Self-Compassion Views

Yesterday I had the most interesting discussion in one of my classes. We were talking about self-esteem, self-compassion, moral values, agression, and stress. The whole idea of the class was to read these articles and figure out how they all related to one another. And, I have a new direction I want to take! I'd always thought I would go into psychological research with something to do with development psychology or something like that, but now, I am most definitely going to try to study social psychology. And it's because of one specific subject: self-compassion.

A lot of people probably don't know the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion. Basically, self-esteem is a very debated topic in psychology where some psychologists believe that low self-esteem is bad, but also that narcissism (extreme high self-esteem) is bad. They've tried to show that low self-esteem creates aggression and behavioral problems. This has a small correlation, but it's not really significant. One of my professors actually believes that self-esteem has very little to do with behavioral problems, and I agree with that theory.

On the other hand, people low in self-compassion generally blame themselves for problems in their lives, and do not know how to deal with inconsistencies between their inner mental state and outer physical world. Self-compassionate people understand that they do make mistakes, they have adversities in their lives, but they also realize that beating themselves up over these problems will not solve anything. They tend to take rejection and failure better than those with low self-compassion.

So, here's my theory. Self-esteem doesn't really have an affect on behavior; rather, self-compassion is the underlying agent to behavioral problems. It makes sense. If people dwell on the mistakes they make, they won't care to progress in life. But, if they can learn from their mistakes and move on, they will progress in life. This seems like common sense.

I know I had more insights to this subject last night, but I can't remember them right now... I should have written them down. This very possibly could be my independent research project someday. Perhaps even one of my research studies in grad school. Who knows...

No matter what, I'm excited to learn more about self-compassion and self-concept. It fascinates me!