I am a big fan of self compassion.  It’s such a powerful tool for recovery and therapeutic work. It’s such a powerful tool for diffusing critical self-talk, decreasing judgment, increasing self-worth, improving emotional maturity, life satisfaction, and social connectedness.  Self Compassion can also be tricky to figure out to put into practice.  Sometimes it can  feel really disingenuous to tell yourself you love you.  In fact I rarely even begin with a practice like that.

 I find that the more tangible we can make something so intangible like self compassion the more it can make sense and begin to sound like your own voice. Cultivating and fostering the experience of self compassion in a real way. I like to do that through teaching  compassionate letter writing.  You can write these letters for anything and everything. You start with the template below and fill in the breaks.  You can check out my example.

Letter Template 

I understand:

I know that you feel:

My guidance to you is:

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Letter Example

Dear Angela,

I understand that showing up and being vulnerable when you put out there your own projects and ideas. I know that you feel anxiety and fear of failure and not being good enough. My guidance to you is you are enough, just as you are. Failure isn’t a bad thing and I love you. Now breathe.

Love, 

Angela