Salam. Semalam Mak Long mendengar Ted Talk Kristin Neff bertajuk "The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self-Compassion". https://youtu.be/IvtZBUSplr4
Menarik sekali perkongsian Kristin Neff dengan tonasi suara yang lunak. Ianya membawa Mak Long berfikir dan reflek diri. Bagaimana Mak Long menyantuni diri sendiri; menyantuni diri dengan baik dan belas kasihan atau sebaliknya melayan umpama musuh?
Mak Long catatkan ted talk ini.
Moga beroleh manfaat. Allahu 'Alam.
✏SELF-ESTEEM VS SELF-COMPASSION.
Compassion is important not only to others but to ourselves. The importance of including oneself in the circle of compassion, of treating oneself with the same kindness, care and concern that we treat a good friend. Compassion is needed especially in difficult times of our life.
Self-compassion offers a lot of benefit that self-esteem doesn't.
So let's first look at the meaning of self-esteem.
📌SELF-ESTEEM
It is the global evaluatian of self-worth, a self-judgement--am I a good person or am I a bad person.
For many years pychologists saw self-esteem as the marker of pschological health, and there is a lot of reason for that.
There is a lot of research that shows if you have low self-esteem, you hate yourself, you going to be depressed, anxious and all sorts of pychological problems. If it gets really bad; you might consider suicide.
However, high self-esteem is also problematic. The problem is not if you have it, it is how you have it.
In American culture, to have high self-esteem is to feel special and above average. It is not okay to be average. It is considered an insult to be average.
So what happens if we all want to be above average?
We started playing the little game, we started finding ways to puff ourselves up and put others down so we can feel better about ourselves in comparison.
Some people take this to an extreme. You may or may not know, there is an epidemic of narsarsist in American culture. Reserch tracking the narcarsism levels of college undergraduates for the past 25 years and they are at the highest level ever recorded. A lot of pychologists believe it is because of the self-esteem movement in schools.
There is a lot of nasty social dynamics that stem from needing to feel better than others, to feel good about ourselves. There is also an epidemic of bullying in schools.
Why do kids bully? Why do kids who are forming their sense of self feel they have to bully others.
It's partly to build their own self-esteem, to feel stronger and more powerful than the other kids they are bullying.
Why are we prejudice? Why we feel better as a group or community than others?
Another problem with self-esteem is it is contingen on success. We only feel good about ourselves when we succeed in the domains of life that are important to us.
What happens if we fail? What happens if we don't meet our ideal standards?
We feel lowsy, we feel teribble about ourselves. It is worse for women. Research shows the number one domain in which women invest in self-esteem is the perception of how attractive they are and the standards for women are so high.
Therefore, how do we get of the treadmill, this constant need to feel better than others; so that we can feel good about ourselves????
That's where self-compassion comes in.
📌SELF-COMPASSION
Self-compassion is not about judging ourselves positively.
Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all.
📌
3 CORE CONCEPTS OF SELF-COMPASSION
📚1. Self-kindness
Kindness vs harsh judgement.
Treating ourselves like we treated a good friend with encouragement, understanding, empathy, patience and gentleness.
Check how we treat ourselves especially on bad days where things aren't going very well. Often, we are harsher to ourselves and more cruel in the language we use. We say things to ourselves we would never say to someone we care about. We say to ourselves probably we wouldn't say to someone we didn't like very much. We are our own worst enemy.
With self-compassion we reverse the pattern and start treating ourselves like we treat our good friends.
📚2. Common Humanity
Self-esteem asks--how I am different than others?; self-compassion asks--how I am the same as others?
What are the ways we are the same as others; what does it mean to be human? All of us, the entire globe, we are imperfect people and our lives are imperfect. That is the shared human being experience.
Often what happens though, irrational, when we notice something is wrong with ourselves, we haven't reach our goal or we are struggling in life, we feel as if "something has gone wrong here", "this isn't normal" and "I shouldn't be failing to reach my goals".
The feeling of abnormality, of separation from others is so pyschologically damaging. We make it so much worse we are isolated in our suffering and our imperfection. When in fact, that is precisely what connects us to other people.
