At this time of year, many people are asking themselves how to make it through the holidays. One way to help yourself through the season is by practicing self-compassion.
What is self-compassion?
Kristin Neff, the most well-known self-compassion researcher at the University of Texas-Austin, calls it “a healthier way of relating to yourself.” It is a tool to help promote psychological healing, well-being, and better relationships.
Rather than beating yourself up, you extend kindness and understanding to yourself. It is a caring attitude, where you can encourage yourself and realize that being human means things can go wrong. Continue reading
Holidays may be a great time to see family and friends. They are also a time when we return to old patterns and behaviors. When we go back “home,” we revert to the relationships we had growing up, instead of acting as the grownups that we now are. These are the same relationships and patterns that formed our views of ourselves and our outlooks on life. Along with this, unconscious conflicts may come to the surface, which will cause us to end up in a three-sided behavior pattern.
