
Show Notes
Self-compassion is the willingness to respond to your pain and suffering in the same way a good friend of yours might–with warmth, patience, and understanding. That sounds easy, right? But you know it isn’t.
For many, self-criticism is a classic playing-it-safe move. It’s like your mind is a champion at criticizing you in response to those moments in which you feel anxious about something that has happened or could happen.
Which of the following fear statements resonate with you?
If I’m kind to myself, I will become a weak person. I need to be hard on myself or I will never get everything done. I don’t deserve kindness. A harsh approach keeps me from making mistakes or keeps me disciplined. Self-criticism motivates me all the time.
Ask yourself: “Am I afraid of compassion?”
In this episode, I chat with Paul Gilbert, the developer of Compassion Focused Therapy.
Key Takeaways
The beginnings of Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) 4 steps to compassionately deal with your inner critic The difference between shame and guilt How to approach self-forgiveness The intersection of self-compassion and exposure practices Paul Gilbert’s self-compassion daily practice What to do if your mind thinks that “self-compassion is weak, it is being permissive with yourself, or that you’re letting yourself off the hook.” How to deal compassionately with anger
(*) Show notes and resources of this episode
(*) Receive free weekly science-based, compassionate, and actionable skills to stop ineffective playing-it-safe
(*) Figure out your playing-it-safe profile in 5 minutes and identify the key thinking strategies that keep you living in your head
(*) Learn ACT skills for anxious achievers by taking Dr. Z. ACT courses Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from PLAYING-IT-SAFE
Two hours at dinner. You were there for about twenty minutes of it.
There is a difference between having a description and being one.
There's an email that's been sitting in your drafts for eleven days, and the only thing stopping it is one sentence in your head that you've never checked. This episode is about defusion, one of the six core processes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and about what happens when a thought and the world get glued together so tightly you can't tell them apart.
Your mind runs a control agenda all day long. Some of its strategies are obvious: distraction, keeping busy, opting out. And some look nothing like control at all: the silver lining, the blessing count, the lesson. Same job, better manners. This episode is about acceptance, the first of the six processes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and about the half of the definition almost nobody teaches.
You're not avoiding the conversation. You're avoiding how it will feel to have it.