Self-Compassion

Several years ago, I attended a Ted-talk at a conference in Atlanta.  The talk was only about 15-20 minutes long, but it had a profound effect on me.  During the talk, the presenter discussed a way to deal with practitioner burn-out through self-compassion. First, she asked us to think of a client whom we work with that made us feel particularly burned out.  Then, she asked us to imagine an event in our lives that evoked compassion.  She asked us to really get into the experience of it.  Once we were really able to get into the experience, she then invited us to apply those feelings of compassion to our own feelings of burn out.

That experience created a sort of cognitive dissonance for me.  I originally thought the presenter was going to ask us to apply the experience of compassion to the person making us feel burned out; instead, the instruction invited me to apply compassion to myself.  So, I went along with the instruction and noticed that it had the effect of energizing me, making me feel inwardly warm, and peaceful.

So, I began to incorporate it not only in my own life, but in my practice with others.  Whenever I become overly-critical of myself I try to catch myself and apply some self-compassion.  It has made me a more emotionally free person.  And, the more I practice it the more filled with compassion I feel.  The more compassionate I feel inside then the more I can offer it to others.  It’s also helped me in my work with clients who suffer from the effects of trauma.  Many people who have experienced trauma blame themselves. For those who’ve experienced complicated trauma, underneath all that anger and rage, can have a profound sense of shame, guilt, and/or self-loathing.  For these folks, the experience of self-compassion, if allowed, can be most transformative.

Why don’t you give self-compassion a try? What do you have to lose?