Love, Love me Do!
Q: What can being kind to yourself lead to?
Kinnari’s Dialogue
"I've noticed over the last year that your inner voice has become less critical" my therapist noted to me a couple of months ago. "Hmm yes.. I think you are right. About time!" I responded with a big smile. This is something I had been working on for years without making a noticeable dent so it was nice to finally see a change.
As an overweight kid, growing up in India wasn't always easy. It’s a culture where people feel free to offer you their opinions even if it comes at the cost of hurting you. Friends, family and strangers felt it was their “duty” to tell me what was wrong with me. Most often when it came from friends and family it was well-intentioned but it was always about looking better instead of focusing on being healthier. While I was dealing with the “affectionate” names and jokes related to being chubby, my cousins were dealing with comments about the color of their skin. No one was spared, especially if you were a girl. Years of hearing the same thing over and over again in your youth makes you start seeing yourself with the lens that others see you.
I also grew up in a house around a Dad that was very critical of us. He felt it was an act of love and that his criticism would make us improve, make us stronger. What he didn't know, and what most people don't realize is that the way we talk to our children, the things we say to them they internalize. The voices of our parents become our inner voice. I became self-critical, developing a sharp and hurtful inner voice. Even when I did something good, I'd compare myself to others and sometimes to an idealized version of myself. I tended to minimize what I had achieved and not take pride in who I was becoming. I carried my insecurities with me through my twenties and thirties. My self-talk was negative.
"Self-talk is the way you talk to yourself about yourself. Negative self-talk is a self-punishment and an extremely insidious one at that. If you make a habit of berating yourself, you’ll experience chronic guilt that morphs into shame. Unless you disrupt your self-punishment with some self-compassion, you’ll eventually adopt a false, shameful identity as someone who is incapable, damaged, lazy, annoying, a mess-whatever mean adjectives you’re using to describe yourself."
- Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist’s guide to losing control
Self-compassion as a tool
It wasn't until my late thirties that I started to do the deep work of accepting myself for who I was. During covid, I attended a talk by Dr Kristin Neff on self-compassion. She is to self-compassion what Brene Brown is to shame and vulnerability. According to Dr Neff, there are three critical components to self-compassion. Here is how she explains it -
Kindness: Self-compassion means being kind and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. We’re warm and supportive when confronted with the imperfection of life rather than cold or harsh. We’re helpful and encouraging, like a good friend, coach or mentor would be. This inner support allows us to feel safe and puts us in a better frame of mind to cope with challenges or make needed changes in our lives.
Common humanity: Self-compassion is rooted in our common humanity. When we struggle or make mistakes, there’s often an irrational but pervasive sense of isolation – as if “I” were the only person in the world having this painful experience. All humans suffer, however. Not the same way or the same amount, but the very definition of being “human” means being vulnerable, flawed and imperfect. When we are self-compassionate, we recognize that our suffering connects us rather than separates us from others.
Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced, mindful approach to our suffering so that we neither suppress or exaggerate it. Treating ourselves like we would a friend means we step outside our usual way of looking at things, putting our own situation into better perspective. Mindfulness allows us to turn toward our pain with acceptance of the present moment reality. It prevents us from becoming “over-identified” with difficult thoughts and feelings, so we aren’t swept away by negative reactivity.
There are so many times where I've heard either myself or my close friends say "But why should I be kind to myself? I deserve this. I made the decision to do x. I'm the only one to blame for being in this position." But self-compassion starts with us giving ourselves permission to encounter what we feel. "You are allowed to feel sad, to feel angry, to feel disappointed..." Self-compassion allows us to acknowledge the pain we are feeling and respond with kindness instead of criticism. While our choices may have been the reason we are in pain, blaming ourselves doesn't do any good. It puts us in a negative frame of mind robbing us of the opportunity to make any progress.
"As an emotional-regulation strategy, self-compassion is king...We underestimate self-compassion all the time. We think of self-compassion as optional, when there’s nothing optional about it. You can’t heal or grow without self-compassion. In the absence of self-compassion, the best you can hope for is stagnation."
- Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist’s guide to losing control
It has taken me years to be kinder towards myself. What's been beautiful about this journey though is that it's also led me towards self-love. I started with healing my wounds with kindness towards myself, then somewhere along the way I learned to accept myself as I was - messy, scattered, disorganized but also joyful, creative, funny and loving. And today when I ask my daughter if she loves herself and she asks me the same, I can truthfully say.. Yes, yes I do!
So on this Valentine's day - a day that is celebrated for loving others - remember that loving ourselves is the foundation to all other love. We do not have to love. We choose to love. If you are not in a place where you love yourself dearly then start with kindness, start with self-compassion.
“One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.”
- Bell Hooks, All About Love
Mitali’s Dialogue
It was a simple question from my husband eight years ago - “How was this vacation for you?” A few months prior I had complained that our vacations were starting to feel more exhausting than relaxing. It may have just been the toll of doing multiple international trips with two young kids in a year. Or maybe it was the reality of life with a child with special needs who struggled to use words to express his needs. Vacations were majorly disruptive to his daily routines which often resulted in angry outbursts. I found myself constantly worrying and prioritizing activities that kept him engaged so that I could keep the peace in the family while on the road.
My husband’s question made me pause and realize that I was failing to identify my own needs. Initially this made me unpack what worked for me and what didn't while on vacation. And then I started to get honest with myself about how I was feeling on a daily basis and recognizing when things didn't feel right. There were times when it felt easy to go along with what my boys wanted and there were times when I realized that what I wanted was completely different. The mantra I found myself repeating was - “I matter, my needs matter.”
Over the years the more I practiced pausing and checking in with myself, the better I got at noticing niggling feelings that I would have ignored in the past. It wasn't always easy to tune into that voice as I took pride in being accommodating and adjusting to others. My emotions became a gateway to recognizing when I was choosing someone else’s needs over my own. Feelings of anger, frustration, guilt, disappointment, anxiety became acceptable when I viewed them as signals. I discovered an intelligence that was always within me if I chose to listen to it.
As I brought awareness to my emotions, I would remind myself that “this belongs”. Then I would bring to mind the metta or lovingkindness meditation that I had learnt a few years ago.
Repeating this prayer taught me to be kind to myself and forgive myself for my inadequacies. Being kind to myself meant talking to myself like I would to one of my kids or my friends. Could I create a safe space for all feelings to arise and then bring compassion to myself? Instead of berating myself, I learnt to let go of expectations. As I did this practice, I would notice the love and tenderness that I felt towards myself. Years of practice has shown me the importance of treating myself with care and respect. Honoring my needs has led me to discover new ways of taking care of my physical and mental well-being and carving out time to fulfill them.
"... Contentment is something entirely different. It comes into being only when you see yourself as you are without any desire to change, without any condemnation or comparison- which does not mean that you merely accept what you see and go to sleep. But when the mind is no longer comparing, judging, evaluating, and is therefore capable of seeing what is from a moment to moment without wanting to change it- in that very perception is the eternal."
-J. Krishnamurti