365: Why Self-Compassion Is A Behaviour, Not A Feeling

Chris Sandel: Hey, everyone! Welcome to Episode 365 of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

So just a note before we get started with today. If you are looking for support, if you’re wanting to reach a place of full recovery, then I would love to be able to help you in that endeavour, and there are two options that I have with working with people. One is one-on-one support, where we have one-on-one sessions where you then get messaging support with me between sessions. And if you’re a regular listener on the podcast, I’ve been talking about this for a while, saying that I’m taking on clients.

The second option is that I have a recovery group. I haven’t been as good at promoting this on the show or talking about this as much; I more recently did a promotion with this and talking about it, but really, it’s something I’ve been running for the last three years – I just haven’t talked about it very much.

As part of the recovery group, there is a community area. We do live coaching calls. You get expert feedback and support. You can post in the community area and get the support of other people going through recovery. So it’s just another way of doing recovery and getting the help that you need so that you’re not doing it alone.

I’ve put links to both of these things in the show notes. You can also send an email, if you email info@seven-health.com. You can put in the subject line ‘coaching’ or you can put in the subject line ‘group’. You can also message on Instagram. It’s @sevenhealthcompany. And again, put in the DM either ‘group’ or ‘support’ or ‘coaching’ and I can get over the details for you and you can look at, is this the right kind of thing for you, is this the help that you’re wanting, and we can go from there.

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s get on with today’s episode.

Today, I want to talk about self-compassion. This is something that I use and talk about and work with with all clients. It’s part of my programmes. I think it is really crucial as part of recovery. To get to a place of full recovery and not being compassionate? I don’t think those two things really mix.

And I think there can be some real misunderstandings of what self-compassion means, especially if we think about what self-compassion means in recovery, especially in the early stages of recovery when you have this very loud eating disorder voice that is going on. I think there can be this general idea that self-compassion means being kinder to yourself, but if I’m thinking about this from a recovery standpoint, I think, and I would like to propose the idea, that it’s less about the kind thoughts that you have. Rather, self-compassion in recovery is really about choosing the actions that protect your long-term wellbeing, and I would even say your short-term wellbeing, but you just notice it more in the long term, over actions that just reduce the short-term anxiety.

So what I want to do today – let me first just outline what self-compassion is, if you’re new to this as a topic, and talk about how self-compassion is normally presented. And I want to use the work of Dr Kristin Neff with this, because she’s probably done more than anyone in the area of self-compassion, and just start there, and then I can look at how I think about it. And it’s not then saying that Kristin Neff is wrong; it’s really just building on what she’s created and looking at how this needs to be augmented or changed to really support recovery.

00:04:00

What is self-compassion? (Dr Kristin Neff’s definition)

In terms of Kristin Neff, she talks about that self-compassion is not letting yourself off the hook, it’s not feeling sorry for yourself, it’s not lowering your standards – it’s about relating to yourself during suffering in a healthy way. Self-compassion is not how you feel about yourself; it’s how you treat yourself even when it is inconvenient.

Kristin Neff outlines that there are three main components of self-compassion.

Component 1 is self-kindness instead of self-judgement. This is really about recognising that we are imperfect, that we as humans will make mistakes, that we’ll go through difficult experiences and challenges in life, and that in these moments, we need to treat ourselves with warmth and with kindness. If we’re thinking about this from a thought-based way of thinking about self-compassion, instead of the “I can’t believe I ate that, I’m so weak”, it would be saying something like “This is so hard. Lots of people struggle with this. What support could I need right now?”

I think there can be this belief – and often this is because a lot of these beliefs develop before the eating disorder, or they could come about because of the eating disorder, but what I’ve discovered with so many clients is that there’s a lot of stuff that was laid in the foundation before the eating disorder even began. There can be this idea that self-criticism keeps someone motivated, and that “The more critical I am of myself, the more that helps me to take action.”

The opposite is really true. When you’re constantly attacking yourself and talking to yourself in a bad way, it leads to more shame. It actually leads to more avoidance, and it leads to more disconnection. So the idea is that self-kindness is the thing that is much more helpful in getting you to take the action that you need to than self-judgement.

Then the next piece is common humanity over isolation. This is recognising that suffering is part of being human, and that is a shared experience and it’s not something that is only happening to you. It can often feel like “Oh, I’m the only one that is going through this” or “Everyone else has got their life figured out” or “No-one else struggles with this thing at this point in their life.” So instead of the thought of “I’m failing because recovery is still really hard and I’m not very good at doing recovery and everyone else is doing better at recovery”, it can be “Recovery is hard because recovery is hard, and other people have felt this way too, and other people are going through the same thing as I am right now.”

