Practising Self-Compassion During Perimenopause
Self-compassion is one of the most useful skills you can build during perimenopause. Learn practical ways to treat yourself with more kindness.
Why Self-Compassion Matters More Than Ever
Perimenopause can be relentless in the demands it makes. Hot flashes interrupt sleep. Brain fog slows thinking. Mood shifts arrive without warning. Many women respond to these changes the way they have always responded to difficulty: by pushing harder, criticising themselves for not coping better, and carrying on regardless. This approach has its merits in the short term, but it takes a significant toll over months and years. Self-compassion is not an alternative to effort or responsibility. It is the recognition that difficulty deserves a response of care rather than contempt. Research by psychologist Kristin Neff has consistently found that people who practise self-compassion are more resilient, more motivated, and experience less anxiety and depression than those who rely on self-criticism. During perimenopause, these qualities are genuinely useful.
What Self-Compassion Actually Looks Like
Self-compassion has three components: self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindful awareness of difficult emotions. Self-kindness means treating yourself with the warmth you would offer a close friend. If a friend told you she had forgotten an important meeting because of brain fog, you would not berate her. You would listen, reassure her, and help her think about what to do next. Common humanity means recognising that struggle is universal and that your difficulty is not a sign of personal failure but a normal part of human experience. Mindful awareness means noticing painful feelings without suppressing them or being swept away by them. In practice, self-compassion might look like saying to yourself: this is really hard right now, and it makes sense that I am struggling.
The Self-Criticism Habit and How It Forms
Most people who struggle with self-compassion during perimenopause have been self-critical for a long time. Self-criticism often starts as an adaptive strategy. If you criticise yourself before anyone else can, it reduces the sting of external judgement. If you hold yourself to very high standards, you rarely disappoint people. These strategies made sense at some point. They may have helped you succeed or avoid rejection. But they come at a cost, particularly during a life transition that genuinely requires more gentleness. Perimenopause often brings a heightened sensitivity to perceived failure, partly because hormonal changes affect the brain's threat-response systems. This makes self-criticism feel more intense, and its effects more damaging. Recognising that self-criticism is a habit rather than the truth is the first step toward changing it.
Practical Ways to Build Self-Compassion
One of the most effective practices is a simple pause when you notice self-critical thinking. You do not need to argue with the critical thought or replace it with a positive affirmation. Instead, try acknowledging what is hard: I am in a lot of pain right now, or this is genuinely difficult. Then ask yourself what you would say to a friend in the same situation, and say that to yourself instead. Writing a compassionate letter to yourself, in the voice of a wise and caring friend, is another powerful practice. It tends to surface a warmth that we rarely direct inward. Some women also find physical gestures helpful, placing a hand on the heart or giving themselves a brief hug. These are not trivial. The physical gesture activates the body's care system in ways that language alone does not always reach.
Self-Compassion and the Body
Perimenopause brings significant changes to the body, and many women find these changes hard to accept. Weight redistributes. Skin changes. Stamina shifts. The body that felt reliable may feel unpredictable. Self-compassion around the body does not mean ignoring health or abandoning self-care. It means releasing the habit of treating the body as a project to be controlled or a problem to be solved. It means noticing what the body can still do, and caring for it with the same attention you would give to something you love. Logging your symptoms regularly using a tool like PeriPlan can help you understand what your body is communicating, rather than experiencing each symptom as evidence of failure.
When Self-Compassion Feels Selfish
One of the most common objections to self-compassion is that it feels indulgent or self-centred. Many women have spent decades orienting their energy outward, toward children, partners, ageing parents, and colleagues. Turning that attention inward can feel uncomfortable or even wrong. It helps to reframe self-compassion not as selfishness but as maintenance. You cannot pour from an empty vessel. The kindness you extend to yourself does not deplete the kindness available for others. In fact, research consistently shows the opposite: people who are more self-compassionate tend to be more compassionate toward others, less resentful, and more able to sustain care over time. Self-compassion is, among other things, a way of staying capable of caring.
Growing Kinder Over Time
Self-compassion is a practice, not a destination. Most people find it easy in theory and difficult in specific moments, particularly when they are stressed, tired, or in physical discomfort. All of which describes perimenopause fairly well. The goal is not to eliminate self-criticism entirely but to catch it earlier, respond to it with curiosity rather than compliance, and build a steadier background of kindness toward yourself. Over time, this changes. Women who make a conscious effort to practise self-compassion during perimenopause often report that the transition, painful as it is, becomes one of the periods in which they felt most genuinely like themselves. The self they meet through this process tends to be more honest, more grounded, and considerably kinder.
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