The Four Steps to a Self-Compassionate Voice
The Four Steps to a Self-Compassionate Voice
Every person has a side of themselves that continuously observes, monitors, and evaluates their actions. Self-criticism is an automatic, largely unconscious, psychological tendency that people occasionally engage in.
When faced with failure or hardship, some people experience a milder presence of self-criticism and may ultimately respond to the situation with self-compassion. However, many others live with an unfriendly and critical inner voice, manifesting through negative thoughts, which distort how they perceive things. Below I have outlined 4 steps that help an individual learn how to respond with self-compassion rather than self-criticism when faced with difficulties.
Step One: Connect
Find a place to be still, put your hand over your heart, and focus your attention on your breath going in and going out. Connect with your experience in this moment. It doesn’t matter where you are; you can be among other people, alone, standing or seated, with eyes closed or open. You are slowing down, centering or grounding yourself, and finding a mindful way to be with yourself intentionally without judgment. You are creating space to be with whatever is happening.
Step Two: Allow
By slowing down and bringing mindful attention to what is happening right here, right now, allow whatever thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations you are experiencing to surface. There is no need to push them away. Instead, give them permission and approval. You can give yourself permission to let whatever experiences you are having to come.
Step Three: Respond
It is often automatic to react to our experiences with harsh words and punishing attitudes. Here, you’re going to practice doing the opposite. You are going to respond to yourself with kindness and tenderness. Write down any thoughts that have a punishing tone and see if you can come up with kinder, more tender ways of speaking to yourself.
Can you imagine what it would be like, even for a moment, to automatically respond to your experience with tender kindness?
That is a lofty goal, because thoughts, feelings and memories continue to stay with us. We don’t get to hit a delete button. It may seem impossible to leave behind the habitual reactions you have used for so long. Consider, then, that you can choose to add new ways to talk to yourself.
Step Four: Embrace
To embrace means to hold closely, accept and support willingly, and welcome with open arms. This makes embracing our experience the simplest step, and the most difficult. It’s simple because the things that human beings experience just show up; there is not a lot we have to do there. But we are judgmental creatures, which makes meeting what shows up with openness difficult. Recall that resisting your internal experience, or perceiving it as dangerous or threatening, opens the door to the Inner Critic and its reactions. Letting your experience, whatever it happens to be, be there so you can accept it opens the space for compassion, and for responding.
Source: Costello Whooley, S. & Yates, H. (2025) The Inner Critic Workbook. New Harbinger Publications Inc.
Blog Post Written by: Kerri Neuberger, Psychologist with Wildflowers
