Mindfulness is a key component of self-compassion, a doorway through which we can enter self-compassion. Self-compassion is more than mindfulness, however. Mindfulness helps us to perceive what is happening within and around us with a non-judgmental, inquisitive attitude. As a mindfulness practice, we name the emotion we perceive in ourselves and then look for how that emotion is being experienced in our bodies. This process helps us to distance ourselves from the emotion we are experiencing while staying connected to it. We are aware that it is present in us here and now, but also that we are not identical with this emotion, it is just a part of us. The perception of our body's emotions distracts me from the thought process that would amplify and sustain that emotion. So the emotion slowly quiets down on its own.
For example, if someone refuses a request and we feel disappointment and anger, instead of thinking through all the disappointments in our lives, concluding that we will only be disappointed in everyone else, and listing all the bad qualities of that person, we can focus on how we feel our anger and disappointment in our body. This calms us down and we can calmly think about whether there is a way to remain in dialogue with the person as an adult, with the aim of compromise or some other way to get our needs met.

Awareness and non-judgmental contemplation of our unpleasant emotions often prevents us from being overwhelmed and controlled by them. Yet there are situations when this is not enough to calm us. Self-compassion adds another ingredient to our awareness of our suffering: kindness to ourselves. Not only do we become aware of our suffering, but we strive to relate to ourselves who suffer with tenderness, with love, with the intention of alleviating suffering.
Here again appears the paradox that accompanies us throughout the practice of self-compassion. It is an irresolvable contradiction on a logical level, yet very real as an inner experience. Only with much practice can we get a taste of how we can allow anger, dissatisfaction, disappointment with ourselves, while embracing ourselves with tender love. How we can allow ourselves to experience even very intense emotional pain, with the attitude that it can be real, that there is no reason to judge ourselves, to be dissatisfied with ourselves, while remaining in our intention to alleviate that pain. Our words are few to resolve these paradoxes. On an experiential level, however, a deep insight emerges, something movingly healing about the co-existence of pain and tenderness.

​It is perfectly all right that this paradox very often seems insoluble, and that we are unable to experience suffering and the tenderness that surrounds suffering at the same time.
It is an innate ability that comes from our capacity for the red and green systems to work simultaneously, and it can take a long time for the green system to begin to reduce the red system's function. The two systems working together is inconceivable and can only be understood through personal experience. And this experience can be very novel and confusing at first. Because it is inherent in the way our brains work, all humans can do it. It is only a matter of practice and self-reflection to recognize it, to taste it.
By comparing mindfulness and self-compassion, we can say that mindfulness focuses on accepting the experience and self-compassion focuses on caring for the person having the experience. Mindfulness asks "what am I feeling here and now?", self-compassion asks "what do I need here and now?" Mindfulness says "feel your suffering with a spacious awareness", self-compassion says "be gentle with yourself when you are suffering."
I can begin to try to experience the paradox: I name the uncomfortable feeling inside me, pay attention to where I feel it in my body, and ask myself, what do I need right now?