So getting out of the idea that “This is just me that is struggling with this” and recognising there are lots of people who are struggling. And even people who aren’t struggling with an eating disorder may be struggling with this other thing and this other thing, and that this is a very normal part of being a human being.

The third component is then mindfulness instead of overidentification. This is then recognising our thoughts and our feelings and recognising how things actually are so that they’re not either, one, suppressed and you’re pretending everything’s fine and this isn’t a big issue and we don’t have to look at this at all, but also, the other end of the spectrum of not exaggerating things and blowing things completely out of proportion.

Really, when we think about mindfulness, mindfulness means being nonjudgemental. It’s being able to just notice what’s going on. I think what often happens is that people can be in one of two camps. There can be this avoiding of emotion, like “I shouldn’t feel this way”, or there can be the other end of the spectrum where they’re just completely consumed by their emotions. “Because I feel terrified, I can’t do this” and it then becomes this really big thing.

So really, mindfulness sits in the middle between these two. “I notice that fear is here, I notice that shame is here, I notice that the urge to restrict is here”, and the feeling is acknowledged, but it’s not then fused with one’s identity. It’s not fused with “Because I’ve had this thought or because I’ve had this feeling, I have to then do this thing.” It’s just saying “Yeah, I’m having this fear, but I am not the fear. I’m having this urge, but that doesn’t mean I need to obey the urge.” It’s being able to step back and be more of a witness or be more objective in what is being noticed.

00:08:52

Self-compassion is a behaviour, not a feeling

That’s the basic idea around self-compassion and how it’s talked about. And while I don’t disagree with any of those things, what I want to talk about today is really a shift away from self-compassion being something just cognitive and about how you speak to yourself, and look at it much more from an action-taking perspective. Because really, when I think about recovery and what self-compassion in recovery is really about, it’s choosing actions that protect your wellbeing and are in service of you having a better quality of life and a better quality of health and all of these things instead of actions that just reduce short-term anxiety.

Really, the central idea that I want to get across as part of this episode is that self-compassion is a behaviour; it is not a feeling. Self-compassion is behavioural, and it’s the actions that you’re taking that are really determining “Am I being self-compassionate here?” It’s not about just getting my thoughts straight, because I think there’s a lot of people who then get tripped up by that of “I’m not being self-compassionate in a way that I’m thinking or talking to myself, so that’s why I then can’t take the action and I need to sort out how I talk to myself first”, and that’s just not actually happening.

So really, self-compassion in recovery is taking action that protects your recovery, even when your mind is arguing against it. I think a way of framing this or thinking about this is: in a moment where you’re feeling anxious or you’re feeling ashamed or the eating disorder is making it seem like everything is out of control, you can ask yourself two questions. One is “What action reduces anxiety right now?” or “What action protects my recovery right now and in the long term?”

What I’ve noticed from working with clients for a really long time is the more that people are asking themselves that first question in terms of “How do I reduce anxiety right now?”, the more likely someone is to keep doing the eating disorder behaviours. Because the most likely answer to “How do I reduce my anxiety right now?”, especially if this is before someone has learnt different tools or techniques to actually manage anxiety or to manage thoughts or feelings, etc., that is outside of the eating disorder, it’s just that you will then end up doing the eating disorder behaviours. The way to manage that anxiety is “I am going to go for that run” or “I am going to go to that exercise class” or “I’m not going to have that snack” or “I’m not going to have the carbs with that meal” or whatever it may be.

Whereas if you’re asking yourself Question 2, this is where I think you’re really doing self-compassion. “What are the actions that will protect my recovery in this moment, but also in the long term?” That may lead to lots of unhelpful thoughts that then come up – eating disorder thoughts. It can lead to things that feel very at odds with ‘self-compassion’. And if you’re then following through and taking that action, I do believe that that actually is self-compassion.

If we go back to the first component from Kristin Neff’s idea of self-kindness over self-judgement, if we’re looking at it simply of how it’s originally talked about, self-kindness means speaking warmly to oneself. What I would say in recovery, in reality, self-kindness means behaving in a way that protects yourself. It means taking action in a way that really supports oneself.

