The search for self compassion and the three legged tripody stool thingy.

on


So now that I have explained what I am all about (twice: avoiding the vulnerability perhaps?), it is time I bit off something big and chunky and sat and ruminated a bit. Following many years of personal turmoil, and at times an extraordinarily large load of trauma which (unknown to me) sat neatly on top of trauma that already existed and had been feeding and thriving on my habit of telling myself to get over it, growing and multiplying in the background: I rolled my eyes at my friends who were telling me I needed to and relented made the decision to seek the services of a psychologist. Hi Jo if you’re reading: look at me putting my vulnerability out there!

I’m not good at this stuff. I am positive that I caused Jo untold amounts of professional frustration. I knew I needed to talk. But I wasn’t really a very cooperative or willing conversationalist about all that made me feel raw, and I really didn’t know what I needed to get out of our sessions. I would start, and then the internalised self talk would start and before I knew it I’d be all “look it’s ok, there are people with much bigger problems than I, this stuff isn’t important. Let’s make jokes and laugh at how much wine we both like to drink instead”. It wasn’t quite literally like that, but that is a pretty accurate paraphrase of our sessions. Jo gave me homework, I’d find excuses not to do it. Jo would ask me why I didn’t do it, I’d say “I dunno, forgot?”, and we’d sit in silence for a bit. Eventually she’d sigh and give me more homework.

Fortunately for me, psychologists are trained to deal with avoiders like me. She saw right through me, she knew exactly what I was doing even though I didn’t. I eventually had to confront the reasons why I wasn’t willing to help myself deal with the trauma I was carrying; why I felt guilt about carrying trauma in the first place (and I will come back to this); and why I kept avoiding it unless I’d had too many wines and was sitting in a gutter at 1am pouring it all out to a reasonably new friend and someone who I’d just met that night in a camp ground after losing my phone in a toilet (thanks girls, and ah, sorry! I know it wasn’t pretty, but I like to think we’re friends for life now, right?). And guess what we came up with? The biggest reason was because I didn’t think I was worth it, because I lacked something called self compassion.

Let’s say it again out loud: Self Compassion.

From the sheer amount of drunken late night conversations I’ve had with people I love, and people I’ve since grown to love, I’ve come to realise that Self Compassion is something almost all of us struggle to deal with. So what is it?

Self compassion is not a new concept – it’s been around for centuries I believe (Buddhism, anyone?). However, my research tells me that Dr Kristen Neff PhD is, as far as I can work out, the first researcher to define Self Compassion and she has a pretty good summary which I’ve pulled directly from her web page (reference in reading and viewing list):

“Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings...” (Dr Kristen Neff, 2018).

Dr Neff is the author of the book “Self-Compassion: the proven power of being kind to yourself”. Disclaimer: I’ve not read it yet, but believe me it is high on my unbelievably long self-help reading list – which I’m really bad at getting through because I keep finding other things to do (oh look! There’s that avoidance thing again!). But I digress… I have, however, spent hours pouring over her web site and watching many of her talks which are available online. What you’re about to read is a mishmash of what I have learned from her amazing teachings (I’ve linked the talks and web sites in the reading and viewing list below for anyone who is interested in this subject – I highly recommend her work). What Dr Neff found in her research, is that self compassion is a three legged tripody stool thingy (my term - she uses better language than I). The stool’s legs respectively represent: self kindness (vs self judgement); mindfulness (vs over-identification); and common humanity (vs isolation). Let’s take a closer look at each leg.

The self compassion three legged tripody stool thingy up close... 

 

 

Kindness. Kindness is simply being kind to yourself. It is treating yourself with the same care, understanding and patience as you would a good friend who you recognise is suffering. It is offering that same soothing and comfort to yourself as you would offer a hug or a helping hand to a friend in need. 
 
