Your relationship with self compassion starts in your childhood.

Self-compassion is something that people often don’t realize has its roots in childhood. Years of bad habits that hurt your confidence and negative self talk often impact our ability to be self compassionate. This is why working on your attachment style is often the key to being able to love yourself more and live a life where you are able to thrive in work, home, and relationships. Being negative and self-hating might be a protective strategy that you have learned, but it is possible and so worth it to unlearn this “skill.” Keep reading to learn the signs of having poor self-compassion (or a strong inner critic), how to improve your self-compassion, and how this can improve your relationships.

Therapy for inner child and attachment wounds can help.

As a therapist who is in private practice serving people all over California and Arizona, self-compassion is something nearly everyone struggles with and yes therapy can help! So can journaling, being in the community, and practicing daily gratitude.

Here is a list of things that show you probably need to work on having more self-compassion with yourself. These are things I see all the time in my therapy practice in Fresno.

Signs that you struggle with self compassion.

You tend to be irritable and anxious.
You tend to complain a lot and always bring up the negative side of things.
You feel tired all the time. (Being hard on yourself takes up a lot of energy!)
You minimize accomplishments and anything going well in your life.
You struggle with dating and your friendships.
You are always on to the next thing, never feeling like you have enough or that you are good enough.
You fight a lot with your partner. (This is something therapy can really help with because there could be a lot of things at play here!)

Working on your self compassion can have life altering impacts. Lots of people who work on self compassion find that being more compassionate has compounding effects on themselves and those in their lives. If there is one thing I want people in therapy to learn and take away, is to have more self compassion. It is that powerful at reducing mental health issues and improving life happiness.

Here are seven benefits of working on having more self-compassion.

You will feel less anxious and depressed.
You will finally feel like you are good enough (or at least most of the time!)
You will be able to sit with the discomfort of being human without numbing out (scrolling, drinking, emotional eating, shopping.)
You will be able to have more fun and joy.
You will have more clarity and calmness.
You will notice improvements in your physical health, like less tension in your body and better digestion. You cannot deny the link between mental health and physical health. Study after study shows this!
You will start to attract better friends and relationships. As that old saying goes, we are what we attract. Miserly loves company. We are really a reflection of the five closest friendships that we have, so let's make sure those connections help us become better versions of ourselves.

Seven things to help you improve self-compassion.

Zoom Out: Remember that our brains are naturally wired to see the negative, to be on the lookout for danger.
Practice daily gratitude. I feel like a broken record because I am always writing about this one. If you leave away with one thing this is it. Practice gratitude daily, and flex that brain muscle to be more balanced.
Stop Comparing Yourself: in a world where people grab their phones the minute that they get bored, where we are instantly bombarded by images and stories of other more beautiful, successful people, it makes complete sense why people are more anxious and depressed than ever.
Remind yourself that you are human. And you are doing the best that you can with what you have in this present time. You can’t really ask more of yourself. So lighten up.
Make space for the icky and not-so-comfortable feelings. We are so quick to numb out with substances: be it food, drinks, drugs, or scrolling on our phones. And for those of us who came from homes with emotionally immature parents, please give yourself a break. You are rewiring decades worth of doing life in a not-very-sustainable way. When we come from homes where we aren’t taught how to regulate our minds and bodies when we get overwhelmed, it makes total sense that we would be struggling with this for decades to come. Be kind to yourself. The fact that you are even reading this right now, shows that you have a desire for change and easier life where you aren’t running from your feelings anymore. That is something that is brave and not something to be mean to yourself about.
Befriend the inner critic. Lots of conventional wisdom says that we should just focus on our positive thoughts and work towards being more happy. This nearly always backfires. Instead, it is much more helpful to befriend the inner critic, heal it, and help it take on a new role within your internal world. This does wonders for healing your inner child. Therapy for Inner Child is one of my favorite approaches!
Make sure you are doing the basics. This means getting a good night's sleep, eating well, and staying in the community with others. Often times I tell clients that they have to do the opposite of what they feel like doing. Go take a walk outside, call up a friend for a quick 5-minute chat, or opt for a veggie pack meal. Your body needs to be taken care of, and though we feel like staying in weeks on end or eating comfort food every day, it is not going to help our bodies perform at their best. Our body needs rest, good nutrition, and engagement with others in order to produce the hormones we need to regulate our mood. Often people will start therapy and feel like it is not working because it is like throwing spaghetti at a wall. Therapy is only one piece of the puzzle.

Three ways self-compassion will help you have a better relationship with others: romantic, platonic, and familial relationships will improve.

1. We are able to give our partner, family member, or friend the benefit of the doubt.

If we are quick to be negative to ourselves, well it becomes a habit that we start to act out on others. Giving our partner the benefit of the doubt is not the same as excusing the behavior that upsets you, this is compassion. Instead of being only angry you will have more space to have a conversation with them so that you can better understand one another. This is one of the number one reasons why people seek out therapy because they are struggling with their relationships, sharing how they don’t feel understood. At the end of the day, we just want to be connected to one another in a way that feels safe, secure, and true.

2. You will more likely be able to engage in “soft start-ups.”

What energy we bring to a social engagement will impact how the other person responds and can completely change a conversation. This is something that I often see in my Fresno Therapy Couples Practice. One partner brings up something in the form of a harsh complaint or criticism and then a fight ensues, not a shock. I often stop couples when they get into this space, and then notice how their energy will completely change the direction of their conversation.

If you are feeling called out, again this is nothing to feel bad about. These are “skills” we learn so early on, it becomes so hard to break as adults. This is where couples therapy with an attachment-focused couples therapist can really be a game changer. Or where individual therapy can help as long as the therapist works from an attachment and has a strong understanding of childhood development and how we develop these “coping skills.”

3. You will less likely people please and compromise your boundaries.

Compassion allows us to hold space for others, with out rushing in to make things better. This is so important when we have complex relationships where we feel discomfort and bend or boundires to make things better. The healthiest people are compassionate and have great boundaries.

Self care is showing yourself compassion. You are human not a machine.

Make sure you're filling up your self-care cup with love. I think most people know the metaphor where a cup is overflowing with water as a symbol of stress and emotional distress compounding and then becoming a big emotional breakdown.

I like to take this metaphor a bit further and explore what it would be like if a person's cup was filled with love and not just focused on not being overfilled with stress. If we get overwhelmed and burst at the seams, we know how a cup that overflows with love and compassion. You are able to tune into your partner as being a human having a rough time. You can then be softer and not add to the fire. Again this does not excuse hurtful behavior, but you will be better positioned to respond to the situation as opposed to reacting.

Fresno therapy for couples and individuals wanting to be less anxious, fight less, and recover from burnout.

A mental health journey towards feeling better can look like a lot of things. Meditation, journaling, and therapy are some of the more common things that people will try to help them deal with depression, anxiety, and trauma. Working with a therapist in Fresno can really help you not only heal from what is causing you pain but help you with prevention work and help you thrive in life.

This is my wheelhouse: relationships issues, childhood trauma, and all things attachment theory. My whole practice aims to support people who are recovering from developmental trauma, fancy talk for coming from chaotic homes, or growing up with an emotionally immature parent. You deserve to feel better and to thrive in this one precious life. Reach out to see how we can work together!

With Warmth,

Elisa Blair