And sometimes that can include nice kind words, but often it means eating a meal or taking action even while the criticism continues. For example, you eat breakfast even while the eating disorder is calling you greedy. That is self-compassion. You rest even while there are thoughts that “I’m lazy, I’m being unproductive, where is this going to end? It’s going to spiral”, etc. You taking action to rest, that is self-compassion. You gain weight even while believing that you shouldn’t and even while there’s a lot of self-critical thoughts going on about how you’re letting yourself go and what this is going to mean and all of those kinds of things. By taking the actions that are leading to that weight gain as part of your recovery, that is compassion.

Maybe another way of looking at this is, again, if we’re looking at the difference between reducing short-term anxiety versus what is good for your long-term – and I say long-term health, but it’s really about your short-, medium-, and long-term health, because the more you’re taking those recovery actions, the more it is truly enhancing the quality of your life even if in those moments, you’re not necessarily recognising it at that point. There is the repair that is going on. There is the neural rewiring that is starting to happen. There is the resilience that’s starting to be created and built up of learning that “I can do hard things” or “I can take action even though those thoughts are there.”

For example, restricting food reduces anxiety now, but eating protects your wellbeing now and later on. So it is the compassionate act. Exercise can reduce your anxiety now, but rest is protecting your wellbeing now and in the future, so it is the more compassionate act. Body checking reduces your anxiety right now. Standing on a scale reduces your anxiety right now, or that’s at least the hope. It often doesn’t end that way. But disengaging from these methods of checking actually protects your wellbeing now and in the future, so it is the compassionate act.

00:15:00

Compassionate thoughts vs compassionate behaviours

I think it’s also useful to look at the distinction between compassionate thoughts and compassionate behaviours. A compassionate thought could be “I deserve to eat.” The compassionate behaviour is actually eating the meal. The compassionate thought could be “It’s okay to rest.” The compassionate behaviour is taking the rest. The compassionate thought is “My body is worthy.” The compassionate behaviour is buying new clothes that fit your body and are comfortable on your body. The compassionate thought is “Wight gain is necessary.” The compassionate behaviour is continuing recovery while the weight gain is going on and doing the rest and doing the eating while that is occurring.

What can often happen is that people want to go with those compassionate thoughts, and it’s almost “I want to go with these because I’ve got to convince myself, so I’m trying to convince myself that I deserve to eat, and I keep telling myself I deserve to eat, but it just doesn’t feel like I believe that yet, and that’s why I then don’t take the action, and that’s why I then continue to stay stuck.”

In a lovely, ideal world, we have both of these things happening. We have the compassionate self-talk that’s going on and we have the compassionate behaviour that is connected to that, so that is the ultimate. But if we’re going to only have one of these things, the behaviour wins out.

And especially in the beginning, your mind is going to have lots of very uncompassionate thoughts coming up, but if you are then taking the action, this is going to be helping. And I would add that this is going to start helping you to become more compassionate in your thoughts by taking the action.

And I really do want to be clear with this; this doesn’t mean that we pay no attention to one’s thoughts. When I’m working with clients and when we’re going through this in the group, I do use different tools to help create more compassionate inner voice or to be able to create defusion and create some distance when those thoughts are coming up for someone to be able to recognise, “This isn’t what I truly believe. This isn’t what I truly value. This isn’t who I really am. This is just the thoughts that are coming up.”

So it’s not that there is no focusing or no acknowledgement or no work being done on the thoughts side of things. It’s just recognising that the eating disorder is going to be hijacking so many different things, and that it’s going to be unlikely that your default voice is going to be compassionate to start with. So yes, we want to work on that and retraining that and noticing that, and the behaviour piece has to come first.

The reason that this is also important is that story follows state. So much of what is going on is because of the state that the body’s in, and if someone’s in an exhausted, depleted state, if the eating disorder has been running the show for a very long time, you’re just not in a state where compassion is the thing that naturally comes to the surface as the first thought, or maybe not even the second or the third or the fourth. So to have self-compassion be something that becomes much more normal and natural and becomes more of the default, you need to, as a minimum, be changing the state that the body’s in to give yourself the chance for that to become much more of the default. So that’s, again, why the behaviour piece is so important.

00:18:39

How the eating disorder can co-opt self-compassion

Another part that I think is really useful to recognise with this is that so often, when people hear the idea of compassion and self-compassion and how important this is in recovery, the eating disorder then co-opts this for its own good, and it really twists what self-compassion is in favour of the eating disorder.

