introduction
“Practicing Self-Compassion,” builds upon students’ previous learning about self-compassion by giving them opportunities to actively apply self-compassion in their lives. This guides them to begin to recognize it as a resilience tool that supports well-being and emotional regulation. This lesson focuses on identifying and overcoming personal and cultural barriers to self-compassion, such as perfectionism or the belief that compassion makes one “lazy”. The Validate-Affirm-Plan framework is reinforced as a core strategy for acknowledging feelings, affirming strengths, and planning actions to address challenges, promoting cognitive reframing.