How not to do self-compassion

and what to try instead

Intrusive thoughts got you down? Negative self-talk buzzing in your brain? Beating yourself up for not meeting your own arbitrary (and most likely unrealistic) standards? Anxious for no reason? 

Whatever your particular flavor of OCD / anxiety / worry / uncomfortable emotions, have I got some (bad) advice for you! 

In a truly selfless act, I have tested out what’s not helpful, so you don’t have to! After decades of tireless and extensive research (sample size of one), I can definitively say these practices are guaranteed to make a bad moment last.

Below is a detailed (yet not completely comprehensive) list of ways NOT to respond to yourself when you’re having a hard time.

• Take your thoughts at face value. Trust them implicitly. Yes, you are the world’s most irresponsible person because you did (or didn’t do) X, Y, or Z. This mistake or thought or feeling wipes out any good you may have ever done or ever hope to do. It’s over. Give up now. 

• Judge your feelings. Seriously, you’re such an idiot for feeling sad/mad/jealous/resentful/anxious, etc. Why can’t you just get it together? You should know better by now. 

• Oh hey, now that you’re feeling shitty, why don’t you do more things that will make you feel shitty. 

  • Avoid your obligations, drop deadlines. 

  • Don’t you dare text that friend back or make a dent in your to do list. 

  • Shut it down. And by it I mean everything. Disengage from all of life. 

  • Isolate yourself from the people, activities, and anything you love.

  • Actually cross LOVE out of your vocabulary. It’s a stupid word anyway. 

  • Stone wall joy and curiosity.

  • Stay stuck in your head, in your rut, in your negative thinking.

  • Bang your head against the proverbial wall again and again and again

  • Bang       

  •            bang        

  •                     bang

  • Don’t go outside.

  • Don’t drink water or eat a snack.

  • Don’t take a deep breath.

  • For God’s sake don’t exercise or paint or draw or do anything that might make you feel. . . good or better or at least not so stuck. 

• Ruminate on all of your past mistakes. The more vivid the memory, the deeper sinking the regret, the better. 

  • Now, do your best to conjure up all of your past embarrassments. Yes, please keep thinking about that time you missed a spelling word in front of all your friends in the 3rd grade Spelling Bee. By all means, remember in vivid detail the time you got asked out on the bus by Kyle W. and everyone snickered and you didn’t actually “go out” anywhere and even then you had a sneaking suspicion that you were the butt of some kind of joke. Relive the time your gymnastics coach alerted you to the tampon string hanging out of your leotard AFTER you competed a beam routine in front of a packed gym. This is gold. Simmer here in this shame soup.

• Hmm, embarrassment is not enough. Escalate to the real, soul crushing regrets. (That even though I’m an open book, I cannot even name here–that relationship you squandered, the words you can’t take back, the action that caused irreparable damage to people you care about). 

• Now that you’re convinced that you’re the worst human on earth, let’s make it true! 

• Set off a brand new cascade of failures. Maybe that first negative feeling was a fluke, out of your control. Let’s cause some real damage on purpose! 

  • Lash out at your kids, your spouse, your roommate, your dog.

  • Send that spiteful text.

  • Say the hurtful thing.

  • Push away the people you love and then act like they’re crazy for feeling hurt. 

  • Stew in resentment. 

  • Practice passive aggression. (or outright aggression based on the culture of your family of origin).  

• This one is important: assume you will feel this way forever. 

I have to come to the end of my list, but don’t think for one minute that, like Brian McKnight, you can’t start back at one, rinse and repeat in an endless cycle of self-loathing. 

There you go! 

***

Okay, okay. If you made it this far, I think you deserve to know what I actually recommend instead. I’ve heard of (and tried) many techniques for managing anxiety, reframing negative thoughts, and dealing with difficult emotions. 

