Self-Compassion can help combat Self-Criticism

Our world has an expectation that we should be continuously judging, evaluating and improving ourselves.  We judge ourselves on our appearance, our social skills, our career, our performances, our academic achievements, our relationships.  These judgements can lead to self-criticism as we find it increasingly difficult to achieve our goals.

Self-criticism can be useful at times but if we allow our inner critic to take over it can undermine our self-confidence.  This can cause unhappiness and lead to personal challenges such as depression, anxiety disorders, stress, anger and procrastination.

However if we learn to develop self-compassion we will be able to disempower our inner critic and become more confident.  Self-compassion encourages us to look after ourselves and treat ourselves in a way which will enhance our best qualities.  Self-compassion discourages comparing ourselves to others.  Self-compassion is not walking away from challenging situations, it allows us to recognise difficult emotions and generate inner support which will help us to cope with the difficulties we face.

References

Welford, M. (2012), Building Your Self-Confidence using Compassion Focused Therapy.  London: Robinson