On being kind to yourself

At the end of a session last week, I said something I’ve said many times before. I encouraged my client to be kind to themselves.

And when we met again, this week, they came back to it and asked:

“What did you actually mean by that?”

And it really made me stop and think.

It is one of those phrases that feels immediately understandable, almost obvious, and yet when you look at it more closely, as I did with their question, it becomes far less clear what it actually means in lived, practical terms. I offered an answer in the session, but I have found myself returning to the question since, thinking about what it really means to be “kind to yourself”.

The term I’d use for what I meant is self-compassion.

It’s not a new idea. It shows up across psychology, philosophy, and spiritual traditions in different ways, and I was first introduced to it formally during my clinical training before going on to explore it further through compassion-focused therapy work.

At its core, self-compassion is about how we relate to ourselves when things are difficult - when we have made a mistake, when we feel inadequate, or when life has not unfolded in the way we had hoped. In those moments, the question I’m particularly interested in is not simply what has happened, but how did the person relate to themselves when it happened? 

Do they respond with criticism, harshness and judgment?

Or did they give themself space for understanding, consideration, and self-kindness?

One of the clearest frameworks for understanding this comes from the work of Kristin Neff, who conceptualises self-compassion as comprising three interrelated processes. 

The first is self-kindness, the capacity to respond to one’s own difficulty with warmth and understanding rather than harsh self-criticism. 

The second is common humanity, recognising that struggle, imperfection, and failure are not something wrong with you, but inherent aspects of the human condition. 

The third is mindfulness, the ability to remain in contact with difficult thoughts and feelings without either avoiding them or becoming overwhelmed by them.

Why does this matter psychologically?

When I think about the people I work with, I think of people who care deeply, about the kind of person they are in the world, about their relationships, about their impact on the world.

They ask a lot of themselves, and they tend to hold themselves to high standards. And often, self-criticism has formed part of their inner architecture as way to try and meet those standards.

At face value, it makes sense. There is a widely held assumption, that self-criticism sharpens us, keeps us accountable, and ultimately encourages growth. But when you look more closely at the research on self-criticism and self-development, that assumption begins to unravel. 

From a compassion-focused perspective, self-criticism is not simply a “bad habit” or a cognitive distortion to be corrected. It is often a deeply learned protective strategy. For many individuals, especially those with histories of relational stress, adversity, or trauma, the inner critic develops as a way of navigating threat. It may have originated in environments where mistakes were punished, where approval was conditional, or where emotional needs were not consistently met. In such contexts, becoming highly self-monitoring, self-correcting, and even self-attacking can serve an adaptive function: it reduces the risk of external criticism, rejection, or harm.

In this sense, the inner critic is not the enemy, it is a part of the self that has learned, often very early, that safety depends on getting things “right.”

But, self-criticism does not simply function as a neutral motivator; it fundamentally alters our internal state. It is closely associated with the activation of threat-based systems, shifting us into a mode organised around detecting error and protecting the self from perceived failure. In this state, a few things happen. Our attention narrows, emotional reactivity increases, and cognition becomes more rigid and repetitive, often manifesting as rumination or avoidance. And while these processes appear to be ‘working on the problem’ and to overcome the difficulty, they tend to reduce the very capacities required for effective learning, reflection, and adaptive change.

I’m aware of the paradox I’m painting here. The individuals who are most self-critical are often those who care the most, yet the strategy they rely on works against the very outcomes they are trying to achieve. 

In contrast, self-compassion appears to engage a different psychological system altogether. Despite the common concern that it may lead to complacency, the evidence consistently suggests otherwise. Self-compassion is associated with lower levels of anxiety, depression, and rumination, alongside greater wellbeing, optimism, and emotional stability. It is also linked to more adaptive coping strategies and increased resilience when individuals encounter difficulty.

When people embrace more self compassion, we see that personal responsibility can be taken without collapsing into shame, reflection can occur without spiralling into rumination, and adjustment and learning become possible through allowing oneself to truly understand what happened. 

What self-compassion is not

I wanted to say this part, because I have often heard doubts, and fears about the idea of self-compassion. 

Self-compassion is not about letting yourself off the hook, avoiding responsibility, indulging in self-pity, or ignoring problems. In fact, it tends to facilitate the opposite. When individuals feel safer internally, they are often more willing to face difficult truths about themselves, not less. As Neff describes, self-compassion allows for clearer self-perception precisely because it reduces the fear associated with self-judgment, making honest reflection more psychologically tolerable.

It’s a Skill, Not a Trait

This is something I often emphasize in sessions.

Self-compassion is not something you either have or do not have, nor is it a fixed characteristic. It is a skill, one that can be developed over time, with practice, awareness, and patience.

And for the human brain, it takes intention to build. By default, the brain’s we’ve evolved to have will move towards self-criticism. 

How to begin cultivating it

There are many ways into this work, but I will offer one simple starting point.

In moments of difficulty, instead of immediately analysing, judging, or trying to fix what is happening, see if you can simply notice your internal experience. What thoughts are present? What is the tone of your inner voice? What is happening in your body?

This is the mindfulness component of self-compassion, holding your experience in awareness without either suppressing it or becoming fully entangled in it. It creates just enough psychological space to interrupt the automatic movement into self-criticism.

Once there is some awareness, the next step is to question how you respond to yourself.

Self-kindness is not about forced positivity or pretending things are okay when they’re not. It is about the tone you take with yourself when things are difficult.

Often, the simplest way to access it is to step outside of yourself for a moment and ask: what would I say to someone I really care about if they were going through this?

And then see if you can turn some of that same response back toward yourself.

So here’s your task this week

At some point this week, when that familiar critical voice shows up - quick to judge, correct, or punish -  see if you can pause, notice it, and respond just slightly differently. 

You might say, this is hard, or remind yourself, I’m not the only one who struggles with this, or shift your tone with something like, I can be on my own side here.

And like all things about behaviour change... start small, experiment and observe, and ‘be kind to yourself’, along the way…

Hopefully that last part makes a little more sense now.