What are some ways you practice self-compassion?
Inspirational Climate Change Blogger/transformational Speaker supporting the four Pillars (2021-present)
How do you give yourself self-compassion?
Not dwelling on shame. Self-compassion is key when shame strikes. Instead of ruminating, be mindful and aware of the presence of now. Be at the moment, not the past torturing yourself, over and over feeling guilt and shame, which could lead to anxiety, self-loathing and depression.
The inner critic can stem from our parents, leaving us with low self-esteem, no self-worth, and an old repeating mantra in our minds that we grew up with backing all that negativity up.
You’ll never amount to anything!
You’ll end up in prison!
Not only that, but you are not very bright, but hopefully, you will marry well!
These parental slights in our early years can cause inner shame for even being born and living in the world, let alone what we end up doing in the future, or not, as the case may be.
Shame is one of the most difficult of emotions to process and recognise. It is up there with grief, which often gets mistaken for anger.
Labelling an emotion that is being felt helps reduce the pain. Try to locate where the emotion is making itself physically felt. Do you feel it around the heart, belly, throat even?
Locate the area in the body where the pain is showing. This is known as introspection. Feel it, and you can then start to heal it.
Place your hands in this area, be in the moment, identify what emotion it is you are having. (For me personally, anger sends my adrenalin into overdrive, I start to shake, and I feel it in my throat chakra.) This is my body’s way of warning me to recognise what I am going through and warning me to walk away before I lose the plot. It has taken me years to master this and not feel shame through dented pride and ego, or cowardly, for walking away from the situation or person making me feel this emotion. But with self-compassion, I overcame that as well.
What we resist persists.
Face the emotion, process the emotion, allow the emotion to do its thing. Then bag it and bin it. Forgive yourself, you made a mistake, you were high, depressed, mentally ill, whatever. It is over, you need to have self-compassion and move on. Procrastination, and rumination, is not going to change a thing.
No one wants to feel the emotion of pain in any form. But if you avoid it and resist the suffering through any means, be this medication, sleep, alcohol or drugs. Then it will only make it worse.
Try to be mindful and not dwell in the past or listen to any negative thoughts and intrusive thoughts. BE IN THE NOW!
Mindfulness and self-compassion are the best of friends.
So think about what it is or who it is that is making you feel the way you do right now. Then after you locate it in your body, name the emotion, process it, feel it, forgive yourself, and move on. That is your compassion.
Forgive yourself for not being there twenty years ago when your dad died. You chose to go to the pub that night, you thought he’d be there in the morning. He wasn’t, so you were left with. Remorse, guilt, grief, self-loathing, depression constant pain in your heart and shame.
Twenty years on you still feel it, because you have not processed it, dealt with it, and forgiven yourself for the misdeed. Everyone else has, but you can not give yourself the self-compassion you deserve to move past it.
BE IN THE NOW MY FRIEND — FORGIVE YOURSELF!
