Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem

> The Mountain Goats - Damn These Vampires

> Bright Eyes - Devil Town

I'm still a bit like that, very often I did things for wrong reasons, validation. My brain was very efficient and very pleasuring when seeking mental complexity, appearing smart; but socially inept to interact emotionnaly with people in sane honest ways.

A fun problem.

(eg. psychotherapy, negative third party social group stereotyping, pop culture references, second person framing of self-help advice as casual banter, capitalia, shameless and fundamentally American reformation of compassion in an ego-linked context...)

I think this is the opposite of what the article was saying. The article says that instead of looking for "self-esteem" from your successes (and avoiding failures), you should stop chasing self-esteem altogether, and instead choose self-compassion.

> it is critical for your survival and success

I think the article is trying to say "It's okay not to succeed, go easy on yourself."

I often think of this geeky comic when the subject comes up: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/13

I often will consider my past and future as a separate entity or person than myself today in the present. And acknowledge things theyve done good or bad. Or to be kind to your future self as if you are doing a favor for a close friend.

e.g. $10 is most useful right now, slightly less useful a day from now, and much less useful a year from now. This is for real reasons -- inflation -- and psychological reasons -- I'm more excited about getting that $10 now than in a year.

There are equations for this stuff but it's been a long time since college.

You can replace $10 with other "goods" like time, sleep, relaxation, etc.

That phrasing helps immensely. Sometimes it's worth it to push out the pain, but usually it isn't.

I think human relationships come with conditions. If there is not some reciprocation of affection, support, time, kindness, etc, then what you have is not a positive relationship, usually for either side, though they may not see it. I think we see good relationships as "unconditional" because the reciprocation comes easily and without calculation, but there are still conditions.

So, in the category of "It works for me, YMMV.":

I am active in two hobby related clubs, one is a local ham radio club, the other is a local robotics club. Both consist of a self-selected pack of nerds that share a common interest. The members of both tend to be quirky individuals... I suppose I am, too. Both communities are large enough that I have formed lasting friendships with compatibly quirky individuals from each.

The common interest anchors the relationship, so any peripheral differences can be glossed over or ignored while working together to solve a particular problem together.

She was pretty harsh on helicopter parenting, and she did a good job setting expectations with parents, teachers and staff that the students really are becoming young adults in high school and they need to be given respect and responsibility.

Her speech was pretty impressive, and I doubt my explanation is doing it justice, but it was the first I'd heard the term and it really struck a chord with me.

My understanding of compassion is that it is more than trating yourself as a best friend -- that is a short-hand if you have diffculty generating loving-kindness for yourself.

Life does not always give you a choice. You are not always in control (though one should still keep their wits about them). A sense of agency can again, augment the false sense of self, no more different than self confidence or self esteem.

Self compassion is different. It is loving-kindness directed to oneseld whether one is doing great or doing bad, on top of the world or hiding in deep shame, heroically rising above or writhing in guilt, having a strong sense of agency or lacking it.

It is much more painful to recieve loving-kindness when you are wounded. Loving-kindness doesn't soothe away pain so much as bring it into greater attention and allow the pain to be felt, accepted, and change can take place. It is only then that there is a transformative effect.

It can be difficult to generate loving-kindness towards oneself if you've lived a lifetime of self-judgement and self-harm. You might have forgotten what it felt like.

Friendship isn't earned, it is discovered and built up :)

You're probably a cat person, and definitely not a dog person?

It’s a pay-it-forward kind of model. And if you choose to you can absolutely “earn” (or at least repay) every bit of kindness that’s offered to you. By stepping up and also being kind to others in need.

At what age do you want to stop seeing yourself as a victim?

No, this happens when you accept that you are a victim and declare that you have zero control over your emotional shortcomings because of a past event. And it will continue to happen aslong as you reinforce this in yourself.

For example, you can decide that by simply being human, one deserves to be treated well as a standard, taking that away when someone earns the right to be treated lesser.

You can decide that you earn someone's affection simply by being yourself around the person. That's more work than folks let onto.

You can decide that sure, the past was shitty - but you've worked and persevered nonetheless and earned the things you have. You can choose to see that while those folks were shitty, others around you haven't been. You can choose to not be a victim to the past. People do it all the time.

You can choose to be a bit easier on yourself. This isn't easy and takes a bit of detachment and reminding yourself that you tend to be hard on yourself so that you can set more obtainable goals.

You can choose to get therapy to help you with these things. You've already the self-awareness of much of this, which puts you steps ahead of others.

FYI, the top portion of the homepage is wider than my phone's screen, but I can't scroll sideways to read all of the text. Let me know if you want a screenshot...

Failure is an option, because we aren't perfect. We will fail, and how we carry on afterwards is the part that matters. Developing this attitude in one area will carry over to others. Professionally, I had a terrible habit of thinking (impostor syndrome) that I should know what I was doing, wouldn't ask for help, suffered from analysis paralysis, etc. This personal growth helped me out tremendously there.

Eventually the thing you're trying to internalise becomes a mental habit, and starts to pop into your head all on its own at just those moments when you need it most.

I think this is a good description of the effect of LSD.

A lot of the concepts that come up in your mind are things you have probably herd before, but in that moment you feel like you not only have understood their meaning, but also internalized it - attached an emotion to it so to say.

That's why I think it has such potential in psychotherapy: There might be a lot of useful concepts that you might have rationally understood, but actually 'discarded' them on an emotional level.

As a PhD student I have this imposter syndrome feeling whenever I hit a wall. Being self compassionate and realising that almost every PhD student hits one or more walls during their PhD has helped me to cope with this.

As far as stability, I think it has to do a lot with your physical and mental health. I noticed that most of the guys I knew who were out of shape and had basement dweller habits tended to stick with self-hating tendencies. And some people who didn't have key periods in their life, like having a mate or living on their own, have stayed that way after about age 26.

To me, your comment reads as a cheeky way of saying that not all people are fluent in overt compassion and that this is fine.

I would agree, as long as there is an underlying implied compassion in these relationships, and that both parties have understanding of this. We are all human at the end of the day, and the need for social support is universal.

When doing any task, you need to be confident that what you're doing is the correct thing to do, even if it's only an experiment and you accept that it may fail. When designing or writing a program, I choose a path, and proceed confidently. When I hit a dead end (a bad design, an unsolvable problem), because I'm not overconfident, I'm able to reexamine my choices and correct. If I lacked sufficient confidence to begin, I'd be stuck at the design stage trying to decide between the twenty different frameworks available, analysis paralysis. Or I'd be second guessing myself at each stage and progress would be remarkably slow.

When going out on the field or into a ring for a sport, you have to be confident in each movement so that the movement is fluid, deliberate. Lack of confidence induces hesitation, and hesitation is more likely to lead to failure (by some metric). Which creates a feedback loop continuing the reduction of confidence and the increase in hesitation, resistance to progress.