I call myself a master of selfgentleness. And I am. But I think I need to unpack what I actually mean by that, because the word “master” implies something I want to gently challenge.

It implies that I’ve mastered it. Done. In the pocket. That Femke is always selfgentle, always measured, always kind to herself without effort or interruption.

I’m not.

Every week, I run into small moments where I catch myself being unkind to myself. I drop a glass and it shatters all over the floor, and while I’m cleaning it up and trying to make sure the dog and the cat don’t walk into it, something in me says: stupid. Silly. You could have paid better attention.

Or I wake up in the morning, catch myself in the mirror, and think: I used to look much better.

Or a friend calls, needing to vent, and I’m already tired, genuinely too depleted to be properly present, so I tell her honestly: I’m sorry, I’m really tired right now, I can’t be there for you the way you need. Let me take care of myself first and I’ll call you later. Which is the right thing to do. And still, something in me says: come on, Femke. They need you. Get a grip.

In all of those moments, I am not being kind to myself. But here’s the thing: that’s okay. Because the mastery I’m talking about is not in that moment. It’s in the moment right after. Or, sometimes, a little while after that.

The Gap Between Knowing and Actually Being Kind to Yourself

If you’ve ever searched for how to be kind to yourself and come away with a list of tips that you already knew, you probably understand this gap.

You know you should be gentler. You know the inner critic is not telling the truth. You know that the standard you hold yourself to is unreasonable. You’ve read the books, done the courses, maybe even sat with a therapist or coach who have walked you through all of it.

And yet. Here you are, cleaning up broken glass, and the first thing out of your own mouth is an insult.

I want you to know that this isn’t because you haven’t learned enough yet, or haven’t found the right method. As I explore in the post on how to accept yourself, the usual advice tends to miss the point for people who have already done significant inner work. Because the problem is not that you don’t know better. The problem is that knowledge alone doesn’t change the relationship you have with yourself.

What changes that relationship is slower and also more personal than that.

What Mastery Actually Looks Like

When I hear myself thinking “you should have paid more attention”, I don’t always catch the harshness in it immediately. Sometimes it’s a few minutes later, when I notice an unpleasant feeling in my stomach. Or that I’m restless, and can’t settle. And then the penny drops and I recognize my own unkindness: Oh. There it is….

Instead of getting into the rabbit hole of getting angry at myself for being angry at myself (and if you can follow that, this blog is definitely for you), I just stop everything that I am doing. And I ask myself: what do I need right now? And then, I take care of myself. Sometimes that means probing for a kinder thought to replace it with. Sometimes it means laughing at myself, but warmly, I don’t mean in a mockery sense. Sometimes, if it’s a harder moment, I allow myself to just feel that. And comfort myself. Soothe myself. Because that’s the best thing to do in such a moment. Until I feel that slight relief in my belly.

That’s it. That’s the mastery. Not the absence of unkind thoughts or self-criticism, but helping myself to feel slightly better, whenever I notice that I am unkind with myself. Even if I know better.

So, catching myself being ungentle doesn’t always happen right away. Sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes I do beat myself up first. But that’s okay. The goal is not to be perfectly vigilant. The goal is to keep coming back to myself, with care, with gentleness, when I trip and fall.

You Already Know When You’re Being Unkind to Yourself

I also see this with the people I work with. People who are already self-aware, already did the ‘hard inner work’, highly sensitive and empathic people who are already so very familiar with concepts like the inner critic and self-compassion and all the rest.

They know. They feel it when they have unkind thoughts. They recognize it, even if they can’t always stop it.

That knowing is actually the most important first step in the whole process. Because you can’t work with something you can’t see. And the fact that you can see it, even if only in retrospect, even if only after you’ve already been hard on yourself for twenty minutes (or longer), means you have something to work with.

If this resonates, it might also be worth reading about what the inner critic is actually trying to say, because understanding the voice underneath that unkindness can change how you’re able to respond to it.

Why Being Kind to Yourself Can’t Be a Method

The reason a list of tips doesn’t get you to stop being self-critical is that what you need in one moment is completely different from what you need in another.

When I dropped that glass, what helped was laughing at myself, warmly, the way you might laugh with someone you love who is having a clumsy day. The morning I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror, laughing would have landed wrong. What I needed there was to put a hand on my own chest for a second and let the thought go by without arguing with it. And with my friend on the phone, the one I had nothing left for, what I needed was to let the guilt sit in my stomach and call her back later anyway, without making myself wrong for having a limit.

Same person, same week, three completely different needs. There is no universal tool, and no sequence that works every time. Maybe that sounds like a flaw in the approach, but it isn’t. It’s the point.

Being kind to yourself, genuinely and durably, requires two things. First, a gradual shift in how you see yourself, so that recognizing unkindness becomes easier and faster over time. And second, a personal repertoire of ways to support yourself in the moment, drawn from what you actually know works for you, not what works in theory.

That’s what I mean when I talk about selfgentleness as a perspective rather than a practice. Yes, the practices I teach matter. But these practices, incrementally and consistently, help you make an inner belief shift. So you’ll start to think differently about yourself. And acting upon those kinder beliefs will become easier. That’s what makes the difference.

The Moment Right After

If you’re reading this and you recognize that gap, the understanding without the being, I want you to know something:

You’re not failing. You’re in the middle of it. And the middle is exactly where the real process happens.

The dropped glass, the mirror in the morning, the friend who needed you when you had nothing left, the expectations around you, the promises you don’t want to keep anymore. Those moments will keep coming. They’re not problems to be solved. They’re the material you get to practice with, again and again, until the moment right after gets a little shorter, a little kinder, and starts to feel a little more like second nature.

That’s the selfgentleness perspective:

When life gets hard again, you won’t have to start over. You’ll still feel it. But you’ll know how to be with yourself in it. Not by pushing through, but by being gentle. And that will be enough.

Selfgentleness is the practice of radically accepting yourself as the most important person to consistently deserve your own gentleness. No exceptions, not when things go well, and especially not when they don’t.

If any of this felt familiar, the quiz I made might help you see the pattern more clearly. It takes three minutes. Take the quiz here.