My wife and have spent the last two days working at the Adolescent Health Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Two hundred professionals—school counselors, teachers, psychotherapists, physicians, and case managers—attend this annual conference put on by the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Our Samaritan Family Wellness Foundation is honored to support this conference as a sponsor, as well as being presenters.
The secular division of our foundation creates teen, parent, and adult resources for the professionals who are on the front lines working with the mental health challenges face by young people and their families today. The need is more significant than ever because the mental health challenges in our young people are great.
One of the benefits of being at a health and wellness conference is the opportunity to learn from the experience and expertise of other presenters. A workshop on the benefits of helping teens to develop mindful self-compassion skills was the presentation that was most helpful to me personally and professionally. It was there that I heard the quote from Kristen Neff, one of leading experts in the self-compassion movement, found in the box at the top of this column, “Treat yourself as you would a good friend.”
The research presented at our conference confirms that it’s a hard time to be an adolescent. Social media is only part of the problem, but one that can significantly magnify feelings of self-criticism for an already vulnerable or suffering teen. Teaching young people mindful self-compassion helps them to quiet their inner critics and to learn to love, accept, and appreciate themselves for who they are. It also helps them to normalize the natural ups and downs they experience as adolescents.
It turns out that we adults, even we professionals it was pointed out, can also benefit from practicing self-compassion. Those who are quite compassionate with others can, maybe surprisingly, be unduly hard on themselves. I, for one, have always wrestled with a loud inner critical voice, and so I was much helped by learning more about self-compassion this week. There seemed to be a consensus amongst all the workshop attendees that there was a need to practice this, as much for ourselves as there was for teaching it to the youth with whom we work.
In closing, if you would like to find out more about self-compassion, I highly recommend watching a short six-minute video from expert Kristin Neff. You may even want to try putting what she teaches into practice, as a gift to yourself.
You can find the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11U0h0DPu7k
Article by The Rev. Dr. D. Scott Stoner, Living Compass
