Great questions!
I think self compassion comes from understanding your issues. Where they have stemmed from and how you got to where you are. I think it’s easier to achieve when you see those patterns and can start effecting them.
I will tell you what this has been for me, in hopes to give examples rather than the abstract.
I have always down deep felt I was bad. shame is when you believe this and it becomes central to how you operate. For me, this stemmed from many many things in my childhood that reinforced it. My mother always screaming and criticizing me, sexual abuse by multiple people (separate times) made me sexually pecosious and the ways I acted out fermented that shame. I could go on but you get the picture.
So I went through life with a faulty sense of self. I believed people wouldn’t want to hang out with me, that I had to do things that made it worthwhile to them. I did not feel worthy of love because I couldn’t love myself.
Self acceptance is a journey. It’s unpeeling layers. It’s changing the focus to what is good about you combining to do your best every day. When we fail, which we will undoubtedly do, it’s saying okay I will do better next time. What did I learn here? Figure it out and next time do that. We are all fallible.
A big part for me was changing my self talk. I used to say horrible things to myself. And I think this is what meditation did for me. I do not think it’s about emptying your mind. I started for a few minutes each day, and I would start with a few deep breaths and then begin observe what came up without allowing myself to get too invested in it. You do this in a detached way, beginning to notice our thoughts are not truths it’s just our brains babbling filling in the spaces. You are the observer, not the one creating the thoughts.
As I became more practices about being mindful, when the thoughts that were not serving me well would come up I would correct myself. For example, if I ate too much, I would say things to myself like "you are such a fucking hog-it" now, I could see "hog-it" was what my mom would call me. I don’t even relate to the term really, other than it’s like calling someone a pig. I began replacing the thought. "Wow, how lucky I am that I was able to have that great meal." Of course I should note, I don’t have problems with food, if I ate too much it was a rare event and one that is okay to have in our human experience.
If I would fail I would react poorly. "You are such a fucking idiot" or "fucking loser." And honestly because I grew up in a place where unless I was perfect and did everything right, then I was worthless, lazy, stupid, etc. these things we grow up with becomes our inner voice. Sitting for a few minutes a day started a revolution, and over the course of a few months my self tack became more encouraging and I could see that changed my behaviors which influenced my results.
Once you make this shift, you will do it for longer. I stay in that state iff and on for a few hours on the weekend. I will do it in the bath, or out in my hammock, or even while I am quietly taking care of chores.
Another layer to that became a gratitude practice. Again, I was always focusing on the wrong thing, the bad thing because I believed I was bad. When I finished my quiet time of meditation/reflection I started to state 3-5 things I am genuinely grateful for. And it could be anything. It started out with health, my family, having a comfortable home, but soon it was infectious. I am thankful for spending time in my garden, or time spent with friends.
What this does is make you keep seeking more and more good.
Eventually, and it took a while, this practice brought me to see some truths about myself. I am not bad. I actually have a loving and generous heart that truly wants the best for those around me, and this turned into also extending this to myself. I started to believe I deserved good things like I wanted for everyone else.
I could see in hindsight, the shame overshadowed everything. And my actions came from that inner belief and voice. And because I was focusing on the hood, and doing the good, it helped me see this is who I have always been underneath and that my actions came from a a place in me that needed healed.
When we love ourselves, we can believe we are lovable. We can see others as loveable. It opens you up, you don’t feel defensive because you feel comfort in the understanding that we are all fallible. When we are nicer to ourselves in our thoughts, we also have more compassion for those we love.
A book or philosophy that gave me a lot of guidance into doing all this was "the power of now" by Eckhardt Tolle. It’s heavy reading nd may come across as woo-woo, but as you learn from him, it does resonate. He does podcasts and other things but that book was pivotal in seeing my thinking was always the problem, once I learned to change the problem it changed my entire perspective on life. I have read it several times now and each time I get deeper into understanding it.
The thing that helped me understand how shame was effecting my life and relationships is "rising strong" by brene brown.
[This message edited by hikingout at 8:41 PM, Friday, June 6th]
