Self-Compassion As A Doorway To Self-Worth

In this episode of the Unconditionally Worthy podcast I break down the three core components of self-compassion and talk about how the practice of self-compassion helps you embrace your unconditional self-worth.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the Unconditionally Worthy podcast.

I am grateful as always that you are here.

You know,

I have been in launch mode.

I am in the process of launching my first course called Unconditionally Worthy course.

It's a powerful seven week journey to unconditional self-worth.

I am super excited about leading people in this transformative journey.

And today is the last day that the cart is open.

So if you're listening on April 13th of 2021,

This is the last day that the course is open.

And I'm really excited to guide people to take a deeper journey to connect with their unconditional self-worth.

So I have been really focused on that over the last month.

And,

You know,

If you're interested in the course,

I encourage you to check it out.

You can learn more about it on unconditionallyworthy.

Com forward slash course,

And you can read all about it.

Also,

Feel free to email me or DM me if you have any questions about it and you're interested.

So today is the last day to sign up.

So if you're interested,

You know,

Make that decision.

Reach out to me because it's really going to be powerful and transformative.

All right.

So let's dive into this week's episode.

We are going to be talking all about self-compassion as a doorway to self-worth.

And I wanted to just,

You know,

Start by talking about my own sort of experience and journey around self-compassion and self-criticism,

Because I think that a lot of people sort of relate to my experiences with this as well.

So see how how your experience aligns with mine.

So for years,

I was harsh and critical with myself when I made mistakes.

You know,

I could not tolerate failure,

Right?

If I failed or I didn't do well on an exam or an assignment or,

You know,

If I made a mistake in a friendship,

It felt intolerable for me.

Right.

Or even in a relationship,

I it was like I wanted to crawl out of my skin because I was so harsh and critical with myself because I couldn't tolerate mistakes.

I felt that mistakes made me unworthy.

And then I responded by sort of beating myself up when I was down or when I was having a hard time.

You know,

When I was in that mode,

I called it pushing myself to be better and do better,

Having high standards for myself.

But really,

The harsh criticism was not necessary.

It wasn't a necessary part of growth and progress.

And the self-criticism really helped me back in a lot of ways.

And I wonder what this might look like for you.

Right.

So when you criticize yourself,

We create negative relationships with ourselves and we create a negative and unsafe mental and emotional space.

When we believe we're unworthy,

We have unhealthy relationships with ourselves and we believe we're worthy of self-criticism.

Right.

So we feel like,

Oh,

My gosh,

You're so stupid.

You're such an idiot,

Whatever.

And then we think it's justified to treat ourselves poorly.

So we then we hold ourselves back.

Right.

So when we're harsh and critical,

We end up holding ourselves back,

Even though in our minds we think,

Oh,

This is going to support me.

This is going to help me get better.

Usually what it does is it holds us back and we end up sort of feeling a lot of self-doubt.

We don't trust ourselves.

And it just really becomes a struggle and keeps us from the life we really want.

So you may be like me and believe that self-criticism is necessary for progress.

And while self-criticism may provide some short term motivation in your life,

Ultimately it isn't helpful.

And it's really not sustainable to live your life,

To work on achieving your goals from the place of self-criticism.

When we're harsh and self-critical,

We're more likely to procrastinate or you may be more likely to overwork yourself.

Right.

It may be hard to give yourself a break to let yourself take time off or take vacation or rest.

And you could work yourself to the point of exhaustion.

When we're harsh and self-critical with ourselves,

We tend to shut down our dreams before they even form.

Right.

So we can't even think about what we want,

What we dream of for our lives because we're so caught up in self-criticism.

A couple of episodes ago,

I talked about how connecting to my unconditional self-worth opened me up to finally dream for my life.

And self-criticism is one of the things that you need to let go of if you're going to allow yourself to dream big and to pursue those big dreams you have for your life.

In general,

When we're critical with ourselves,

We hold ourselves back and we end up settling for a life that we may not really be happy with because we don't think we deserve anything else.

We don't think we're worthy of anything else.

Also,

Self-criticism makes us feel unworthy.

So there's a cycle that happens when we're more likely to be self-critical when we feel unworthy and then criticizing ourselves causes us to get stuck in low self-worth.

Right.

So this sort of cycle repeats itself and it just keeps us stuck.

It keeps us in a place where we're not happy,

Where we're more likely to feel anxious and depressed and just have a lot of things that we don't really want in our lives.

Right.

So the challenge is that our minds tell us you need to be self-critical to get better.

You need to be self-critical to get to the life you want.

But in reality,

The self-criticism keeps us from the life we want.

