How much Compassion do you have?
Hi
Being a perfectionist, my brain often has a lot of chatter - well really negative self talk that’s not kind to myself at all.
Another one of the big lessons I’ve gained on my spiritual journey is around compassion and understanding - both for myself and for others.
This is not something I’d ever paid any attention to or even thought about before.
I have been so cruel to myself without even realising what I was doing. I even did a course called Mindful Self Compassion about 10 years ago and I still didn’t get it.
And then some time ago, I started working with an amazing mentor.
I would share my challenges with her, areas of my life that I thought I wasn’t doing right or perfectly, telling her all the things I was doing “wrong”. And the list was long.
And do you know what she did?
She just gave me compassion and understanding.
She didn’t tell me I was doing anything “wrong”.
I couldn’t believe it.
This really surprised me.
Here I was as I’d always done telling myself I was doing everything wrong – aka blaming myself, punishing myself, creating deep suffering for myself.
I was waiting for her to tell me what I should be doing so I could do everything “right”.
After all, isn't that what self-help is all about??
And here she was not joining me in any of that – she simply pointed out my humanity and told me she understood how I felt and why I did the things I did.
And when I told her I Shouldn’t feel the way I was feeling (Click here to see newsletter on SHOULD) – anger, upset, frustration whatever it was, I couldn’t believe what she said.
She told me it was normal to feel the emotions I was feeling.
In fact as humans we are meant to experience every emotion possible.
And there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.
And Why?
Simply because I can call myself a human being.
Life can be very messy.
Being a human is definitely not an easy road to walk.
And so I started to understand some things about life.
And the more I understood and gave compassion to others, the more compassion and understanding I was able to give to myself.
That was my experience.
I know some say you can’t give love to others if you don’t love yourself, however in this area of compassion I needed to feel what it felt like and see how others responded and then I slowly allowed myself permission to be compassionate to myself.
Compassion and understanding go hand in hand.
We cannot be compassionate if we don’t look to understand the other person or even ourselves.
And we can’t understand if we are judging.
To understand means to really look at the other person or yourself and being open to the Why?
Why are we doing what we are doing?
Why are we behaving the way we are behaving?
There is always a reason and when we can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes it’s easier to see the reason.
If it’s around ourselves then reflecting and being honest with ourselves.
Asking the question - Why did we do or say or behave or feel a certain way.
Often the answer to the Why is painful. We do things because we hurt.
And if you or someone you love are hurt, compassion is the best place to start healing. In fact compassion is most needed when we are hurt and in pain.
So what is self-compassion?
Brene Brown defines self-compassion so beautifully.
“Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.”
How often do you do that??
How often do you talk to yourself like you talk to someone you love?
I’d say for many it’s not very often or not often enough.
Like so many of us the messages we heard growing up were always
DO more
BE more
PUSH more
CONTROL more
And we think we have to punish ourselves to get there – wherever there really is.
You may think punishments?? I don’t punish myself.
Well I didn’t either but let's explore some ways in which we can unconsciously punish ourselves:
Critical or negative self talk
Doing things that are self-sabotaging - knowing the right thing to do and doing the opposite
Depriving yourself of a whole aspect of life until you meet a specific set of criteria eg I’ll travel when I’ve lost weight ….
Depriving yourself the space and time for simple pleasures eg not taking a break from work to go for a walk
Doing things that give you pleasure but then feeling guilty when you do
And all this is really unkind to ourselves.
Compassion is a much better way to heal, to grow, to learn to evolve as well as a much better environment for you to achieve the things you dream of.
As often happens, I discovered an amazing book that speaks to exactly what I have been sharing here. This book helped me gain clarity and put words around what I’d already seen and so I really wanted to share with you here.
The book is called “The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control” by Katherine Morgan Schafler.
Ms Schafler expands on a topic we don’t discuss very often and I feel needs a much bigger spotlight.
Compassion and self-punishment.
This book is so rich in so many gems but for now I’d like to discuss Compassion and self-punishment.
