Self-criticism doesn’t work

You’ll find that practicing self-compassion is more effective when directed towards supporting your needs, rather than being a vague promise to be kinder to yourself.

To understand your needs, you must first have some sense of what you value most in life. It’s in the momen...

When you offer compassion to a younger version of yourself, you’re stepping out of the cognitive rigidity that typically fuels your self-criticism and feelings of shame.

By externalizing and connecting with a version of yourself that isn’t technically present, you might find you can more e...

Recognizing that you’ve fallen into self-criticism is the crucial first step in saving yourself from it and practicing more self-compassion:

• Did I call myself names?
• Was I looking for the worst-case scenario? 
• Did I use words like ‘should’ or ‘must...

Despite the extensive research demonstrating the mental and physical benefits of self-compassion, it’s an often unknown, overlooked, or even avoided practice.

• Some people are unfamiliar with self-compassion because it was never, or only infrequently, modeled by their parents or ca...

If your inner critic said: ‘I’m so nosy. I shouldn’t have asked such personal questions,’ you would restate this as factually as possible. For example: ‘I asked one question about my boss’s marriage that, in this moment, I wish I hadn’t asked.’

Stripping down the situation to its i...

You can do this in retrospect or in the moment you catch your inner critic speaking to you.

Imagine your inner critic as a being that lives inside your brain and talks to you. Rather than taking what it says (eg, ‘You’re so pathetic’) to be true or criticizing it for speaking up at all...