The research around self compassion has developed over the past 20 years.

Kirstin Neff has been instrumental in developing this and has strived to make it as accessible and as meaningful to as many as possible.

However, as healthcare practitioners, we know that sharing of a new evidence base rarely results in an overnight change in practice. Even when the research eventually finds it’s way into national guidance and strategies it can take a long time after this for it to become embraced and valued into our everyday practice and teachings.

The history around embracing routine hand washing illustrates this well. In 1848 Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis reduced the rate of mortality from 18% to 1% in the new mothers he cared for by washing his hands. However due to the strong societal belief system at that time around what constituted being clean it took a further 30 years for doctors to routinely hand wash between tasks and not for 50 years did hand washing practice make its way to public health campaigns.

Just as the upper class doctors of the 1850s refused to believe that they were capable of being unclean when Neff’s research came out in the early 2000s about self compassion our belief system around the importance of confidence and self esteem in leadership and wellbeing behaviours prevented many of us from embracing Neff’s research evidence.

For years our leadership programmes were based around the importance of developing our self esteem, building (or faking!) our confidence, being strong, resilient and assertive.

These approaches are predominantly based on denying our true emotions and homing in on a competitive nature where we have to be stronger than those around us to thrive, or indeed survive.

Despite Neff’s research blowing this approach out of the water 20 years ago phrases and goals based on self esteem and confidence still remain in our health and social care communities and languages. I hear them being described proudly during recruitment processes and I see them written in outcome measures for leadership programmes and being valued in and by those around us. We all feel and witness the impact of this daily. There is no doubt that it impacts our wellbeing and therefore the quality of care that we are capable of delivering.

So what can we do to move away from this old paradigm to one that fits more with the evidence base and can improve our wellbeing and the care we deliver?

Neff’s research demonstrates that being self compassionate is the answer. She describes 3 aspects of self compassion.

• Kindness. Self kindness versus self judgement. Being able to sooth ourselves.
• Common humanity. Connected to others versus isolated and cut off. Being able to see our experience as part of a larger human experience.
• Mindfulness. Be with painful feelings as they are versus over identification. Being able to tune into our feelings and notice our suffering.

Just as Semmelweis saved lives by hand washing we can save lives by being self compassionate and valuing this practice in others we support.

How are you putting this evidence base into practice? I’d love to hear.