Inspired by Cassie Shortsleeve’s article, “How To Practice Self-Compassion And Build A Stable Sense Of Confidence — Being kinder to yourself pushes you to make positive changes” (https://www.womenshealthmag.com/author/209551/cassie-shortsleeve/ - 30/12/2022), this article attempts to touch on the subject from a Christian perspective.

Firstly, I want to think about the particular issues we might face in Church life as Christians, ie, the reasons we might need to be compassionate with ourselves; and secondly, I want to indicate that there are benefits in finding self-compassion for ourselves in our faith, benefits which are deeper than personal. I am looking at Church culture as a whole, and not thinking about individuals, and do not agree with a “bad apple” theory that there are abusers in every culture, and the Church is a culture like any other. I believe there is a cultural problem in the Christian Church, and it has nothing to do with Christ.

We have a Church with a culture which often looks —or is— narcissistic: it picks people up and then drops them, it judges, belittles, fails to listen, it is controlling and autocratic, unwelcoming and unwilling to admit difference. As such, the culture is a culture of fear, which is necessarily counter productive to our mission to love. It is a simple fact that if only people were quiet and watchful, rather than being quick to speak and to judge, they would see that God is managing things very well, and with a creative ability beyond our own conceptions. We don’t need to interfere, we need only to love! And what a blessing it is to be the witness to God’s work in the life of another soul. So much is being lost, because being in Christian life, it can feel like sacred ground is getting trampled in the stampede to get to heaven.

I say stampede, but it feels much more passive aggressive than that.

Whatever is happening, the teachings of Christ are being forgotten, in the moment, due to “more important” things happening. Attempts to worship end up overriding life. Jesus didn’t fail to warn us about these dangers in the Gospels:

  • “Who is my mother and my brothers?… whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:48-50);
  • “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27);
  • “‘Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbour to the robbers’ victim?’ He answered, ‘The one who treated him with mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise’ ” (Luke 10:25-42).

After centuries of aggressive and autocratic Christian culture, which has pervaded the secular world, we now lack a vision for what “healthy relationship” actually looks like. This is a limiting factor for those who are genuinely trying to do a good job and who devote their lives, with integrity, to offering Christian leadership and guidance in a world where the thirst for guidance is strong.

What this means for us on a practical level, is that people in Church communities can be very triggering, and there is very little guidance or support with the issues arising on the ground. Leaders and other “VIP”s can be bullishly sure that they are right, or be intent on looking “perfect”, creating the “perfect” atmosphere for Holy Worship, or can be so “busy” they have no time for meaningful or honest interaction — they are never truly present! And through these, and many other ways, members of the Church body can find themselves in hurtful situations again and again, in a kind of survival of the “fittest”, as though there wasn’t enough love to go around, as though love was a scarce resource. It is a dysfunctional family where the children are longing for the time and attention of their emotionally unavailable or over-stretched parents. The harvest (the harvest for the love in the hearts of those seeking Christ) is surely vast, and the harvesters (those blessed to make the connection, to be able to connect in love) are few:

  • “At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is abundant but the labourers are few’ ” (Matthew 9:36-37).

Worse than this, damaging, hurtful, and even abusive behaviour can be seen as unimportant in the scheme of things. There can be an implication that it is “worldly” to be too concerned about temporal behaviours. When members of Church communities get things wrong, there can be a quick recourse to statements such as “we’re all human and we all err” or “leave that in the past”, immediately putting the emphasis back on the person who was hurt, with the implication that they should be “more forgiving”. …Which can be frustrating when errors happen again and again, apologies often aren’t forthcoming, we are often met with defensiveness and anger, and situations start to feel abusive. At this point, behaviour that seems to be part of the norm in Christian communities is actually interfering with the ability for us to form real human relationships, and go anywhere in the love which Christ became incarnate to teach us about.

Even in the best of cases, behaviour which comes from the best of intentions, can effectively be interference or gossip and can lead to terrible pain through the real issues being obfuscated and extra complications being brought into a situation which was already difficult.

