Finding Relief With Self-Compassion

Making ourselves wrong for having certain emotions causes suffering. Giving space to these emotions, and speaking kindly to ourselves when we feel them, can cause an appreciable shift in our moods.

Since I’ve been doing more wellness coaching over the past couple of months, I’ve wanted to pass along some of the more efficient and impactful  strategies that I’ve found to induce calm and reduce stress. 

Today I’ll focus on one of the most surprising and effective strategies that my clients, and I personally, have used. No one was more surprised than I by how helpful this was. 

Self compassion. I’ve always known about it. I understood it at a cognitive level. But it felt too woo woo. Fake. Forced. And kind of lame. But that’s because…I had no self compassion!! 

I was so hard on myself! If I was sad? Suck it up buttercup. Hurt? Get over it. I completely diminished any kind of upset. I gave myself no room to articulate it even to myself.  I lost out on opportunities to address poor treatment by others and to fix things that were broken. 

But then I met my therapist. I had never taken part in formal therapy before. I was just looking for relief from my chronic anxiety.

During one session she asked me what my self-talk was. I replied “Heather, you have a lot to be grateful for, stop complaining for God sake. Stop being such a baby!”   She said “Well that doesn’t sound like a kind thing to say to yourself”.

Kind? I didn’t care about kind. I wanted a fast and easy way to get past the pesky emotions and just get on with it already. You know, New Englander style. Let’s be practical and get back to work! 

But kindness? Towards myself? You mean, just let myself feel whatever I feel? Just allow them to be? Don’t talk myself out of them and make myself wrong for feeling them?

This sounded like madness! And it sounded messy. But there was no convincing her. She stood for kindness. She wasn’t going to agree that I was being too sensitive. She wasn’t having it. 

She asked “Is this what you would say to a small child if she was clearly sad and upset about something?”. I answered “No! Of course not!” And that’s when, with the help of my therapist, I started letting myself off the hook. 

There are a few ways to go about this. For this post I’ll talk about speaking kindly to yourself.  It will feel forced at first but just go with it and trust the process. 

Here’s an example of how I made myself wrong and how my therapist (and a good book), helped me turn it around.

I moved from Lowell, a city I had lived in for 20 years, to Sagamore Beach, about an hour and a half south of Lowell. It’s right on the water and it’s beautiful. It’s quiet.  I'm often on the beach by myself.

It’s everything I had wished for when I was in the hustle and bustle of my life in Lowell. But there were times that I missed my community in Lowell. I was sad and grieved for the life that I had there.

But as soon as those emotions surfaced, I made myself wrong for feeling them. I didn’t wish myself back there, I just missed my life there.

I at that  point didn’t really have any friends in my new area. It was still during the pandemic combined with the fact that, lets’ face it, New Englanders aren’t exactly the friendliest of groups. ( I grew up in Massachusetts and although a loyal and helpful group of people we are, warm and fuzzy we are not).

I missed my friends and community desperately on one particular day. I thought I was feeling sad. But actually, I was knee deep in grief.

I missed my home, I missed my friends, and I missed my beautiful coworkers that I worked side by side with, in nursing homes during the pandemic. During the initial round of the pandemic, we lost residents, patients and coworkers and I was still feeling the losses.

As I thought back to that time and felt sadness, I would stuff it down.

Appreciate the ocean I would say to myself. No one wants to hear you complain Heather, I would say to myself. You can walk to the beach. It’s quiet, there’s no sirens and you are in a beautiful renovated home. You are in a safe, secure neighborhood with more food than you can actually eat. Shut up already. 

This was a familiar conversation I was having with myself. In the past, any upset or negative emotion was a catalyst for scheduling yet another activity.

But this was a new frontier for me. My kids had both moved out and other than work I had very few activities to attend given that I was in a new part of the state. I didn’t have my vice of over-scheduling myself so I had no choice but to really acknowledge what I was feeling.

A lifetime of stuffed down emotions bubbled up to the surface. To be clear, this was not just about moving and missing my home but this is a very pointed example of making myself wrong for feeling anything except happiness.

“I’m sad,” I said to my therapist. I miss this and this and that. She asked me more questions. “Grief. I feel grief.” Seems dramatic don’t you think?"I asked her. “Seems like I’m being a baby about the whole thing.”

She told me to “allow it”. Just feel it. Experience it. Let it pass through. It’s a normal human emotion to feel.

Then it was anxiety (or so I thought). She kept asking questions and kindly listened to my answers.

She asked me, “What is this feeling trying to tell you?”  I said, “ I’m afraid. I’m afraid that my whole life is not going in the direction that I want. I’m afraid that I’ve made so many changes I don’t know what’s solid anymore. I feel like the whole ground has shifted.”

This was not just about a move. This was about a number of changing relationships, career changes and losing my community. This was about years of not addressing a number of issues and running away from uncomfortable emotions of any kind. 

So, over the following weeks, I went on to name my emotions and fears and learned to sit with them.  I allowed them to be. 

I shifted from saying things like just get your shit together and move on already to using Martha Beck’s approach to self compassion. The author of New York Times Best Seller The Way of Integrity has found that using words of kindness, spoken to yourself, helps tremendously.

Literally talking to yourself  in the way that you would speak to a small child. Saying things to yourself (if even in your head). Hmmm, what’s going on? What are you feeling? Afraid.

I’m afraid because I don’t know where my life is going. Hmmm, OK, tell me more. I’m sad. OK. You’re sad and afraid. It’s OK, it’s OK, you’ll be OK. These are normal human emotions. It’s OK to feel them. It’s OK to feel sad or afraid. It’s OK.

And then? Well….nothing earth shattering here, but I just felt the emotion instead of resisting it. I let the feeling pass through me and just made it through to the other side of the feeling.

It didn’t change my circumstances right away, but I really started to feel better. Far less anxious, less fearful and the sadness dissipated.

And isn’t that what we want? Relief? Relief from anxiety?  Noticing and feeling emotions, without judgment, allows us to gather information.

Emotions are valuable and alert us to what we are really thinking and believing. They give us guidance in a way that helps us create our world. There’s nothing right or wrong about them, they are data. 

There are many paths to self compassion but  this particular path allows the emotions to surface and then speak to ourselves in kindness.

You’re OK, you’re OK, It’s OK. Sounds too simple I know. But it was a sure way to get relief from fear and worry.

I found it impactful and so did many other clients when they put it into practice. If this resonates with you and you try it, reach out and let me know how it goes.