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Kindness is one of those virtues we speak about as though it were simple. Be kind. Teach your children to be kind. Choose kindness. It sits on classroom walls and coffee mugs as though it were as straightforward as “wash your hands” or “drive under thirty.” But kindness is not a switch to be turned on. It is not a rule we can followed blindly. Rather it is a dynamic judgement, and like all real virtues, it exists on a scale.

At one end of that scale we find cruelty.  We may recognise hardness, selfishness, indifference or the refusal to care.  But at the other end lies something far less obvious, which is often praised and that is self-annihilation.

At this point, kindness ceases to be virtue.  For some it manifests as the inability to say no or as absorbing another person’s chaos until you disappear inside it. For some people it will involve tolerating injustice in the name of peace, excusing harm in the name of compassion, and mistaking exhaustion for goodness.  

This kind of over-kindness can be dangerous precisely because it looks moral. People reward those who self-annihilate and like to be in company with those who persistently please others.  People like this are praised as patient, forgiving or understanding.

But when kindness repeatedly leaves one person depleted, resentful, or silently crushed, then something has gone wrong.

Self-erasure is not love and it is not justice.  And quite often, it does not even help the other person.  Carrying burdens that are not yours may feel compassionate, but it can quietly become a form of dishonesty, preventing reality from being faced and allowing weakness to become permanent.

Real kindness lives somewhere in the middle, between self- annihilation and cruelty and the middle is always an ambiguous place to be and there is no universal formula.  It cannot be reduced to “always forgive” or “always put others first.” Every situation presents its own conditions, and virtue lies in the constant retuning. What does justice require here? What does love require here? What protects dignity rather than destroys it for everyone involved?

This is why truly kind people have a kind of radiance about them. They are warm, but not weak.  

Perhaps this is what we should teach our children instead of simply saying “be kind.”  Not that kindness means always giving, always yielding, always enduring but that kindness is the difficult art of loving without losing yourself. Sometimes kindness looks like softness and sometimes like a closed door, the wisdom is found in the moment.

Haircuts, nails, gym subscriptions, new wardrobes, evenings out… these are all expensive things we have learned we need to feel good.  But you may have noticed, that despite the expense, the dopamine hit doesn’t last.  Dopamine doesn’t last- it is a short hit and then you come down.  You may feel a little surge each time you receive a compliment for your new haircut or shoes.  But even this can leave you feeling empty when you are sat by yourself.

Much of what we have learned is good living is based on a system that wants us to spend money, have shallow unfocused attention.  The gnawing sense of meaningless in the dark moments of the night creates a void we need to fill with more spending of money and short-term fixes.  It is why so much internet shopping happens in the middle of the night.

Much of what we have learned decides whether we are worthy is dependent on the approval and judgement of other people, systems and a voice inside that perhaps doesn’t really feel like me.

The therapy I offer is £75 a session.  It is less than a haircut and much less than a new wardrobe.  But unlike the haircut that grows out, your therapy grows with you.  It gives you resources to face the judgements and the disapproval of others with curiosity and to address the void head on, without fear.  It is not a wand to make everything wonderful, but what once seemed impossible or terrifying, may no longer seem so huge.

If you came to therapy to quit smoking, you may or may not achieve that outcome, but the exploration you will take and the small shifts you will make will lead to positive changes in your day-to-day functioning.  Everyone who turns to therapy openly will find lasting value in it.