Chapter 6
Using Mindful Self-Compassion and Kindness for Anxiety
- Discovering how to practise loving-kindness
- Reducing the need for perfectionism
- Understanding how self-compassion is helpful
This chapter is about being kinder to yourself in a mindful way. When anxious, you're more likely to think negatively and berate yourself — for example, for not being perfect (despite the fact that no one is!).
The practices I describe – such as the loving-kindness meditations that are proved to reduce anxiety – can help you counteract this tendency, and lead to higher levels of well-being. And don't worry that this self-compassion is going to turn you into an egotistical monster because I also describe the importance of directing compassion to other people as well.
Understanding Loving-Kindness
Loving-kindness is basically the idea of evoking love toward every human being on the planet, including yourself.
The practice of loving-kindness helps generate a sense of friendliness toward yourself and others.
Generally, you achieve this sense of friendliness through practising loving-kindness meditations, which traditionally can be up to 45 minutes long. But in this section, I offer you a range of loving-kindness practices, directed to yourself and others, that vary in time. This flexibility makes practising loving-kindness much easier in today's busy world.
Accepting the importance of being kind to yourself
You may not realise that you're irrationally hard on yourself on a day-to-day basis. For example, perhaps you get to work and notice that you've forgotten your lunch or that you've double-booked something in your diary by accident. In such cases, negative thoughts can arise such as ‘I'm such an idiot for forgetting’ or ‘I can't believe I did that!’.
But these kinds of situation happen to everybody. You need to be kind to yourself and realise that everyone makes mistakes from time to time, and that's just part of life. However, if you become used to berating yourself every time you make a mistake (and this self-criticism can be a pattern you learnt from childhood), bringing yourself out of it can be difficult.
One of the best and most helpful suggestions I ever received about self-kindness was to think of myself as a young child — not when I personally was young, but a small child in general of around 6 years of age. I was advised to treat myself as I would that young child. I found that thinking of this child as separate from myself and treating myself accordingly very helpful. For example, I made sure that I got enough sleep, ate healthily and was generally a lot kinder to myself.
Practising loving-kindness for yourself
Loving-kindness meditation is often called metta or compassion meditation. I recommend doing this meditation after you've had some practice of other meditations, such as the body scan or the sitting meditations (check out Chapter 5).
This loving-kindness meditation varies slightly from other meditations in that it's quite visual and promotes positive emotions, such as well-wishing or compassion toward yourself.
Before you start, get into a comfortable sitting position. Allow 10 to 15 minutes and make sure that you won't be disturbed. Turn off the TV, computer and mobile phone and find a quiet place. If you can, do something relaxing beforehand, such as having a warm bath or a cup of tea. Wrap yourself in a blanket and make sure that you're warm and cosy!
- Breathe mindfully with a sense of gratitude.
Begin by focusing on your natural breathing. Simply rest your awareness on your breath and be thankful that your breath is keeping you alive. Feel the same sense of gratitude and thankfulness that your breath is nourishing your body with oxygen.
- Well-wish towards yourself.
Visualise yourself and wish yourself a sense of well-being. Say to yourself, several times, ‘May I be well, may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be free from suffering’.
- Feel the words radiating out from your heart.
Don't force any feelings. Even if you don't feel any positive emotion, that's perfectly fine.
This meditation may feel difficult for you, especially at the beginning of your mindfulness journey. People commonly struggle with this exercise. If challenging emotions come up for you, try practising loving-kindness to someone else you find easy to love or even a pet. Then come back to this exercise in the future.
Your mind is bound to wander to other thoughts. Bring a spirit of kindness to your practice, especially in this meditation.
Well-wishing loving-kindness for others
Practising loving-kindness for others is important because it helps give you a sense of warmth and well-wishing to their welfare, which in turn raises your own well-being level. Even if you don't have many positive feelings toward a person to begin with, loving-kindness helps you let go of those aggravations, which in turn makes you feel better.
As with practising loving-kindness towards yourself (see the preceding section), get into a comfortable position and try to do something relaxing beforehand. Allow 15 to 20 minutes for this meditation.
People normally practise loving-kindness by offering kindness to themselves first and then to others. If you feel like you're ready to do this meditation, allow yourself 20 minutes and incorporate loving-kindness for yourself before you move onto others. If you feel this meditation is too difficult for you to do the whole 20 minutes to start with, do the meditation as I set it out, in two parts.
- Start with some mindful breathing.
Focus on your breath with a sense of gratitude.
- Well-wish towards someone you find easy to show affection for.
Choose someone with whom you have a simple uncomplicated relationship, such as a close friend, a relative such as an aunt or uncle, a spiritual or wise person that you know or even a pet.
I suggest not choosing a partner because that's a more complex relationship.
Visualise this person and, in your mind, say to yourself several times, slowly and thoughtfully, ‘May you be well, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free from suffering’.
Say it with a sense of kindness and affection. You don't need to force any specific emotion to arise.
