Another month gone, another beautifully crafted calendar by our friends at Action for Happiness. For September, it´s all about self-care – and as usual, based on insights from Positive Psychology. You can download a file in high resolution for printing here. Enjoy – and please spread the news.
Self-Compassion
Positive Psychology News Digest | No. 15/2017
My favorite news and blog articles covering Positive Psychology and adjacent Topics from (roughly) the last seven days.
Thrive Global: The Father Of Mindfulness on What Mindfulness Has Become by Drake Baer
CNN: Want to be happy and successful? Try Compassion by Jen Christensen
ScienceAlert: There’s now a brain scan to tell if you’re depressed – and what treatment is needed by Cynthia Fu
Fast Company: The Power of Pride at Facebook by Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Brynn Harrington & Adam Grant
Psychology Today: How I Learned About the Perils of Grit by Todd Kashdan
Atlantic: Can a Difficult Childhood Enhance Cognition? by Olga Khazan
New York Times: Rude Doctors, Rude Nurses, Rude Patients by Perri Klass
New York Magazine: The Original Natural Remedy for Burnout: Nature by Brad Stulberg
Time: The Lifelong Problem With Loneliness by Elizabeth Tillinghast
Huffington Post: How to Avoid Being a Fake Positive Leader by Chris White
Treating Yourself with Kindness: On Self-Compassion
For several decades, developing self-esteem in children and adults has been the holy grail of fostering healthy attitudes towards the self. Yet, starting in the early 1990s, criticism arose, pointing towards the absence of positive consequences of having high self-esteem, and highlighting several negative consequences, such as dismissing negative feedback or taking less responsibility for harmful actions. In an influential review article from 2003 titled Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?, Roy Baumeister and colleagues conclude:
We have not found evidence that boosting self-esteem (by therapeutic interventions or school programs) causes benefits. Our findings do not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes.
In the same year, Kristin Neff from the University of Texas at Austin introduced a different kind of healthy attitude towards the self – which may be especially helpful in times of suffering, or when facing adversity: Self-compassion, rooted in the ancient Buddhist traditions of mindfulness and compassion, and Western adaptations such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). In the words of Neff:
[…] When faced with experiences of suffering or personal failure, self-compassion entails three basic components: (a) self-kindness — extending kindness and understanding to oneself rather than harsh judgment and self-criticism, (b) common humanity — seeing one’s experiences as part of the larger human experience rather than seeing them as separating and isolating, and (c) mindfulness — holding one’s painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than over-identifying with them.
Furthermore:
[…] Self-compassion may entail many of the psychological benefits that have been associated with self-esteem, but with fewer of its pitfalls. Self-compassion represents a positive emotional stance towards oneself, in that one extends feelings of kindness and caring toward oneself. It helps to motivate productive behavior and protect against the debilitating effects of self-judgment such as depression and anxiety. Self-compassion, however, is not based on the performance evaluations of self and others, or on congruence with ideal standards. In fact, self-compassion takes the entire self-evaluation process out of the picture […].
In the meantime, self-compassion has shown to be a valuable tool for personal development and fighting symptoms such as anxiety and depression. Long-form and short-form scales for measuring self-compassion have been developed, an effective training program has been devised, and a recent meta-analysis finds that fostering self-compassion effectively helps to alleviate several psychopathologies (please see links to research papers below. You can find out more about self-compassion (e.g., free exercises and training opportunities) via Kristin Neff´s homepage.
Some of the core papers on self-compassion (linking to PDFs):
- Leary, M. R., Tate, E. B., Adams, C. E., Batts Allen, A., & Hancock, J. (2007). Self-compassion and reactions to unpleasant self-relevant events: the implications of treating oneself kindly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 887-904.
- MacBeth, A., & Gumley, A. (2012). Exploring compassion: A meta-analysis of the association between self-compassion and psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(6), 545-552.
- Neff, K. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85-101.
- Neff, K. D. (2003). The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity, 2(3), 223-250.
- Neff, K. D., & Germer, C. K. (2013). A pilot study and randomized controlled trial of the mindful self‐compassion program. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(1), 28-44.
- Neff, K. D., Hsieh, Y. P., & Dejitterat, K. (2005). Self-compassion, achievement goals, and coping with academic failure. Self and Identity, 4(3), 263-287.
- Neff, K. D., Kirkpatrick, K. L., & Rude, S. S. (2007). Self-compassion and adaptive psychological functioning. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(1), 139-154.
- Neff, K. D., Rude, S. S., & Kirkpatrick, K. L. (2007). An examination of self-compassion in relation to positive psychological functioning and personality traits. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(4), 908-916.