Let me give some examples. There could be the idea that we’ve set this goal of having a snack, and now we’re getting close to having the snack and there’s the thought that “My gosh, I already feel so anxious. If I’m going to eat this snack, there’s going to be so much extra anxiety. Afterwards I know I’m going to feel so much shame and regret and it’s just going to be so difficult to do, so really the compassionate thing is just give yourself this break. Just skip this snack, give yourself some real compassion, and we’ll come back to this at another time.”

Or it could be “You’ve just got so much going on right now, all the kids are sick, we’ve got so many fires that we’re having to deal with because of this. Following that new meal plan right now is just asking too much of me, so we need to go easy on ourselves. The compassionate thing to do is just go back to what you were doing before and we’ll deal with this another time.”

Another version could be “I know I said I was going to not do the morning exercise and that that’s part of the plan, but it just feels so hard and it’s going to make the day just so much more difficult because how am I then going to be able to eat the food, and how am I then going to be able to concentrate on the things that I need to do, because it’s just going to be so loud? Really, the thing to do to treat yourself kindly is either we don’t give up the morning exercise today, or we do it but we cut it back just a little bit. Why don’t we do it, but we’ll just take 10 minutes off it at the end.”

All of these things can feel like they’re self-compassion, and I would just say they are not self-compassion. They are simply the eating disorder masquerading as self-compassion. It’s avoidance pretending to be kindness. True self-compassion is holding yourself accountable but doing so in a loving and kind way.

And again, the loving and kind way can be more challenging because of the kinds of thoughts that will naturally occur, but that is what true self-compassion is. It is “I know eating the snack is going to create a lot of anxiety. I know it might even feel more difficult today than it’s been feeling when we haven’t been doing this. And we need to do this. We don’t want to continue living like this. We said that we were going to make this change, and last night when we were going to bed, we were really adamant that this was what we were going to do today. So it makes sense that as we get closer to it, there’s going to be more fear and there’s going to be more anxiety, and we’re going to do it.”

Or “I know that everyone’s sick. It’s such a tough week this week. And we need to stick to the meal plan. This is the way that we’re able to get out of being in this place. And while it might not feel like it in the moment, this is actually going to help us. And the next time people are sick, we’re going to have so much more capacity to be able to deal with this because we’ve been moving forward in our recovery.”

“I know that stopping exercise this morning is going to feel like I’m crawling out of my skin and it’s going to feel really uncomfortable, and we need to take this break. We said we were going to take this break. We need to try something different, because we’ve been doing this for so long and we know where it leads, and we don’t want to keep living like this.”

So you may say all of those things that I just said there and then the eating disorder jumps on and has its things to say about why that’s such a terrible idea and why it doesn’t make sense, and really, the eating disorder, one of the great tricks that it plays is logic. It will come up with all the logical reasons why not making a change is the right thing to do, and that actually making a change is the worst thing to do, that is going to take you to a much worse place than currently.

It might even say, “Look, I know this doesn’t feel like it’s great, but you don’t know how bad it could really get, and that’s why we shouldn’t be making that change.”

Again, if I’m thinking about this from a compassion piece, it’s, yes, we can talk to ourselves kindly and remind ourselves again of why we’re making these changes, but really, the compassion is about the behaviour. It’s not about the feeling. It’s about taking that action so that we do now have that snack or we do now follow the meal plan or we do now take that break from exercise.

Because I think what happens is that the eating disorder hears ‘compassion’ and ‘self-compassion’ and it defines it as ‘relief’. It defines it as “It will just feel so nice to not have to do that thing or to be able to keep doing that thing” and it makes it out as if relief is compassion.

What I would say is that when I think about recovery and compassion, it’s really about protection. It’s really about, in a lot of ways, doing the hard thing. It’s actually about holding yourself accountable while doing this in the most loving and caring way possible.

I think another thing that can get in the way of this -a gain, the eating disorder using tactics and using logic to make it look like this is the compassionate thing to do – is that it can frame compassion or self-compassion as in ‘equals lowering expectations’. Like you starting to eat more food or you starting to eat these different foods or you starting to rest more or you taking this break from exercise, all of these are manipulated to look like this is you lowering your expectations, this is you not taking care of yourself, this is you letting yourself off the hook, and framing it in that way.

And actually, what I’m describing is the complete opposite. It is holding yourself to recovery commitments because you and your wellbeing and your life and the quality of your life truly matters. It’s not taking the easy way out. Recovery in the short term can feel like the much harder thing to do. I don’t believe in the long term that it is the harder thing to do; I think if I could look at across a 20-year period, continuing to live with an eating disorder versus doing recovery and getting out of that place, recovery is by far the easier of those two options. But in the beginning stages and in the early stages, yeah, it does feel harder.

