Looking at and talking to yourself with kindness (in a way that you can actually feel)

When you are hard on yourself, sometimes you can see you are doing it and sometimes you can’t.

Whether it’s speaking to yourself sharply, or looking at yourself in the mirror in a way that is critical, harsh and nitpicky, you might not even realise it is happening. It might not feel like you are being harsh, it might just feel like you are telling yourself the truth.

A first step in being able to do anything about that is spotting it at all. A good first step there is to pay attention to the way you look at and speak to yourself and ask yourself:

“If I was speaking to someone I love about this, what would I be saying?”

From that, you might find that there is a difference in what you would say to someone else. That’s your clue that you are being harsh on yourself.

However, that isn’t always enough to change how you feel. You might be able to see what you would say, but that doesn’t mean you can believe it for yourself.

So, a next step can be to think more about not only the words you would say, but the tone of voice you would use. That brings in a physical feeling. With someone else, you might still say “Yes, you have messed up here”, for example, but the tone might be kinder, gentler, or more supportive.

That is a way in, but it still might not be enough if you find it hard to access that kinder and gentler tone for yourself.

So how do you practice that?

For me, a useful way in is to spend some time practising noticing where you use that kind, gentle and supportive tone for other people (or even with animals, to be fair). When you look at someone you love, how do your eyes take them in? Do you zoom in on the flaws and wobbly bits in quite the same way? Do you react with disgust and criticism? Do you whisper into their ear all the nastiest things you can think of? Probably not.

When you practice paying attention to the loving, kinder, softer, gentler way that you might deal with others, and practice using it even more, you get a chance to feel what it is like in your body when you do. When you speak in soothing tones, when you look at someone else with love, it has a physical effect. For me, it sits in my chest and behind my eyes. When I speak in a soothing tone to someone else, I get to feel that soothing too.

Like when I used to rock my little ones to sleep, and I would start nodding off myself. In being calm, soothing and gentle for someone else, you get a little bit of it for yourself.

If you can practice that enough, you might find it becomes that little bit easier to access what it feels like to offer care, love and soothing when it comes to speaking to or looking at yourself, too.

It’s about helping yourself to feel it in your body, not just in your head.

P.S. Kids, of course, are a great help here, an example being the way my children like to refer to my hair as a “reverse fade” – wonderful for the old self-esteem.