- Neff, K. D., & Vonk, R. (2009). Self‐compassion versus global self‐esteem: Two different ways of relating to oneself. Journal of Personality, 77(1), 23-50.
- Raes, F., Pommier, E., Neff, K. D., & Van Gucht, D. (2011). Construction and factorial validation of a short form of the self‐compassion scale. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 18(3), 250-255.
Positive Psychology News Digest | No. 01/2017
My favorite news and blog articles covering Positive Psychology and adjacent topics from (roughly) the last seven days.
New York Times: The Year of Conquering Negative Thinking by Lesley Alderman
New York Magazine: Living With Purpose Yields a Longer Life and Higher Income by Drake Baer
Guardian: From Groundhog Day to … Raging Bull? – films to inspire and uplift by Peter Bradshaw
New York Magazine: Small Things to Remember to Change Your Life for the Better by Melissa Dahl
Fast Company: How To Use Brain Science To Be Your Best Self In 2017 by Lydia Dishman
Greater Good Science Center: What Does a Compassionate Workplace Look Like? by Nir Eyal & Monica Worline
Harvard Business Review: To Recover from Failure, Try Some Self-Compassion by Christopher Germer
Psychology of Wellbeing: The Law of Diminishing Returns, Applied by Jeremy McCarthy
Fast Company: 10 Science-Backed Ways To Be More Positive In 2017 by Gwen Moran
Inc: 5 things science learned about happiness last year by Jessica Stillman
Greater Good Science Center: How to Reduce Rudeness in the Workplace by Jill Suttie
Wharton Knowledge: Why Mental Bandwidth Could Explain the Psychology Behind Poverty, no author
Top 10 Positive Psychology Articles on Mappalicious for 2016
Here are the top 10 Positive Psychology articles for 2016. It seems like you really like infographics this year…
- Great Infographic on Self-Compassion: How not to be Hard on Yourself
- Fabulous Infographic: Why People become Unhappy
- The Meaning of Life according to different Philosophers [Infographic]
- Positive Psychology Articles – a topical Collection
- Do you want to find more Meaning in your Work? Here´s where you should look for it – according to Science
- Strengths gone astray: The real mental Illnesses?
- Positive Psychology Constructs
- Explaining Character Strengths to Children: Meet the Dynamos
- Are you a H.E.R.O.? Positive Organizational Capital (PsyCap) explained
- Infographic: How to be Wise – as an Entrepreneur (and in Life)
“Hide not your talents. They for use were made.”
Stumbled this beautiful quote by Ben Franklin today. What do you think?
Fabulous Infographic: Why People become Unhappy
This is yet another fantastic piece covering Positive Psychology by information designer Anna Vital (the other ones I published on Mappalicious can be found here and here). Share and enjoy!
Why it´s good to have Tea with your dead Aunt once in a while
In my late twenties and early thirties, I was really into Zen Buddhism. I took zazen meditation lessons (stopped it, I think it´s just not for me…), practiced martial arts, and read almost anything related I could get my hands on. I remember a story that was about conquering our fears, where a monk would lay his head inside a dragon´s open jaw – in order to rid himself of the fear of…well…dragons.
I deeply sympathize with this approach of “accepting what´s there” – it´s one of those crucial points where the more helpful spiritual and therapeutic traditions of East and West regularly meet and become friends (e.g., see Kristin Neff´s outline on self-compassion to get an idea for a more Western take on the concept).
I’ve got 99 problems and 93 of them are completely made up scenarios in my head that I’m stressing about for absolutely no reason. (multiple attributions)
While writing this, I remember another sage basically taught me the same lesson almost a decade before my deep-dive into Buddhism. One of my all-time favorites on TV is Ally McBeal. Every other year or so, I start another binge-watching weekend. I still love the affectionately exaggerated characters, the idea of visually externalizing the protagonists´ feelings, and the fabulous blending of music with plot and personal development. Here´s the dialogue that came to my mind:
John: I used to have a hallucination where my dead aunt kept wanting to have tea with me. It went for two years before I finally stopped her.
Ally: How did you stop her?
John: I had tea with her.
You are allowed to be both a Masterpiece and a Work in Progress, simultaneously.
This quote brilliantly summarizes a mindset that I´ve been struggling with all the way up to my 30s. I´m definitely the “achiever type” person and into self-optimization, I want to be increasingly productive, get better at what I do, expand my outreach, and so on. I guess that is what drew me towards Positive Psychology in the first place. But this can be a pretty tough and unforgiving lifestyle – until it is balanced with a fair amount of self-compassion, and the ability to accept, appreciate, and enjoy what´s already there. I´m on my way…
Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then…
Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.
(L.R. Knost)