘Charity is really self-interest masquerading under the form of altruism. … I give myself the pleasure of pleasing others.’ In the same vein, the Dalai Lama playfully speaks of working to benefit others as ‘selfish altruism.’”

“Psychologists have identified a typical state of euphoria reported by those engaged in charitable activity. They call it ‘helper’s high,’ and it’s based on the theory that giving produces endorphins in the brain that provide a mild version of a morphine high. Research at the National Institutes of Health showed that the same area of the brain that is activated in response to food or sex (namely, pleasure) lit up when the participants in the study thought about giving money to a charity. At Emory University a study revealed that helping others lit up the same part of the brain as receiving rewards or experiencing pleasure.”