When we think about empathy most people think of empathizing with someone else. Self-Empathy is all about treating ourselves with kindness. Many of us have been conditioned to be highly critical of our mistakes. We may be far tougher on ourselves than on our friends and coworkers. We know the concept of self love. We try to follow it but for me self empathy was very new and I struggled so much when I started to follow it. Self empathy is putting yourself in your shoes and thinking for yourself and knowing
about your emotions. I am the kind of person who runs out of words when someone asks me to write about myself so for that kind of person it takes time to practice this. And I was also kind of worried and had to take time differentiating between self- empathy and being selfish, I somehow was made to believe these two correlate but trust me they don't. Today I'm sharing my journey with you because I believe every single one of you out there needs to know this and should have self- empathy. I took one step at a time, and
when I am going to list it out it may seem very small but it's the little things that matter isn't it. I started practicing being kind to myself first. Instead of yelling at myself “you, it was you who did it, why did you let it happen” as I always do (trust me I was doing this so many a day) I changed this phrase of mine to “yes you did it. Maybe you thought it was right and yes it did not turn out as you expected. That's okay. You won't repeat it again. That much I know about you” I had to tell it twice or thrice each time I wanted to
shout at me to feel empathetic on myself as days passed it became a habit I was not upset with myself I was proud of myself that I found out I did something bad/wrong and am ready to fix it, does this sound like empathy y’all?
It prevents you from judging who you are too severely. Yes I judge myself so much and make myself feel bad for hours for it. Changing the way I talk to myself and changing the phrases like I mentioned above prevents you from judging yourself so hard and trust me you don't even know it’s happening to you that’s how beautiful the process is. The next thing I did was “A sense of shared humanity” . We are humans and we are social beings. That means we like company, we love to feel a sense of belongingness. That’s exactly
what “A sense of shared humanity” does. Shared humanity feeds self-empathy by reminding us that we are not alone, even in our failings. I have a great set of friends who make me love myself so much. So this was the easy part. Whenever I felt low, whenever I thought “Why does it happen only to me” they were there to tell me yes, it’s happening to you but you don’t have to face it alone. Another thing I want to add on here is talk about what you are feeling and people relate to it in the most surprising ways. Communication is the key here. Mindfulness, the ability to identify your thoughts and feelings without reacting to them or judging them. At first when I was in the process of identifying my feelings and thoughts of course I judged them. I was like “Ananya why would you laugh why it was such a serious conversation”. But when I looked deeper into the situation it made me realize a part of me that I never knew existed. People I find humour in something or other when I pay full attention to something and I find humour because I want to make the conversation more lively by pointing out the irony and *I use it as a diversion to get back on track with the conversation*. Wow just wow right, I just can’t believe my thoughts and emotions had this level of intelligence. Mindfulness has its hands on so many things, it helps us heighten our levels of focus, spreads awareness about ourselves and lets us accept ourselves from moment-to-moment experience without judging ourselves. Biologically speaking it makes the brain take greater control over attention, it helps us focus on what is important, and tunes our ability to switch attention onto something else when necessary. I would say this was the best thing, people how
many times we want to stop thinking about something but can never do it, practicing self- empathy actually makes your thoughts obey your thoughts. You don't want to think about it, okay let’s not think about it. It's that amount of understanding you will have with yourself. And the last thing I am going to say is something that’s very close to me. Self- Empathy works in ways I never imagined. I don't know if I was the only one who experienced it. I started having this-say gut feeling where I feel that my unconscious
mind tells me to do or not to do certain things very occasionally and when I go by it the experience I have is I don't have words to explain it. And the final thing I swear self- empathy is reducing the gap between my ideal-self and real-self. I feel so happy and proud whenever I think about myself. We can act strongly when necessary and remain open to helping everyone, including ourselves. By combining Empathy for ourselves with Empathy for others, we can find our inner strength and make meaningful connections with people from all walks of life. Do try practicing self-empathy and let me know how your experience was. Follow whatever method works for you and makes you feel connected in the process.
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