When people experience lapses while pursuing their health goals, negative emotional responses are common and can derail making positive changes to health behaviours. Growing evidence suggests that showing self-kindness, connectedness, and mindfulness can be an alternative response to these lapses that facilitates health behaviour change. Yet, adopting a self-compassionate mindset can be challenging for some people. In this chapter, we provide an overview of theory and research on the role of self-compassion in promoting health behaviours and the processes that explain why self-compassion can facilitate and support health behaviours. We also review research investigating the barriers to being self-compassionate and propose a new theoretical framework for understanding and organising these barriers. Finally, we discuss the implications of this framework for interventions using self-compassion to target health behaviour change.