All this happens between people who, generally, think they love each other, and who have the very best of intentions, and are hurt when those intentions are questioned. While it might be Love, it is love within limits, love on my terms, love which I bestow, love which isn’t coming as part of a relationship. There is a huge amount of room here for betrayal, rejection, fear, humiliation, silent withdrawal, cruelty, superficiality, black and white thinking, masking of our true selves, hiding of weakness or vulnerability, isolation and exclusion, all in the name of Love.

As Christians, even in a Christian Church, how do we manage all this suffering and difficulty without falling into a false sense of martyrdom and adding to the problems?

It seems to me that there is very little vision about what is possible in terms of human relationships, and just how close to heaven they can bring us: they can bring us straight to heaven when we chose to relate to each other in an inclusive and respectful way. But even before we think of relating to others — because there will be difficulty doing this, we can start to relate better with ourselves.

It is very important to be compassionate to ourselves in the Church, as in any, environment, if we are to create the change we want to see. As Cassie Shortsleeve’s article says, “Being kinder to yourself pushes you to make positive changes”. We see Jesus always approaches with kindness and love, even where he is critical; and he is only critical where the empowered are using their power to destructive ends.

Cassie Shortsleeve’s article uses the work of psychologist Kristin Neff to say that, by improving our internal judgement of our self-worth, we build confidence and ability to be our authentic selves in the world. Shortsleeve argues that we don’t need to build up our self-esteem or become more assertive, we need to become more compassionate and allow the fruits of this compassion to grow, as they naturally will. Shortsleeve says, “self-compassion, which involves showing yourself kindness when you’re struggling, failing, or noticing something you don’t love about yourself. Self-compassion isn’t about measuring up to expectations; it’s a way of relating to yourself as a human. By caring and expressing concern for yourself during hard times, you’re able to persevere and create changes.”

Of course, as Christians, we know this is what Christ teaches us, “For we have a magnificent King-Priest, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who rose into the heavenly realm for us, and now sympathises with us in our frailty. He understands humanity, for as a man, our magnificent King-Priest was tempted in every way just as we are, and conquered sin.” (Hebrews 4:14-15)

“When you can sit with your pain and think through what you might need to achieve your goal—like waking up earlier for runs or scheduling them on your phone calendar—instead of spiralling over all the ways you’re failing, you’ll overcome challenges, building confidence and belief in yourself as you go. It’s a subtle change in reaction, but it makes a huge difference.

“We tend to think of self-compassion as passive, even unproductive (‘If I’m easy on myself, I’ll become complacent’). But that could not be further from the truth. There are two sides to self-compassion, Neff says. The tender side embodies the idea that although you are innately flawed, you are still worthy. And the fierce side says if you truly care about yourself, you accept yourself but don’t accept all of your behaviours, especially harmful ones. ‘Part of caring for yourself means taking active steps to change,’ says Neff. That’s where the power of self-compassion comes in.

“But none of this is easy. We tend to be waaay nicer to others than we are to ourselves—and we’re quick to judge our shortcomings and failures. The good news is this is a trainable skill. ‘It’s a muscle you can build,’ says Neff.” Cassie Shortsleeve, ibid.

The article has three major points where we can learn to have self awareness and respond to ourselves in a way which is healthy for us: 1. Ask Yourself: What Do I Need?, 2. Put a Hand on Your Heart, 3. Figure Out When You Just *Don’t* Have It in You.

  1. What do I need? Instead of focussing on how we have failed, focus on what our needs are, what can we do to help ourselves next time? As Christians, we might like to ask ourselves “what is God calling me to?” And pray to see how we can enable ourselves to do it better. Sometimes, there may be no clear choices, and we will have to pray to step forward in faith until we get out of the dense undergrowth of difficult times (God makes a wide place for us to place our feet, and makes our footing stable and secure, Samuel 22:33,34,37).
  2. Put a hand on your heart. A soft touch to your cheek, arm, shoulder, hand, or heart simulates a loving touch by a caring parent. It soothes us, and offers us security. We can care for ourselves in this way.
  3. When it is just too much. Are people in your environment simply too triggering? Do you need to withdraw and get some space? Is there anything you can do to be kind to yourself in this moment? If this entails withdrawing from a Church community which we are finding toxic, this can lead to suggestions from others that we are being selfish or weak! This simply isn’t true.

