Compassion for yourself serves as an important function for mental wellbeing. When you look beyond your flaws and treat yourself with forgiveness and understanding, you increase your psychological and mental health.
Viewing your own behaviours and shortcomings with compassion can boost your self-esteem and increase your levels of happiness.
Studies have shown that practising self-compassion meditations can positively impact your innate immune responses to psychological stress, reducing feelings of burnout and buffering the negative impact of stress.
Positive psychology highlights the relationships with reduced feelings of anxiety and depression. Self-compassion has also been shown to reduce PTSD symptom severity.
Compassion helps social connection and encourages you to foster meaningful relationships. By showing compassion to others, you express care, concern and empathy for other people as well as helping you to identify with them and so benefits both the giver and receiver.