Building Self-Compassion
Building Self-Compassion

Building Self-Compassion
Module 6
Self-Compassionate Behaviour
Introduction

2

Taking Care of Ourselves

2

Taking Care of Others

4

Taking Care of Business

5

Worksheet: Weekly Activity Schedule

9

Module Summary

10

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Building Self-Compassion
Introduction
Ideally you are now able to think in more compassionate ways, which is hopefully having a positive impact
on how you feel emotionally, how you feel physically, and may also be having flow on effects to how you
behave. In this module we will take a closer look at the ‘doing’ side of things, looking at what it means to
be more compassionate in your behaviour.
Now this is a tricky one. There is no single behaviour that goes with being self-compassionate. Dependingon your circumstances, very different types of behaviours will be helpful. So, to try to simplify this, we havedivided self-compassionate behaviours into three categories, and it is likely that a little bit from eachcategory will be needed by most people. These three categories of self-compassionate behaviours involve:
taking care of ourselves, taking care of others, and taking care of business (i.e., attending to things that weneed to, or have to, do). Let’s look at each in turn now…

Taking Care of Ourselves
The idea of being kind and caring towards yourself, in how you
treat yourself and how you spend your time, is probably the mostobvious self-compassionate behaviour that comes to mind. Doingkind things for ourselves regularly can act as a sort of prevention
or buffer when it comes to experiencing emotional pain. Doingkind things for ourselves particularly when we are struggling, justas we would do to try and help a friend in need, can help us tocope and move through difficult emotional experiences.
Taking care of ourselves by being very considered about theactivities we engage in, is often referred to as self-soothing or selfnurturing. Self-soothing tends to involve purposely participating in
activities that provide a sense of warmth and being cared for, andthat help us to get through tough times.
People will differ greatly in terms of what they find self-soothing. One person’s idea of treating themselves
well could be someone else’s nightmare. The idea is to experiment with various activities to find out whatfeels good to you, and find out what feels like you are showing care and kindness towards yourself. On
page 3 is a list of possible self-soothing activities. The idea is not that you have to use each activity on thelist, but that some may appeal to you to try and others won’t. Also, by having a large list, it may help you
to brainstorm other self-soothing activities that may work for you.
Look at the list and underline any activities you may like toexperiment with generally or when you are next struggling in someway. Also feel free to add other activities that come to mind in thespace provided. The aim of these activities is not to take youremotional pain away or to solve the problem at hand, but tosee what happens when you choose to be kind to yourself byinvolving yourself in self-soothing activities.

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Building Self-Compassion
SELF-SOOTHING ACTIVITIES:Make a nice meal or snack for yourself
Go out for a nice meal or snack
Enjoy a favourite drink (non-alcohol)
Go to a favourite cafe
Have a picnic
Meet with a friend for coffee, lunch, a walk, etc.
Phone a friend to chatTake a walk in lovely surroundings
Look at beautiful art or scenery
Go to a beautiful place
Enjoy time in the sunshine
Go to the beachLight a candle
Watch the stars
Put on soothing or enjoyable music
Enjoy the sounds of natureSing
Use a favourite perfume or lotion
Enjoy the smells of nature or flowers
Have a bubble bath
Have a long shower

Have a massage
Pamper yourself
Soak your feet
Gently brush your hair
Do your nails
Read a good book or magazine
Watch a good movie or TV show
Pat your dog or cat
Hug yourself
Hug someone else
Imagine a relaxing scene or safe place
Do some relaxation or meditation
Do some slow breathing
Smile to yourself
Laugh out loudTake a break (enjoy staying in bed for 20mins)
Others:When we try to change our behaviour by trying new activities, it is important to come up with a specificplan of what we are going to do and when we are going to do it.
Ideally it would be great to plan one specific self-soothing activity that you can try each day. Not every
activity has to be time consuming, and some should be quite easy to incorporate into your day, it justrequires a bit of planning. However, if one activity per day seems like too much at this stage, then pickwhatever is manageable for you at the moment, and then build on that over the coming weeks.
At the end of this module you will see a weekly activity schedule that you can use to assist you in planning
your new activities for the week. Have a look at the activities you underlined from the list of Self-Soothing
Activities. From those that you underlined, start slotting some of these activities into your schedule for the
coming week - these then become your pre-planned self-soothing activities for the week ahead.
Whilst it is very useful to have pre-planned self-soothing activities in your day, it is also helpful to haveanother relatively easy activity that you can use as required. That is, a self-soothing activity that you can try
whenever you notice you are going through a tough moment throughout the day, and need to show
yourself a little compassion. An example might be having a favourite song or meditation track saved onyour mobile phone that you can play any time you need, or carrying a favourite hand lotion with you thatyou can apply at any time.
Identify which as required self-soothing activities you would consider experimenting with over the
coming weeks whenever you need some compassion.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Try to remember that taking care of yourself is about showing yourself the same care and kindness you
would show a friend who was upset. It is likely that if it was a friend who was struggling, you would try to
comfort them and try to do something nice for them, to cheer them up. This is about behaving in thatforCentrelinical
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Building Self-Compassion

