Posted January 12, 2025
I hated myself. I judged myself for everything, I hated the way that I kept having to deal with the same problems over and over, and I held an exponential amount of guilt and loathing about who I was versus who I felt I should be. I truly believed that I wasn’t good enough and beat myself up constantly over my mistakes and shortcomings – even over things I perceived as inadequacies even though they weren’t.
But I’ve been learning about something called self-compassion, and it is slowly changing the way I treat and relate to myself. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, compassion is “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Self-compassion, therefore, could be defined as “sympathetic consciousness of one’s self’s distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” In fact, the word compassion comes from the latin word compati, literally meaning “to suffer together.” Self-compassion is the conscious decision to suffer with ourselves – to walk with ourselves – to take care of ourselves. “Having compassion for yourself,” writes author Kristin Neff, “means that you honor and accept your humanness.”
In my opinion, self-compassion differs from self-love in the fact that it is not putting yourself first – it is simply recognizing your value and therefore making the conscious choice to care for yourself – which we should do, as humans made in God’s image. Self-love is putting your happiness above all else – something to be achieved – whereas self-compassion is recognizing that all emotions are part of the human experience and it is okay to be unhappy. Self-compassion is choosing to eat what is healthy for you because you recognize that your body is important. Self-compassion is recognizing your need to recharge and taking some time away so that you can stay well and continue to be there for others. Sometimes it looks like being non-judgmental of ourselves for our struggling, or doing something we used to enjoy but that we haven’t put much effort into in a while. It could even look like taking a walk outside in the sun, or even just taking a shower.
The thing that ultimately helped me to stop hating myself was coming to a point where I could have empathy and compassion for my younger self. Making peace with my younger self – picturing the child that I used to be and realizing that I would not treat her the way I was treating myself – involved a lot of song writing, journaling, and reflecting. It has taken a lot of work. And today I am so much more at peace with myself than I used to be.
“The beauty of self-compassion,” writes Kristin Neff, “is that instead of replacing negative feelings with positive ones, new positive emotions are generated by embracing the negative ones. The positive emotions of care and connectedness are felt alongside our painful feelings. When we have compassion for ourselves, sunshine and shadow are both experienced simultaneously. This is important—ensuring that the fuel of resistance isn’t added to the fire of negativity. It also allows us to celebrate the entire range of human experience, so that we can become whole. As Marcel Proust said, ‘We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.’”
the fire journey 