Engaging in self-care is one of the most common strategies that caregivers are advised to do. This isn’t surprising. Self-care has been linked to decreased caregiving stress and improved ability to cope. Yet, self-care has its limitations, especially as it does not directly address many of the immediate challenges that caregivers face.
Recent research has suggested a second key area – self-compassion. Unlike self-care, self-compassion focuses on how you feel about yourself. The combination of self-care and self-compassion is especially relevant for caregiving.
Using both of these approaches can help to make caregiving less frustrating and reduce the risk of caregiver burnout or building resentment.
Why Self-Care Isn’t Enough
Self-care is a critical skill for caregivers. You do need to take time out for yourself and simply relax. It’s also important to meet your needs, such as going to the doctor regularly and eating healthy food.
Thankfully, there are many good self-care approaches that you can try. Many of them are simple and can be done even if you have very little free time.
There’s one problem though – self-care often isn’t enough. It can also be unrealistic. Some caregivers struggle to take any time out for themselves at all. Respite care may be possible from time-to-time, but this is little comfort when every day feels overwhelmingly difficult.
Caregivers who can practice self-care regularly do often find that it decreases overall stress levels. Even so, frustrating situations regularly emerge during caregiving. Self-care doesn’t offer tools to address these and may not help at all.
The Concept of Self-Compassion
Self-compassion isn’t a new idea, but it has become more popular in recent years.
The concept is basically what the name suggests – that you feel compassionate towards yourself. A good way to look at it is that self-compassion is where you are treating yourself like you would a close friend who is going through a difficult time.
You can also consider what compassion looks and feels like. We all have some experience of feeling compassion for others. Self-compassion is simply taking that concept and turning it inwards.
Kristin Neff, an expert in the field, highlights three key areas of self-compassion:
- Self-Kindness vs Self-Judgement: People who are self-compassionate rely on being kind to themselves, rather than focusing on criticism. This includes an acceptance that humans are flawed. Everyone is going to make mistakes and they won’t always perform at their best. There is also a realization that life isn’t perfect. There is no way that life ‘should’ be. Instead, there will always be painful experiences. Accepting these concepts can make it much easier to respond to the difficulties that life throws at us.
- Common Humanity vs Isolation: Common humanity focuses on the idea that everyone suffers. Understanding this can help people to connect with one another, rather than isolating. This is much more powerful than viewing yourself as the only person who is going through such challenges.
- Mindfulness vs Over-Identification: Self-compassion aims for a balanced approach to emotions. This involves mindfulness, where you are aware of the emotions and mind state that you are experiencing – without judging. At the same time, it’s important not to over-identify with the emotions. Over-identifying is where you become caught up in the emotions. This often leads to negative reactivity.
She highlights these areas in the video below.
How Does Self-Compassion Help?
Many people focus on the ‘stiff upper lip’ approach to challenges. This often includes trying to force your way through any difficulties, ignoring any negative emotions that arise.
The idea can sound good at first glance. After all, negative emotions can make it difficult to do what you need to. The challenge is that brute forcing past emotions is rarely effective in the long run. It tends to lead to stress and anxiety, making life more challenging.
The pattern is particularly relevant for caregivers. The caregiving role can often be stressful and overwhelming – which sometimes leads to burnout.
As anyone with children will know, the idea of rigid discipline with no compassion rarely leads to good results. So, why do we treat ourselves that way when we wouldn’t act like that towards our kids or our friends.
On the other hand, self-compassion is a way of accepting your emotions and circumstances – then being kind to yourself. You care for yourself regardless of whether you are having a good day or a bad one.
Doing so is more powerful than you might expect. Research shows that self-compassion can help to make people more resilient. Self-compassionate individuals end up having a better ability to adapt to life’s changes.
In fact, one recent study found that higher levels of self-compassion were linked to decreased levels of caregiver burden.
Aren’t Self-Care and Self-Compassion Selfish?
The inward focus of self-care and self-compassion can make them sound incredibly selfish. We’re often taught that caring for others should be the priority, especially when they’re worse off than we are.
But, in reality, self-care and self-compassion are both critical for your overall health. If nothing else, they help to keep your stress levels in check. This outcome alone is important, as chronic stress has been linked to many health problems.
That’s not all.
Caring for yourself is similar to refilling the fuel tanks on a car. If you don’t meet your own physical and emotional needs, you’re not going to be much help to anyone.
Think about what it is like to try and function on hardly any sleep every night. Everything that you do gets compromised. You’re much more likely to snap at the people around you, to make mistakes and to be miserable company. Similar outcomes occur if you don’t meet your own mental health needs.
Simply put, you have to care for yourself if you want to care for anyone else.
The Flipside of Self-Care
Of course, there are bad sides to both self-compassion and self-care. Self-compassion requires a careful balance, or you risk getting overwhelmed by your emotions and suffering them too much.
Both self-care and self-compassion can also lead to selfishness, if done incorrectly.
For example, self-compassion doesn’t normally stop you from being productive, as there is a recognition that you need to do things to protect your own health. Even so, some people end up using self-compassion as an excuse to avoid things that they don’t want to do. In a similar way, self-care can be taken to excess, where you end up focusing on your needs at the expense of others.
These aspects don’t mean that self-compassion and self-care are bad, far from it. They simply mean that you need to be aware and pay attention to the patterns in your life.
Self-Compassion Helps You To Be Compassionate
A somewhat surprising aspect of self-compassion is that it helps to promote your compassion for others. This might seem like an odd outcome, as self-compassion is focused inwards. However, the ability to care for yourself regardless of any mistakes that you make is a powerful one. Regular practice of this means that you’ll often naturally have compassion for others, without putting any effort into the process.
Self-compassion also helps you to be kinder. When you’re compassionate to yourself, you’re likely to be less stressed and less reactive in any given situation. This reduces the risk of bad interactions in caregiving and is likely to decrease caregiver stress.
Self-Compassion Doesn’t Mean Feeling Sorry For Yourself
Self-compassion can sound like you’re simply dwelling on your problems. But, that’s not really the idea. Instead, self-compassion focuses on being aware of what you are feeling and being kind to yourself.
It’s kind of like when a parent sees a child struggling. They might say something like “I’m sorry that you’re having a hard time, how can I help?”. This type of approach involves comfort and also finding ways forward. That’s the heart of self-compassion too. You’re aiming to support yourself emotionally and also make good decisions in challenging situations.
Where Do You Begin?
Most of us have a fairly persistent negative voice that puts us down – making it hard to feel good about ourselves. This can make self-compassion and self-care challenging.
Of the two areas, self-compassion is the best starting point.
The reason is simple. When you’re compassionate with yourself, the idea of self-care makes sense. If you focus on self-care first, there’s a risk that you’ll simply feel guilty for any time that you take to yourself. This reduces the effectiveness of self-care.
The best author that I’ve found on this topic is Kristin Neff. She is considered an expert on the field and runs a self-compassion website.
She also has a fantastic workbook that can help you to step through self-compassion and learn it for yourself. The book is one that I’ve purchased recently myself and have reviewed it elsewhere on the site.
There is also an audiobook that you can check out. Many people will even be able to access it for free using the free trial from Audible.
If neither of those options appeals to you, take a look at Kristen’s site. There are plenty of resources and discussions on there, including guided meditations and exercises.
Leave a Reply