So just check in with yourself and think about that.

If you engage in harsh self-criticism,

Has it really helped you?

Just think about that.

So you may be thinking,

OK,

Self-criticism isn't working for me,

But what do I do instead?

I don't want to just let myself lie on the couch all day.

I don't want to just be complacent.

And while relaxing on the couch sometimes sounds like a great idea and I would fully support that,

I don't think any of us just want to lay on the couch and never do anything else with our lives.

Right.

So I'm going to sort of offer an alternative.

And my recommendation is to be self-compassionate and firm with yourself.

So I like to talk about this using the analogy of two teachers.

So teacher one is harsh and critical.

She points out every mistake you make.

She uses a bright red pen to mark up your papers or your problem sets and tells you that she's not sure if you're really cut out for this class.

Maybe you need to go back and take a remedial class instead.

You never feel like you can meet the standards of this teacher.

Almost nothing you do is good enough for her.

You vacillate between procrastinating on the work because it's not enjoyable.

And you know she's going to criticize you regardless of what you do or overworking yourself to try to do things perfectly.

So maybe she just might tell you that you did a good enough job and finally give you that A.

So take a moment.

How would it feel to learn from teacher one?

In contrast,

Teacher two is firm and compassionate.

She has high standards and she expects you to meet them.

She also provides you the support you need to meet those standards.

She holds you accountable with kindness if you miss work or make mistakes.

She offers to help you if you're confused or having trouble with the material.

She assures you that you can do the work and that you have the capacity to do it.

And she will support you during this process.

If you fail or make a mistake,

She reminds you that this is part of the learning process and does not mean you're deficient or not capable of success in her class.

Now think about what it would feel like to learn from teacher two.

My hope is that you'd prefer to learn from teacher two.

That you would prefer the encouraging and supportive learning environment because that is really how we best learn and grow.

Now if you think you'd prefer to work with teacher one,

I want you to reflect on why you'd prefer the harsh and critical teacher.

Is that what you think you're worthy of?

Do you not trust yourself and feel you need harsh criticism to learn and grow?

And if you said that you'd prefer teacher one,

I want you to think about a child in your life or maybe a loved one and then consider which teacher you'd want them to learn from.

Which teacher do you think they would be worthy of?

And if you said teacher two for someone else and teacher one for yourself,

I want you to think about why you want a loving and supportive and compassionate teacher for someone you love,

But you want a harsh and critical teacher for yourself.

So I don't expect you to have the answer to these questions right away,

But I encourage you to take some time to reflect and journal about them,

If that would be helpful for you.

So let's talk about self compassion.

Self compassion is an important doorway to unconditional self worth,

Because it helps us to release the self criticism that holds us back and keeps us from feeling good about ourselves.

Self compassion transforms our relationships with ourselves.

Instead of being harsh and critical,

We are attentive,

Curious and kind to ourselves,

Especially when we're going through a challenge.

At the core,

Connecting to our unconditional self worth is about healing and transforming our relationships with ourselves,

Letting go of the belief that something is wrong with us.

Releasing self criticism when we make a mistake or experience a failure,

And instead connecting to our true selves.

Being loving and compassionate and giving ourselves grace.

Cultivating a supportive and encouraging relationship with ourselves,

Gives us the foundation to move boldly into the world and share our gifts and strengths confidently,

Not to prove that we're good enough,

But to show up and live life full out.

I hope that sounds pretty good to you,

And I want to talk about how self compassion can help us get there.

So I'm going to give an overview of the three core components of self compassion,

And I want you to think about how you could start putting these into practice in your own life.

So the first component is mindfulness.

Mindfulness is about being in the present moment.

It's about paying attention to what we are seeing,

Tasting,

Smelling,

Feeling in the moment without judgment or evaluation.

When we are mindful,

We bring ourselves into the present moment without judgment.

We look at and observe what we are experiencing,

And just we're curious about it.

And when our attention is in the present moment,

We are usually able to be more calm and centered.

And,

You know,

What we're typically doing is that our minds are going to the past thinking about things we regret things that happened in the past,

Or it's going to the future things that we're worried about,

And mindfulness helps us to ground ourselves and center in the present moment.

When we practice mindfulness as a part of self compassion,

We get curious about what's happening,

What we are experiencing,

And we don't judge it.

We notice our emotions and the physical sensations associated with them.

And instead of going down the rabbit hole of wondering what's wrong with us,

What we did wrong to feel this way or what we can do to fix it.

We are just present with our feelings.

We breathe and allow them to be there.

What you will find when you practice this is that being present with your feelings in the moment,

And being willing to feel them without resistance without struggling against them actually allows the feelings to pass.

