How Can Self-Compassion Help Your Teen Thrive?
Have you noticed your teen tends to be very critical of herself? Is he often anxious and overwhelmed? Does she compare herself to others, which makes her feel down? Is he experiencing a lot of emotion, but does not have the skills to understand how he is feeling and how to regulate himself?
These are common experiences for this stage of development. This is a time when your teen’s body is changing, her brain is under construction, and her orientation turns toward her peers and away from you. Furthermore, the pressures created by academics, sports, fitting in and social media present many opportunities for your teen to compare herself to others, often resulting in feeling “not good enough.”
You might be thinking, so how can Self-Compassion help? I thought we were supposed to be cultivating self-esteem in our kids? Oftentimes our self-esteem is based on our self-evaluation tied to external factors. Therefore, we have high self-esteem when we do well and evaluate ourselves positively. When your teen wins the game, gets the A, or is invited to the party, he feels great about himself and is in a good mood. However, when he loses, gets a low grade or is left out, you may notice how he begins to feel terrible about himself, perhaps overrun by thoughts about what a bad person he is. High self-esteem tends to be a fair-weather friend. It is not so reliable and steady over time when it is based on how we compare to others.
Self-compassion is something else entirely. Once we learn to relate to our pain, our difficulties, our failings, with kindness toward ourselves, we begin to develop a relationship with ourselves that is supportive and constant, especially during the hard times. This kind of relationship with the self tends to be more stabilizing and leads to more resilience over time. Imagine this: Your teen can learn to have her own back no matter what happens.
So how does Self-Compassion work? Self-Compassion has three components: mindfulness; common humanity; and self-kindness. Mindfulness is a way of being in which we learn to pay attention to what is going on in the present moment non-judgmentally. We must first learn to pause, notice, and ask, “how am I feeling, what am I thinking?”
The second component of Self-Compassion is “common humanity.” This is about the fact that we are not alone in what we experience. Teenagers often feel isolated in their difficulties. When teens become aware that their painful experiences of falling short, getting left out, and losing, are part of the shared human experience, this leads to feeling less weird and less alone.
The final component of Self-Compassion is self-kindness. Here, we learn to turn towards ourselves with kindness when we are in pain. The common human strategy is to avoid our painful feelings, which leads to other problems, such as unexpected emotional outbursts. With Self-Compassion we learn to turn towards our pain, to feel what is here, and to ask ourselves, “What am I needing right now?” Then we offer that thing to ourselves. Perhaps we need some kind words, like “This hurts, but I know I’m not alone in feeling this way and it will pass.” Maybe a supportive touch will help, like a hand over the heart space, bringing a sense of self-soothing and leading to a calm state. These skills, with practice over time, can lead to more resilience in the face of difficulty and an increased ability to regulate emotion in a healthy way.
As a therapist, it is rewarding to witness a teen with a loud internal critic begin to notice, through mindfulness, how this voice makes her feel and then begin to relate to herself differently. Instead of, “I am SO dumb” when she falls short academically, it might become, “This sucks. I feel embarrassed and disappointed, but I usually do well and I know I can study a little more next time.” She moves from a habit of rumination leading to a depressed mood, to a new habit of taking a few deep breaths, offering some self-kindness and feeling soothed and calm.
If you would like your teen to learn and practice the skills of Mindful Self-Compassion, consider registering him/her for our upcoming 8-week Course. More information can be found here: https://www.newgrowthcounseling.com/mindfulness-group-for-teens/