I think many of the mindfulness-based interventions do that as well but it’s not necessarily as explicit. And for those people like me who had very strong senses of self that were focused on trying to—that were not kind to themselves—it was hard to have the right view, so to speak as I was practicing. And I think that MSC, by explicitly focusing on that [being kind to oneself] helps you to see to what extent you are approaching this from this right view, this kinder view of oneself. 
 
I know that you’re working with therapists in psychodynamics, and in my training on addictions, one of the things that I learned from a psychodynamic perspective is that one of the goals of the therapist, with addiction or with behavior change, is to be able to stay equidistant from ego and the super ego. So it’s like you have this being a triangle. And in any kind of change, there generally is a triadic relationship between them—you could call it id or some part that’s really full of wanting, desire, appetitive urges. You have another part of what you might call super ego, or one might call criticism or moral shame or whatever is trying to restrain the appetitive behavior. And then you have at the top, you call it ego or it’s any piece that’s really involved with trying to manage this conflict between those two. 

And as a therapist, it’s important to be able to stay equidistant. And what that means is that you’re not siding with any one of those parts of a person’s self that are driving or caught up in the cycle of addiction or habitual behavior. And, so for me, that was actually difficult to do because I had strong feelings in these different triunes and would find myself often wanting to side with one or the other of those aspects of a person’s self in the way that they’ve constructed around this behavior. And so, I actually find that self-compassion and compassion in general, that kind of ability to warmly be with what one’s experiencing really helps me as a therapist to be able to sit with people without getting caught up or drawn into any of those three aspects. And sometimes there’s more. But generally, they are forming into some kind of triadic relationship around change. And I do find that self-compassion helps me to be able to sit there in the middle and calmly and warmly be with all the parts of the client that I’m working with in a way that then allows them to develop that capacity to do that as well, and then be able to heal from within and find their way out of the addictive behavior.