Self-Compassion: Healing’s Secret Ingredient

It’s almost a taboo in our society to have compassion for yourself. If you were taught anything, it was probably to NOT have self-compassion, to not be a “crybaby,” or to “stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

And that’s too bad, because opening your heart to yourself is a critical part of any healing experience. The better you are at it, the faster and deeper you will heal from any upset.

If you know me (ether through these newsletters or from my seminars or phone coaching), you know that I’m always looking for the “secret ingredient” — the one thing in any situation that has a disproportionate effect on the outcome.

In the healing process, one “secret ingredient” — the simple thing that accelerates you toward the “healing moment” — is self-compassion.

Opening your heart to YOURSELF does more to bring about healing than just about anything else.

I’m going to share some tips, techniques and insights I’ve found have made it easier for people to access their self-compassion. (And, as a bonus, it will also make it easier for you to be compassionate to others!)

Once you know these simple steps you’ll be able to get through upsetting experiences faster, get unstuck more quickly, be able to go for what you want with your whole heart. You’ll also be able to be happier and more at peace no matter what your circumstances.

FIRST– ARE YOU BEING COMPASSIONATE FOR YOURSELF?

It can be hard to tell if you are being compassionate for yourself. Here are some clues that you are NOT being as compassionate for yourself as you could be:

CLUE ONE: You are feeling cut off from what you need. You feel cut off from any sense of being nurtured, by Something Greater or even other people. It feels like the world is on your shoulders, you are alone, and you are inadequate to the task of making it through.

CLUE TWO: You are trying to generate what you need for yourself by being smarter or working harder. If what you need can’t come to you from the Universe, you try to create it for yourself — by working harder, being smarter, and pushing yourself more.

That’s difficult, though, because if you are in an upset, you are probably ALREADY doing your best to get out of it. You ALREADY are trying harder. You ALREADY are at 100% effort… and trying harder, while painful, doesn’t really help.

CLUE THREE: You are trying to get away from your experience of what is happening.

Because it seems like there’s nowhere to turn for healing (and trying harder isn’t working), you’ll then try to get away from the experience by employing a distraction.

Different people use different distractions. You might like goofing off on the internet, or eating, or watching television. What all distractions have in common is they try to take you out of the feeling of being upset, alone, and unable to work your way out of the problem.

CLUE FOUR: You are criticizing yourself for being upset. “I shouldn’t feel this way,” “I’m just being a baby,” “I should buck up,” “I’m probably just being dramatic” — these are all self-criticisms that are signs that compassion is MISSING from how you are handling being upset.

If any of these clues seem familiar to you — if you find yourself feeling cut off, trying harder, avoiding your experience and criticizing yourself — then you have an “improvement opportunity,” and will benefit from developing your compassion toward yourself.

COMPASSION OPENS A DOOR

Opening to self-compassion breaks that cycle of loneliness, fixing, criticizing, and distracting. It “breaks the state” of simply trying to fix things, and opens you to a new energy that’s beyond your own ability to “noodle your way through.”

If you’ve ever seen someone who has just had a breakthrough, you know how they are lit up with a new energy inside of them. They have a new hope, and can see new opportunities, and can take action where they previously could not.

A new energy has come to them that is beyond what they could generate for themselves by trying harder, or going at it alone. I think of this energy as a Blessing Current… and when you are in touch with it, your heart becomes filled and you become inspired and empowered to move forward.

If you examine the process they went through to get there, you’ll find that, at some pivotal moment, they opened to compassion for themselves. Perhaps they acknowledged their need for love and opened to it. Or they acknowledged how painful a situation has been, and opened their heart to themselves. They may even have acknowledged their need to take action and set a boundary, and really put their heart fully into doing so.

As they opened to that compassion, it opened the door to the Blessing Current started to flow for them… and transformation became possible.

Opening to yourself in compassion is a way to get the flow of that Blessing Current started. Once you know how to do it, it’s something you can do at any time, no matter what else is going on.

I hope I’ve helped convince you that developing self-compassion is worth some time and effort. In the next posts I’ll share more about how you can start to open to compassion for yourself… some surprising facts about compassion… and some unexpected do’s and don’t's of being compassionate. I’ll also share the traps of compassion that you’ll want to be able to avoid.