So it’s not about letting yourself off the hook or letting yourself go or anything along those lines; it’s about, “Hey, I’m going to hold myself accountable and I’m going to take the actions that are required.”

If I’m looking at this from a self-criticism way, it would be more like “You should do this because you’re not good enough” and that’s actually not what I’m wanting to share. It’s self-compassion where it’s “You need to do this because you’re worth protecting.” It can lead to the same action, but it can have a very different relationship.

Because I know there are people who can be very cruel to themselves to motivate themselves to take action in recovery. It may sound like I’m onboard with that because it’s leading to the kinds of actions that you need to take, but I also don’t think that that’s a great approach either. At minimum, we can be neural, or we can at least recognise when there are these cruel thoughts that are coming up and I can say “Hey, that’s actually not me. That’s just my mind generating those thoughts.” But the idea of “I need to be really cruel to motivate myself towards recovery” – again, I think that’s going to break down, because at some point you’re like, “This feels so awful to be talking to myself in this way and having to try to motivate myself in this way. I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

So even though I’m very much saying self-compassion is a behaviour and not a feeling, we can still look at we don’t need to be criticising ourselves. We can be compassionate and recognise we are worth protecting as opposed to we’re having to do this because we’re not good enough.

00:27:39

Self-criticism vs self-compassion examples

Let me just give a few more examples to really understand what recovery looks like connected to different areas.

For example, food. Self-criticism would say something like “I ate too much, I need to pull back”, or at least the eating disorder would be saying this.

Whereas if I’m thinking about this from a true self-compassionate place, it would be to eat the full breakfast anyway, to not reduce the next meal, to continue to have all your snacks, to not compensate with movement or some other forms of compensation despite the fact that there are all these thoughts going on. Really, especially connected to food, the consistency being there, even though there is the shame and the guilt and the regret and the whole host of other uncomfortable emotions and sensations that come up.

From a movement standpoint, the eating disorder could be saying “You’re lazy, you need to burn this off, you haven’t exercised enough to earn your food, this is why we need to keep doing this.”

But if I’m looking at this from a self-compassionate action standpoint, it would be to cancel the workouts. It would be to keep the rest days. It would be to sit down instead of standing up. It would be to leave the walk much shorter than planned. Really starting to frame this as “This is me protecting my body” as opposed to “This is me protecting the eating disorder.”

Next one would be body image days. The self-criticism or the eating disorder, “You look huge, you can’t wear that outfit. You need to skip dinner. We need to go back to what we were doing yesterday or what we were doing recently in terms of our exercise. We need to change this. We can’t look like this.” The self-compassionate thing to do would be to wear the outfit anyway, or to find something that’s actually comfortable. It would be to eat the dinner anyway. It would be to go to the event anyway.

I had a thing with a client this week, and she actually noticed there’s something different for her in terms of the clothing piece. She put on some clothes and she noticed that it felt uncomfortable from a sensory perspective. It was really itchy, it didn’t feel like it fit very well. It felt tight and it felt uncomfortable. So she took that off and then she put something else on, and when she put that next thing on, it actually felt comfortable. It felt good on her. She then looked in the mirror, and then the eating disorder had lots of different things to say about that, like “You look terrible, you can’t wear that”, etc. All of the cruel eating disorder thoughts.

What she decided to do was “I’m still going to wear this outfit.” She could recognise that there’s a difference between “This thing from a sensory perspective doesn’t fit me very well and it means that I’m actually going to be much more conscious of my body and that doesn’t help me in my recovery” versus “Yeah, when I look in the mirror, the eating disorder can have lots of thoughts, but actually I notice in my body, these clothes I’m putting on, I do feel comfortable in them, so I’m going to leave them on.”

I think that was a really great bit of awareness from her, of being able to notice the difference between those two things and noticing “If it’s a sensory thing, that’s not helpful for me, but if it’s just the eating disorder is wanting to say lots of mean things about how I look, you know what, I’m going to ignore that and I’m going to continue to wear these clothes.”

If I’m thinking about self-compassion, it’s not necessarily fixing the thoughts; it’s refusing to obey them.

