Originally published September 4 2005
Be self-compassionate for better mental health
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A recent study found that people with self-compassion can face life in a much more balanced way after negative influences such as defeat, loss, failure and rejection.
If life is a journey, we all run into potholes, and new research shows that those jolts might not be so bad if you treat yourself with compassion.
In other words, lighten up on yourself when failure comes your way.
Self-compassion might even help more than high self-esteem, report researchers from Wake Forest University.
"Although Western society has emphasized the importance of high self-esteem, the more important thing may be to have self-compassion -- the ability to treat oneself kindly in the face of failure, rejection, defeat, and other negative events," says researcher and psychology professor Mark Leary, PhD, in a news release.
Leary and colleagues presented three self-compassion studies in Washington, D.C. at the American Psychological Association's annual convention.
In the first study, students were asked to imagine themselves in certain situations, like causing their team to lose a game or forgetting their role in a play.
Those who were harsher on themselves were more likely to fret with statements like, "This is awful," or "I'm such a loser."
Lastly, students in the third test boosted self-compassion by recalling a failure from their lives and writing about it as if they were writing to a friend who had gone through the same thing.
They also reported being happier and less angry than participants lower in self-compassion.
Self-compassionate students were also less likely to dwell on negative events and to view neutral feedback positively, the study showed.
They handled failure better if they were kind to themselves about it, even if they had low self-esteem.
"A self-compassionate mindset may be particularly beneficial for people with low self-esteem," states Leary in the news release.
* Raising low self-esteem doesn't bring new coping skills if people still beat themselves up for failures.
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