Dr Simmo’s HOT READING TIP FOR 2012.

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Posted by Dr.Hughes in the Creative Community category on 28-12-2011

Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself up and Leave Insecurity Behind, by Kristin Neff.

This book encourages you to be compassionate toward your failings and imperfections, to take away judgement of yourself and to end the self-esteem game. Learn to give yourself the same caring support you’d give to one of your friends.

“Western culture places great emphasis on being kind to our friends, family, and neighbours who are struggling, Not so when it comes to ourselves… self-kindness, by definition means that we stop the constant self-judgement and disparaging internal commentary that most of us have come to see as normal. It requires us to understand our foibles and failures instead of condemning them. It entails clearly seeing the extent to which we harm ourselves through relentless self-criticism, and ending our internal war. ”

This excellent book looks at the origins of self-blame and criticism.Choosing to relate to ourselves with kindness rather than contempt is a pragmatic approach. Ask yourself:

What are you observing?
What are you feeling? What are you needing right now?

Here’s an exercise used by my clients for learning about and changing critical self-talk.                                                     

1. The first step toward changing the way you treat yourself is to notice when you are being self-critical. Try to be as accurate as possible and note the language you use toward yourself. In a sense you can use this exercise to both learn about your self-talk and to defuse it. I encourage my clients to write what are called ‘morning pages’: a free, uncensored, stream of consciousness writing for about 15 minutes every morning. What is the tone of the language you use? What of your self-critical voice seeps through? Morning pages can help you to get a clear sense of how you talk to yourself.

2. Underline particularly damaging self-statements. Make an effort to soften the voice and do so with compassion rather than self-judgement. Create alternatives by reframing your observations in a more positive and self-accepting way. It might help by imagining what a compassionate friend might say to you in this situation. Learn supportive self-talk in this way. The important thing is that you find a gap to start acting kindly, find a moment of peace, a suggestion of acceptance.

When faced with human imperfection we can either respond with kindness and care or with judgement and criticism.

We’re all in this together … more self-compassion exercises to follow soon!

 

 

 

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