Tender Or Fierce Compassion?
& Blue Skies & A Flopped Out Cat
It’s been a hot and tiring week, so here’s a quick thought for the next one:
Do you need tender or fierce self-compassion?
(And what does that mean?)
Or if you’re not up for thinking, scroll to the bottom for cat pics and beautiful skies.
What are we talking about here?
Compassion
According to Brene Brown in her book, Atlas of the Heart (2021, p118):
‘Compassion is the daily practice of recognising and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and others with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering.’
Fierce & Tender Compassion
On the mindful self-compassion course, we talk about how self-compassion (just like compassion towards others) can come in these 2 different flavours: Tender or fierce.
Tender compassion is something gentle and soothing, centred around making space for painful experiences and enabling ourselves to feel seen, heard and supported. And held. Tender self-compassion might look like recognising how tired you are, and choosing take a break from a draining activity in favour of doing something restful.
Fierce compassion is something more active and energising. Sometimes it is driven by anger, and it can be really helpful at times when a more active response is needed. Fierce self-compassion can come in a few different forms:
Protective (e.g. realising that someone is asking too much of you, and needing to say no).
Motivating (e.g. when you realise that continuing to lie on the sofa and stay up watching TV is not what will leave you feeling better tomorrow, so encouraging yourself to get up and go to bed).
Providing (e.g. Shopping and cooking for yourself so that you are well nourished and feel well looked after).
Where tender compassion can be likened to a parent soothing a crying child, fierce compassion is likened to a ‘momma bear’ protecting her cubs from aggressors, or making sure they move quickly to get to safety, or providing enough food for them. This comes from the work of Dr Kristin Neff, which you can check out here.
How do we stay compasionate?
So what is it that makes fierce compassion, which might be saying ‘get up off the sofa!’ different from and inner critic that might be saying the same thing (though perhaps in a different way)?
And what is is that makes tender compassion, which might be saying ‘go easy on yourself, you’re tired’ different from avoidance or letting things slide a bit too much?
Well, going back to that definition of compassion, it includes:
self-acceptance (‘recognising and accepting our shared humanity’)
self-kindness
So if the way we relate to ourselves starts to become judgmental or shaming (for example ‘ugh I’m so lazy’), then it has moved away from fierce compassion and into something more stress-driven and less supportive.
And that definition of compassion also includes:
taking action in the face of suffering.
So where tender compassion might say ‘go easy on yourself’, if going easy on yourself later becomes avoiding doing any of the things that you need in order to stay well (e.g. getting sleep, spending time with loved ones etc), then it may have stopped being the most self-compassionate thing.
So what?
Well, it’s a challenging thing to navigate because we’re probably all going in and out of doing what’s ‘best’ for us and inadvertantly dipping into unhelpful habits, and it’s not a perfect science (and who wants to be perfect anyway, really?). But perhaps the ‘so what?’ of this is that the key question to ask yourself in trying to be self-compassionate is:
What do I need right now?
And, knowing that sometimes what you need might be in the arena of gentle and soothing, and other times, active and fierce.
Some examples provided by my cat, Spooky:
Fierce compassion: Spooky staging a desk lie-in to prevent me from doing more work (‘You need a break!’)
Tender self-compassion: Spooky finding a shady spot and making herself as flat as possible to stay cool(er) on a hot day.
That’s it!
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And finally…
Some recent beautiful skies from here in South London. Xx
