Speaking Kindness to the Mirror
We often reserve our harshest words for ourselves. What changes when we start applying the same standard of kindness we give to a mate?
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? How often do you take a look at yourself in the mirror? I don’t mean squinting as you apply your false eyelashes; I mean taking a moment to pause and examine your reflection. Perhaps ask your reflection a question, or have a conversation? Does your reflection answer back?
I am sure I am not alone, there’s an internal critic inside me that can be almost a bully - there are moments when I say aloud ‘leave it alone’, to force the voice to go away. Most usually, the bully is hyper-focused on a small faux pas, maybe something I said to someone that, on reflection, seems clumsy or ill-judged. The bully has no nuance; it just tells me I’m an idiot. I tell it to go away.
What’s clear is that if you spoke to your friends the way you speak to yourself, you would likely find yourself very much alone. How can you be a good friend to others if you are not a good friend to yourself?
The concept of being one’s own best friend is often dismissed as soft or indulgent. We assume that being “hard on ourselves” is the only way to maintain standards. Yet, the research suggests the opposite.
The leading researcher on self-compassion, Dr Kristin Neff, notes that the number one reason people give for not being more self-compassionate is fear of being “too soft on themselves” - in other words, they confuse self-compassion with self-indulgence.
“Far from encouraging passivity or indulgence, self-compassion provides us with the strength and clarity to confront our weaknesses and make meaningful changes in our lives.”
Dr Neff notes that self-criticism often triggers our “fight or flight” response.
“We turn fight, flight, or freeze inward. So self-criticism is the fight response - like I’m going to beat myself up to try to get myself in line.”
If we beat ourselves up, regard our own failure as a threat, we trigger the stress hormone cortisol - pretty hard to learn and grow when your body is flooded with stress juice. On the flip side, when we respond with kindness and compassion to a friend or family member, we release the happy hormone oxytocin. I know which hormone I want whizzing around my brain!
This is not about excusing our mistakes. We would expect a friend to pull us up on poor behaviour or a mistake, but to do it with compassion and empathy. Sometimes, the truth is difficult to swallow, but when we know our friend is acting from a place of support, and not a desire to wound, they are holding us accountable with love, not shame.
If this is how we would like a friend to treat us, how come we don’t treat ourselves like this?
Psychologist Professor Ethan Kross coined the term ‘distanced self-talk’, opting to talk to ourselves in the third person, ‘hey David, you messed up’ rather than the triggering ‘I messed up’.
Professor Kross describes it this way:
“Distanced self-talk - like when I say to myself, ‘Ethan, you don’t need to worry about this!’ - shifts people’s perspective, making it easier for them to coach themselves through a problem like they were advising a friend. You can see people doing this throughout history, often in contexts in which they’re trying to manage themselves, from Julius Caesar to LeBron James and Malala Yousafzai. It’s not a sign of narcissism or a strange linguistic tick - it’s an emotion regulatory tool.”
This minor shift in language acts as a circuit breaker. It deactivates the amygdala, allowing the more rational parts of the brain to take over. It moves us from being the victim of our own thoughts to being a supportive observer.
Being a good human starts with the person you spend the most time with. If we cannot practice kindness toward ourselves, our capacity to offer it to others will eventually run dry.
Building this internal alliance is a quiet, everyday practice. It is the realisation that you are worthy of the same patience, boundaries, and encouragement you so freely offer to the rest of the world.
How would your internal dialogue change tomorrow if you treated yourself like a mate you actually liked?