It’s a Wednesday morning, and you’ve arranged to grab a coffee and meet a good friend for a walk in the park. They arrive looking worn and harassed, eyes red with emotion.

As you stroll along, they pour out news of an ill parent, job worries, the conflict they’re experiencing with their spouse, and the fear they feel that all the balls they are trying to keep in the air are about to come crashing messily down. They tell you of their daily mess-ups, that they are hopeless, pathetic, irresponsible and a downright horrible human. 

What would you say or do?

As a friend (or just as a fellow human), hopefully it wouldn’t be too difficult to extend them some empathy and compassion. Especially when they seem so overwhelmed.

OK, reverse the scenario. Put yourself in your friend’s shoes.  Are you able to extend the same compassion to yourself?  If you’re like most people, you’ll probably find this a lot harder. Why do we struggle with self-compassion?

We might feel it’s self-indulgence under another name. However, there is a difference. To be self-compassionate, you are concerned with your health and well-being. Self-indulgence on the other hand, cares only about getting what you want when you want it, and doesn’t concern itself with whether it’s good for you or not. If you are showing yourself compassion, you are bringing your pain and mistakes front and centre, allowing yourself to sit with the discomfort while still liking yourself. Indulgence means you invite anything in to numb your feelings and smother your pain.You might have the mindset that you are meant to give, not expect anything back. 

Perhaps you’ve been able to push yourself to serve the people around you, before collapsing in a heap of burn out, even to the point of rejecting your own needs - if you have justified this, it could be the way you’ve been raised or your perspective on life.  Self-compassion can sound like the reverse of what you're meant to do: take care of others. 

We feel kindness, empathy, and a willingness to help decrease the pain of others when we feel compassion towards them. 

When you care for yourself, it is the same. Self-compassion provides a gentle environment within you that is free of judgement - a place where you can look at your hurt and your mistakes, and instead of harsh criticism allows you to examine those mistakes with kindness and understanding. If you beat yourself up whenever you fail or fall short, this naturally inhibits you from trying new things and taking chances. But when you're self-compassionate, you know that even if you fail, you'll still like yourself.

Ask yourself these questions:

Are you harder on yourself than you are with others?

How can it help you be kinder to others by beating yourself up? 

How can you be in a position to be kind to others and show empathy if you can’t identify your own suffering, because you have rationalised it, suppressed it or buried it with busyness?  

You can feel alone when you criticise or judge yourself, it is incredibly isolating, seeming as if you're the only one who has that particular fault.   Remember, all of us are imperfect. We're all hurting. And so, all of us are connected by our common ability to mess up. 

Only when we are able to show compassion to ourselves can our expressions of compassion for others be more authentic.  To quote the Scottish comedian Janey Godley “pull on your emotional life jacket and keep each other afloat.”