"But I know what I'm really like"

The double standard has a defence, and you may have been rehearsing it since chapter 1. Anna is different. When Anna forgot the dentist, it was an honest slip by a good person under pressure. You know that about her. When you forget a form, you know rather more. You remember noticing the form on Sunday and thinking "I'll do it later". There have been other times as well. You know how lazy you can be, how distracted, how much you leave to the last minute. Anna deserved kindness because her mistake was innocent. You have inside information on yours.

This is the most persuasive argument for the double standard, because it's built on something true. You do know more about yourself than about anyone else. You have access to every lazy impulse, every uncharitable thought, every corner you cut. With Anna you see only her behaviour, which is mostly fine, and you hear the account she chooses to give.

But follow that through. Anna has the same inside information about herself. When she rang you, she probably knew that she'd seen the appointment card on the fridge and thought "I must put that in my phone", and hadn't. She has her own store of lazy impulses and cut corners, and her own commentary may well have been calling her an idiot before she picked up the phone. If she'd told you all of it, you'd have given her the same answer, and you know you would. You'd have said, "Everyone does that. I do that." You didn't think her innocent. You gave her kindness because you take it for granted that ordinary people are disorganised sometimes, think "I'll do it later", and are still good people doing their best.

You apply that assumption to every adult you know except one. The inside information makes you feel like a special case, but everybody has it about themselves. If you could see the inside of anyone else's head, you'd find the same procrastination, the same private pettiness and the same forgotten forms. What you can see is their outside, which looks competent. You compare it with your own inside, which looks like a mess to you, as everyone's does to them. You'd come off badly in that comparison however well you were doing.

Researchers who study kindness towards oneself treat this as one of its main ingredients. Kristin Neff, whose questionnaire is used in many of the studies in this book, describes it as seeing your own failings as part of what everyone goes through, and not as something that sets you apart. People who score low on that tend to feel, when they fail, that they're the only one. That feeling of isolation is part of what makes the failure hurt so much.

So the inside information is real, but it doesn't justify the double standard. If the people you're kind to were judged on their insides, they wouldn't look much different from you. You're kind to them anyway, and you're right to be.