As we are engaged in enquiry, substitute other words for “should” in any way that “fosters curiosity”. Instead of berating ourselves for what we “should” have done, Shortsleeve suggests we ask questions like, “*Could I have chosen to do X instead?*Or:I wonder what held me back most this week?.”

Techniques to help with these three practices are:

  • Notice your body: sit quietly in contemplation; notice areas of tension, tingling, heat and cold, notice the breath, notice the weight of your body, notice any agitations, or discomfort.
  • Enquire into yourself: what am I feeling? Where am I feeling it? What does it feel like to feel this?

We can stop and notice our bodies, and enquire into ourselves as to what we are feeling, in moments of agitation, shock, upset, when we want to be aware of and careful of our reactions. It’s a method we can use when we are at waiting for an appointment, or a job interview. We can do it when we are on our own and meditating on a situation we feel we handled badly. We can do it when we are with friends and someone has said something which seems to hurt our feelings, or we witness something distressing. Anything that comes up in life can be addressed with this kind of self-enquiry so that we start to get to know ourselves, and start to feel sincerely interested about and content with our own responses and reactions, even when our reactions might not seem to be ideal. “Irrational” anger and upset is indicative of somewhere Christ wants to take us for healing. We can go there, with him, in prayer, with a compassionate eye and spirit of curiosity and allow the feelings to emerge. They are not dangerous, and shutting them away only makes them feel stronger and more frightening than they were before. Shutting ourselves off from our feelings shuts a channel to God, and disturbs our ability to grow in discernment. Even fear can be faced in this way: yes, it is frightening, but when it emerges and is faced in the abstract, it is a gift which we can conquer by not distracting ourselves and moving away. Notice how Jesus faced, and owned, his fear in the Garden of Gethsemane.

We are all unique, and Jesus himself wasn’t the “perfect” human, because there is no such thing as a perfect human being. “He had no majestic bearing to catch our eye, no beauty to draw us to him”, Isaiah 53:2. He was only perfect in so far as he lived his true self, in communion with God. Jesus must be our role model, he shows us the way, through our own hearts. “The real spiritual guide is the one who, instead of advising us what to do or to whom to go, offers us a chance to stay alone and take the risk of entering into our own experience.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching out, A Suffocating Loneliness, From Desert to Garden.

I’ll finish with a reminder of Aesop’s fable, The North Wind & the Sun:

The North Wind and the Sun had a quarrel about which of them was the stronger. While they were disputing with much heat and bluster, a Traveler passed along the road wrapped in a cloak.
”Let us agree,” said the Sun, “that he is the stronger who can strip that Traveler of his cloak."
"Very well,” growled the North Wind, and at once sent a cold, howling blast against the Traveler.
With the first gust of wind the ends of the cloak whipped about the Traveler’s body. But he immediately wrapped it closely around him, and the harder the Wind blew, the tighter he held it to him. The North Wind tore angrily at the cloak, but all his efforts were in vain.
Then the Sun began to shine. At first his beams were gentle, and in the pleasant warmth after the bitter cold of the North Wind, the Traveler unfastened his cloak and let it hang loosely from his shoulders. The Sun’s rays grew warmer and warmer. The man took off his cap and mopped his brow. At last he became so heated that he pulled off his cloak, and, to escape the blazing sunshine, threw himself down in the welcome shade of a tree by the roadside.

Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.

Original article to be found here: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/author/209551/cassie-shortsleeve/
Kristin Neff has some self-compassion exercises here: https://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/#exercises
Aesop’s fable of the North Wind and the Sun can be found here: https://read.gov/aesop/143.html

Written by: Ruthie Baigent 02 Jan 2023