We now are more than one year into a global health crisis that has left many of us wracked with depression, anxiety and loneliness. Many of us have taken the past year to learn more about ourselves, to become the people we always were meant to be. For some, this has been difficult and some people continue to find it challenging to offer themselves kindness, grace and compassion for struggling with difficult thoughts, feelings and emotions.

What happens if instead of beating ourselves up for struggling this past year, we turn toward ourselves with compassion and understanding. What happens if we offer ourselves the same compassion and understanding that we likely offer our friends and loved ones? What happens if we try to stop criticizing ourselves for trying to manage difficult emotions?

It can be difficult to offer oneself compassion, but doing so allows us to be even more compassionate with those we love. Offering ourselves compassion means speaking kindly to ourselves, being gentle with ourselves and coming to realize that we are doing the best we can with what we have right now. It has been a very difficult year for so many of us. It is okay to feel overwhelmed with challenging emotions such as sadness, loneliness, anger. It is perfectly normal to find yourself mourning the loss of whatever your “normal” was prior to the pandemic. Doing so simply means that you are human. Offer yourself some grace for what you are dealing with. Beating yourself up for dealing with negative or challenging emotions likely will only make you feel worse. Try to practice loving kindness with and toward yourself.

Offering yourself loving kindness when you are struggling with difficult emotions will allow you to let go of any negative self-criticism. It is perfectly okay to be struggling right now. It is perfectly okay to admit that this past year has been very challenging. Doing so does not make you weak. Doing so makes you human.

What happens if you give yourself permission to feel those challenging emotions? What happens if you accept the fact that feeling negative or challenging emotions is a part of life and something that we all deal with? The fact that you may feel sad, lonely, depressed or anxious does not mean that you somehow are a lesser human being. It simply means that you may be struggling, and that is okay. We all struggle from time to time. Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to feel. If you find that those negative feelings have become overwhelming, reach out to a trusted other, be it a friend, family member or mental health professional. It is okay to ask for help. It takes more courage to ask for help than it does to suffer in silence.

Asking for help to learn how to manage challenging emotions can feel freeing. So will speaking to yourself kindly and with love. The more we step away from negative self-talk the easier it is to come to love and accept yourself for being human and feeling challenging emotions. What happens if instead of berating ourselves for feeling negative emotions, we speak to ourselves with kindness when we do? What if we speak to ourselves with love, likely as we would speak to a friend or family member who is struggling? Offer yourself that same love and compassion. You deserve it.