The Power of Self-Compassion: Overcoming Negative Thoughts and Improving Wellbeing

Attention training and compassion could be your two new super powers!

We have about 12,000-60,000 thoughts during waking hours of any given day. Thats a whole lot of thoughts, and if many of them are judgmental and critical thoughts, then we can all imaging the impact this is likely to have on all levels of our self worth, self confidence and self esteem.

How do we manage to cope with such a large volume of mental capacity?

The answer lies in our attentional processes.

We all have an attentional filter that guides which information, both internal (inside our heads) and external (from the environment around us), we turn our attention to and which information we ignore.

Certain kinds of information take priority, such as information related to threat. If we didn’t have this attentional filter we would not have survived as a species.

We attend to thoughts that have relevance to our main goals, values or motives, both thoughts that promote goals and values and thoughts that threaten them.

This is how we are able to manage the enormous volume of thoughts we experience on a regular basis; we ignore thoughts that are not relevant and we attend to those that are.

One goal is to recognise your worry thoughts as just worries rather than facts, and therefore a non-threatening thought that requires no attention.

The key to overcoming the worry thoughts is to abandon the belief that it has to be controlled and responded to.

Deflate the significance of the thought. One of the most important differences between people who are worries and those who are not worries is that individuals with worries pay more attention to their unwanted intrusive thoughts. They evaluate them as being more important, and are more likely to believe they must control their thoughts to prevent some dreaded consequence.

A therapist can teach you skills such as attention training and exposure response prevention (ERP) to support you to change unhelpful responses to intrusive negative or critical thoughts.

Our mind can be our biggest challenge and barrier, but if we learn to both manage it skilfully (turning our attention away from irrelevant and unhelpful thoughts and only our valued based action).

If we can nurture self compassion (developing a kinder internal dialogue), it can be our biggest help, supporting us to reach new heights of personal development and performance.

Learning the skills of being more compassionate to others and self-compassionate will help both the wellbeing of others and yourself.

Developing compassion is a hugely important skill, both our ability to be compassionate towards others as well as our ability to treat ourselves compassionately.

What is compassion and self compassion?

💛 Compassion is our ability to direct care and concern towards others.

💛 Self-compassion is the ability to practise the same care and concern towards ourselves.

“Self-compassion means being gentle, kind and understanding with yourself; accepting that you are not perfect; and understanding that there is potential for learning and growth in every mistake you make” (Neff, 2003).

If we want to be truly more compassionate to others, we have to also develop self-compassion.

Self-compassion improves our tolerance and resilience.

It includes:

💛 Being kind to ourselves

💛 Offering sensitivity to our own suffering

💛 Taking control of the internal mental chatter about ourselves.

How we talk to ourselves matters.

💛 One of the best ways develop self-compassion is to talk to ourselves as we would a friend. 

💛 Use words of support, wisdom, courage and strength.

💛 Approaching our daily life knowing that we are in our own corner will have a marked improvement on the confidence, mood and self esteem.

Some people may view self-compassion as being self-indulgent, but it is important that we look at our own experiences with the same understanding that we give to others.

We are so much more comfortable with being compassionate to others, we often practice at nurturing this skill as we develop relationships. We need to practice self compassion for it to be come the ‘new normal’ of our internal dialogue.

I have seen the positive impact of those who have nurtured and developed the main problem they came to therapy to address, but I have also seen less positive outcomes of those who are working very hard at the therapy goals, but do not work on the impact their mood sapping and confidence limiting negative and often critical internal dialogues.

A study featured in Frontiers in Psychology, demonstrated that the teaching of compassion skills showed positive results in reducing OCD symptoms by reducing feelings of guilt, increasing self-acceptance and damping self-criticism.

So the next time you face a fear but also find yourself being critical or judgemental of what you did and didn’t manage to do, try to take a moment to pause and reframe the way you are talking to yourself.

💛 Draw on the compassion you have for others, and try to develop your self-compassion.

💛 Be mindful of the difficult emotions that arise.

💛 Forgive yourself and recognise that you are only human.

💛 See if you can identify how to do it differently next time.

💛 Be grateful for the opportunity you had in the first place and for your persistence, curiosity and belief in your own growth to try again.

💛 Finally, accept yourself. You are not perfect. Chances are, you did just fine, more than fine. You are doing more than enough.

Remember, approaching your daily goals knowing that you are in your own corner will have a marked improvement on the confidence you feel in achieving them.

Lisa Johnston

CBT & EMDR Therapist

Director My Therapist Online

References: Featured Article | Frontiers in Psychology | 2021, Vol. 11, 549277. Compassion-Focused Group Therapy for Treatment-Resistant OCD: Initial Evaluation Using a Multiple Baseline Design

Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualisation of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself. Kristin Neff. Pages 85-101 | Published online: 24 Sep 2010