Self-Compassion: an Entry Point to Healing
Self-compassion means turning inward and treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding you'd offer a friend in difficult times. It involves being supportive when you're facing challenges or feeling critical of yourself. Cultivating tools of presence and compassion reminds us that we're all works in progress. Growth is not always comfortable, and it is through the gentle process of acceptance that we can begin to process feelings and move toward the person we are growing into.
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." Carl Rogers
When we come to understand how the nervous system adapts in response to trauma and unmet needs, we begin to shift the narrative of mental health disorders from one that is often stigmatizing and pathologizing to one that allows for self-compassion through a better understanding of its evolutionary role. Realizing that “I was doing the best I could with the tools and resources I had at the time” fosters a compassionate perspective towards oneself and others.
Psychotherapy opens the door to understanding the origins of one’s defenses and facilitates the process of untangling from self-limiting beliefs. These beliefs are termed “self-limiting” because, as long as we internalize narratives such as “unworthy” as true, our growth into the person we want to become is limited.
Insights from Francis Weller
Self-compassion is the foundation for befriending our lives. Francis Weller, a renowned psychotherapist, shares that it is the great work of the heart to behold our life as eminently worthy of compassion and love. He suggests that we will not navigate through grief and suffering by mere reasoning but by turning towards our sorrows with kindness, tenderness, and affection. Weller writes:
“Nothing ever heals in an atmosphere of judgment or criticism. We contract and get small under such conditions. We open and soften only when the space around us invites revelation and connection.”
Practicing Self-Compassion
During periods of stress, we often revert to old patterns of relating to ourselves and the world, which can be harsh, critical, and brittle, especially towards ourselves. Self-compassion offers us the opportunity to hold what is vulnerable with kindness and tenderness, allowing these places to remain soft and open. Times of great uncertainty call for a level of generosity to ourselves that helps to offset the effects of trauma, often enveloping our emotional bodies. Our primary intention must be to hold all that we are experiencing with compassion, offering a safe place for our fears and grief to land. The great Sufi poet Rumi writes:
“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
This wisdom underscores the transformative power of self-compassion in the journey towards healing and personal growth.
With You On Your Journey
At New York Integrative Psychiatry, we offer a compassionate, supportive space to nurture your growth. We invite you to schedule a session where we’ll bring curiosity and non-judgemental presence to explore what might be getting in the way of self-compassion and the journey toward the human experience of becoming.