Why Is It So Much Harder to Be Nice to Ourselves Than to Other People?

...Another of the central aspects of Neff’s concept of self-compassion is one we should all be able to relate to. To be truly kind to yourself, she argues, is to realize that whatever shame, embarrassment, disappointment, sorrow or anxiety you might be experiencing, those feelings are being shared, somewhere, by someone else. Because they’re all inescapable aspects of being biological humans dealing with our universal human shit. And it’s this element, waking up to what Neff calls our “common humanity,” that helps explain why some 75 percent of us are emotionally generous with friends but are continually short-changing ourselves.

Our emotional asymmetry, she says, springs from the fact “that self-criticism and self-compassion tap in to two different physiological systems.” When we self-criticize, explains Neff, it’s often a trigger for our body’s fight-or-flight stress response, which is controlled by a neurological network known, slightly confusingly, as the sympathetic nervous system. Evolved in our hunter-gatherer past to put us in a state of high alertness and heart-thumping readiness for action, it’s a system that’s all too quick to activate whenever we feel threatened. When the threat arises from ourselves, “because we’ve failed or we aren’t good enough,” says Neff, “then we try to fight ourselves, control ourselves, so we can be safe. But when my friend fails, I’m not directly threatened. So I don’t have to go into that fight, flight or freeze mode.”

“The thing we have to remember,” she says, is that our aggressive reaction toward ourselves “is all about wanting to be safe.” But it turns out our bodies have a second mechanism for helping us do that. This parasympathetic nervous system is “a later thing evolutionarily — the mammalian care system,” says Neff, which regulates the heart rate and our levels of “feel-good” hormones such as oxytocin. This system helps mammals bond with each other “in the context of warmth, care, kindness, touch and gentle sounds. That’s what motivates children to be near their parents and motivates parents to take care of their children.” But compared to the fight-or-flight path to feeling secure, this system “doesn’t come online as quickly and it takes a little extra effort.”

“So all we’re doing with self-compassion,” says Neff, “is we’re teaching people to use this other safety system — the care system — for themselves, to help them feel safe. It’s very doable. That’s the crazy thing: It’s not that hard for people to do. Because they already have it!”

Which makes sense of why the mannerisms of being nice to yourself — those kind words and ballad-singer heart-pressing and head-caressing — might actually have a great deal of merit in fortifying our mental defenses. “I don’t want to make self-compassion sound like some sort of tonic for all of life’s ills,” says Kreiss, “but the research suggests it’s a learnable skill that unlocks many of the most sought-after goods of life.”

It’s just as Whitney Houston once sang while lightly tapping on her chest: “Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.” (See? Diva hands: All of life’s truths. Someone really should get on this.)

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