Are you kind to everyone but yourself? This book will help you find the strength and courage to move beyond self-criticism and just be you.
Do you ever feel like you're just not good enough? Do you often compare yourself to friends, classmates, or even celebrities and models? As a teen facing intense physical, mental, and social changes, it's easy to get caught up in self-judgment and criticism. The problem is, over time, these negative thoughts can build up, cloud your world, and lead to stress, anxiety, and even depression. So, how can you start being nicer to yourself?
Written by psychologist Karen Bluth and based on practices adapted from Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer's Mindful Self-Compassion program, this book offers fun, everyday exercises grounded in mindfulness and self-compassion to help you overcome crippling self-criticism and respond to feelings of self-doubt with greater kindness and self-care. You'll find real tools to help you work through difficult thoughts and feelings, navigate life's emotional ups and downs, and be as accepting of yourself as you are of others.
Learning to believe in yourself means being aware of the self-critical voice inside you, and then discovering how to not take it so seriously. With this book, you'll learn how self-compassion can actually be a much greater motivator for reaching your goals than self-criticism. In fact, being kind to yourself when you're struggling can actually reduce stress and make you more resilient!
So, stop beating yourself up, and start reading this book. You have an important friend to make--you!
Bluth, Karen: - Karen Bluth, PhD, is on faculty in the department of psychiatry and a research fellow at Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is founder of the Frank Porter Graham Program on Mindfulness and Self-Compassion for Families (https: //selfcompassion.web.unc.edu). She is a certified instructor of Mindful Self-Compassion, an internationally acclaimed eight-week course created by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer; and is a codeveloper of Self-Compassion for Educators, a self-compassion program offered through Mindful Schools.
Bluth is also cocreator of the curriculum Making Friends with Yourself: A Mindful Self-Compassion Program for Teens, the teen adaptation of Mindful Self-Compassion; and Embracing Your Life, the young adult adaptation. She is also author of
The Self-Compassion Workbook for Teens and
The Self-Compassionate Teen. As a mindfulness practitioner for more than forty years, a mindfulness teacher, and an educator with eighteen years of classroom teaching experience, Bluth frequently gives talks, conducts workshops, and teaches classes in self-compassion and mindfulness in educational and community settings. In addition, she trains teachers in Making Friends with Yourself internationally.
Neff, Kristin: - Kristin Neff, PhD, is currently associate professor of educational psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, conducting the first empirical studies on self-compassion more than fifteen years ago. In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of Self-Compassion. In conjunction with her colleague Christopher Germer, she developed an empirically supported, eight-week training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, and offers workshops on self-compassion worldwide.
