The Gift of Self-Compassion

Did you know the following deceptively similar concepts - self-esteem, narcissism, and self-compassion - are different? I didn't.

There is a podcast interview w/ a psychologist, Dr Kristin Neff, on self-compassion. She talks about the differences among self-esteem, narcissism, and self-compassion and why self-compassion is important for our well-being. It is fascinating to see that self-compassion is different from self-indulgence or self-pity. It an act of being kind to ourselves without judgment. It is in a way the ultimate goal of psychotherapy. Well, at least, it is for me.

Below is an exchange between the interviewer and Kristin that I found pretty interesting re: the differences among the three.

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David: So all of this raises the question as to how self-compassion differs from being narcissistically self-centered.

Kristin Neff: It differs in many ways. So, again, for one, narcissism is all about me. Self-compassion, although that term "self" is there kind of as the target of the compassion, it really is all about recognizing the shared human condition. Compassion, almost by definition, means to "suffer with." So you suffer with someone else or you suffer with yourself in the sense that you frame yourself as part of this larger human community. And it also, the way I define it, entails mindfulness, which is seeing things clearly as they are as opposed to getting lost in your own personal soap opera. So when you see things as they are, you don't get lost in self-pity and the story of "poor me," and you recognize this is the human condition, to be imperfect, then it's really actually not self-centered at all. So that's one way it's different from narcissism.

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The interview is available in both audio and text at http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_index.php?idx=119&d=1&w=9&e=43061.