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Self-Compassion is an Inner Mechanism of Compensation for When we Fail


Introduction

This is a very strange assertion: to say that self-compassion is an inner mechanism of compensation for when we fail. The aim of this post is to make this statement a lot more understandable and ultimately real to you.

Compassion of a very ordinary mechanical type is brought forth in people when we see that others are suffering, undergoing a difficult time or have failed in something or rather, and or are worse off than ourselves. So self-compassion is ourselves giving that to ourselves, but in the wrong way, where we just end up getting stuck, not getting up (and trying again) and feeling worse and worse about ourselves, others, our situation and the world.



An Inner Mechanism of Compensation?

Self-compassion is really a compensation for when we fail in life, or in any endeavour that we undertake, whether it be something in our human life or something in our spiritual life.

When we fail we need something to console us and to commiserate our failure, and we have just that element inside of ourselves, and that element is what we call self-compassion. It is a psychological characteristic or ‘I’ (ego, one of the many that we have) that feels sorry for ourselves and says things like, I’m a failure, I’m doing nothing in life, I’m going nowhere, I’m not going to make it. We feel that we can’t achieve, that we can’t get to where we want to go.

 Self-compassion seeks others that are sympathetic to its failure and join us in our lamentations about having failed. It doesn’t like people who say: “get up and try again” and or “stop feeling sorry for yourself and just do it”. This is because it wants to compensate for its failure by giving itself compassion, recovery time, rest, feel good movies, feel good comfort food, lamentations, regrets, going over and over the reasons why we failed, blaming others etc. etc.


A Debt with Ourselves

When we don’t do all that we can, in other words when we don’t give our best we create a debt with ourselves. Or when we have an expectation of ourself, we create a debt with ourselves when we fail. And to compensate for that debt or to pay that debt we have the psychological element called self-compassion that trues to cancel that debt by giving ourselves compassion of a negative type, justifying the failure saying that wea re useless and good for nothing.


The Right Kind of Self-Compassion

If we were to say to people don’t have compassion with yourself, a lot of people would protest. We actually want to say don’t have the negative type of self-compassion with yourself. Definitely don’t indulge in that and go ahead and eliminate it, already.

You can have the positive self-compassion which recognises that we failed and impulses us to get up immediately and learn about where we failed, and try again correcting our path that lead to our failure. Get up, repent, repair and go again until you triumph, that is the real self-compassion because that is what brings you hope, makes you authentically feel better and leads you to triumph which is entirely in your benefit. The other negative type of self-compassion leads you in a hole that you dig deeper and deeper every minute that you don’t get out of it.


Conclusion

So I really hope that we have made this topic of self-compassion a lot clearer and that you may find it useful for when you feel self-compassion to be able to understand that when we feel this way, we are only trying to balance our failure and we don’t need self-compassion to do that for us we can do it by trying again, getting up and going again!

End.

Comments

  1. Unknown19 December 2015 at 05:53

    Through my experience and anyone else who has been stuck in the mire of addiction, one of the extremes of self-compassion is the crystallizing of an external substance abuse vice to handle the wicked self pity and self love that has taken hold of you by ones own dreariness felt from failing in life. Self compassion can create vicious internal cycles of psychological degradation which can lead to misery and even depression. Pride being the benefactor of self compassion uses this defect often with stealth or with blatant attention seeking. By either emotionally black mailing your self or other people you use to gain sympathy for your plight. This is the hole you mention which can be dug deeper and deeper.

    Returning to the value of compassion by virtue of the Being is vital to expressing this value in a balanced way both to oneself and to others.

    Thank you for you post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gnostic Aspirant21 December 2015 at 08:59

    Thank you very much for your comments. I agree 100% with your observations. You also have by the looks of it real experience behind those observations. Thank you for expressing your understanding in such a clear way and I especially really like the last line that you sent: "Returning to the value of compassion by virtue of the Being is vital to expressing this value in a balanced way both to oneself and to others. " That for me is the key.

    Thanks to you and my pleasure for writing the post.

    ReplyDelete

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