Ep. 223 What if I Don't Deserve Self-Compassion

SUMMARY:

We all know that self-compassion is am important tool for anxiety recovery.  In this weeks episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast, I address a common concern; “What if I dont deserve self-compassion?”  This is such a common reason people do not provide themselves with compassion.  In this episode, review the reasons YOU DO DESERVE SELF-COMPASSION and some key concepts and self-compassion mediations to help you practice self-compassion.

In This Episode, we cover:

• Self-Compassion Definition
• Reasons people feel they do not deserve self-compassion
• Ways to manage feeling unworthy of self-compassion
• How to practice Mindful Self-Compassion

Links To Things I Talk About:

Self-compassion Mediation: Here is a link to several self-compassion meditations from previous episodes.
https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/episode-2-lovingkindness-meditation/
https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/ep-134-giving-and-receiving-meditation/
https://kimberleyquinlan-lmft.com/ep-110-this-compassion-practice-tonglen-meditation-for-anxiety-will-change-your-life/

Episode Sponsor:

This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 223.

Welcome back, everybody. It is a joy to be with you again. Thank you so much for being here with me. Thank you so much for putting aside your valuable time to spend it with me. I feel so honored.

Today, we are talking about a question. And in effort for us to respond to this question, we’re actually going to ask ourselves some questions and I’m going to have some questions for you, and you’re going to think about them, hopefully, and then make some changes if you think that is what you need.

The big question of the week is: What if I do not deserve self-compassion? Now, one of the most common questions I get is this question, particularly when I’m with patients and we’re discussing the idea of practicing self-compassion or kindness towards themselves. Often, that is a question they ask, what if I don’t deserve it, or they may even make a statement like, “I don’t deserve self-compassion.”

Now, this is particularly true for those who are very self-critical and blame themselves for certain things that have happened either to them or that they have done. Like I’m saying, it’s like things that were accidental, things that they didn’t have control over, or maybe some things and mistakes that they did make. This is a really important question for us to explore. I’m going to hopefully get to explore it with you.

Before we do that, I would like to do the “I did a hard thing” for the week. This one is from Sophia. Thank you, Sophia, for writing in and telling us your hard thing. Sophia said:

“I suffered from OCD starting when I was 19. My hard thing I did was I reported my stepfather in for sexual abuse that occurred when I was nine when I found out I wasn’t the last victim. It to