Building a Supportive Relationship with Yourself

by Ryan Berkompas, a Doxa Counselor.

When I was a new student therapist beginning my clinical work for my Master’s in Counseling, I was awash in feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, doubts, and harsh self-criticism. I would make snap comparisons between the incredible skills of my professors or other experienced professionals and my fumbling attempts to recreate their way of helping people. My typical way of handling these experiences included a mix of teaming up with my inner critic against myself or furiously trying to prove my own doubts “wrong” by not making mistakes and building a fragile sense of competence founded on perfectionism. This led to daily bouts with anxiety and dreading entering into new situations. 

However, early on, I made a small pivot that has continued to have major impacts on the joy and fulfillment I have in my work to this day. This move simply involved taping a quote from the Adventure Time character Jake the Dog in my cubby (Yes, we had cubbies in graduate school). The quote was laid over a picture of Jake’s face and read: “Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards sorta being good at something.” Posting this seemingly silly cartoon quote was a way for me to recognize and name the discomfort and doubt I experienced as I sought to master something that I deeply cared about. It represented me letting go of a little bit of the self-criticism and perfectionism and turning towards kindness and compassion for myself as I made my way through the difficult work of learning to care for others. It’s also a small window into why I have come to view self-compassion as centrally important in working through difficulties in life.

Before continuing to discuss self-compassion, it’s important to point to how we can “till the soil” to prepare ourselves to build a supportive relationship with ourselves. The first step that most people need to make towards being kinder with themselves is to start by recognizing the part inside them that is so mean, critical, and demeaning towards themselves. I have come to believe that self-criticism and general inner-directed meanness is nearly universal in humans. Many of my clients readily acknowledge that they treat themselves in ways they would never imagine treating another person. Because of this, I seek to help people learn how to notice and get some distance from their automatic, negative thoughts about themselves. This is itself a big step toward treating yourself more gently. Everyone progresses through this step at different rates; some people who are very, very used to beating themselves up may need to work at this for a while. However long it takes, it’s a process that just about every person finds themselves working on when they decide to try out the self-compassionate approach. 

While seeking to make self-compassion feel doable and accessible to my clients, I often think about how much a hyphen can cause trouble with trying to learn a kinder way of dealing with ourselves. Something about “self-” added to the word “compassion” causes most people to freeze up and feel incapable of taking another move forward. I think it’s because we make an unnecessary distinction between acting compassionately towards others and acting compassionately towards ourselves. This creates a “compassion for thee, but not for me” mindset. It’s my opinion that compassion for self is the same as compassion for the other since it is our common human experience to suffer and feel that life is hard. Any acknowledgement of that suffering and dealing with it kindly is worthwhile and grows our capacity to respond to all of life’s difficulties with compassion. 

When we are willing to make it a practice, we can find that compassion and kindness are available to us at any point when life hurts; even when our suffering comes from our own faults, failures, and poor decisions. “Practice” is an important word here. It’s necessary to decide that you want to build a more supportive relationship with yourself, but that is just the beginning. This is where I think Russ Harris’ two steps of self-compassion can help give an idea of how to go from wanting self-compassion to building it into your life one moment at a time. Harris, a popular author and trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, says that self-compassion begins by acknowledging our suffering or pain. When trying this, it’s important to use words that feel authentic to yourself whether they’re “This is a moment of suffering” or “This really f**king hurts” or something in between those two! You can get a feel for how you want to practice acknowledging your pain by writing out phrases that you could use. You can also think about how you have had experiences of acknowledging another person’s pain or when someone caring has acknowledged your suffering as guides to how you would do that for yourself. 

Once you have faced your pain kindly instead of judging yourself for having it, denying it, or ignoring it, you can practice the second step: Responding with kindness. This step involves doing a 180-degree turn on our usual team-up with our inner critic (see above) and learning how to engage in gentle, encouraging self-talk. Some examples of this might include “Given what you’re going through, anyone would be hurting/anxious/angry right now,” “It’s human to fail/struggle/fall down/mess up,” or “Hello, _______(anger, sadness, anxiety, pain); I’m here and I will take good care of you.” Again, try to find words that feel genuine to your way of speaking.

Going through life after learning practices that support you rather than tear you down allows you to embrace difficult, painful thoughts and feelings as part of your human experience. It also helps to bridge the gap between learning how to open up to our inner experiences and acting in alignment with what we care about most deeply by giving us a supportive, encouraging travel companion. 

If you’re balking at these words while reading this, I ask that you take a moment to notice your reaction and ask yourself if your inner critic might be making an appearance right now. If that’s the case, remember that the first step for most people is to learn how to get some space between themselves and their automatic negative thoughts. If you can get that distance, it opens up an opportunity to talk to yourself in a way that is flexible, balanced, and more in line with how you most want to show up for yourself. However, most people need to experience that for themselves rather than just be told by a blog post. So, if you’re interested in being taught more about what’s been discussed above then please reach out to me at 601-207-4699 or use the Doxa web form to schedule a session.