The next one would be emotional regulation. There can be the criticism or the eating disorder thoughts of “You shouldn’t feel this way. This is too much. You’re not going to be able to handle this. You’re feeling this way because you did X, Y and Z recovery action and that’s why you shouldn’t do these, because you just don’t have the capacity to feel this way.”

And then the self-compassionate thing to do would be to eat despite the anxiety, to stay at the table despite it feeling really uncomfortable, to reach out and ask for support because it’s a more challenging day. To be able to cry and not punish yourself and be critical of yourself of you being weak or anything along those lines, but to say, “Okay, yeah, I’m crying, and this is actually part of me completing the cycle of being able to process the things that are going on” and really instilling the idea that “Hey, I can actually handle this. It is a lot, and it’s challenging, and I actually do have the capacity to be with this. And that doesn’t mean I have to do it all on my own.” That could be going to ask for support, it could be opening up to a partner or whatever it may be. But it’s not getting to the place of “I can’t do this and I need to pull back” and going back to the eating disorder.

00:32:52

Self-compassion is not always soft + soothing

Another thing I want to talk about with this – and again, I think there can be this misunderstanding with self-compassion, is that self-compassion is just really soft and soothing and if we do it, it feels really nice, and it’s going to be so obvious when I’m doing self-compassion because ‘self-compassion, what a lovely thing’.

The reality is that that’s just not how it feels. Maybe we can label this as ‘hard’ compassion. I probably need to come up with a better title than that, but where I think about compassion meaning protective boundaries and protective behaviours, and really setting those boundaries.

This could be things like removing the scale. It could be deleting the calorie app. It could be taking off the Apple watch or the different tracking things that people wear and putting that in a drawer. It could be getting the treadmill removed from the house. It could be cancelling the dance class for this semester. In these examples, it can be this one-time thing where you remove this and then it’s done.

And I know from working with clients, again, for a really long time that gosh, these things can feel so monumental to begin with, and it can feel so difficult to get that treadmill out of the house or to get rid of the scale or to take this thing off. And often there can be this discomfort, and then fairly shortly afterwards, there can be this feeling of relief – of “Man, it’s so nice that that thing is now out of the house” or “It’s so nice that I’m not now looking at that number.”

And it’s not that that’s everyone’s experience. There can be challenges with this, and there can be difficulty. And I just want to say that for many people, there can be the difficulty and the anxiety leading up to it and then there can be the relief afterwards.

But in terms of this hard compassion, it might not be just this ‘one and done’ thing. It could be saying no to body or diet talk. You’re at work and this thing comes up and you actually say, “Hey, I don’t want to talk about this. Can we change the subject?” It could be eating dessert when you’re scared or when no-one else is eating dessert, and you’re choosing to eat dessert because you know that that’s what you need to do. It could be advocating for yourself at the doctor’s office and them making some comments and you pushing back and saying “Actually, that’s not true” or “That’s actually not how it is for me” or whatever it may be. Or “No, actually, I’m not going to be weighed today. If it’s an absolute must for a certain reason, I will do a blind weighing, but I don’t want to know, and this is why.”

I’m mentioning these because, yes, I totally believe that these are compassion, and you being self-compassionate with yourself by creating these boundaries – and it’s not going to feel comfortable to do that in the moment. It’s going to feel very uncomfortable to do that. Again, if we’re coming back to this idea of the difference between calming your anxiety in the short term versus really protecting yourself in the short, medium, and longer term, this is what that’s about. It’s really about “Hey, I need to set this uncomfortable boundary, and this is compassion. This is actually really being compassionate with myself when I do it this way.”

00:36:22

Self-compassion as life architecture

The final thing that I want to go through with this is just looking at self-compassion from an action standpoint more as life architecture, for want of a better word. I think a lot of what I’ve gone through today is looking at self-compassion in the moments where things are already hard. “Things come up and I’m having to now deal with it in that moment because I’m feeling these feelings or these thoughts are upon me.”

What I would want to say with this is that self-compassion is not only how you respond in difficult moments. It can be so much about how you then structure your life so that your body and your nervous system really are supported.

So if I’m looking at self-compassion from more of a reactive standpoint, it’s how you treat yourself when something difficult happens. And structural compassion is more, how do you design your life so that there are fewer of these unnecessary battles? Or “Yeah, there’s still some battles, but I know what’s coming. It’s not just happens to me.” I think the highest form of self-compassion is not how you respond when you’re drowning, it’s building a life where you’re less likely to drown in the first place. So choosing to do things in advance that are challenging, but you know they’re coming. It’s not just that this has been sprung upon you.

