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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
I grabbed this book because I was curious to learn more about self-compassion. In this work, Kristin Neff's focus is exploring how gender roles inhibit women from developing the fierce side of self-compassion. I really enjoyed her explanation of how self-compassion is expressed not only as tenderness, but also through the proactive elements of protecting, providing, and motivating. However, the crude and brash tone was sometimes a turn off. For example, she describes yelling "You bigoted monster" as a moment of power. She also describes the Hindu goddess Kali who wears skulls and stands on her flailing husband as a "wonderful symbol of women's fierceness" who we can turn to for inspiration (pp. 78-79).
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
Insightful, but too repetitive. I could have just read the first 2/3 and come away with all the same takeaways. The feminist argument and self-compassion practice were poorly integrated and put the onus on women to change the system that oppresses them by being self-compassionate, I guess? But I found it easy enough to put some of this aside — in addition to some of her offensive language and ideas (the drug addict story is the one that bothered me the most) — to sift through and find the gem at the heart of her argument, which is that self-compassion is misunderstood to always be soft and tender, and that we need fierceness as well. I will use the guided practices online for sure.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Repetitive without new information or actionable steps. I was not interested in the exercises. The author mentioned being a scientist multiple times so I wish she would have spoken more about the science instead of so many stories and metaphors about yin and yang.
medium-paced