Overcoming Barriers to Self-Empathy

Self-empathy is an essential MCD Relationship Competency that enables you to live an authentic and empowered life. It is a process of listening to yourself with warmth, clarity, and compassion. It’s especially useful when you don't have the option of receiving empathy from another at the moment. It can be there for you when you are alone or not ready to share your inner experience with another. It allows you to explore, understand and transform your inner experience. And it gives you access to creativity, equanimity, new ideas and solutions to old problems. Finally, it can nourish and resource you, freeing you up to face new challenges in life.

I often hear students say they have more difficulty with self-empathy than empathy for others.

What makes it so hard?  Let's look at three things that might be getting in your way:

1. Unrealistic standards

You might have a set of standards for how you "should" be that you don't necessarily hold as true for others. These unconscious standards then trigger shame or hopelessness when you perceive that you fail to live up to them. You can become more aware of these standards by looking at the various roles you play in life— daughter, employee, father, student, friend, spiritual person, etc.— and ask yourself what you expect from yourself in each of these roles. 

At first, it may seem like an act of faith to not take action from the internal pulling and pushing that those standards trigger. But a larger you knows that transformation and living from authenticity arises from a foundation of compassion and acceptance. 

2. Avoidance of pain and discomfort

Self-empathy requires time, focus, and a willingness to step into the pain of the situation. Most of us live in cultures that push distraction as a strategy for relief from suffering. This idea makes it seem easier, in the moment, to turn toward the distraction of drugs, alcohol or media and hope the situation will resolve with the passage of time. 

Giving yourself empathy means that when you feel some feeling you don't enjoy (or that you do enjoy!) you move towards it by asking:

• “Can I focus on slow full breaths and just name what is happening in my experience?”

•  “What are these feelings telling me about needs met or unmet?” 

• “Can I greet every experience with warmth and compassion?”

•  “Do I believe what I am telling myself about the challenging situation at hand?” “What else could be true?” 

This may feel pretty scary at first, if the feelings are uncomfortable ones. You might be concerned about getting lost in the pain. If that feels too vulnerable right now, perhaps you could try it out with a study buddy first. Offering yourself self-empathy out loud with an empathic other listening and accompanying you without judgment or advice may feel like an easier, safer first step. 

And if your mind is telling you that almost anything on your to-do list is more important than self-empathy, you might want to remind it that with more inner resources (such as after a self-empathy session) you will be more efficient and find new solutions to the tasks at hand.

3. A lack of foundational abilities, skills, and understanding

Self-empathy can be as simple as a moment of acceptance. At the same time, if you want to access it consistently long-term it requires a complex set of abilities, skills, and understanding. For example, the MCD foundation of concentration is essential for engaging the practice of self-empathy with greater effectiveness and skill. Concentration is the ability to direct your attention where you would like and hold it there as long as you would like. Concentration is a power of mind developed through specific meditation practices such as holding your attention on a single subtle object like  the breath for specific lengths of time. Concentration is supported in daily life through tasks of uninterrupted single focus, rather than multitasking.

When you are attempting to focus on a process of self-empathy, your "monkey mind" can get in the way— jumping from branch to branch— analyzing, theorizing, imagining the future, remembering other similar situations, etc. It takes some practice to tame your “monkey mind” and help it settle on regulation practices, compassion, and identifying and sorting experience in the present moment. 

When for most of our life we've experienced judgment and criticism rather than empathy, it may feel impossible to offer yourself empathic listening. If you don't yet have the capacity for self-empathy, you can begin by finding ways to receive empathy first.

Practice

Take a moment now and commit to one first step you would like to take to begin a practice of self-empathy. Make it specific, for example, you could: write down three standards you compare yourself to, choose one situation each day for which you write down your feelings and needs, or take a few minutes each day just to practice sitting still physically and mentally, choose a focus point like your breath, sound, or a sensation in your heart and staying with it for five minutes every day.

Or, if you'd prefer to start accompanied, it might look like: getting some empathy sessions scheduled for yourself, agreeing with a study buddy to practice self-empathy out loud together, etc.

Remember that you may adjust your self-empathy practice to your preferred format: whether that’s an inner conversation, recording an audio/video journal, doing it in writing, drawing, painting or doing collage, the important part is to find the format that comes most alive for you.