Patty,

Self-compassion is really helpful. There is a book about this I really like, Compassion and Self Hate: An Alternative to Despair, by Theodore Rubin. It helped me back when I used to attack myself all the time.

But the biggest thing that helped me to learn compassion for myself was developing a good relationship with my therapist over a long period, and with two older friends who came to know me and my struggles, and took pity on me enough to regularly talk to me and try to understand my abusive history. In other words, I think you can work on having more self-compassion on your own, but only up to a point. Real lasting improvement has to come by having a vulnerable, trusting, dependent relationship with another person where you are intimate with them and feel loved by them, cliche as that they may be. That usually starts in a parental-type or friendship-type relationship, at least in my experience.