Why Self-Compassion Feels Unsafe for Some People
Self-compassion is the practice of turning attention inward with curiosity and kindness rather than criticism. At its core, it involves the capacity to soften toward our own emotional experience, to use that experience to understand what we need, and to find the courage to step outside the familiar, relationally, professionally, and personally. Neff (2023) describes self-compassion as comprising three interlocking elements: self-kindness rather than self-judgment, a recognition of common humanity rather than isolation, and mindful awareness of suffering rather than suppression or over-identification. It sounds, in principle, both simple and gentle.
The reality is that beginning a self-compassion practice can feel more like stepping into unfamiliar terrain without a map than settling into something warm and restorative. And for many people, that disorientation is not a detour. It is the path.
The Under-Developed Capacity to Sit With Difficulty
As humans, our relationship with difficult emotions is poorly developed by default. Most of us learned, early and implicitly, that uncomfortable emotional states are problems to be solved rather than experiences to be metabolised. This tends to produce one of two patterns: suppression, which can manifest as control behaviours, emotional dysregulation, or what clinicians sometimes call "acting in" through substance use, self-criticism, or withdrawal; or over-identification, in which we become so fused with our emotional state that it drives our behaviour, disrupts our relationships, and erodes our sense of self.
Neither pattern offers the nervous system what it actually needs: the experience of feeling something difficult while remaining fundamentally okay.
Building distress tolerance is therefore not incidental to self-compassion practice. It is central to it. Germer and Neff (2019) describe the self-compassion break, a foundational practice in the Mindful Self-Compassion programme, as a structured turning toward inner experience, including guilt, shame, and grief, with a quality of warmth rather than resistance. The aim is not to resolve these states, but to change our relationship to them. Over time, this builds new associative pathways in the brain's threat and affiliation systems, shifting the default response to emotional pain from aversion to accommodation (Gilbert, 2010).
The Backdraft Phenomenon
One of my past workshop participants once confessed that he feared self-compassion practice would feel like a ride on Mr. Rogers' train: pleasant, gentle, and somewhat beside the point. It is a reaction I encounter often. Self-compassion sounds as though it should be soothing, and for some people, in some moments, it is.
For many others, particularly those with significant shame histories, early attachment disruption, or a long-standing habit of self-criticism, the initial encounter with self-compassion is something quite different. Germer and Neff (2019) named this the "backdraft" phenomenon, borrowing from firefighting: when firefighters open a door in a burning building, the sudden influx of oxygen can cause the fire within to intensify dramatically before it can be brought under control. Something similar can occur when warmth and kindness are introduced to a nervous system that has long housed shame, self-criticism, and unprocessed grief. The compassion creates contrast, and feelings that have been managed through distance or control begin to surface.
Gilbert and Procter (2006) found that for many individuals with chronic mental health difficulties, the first movement toward self-compassion was met with doubt, fear, and resistance, linked to beliefs about whether compassion was deserved, an unfamiliarity with what it feels like to be treated kindly, and unresolved grief connected to longing for care that was never consistently received. What looks like resistance to healing is, in a sense, the beginning of it. The antidote to pain can initially intensify the pain before it begins, steadily, to reduce it.
The Role of Protective Parts
Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), developed by Richard Schwartz, offers a useful clinical framework for understanding why self-compassion can feel threatening rather than welcoming. IFS posits that the mind is composed of multiple subpersonalities, or "parts," each with its own perspective, history, and protective function. Protectors are parts that developed in response to early experiences of criticism, failure, or relational disruption, their role being to manage the internal environment and prevent vulnerability. Firefighters are more reactive protective parts that activate when emotional pain threatens to become overwhelming, often through impulsive, distracting, or numbing behaviours.
Critically, no part in IFS is understood as bad or pathological. These parts developed for good reasons, in conditions that genuinely required them. The therapeutic goal, and the goal of compassion-based practice more broadly, is not to eliminate these parts but to build enough of a relationship with them that they no longer need to dominate. Schwartz and Sweezy (2020) describe this as helping protective parts step back so that the Self, characterised by calmness, curiosity, and compassion, can take a greater leadership role in the system. Recent evidence supports this approach: a 2025 scoping review published in Clinical Psychologist identified IFS as a promising intervention for PTSD, depression, and chronic pain, with consistent improvements in self-compassion noted across studies (Colwell et al., 2025).
Why Community Matters
Self-compassion practice is not always the gentle process it might appear from the outside. It can be destabilising in the early stages as old protections meet warmth for the first time and the emotional material they were guarding begins to surface. This is not a sign that the practice is failing. It is frequently a sign that it is working.
This is precisely why learning self-compassion in a therapeutic or group context matters. Co-regulation, the experience of having one's nervous system supported by the regulated presence of another, provides a scaffold for the moments when practice stirs more than a person anticipated. As Germer and Neff (2019) describe it, compassion activates old memories and makes them available for reprocessing, offering the opportunity to receive the kindness and understanding that was missing when the painful experiences originally occurred. In community, that process becomes less isolating, more survivable, and ultimately more sustainable.
The long-term outcomes of self-compassion practice are well established. Neff (2023) documents consistent associations between higher self-compassion and reduced anxiety, depression, and rumination, alongside greater emotional resilience, motivation, and life satisfaction. The path to those outcomes is not always smooth, and for many people, the most important thing to understand before beginning is that difficulty in the early stages is not evidence of failure. It is evidence that the work is real, and that something in you is finally ready to meet it.
To join our trauma-informed self-compassion course, click here.
To join one of the Self Compasison meditation practice groups at Resilience Psychotherapy, click here.
References
Colwell, A., et al. (2025). Exploring the evidence for Internal Family Systems therapy: A scoping review of current research, gaps, and future directions. Clinical Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1080/13284207.2025.2533127
Germer, C. K., & Neff, K. D. (2019). Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion program: A guide for professionals. Guilford Press.
Gilbert, P. (2010). Compassion focused therapy: Distinctive features. Routledge.
Gilbert, P., & Procter, S. (2006). Compassionate mind training for people with high shame and self-criticism: Overview and pilot study of a group therapy approach. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 13(6), 353–379. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.507
Neff, K. D. (2023). Self-compassion: Theory, method, research, and intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 74, 193–218. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031047
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal family systems therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.