By Christina Carney
You can’t build joy on a feeling of self-loathing.
~ Ram Dass
I have a lot of wellness tools that I employ regularly. They give me something solid to ground in, and keep me oriented to my center. They’re amazing and yet not quite complete.
In the past year or so I’ve become fixated on self-compassion. I’ve done some research on it and wrote a piece on it last year (you can read it here). Conceptually, I understand it, but I could not figure out how I was supposed to work with it. I wanted a way to actually practice it, like a task I could complete, something to check off my list. I couldn’t find it, but I was certain I would if I just kept grappling with it.
A couple of months ago I was having a particularly hard night. My thoughts were dark and spinning, chasing each other into a frenzy of mounting anxiety. I did some yoga (one of my tools at the moment), to try and slow everything down a bit. It helped some; my body was feeling better, but my mind was still racing and I was getting pretty overwhelmed. Sometimes I’m astonished by how cruel I am to myself. But somewhere in the tangle of those toxic thoughts, was the self-compassion seed I had planted. On a whim and an exhale, I said it out loud, “I am practicing radical self-compassion.”
Everything in me softened. It wasn’t fixed, but it felt better. It eased the anxiety in a way that nothing else could in that moment. It occured to me that practicing radical self-compassion wasn’t a task but rather a perspective, an approach, or a mind-set. I saw my own humanity and held myself in that space of gentleness.
I find this particularly interesting because it seems like it’s my human-ness that I am struggling with in those moments. My emotional state – whatever I’m feeling, or feeling in response to what’s going on around me – sets off an inner litany of abuse (also known as the shame spiral). I perceive my feelings to be flaws and even though it sounds ridiculous, that’s the best way I can describe it.
I’m still figuring this out, but it occurs to me that self-compassion is actually the place to begin. Those dark thoughts have roots, and I don’t want to ignore them to fester into something worse. I’ve done that and it definitely bit me in the ass. Self-compassion seems like the key to doing that work in a way that doesn’t overwhelm me. And, it’s a simple way to attend to myself in those moments of heightened anxiety.
Compassion isn’t some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we’re trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don’t even want to look at.
~ Pema Chodron
Self-compassion seems especially important when it comes to trauma. Whether it’s dealing with old wounds, or new, trauma responses often leave us feeling like there’s something wrong with us. If we can shift from self-contempt to self-compassion, we then have a chance to deal with what’s hurting us. It’s a good first step in the healing process.
Be kind to yourself. Remember that when you abuse yourself, you will experience the anger, regret, and apathy of the bully as well as the depression, anxiety, and insecurity of the victim. Whatever you do, be kind to yourself.
~Vironika Tugaleva
There’s some great research and writing around self-compassion (you can find some here and here, as well as a lovely collection of quotes here), but what this has really been about is how I apply it to my life, or, rather, how I am trying to apply it to my life. And with so much happening in the world right now, it feels like we need something like this more than ever.
It is a beautiful experience being with ourselves at a level of complete acceptance. When that begins to happen, when you give up resistance and needing to be perfect, a peace will come over you as you have never known.
~ Ruth Fishel