There is wisdom that says that our feelings last for about 90 seconds.

So if we allow them to be there without judging them without resisting them without struggling to get against them,

They will pass in 90 seconds.

What most of us do is we resist the feelings that we're experiencing by struggling against them and that struggle can look like,

Oh my god I'm going to feel this way forever.

Oh my god if I feel this way I'm going to be overwhelmed.

Oh my god I'm gonna,

Oh my gosh,

Oh my gosh,

Right like it's worrying that these feelings will take over that will fall apart,

That will be sad forever if we allow our sadness to be there.

Instead,

Mindfulness is asking us to breathe to say,

Okay,

I feel sad in this moment I feel a heaviness in my chest.

I feel a lump in my throat.

Breathe,

Right,

That's what it is,

Instead of the struggle we breathe with it.

So that's the first component mindfulness.

The second component of self compassion is common humanity.

Common humanity helps us to feel less alone and reminds us that we are not the only ones feeling the way we do.

Common humanity helps us to connect to the fact that emotions are a normal part of the human experience,

Right,

When we experience a difficult emotion.

It is usually a normal response to a challenging experience.

Sometimes when I talk to my clients they say I just don't want to feel anything and I jokingly say,

Okay,

Do you want to be a robot,

Right,

Because to be human is to feel right there are wonderful things about feeling right you want to feel joy when you're holding your niece right or nephew for the first time you want to feel excitement when you're looking forward to something great you want to feel happiness when something wonderful happens in your life.

And it makes sense to feel grief or sadness or sorrow,

When you lose something or when a family member passes away.

This is the richness of the human experience.

And often when we experience hard emotions,

We feel like there is something wrong with us and we judge ourselves and we think there must be something wrong with me for me to be sad,

Angry,

Anxious,

Frustrated in this way.

And so we judge ourselves.

Instead,

Common humanity is asking us to let go of that judgment and say you know what,

This is human.

This is a normal human experience.

This is not this does not mean that there is something wrong with us.

So common humanity helps us to let go of these negative thoughts these self judgmental critical thoughts by connecting to the fact that our thoughts and feelings are normal response to what we are experiencing.

When we feel sad or disappointed about losing losing something or someone that's normal.

When we are frustrated or angry about some personal or societal injustice.

That's normal and human.

When we're scared or anxious or worried about something that's coming up or taking a risk that is normal and human reminding ourselves that what we are feeling makes us human helps us to calm down and soothe ourselves.

It supports us in moving out of a space where we are judging and criticizing ourselves and into a place where we are more accepting of how we feel common humanity sets the stage for us to engage in self kindness,

Which is the third core component of self compassion.

So self kindness is about treating ourselves in the ways that hopefully we treat others right it's about being kind to ourselves.

So often,

We treat ourselves in a way that we would never treat other people,

And in a way that we wouldn't tolerate being treated by other people.

Self kindness is about responding to ourselves with encouragement with gentleness with support with love and reminding ourselves that we are worthy,

Even when we make mistakes,

Or are having a hard time.

I believe self kindness provides us with a strong foundation and it enables us to grow and develop.

When we're kind to ourselves we are able to look at our mistakes and our flaws with compassion,

And to consider how we want to grow and change.

When we're kind to ourselves we're able to take responsibility for mistakes we've made or harms we've done to other people,

And genuinely apologize for those things.

We don't let ourselves off the hook,

We actually take responsibility because instead of being harsh and critical and thinking you're horrible,

You're stupid.

I can't believe you did that instead of berating ourselves and drowning in shame.

We are kind to ourselves and we say okay you made a mistake.

That's okay what you did hurt someone.

That's okay.

Right.

How do you want to apologize,

How do you want to make this right.

You take responsibility,

Without shaming yourself into it.

This takes us way further than self criticism because usually with self criticism,

We just opt out right we can't face the mistake we can't face what we need to fix,

Because it's too much because we feel too much shame,

If instead,

We are kind,

We can look at the mistake we can look at what we how we need to learn and grow.

And so we're really better able to progress and develop when we are kinder to ourselves.

Right.

It's going back to that teacher one teacher to with teacher to the kind teacher,

We can look at that and figure out how do we learn better.

Where did we make a mistake where do we go wrong because the risk isn't that the mistake says that we're unworthy or not smart right that is off the table and we're kind to ourselves in the growing and learning process.

And so the key practice of kindness is through saying kind and affirming things to ourselves just like we would if we were comforting or encouraging a loved one or a child.

So it might be things like,

I am worthy,

Even when I make mistakes.