Like the title suggests, the response above is decidedly not one of self-compassion. In fact, most of those actions could fall under the category of self-punishment¹. Whether intentional or not, when we feel like we’ve done something bad or experience a negative emotion, it’s easy to believe that we’re undeserving of good things. And when we believe we don’t deserve good things, we act accordingly and avoid the very activities and actions that would help us feel better. 

When I’m stuck in the shame and self-punishment spiral, the response that’s helped me the most doesn’t focus on reframing thoughts or managing anxiety at all.

My favorite response is action oriented: act as if you don’t feel shitty.

Even better, intentionally reward or treat yourself to something good. 

Basically, do the opposite of any of the actions listed above. The key part here is to do something that you feel like you don’t deserve to do. 

To be clear, this is not toxic-positivity-at-all-costs-tamp-down-those-negative-emotions kind of advice. Acknowledge that you do feel shitty or sad or mad or disgusted at yourself. You don’t need to fix the feelings. You can just let them be by saying something like “Hi, anxiety, thanks for being here. I’m going to keep living my life.²” 

You do not need to challenge your negative self-talk or prove why you are worthy of doing something good for yourself³. 

Act first and feelings will follow⁴. 

When you’re in the middle of this shame spiral, it can be hard to identify even one action that could feel good. 

Some therapists suggest asking the question, “What would I do if I didn’t have anxiety?” Or “How would I act if I held myself in high esteem?”

If those questions work for you, great! I’ve pretty much always had anxiety and second guess my every decision, so those questions feel tricky to answer. I’ve found it helpful to flip this concept with a different question: how do I typically act when I’m overcome with anxiety and self-loathing? 

For me, it’s easier to recognize self-punishment (ahem, see the full list above) than to identify what would feel good and be life-giving. So I start with the punishing behavior and then do the opposite. 

If my default is to isolate, I reach out. 

If my default is to ruminate on past failures, I intentionally bring myself back to the present moment. 

If my default is to self-sabotage, I do one small task I can be proud of. 

If my default is to overcompensate by overachieving, I pull back a bit–I set time limits on tasks, do a “good enough” job or let myself off the hook. 

If my default is to lash out, I offer a hug or a compliment even when I’m raging inside. 

Does doing the opposite feel irresponsible⁵? Yes. Does it feel like I should punish myself instead? Yes. 

My challenge for you: do it anyway! Choose the nurturing, life-giving, self-compassionate action BEFORE you feel like you deserve it.

“But, Aly, what if I’ve already started down the shame and self-punishment cycle? Is it too late for me to try the opposite?” NO! 

If at any point, you find yourself wallowing, ruminating, or self-sabotaging, you have the agency to hop into a new cycle: 

1. Recognize the self-punishing action.

2. Acknowledge the negative emotions.

3. Do the opposite.

Start back at one. Rinse, repeat. 

Good luck! 

***

If you try this, let me know how it goes in the comments! Can anyone relate to my list of how not to respond compassionately? What has worked for you when you get stuck in a shame spiral? 

1. Self-punishment can actually be a sneaky compulsion in OCD, but I think a lot of people experience this to some degree, especially those prone to any kind of overthinking or anxiety.

2. In OCD treatment, this is called a non-engagement response (NER). Lisa Levine gives a detailed explanation and examples of non-engagement responses in this blog post.

3. We’ll talk about the role of reframes in self-compassion in a later post. Kimberly Quinlan, LMFT has many reframing exercises in The Self-Compassion for OCD Workbook.

4. This technique comes from an evidence-based OCD treatment: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that encourages action that aligns with a person’s values regardless of how they feel. For me, I value self-compassion and grace, so it’s more important to me to act that way toward myself even before I feel compassion or grace.

5. The gold-standard for OCD treatment is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). This entails intentionally moving toward your fear or negative emotion (exposure) AND not doing any of your compulsions/safety behaviors (response prevention). For me, self-punishment is a compulsion, so choosing to act in a way that is not self-punishing is one example of how I interrupt the OCD cycle.