same way towards yourself. Now the only way to get over the initial ‘yuk’ factor that can sometimes arisefor people when they first try to treat themselves kindly, is to keep trying. Initially, treating yourself thisway will be unfamiliar and therefore may feel a bit weird. But like anything, if you keep doing it you’ll
eventually get used to it. Hey, you may even like it at some point. So give it a go, what have you got tolose?

Taking Care of Others
Building our own self-compassion can also be helped along by showing compassion towards others. The
more time we spend being compassionate, whether that be directed internally towards helping ourselves orexternally towards helping others, the more our soothe system is active, and hence the better it is for our
general mental health and well-being.
Now, let’s think specifically about how we might show
kindness and gratitude towards the people around us, bothclose loved ones and also perfect strangers. It is important
to clarify that the idea of ‘taking care of others’ should
never come at the expense of ‘taking care of ourselves’,
both are equally important. It is often important to takecare of ourselves, so we then have the energy and capacity
to be able to take care of others. You know when you areon a plane and you hear the safety message about putting
the oxygen mask on yourself first before helping others,
well the same goes here. Make sure you have prioritised
those self-soothing activities from the last section, and then
you will be in a good position to show that same kindness
to others.
Another important point to consider is that ‘taking care of others’ isn’t the same as just being passive,
unassertive, or submissive to other people’s demands. It isn’t just doing what others tell you to do. Taking
care of others should be motivated from a kindness within us that we want to show others in some way
through our kind behaviour. It is not about just surrendering to others and doing things others tell us todo, that we don’t really want to be doing.
When thinking about the different ways we could go about taking care of others, below are a few ideas tohelp get you started. You may be able to think of other ways you could show kindness to a partner, family
member, friend, or stranger, that aren’t on the lists below.
•

Thank someone close to me for the things they do for me. For example, giving a hug
and telling the person how much I appreciate them for… making meals for me/ driving me places/
helping around the house/ listening to me/ spending time with me, etc.

•

Plan a kind act or gesture for someone I care about. For example, making ororganising a surprise dinner, an outing, or a pampering session, etc.
•

Do something caring to cheer-up someone I care about. For example, making them agift, or taking them for a picnic or beach walk or movie, or spending time showing interest andlistening to their troubles, etc.

•

Compliment someone I care about. For example, telling them what I like or love about

them…their sense of humour, their caring nature, their intelligence, their loyalty, their integrity,
their patience, their tenacity, etc.

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Show kindness to strangers. For example, offering to help someone struggling with heavybags, offering my seat to someone on the bus, telling someone in customer service how helpful
they have been, etc.

First think of specific people in your life you would like to show kindness towards (i.e., your partner,
particular family members, particular friends, work colleagues or classmates, or certain strangers you tend
to encounter in your daily life). When you have some people in mind, then list the things that you would
like to do for these people more often over the coming weeks. Now, some of these things may need to be
spontaneous as the opportunity arises (e.g., next time you see someone who needs a seat on the bus). But
some will be able to be pre-planned into your week. Again where possible, use the weekly activity scheduleat the end of this module to get more specific with what you will do, and also plan when you will do it.
People I would like to show kindness to are:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What I can do to show kindness is:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Once you start to do kind things for others, pay attention to the impact your compassionate actions haveon yourself and on the people around you. How do you feel when you do kind things for others? How dopeople respond to you? What does it do for the quality of your relationships? Whilst we can certainly dowith more compassion for ourselves, the world more broadly could do with a bit more compassion too,and your kind actions towards others will contribute to this.

