Does Self-Compassion Make You Cringe? Why Perfectionists Can Struggle With Self-Compassion
By Peggy Loo, PhD
Let’s try a thought exercise. Let’s say you realized you made a frustrating mistake at work, and you want to tell someone about it. Bring to mind a friend, coworker, partner, or family member that cares about you. How do you react when they are super understanding and encourage you to be kind to yourself about the work mistake? What thoughts or feelings come up immediately? Is it a welcome invitation, a wash of relief to be reminded you don’t have to be hard on yourself about it? Or do you ever notice an inward eye roll, a doubtful pushback, even a doubling down in self-criticism and frustration? Our reaction to opportunities for self-compassion can be telling.
There’s a lot of reasons that you may find practicing self-compassion challenging - but if you struggle with unhelpful perfectionism, self-compassion may feel uniquely tricky. As a psychologist working with high-achieving professional adults in Manhattan, there are many who describe their perfectionism as a double-edged sword - it aids their success and it’s an unending source of stress. I’ve noticed a pattern with some of my self-identifying perfectionistic patients. When I suggest exercising a self-compassionate response in times of struggle or failure, the reaction is a deeply ingrained dismissal, mistrust, and aversion. Let’s start with some definitions.
How do you define unhelpful perfectionism?
Maladaptive perfectionism has been defined as “the overdependence of self-evaluation on the determined pursuit of personally demanding, self-imposed, standards in at least one highly salient domain, despite adverse consequences” (Shafran et al, 2002, p. 778). More simply put, unhelpful perfectionism is when your self-worth is precariously built on striving and achieving high expectations. Which means that your sense of value comes from whether or not you’re successful. What’s important to recognize here is that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with reaching for excellence and having high personal standards. And there's nothing wrong with feeling great when you achieve. In fact, I’m a huge fan of both, as they got me to where I am today. However, where things go awry is when the majority, or even entire sense of self-worth hangs in the balance - this is what “despite adverse consequences” means. Maladaptive perfectionism at its core can be a recipe for burnout and conditional self-respect or acceptance.
How do you define self-compassion?
Generally speaking, compassion is awareness of the experience of pain and a desire to alleviate it. Self-compassion has been described as the ability to extend kindness to oneself in moments of pain, struggle, or failure. It can also include recognition that being imperfect is part of our common humanity and mindfulness of difficult emotions as they are (Germer & Neff, 2013). Many folks describe self-compassion as speaking to yourself the way that you would with your best friend who is having a tough moment.
Perfectionists and the practice of self-compassion can be like oil and water. Sometimes it’s not obvious why. Doesn’t it seem like we should welcome kindness all the time? Yet this clearly isn’t the case. Sometimes when my patients have a negative reaction to empathy in the face of a personal struggle, mistake, or shortcoming, I get curious.
As I’ve listened to my patients’ responses and rationale for why self-compassion “wouldn’t make sense” for whatever situation they’re in, I’ve come up with my own metaphor. I find it helpful to think about it like a self-compassion allergy.
Let me explain. I am allergic to cats. When I’m around cats, my immune system has an outsized negative reaction. My body believes cat dander is a serious threat to my well-being. In an effort to protect me from imminent jeopardy, my immune system mounts an immediate, unpleasant, allergic response (e.g., watery and itchy eyes, incessant sneezing) that is highly annoying and effective. The result? I avoid cats, and I have a dog. (Apparently, my immune system thinks dogs are great.) The point is that cats don’t actually pose any real danger to me - but if I only had my allergy symptoms to go off of, I’d conclude that cats are bad because my body has an instinctively bad response. I wouldn’t question whether or not it’s my own immune system that may be a flawed judge of threat.
As a therapist, I think it can be illuminating to take a closer look at anything we have a strong negative reaction to - which includes self-compassion. As I mentioned above, I’ve heard a number of negative reactions to self-compassion over time. Here are four common concerns I’ve heard from people who identify as perfectionists.
4 Common concerns you may have about self-compassion if you’re a perfectionist
1. Self-compassion is a sad participation trophy.
You’re used to real trophies. Self-compassion seems patronizing and like the consolation prize for “just” showing up. Perfectionists tend to struggle with all or nothing thinking, so anything short of excellent, the best, or complete is labeled as a failure, and therefore hard to give much value. You figure if you had succeeded, there would be no need for self-compassion anyways - so more attention on whatever isn’t going right feels like a sad reminder that you didn’t achieve what you wanted in the first place.
2. Practicing self-compassion means lowering the bar or abandoning standards.
Perfectionists are often labeled as special in some way, such as exceptional or full of potential - and certainly above average. The truth is that perfectionistic behavior tends to correspond with strong outcomes because you’re likely to put in your all, all the time. When being a success becomes a key part of your identity, self-compassion feels like trying to embrace a “lesser” version of yourself. The word “realistic” feels like settling. Relatedly, by nature, perfectionists are idealistic. High standards can reflect personal aspirations or principles. Intentionally normalizing mistakes or failure can feel like a profound compromise or renunciation of the values that matter to you.
