Why You Struggle To Love Yourself — And How To Start
Why You Struggle To Love Yourself — And How To Start
Most of us are never taught how to deal with suffering.
But pain and loss and grief are an inevitable part of life (in fact, I would argue that they are also essential to living a good, New Happy life: there's no way to truly connect, grow as a person, or make an impact without experiencing these.)
We can't just ignore this reality — but boy, oh boy, in our Old Happy culture, we like to try. We like to make people feel like they are weak and worthless for struggling; this results in people repressing and hiding their pain; this, in turn, results in other people feeling like they are the only ones in pain, which leads to more pain!
Breaking this cycle starts with each of us choosing to offer ourselves self-compassion. In this article, you’ll learn why you struggle with self-compassion and how to address it using our CARE model.
What is self-compassion?
Self-compassion is inspired by Buddhist teachings and was a concept first coined and studied in the scientific literature by Dr. Kristin Neff. It has three distinct elements:
Kindness to oneself — offering yourself the same kindness you would give a loved one
Mindful awareness — practicing being aware of one’s emotions and state of being
Common humanity — recognizing that you are not alone in your pain and that you are connected with those who are also suffering
Research has found that people who are self-compassionate are happier, healthier, and more resilient.
What gets in the way of self-compassion
For most of us, the thing that gets in the way is our critical inner voice. This is the voice inside of your head that berates you for not being a certain way, for messing up, for not being good enough. It can go on and on and on and on and nothing ever seems to appease it. To bring more self-compassion to our lives, we have to notice the voice and then practice shifting it, over and over again, until it becomes a default behavior.
Where does this voice come from? For many of us, it is familiar: it reminds us of our parents, a teacher, or a coach. But I also have seen that the voice is hugely influenced by our society’s Old Happy culture: telling us that our worthiness as human beings is dependent upon our progress towards becoming famous, rich, wealthy, or traditionally successful.
We have spent our lives immersed in society’s messages that we are not “good enough” unless we reach a truly impossible standard. We have been marinating in these messages for our entire lives — but then, we have also brought them into our minds and adopted them for our own. It’s the voice that tells you, “You don’t deserve rest — you didn’t do that thing you needed to” or “You aren’t good enough” or “Why can’t you just be more like [that person]?” In this way, we perpetuate the Old Happy culture inside of ourselves, hurting ourselves so deeply.
Living within this culture, is it really surprising that we’ve turned to using self-criticism as a way to try to protect ourselves? I have so much compassion for all of us who are desperately trying this strategy to find happiness. And I feel so sad about the pain we create for ourselves. We have learned to use self-denigration to motivate ourselves to push through our exhaustion and pain, and do more and more and more, in hopes of finally feeling worthy.
There is no achievement that will ever make you feel worthy. That feeling only comes from within, from the practice of learning how to love yourself exactly as you are: as a wonderful, brave, imperfectly human.
How to quiet the voice using the CARE Model
In the moments that we need our own kindness most, we tend to choose cruelty instead. In the process, we also betray our most important relationship — the one that we have with ourselves.
Practicing self-compassion begins with noticing your inner critical voice. Start to pay attention to the voice in your head and what it says. Notice:
Do you criticize yourself most in specific areas, or more generally?
If you start feeling bad about yourself out of nowhere, pause and rewind to think about what you just said to yourself.
What does this voice sound like: is it cold, angry, mean? Does it sound like someone you know?
Consider giving it a name to refer to it (my mom calls hers 'the itty-bitty-shitty-committee'; a friend of mine named his Voldemort).
With that awareness, we can start to shift the voice using the New Happy’s CARE method. It only takes a minute to use and can be done at any time, in any place, in any challenging moment.
Center: Pause and get in the moment.
Acknowledge: Acknowledge what you heard from your critical inner voice as though it was a child, saying something like "I know you are just trying to protect me, but you are creating pain. Can you please be quiet for a moment?"
Request: Ask to hear from your compassionate inner voice. Reframe the critical voice's words to be more loving and positive. What would your most loving and compassionate friend say to you in that situation?
Embrace: Embrace these compassionate words and let them sink in. This step is so important; it rewires your brain to recognize that you are worthy of your own kindness.
You might notice your critical voice immediately pushing back against what your compassionate voice self says after Step 3, saying "That's not true!" If that happens, just go back to the beginning of CARE and use it with that statement. Over time, this will quiet.
Any time you catch yourself being an enemy to yourself instead, just come back to the CARE practice to reset. The more that you use it, the more it will become your default response to your pain. Every time you do this, you are rewiring your brain to be more self-compassionate.