The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions by Christopher K. Germer, PhD focuses on mindfulness in a way that gently glides into self-compassion. Germer weaves his personal and professional experience using mindfulness to get to self-compassion with research into self-compassion in a way that is easy to read and makes both mindfulness and self-compassion feel approachable. He includes exercises and meditations to demonstrate the effectiveness of mindfulness on self-compassion. I really like that Germer explains that self-compassion isn't a self-help goal but a continuous journey that sometimes brings up pain while helping one to heal in a way that encourages and inspires one to pursue embracing self-compassion. The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion helped me with my own journey to strengthen my mindfulness and my self-compassion.

Germer outlines the mindfulness path to self-compassion ("freeing yourself from destructive thoughts and emotions"). He admits early in the book that "life is tough", and goes on to discuss acceptance of inevitable emotional pain and suffering, letting life be easy, moment-to-moment awareness, the importance of breathing and being aware of our breathing, caring for ourselves (easy to forget) and caring for others, and loving-kindness meditation. He suggests that when something bad happens to us, we tend to have three unfortunate reactions: self-criticism (put myself down), self-isolation (avoiding others), and self-absorption or focusing only on myself (been there to all three). The components of self-compassion on the other hand direct us in exactly the opposite directions.He also discusses personal vulnerabilities or "tender spots" that characterize many people and that can kick in when times are rough. Self-compassion is most likely to occur if we recognize and manage these vulnerabilities. Further, he outlines his conceptualization of "personality types" (based on anecdotal evidence rather than scientific research), and discusses ways that awareness of one's personality type can enhance self-compassion. The "personality types" include: Caregiver, Intellectual, Perfectionist, Individualist, Survivor, Workhorse, Butterfly, Outsider, Floater, Moralist, and Extravert and Introvert. As just one example, the "moralist" tends to get really upset when people behave badly, and they apply strict moral codes to themselves as well. To develop self-compassion and serenity, the moralist needs to lighten up. I was pretty impressed with German's book.

Clear and understandable

(This review is based on a review I wrote and maintain on my home web site. The definitive version can be found at:[...].I had reached the point in my personal and professional development where I noticed I was giving a lot of energy to "beating myself up" about stuff -- goals unmet, decisions regretted, actions not taken. It had gotten to the point where I realized a lot of my energy going to waste doing so.After having read, "Mindset" by Carol Dweck, (more on that book in another review) I was actively seeking new ways to set and meet higher expectations for myself in a constructive and supportive way.Christopher Germer's mindfulness and loving kindness meditations turned out to be the right recipes for me. The meditations enabled me to replace my old habits of bringing myself down or catastrophizing failure with new habits of giving myself kindness while I worked, and when I suffered setbacks either from outside circumstance or from my own limitations.Sometimes books about meditation are presented in a framework set by some particular religion. Germer's presentation is simple and factual. Germer uses Budhism, but he keeps religiosity out of it. He focuses on connecting one's self with our fellow human beings in a way that can be comfortably read by people of various faiths, those who are agnostic or those who consider themselves apart from a faith or religious tradition.Anyone who has come from a high pressure professional, personal or family history will find this book a valuable help.

Christopher Germer does a great job of writing this important book. He makes it simple enough to understand and try to practice without imposing judgment or expectation on the process. But urges one to keep trying it.This age old Buddhist concept of Loving/kindness I believe is our greatest hope for beginning with self and one person at a time practicing this until the worldwide karmic energy goes more positive than not. Then with this growing compassion conscientiousness first given to self, will enable all of us to give it out to others and pass it along worldwide.This is my greatest hope and faith in practicing Loving/Kindness Mindfull Compassion daily in every way possible in gestures and words makes all the difference. Much like the "Chaos" Theory that a butterfly flapping its wings affects the entire planet so does simple acts of loving/kindness (random acts of kindness) affect our karmic energy produced and taken in daily.Thank you Christopher Germer for shining a brilliant white light on this "enlightenment path" we can choose if we want to. I hope many many will and pass the word to others encouraging them to practice Loving/Kindness Compassion.... and so on and so and so on.........

My therapist suggested this book to me and I'm enjoying it. It helps you take a step back