3. I have to be careful. If I exercise too much self-compassion, I’ll lose all motivation to work hard.
Many perfectionists are driven by strong self-critics, which act like screaming, tough love coaches or vigilant hall monitors that ensure order. Maybe you believe you need to keep your inner monster or couch potato from running the show. You think being understanding or gentle towards yourself is kryptonite - it’ll fundamentally weaken you and will give you unfettered permission for self-pity, irresponsibility, and stagnation. Introducing self-compassion may genuinely feel scary because you have no idea how else to mobilize action and get where you want to go. You may find it difficult to trust yourself. Without “something to show for yourself”, it’s too easy to feel small and useless.
4. Self-compassion feels uncomfortable, fake, or even painful.
If you grew up in relentlessly demanding, punitive, or oppressive environments, perfectionistic striving may have been the way to gain emotional safety and approval or survive a system that would just as easily let you slip through the cracks if you weren’t perfect. If you had caregivers that were conditional with their affection (e.g., only happy with you when ambitious and successful), hustling and achieving may have been the only avenue to experience positive attention (or earn a reprieve from mistreatment). If that’s the case, exercising self-compassion may be a completely foreign way of relating to yourself because caregivers (and larger systems) never modeled it. If people around you proactively disdained compassion as weak, of course it wouldn’t be something you aim for. If you ever received “compassion” that was paternalistic (i.e., pitying) or came with mixed messages, such as a shaming undercurrent (e.g., “you’re so lucky I’m so patient and understanding with you”) - it would be impossible to hear it as sincere and respectful today. Receiving unqualified warmth and generosity when you’re struggling may even feel painful because it highlights the absence of compassion in past experiences.
I also want to acknowledge that sometimes choosing self-compassion isn’t simple for reasons that have nothing to do with individual hangups. In an ideal world, everyone could freely express self-compassion without fear that doing so will be misconstrued. However, if you have a marginalized identity of any kind, you know it’s not that easy. The reality is, a lot of people do misjudge compassion for weakness or laziness. And if you regularly endure stereotype threat, you’re already combatting biases that you’re inferior in some way. For example, if it’s assumed amongst college students that women are less likely to succeed in STEM majors than men, and you’re a woman in engineering struggling academically, being openly self-compassionate about it isn’t straightforward - even if it should be. When human struggle and failure that’s common to us all can be weaponized as evidence substantiating stereotypes - self-compassion can feel like it’ll make things worse. Being openly flawed and accepting kindness without worrying you fit a stereotype is a privilege. While this doesn’t mean self-compassion isn’t an option, it’s important we recognize - it’s complicated.
Practicing self-compassion takes self-compassion
If you’ve ever wondered why you inwardly cringe in response to self-compassion, even if others around you and social media encourage it, you’re definitely not alone. Learning what it means to earnestly nourish self-compassion in your life takes curiosity, honest self reflection, committed practice, support, and…(you guessed it) self-compassion in response to whatever obstacles you meet along the way. Self-compassion isn’t a bunch of generic, chirpy affirmations you’re brainwashing yourself into believing. It’s cultivating an inner tone of voice that is friendly and generous, premised on the fact that the tone remains consistent whether you’re succeeding, struggling, or failing.
For perfectionists, life experiences, early messaging about your source of value, trauma, minority stress, among many other things can make self-compassion complex and therefore feel like an unpredictable allergen you should avoid as much as possible. Much like our bodies sometimes misperceiving good things as threats and preparing an exaggerated defense, you may be suspicious about self-compassion if it endangers a perfectionistic sense of self. While the intention is protective, it’s misguided in that it distances you from something that’s actually essential to your wellbeing and capacity to live fully.
The truth is, everyone benefits from empathy, kindness, gentleness, and self-compassion. Self-compassion isn’t mutually exclusive from personal responsibility, desired performance, and success; in fact, research suggests that self-compassion can improve high-level performance and even recovery after failure (Egan et al, 2021; Ceccarelli et al, 2019). Self-compassion doesn’t mean that you have to compromise or change your standards (although reevaluating unrealistic expectations may be sorely needed). It is possible to reach high and be kind to yourself along the way. If you’d like support understanding your reactions to self-compassion and how to develop it in your life, consider seeking therapy. Working with a therapist can help you consider a different way to see yourself as well as how to strive and struggle in a healthy way.
About the Author: Dr. Loo is the clinical director and a licensed psychologist at Manhattan Therapy Collective. She is pursuing new hobbies and practicing self-compassion as an adult beginner fumbling along. She also loves being a couch potato with her dog.
References:
Ceccarelli, L. A., Giuliano, R. J., Glazebrook, C. M., & Strachan, S. M. (2019). Self-compassion and psycho-physiological recovery from recalled sport failure. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 1564.
Egan, H., O’Hara, M., Cook, A., & Mantzios, M. (2021): Mindfulness, self-compassion, resiliency and wellbeing in higher education: a recipe to increase academic performance, Journal of Further and Higher Education.
Germer, C. K., & Neff, K. D. (2013). Self‐compassion in clinical practice. Journal of clinical psychology, 69(8), 856-867.
Shafran, R. Cooper, Z., & Fairburn, C.G. (2002). Clinical perfectionism: A cognitive-behavioral analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 773-791.