When I’m looking at this, one of the things with this structural piece is it’s becoming part of your routine. When I say then it’s not a constant battle, it stops being a constant battle because “I’ve now done this again and again and again and it’s become much more normalised because I was consistent with doing this thing.” Or “Hey, yeah, there’s some anxiety that’s still there, but it’s no longer impacting my behaviour. I just know that no matter how bad the thoughts or the feelings are gonna get, I’m not going to go out for that run. I’m not going to skip that snack. It’s really difficult, but I’ve built this in so that the compassion is just happening from a behavioural standpoint.”

Again, if we’re looking at some different options with this, if I’m looking at structural self-compassion connected to food, it would be eating at consistent times, and that this is a non-negotiable. It could be planning meals in advance so that you’re not having to deal with “What do I need to eat?” at the same time as you’re about to eat, where that, at this stage of recovery, can feel really difficult. So “I’m going to do some planning in advance.”

It could be not scheduling meetings across the mealtimes or the snack times. And look, this works for some people, it doesn’t work for others. Sometimes it’s “I need to work out ways of eating a snack in under two minutes because that’s all I have as part of my job.” It can be keeping food easily available. It could be changing the foods that you have in the house and being very intentional of “I’m going to remove all of these safe foods. I don’t want to have them around because it just makes it so much more difficult, and if I don’t have those in the house, I don’t have the option to have the salad instead of having the burger or having the pasta or whatever it may be, so I’m going to remove those things.”

From a movement standpoint, if we’re looking structural things connected to movement, it could be, as I talked about a moment ago, removing exercise equipment from the house, so removing the treadmill from the house. It could be cancelling the gym membership. So “It’s not that I’ve put this thing on pause or I’m paying for this thing but I’m not really going. It’s let’s just remove this for now.” It can be limiting the exercise frequency, where you are saying “This is a non-negotiable. I am only doing this one day a week or two days a week” or whatever it may be, depending on where you are in recovery and what’s actually appropriate. Often it could be “I’m doing nothing. I need to take this full break.” It can be removing tracking apps, removing steps and that kind of thing.

It could be when you’re bringing movement back in, “I’m going to be choosing movement that I haven’t had a compulsive relationship in the past. I want to choose things that are purely about fun to begin with or are actually pretty easy for me to start with because that’s where I need to be starting.” But again, where these are non-negotiables. These are “This is what I’m doing and I’m going to be consistent with doing this.”

It can be changing things in your environment. Unfollowing different social media accounts, unfollowing different email accounts. It could be being intentional about not participating in diet talk at your office. And that could be setting a hard boundary of saying “Hey, can we just talk about something different? I don’t want to talk about this” or it could be as soon as that comes up, you’ve decided “I’m just going to walk away.” That conversation comes up and you’re like “I’m going to go get a tea” or whatever it may be. “I’m going to have an exit strategy already in place. I already know that’s what I’m going to do whenever that occurs.”

Or what one of my clients is doing – and she’s much further along in recovery – is when that talk comes up, she goes and gets a biscuit or a cake or goes and eats something that flies in the face of what everyone else is doing because she really wants to cement this and really take the opposite action so that she’s not impacted upon by this kind of talk.

It could be buying clothes that fit your current body and recognising that “Hey, the things that I’m wearing are starting to dig in” or “The things I’m wearing used to be so massive and actually, I think that’s part of the eating disorder. I need to get clothes that aren’t about totally hiding myself and that actually do feel more comfortable in terms of how it feels on my body, but more in alignment with the style that I want to be wearing.” But again, changing this so that “When I go to my wardrobe, I have things that I can wear.”

It could also mean the clothes that you’re not fitting, that you donate to charity or you sell or at the very least you put in a box and put at the back of the cupboard or you put in the garage or whatever it is so that each day they’re not staring you in the face and you’re not tempted to “Let me just try on that pair of shorts again and see how it fits” or using this from a body checking standpoint.

There could be stuff connected to life rhythm. Being intentional of “I eat lunch away from work. I take that half an hour and I go and sit on a bench in that park or I go to the canteen area and I have these two work colleagues that I really like and we sit down and we have lunch together.”

It could be connected to bedtime. “I go to bed at 10 p.m. instead of scrolling on Instagram or instead of getting caught in the OCD loops that I’ve been doing where I have to keep doing this thing and this thing, and that just keeps pushing back my meal, which keeps pushing back my bedtime”, and really committing to “I’m going to take action to stop that happening.”