Taking Care of BusinessAs we have said in earlier modules, compassion is not just about the warm and fuzzy kind stuff, which is ofcourse very important and not to be underestimated. But being compassionate also
involves some hard stuff, like courage and strength to face ourstruggles, and doing what is needed to alleviate our struggles.
This is where the idea of ‘taking care of business’ comes in.
This really relates to if there is a problem, then facing the
problem rather than running away from it, and doing what we
can to try to overcome it. This doesn’t mean that all problems can be overcome,and under those circumstances, taking care of ourselves with self-soothing
activities and self-compassionate thinking (see Module 5), will be particularly
important to help us cope through a difficult time that we can’t do much about.
However, with many problems there may be things we can try, actions we can take, and doing these things
may lead us to feel a bit less helpless and a bit less hopeless.
Different circumstances and different problems will call for different
compassionate actions. But as a rule of thumb, a guiding principle that cansometimes help is the idea that if the situation is objectively safe (i.e., others do
it with no real harm to them), then try ‘acting opposite’ to what your threat
system is telling you to do. That is, opposite to what the anxiety or anger or
depression is telling you to do. See the following ‘Acting Opposite Guide’ togive you a few ideas…
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Building Self-Compassion‘Acting Opposite’ Guide
Threat System says…

Instead Do the Opposite…

*Avoid things I need or would like to be doing,
because it makes me anxious

Don’t avoid situations that make you anxious. If it isrealistically a safe situation, then find ways to gradually
face these situations and stay in them, until you haveridden through the anxiety. By repeatedly doing this,you will slowly build confidence that the situation issafe and you can cope with anxiety.

Give up because there is nothing I can do about
this problem

Don’t give up, try problem solving. Be clear about
what the problem is, and then think up all the possible
ways of solving the problem. Shortlist a few of thebest solutions and think through the pros and cons ofeach. Then pick one of the solutions you would like totry, and break it down into the steps involved in
implementing the solution. Start with the first stepand keep going. If it doesn’t work, return to one ofyour other solutions and give that a try.

*Procrastinate and put off things that need to
be done because it is too hard, too scary, tooboring, etc.

Get started. Break the task down into steps. Whatis the first smallest step that needs to be done? Start
with that no matter how you feel. Once you get going
you may find things get easier.

Escape or numb the problems and my feelings
by using alcohol or drugs,* restricting my foodor binge eating, self-harming, etc.

Instead show yourself compassion by thinking
compassionately (e.g., compassionate thought diary orcompassionate letter writing) and taking care ofyourself (i.e., self-soothing activities, reduce alcoholand drugs use, healthy regular eating, etc).

Isolate myself from everyone and everything so
I don’t get hurt

Instead take care of yourself (i.e., self-soothing
activities) and take care of others (i.e., connect withothers by doing kind things for them).

*Be passive to others’ demands or be
aggressive towards others

Communicate with others assertively. Express yourneeds clearly and calmly, hear the other person’s pointof view, and then work together to negotiate a goodoutcome where your needs are considered and often
met.

Don’t forgive people, because they will justhurt me again

If not forgiving someone is causing you a lot of pain,
consider accepting and letting go of past hurt.
Thinking compassionately (e.g., compassionate thought
diary or compassionate letter writing) might help you
work through this past hurt. Remember, you canforgive yet still put boundaries in place to protect
yourself from being hurt again.

* Note: This module gives some very general ideas about how to overcome general avoidance behaviours. If you identify very strongly with youravoidance being specifically related to social situations, or fear of having a panic attack, or fear of having a serious health problem, then you may
want to look at the ‘Shy No Longer’, ‘Panic Stations’ and ‘Helping Health Anxiety’ Information packages respectively to target these specificproblems. In addition, if you need further help with some of the acting opposite behaviours mentioned, there are other Infopax available that may
be of assistance (e.g., ‘Assert Yourself’, ‘Put Off Procrastinating’, ‘Overcoming Disordered Eating’).
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Building Self-Compassion
Now, let’s think about how these ‘Acting Opposite’ ideas apply to you. What business do you need to takecare of? Is there a certain problem or situation you need to be facing or addressing in your life? Is there
something you need to deal with and overcome to make life better for you?
Here is an example of how to get clearer and more specific about what needs to be done. Have a readthrough and then have a go for yourself.
The problem area for me is:Socialising with people my age
The threat system tells me:

Don’t do it, they won’t like me, I won’t fit in
To act opposite I need to:Socialise more with people my age even though it scares me. It is the only way I will start toovercome this, and I really want to make some more friends.
The steps involved in starting to overcome this problem area are:1) Accept invitations from my existing friends to go to social events
2) Start making small talk more with the people at work
3) Make an effort to talk more to general strangers when I am out and about, at the shops,
etc.
4) Research a social/hobby/sport group I could join
5) Go along to a group and talk to at least 2 people
6) Go along to more groups and talk to the people I meet.

