Embrace Your Awesome

Meet the Self-Compassion Box Technique

Emma Willmer
4 min readNov 24, 2023
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

In 2017 I started my master’s degree in applied positive psychology.

At the time, I was working full time, and I was exhausted all the time from struggling with chronic illness and being a single mother to 2 teenage daughters (anyone who has teenagers knows how emotionally draining that can be).

I thought I had a good life, but I was constantly exhausted from putting other people’s needs before my own, both in the workplace and elsewhere, and I was stuck.

In the first year of my degree, we had to apply positive psychology interventions to ourselves, and this was very interesting.

We did this so we could see how they worked and what it felt like, but also so we could learn how to reflect on our experiences in life.

Over the time that I applied these interventions to myself, things started to change for me.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but looking back, I changed dramatically.

I started to understand that my health was important, what I wanted was important, and my decisions were important.

Fast forward to today, and even though I’ve done my master’s degree and I know lots of positive psychology, I’m still human, and I still struggle.

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Emma Willmer
Emma Willmer

Written by Emma Willmer

🌟 Empowering neurodivergent women to embrace confidence & self-compassion. Super-late diagnosed ADHD, now on the autism diagnosis journey 🌸 #YouMatter