Life inevitably presents unexpected challenges. Whether navigating a difficult divorce, receiving a challenging medical diagnosis, or experiencing discrimination, these events can significantly impact mental wellbeing. In times of hardship, anxiety and stress often emerge, triggering feelings of unease and putting both the mind and body on high alert.
However, research over the past two decades in neuroscience and psychology suggests individuals possess a powerful internal resource to navigate these difficult times: self-compassion. This involves treating oneself with kindness and understanding during moments of suffering, failure, or personal pain.
Essentially, self-compassion means extending the same kindness to oneself as one would offer a good friend facing difficulties. Kristin Neff, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, has been a leading researcher in this area.
In the journal Annual Review of Psychology, Neff explained that self-compassion involves treating oneself with kindness and understanding when experiencing pain, failure, or feelings of inadequacy. “It can be understood as compassion for the experience of suffering directed toward oneself,” she clarified.
This attitude comprises three key elements: kindness toward oneself, recognition that suffering is a shared human experience, and mindful awareness of emotions and thoughts.
Neff’s review of over 4,000 studies on self-compassion revealed concrete benefits, including:
- Reduced anxiety, depression, and stress: Individuals practicing self-compassion demonstrate lower levels of anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and negative thoughts.
- Increased resilience to challenges: Self-compassion serves as a resilience resource when facing divorce, violence, illness, natural disasters, prejudice, and trauma.
- Improved trauma coping: It reduces the risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder and promotes personal growth after traumatic experiences.
- Enhanced psychological wellbeing: It is associated with greater happiness, life satisfaction, hope, vitality, gratitude, curiosity, and authenticity.
- Reduced shame and guilt: Self-compassion diminishes feelings of shame and guilt in painful or failing situations.
- Better emotional regulation: It facilitates the management of difficult emotions and reduces the tendency to avoid or get stuck in negative feelings.
- Healthier interpersonal relationships: It improves relationship quality, promotes empathy, authenticity, and satisfaction in affective and family bonds.
- Positive health habits: It is related to fewer harmful behaviors (such as tobacco use), better nutrition, more physical activity, better sleep quality, and more self-care.
- Healthy motivation and learning from mistakes: It facilitates motivation based on a desire for wellbeing and learning, not self-criticism. It decreases fear of failure and encourages trying again.
- Improved physical health: Studies indicate improvements in immune function, lower cortisol (stress hormone), and fewer physical symptoms such as pain or breathing problems.
- Protection against low self-esteem: Self-compassion reduces the negative impact of low self-esteem and offers emotional stability beyond achievements or appearance.
These benefits are all supported by experimental, longitudinal, and meta-analysis studies.
Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the University of Helsinki in Finland, and the University of Nicosia in Cyprus recently published a study in Scientific Reports further exploring the benefits of self-compassion.
The team sought to understand how kindness toward oneself impacts the relationship between resilience – the ability to bounce back from adversity – and emotional distress, such as stress, anxiety, and depression.
To do so, they surveyed 500 adults about their feelings, how they treat themselves, and how they cope with problems.
The results showed that those who adapt best to challenges tend to have fewer negative symptoms, and that treating oneself with compassion helps explain this relationship. The study also found that women generally report higher levels of stress and anxiety, while men tend to be more self-compassionate.
Researchers suggested that learning to be more compassionate with oneself may be key to protecting mental health and coping with difficult times.
Self-compassion can be developed through simple, informal exercises or through formal programs with trained instructors. Writing a letter of support to oneself, placing a hand on the chest, or repeating kind phrases during difficult moments are some of the recommended informal practices.
Neff indicates that “informal practices, such as placing a hand on the heart and speaking kindly to oneself in difficult moments, were as impactful for learning self-compassion as formal meditation.”
Speaking with Infobae, psychologist and health master’s degree holder Martín Reynoso, director of Train your Brain and author of the book Mindfulness, la meditación científica, noted: “An important point is learning to detect that critical voice, which is also called naturalized hostility.”
He added, “It’s key to find ways to soften that critical voice. There are many possibilities for achieving this by taking walks, enjoying a good coffee, or practicing formal meditation.”
Proven interventions, such as the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and Fierce Self-Compassion (FSC) programs, are now available.
