Wellness Community | Couch of Compassion

The Self-Compassion Project: An Intervention study on Being there for Yourself (2017)

The Self-Compassion project is a 7 day program formulated in 2017 with the aim of helping young adults to cultivate self-compassion in regular living.

The program is appropriate for young adults who:

find themselves often putting the needs of other people before their own
are open to exploring aspects of themselves that they haven't before
are curious about how to take care of themselves better
feel uncertain or uncomfortable being by themselves
wish to learn how to express themselves authentically
have trouble being supportive of themselves during hard times

The Self-Compassion Project

at a glance:

Duration: 7 Days
Timings: 2 hours per day
Participant strength: 6
Age range: 16+
Language: English
All necessary materials (Rediscover Yourself File, Homework materials) were provided.

Findings

Using thematic content analysis, we can see that in order to cultivate self-compassion

in daily living, there are 2 components:

Thought-oriented component - Attitudinal Process - This includes self-awareness, self-acceptance, balanced approach and security in self.

Action-oriented component - Behavioural Change - This includes self-care behaviour

and authentic self-expression.

TESTIMONIALS

When I got to know about this program, I was glad there was something like this taking place and I was very much interested. I started off with this program with no expectations and just wanted to see how it goes, but this program made a difference to me. This program made me realise how important it was to be self-compassionate, to love yourself and to be there for yourself. The activities that we had to do made me think about myself and made me feel good because it gave me a chance to spend time with myself and everything I was doing was for my myself.

On the whole this program did bring a change in me, I wouldn't say entirely but definitely a change which is enough for me to realise the importance of myself and able to be self-compassionate.

~ P, 25

I think signing up for this program is the only gift I have gifted to myself. I did not realise the importance of it before the sessions began. Every single day I got to learn something new about myself in different ways. It gave me a hope that I will be able to survive alone.

These 7 days will definitely be memorable for me. And hopefully if I put in enough efforts, I'm sure there'll be a time in the future when I'll proudly be able to say that I can rely on myself, and myself only; for anything!

You have no idea how much this program helped me. I learnt to let go of things I never thought I would. I am now capable of telling out my opinions directly with very less hesitation. These are the few things I thought I would never be able to do. But then again, nothing is impossible.

So thank you so much for holding a program like this.

~ YANS, 21

The program was introduced to me via my class WhatsApp group. The moment I read about it, without any second thoughts, I decided to sign up for this. The reason being that I needed to dedicate some time for myself. I wanted to be a part of any work shop which would let me be myself.

The program was very helpful in terms of connecting with oneself. It had meaningful content. Key takeaways for me was to understand that there's nothing wrong in being there for myself; activity of accepting and forgiving myself; few ways of taking out time for myself. Thanks for the lovely program. All the best.

~ SS, 26

Before this program, I’ve never really given importance to myself and I blamed myself for everything bad that has happened. But coming here made me realize how important self-compassion is and that I’m not alone. The activities and exercises were really good and interesting, and all of them just made me feel better about myself. A few of them I never would have done if I was alone, but the group helped me. It was a good support system. Now I am more positive towards life and myself and more confident about what I do. A few activities were intense, but in the end they just helped me to open up more. Overall it was a good and very helpful experience.

~ SC, 23

The self-compassion project helped me realise that I need to give myself a lot more credit than I do. I didn't open up as much as everyone else did, but I think if it was a little longer in hours every day, I would have.

It's something that can help many people, and in my opinion, it will do so only if it continues to be a group thing. It'll be too intimidating if it was in individual project according to me. Most of the activities made a huge impact on me, except the one on day 4 because I couldn't open up. But I think I would have if it was for longer hours or it was on a later day. The rest of the activities made a huge impact on me and I will always remember to be more self-compassionate because those activities can be fit into daily activities.

~ RUM, 21