Why being kinder to yourself can feel uncomfortable

What self-criticism is trying to prevent

Being asked to speak to yourself more kindly can sound reasonable until you try it after making a mistake. A gentler response may feel undeserved, or bring the worry that you will lose the pressure that keeps you doing things properly. Someone who would patiently help a colleague can find the same response to their own difficulty irritating, embarrassing or difficult to believe.

In therapy, I would want to understand that reaction before suggesting another exercise. A person may believe that criticising themselves prevents complacency, or that acknowledging how hurt they feel will make it harder to get through the working day. If that is what they expect, an invitation to be compassionate can sound like being asked to give up something they rely on.

Consider a fictional example of a person who sends an email with an incorrect attachment. They correct it promptly, then spend the evening calling themselves careless and imagining what the recipient now thinks of them. When asked what would happen if they stopped the criticism, they might say that they would forget the mistake and repeat it. We can then examine that prediction, including whether the hours of self-attack add anything useful after the practical correction has been made.

The distinction can be difficult to feel from inside the experience. Taking responsibility might involve checking the attachment before sending the next email, whereas condemning yourself can continue long after there is anything left to repair. I would want to hear what the criticism says, when it starts and what the person does afterwards, because feeling bad about a mistake does not tell us whether the response helps them deal with it.

What the newer research adds

A review published in October 2026 by Palacios and colleagues examined 57 randomised trials involving 4,877 adults. Across compassion-based interventions, reductions in self-criticism partly accounted statistically for improvements in psychological symptoms. This moves the research towards asking how these treatments might help, although the finding identifies a possible mechanism rather than proving that reducing self-criticism causes recovery.

The review has substantial limitations. More than three-quarters of the trials were rated at high risk of bias, and the interventions and study designs varied considerably. Random allocation to a treatment does not, by itself, establish the causal role of a psychological process measured within it. Symptoms and self-criticism might change together, influence one another, or respond to another part of treatment. The results do not establish that compassion work is the best treatment for every person who is self-critical.

Earlier research helps explain why introducing it may require care. Kirby and colleagues' 2019 meta-analysis brought together 19 studies involving 4,723 participants and found that fears of self-compassion and of receiving compassion were associated with mental health difficulties, particularly shame, self-criticism and depression. These were associations, so they cannot tell us which difficulty came first or establish that fear of compassion caused the symptoms.

Vidal and Soldevilla's review, published online in 2022, examined compassion-focused therapy specifically and found improvements in self-criticism and self-soothing. Its evidence base was much smaller, with seven controlled trials and seven observational studies, and the authors called for more randomised comparisons with other therapies. Compassion-focused therapy is one structured approach within a wider family of compassion-based interventions, so findings about the broader family cannot automatically be assigned to a particular exercise or treatment.

Beginning with a response you can use

For someone who finds compassionate language uncomfortable, I would begin by asking what felt wrong about it. An encouraging phrase may seem false because it overlooks a real mistake. A warm tone might feel unfamiliar, or suggest pity when the person wants to be taken seriously. We would need to understand the particular objection, rather than treat discomfort as evidence that they are resisting therapy or doing the exercise badly.

Sometimes a more usable starting point is a fair description of what happened. In the email example, the person might acknowledge that they sent the wrong file, corrected it and can add a check next time. They can still care about the consequences. The exercise would be to see whether they can follow through on that correction without spending the evening making a judgement about their entire character.

I would treat that as a small clinical experiment, not as a technique established by the October review. Before trying it, we could record the person's prediction that easing the criticism will lead to worse work. Afterwards, we could look at whether the next task was completed and whether the practical check was used. Feeling immediately reassured would not be a requirement, because a different way of responding can remain uncomfortable while we examine what happens.

Compassion work also needs to make room for circumstances that deserve a response outside the person's own thinking. If someone is being humiliated at work, for example, I would want to discuss what happened and what options they have. Asking them to change their inner tone while overlooking the treatment they are receiving would leave part of the problem unaddressed.

The therapy relationship gives us another place to notice these reactions. If a response from me feels patronising, implausible or too much, I would want the person to say so. We could then consider the actual wording and what they heard in it, including whether I had misunderstood. That conversation may give us a more useful place to begin than asking them to repeat a compassionate statement they do not believe.