The Medicine of Self-Compassion

Reflections on Gabor Maté’s Five Compassions, chronic illness, and the healing journey

On a list of books that have marked milestones on my personal healing journey, Dr. Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture sits near the top.

Over the past couple of months, I found myself once again grappling with the legacy of my complex trauma that’s manifested as chronic illness.

It's something I’ve lived with throughout my adult life, and a place where I often struggle to offer myself compassion. I sometimes feel angry at my body for seemingly betraying me.

With this as the backdrop, I picked up The Myth of Normal again and made my way through it.

Whenever I read a book for the second time, it’s always different—because I’m different.

In the previous reading, I focused more on how trauma causes illness. This time, I gravitated to the section on healing and recovery.

And (surprise, surprise), I landed heavily on the section entitled “The Five Compassions.” Maté begins this section with a quote from neurosurgeon Dr. James Doty, the former head of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.

Doty says:

“There is a subset of people who believe that compassion is soft, that it’s not worthy of scientific study…Yet, I assure you, the science we have today demonstrates these practices of mindfulness, self-compassion, and compassion are some of the most powerful that exist to change your physiology and to benefit you in your own health, mental and physical, and in terms of your longevity.”

Maté goes on to say that to truly heal ourselves and inspire a healthier, more harmonious society, we need to “harness and amplify compassion’s healing power.”

That’s been my experience. The more I’ve learned to practice compassion for myself when experiencing emotional reactivity and inner criticism, the more balanced my life is. I feel better inside and, as such, am able to have better relationships with people around me.

What’s most interesting is how Dr. Maté breaks compassion down into five different flavours that, together, can serve as guideposts on the healing journey.

I felt inspired to reflect on each of these as they relate to our topic at hand: self-compassion.

Ordinary compassion: Give yourself permission to feel.

At its core, compassion means "to be with another in their suffering; to acknowledge their pain and let it move us."

I consistently argue that before we can extend authentic compassion to others, we need to learn to offer it to ourselves. When we can see our pain, our flaws, and setbacks through the lens of kindness, it becomes possible to offer it to others.

To clarify once again, self-compassion isn’t an indulgence. It’s not akin to self-pity, which only traps us in old stories of woe-is-me. Instead, it’s a clear-seeing recognition of our own vulnerability.

Unlike self-pity, as Maté puts it, “Self-compassion…doesn’t resist how things are, nor swaddle the pain in layers of narrative gauze; it just says, 'I am hurting.”

Believe it or not, this simple, honest acknowledgment can be the seed of true healing.

Curiosity & understanding: Ask why am I hurting? without judgement.

This form of compassion rests on the concept that everything exists for a reason and that reason matters.

As such, it asks us to pause before judging anyone—including ourselves. To ask why we act the way we do. It’s compassion, not just for suffering itself, but for suffering’s roots; the oft-hidden place from whence the pain comes.

In other words, compassion requires curiosity about the story beneath the suffering to work its healing mojo.

As the book points out, wishing someone freedom from addiction without first exploring the pain underneath the substance abuse keeps things at a surface level.

This applies to our own hurts.

Can we meet our challenging patterns, like addictions, defenses, or shutdowns, with curiosity instead of condemnation?

Can we recognize that our pain has roots? That our struggles aren’t random failures, but responses to wounds we haven't understood or healed yet?

This approach can free us from the futility of self-judgement and lead us toward true self-compassion.

As Maté reminds us: “The willingness to seek the why before leaping to the how is the compassion of curiosity and understanding in action.”

This kind of compassion requires patience and courage, because it balks at easy narratives and quick fixes. But by practicing it, we start to see our own pain and that of others, as well as the deeper story that underlies true healing.

Recognition: See yourself as human, imperfect, but not alone.

The compassion of recognition can soften our illusions of separation.

It reminds us that we’re not alone in our flaws, struggles, and missteps. They’re not defects, unique to us, but part of the shared human experience.

Recognition involves seeing ourselves in others, and others in ourselves. Without this lens, judgement creates separation, spreads shame, and isolates. When it’s present, recognition breaks down walls. It lets us see clearly that we’re all in the same boat, navigating the same storm.

Recognition also brings us home to our bodies. When we notice judgement, we can pay attention to what happens inside: the tight chest, the clenched stomach, the constrained throat. These are signs of suffering, not moral clarity.

When we’re on the growth or spiritual path, there can be a tendency to judge ourselves for judging. But judging our own suffering only adds fuel to the fires of shame. This, in turn, breeds more suffering in the world.

What if, instead, we could meet our judging mind with compassion? Could we gently inquire: “What pain is beneath this?”

As Dr. Maté shares: “Healing flows when we are able to view this hurting world as a mirror for our own pain, and to allow others to see themselves reflected in us as well—recognition paving the way for reconnection.”

Healing happens when we see ourselves as part of a collective, and our wounds as part of the collective trauma. This opens the door to compassion for others when we see that their suffering is also our suffering.

Truth: Face your pain rather than numbing it.

Numbing is a common strategy for keeping suffering at bay—by hiding it behind a curtain of distraction, compulsion or denial.

But forcing something out of our awareness doesn’t make it disappear. It gets stuck in our nervous systems and leaks out in various unhelpful ways.

Facing our pain isn’t easy. It takes courage.

To be clear, we’re not talking about masochism. There's no intention for punishing ourselves embedded here. What's up for discussion is a gentle, kind exploration of the patterns that shaped us.

Being able to see our pain clearly and meet it with openness gives it a voice. It offers our wounded parts the chance to share their origin story and voice the unmet needs beneath them.

This opens the doorway to healing. Turning toward the pain lets us reclaim long-hidden and disowned parts of ourselves.

We can honour the inner child who suffered. We can tenderly hold the adult who coped in the best way they knew how. We can commit to never abandoning ourselves again.

This, my friends, is the foundation for unshakeable self-compassion. It’s forged through the fires of facing our pain, our suffering, our hurt with tenderness.

Possibility: Believe in your capacity to heal and change.

I want to do a whole post about this one day.

The compassion of possibility involves holding space for the gold inside each of us—the basic, unbreakable goodness each of us was born with.

It means believing that our deepest longings aren’t some distant dream. They’re already living inside us, just beneath the surface, waiting for the right conditions to reveal themselves.

This isn’t a promise that transformation will be quick or easy. And it’s not some vague hope for the future. It’s a deep knowledge that we each carry the seed of wholeness inside us, despite the scars or shadows that obscure it.

Honouring possibility means standing in awe before the great mystery of this human existence and trusting that unseen currents can carry us where we need to go when we’re able to surrender to their flow.

So, when shame wants us to reduce ourselves to our worst moment—to believe we’re unsalvagable, and so are others—the compassion of possibility allows us to hold our potential for greatness. The basic goodness inside each of us.

As Maté writes: “If we didn’t mistake ourselves or one another for whatever personality features and behavioral traits appear on the surface, “good” or “bad,” if in each person we could sense the potential for wholeness that can never be lost, that would be, for us all, a victory worth savoring.”

From betrayal to belonging

While chronic illness still sometimes feels like betrayal by my body, deep down I know my physiology is doing its best for me. It's been working overtime for a long time to help me survive.

Each time I can return to this place of compassion, I feel less at war with my body and more in conversation with it. My body and mind are on the same team, and we need to work together toward a common goal—healing.

These five compassions remind me that healing isn't about fixing what seems broken. It's about tenderness and connection toward the parts of me that have operated in survival mode for 40+ years.

If you've ever felt betrayed by your body, perhaps these five compassions might be of benefit to you, too. Could they offer a path back to tenderness, trust, and your ever-present potential for wholeness?