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Building Self-Compassion
The problem area for me is:

The threat system tells me:

To act opposite I need to:

The steps involved in starting to overcome this problem area are:Now plan at least the first step into your weekly schedule. If this step feels like too much too soon, see if
you can break this step down even further to make it more manageable.
If you are struggling to know what the compassionate behaviour is for a particular situation, slow yourbreathing and get in touch with your compassionate image, and then see what advice your compassionate
image would give about how to handle the situation or problem you are facing.
We understand that acting opposite is often challenging, and can bring up your self-critical thinking
especially when things do not go as planned. Be aware if this is occurring and remember to use your slow
breathing and compassionate image to activate a compassionate attitude when approaching the tasks you’ve
set for yourself.
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Weekly Activity Schedule

Use the schedule below to plan your activities for the coming week. Make sure self-soothing activities thatare aimed at taking care of yourself are a priority. Also schedule any activities that involve taking care ofothers or taking care of business. Be clear about what you will do and when you will do it. If for somereason you don’t end up completing a planned activity, don’t criticise yourself. Instead treat yourself with compassion,and make a plan for when you will reschedule the activity.

Mon

Tues

Wed

Thur

Fri

Sat

Sun

8 to 9am
9 to 1010 to 11
11 to 12pm
12 to 1
1 to 2
2 to 33 to 44 to 55 to 6
6 to 77 to 88 to 1010 to 12 amforCentrelinical
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Module Summary
•

•

•
•

•

There is no single behaviour that goes with being self-compassionate. Depending on yourcircumstances, very different types of behaviours will be helpful. To simplify, we can breakcompassionate behaviours into three categories: taking care of ourselves, taking care of others, andtaking care of business.
Taking care of ourselves by purposely engaging in self-soothing activities is a priority when it comesto self-compassion. Self-soothing involves participating in nurturing activities that give us a sense of
warmth, being cared for, and can help us get through tough times. It is important to pre-plan theseregularly into our week, and have specific activities in mind that can be easily used as required when
we are struggling emotionally.
Behaving compassionately by taking care of others can also strengthen our compassionate side.
Think of how you can show kindness to a partner, family member, friend or stranger, and notice
the impact that your kindness has on you and the other person.
Behaving compassionately can also require courage and strength as we need to take care ofbusiness. This means facing problems and taking action rather than avoiding, giving up,
procrastinating, escaping or numbing our feelings, isolating ourselves, being passive or aggressive,and not forgiving others. As a rough guide, when the threat system is being unreasonable andoversensitive, try acting opposite to what it is telling you to do.
When making changes to our behaviour it is important to plan what we are going to do and when
we are going to do it. Use the Weekly Activity Schedule to help you with this process.

Coming up next …

In Module 7, we will wrap things up
and look at how you can maintainliving a compassionate life over thelong term…

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Building Self-Compassion
About The Modules
CONTRIBUTORSDr Lisa Saulsman (MPsych1; PhD2)Centre for Clinical Interventions

Bruce Campbell (MPsych1)
Centre for Clinical Interventions

Dr Adelln Sng (MPsych1; PhD2)Centre for Clinical Interventions
1

Masters of Psychology (Clinical Psychology)2

Doctor of Philosophy (Clinical Psychology)

BACKGROUND
The concepts and strategies in these modules have been developed from evidence based psychologicalpractice, primarily Compassion Focused Therapy, which is an extension of and adjunct to CognitiveBehaviour Therapy. These modules particularly draw on the work of Paul Gilbert and Kristen Neff.

REFERENCES
These are some of the professional references that informed the development of modules in thisinformation package.
Gilbert, P. (2009). The Compassionate Mind. Constable: London, UK.
Gilbert. P. (2010). Compassion Focused Therapy: Distinctive Features. Routledge: East Sussex, UK
Gilbert, P. & Choden. (2015). Mindful Compassion: Using the Power of Mindfulness and Compassion to Transform
Our Lives. Robinson: London.
Hackmann, A., Bennett-Levy, J., & Holmes, E. A. (2011). Oxford Guide to Imagery in Cognitive Therapy. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Leaviss, J. & Uttley, L. (2015). Psychotherapeutic benefits of compassion-focused therapy: An earlysystematic review. Psychological Medicine, 45, 927-945
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Skills Training Manual For Treating Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: Guilford
Press.
MacBeth, A. & Gumley, A. (2012). Exploring compassion: A meta-analysis of the association between selfcompassion and psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review, 32, 545-552.
Neff, K. (2011). Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. William Morrow: NY.

“BUILDING SELF-COMPASSION”
This module forms part of:Saulsman, L., Campbell, B., & Sng, A. (2017). Building Self-Compassion: From Self-Criticism to Self-Kindness.
Perth, Western Australia: Centre for Clinical Interventions.
ISBN: 9780987547903
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Created: March 2017

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