Why Self-Compassion is Important for Your Wellbeing

On the surface, self-compassion might sound like something everyone can get on board with. Being kind to ourselves isn’t supposed to be hard, right? As a mental health counselor, wellbeing instructor, and medical burnout researcher and consultant, I have spent many years working with and talking to all types of clinicians about their experiences with burnout, distress, and wellbeing. What I have found over the years is that self-compassion isn’t always an easy concept for clinicians. In fact, many have responded with skepticism when I raised the concept.  Here are a few of the responses I have heard (not direct quotes, due to confidentiality): 

• My training was highly competitive, and I learned early on that I had to push myself if I wanted to succeed. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been hard on myself, and if I start going easy on myself now I might lose everything I have worked for. 
• Being kind to myself sounds great and all, but there isn’t really time or space for that. The way things are set up, If I try to set boundaries and take care of myself, that just means that either my colleagues will have to take on more and be overwhelmed, or that my patients will suffer. I’m not really ok with either, so I just keep going as long as I can because there isn’t really a valid alternative. 
• Maybe self-compassion is a good goal in other jobs, but in medicine, isn’t it a bit selfish? I went into this field to help people and a lot of my patients have a huge amount of need. How am I supposed to feel ok taking time away from patients to take care of myself?  
• I’m already exhausted and emotionally drained by my work. I am around suffering all the time and it is really starting to get to me. I feel like what I need is to figure out how to not care so much so that I have some kind of buffer from the pain and frustration. Self-compassion sounds ‘soft’ and vulnerable - I really think that listening to my feelings is just going to make things worse. 

Do any of those resonate with you? If so, you are not alone. Self-compassion can feel scary and also like it doesn’t really ‘fit’ inside of the clinical world, especially not in a field that often encourages clinicians to give 110%. When you break that down, that is a directive to burn out - and it is far from self-compassionate. But self-compassion is crucial to finding a way to live sustainably in health care.

I ground all of my work - clinical and educational - in self-compassion, especially when I am working with clinicians. That is because I was trained in the Medical Humanities to view medicine as a “healing art,” - one that pairs scientific inquiry and practice with creative, empathetic human connection in order to treat whole human beings, rather than simply diseases. That means that practicing medicine is grounded in each and every individual clinician’s humanness, and that our ability (I am a clinician too) to be present with our patients is dependent upon our relationship with ourselves. That is why working to develop a healthy, supportive and compassionate relationship with ourselves is so important to being able to work in the medical profession without burning out or succumbing to compassion fatigue. 

But what exactly is self-compassion and how can practicing it improve clinician wellbeing? Self-compassion expert Dr. Kristin Neff explains that “self-compassion refers to being supportive toward oneself when experiencing suffering or pain - be it caused by personal mistakes and inadequacies or external life challenges.” She and her colleagues have done extensive research on the benefits of self-compassion and demonstrated that people who are more self-compassionate report experiencing both mental and physical benefits. Self-compassionate people have been found to be more likely to report feeling satisfied with their lives, having a stable sense of self-worth, being more emotionally intelligent, being resilient in the face of hardship, feeling authentically connected in relationship with others, sleeping well and maintaining better overall health. In this video, Dr. Neff explains how self-compassion can alleviate burnout. 

Practicing self-compassion means acknowledging negative experiences and feelings in a non-judgmental way and extending kindness to oneself. It is learning how to be our own friend, confidant, support, and advocate who has our own back and listens to what we need and what is important to us. It will not magically eliminate the more challenging aspects of being a clinician, but it will provide us with a self-renewing fountain of caring and support that can always be accessible when we need it. That can be both sustaining and lifesaving in a profession where we endeavor to care through so much suffering and ambiguity, because the reality is that compassion for others begins with compassion for ourselves.