Life is hard, and the person who can comfort you the most is yourself! Psychologist: If you know how to forgive yourself, you will have the power to start again

Life is hard, and the person who can comfort you the most is yourself! Psychologist: If you know how to forgive yourself, you will have the power to start again

Editor's note: When you are struggling, do you criticize yourself more, or give yourself more hugs and understanding? Everyone needs different ways of comfort. If you want to convey comfort, you must practice using the other person's preferred and acceptable way to convey it. And what kind of comfort you want, rather than expecting others to give it, a better way is "self-compassion" in psychology.

Consolation means "to ease pain or soothe grief with warm words or actions." Because the reasons for pain and sadness are different for each person, the timing for comfort is also different. In daily life, sometimes we don’t have to mention painful or sad experiences. As long as we feel that we have gained strength and become happier, we will use words such as “I have been comforted” or “I have been comforted”.

When hearing the word "comfort", some people will worry about "how can I give comfort to others", while others will think about "where can I get comfort from". Even if the starting point is different, life is undoubtedly the mutual comfort between people.

When do you feel comforted? When you drink a cup of fragrant hot coffee, when you feel the cool breeze and warm sunshine, or when you bury your tired body in the soft sofa? Those pictures that can relax the body and mind just by imagining them in your mind are the moments when you get comfort.

Of course, the comfort you get from others also has a huge impact, for example, when you are recognized for what you have worked hard to do, say "are you tired recently?", when you see through the feelings you have not expressed, or give a hug quietly . If you try to enumerate your own experience of obtaining comfort, you will find that not only the timing is quite diverse, but the methods are also very diverse.

The first secret of comforting is to understand and be aware that the timing and meaning of comforting is different for each person .

Some people feel comforted by warm words, but others just need a real hug than a long speech. In addition, when some people are eager for comfort, they will express it with "please listen to me", while others will hope that the other party will treat them to a meal. What is comfort to you?

Comfort is the language of love, 5 love languages, everyone's preference is different

After all, comfort is a love language. When expressing that I need comfort, I actually want to feel my own preciousness and being loved ; when I want to convey comfort to others, the starting point is also because I take the other person to heart, so I want to be a warm help. If you want to know what kind of comfort you and others need, try to recall "5 Languages ​​of Love"!

World-class counselor Gary. Gary Chapman proposed five love languages: words of affirmation, quality time, sincere gifts, acts of service, and physical touch .

Depending on where an individual is born and raised, communication between people whose mother tongue or language is different can be limited. Similarly, love also has a so-called "language", so it is sometimes difficult for people in love to understand each other. Most people want to express love in their favorite language, and long to be cared for in the same way. The "language of love" is different. It's like traveling to a country where you don't understand the language. No matter how you express it, it's hard to get what you want, and you can't give the other party a happy response.

Understand each other's needs, love and comfort can be conveyed smoothly

Gary. Through the counseling cases of various couples and families, Qiaomen found that as long as you understand the love language used by the other party, you can effectively improve the relationship problems. Many times, conflicts in relationships are not because of insufficient love for each other, but because of different ways of expressing them .

In a TV program that dissects the hearts of couples, a couple with different love languages ​​appeared.

The husband has fulfilled his responsibilities as a parent, doing his best every day, expressing his love for his family with time and dedication. However, the wife is disappointed with such a husband, because as long as there is physical contact, the husband will show a tired or resistant look, which makes her wonder: "Is this boring life a marriage?" Even Even when the child asks his father for a hug, he will show an uncomfortable face. Is physical contact really that difficult? Later, the wife gradually gave up.

However, the husband is actually unaware of the frustration in his wife's heart. The two people with different love languages, rather than trying to understand their language, hope that the other party will communicate in their own way, so they will eventually become two parallel lines.

The principle of consolation is the same. People are used to comforting others in the way they are familiar with or prefer, which is why the action has been taken, but the intention has not been conveyed . People who are used to getting comfort through dialogue are good at capturing subtle changes in expression, and will experience warm comfort in the company of questions and answers. And this type of person, when they want to comfort others, will naturally try to talk first. They will carefully observe what happened to the other party and how they are feeling now. However, for someone who wants to be alone or calmly collect their thoughts, these behaviors may not be comforting.