- Well-wish toward someone neutral.
Think of someone for whom you have neither positive nor negative feelings, such as a local shopkeeper you see every day or the people who do your dry cleaning. You can even think of someone who commutes on the same train to work as you but you've never spoken to.
Say ‘May you be well, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free from suffering’.
Visualise and wish the person well, as best as you can.
- Well-wish towards someone difficult.
This step is sometimes not the easiest! Think of someone who you don't particularly like — perhaps someone who annoys or irritates you. Choose someone you have a difficult relationship with but feel willing to work with today.
Visualise the person and say, ‘May you be well, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free from suffering’.
You're not condoning what the person has done; you're simply wishing them well and not holding a grudge. This person won't know that you're doing this meditation, but you may feel a huge weight lift off your shoulders as you let go of some of your negative feelings.
- Well-wish towards your loved person, your neutral person and your difficult person.
Imagine all three of them together. See whether you can wish everyone a sense of equal well-being. After all, they're human beings deserving of happiness.
- Well-wish to everyone on the planet.
Wish everyone on the planet, including all sentient beings, such as animals, a sense of wellbeing. Imagine coming out of your front door and the street you live in, wishing everyone there happiness. Then zoom out to the area you live in, followed by the town or city, the country, the continent and the earth as a whole.
Think of all the people in the world: the children, the families, the retired. Think of all the lakes, rivers, seas and mountains. Think of all the animals that exist on the planet.
Wish them all a sense of happiness and wellness. Use the words ‘May they all be well, may they all be happy, may they all be healthy, may they all be free from suffering’.
Facing common issues with the loving-kindness meditation
Some common difficulties may arise for you with loving-kindness meditation:
- You can't feel any kind or compassionate feelings towards another person. That's okay; just try to wish a sense of kindness, even if you don't feel it.
- You find that the meditation makes you feel worse. In fact, this feeling may be a good thing for you because you're releasing stored emotions and letting them go. Still, if you find the meditation too upsetting, take a break, talk to someone you trust and come back to it when you feel a bit stronger.
- You can't feel any affection towards yourself. This experience is normal. People are often taught the importance of looking after others but not necessarily themselves. Take your time with it and practise after a body scan or a sitting meditation if you find that helpful. (I describe these meditations in Chapter 5.)
Letting Go of the Perfectionist
Perfectionism goes hand in hand with anxiety. Perfectionists tend to be high achievers trying to do their very best at everything. They seldom enjoy what they do because they're too busy striving for perfection. They never live in the present moment and make their happiness dependent in their achievements.
Investigating what being a perfectionist really means
Anxiety comes about because perfectionists aim for perfection and yet never quite achieve it. They think that they have to have the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect house, the perfect group of friends or the perfect body. But they can't meet these extremely high (often impossible) expectations, which causes anxiety. Thoughts occur, such as ‘I must do this right’, ‘I mustn't fail’, ‘I must get everything done’ and ‘Everyone must like me’. They need their life to look a certain way in order to be happy, but this ideal is always just out of reach.
Sarah worked extremely hard at school. She passed all her exams with great grades. She got into a top university and worked very hard throughout her time there. She hardly went out and put all her time into making her assignments perfect. When she left university, Sarah got a good job with the company she wanted.
Then the recession hit, and Sarah was made redundant. She suffered very high anxiety levels because she thought constantly about what she hadn't done perfectly and why she was made redundant. She felt like a failure, but Sarah had done nothing wrong. The company made her redundant because she was a new graduate with less experience than others, and graduates were the first group of people to be hit. It had nothing to do with the quality of her work.
Accepting yourself as already perfect
Instead of striving for perfection by relying on external factors, try accepting yourself as you already are! Underneath your anxiety, thoughts and worries, you're already perfect! You were born perfect but may have learnt negative conditioning, perhaps in childhood.
The stories in your head that you listen to about yourself aren't necessarily true. Your being is whole, perfect and complete just as you are. No one can be perfect all the time in that sense, but everyone is perfectly imperfect. If everyone was always perfect and everything was executed perfectly all the time, the world would be so boring!
Here are some suggestions to help you on the road to accepting yourself:
- Begin with a sense of purpose to look after yourself using kindness and acceptance. Looking after yourself first isn't selfish. In fact, you're better able to look after others in the future.
Think of the preflight demonstration on a plane. Flight attendants always tell you that in the event of an emergency you're to fit your oxygen mask first, before helping any others with you, including children: If you start to run out of oxygen while struggling to fit someone else's mask, no one gets helped. But if you fit your mask first, you can receive the life-saving oxygen and then help others receive it, too.
In the same way, when you show compassion and kindness to yourself, you're in a better and stronger position to show it to others. People may also learn from your example and begin to be kinder to themselves, too.
- Write down a list of things that you like about yourself. These items can relate to your physical appearance or the fact that you're a good listener or a good friend. Write down anything that comes to mind, even if it seems insignificant. This exercise is about accepting aspects of yourself, just as they are.
