Everyone is self-defeating in their own unique little way. When you're judging someone for being an awful person, consider whether maybe you're just witnessing the self-defeating part of their personality in action.
Feeling compassion towards people who self-defeat in the same way you do is easy bc it's intuitive. Compassion for people who struggle in ways you don't takes more work, bc you'll instinctively assume it must be evidence of core badness, like deep selfishness or lack of humanity.
It's the difference between what I've been calling low-rung and high-rung psychology in the Story of Us (or level 1 and level 2 in the truthism post). When you're in a low-rung mindset you can't think outside yourself, which limits your compassion.
I use my own hideous flaws as a trigger to vault me up to the high rungs. When I'm unconsciously dehumanizing someone in my head, I try to remind myself, "This is just their version of your procrastination."
