Prescribe kindness
Updated: Oct 2
Many people who experience a significant change in health will find it difficult. Change of this kind can be hard to bear and often brings a weight of sadness, anger, grief and fear alongside symptoms, treatments and appointments.
We might find ourselves comparing the body or the life we have now with the one we had before and we may be very aware of the difference between the two. We might find ourselves thinking “I should be managing this better, I shouldn't be finding this so difficult”.
We may also turn our anger and sadness inwards. Before long, our judgmental thoughts can end up causing us more distress than the change in circumstances and the symptoms of the health condition itself.
In these situations, we might find that our changes cause us physical and emotional pain through symptoms, limitations and uncertainty. Suffering is then added on top of the pain through resistance, comparison, and self-criticism. While we may not be able to control the pain we feel or the symptoms themselves, we may be able to do something with the amount of suffering we experience.
Self-criticism doesn't make things better
People who hold themselves to a high standard have likely used self-criticism before to good effect. Self-judgment and self-criticism can help us push through, do difficult things and hold ourselves accountable.
If you’re someone who’s had a life-long history of beating yourself up to be a “better” person, it makes sense that you’d use that same tool to help you manage your change in health. This is where we might be doing ourselves a disservice and increasing our own suffering.
Research suggests that self-criticism tends to backfire when the challenge is a health condition rather than a task to be completed. Self-blame and harsh self-judgement are consistently linked with worse coping and higher distress in people living with long-term illness.
Rather, research found that active, accepting, and self-compassionate coping styles are linked with lower stress, even after accounting for how severe the condition is (Sirois et al., 2015).
Choosing self-compassion
Self-compassion means treating yourself with kindness, understanding and support when you suffer, fail or feel inadequate, rather than judging yourself harshly.
It doesn’t mean self-pity, self-indulgence or lowering your standards and giving up.
Self-compassion has three parts:
Treating yourself with the same kindness you'd offer someone else having a hard time
Recognising that experiencing struggle and limitation is part of being human and not evidence of personal failure
Holding difficult feelings with care and tenderness, rather than suppressing them or being swept away by them.
The third part is especially important. Research on self-compassion in chronic illness suggests that a mindful, non-judgemental stance towards pain and limitation helps people not to over-identify with their suffering. Over-identifying means getting so fused with “this is who I am now” that there's no room left to see the fuller picture of a life still being lived.
In a recent meta-analysis Baxter and Sirois (2025) found a consistent link between higher self-compassion and lower psychological distress across a range of patient groups with chronic illness. They identified more adaptive coping and a less threatened sense of self as likely mechanisms behind that link.
Studies that looked specifically at people with inflammatory bowel disease and arthritis found that people with more self-compassion used more active, accepting coping strategies and less self-blame and avoidance. This pattern explained a large share of the difference in how much stress they experienced day to day and means that it wasn't the health condition alone driving people’s distress levels. Instead, it was how people related to themselves within their health condition that increased their suffering (Sirois et al., 2015).
In a small pilot study of people with chronic pain, self-compassion exercises were linked with greater improvements in depression and anxiety than therapy alone (Carvalho et al., 2022).
What this might mean for you
Self-compassion does not mean you need to feel “ok” or happy about your change in health, or to stop being frustrated by it. It also doesn’t mean that you have to bypass the anger or grief that you feel.
Self-compassion encourages us to notice when our judgmental self-critical voice is present and tells us that we’re being weak, not coping or that everyone else would be handling this better.
Self-compassion helps us to recognise that our critical inner voice is information we can notice and process, rather than an instruction to follow.
It also helps us to learn how to recognise when our critical inner voice is present without getting hooked into a struggle with it.
As an additional benefit, when we create this shift inside, we may also change how we are in the world with others. People who are critical of themselves are sometimes just as critical of other people and are quick to notice when other people "fall short".
Practising compassion towards yourself and others can help us to soften that tendency and be more tolerant because we’re more aware of ours and other people’s suffering.
When we can view our own challenges through the lens of "everyone struggles, and everyone has limits", it's harder to hold a different, harsher standard for other people too.
Acceptance, when combined with self-compassion, can help us to step out of an unwinnable fight with ourselves, so that whatever energy remains can go towards focusing on what's within our control.
If these words have resonated with you I warmly invite you to book a free 30-minute introductory session to explore how coaching can help you to move forwards too.
References
Baxter, R., & Sirois, F. M. (2025). Self-compassion and psychological distress in chronic illness: A meta-analysis. British Journal of Health Psychology, 30(1), Article e12761. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12761
Carvalho, S. A., Gillanders, D., Forte, T., Trindade, I. A., Pinto-Gouveia, J., Lapa, T., Valentim, A., Santos, E., Paciência, J., Guiomar, R., & Castilho, P. (2022). Self-compassion in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for chronic pain: A pilot study. Scandinavian Journal of Pain, 22(3), 631–638. https://doi.org/10.1515/sjpain-2021-0214
Sirois, F. M., Molnar, D. S., & Hirsch, J. K. (2015). Self-compassion, stress, and coping in the context of chronic illness. Self and Identity, 14(3), 334–347. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2014.996249
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