- Discover how to forgive yourself. Try to understand that you can't be perfect in what you do, and no one can get everything right 100 per cent of the time. See whether you can use your mistakes as a way of growing and learning.
If you still struggle with perfectionism, try being good enough instead of perfect. Try to accept that there is no such thing as perfection, but there is such a thing as good enough, and that can be achievable.
‘I'm surprised you remembered to meet!'
I have a friend who's extremely forgetful. Sometimes when we meet up, I ask him to bring something for me. He nearly always forgets. When I ask him whether he's remembered and it becomes apparent that he hasn't, we start laughing because it's such a common occurrence.
I accept that he's forgetful, and he accepts that he's forgetful without beating himself up over it. He's a friend who's flawed just like everyone else. I accept him just as he is and enjoy his company when I see him.
Discovering Compassion for Yourself and Others
The word compassion literally means ‘sympathy for the suffering of others often with a desire to help’. If you're practising compassion for yourself or others, you first need to be aware of the suffering. When you have no concept of just how hard other people's experiences can be, you're more likely to ignore them when they are upset or crying, for example, and therefore show no compassion.
To show compassion is about being moved by people's suffering so that you feel their pain in your heart. You want to reduce their suffering. By doing so, you feel a sense of warmth, caring and understanding towards them.
Compassion is about feeling warmth, not just the difficult feeling that you or others are experiencing. In that sense, it's different to empathy.
When you show compassion, you demonstrate a sense of common humanity. You understand that suffering, failure and errors are part of the human experience. You're much less likely to judge people severely on their errors or failures.
Being compassionate towards yourself
You may have difficulty showing compassionate to yourself. Common misconceptions about self-compassion may get in the way, such as the following:
- Motivation: People sometimes mistake self-compassion for self-indulgence and are worried about what they may allow themselves to do. Perhaps you think that if you feel upset and practise self-compassion, you'd stay in all day, watch bad TV and eat junk food! Although behaving in this way is okay occasionally, if you do it regularly you're not showing self-compassion.
Self-compassion means looking after yourself and your happiness in the long term, not just the short term. It may mean going to the gym or giving up smoking for your health or cutting out the TV and getting earlier nights in bed. It may involve doing things that aren't necessarily instantly pleasurable but knowing that the result will be long-term benefits.
- Self-pity: In fact, self-pity is egocentric and doesn't allow thoughts of compassion toward anyone else. Self-pitying people think that they're the only ones in the world with their problems and exaggerate them. They often stay stuck in the victim role. They become incredibly self-obsessed and separate themselves from the world around them.
In contrast, self-compassion allows you to see how you can relate to other humans in their suffering and see things through a more balanced view. You're more able to put things in perspective and understand that even though what you're going through is tough, other people may be in a worse situation.
I've had trouble with my knees since I was a teenager. After one nasty fall, I became very upset about the pain and my situation. I started to feel sorry for myself. A bit later, I thought about all the people in wheelchairs or who're paralysed, whereas I can walk. I berated myself for feeling sorry for myself initially. But then I started being self-compassionate, allowing myself to move through what I was feeling, without trying to suppress my emotions, just being aware and observing them as they came up. I practised the loving-kindness meditation (see the earlier section ‘Understanding Loving-Kindness’). The next day I felt a lot better, with a more positive outlook.
Ask someone you trust or feel close to, such as a friend, to write down three good things about you. Then, write three good things about that friend. These attributes can be about physical appearance, aspects of personality or even habits that you like. Read these three things to each other and see how you feel.
Showing compassion towards others
Studies show that compassion and kindness toward others helps boost your happiness. It does so by making you feel happy with where your life is at, giving you a sense of connection, helping you relate to others and reducing stress. It can help stop you from thinking about your own troubles and provide a sense of purpose and meaning in your life.
Also, the more compassionate and kind you are towards others, the more likely you are to spread it around. Compassion is contagious, creating a happier community around you.
You can get involved in being kind and compassionate toward others in a number of different ways. Being compassionate doesn't have to mean a giant gesture; it can be something as simple as making someone's life a little easier by eliminating a day-to-day chore.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Cook a surprise dinner for a partner or a friend.
- Volunteer for a local charity of your choice.
- Read to, offer to shop for or perhaps just visit an older person for a chat.
- Send someone you haven't seen for a while a random surprise present. (It doesn't have to be expensive, but if you can't afford it, send a nice quote or poem.)
- In a coffee shop, pay for your drink and then pay for the person waiting behind you.
- Let someone go in front of you in a supermarket queue.
Also keep in mind these wise words:
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.
—Chinese proverb
Sometimes, however hard you try, you're unable to change things. In this situation you need to take a step back, start being kind and compassionate to yourself and accept things as they are. The serenity prayer is a great reminder and asks for the following:
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can; and
The wisdom to know the difference.