Back in 1991, a young man who worked for the giant Japanese advertising firm Dentsu, took his own life because of depression brought on by overwork. He had worked every day for a year and a half and was sleeping two hours a night. After a case that went to Japan's Supreme Court, the company apologised and said it would try to stop this from ever happening again.
Last month, the company president said he would step down following the death of another employee. She had killed herself on Christmas Day in 2015. She had been working a hundred hours a month overtime.
I came across these extreme cases (though, unfortunately, not all that extreme in Japan) when I was looking up information about a new French law that allows employees to refuse to open work emails after hours. It struck me that some people would be too hard on themselves to allow themselves to benefit from this legislation.
I wanted to suggest that many people need to cultivate a degree of self-compassion so as not to keep driving themselves on relentlessly. But I think the argument for self-compassion also applies to the more serious issue of "karoshi" as death from overwork is called in Japan.
One of the saddest aspects of suicide from overwork is that the victims tend to blame themselves for not having been good enough, according to the notes they leave behind. To me this is a stark reminder of the value of self-compassion in our lives, even though it is a quality that is rarely talked about.
I am not discounting the influence of toxic company cultures or of toxic management behaviours. I do think, though, that self-compassion can enable us to negotiate these situations, including negotiating our way out of them in a healthy way, and can also improve our general experience of living.
Suppose you base your self-worth on impressing a group of people who are bad for you, for instance people you work with work for or even members of your own family. That need to impress traps you in the situation and keeps you dancing to their tune.
If you are guided by self-compassion you will be far more likely to recognise that the cost of impressing these people is too high and that you deserve better.
Self-compassion doesn’t make you lazy. There’s plenty of research showing that self-compassionate people are particularly good at taking on challenges. This might be because placing an emphasis on self-compassion means that they don’t have to fear the fierce and painful self-condemnation that can come the way of those who are not compassionate towards themselves.
Self-compassion involves adopting an attitude of kindness and tolerance toward yourself. This takes time and effort because as Freud pointed out the mind has a very very self-critical at aspect to it. That self-critical aspect, the superego, is always watching and waiting to pounce so you need to be alert, mindful really, of what is going on in your head.
In practice that means stepping out of those self-attacking thoughts when you discover that you are lost in them and instead adopting an attitude of kindness toward yourself which, after all, is most likely the attitude you would adopt towards a good friend.
It is also hugely helpful to recognise that whatever your feelings are right now and whatever you are going through right now, millions of people around the world are going through the same thing and having very similar feelings. You are not uniquely faulty in some way – you are humanly faulty and that’s because you’re human. That perspective makes it easier somehow to be kind towards yourself.
We all have our self improvement projects going on at this time of year. There is nothing wrong with that and sometimes these projects make a big positive difference in people’s lives. But try to view the project and your assessment of how you are doing with it from the perspective of self-compassion. The results could be very interesting and rewarding.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@yahoo.com) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.
Twitter: @PadraigOMorain