Are you as kind to yourself as you are to everyone else?

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to say something warm and encouraging to a friend who's struggling and how quickly that same generosity disappears the moment you turn it on yourself? According to Dr. Kristin Neff, one of the world's leading researchers on self-compassion, there's a very good reason it happens. 

"People raised as women were socialized to be really loving and caring to others," Kristin explained in this week's podcast. "But for themselves, they're not really taught that they're allowed to meet their own needs. The idea is they should be self-sacrificing." 

There's also something happening in the brain that makes this harder. When we fail or fall short of our own expectations, we experience it as a personal threat. "We go into fight, flight, or freeze," Kristin said, "but we aim it toward ourselves. So we fight ourselves with criticism, we flee into shame, or we freeze and get stuck and ruminate."  

Kristin is careful to point out that these voices of self-criticism aren't trying to harm us - they're a misguided effort to keep us safe. Rather than taming, shaming, or blaming them, self-compassion helps us see them for what they are: just stories about the things we fear, not the truth about who we are or what we're capable of. 

What we need, Kristin says, is already within us. Her research points to three elements that most of us have already spent a lifetime practising - just never on ourselves: 

• Kindness — asking "what would I say to a good friend going through exactly this?" and then turning that same warmth inward 

• Common humanity — remembering that struggle isn't what separates us from others, it's what connects us.  

• Mindfulness — pausing long enough to notice you're hurting, rather than pushing through or getting lost in it 

Next time you fall short of your ideals or make a mistake, what might become possible if you gave yourself the same kindness you'd so freely give a friend? 

Visit www.self-compassion.org for more tools from Kristin.