Mindfulness. In order to offer compassion and therefore kindness to ourselves, we first need to recognise that we are in fact suffering in the first place. It is in our nature as humans to avoid suffering (that uncomfortable feeling of vulnerability again), but we must be aware of it if we are to afford it compassion. Mindfulness in this sense, is paying attention to what is happening in the immediate and present time: noticing what is happening in the moment; avoiding suppression of that suffering (avoidance this time is good); noticing it without judgement or critique; and having compassion for the person experiencing that moment (Dr Neff discusses that in this case, this means the experiencer is the self: YOU!). 
 
Common Humanity. The acknowledgement that as humans, we are all fallible. All of us. There are no perfect humans. Having compassion for self involves the recognition that imperfection is a part of the shared human experience, it is normal. People who practice self compassion are really good at framing their own experience in the common human experience: life goes wrong; life is imperfect; we are not the only ones that bad shit happens to. When we forget that we’re essentially all in this together, we feel isolated and unsafe. When we forget that we are not alone in our experience, we end up with self pity instead of self compassion (read this!).

So let’s come back to my experience with trauma and psychologist-extraordinaire (aka: Jo) above, and let’s re-frame it in the context of the self compassion tripody stool thingy. What might things have looked like if I was sitting on the three legged tripody stool thingy?

Firstly (and this is me admitting to my imperfections): like so many people I know, I’m not great at mindfulness and recognising when I need self care (see what I did there? Common humanity!). For so long I avoided sitting with my traumas (and I don’t mean physical pain here, I’m talking emotional trauma, and – nay sayers – I’m here to tell you that emotional injury is still trauma) because noticing them left me feeling (you guessed it) vulnerable. For so long I ignored the small signals that my body, my mind, hell - the universe was sending me in and effort to keep up what I felt was expected of me. In an effort to remain the good employee, the good member of society, to do what I should (work hard, be a good little consumer, live in a house, drive a nice car, etc), I failed to stop and notice what was really happening within me and what effect that was having around me. I still struggle with mindfulness, it is something I have to physically work on every single day.

Because I didn’t fully recognise my suffering, I was unable to offer myself the kindness I needed. This is why I never did my Jo homework. This is why I became unhappy in my life, but didn’t realise I was. This is why I kept going when I should have stopped, it is why I felt I was failing in every part of my life: as an employee; as a wife; a daughter; a friend; and most crushingly as a mother. And I honestly believe it is why I have just been diagnosed with my third autoimmune disease (more on that in a later post). The consequence is this: if you cannot show yourself kindness, how can you know when you need to show it to others?

Why did this happen? Because I didn’t think I was entitled to feel overwhelmed by my experiences, because other people were experiencing so much worse. Because I didn’t take the time to experience what I was feeling in the moments, I failed to recognise that others in my situation would feel just as overwhelmed (common humanity). I held enormous guilt attached to even the thought that I might feel overwhelmed, when others were suffering so much more. Guilt is such a big, HUGE, human emotion – I won’t go into it here, but you can be sure there will be a separate post on it.

Interesting isn’t it – if one of those little legs on the tripod falls off, the entire stool will topple over.

If I had been sitting on that three legged tripody stool thingy, with all the legs firmly attached: I would have recognised that I was overwhelmed (mindfulness); I would have realised that other people in my situation would have felt overwhelmed too and that would be a normal response (common humanity); and I could have taken the time to do something about it (kindness).

Do you know what else Dr Neff’s research revealed though? People who practice self compassion suffer less depression, less anxiety, less shame, are happier, are more hopeful, and more optimistic. People who practice self compassion recognise that we’re all entitled to be a wreck like anyone else! The research even indicated that the ability to practice self compassion can be predictive of whether or not someone may suffer PTSD.

Self compassion: it’s the bomb. 






Reading and Viewing List - wanna see where I got the ideas I'm banging on about? Look here. You might even learn something! Click on each dot point to go to the relevant site.  



Comments

Post a Comment

If you are following along I would love to hear from you. Put that vulnerability aside and let rip! ;-)