It could be being intentional about saying no to commitments that you don’t have capacity for. It might be any time you’re asked to do something, it’s “Let me have a think about that. I just need to check my calendar and then I’ll come back to you” and giving yourself that little extra window of time to then be able to say – and first think about – “Do I want to do this? Do I really have the capacity to do this?” And if it’s not, then being able to send a message back and say, “Thank you for the invite. I would’ve loved to. Unfortunately, I just can’t do it on this occasion” and then that’s the end of it.

Or it could be the opposite for someone – that their default has always been “no, no, no, no, no” and there’s been so much isolation, and actually, there needs to be some more yes that is going on. There needs to be more “Yeah, I will come out to hat meal” or “I will do that thing on the weekend” because actually, the isolation piece is the thing that’s causing so much of the problem. It’s not the overcommitting. That’s someone else’s issue.

So these are just some of the ways that you can start to change the structure and to change what is going on on an ongoing basis, and a lot of this is about repetition. A lot of this is about saying, “This thing is a non-negotiable.”

And in the beginning, that can feel harder to do than as you get further along with it. It’s one thing to say “In theory this thing’s a non-negotiable” and it’s another thing to actually put that into practice and to demonstrate that to yourself. But these are ideas connected to structural compassion and self-compassion.

00:45:51

Journalling ideas for self-compassion

The final thing I just want to suggest with this is just some journalling ideas. If this idea of compassion, and compassion being a behaviour, not just a feeling – if this has resonated with you and you want to do some extra reflecting and journalling, some ideas that I had:

One, a self-compassion audit of sorts. The first is “In the last 7 days, self-compassion looked like…” and you can then write down all the ways that you’ve been self-compassionate. And I would say given what we’ve talked about today, it’s not just listing thoughts. It’s listing behaviours. So, “What action shave I been taking that show over the last 7 days that I’ve been self-compassionate?”

And then the inverse of that: “In the last 7 days, I withheld self-compassion…” and putting down when did that occur, and then being able to look back and reflecting on that.

Another option could be: “What is one situation where I tend to withdraw from self-compassion?” It’s not just over the last 7 days; it could be “Let me reflect; where is one area I tend to be doing this?”

Or another question in the same vein is “What is one uncomfortable action that would demonstrate self-compassion this week?” That could be connected to the area where you notice that you withdraw self-compassion, or it could be this other area where you notice that’s going on. So “Even though it’s going to be uncomfortable, I’m going to commit to this because I want to take action to demonstrate that I’m being self-compassionate.”

And it’s not just about to demonstrate you’re being self-compassionate. It’s because of the knock-on effect that that then has in terms of you developing resilience, you being able to challenge the eating disorder, you being able to experience the benefits of that action, whether it’s resting more or eating more or whatever it may be.

And then the final one is asking yourself: “If your future, fully recovered self could come back in time and intervene this week, what would they tell you to do?” So imagine you’re fully recovered, and that fully recovered version is coming back in time, and it’s surveying what you’ve been up to and what’s going on; where would they want to be intervening to say, “Look, we got to that place of being fully recovered by starting to change some of these things this week”?

So asking yourself that question and then doing it and turning this theory, or turning this exercise that can feel very theoretical, into action-taking.

That is really what I wanted to cover today. I truly believe that self-compassion is a behaviour, not just a feeling, and that it’s not just about feeling better about yourself or that you’ve got to just speak kindly to yourself. Those things do matter, but not nearly as much as the action-taking.

What is so true in recovery is that the act of compassion doesn’t feel like compassion to start with. It feels challenging. It feels like “This is so uncomfortable to do.” It will be a long time before it starts to feel like “Yes, this is me being compassionate with myself.” So really understanding that one of the most compassionate things you can do is to keep taking care of yourself by taking recovery action while your mind argues against it the entirety of the way. “There can be lots of those thoughts coming up, and I’m still going to take that action.”

So that is it for this week’s episode. Asi mentioned at the top, there is a couple of ways that you can work with me to get the support if you’re wanting to reach a place of full recovery, if you’re wanting to learn how to be more self-compassionate from a behavioural standpoint. So yeah, in the show notes there will be links to both of those things. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com and you can put ‘coaching’ or you can put ‘group’ in the subject line, or you can send a message on Instagram @sevenhealthcompany. Send a DM with those words and I can get the details over.

So, that is it for this week’s episode. I’ll be back next week. Until then, I will see you soon.

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