To understand self punishment I think it’s helpful to look more closely at punishment.
I’d like to share a personal example that helped me understand the power of compassion.
It was not something I did consciously but when I had children I decided that I was not going to use punishment.
I experienced that punishment didn’t work on my children and I knew I didn’t want their motivation to come from a place of fear. That definitely didn’t feel right to me.
It makes so much sense to me how Ms Shafler describes in her book:
“A self-punishment is consciously or unconsciously returning to something that you know will hurt you, or denying yourself something that you know will help you. Punishments are designed to create more pain. When you’re punitive with yourself, the grand plan is to hurt yourself in order to teach yourself a lesson. You punish yourself “for your own good.” You’re hurting yourself as a strategy for learning, growth, and healing.
Punishment doesn’t work.
When you punish someone, that person doesn’t learn how to change; they learn how to avoid the source of the punishment.
If you are the source of your own punishment (through critical self-talk, for example), then you learn to avoid yourself by numbing out. Numbing out looks like overeating, overspending, overworking, getting caught up in drama, substance misuse, mindlessly watching TV or scrolling social media, and so forth. You don’t heal yourself by hurting yourself.”
And she goes on to say “The more pain you’re in, the more compassion you need. Period.”
Our usual automatic response is punishment however we can choose to disrupt that and consciously choose compassion instead.
So when we are in pain, suffering, punishing ourselves that’s the time we really need to dial up our self-compassion.
Growing up I’d never even heard of the word Compassion.
Where was it in school? Why was it never discussed?
The word I heard used frequently was punishment.
Our society doesn’t value the power of self-compassion. I love how it’s discussed in the book –
“We think of self-compassion as a sweet thing we can do for ourselves while we’re putting lotion on our legs, not as a primary source of power. We think of self-compassion as optional, when there’s nothing optional about it. You can’t heal or grow without self-compassion. In the absence of self-compassion, the best you can hope for is stagnation. Some of us think of self-compassion as an indulgence—emotionally petting ourselves while we avoid personal accountability. We don’t realise that self-compassion is what ushers us into personal accountability.”
When we experience pain, discomfort, and suffering, practising self-compassion in those moments allows us to strengthen our compassion muscle. This, in turn, reveals the positive influence on our mental well-being when we approach ourselves with such a distinct level of kindness.
I’ve given my children and continue to give them a lot of compassion and understanding especially when they’ve done something “wrong”.
I see that my children feel an enormous amount of freedom to be who they are, to connect to what feels right to them and to experience life, make mistakes and to grow and evolve from there.
That’s not to say they don’t have challenges and shitty times because they definitely do. No human escapes that.
My son even said to me that he feels that his resilience he gained from experiencing bullying at school was born from the understanding and freedom I gifted him to be who he is and to learn and grow from there.
I think I learned to have compassion for my children first then that infiltrated through to me.
Most of us are pretty good at compassion and understanding for their children or friends or family.
What if instead of looking at how we treat people outside of us, we look at how we treat ourselves – inside.
Why should it be any different?
Why should we do for our children, partners, family or others and not for ourselves?
Why should we give our children, our friends, our family compassion and understanding and not turn that to us?
As Ms Schafler said “Self-Compassion is King”
Self punishment is so unconscious and I would say insidious too
You don’t realise it’s happening however awareness always creates shifts and miracles are always possible if we are open and available for miracles they will happen.
I constantly see this playing out in my life
And now years later, with a lot more compassion and understanding for myself and others I can see.
I can see that when I bring in compassion and understanding I have a lot less suffering and a lot more peace.
I can see more and grow and evolve more.
It doesn’t make life easier as stuff still happens (Click here to see newsletter about Bad Days) but life certainly feels a lot more in Flow.
I invite you to be curious…
How do you punish yourself?
Have you ever thought about the impact of punishment on your mental health?
How often do you give yourself compassion?
As always, if you feel called to share anything I'd love to hear from you. Click here to message me.
Hope you’re having a wonderful day