For those of you who are practicing mindfulness meditation, the idea of “self-compassion” is apparently important. There are rather thick layers of research that you’d find for its effectiveness toward well-being of daily life. Especially there are lots of positive scientific evidence on so-called “gratitude” exercise in nursing and other healthcare areas that has its origin in “self-compassion.”

However, there are many folks who are poor at giving compassion toward themselves. The researchers call it “backdraft,” and they found that those folks oftentimes have prolonged insecure experience with their parents when they were young. It does make sense.

Personally, I find out people from Eastern Asian countries appear being troubled by the notion of “self-compassion,” where the cultural norm and expectation are tighter. I experienced this a lot when I threw some workshop about mindfulness meditation. They are likely to feel guilty and shame when they fail to follow the rules. Many of them tend to put collective welfare prior to their own. So naturally, “giving compassion to themselves” may feel a bit awkward for them.

(…I’m not being counted here, I guess, as many non-Japanese friends of mine would agree.)

(source: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_is_self_compassion_so_hard_for_some_people)