What Is Self Compassion and How Can it Help Me?
Keywords: self compassion, healing, childhood trauma, neurodivergence, resilience, post-traumatic growth
Self compassion. It is the word on everyone’s lips and the claimed antidote for everything from shame to depression and anxiety to physical health conditions (and for good reason too, it works!). But what exactly is self compassion?
As humans, we all go through life facing many ups and downs. Along the way, we face failures, heartbreak, loss, and so many other things that are out of our control. And as humans, when we face things that are out of our control, we seek to find out why - leading to blame and shame, which are both forms of disconnection - blame makes us disconnected from ourselves and shame makes us disconnected from others. Truly, this is the base of divisiveness. And whether we externalize (blame) or internalize (shame), the result is the same, we lose the ability to process our feelings, understand our needs, and move forward with courage and resilience.
At it’s base, self compassion is about turning towards yourself with curiosity and care, rather than self criticism and shame (it’s a way to, as we say, stop “shoulding” on yourself). But self compassion practice is so much more than that. For one, it is a practice that helps us learn to focus our attention on the things inside of ourselves that feel uncomfortable to sit with. Often, when we go through something emotional, our tendency is to either suppress/distract or ruminate/get overwhelmed. While very human, neither of these responses are inherently helpful.
As unprocessed emotions accumulate in our nervous systems, they come out in the form of acting out behaviours (e.g. lashing out, spending sprees, addictive behaviours, emotional outbursts) or acting in (i.e. shame, disassociation, numbness, disconnection). We are often carrying burdens that we are not even aware of, and act in ways that are either confusing/painful to ourselves or to those around us. Self compassion helps us by teaching us to create a container of safety in which we can start feelings our emotions, processing them, and making space for new experiences.
An example comes to mind of a friend of mine, let’s call her Amrit. As the child of immigrant parents, who were often too busy to emotionally attune to her needs, she learned to channel her feelings into productivity and excel whenever she was feeling vulnerable. This coping mechanism helped her out in many ways, she won accolades, went to an excellent school, got an excellent job, married who she “should” when she “should.” But underneath it all, she felt rather lonely and disconnected for her own authenticity. This showed up in high competitiveness, self criticism, a tendency to always be in her head and struggling to connect with others, and especially in her intimate connection with her partner. While channeling her vulnerability into productivity, she never really got a chance to get to know her feelings and use them as a roadmap to understand her own unique needs and preferences.
Another example comes from a man named Casey. Casey grew up in a poor neighbourhood and went to a school that a lot of rich communities fed into. As a result, although he had many friends, he always felt like an outsider as they did not have many shared life experiences outside of school. On top of that, Casey’s Dad tended to get angry when he did not meet expectations, teaching Casey that his feelings were invalid and even shameful. As Casey moved through life, when he met challenges or emotional situations, these emotions quickly turned to shame. If something was going wrong, it must be his fault. Casey started to underperform, spend time with peers who lacked ambition and engaged in substance abuse, and feel fear anytime he was given the opportunity to apply himself or try something new.
Although these two characters had very different ways of moving through the world, the basis of their malaise was the same. They never quite learned to relate to themselves in a kind way and process their emotions effectively. Self compassion practice helped both of them learn to turn towards their own experience, feel and understand their emotions, and start to create an unburdened and authentic life and connection with others.
When I teach self compassion courses, I often use the reference to the Robaxacet dummy. There is a commercial for pain medication that shows a marionette puppet burdened by several pins stuck into it’s body (each pin representing physical pain), the puppet is twisted and bent over, restricted by its pain. It takes the medication and the pins pop out one by one, leaving the puppet skipping along happily.
Self compassion practice is much like that, as we learn to turn towards our wounds and create an internal space to process these emotions - we become unburdened by the past and allow ourselves to move into a more integrated, grounded, pleasurable, and connected present.
To learn more about joining a self compassion groups, please get in touch!