Self-compassion

A guided journey of how to offer yourself compassion in a moment of suffering.

Welcome to our first guided journey together at the members space of Being in Motherhood. If you are a paid member, you have access to this whole post. If you are a free subscriber, you have access to this voice note and the theme of the month before you reach the paywall. I invite you to listen to the voice note below and take your time as you move through this post.

As we move towards the end of Summer, I felt called to focus on heart opening. The theme for this month’s journey came to me on a random afternoon, it presented itself as compassion but as I sat with it more, I saw clearly how the journey is through self-compassion.

I find motherhood to be an extraordinary place for self-compassion to flow in. Never have I been harder on myself and in need of my own compassion after I yelled at my toddler or handled him too roughly.

Defining Self-compassion

In his book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, Christopher K. Germer, PhD, defines self-compassion as…“acceptance of ourselves while we are in pain.”

Compassion itself comes from latin roots…‘com’ (meaning with) and ‘pati’ (meaning suffering). Compassion is means to suffer with. Self-compassion is embracing yourself as you are suffering, uncomfortable, frustrated, insert any difficult emotion for you (this can include more positive ones, joy can a weird one).

One of the best ways I have heard self-compassion described is being a friend to yourself. If your friend was being mean to themselves or treating themselves with disrespect, you would not jump in with agreement and tell them how horrible they are. You would slow down, tell them they are being hard on themselves, and probably offer your insight into how wonderful you know them to be.

This is what we are aiming to give ourselves here. Another way to think of self-compassion is as the kindest, warmest, nurturing love of a mother. Maybe this is your own mother, maybe this is another female figure, maybe you take notes from how your friend mother’s their children, or notice how you offer your child compassion is different than yourself.

As we wrap our heads around this topic, when you are hurting, think…what would someone who loves you say? What would you say to your child if they were hurting? Often we offer compassion to others because we find more ease in being with someone else’s discomfort than our own.

When we can offer ourselves compassion, we enter into the truth of our experience. We are facing our discomfort or suffering and holding ourselves in it. We are approaching what is uncomfortable with softness and kindness. As Elena Brower often says, “how human of me to feel…” and insert what is present for you.

And when we offer ourselves self-compassion, we remove the struggle. We are not going into story mode about the pain, we are not trying to defend ourselves, instead we are being with the pain and tending to it. This requires radical patience, care, and a whole lot of kindness.

Awareness of sensations

To practice self-compassion, we need to be aware we are in emotional discomfort. It is impossible to offer ourselves compassion when we do not know when we need compassion. We need to establish a connection to our discomfort to offer compassion. We need to know when we are suffering. Let’s dive into this with a practice.

If you are not a paid member, I invite you to join us. You will receive full access to each monthly guided journey full of prompts, practices, and insights to deepen your relationship with yourself and the present moment.

Awareness journaling prompts

• When do you feel the most frustrated with yourself?

• What happens in your body when your frustration emerges?

• What situations does your inner-critic emerge?

• What happens in your body when your inner-critic comes online?

• What emotions are uncomfortable for you to feel?

• What happens in your body when these uncomfortable emotions arise?

Inviting in Self-compassion

What did you notice in answering these prompts?

What did you learn about the sensations in your body?

You are welcome to share your insights in the comments.

These situations and emotions you wrote about are the places we are going to practice inviting self-compassion into.

Do you feel really tense in your body after you yell at your kid?

Offer yourself compassion.

Do you feel pain in your stomach when you speak up to your partner?

Offer yourself compassion.

Do you feel a nagging sense of guilt when you take time for yourself?

Offer yourself compassion.

Self-compassion does not have to be complicated. The quickest way I drop into self-compassion is by saying how human of me to feel this way. Another favorite from Elena Brower is to place a hand on my heart and remind myself I am doing my best.

Another way I offer myself self-compassion is parts work. If you try this exercise, take a few deep breaths before and let the answers rise within you. This can be a short conversation, this part may give your one word answers or full paragraphs. If you aren’t a visual person, this can be done as a journaling exercise.

• When you feel the sensation in your body or the discomfort of an emotion, ask yourself…how old do I feel right now?

• Then, ask this part to tell you what is going on for them, what is their experience? Listen attentively, you can offer compassion here and validate their experience, “I see you, I hear you, I know how hard this must be for you.”

• Next, ask them what they needs from you? Again, listen attentively to what they say, validate what they ask for, and tell them you will do your best to accommodate their request.

• Finally, tell this part of yourself you will take care of whatever is troubling them and this part of you can go do whatever her favorite activity was at the age they presented themselves to me.

Meditation on Self-compassion

A final way we can invite in self-compassion is loving kindness meditation, or metta mediation. This is a Buddhist meditation focused on cultivating compassion for ourselves and others. The traditional phrases of this practice are…may I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy, and may I live with ease. We are going to use different phrases and practice turning our compassion inwards.

Creating your own practice

You are welcome to come back to the above meditation (or any of the exercises I shared) again and again. Whatever answer arose in your meditation, write it down. If nothing came up, come back to the question later. Ask yourself…what is the most loving and kind thing you need to hear? You can ask yourself this at any point, it may change.

Once you have a phrase that rings true in your body, use it. When I took my self-compassion training in graduate school, the phrase that rang true for me was…may I soften. I used it all the time. Anytime I felt tired, angry, frustrated, or I couldn’t get my baby down to sleep, or he was crying, or things were too much…I placed a hand on my heart and said may I soften.

And I softened, the repetition of doing that over and over again for months helped me soften. It helped me approach those difficult moments with a bit more ease and grace. I could feel my feet on the ground a little more and I felt less overcome by whatever was arising in my body or in a situation in front of me.

I invite you to use your statement through out the month, or for however long it feels relevant with you. I invite you to at least try it for a month and see what happens, see how things shift in your body and your experience.

The intention of these guided journeys are not to make you an expert on the topic or completely perfect at self-compassion by the end of the month. The intention is to guide you and support you into build a relationship with self-compassion, to start introducing it into your life, and practice it when you feel you need it.

What resistance is coming up to offering self-compassion? How do you define self-compassion? What is your current relationship to offer yourself compassion?

Let’s journey together.

Love,

Emma