Compassion
Self-Love
What better way to celebrate February, the month of love, than to think about how we show ourselves self-love? Kristin Neff talks about self-compassion as containing 3 main elements (1) Kindness (2) Common Humanity (3) Mindfulness. With these 3 components, you are better able to comfort yourself, better able to frame your situation within the reality it exists and better able to process the pain when things (inevitably) go wrong.
In my practice, I see many people who are wanting to ease symptoms, be less anxious, be happier, and improve their wellness. When we start to work on things, the negative thought process that is self-critical becomes quite clear.
What’s a negative thought process?
Our tendency to see things as “the glass half-empty” is a good way to understand a negative thought process. Unfortunately, our minds are built to look for, and hold on to, negative information. In one study, when people were told a medical procedure was 30% likely to fail, they held on to that information, even when the same procedure was framed as 70% likely to succeed. The problem with negative thinking is that it can become so pervasive that our mental health deteriorates, like seen in depression and anxiety. In the practice of therapy, we have lots of ways to categorize negative thinking and we look at the reasons why your thoughts may be tending towards a negative bias quite strongly in certain situations.
How can the negative thought process be changed in therapy?
Through the therapeutic and evidence-based technique known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), you can learn how to address and change your negative thinking patterns.
At Being Therapy, we guide patients through the steps of doing an automatic negative thought analysis. It’s a technique called “putting your thoughts on trial”. Negative thoughts tend to take on a life of their own and can overwhelm your ability to see ALL the facts of a situations, including the intentions of others. We can then quickly start to self-blame for not knowing better, not following the ‘shoulds’ or the ‘rules’ closely enough – and feel isolated, not only from others, but ourselves too.
Where does compassion come from?
We learn to be compassionate. That’s right! It’s not something you have or don’t have. It’s not a character trait. It’s a behaviour. And all behaviours are learned. The good news about that is you can learn how to be more compassionate. This is important to know: any behaviour change takes a little bit of practice. There is some neurobiology to this as well. The more we do something, the easier it becomes to do it more often. This is because the brain thrives on repetition to make new neural pathways. Start with some simple ways and build your capacity to be compassionate. Try noticing how much you pay attention to people around you. Are you seeing the humanity in someone else? Another really good way to practice self-compassion to is think about how you treat a friend when they are going through a tough time or heard some bad news.
How can I learn to be more compassionate?
Great question! And hopefully one that has kept you reading this article :).
Come talk to us at Being Therapy. We can show you how to use some CBT techniques, how to reframe your thinking and grow a compassionate frame of mind.