Not by your preferred method, but by approaching in the way the other person desires, so that comfort can truly be given. If you want to convey warm comfort, you must first understand the love language that the other person is accustomed to; similarly, when you want to be comforted, you must also clarify what is comfort to you. In other words, we need to know how to clearly distinguish between the needs of others and ourselves .

The only person who can comfort me is my self-compassion of "It's okay, it doesn't matter"

We can't always seek comfort from others, and it's certainly something to be grateful for if someone can fully understand my words of comfort, but even so, people can't be tired of being together forever. Does the thought of having no one to comfort you make you feel doubly lonely? This is why we must have the power to comfort ourselves.

Psychologist Christine. Based on various studies, Kristin Neff (Ph.D.) pointed out that when in pain, it is important to have tolerance and understanding of oneself rather than excessive self-criticism . In addition, she also emphasized that in this journey of life, everyone is working very hard in order to survive, and no matter who you are, you may fall or make mistakes, and knowing how to encourage yourself "it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter" is the so-called healthy attitude towards life .

People often blame themselves in order to achieve higher achievements, or obsessed with showing a positive side, but this attitude is prone to collapse or blame others in the face of failure. In times of pain and sorrow, what we need is not harsh criticism or unrealistic optimism, but a heart of tolerance and love. Just like comforting a frustrated friend, maintaining a loving attitude towards your own life and appearance is " self-compassion ".

People with self-compassion accept their setbacks and mistakes lightly. For everyone, "life" is the first time, and it is natural to encounter difficulties, so they accept that they may fall sometimes, and think that it is okay to fall. How can it be painless to make a mistake or fail? However, they do not indulge in this emotion. In other words, they recognize their own contributions and know how to comfort themselves "you have done a good job." The so-called "self-compassion" is to be tolerant and kind to oneself .

Experiment proves: Knowing self-forgiveness has the power to start again

To demonstrate the power of self-compassion, Juliana. Breines (Juliana G. Breines) and Serena. Professor Serena Chen conducted an interesting experiment. They asked the students participating in the study to think about a recent event in which they did something wrong, or felt guilt, regret and shame, and then asked them to write a short essay.

The first group used self-compassion as a condition for writing. The professors gave the students a reminder: "For the scenes that come to your mind, please look at them with generosity and compassion when writing articles, and think about what you can say to yourself." The writing condition for the second group was self-esteem, "Please write about your positive side, such as pride, proud characteristics or achievements, etc."; the last group was told to write about personal interests and hobbies. After the writing time was over, the subjects took questionnaires about how much they wanted to correct their mistakes and how determined they were not to repeat them in the future.

It is often believed that the more positive you are about yourself, the more power you have, but the results of the experiment were surprising. "I have no choice in that situation", "The current situation has also affected my behavior", people who know how to look at themselves with a similar compassionate perspective, the motivation to correct mistakes and not to repeat the same mistakes is relatively less. strong .

Juliana. Brenes and Serena. Professor Chen has conducted a series of studies to prove that people with self-compassion believe that they have the ability to overcome their weaknesses, and after failure, they will invest more time and effort to achieve better results, and they will not stop learning from others. Borrow. In other words, the warm comfort of embracing the self brings the energy to start again .

Many people are afraid of self-forgiveness, worrying about breaking down or becoming lazy, but the results of the experiment tell us that "self-compassion" instead increases the motivation for growth. It's the same reason that after a tiring day, if you rest well, you can feel refreshed the next day. And those who fall into positive self-fantasy and show a burnout attitude are mostly the second group whose writing conditions are based on self-esteem. Although they temporarily gained a good mood from the self-showing state, they did not show a posture of introspection or pursuit of progress.

Everyone makes mistakes, one time failure does not mean forever failure

Those who lack self-compassion will feel that since they screwed up in the first place, they might as well let it go; on the contrary, those who know self-forgiveness can still exert the ability of self-control.

When you make a mistake or mess things up, if you have self-compassion, you can understand that "everyone makes mistakes", and one failure does not mean permanent failure, as long as you start to stand firm again from this moment.

If you are curious about your level of self-compassion, you may wish to refer to the table below, which extracts part of the Korean version of the self-compassion scale. The scale tests aspects such as self-kindness, self-judgment, universal humanity, isolation, spiritual care, and overidentification. It consists of 26 questions. Here are 6 questions that are helpful for understanding self-compassion.