📚3. Mindfulness
Mindfulness means being in with what is in the present moment.
We need to turn toward, acknowledge, validate and accept we are suffering to feel compassionate about ourselves. Oftentimes, we are not aware of our own suffering and the suffering comes from our own harsh self-criticism. We get so lost in the role of self-critic, so identified with the part of ourselves that put the back up straight saying, "you are wrong, you should have done better" without noticing the pain we are causing to ourselves.
If we don't know what we are doing to ourselves with our harsh self-criticism, we cannot give ourselves the compassion we need.
So if we know it is painful, why do we do it?
There is a lot of reasons for self-criticism but the number one reason is we believe that we need self-criticism to motivate ourselves. If we are to kind to ourselves, we are self-indulgent and lazy.
So the question is: is it true?
Actually, research shows just the opposite. Self-criticism underminds our motivation.
When we critisize ourselves, we are tapping at our bodies' threat-defense system, the reptilian brain. The system evolved if there is a threat to our physical person, we would release adrenaline and cortisol that prepare for fight-or-fight response. The system response cause threats to own bodily self. Modern time threats, typically, not to one self but one self-concept.
When we think a thought about ourselves that we don't like, there is some imperfection, we feel threatened so we attack the problem meaning we attack ourselves.
What self-criticism, it is a double whammy, we are both the attacker and the attacked.
So self-criticism releases a lot of cortisol. If you are constantly self-critic, you have high level of stress and eventually the body shuts down to protect itself and you become depressed. And depression is not a motivational mindstate.
Fortunately, there is another way to feel safe, that is by tapping into the mammalian caregiver system. What is unique about mammals, they are born immature in which the infant want to be close to the mother and stay safe. Which means we are programmed to response to warmth, gentle touch and soft vocalisation.
When we give ourself self-compassion, reseach shows we actually reduce our cortisol levels and release ocytoxyn and opiates which are the feel-good hormones.
Thus, when we feel safe and comforted, we are in our optimal mindstate to do our best.
Self-compassion very strongly related to mental well-being, less deppresion, less anxiety, less stress, less perfectionism. It is equally strongly related to positive states, like happiness, life satisfaction, it leads to greater motivation, taking greater self-responsibily and making healthier life style choices.
This also linked to having more sense of connections to others, better interpersonal relationship.
It is actually very easy too see when we think about how to best motivate our children. For example, a son coming home from school with a failing math grade. The father has two different ways to motivate the child.
The first is when the son shows the failing math grade, he father give harsh critivism by saying, "I am ashamed of you, you' ll never amount to anything." Doesn't that make you cringe? Isn't that often precisely the type of language we use with ourselves?
What will happen to that son? Will he try harder? He will for a short term but eventually he is going to lose faith in himself. He will become depress and probably give up math because the consequences of failing math again is too dire.
But what if the father take a more compassionate approach. The son comes home, shows him the failing math grade and the father says "Uhh, ouch, it must be hurting. Give me a hug. I still love you. It happens to everyone. I know you want to go to get your math grade up because you want to go to college."
Here is what compassion says: "What can I do to help? How can I support you?"
The more loving and compassionate the father is, the better state, emotionally the son will be to do his best.
There has been an increase in the number of research carried out on self-compassion in recent years. Research finds self-compassion offers the benefit of self-esteem without the pitfalls. It is associated with strong mentel health. It is not associated with narsarcism, or constant social comparison or ego-defense aggression.
It also provides a much stable sense of self-worth than self-esteem does because it is there for you precisely when you fail. Just when self-esteem deserts you, self-compassion steps in. It gives you the sense of feeling valuable not because you have reached some standards or judge yourself positively but you are human worthy of love at that moment.
People sometimes think self-compassion is self-indulgent or selfish. It is not because the more we are able to keep our hearts open to ourselves, the more we have available to others.
So let's be more compassionate to ourselves. Especially women. You know how to do it. You know how to be a good friend. You know what to say to comfort someone when they are in need. You just have to remember to be a good friend to yourself.
It is easier than you think and it really could change your life. That is why self-compassion is an idea worth spreading.
Thank you.
Kristin Nelf
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