Review: Kristin Neff’s ‘Self-Compassion’

★★☆☆☆

Initial rating lowered from three stars to a shaky two. At first, I thought my resistance to this book was a defence mechanism, but the more I reflect on it, the more my dislike feels justified.

As a therapeutic practice, self-compassion is the art of recognising our own sufferings and being gentle on ourselves. It can help us reject the urge to beat ourselves up for our flaws and failings in favour of a more forgiving, pragmatic mindset. In short, ‘don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re only human.’

Kristin Neff is one of the leading psychologists in the field of self-compassion, and with its thousands of five-star reviews, it is clear that Self-compassion (2011) has helped many people develop this ability to empathise with themselves and to live happier lives. Unfortunately, I did not come away counting myself as one of them.

Self-compassion was recommended to me during counselling on the basis that I tend to be pretty dismissive towards myself and my own feelings. Like anything that holds a mirror to unpleasant truths, I knew this would likely be an uncomfortable read. The issue is not that I found this book challenging, however, but that I found it off-putting. Though I agree with the premise of self-compassion, and I would like to embrace it as a means of rewiring my overly critical brain, the way this book packages its ideas makes them very difficult to swallow.

I gently stroked my arms and spoke to myself in a kind, sympathetic manner. Poor darling. This is really hard right now. I comforted myself for the pain of being treated so unfairly.

For one thing, and I say this delicately, Neff’s writing is not the best. Flowery and repetitive, this book says in 270 pages what it might in 50. Also, though Neff does make some good points about the value of being self-compassionate in an often incompassionate world, the chapters are littered with linguistic mistakes such as ‘set your sites’. Given that the author has a PhD and a wealth of published research, it is reasonable to assume that she is highly intelligent, but the writing does not reflect this. I found this book dumbed down, and in places superficial.

Neff frames self-compassion through the lens of her own life experiences, particularly the breakdown of her first marriage following her affair. One of her main points is that since her ex-husband was unable to forgive her, she had to choose to forgive herself instead. Whatever our worst mistakes are, it is true that we must find ways to live with them, but I would argue it is equally important to own them and, as much as possible, to atone for the hurt caused to others. Neff believes her troubled relationship with her father and her ex-husband’s neglectful tendencies contributed to her own behaviour, which is a fair observation, but she carries this to the point of absolving herself of any responsibility for her own actions.

The thrust seems to be that there is no point in ever feeling bad for mistakes already made, because feeling bad is unpleasant, and our mistakes are never really our fault, anyway. All very comforting, but this ignores the reality that there are contexts in which we should feel bad. Never allowing ourselves to feel guilty means ignoring the ugly fallout of poor decisions and shying away from earning the forgiveness of those we have wronged. There are certain no-win situations in which this mindset may be helpful, but in suggesting that it is the ultimate trump card to play against life’s problems, Neff heavily implies that personal happiness is more important than personal honour, consideration for others, and integrity.

And who wants to be stuck in a box labeled “good” anyway? Isn’t it more interesting to revel in the full range of human experience? Instead of trying to control ourselves and our lives to obtain a perfectionistic ideal, why not embrace life as it is – both the light and the shadow? What adventures might follow if we free ourselves in this way?

Another point of focus is Neff’s struggle to accept her son’s autism diagnosis. The way the book discusses this is frankly quite depressing. The language surrounding neurodiversity has certainly evolved in the last decade, but it is not the language Neff uses that is the issue. The problem is that Neff makes it abundantly clear that she was only able to ‘accept’ her son’s autism when he learned (or was forced to learn) how to mask his autistic traits. The book all but states that the reason Neff has grown to feel incredibly proud of Rowan is because no one notices he is autistic anymore.

The last section of the book focuses particularly on this, diving into a strange tangent about the traditional healing experience Neff and her husband subjected their son to as a tantrum-prone, incontinent young child. Off the back of some equine therapy in the States, Neff and her husband decided to take Rowan to Mongolia for several weeks of hard riding in the steppe to meet a group of shamans. Though experts in the field agree there is no way to ‘fix’ autism, maybe magic would do the trick… The gist of it is that the shamans claimed Rowan was possessed by the ghost of his great-grandmother, then scared him into submission with loud noises and made him watch whilst they whipped his parents with rawhide.

Needless to say, this is not a healthy way to help a child cope with their autism, nor to deal with the weight of a diagnosis as a parent. I feel for Rowan, who is probably now old enough to understand how much distress his parents were willing to put him through in the hope of changing an essential part of his nature. Neff is convinced that this experience was transformative, which seeds considerable doubt in my mind about her honesty, and her credibility as a mental health professional.

Overall, I found the tone of Self-compassion more self-absorbed than self-aware. Some of the exercises at the end of each chapter do offer a springboard for self-reflection, and there are a few nuggets of information scattered throughout for those who enjoy psychology, but my rating reflects the problematic delivery and the fact that I found little here that was truly helpful. I would also say that you can find all the exercises included in this book, and more, simply by Googling self-compassion.