http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-self-compassion-works-better-than-self-esteem/481473/
I have to admit, I, like most of the people I knew, scrunched up my nose at the self-esteem campaign that hit schools a few years after I graduated high school. Despite my dislike of competition, I know full well that competition is a fundamental part of life. Trying to take that away, to my viewpoint, simply made kids less prepared for real life. Y'know, to go with the not teaching us the laws of our country, or how to vote, or what our rights are. I've linked this before, but seriously, watch it again. It's that good, and that true.
Anyway, my gripes with the schooling system aside, the article talks about the factors of self-esteem: peer approval, perceived appearance, and success. It very rightly points out that the first is heavily flawed (because you don't know what people think of you and they don't really know you very well), the second is vastly unfair to women (and after middle school, men too), and the third deserts you at any failure. And failure is, after all, a major part of life. If you're not failing, it's because you're not trying things. In short, self-esteem is a very volatile, finicky, fair-weather friend.
Self-compassion, however, is that friend that'll be at your door with a joke, a hug, and food when everything is going wrong for you.
I was somewhat surprised to read that, at least according to this expert, you can't forgive yourself too much, or become too self-satisfied. That's usually the way of things, that too far in one direction is as bad as too far in the other. Maybe the last paragraph answers that: that actual self-compassion doesn't minimize what's gone wrong, or how horrible things are, to make the pain go away faster or pretend there isn't a problem.
I think, at this point, that I'm getting closer to being self-compassionate as a person. But this is stemming from a long, long history of low self-esteem. Distressingly, the difference that's allowing me to be self-compassionate is that I finally was able to have a few things to be proud of, ie: higher self-esteem.
That might be a function of depression, perhaps? But perhaps it's not. I watched an anime in high school, the same anime that convinced me that emotions were perhaps worth the time, that addressed this. A character had been bullied in school and had stopped speaking. Her friends gathered around to try and support her, when she received a letter from the teacher. It mostly talked about how much they wanted her to come back to school, but it also said something like: "Find good points about yourself so you can be more confident and happy." One of the older characters just shook his head at that, and said on the order of, "You can't find good points about yourself until someone likes you for who you are, and finds the first one for you."
I suspect that's more or less the story of my life. It's not that my parents didn't love me, because of course they did. But they're my parents, they kinda have to. Other people really didn't care for me, or weren't long enough in my life for it to matter. I was born female, meaning I was subject to all the stresses of impossible beauty standards. Despite the autism and obliviousness, I still internalized them sufficiently to have my self-confidence permanently undermined. I kept having to move across states as a child, meaning I really didn't develop close friends. People barely had a chance to get used to me, let alone like me. And I wasn't over-interested in having friends. So perhaps that's why it's taken this long for me to develop anything resembling a healthy relationship with myself.
I have to admit, I, like most of the people I knew, scrunched up my nose at the self-esteem campaign that hit schools a few years after I graduated high school. Despite my dislike of competition, I know full well that competition is a fundamental part of life. Trying to take that away, to my viewpoint, simply made kids less prepared for real life. Y'know, to go with the not teaching us the laws of our country, or how to vote, or what our rights are. I've linked this before, but seriously, watch it again. It's that good, and that true.
Anyway, my gripes with the schooling system aside, the article talks about the factors of self-esteem: peer approval, perceived appearance, and success. It very rightly points out that the first is heavily flawed (because you don't know what people think of you and they don't really know you very well), the second is vastly unfair to women (and after middle school, men too), and the third deserts you at any failure. And failure is, after all, a major part of life. If you're not failing, it's because you're not trying things. In short, self-esteem is a very volatile, finicky, fair-weather friend.
Self-compassion, however, is that friend that'll be at your door with a joke, a hug, and food when everything is going wrong for you.
I was somewhat surprised to read that, at least according to this expert, you can't forgive yourself too much, or become too self-satisfied. That's usually the way of things, that too far in one direction is as bad as too far in the other. Maybe the last paragraph answers that: that actual self-compassion doesn't minimize what's gone wrong, or how horrible things are, to make the pain go away faster or pretend there isn't a problem.
I think, at this point, that I'm getting closer to being self-compassionate as a person. But this is stemming from a long, long history of low self-esteem. Distressingly, the difference that's allowing me to be self-compassionate is that I finally was able to have a few things to be proud of, ie: higher self-esteem.
That might be a function of depression, perhaps? But perhaps it's not. I watched an anime in high school, the same anime that convinced me that emotions were perhaps worth the time, that addressed this. A character had been bullied in school and had stopped speaking. Her friends gathered around to try and support her, when she received a letter from the teacher. It mostly talked about how much they wanted her to come back to school, but it also said something like: "Find good points about yourself so you can be more confident and happy." One of the older characters just shook his head at that, and said on the order of, "You can't find good points about yourself until someone likes you for who you are, and finds the first one for you."
I suspect that's more or less the story of my life. It's not that my parents didn't love me, because of course they did. But they're my parents, they kinda have to. Other people really didn't care for me, or weren't long enough in my life for it to matter. I was born female, meaning I was subject to all the stresses of impossible beauty standards. Despite the autism and obliviousness, I still internalized them sufficiently to have my self-confidence permanently undermined. I kept having to move across states as a child, meaning I really didn't develop close friends. People barely had a chance to get used to me, let alone like me. And I wasn't over-interested in having friends. So perhaps that's why it's taken this long for me to develop anything resembling a healthy relationship with myself.
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