By Malynn Kuangparichat, Psy.D., J.D.
When my daughter was two years old, she pointed out a picture in her Moana book and commented, “I wish I had two mommies.” Confused by that comment, my husband asked her to clarify. She pointed to the picture and said, “This mommy stays home and this mommy goes to work.”
In her little mind, she had found the solution to my constant struggle to find work-life balance.
I just needed to figure out how to clone myself.
Back in 2015, I opened the practice when I was pregnant with my first child with the intention of creating more flexibility for myself and my family. That year had different plans for me. My husband became very sick and required multiple hospitalizations and surgeries.
Suddenly, I became the sole financial provider for our soon to be family of three. My son’s first Christmas was a humble one. We couldn’t afford gifts and the medical bills were never ending.
Determined to do more for my family, I poured everything into the practice and work.
This determination laid the foundation for the imbalance between work and life. When the practice was relatively established, I was surprised by the lack of services in the area and was motivated to expand our reach so as many members of the community could benefit from it.
While the practice was initially rooted in financial responsibility, it quickly shifted to providing quality psychological services. Because I valued making these services available, I again found myself spending a significant amount of time and effort on it. By doing so, I further reinforced the imbalance between work and life.
When my daughter unintentionally pointed out this imbalance, I knew I had to make changes.
This was my first reality call to personally embracing self-compassion.
Dr. Kristin Neff, self-compassion researcher and guru, illustrates that self-compassion is a shared reality because we all make mistakes. Not only that, but as life has it for us, things don’t go according to plan. Dr. Neff boils self-compassion down to the essential idea to “honor and accept your humanness.”
In sum, you can feel more compassion for yourself and others in the great scheme of life when you can understand this shared reality.
Trying to Find Balance
As a psychologist, I have the privilege of hearing a lot of people’s stories. One of the most repetitive stories I have heard from the wiser generation when they reflect on their lives is a desire to have spent more time with their family. No matter how successful they were in their lives, the time spent with family was the most treasured and valued.
I committed myself to shifting my focus to doing what I love but not at the sacrifice of time spent with those I love.
While I attempted miserably at accomplishing the new goal, this need for work-life balance was further emphasized after a particularly negative experience.
*Please note that the following paragraph contains sensitive details about pregnancy loss.
In November 2018, I suffered a miscarriage. On my way to my doctor’s office to have a procedure to remove the fetus, I received an “emergency call” from a client. While the call was important to the client, I would not have described it as an “emergency.” No one was in danger of any imminent harm.
When the client demanded a session, I had to turn it down because I wanted to focus on healing myself so I could actually return to work in a couple days and be fully present for my clients.
Not surprisingly, the client left the practice a couple weeks later disgruntled by my unwillingness to leave my emergency to attend to that individual’s emergency.
The moments leading up to the procedure and the days following it were filled with thoughts of whether I had made the right decision to turn the client away under those circumstances.
On the Path to Self-Compassion
As my practice continued to grow, I realized that having compassion toward yourself is about long-term happiness and health. It’s an intrinsic motivation that is strong enough to help you grow.
A part of self-compassion is about self-acceptance. You learn to rate your behavior rather than yourself.
It’s a strong safety net because you can see yourself clearly without condemning yourself.
Another way to think of self-compassion is understanding that self-compassion isn’t about rating yourself compared to others. We gain our sense of self-worth from our own perceived value. It’s not set on traits like how productive, smart, talented, etc. you feel you are.
According to Dr. Neff, this is considered self-esteem which is a harmful practice. Trying to increase your self-esteem is problematic because we are comparing ourselves to others. This can cause narcissistic behavior.
“People feel compassion for themselves because all human beings deserve compassion and understanding not because they possess some particular set of traits (pretty, smart, talented, and so on).”
Dr. Kristin Neff
On the other hand, self-compassion is different.
With self-compassion, you have better self-clarity and you can acknowledge personal fault lines with kindness. Compared to self-esteem, self-compassion allows for more emotional resilience, accurate self-awareness, and caring relationship behavior.
What’s more, you find yourself reacting with a new kind of gentleness instead of reactive anger, to yourself and others.
I’ve found self-compassion improves my well-being in such deep and longstanding ways.
Achieving Work-Life Balance
After those experiences with my daughter and disgruntled client, I made a commitment to doing things differently. I focused on my value of spending time with my family.
When I shifted my values and focus to gaining more balance, I could then choose behaviors that were consistent with it.
I blocked my calendars that were specific to time with family and friends. I did not feel guilty when I ended my day a couple hours early to attend my son’s school performance. I took my first non-working vacation in the summer of 2019 (a pleasant surprise for my husband).
Contrary to my worst fear, even though I made that commitment to gaining more balance, my practice did not suddenly tank. The quality of my work did not suffer and even improved.
Honestly, I’ve made the same New Year’s resolution for the past few years – to achieve work-life balance. I usually strike out within weeks, at times glancing at my clock in the wee hours of the morning as I finish up psychological reports and cursing at the world for not having more time in the day.
What allowed me to continue to achieve my goal of work-life balance was accepting that at times I will have to temporarily focus more on work or more on non-work. It’s not going to be perfect but recognizing that it was temporary allowed me to see that I can bring back that balance. I didn’t allow it to continue for an excessive period of time.
Accepting support meant I didn’t have to do it all on my own.
Another mind shift that I had to take was accepting help from others. Accepting support meant I didn’t have to do it all on my own.
Many of us want to outwardly look like we have everything under control, and aren’t willing to accept help as it’s a sign of dependency and weakness. But this again strikes at one of the golden cords in self-compassion: we share a commonality as humans.
None of us have it all put together.
I realized I have a rock-solid support group in my husband and family, my mom village, and my lifelong friends. Sometimes their help allows me to create the boundaries I need. At other times, their help gives me the opportunity to focus more on what is needed at the time.
Modeling Self-Compassion
When you ask my daughter what she wants to do when she grows up, she’ll respond, “I want to work like mommy” (and also “eat all the candy I want” because she’s still a 4 year old).
Whatever vocation or career she ends up in, I hope that I’m modeling a well-balanced lifestyle for her.
All in all, I hope I’m showing her how we can love and accept ourselves in a gentler, kinder way, by navigating the messiness of life through self-compassion.
We’re launching a Self-Compassion Challenge for January 2022! We hope you’ll join us on our Instagram or Facebook accounts for 3 practical self-compassion exercises throughout the month to increase your emotional resilience. See you there!
About the Author
Malynn Kuangparichat (Psy.D., J.D.) is founder and psychologist at Chester County Well-Being.
She has a collaborative approach that results in highly tailored evaluations intended to meet her clients’ unique needs. She focuses on an individual’s strengths, which are integrated in the practical, personalized recommendations identified by the findings of an evaluation.
In her free time, she enjoys running, spending time with family and friends, and getting ice cream or doughnuts from the local shops.
Contact Us
Ready to take the next step for your well-being? Chester County Well-Being (CCWB) provides a range of mental health services to ensure we meet our community’s needs. We serve individuals, couples, and families in the Chester County area; Dr. Malynn Kuangparichat also provides high quality and secure telepsychology services. Reach out to us here.
You can learn more about self-care, self-compassion, and mental health insights by following us on Facebook and Instagram.
Our specializations include:
- Therapy for Depression and Anxiety
- Couples Counseling
- Family Counseling
- Parenting Support
- Grief Counseling
- Work and Career issues
- Stress Management
- Addiction & Recovery
- Conflict Resolution