May I forgive myself.

I know I messed up.

And I still love myself.

So we're going to use these affirming kind statements.

And when we offer ourselves comfort,

We help to calm our nervous systems down so that we feel safe again,

And we can start thinking again.

Right.

When we're activated when we feel unsafe when we feel like we've made a mistake when we feel caught up in shame,

Our emotional brain or our amygdala takes over,

And it's really hard to think when we're able to soothe ourselves and calm ourselves down using self compassion.

That's when we're able to re engage our thinking brain or prefrontal cortex and think about okay what's the next best move.

So self compassion really soothes us and grounds us.

So if you're struggling with being kind to yourself.

I want you to imagine comforting a baby or your favorite baby animal right so the next time you're sad or anxious or scared or whatever you're feeling.

I want you to imagine that emotion,

Being embodied by a baby or a puppy or your favorite baby animal,

And I want you to imagine how you would comfort it.

Right.

What would you say to offer kindness and care.

What would you say to help you look like picking it up,

Holding it to your chest and saying,

Oh baby it's okay.

Oh,

I know it's so scary.

I know that's hard.

I know it's frustrating but it's okay.

I got you.

I'm here.

It's okay.

Right.

Imagine doing that and even if you can't imagine offering that comfort to yourself,

Really picture,

Offering that comfort to that little puppy right that's so adorable right because you wouldn't say that puppy now what's wrong with you.

Why.

Okay,

You didn't get the bone so what's wrong with you I don't even get it together you don't always get the bone right like you wouldn't do that.

I hope you wouldn't do that right you'd say I know I know you lost the bone and it's so hard,

Right.

Imagine doing that and it will still engage the part of you that is wise and compassionate and will suit and calm you down.

So if you're struggling with this being kind to yourself,

Imagine being kind to someone else or something else,

And offering yourself,

Love and comfort in that way.

Okay,

So these three core components that we just talked about a self compassion are mindfulness common humanity and self kindness.

I want you to think about how you can incorporate these things into your life.

How can you be more mindful and just present with what you're experiencing without struggling against it.

How can you remember common humanity,

How can you remind yourself that you,

Your emotions are human that they're normal part of the human experience and kindness,

How can you be kind to yourself.

And I want you to experiment with this and see what happens.

See if this helps you to connect to your unconditional self worth,

Because it's been powerful for me.

Right,

I know that if I miss make a mistake or I'm struggling,

Being kind and compassionate with myself really helps me to shift away from self criticism to being kind,

It calms me down,

It soothes me,

And it helps me to move through emotions and challenges with so much more resilience than when I was harsh and critical with myself.

So I'd love for you to try it out.

And,

You know,

Let me know tag me in a post on Instagram,

Or send me a DM I'm at Dr.

Adia Gooden.

And let me know how self compassion,

Working for you.

Um,

You know,

I mentioned the course,

I hope that you'll consider it again that's unconditionallyworthy.

Com forward slash course,

If you're interested,

I have a whole module on releasing self criticism and using self compassion instead and we go really deep into these practices and I give you some really practical strategies to help apply this to your life,

And particularly with helping to release the self criticism.

So if this is piquing your interest,

Make sure you check that out.

Time is limited and I'd love for you to join me.

So as always,

Thank you again for listening to the episode this week and stay tuned for next week which will be all about the connection between self worth and receiving abundance and I'm going to talk about my own experience of how connecting to my unconditional self worth really opened me up to receiving so much abundance and financial abundance in particular in my life so it's going to be a good one,

And I will see you there.

Reviews

Another wonderful meditative talk Dr. Adia! I’m grateful to you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, as it has been helpful in my own healing, and as I help/support others in their healing.

Love & light, always 💓🙏🏾

I absolutely loved this talk. Practical wisdom and steps to take for real growth. Thank you Celia

Love love love. I’m thankful to be able to admit my mistakes and see them as necessary for growth, instead of shaming myself

I great overview of mindful self compassion. Thank you!

Comforting myself... something I need to do. Your example allowed me to practice Thank you!

This has been a very succinct reminder of the process that I have been learning as a set of concepts and ways of thinking, but had not yet fully embodied. When I was faced with my inner critic in a moment of crisis, I panicked and forgot everything I had learned. The regression felt like such a failure, the inner critic became a dragon I was fighting in the abyss. The compassion that I experienced in the patience others in my life offered with such grace has opened the possibility of self-compassion and to remember mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness. Thank you for this meditation in re-membering my self.

Wow, talking to myself in that tone and giving myself the attention that I give others actually works. Thanks. 🙏🏾🌸🙏🏾