Loving Kindness Worksheet
When compassion should not remain abstract, but should be practiced as a concrete practice for yourself or others.
Make compassionate practice available not just as an optional meditation, but as a concrete practice format with review and repetition.
When does this fit?
If Loving Kindness is not only to be understood, but also to be practiced as a repeatable practice for specific people and situations.
Priority in the path
This node fits early in the path when anger or irritation or strong emotional activation are in the foreground.
What this is about
Loving-kindness meditation produces its effects through repetition and genuine (not performative) intention. The worksheet guides practice through four stages: directing warmth toward oneself, toward someone easy to love, toward a neutral person, and toward a difficult person. The stage most people find hardest — directing warmth toward oneself — is often the most clinically important. The practice does not require feeling warmth immediately; it begins with the intention and the words, and the feeling tends to follow with practice. Resistance ('I don't deserve this') is itself useful information, not a reason to stop.
Step by step
Work through the steps at your own pace. For written exercises, you can use paper or a notebook.
- Choose whom to direct kind wishes towards: yourself or someone else.
- Form short well-wishing phrases and repeat them attentively.
- Afterwards record who received the wishes and which words you used.
- Describe any change in warmth, compassion or connection, including if you noticed none.
- After another practice, again record what helped or was difficult.
Explore and apply
These nodes deliberately lead into a second DBT module space when the current content must be carried across modules.
Other-Compassion
Background
When compassion for other people should be actively practiced instead of just being judged or rejected.
Practicing compassion for others directly changes relationship quality - the worksheet is interpersonal practice in the form of a mindfulness exercise.
Also in: Mindfulness
Loving Kindness
Background
If you want to practice active, warm affection instead of just distance from yourself or others.
Also in: Interpersonal Effectiveness
Self-Compassion
Background
When you need to treat yourself with compassion instead of harshness or shame.
Also in: Emotion Regulation · Interpersonal Effectiveness
Sources and references
Show where this node comes from and how source-near or practice-near it is.