Many people fear that self-compassion will make them weak or less successful.

Self-compassion can be tender or fierce.

Self-compassion can make you more capable of effectively dealing with pain and difficulties.

For decades, I lived by an unwritten rule: Keep your head down, push through, and do not feel sorry for yourself. I treated self-compassion as a risky luxury—a soft indulgence that might rob me of determination, invite self-pity, and undermine my drive. I bought into the zeitgeist that being hard on yourself was how you kept yourself accountable and succeeded in life.

Many of my clinical patients voice similar fears. One man firmly believed he didn’t deserve self-compassion if his bad choices contributed to his suffering. Yet you can offer yourself compassion and still learn from your mistakes. Punishing or berating yourself isn’t the most effective remedy. In fact, research shows that self-flagellation breeds shame and paralysis, while self-compassion creates the emotional safety required to learn, adapt, and actually change.

I understood the research intellectually, but didn't truly see the need for, and didn't practice, self-compassion until a personal tragedy rocked my........

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