The Lost Art of Self-Compassion

We’re all regularly urged to practice compassion - it is espoused by the greatest gurus of our times, philosophy and poetry lace it into words, and media makes heroes of those who demonstrate it. And with good reason. Out of all virtues that exist, perhaps compassion is the one that could save the world. If only we could show ourselves some, we might be able to save ourselves too.

One of the topics that Alain de Botton regularly speaks on is self-loathing. The School of Life has some brilliant resources and articles around the topic. It is how I chanced upon this revelatory emotion, something seemingly afflicting many of us in varying degrees. ‘Do we like ourselves?’ is a question de Botton suggests we ask ourselves. As with most things, de Botton, like Freud, assigns the source of self-loathing to our childhood.

In her book, Unworthy, Anneli Rufus talks about self-hatred and how it plagues us into covering ourselves up - be it our personalities, bodies or minds. In a similar vein as de Botton, she writes -

“Maybe no one directly told us we were worthless, but we came to that conclusion anyway as the only rational explanation of how we were treated or how we felt.”

We all come into this world with a feeling of inadequacy, an eternal need for validation. It is only through regular loving affirmations received from our earliest caregivers that we come to build up a sense of self-esteem. And when that has been lacking in our lives, we come to the unfortunate conclusion that there must be something very wrong with us. It somehow seems easier to accept that than to face the terrifying reality that those meant to love us unconditionally, didn’t.

This manifests in many ways in our lives - small and big. When we’re applauded for our work, we panic and feel like imposters, we try on a million clothes only to wear the most unshapely ones in the end (in an attempt to cover up our ‘hideous’ bodies), we doubt those who compliment us and never seem to feel strongly enough about those who love us (because anyone who couldn’t see through our awful personalities must be a fool).

The path we go down further depends on the degree and nature of self-loathing we feel. But we all perform various acts of self-sabotage. Some of us might end up turning into cynics, an even more dangerous thing to be. Cynics are often just people too afraid to face reality and the disappointment it might bring. They choose to be disappointed right from the beginning, on their own terms, calling everything around them ‘hopeless’ or ‘corrupt’. The nihilism they exhibit may be them refusing to talk about how they were treated as children, or the various failures in the course of life that further created a cycle of self-loathing.

While not all of us turn into cynics, self-loathing affects the quality of our relationships. People who hate themselves will sabotage their relationships much like vain people do. Self-loathing frequently causes us to wallow in our thoughts of self-doubt, completely failing to acknowledge the person sitting in front of us - partners who love us and cannot fathom why we hate ourselves so much when they love the very same person. They reassure us for years but we refuse to believe it, because often in our heads, we’re the realists. Our partners are bound to tire out and leave, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for us.

Many of us are aware of the self-hatred we feel. Many of us want to get over it, just ask our minds to stop. But it may seem like two personalities fighting with each other. Outsiders may not understand this and may use earnest compliments as a way to get us to stop thinking like this. But compliments seldom help those who hate themselves. So how do we retrieve ourselves from this sinking pit?

I have found many a times (and wrote about it here) that the answer to many of our problems is to not take ourselves too seriously. The more we think about ourselves, the more we find to dislike. There are many things in this world worth marvelling at - how some birds take flight miles up in the sky, while some barely manage to sit atop trees. How they all go about living their lives, for if a peacock hated itself for not taking flight or an eagle thought it was ugly, we’d have very listless and unpleasant birds around.

We are however, bestowed with cognitive abilities far superior to birds. What we must practice is looking at ourselves with compassion. We must trace down all those incidents as children when we were made to feel inadequate and unworthy. We must confront them and let them go. We must look at ourselves as we would look at our friends, with loyalty and without judgement. We must learn to laugh at ourselves - humour makes everything better. We must look at our partners and offer them our attention.

It is only when we are kind to ourselves that we can be kind to others.