SELF-COMPASSION

Larry is estranged from his 46 year old daughter and angry with her for the "mess she's made of her life." He feels guilty about the estrangement, yet he is stuck and unable to reach out to her. Doug at 68 years old is preoccupied with thoughts about aging and says,"The thing I want most is to have peace of mind." Yet he looks back upon his life with a lot of regret and shame. Frank is 75. Almost every morning he wakes up depressed with a vague sense of dread about the day. "When I look at my male friends and how much they have accomplished I feel diminished."
What each of these men need is more compassion towards themselves. Although the importance of self-compassion is not often emphasized in our training as psychotherapists and counselors, most of our clients need to learn to be more gentle and kinder toward themselves. For Larry, Doug and Frank the additional need at this latter stage of their lives is to be able to look back at themselves at earlier stages of their development with compassion and loving kindness.
At this stage of my lifework,probably because at 73 I am viewed as an empathic guide, I am seeing a number of patients in their 60's and 70's. From my experience it is quite common for most of us to look back at ourselves at earlier times of our lives and be judgmental and critical. At some level of consciousness we are doing a life review, seeing many mistakes and moments when we hurt others or ourselves. We forget that we were much less psychospiritually evolved then. As we review our lives it is important to find a way to be kind and compassionate towards those earlier versions of our selves.
As we talked more deeply Larry became aware that his daughter was triggering memories of what he was like in his 40's. He was addicted to marijuana and careening from one job to another. He was a "mess." At a subconscious level Larry was angry at her for reminding him of those painful times - filled with self-hatred. If he didn't have to be in her presence then he could suppress those memories. The pathway of his therapy was to revisit his 40's and become more compassionate towards his 40 year old self.
For Doug too the pathway to finding some inner peace and ending his daily self-recriminations about his multiple affairs many years ago was to revisit those times with more compassionate understanding. He came from a background of profound emotional neglect. Doug's mother was very fearful - her fearful energy permeated the atmosphere in their home - and very self-absorbed. That left him with a deep emptiness that he had tried to fill with serial extra-marital affairs,
In the 1960's Frank was actively involved in the peace protests and the counter-cultural "back to the land" movement. He chose the pathway of a simpler life, became a potter and grew most of his own food. Years of hunching over a potter's wheel had taken a toll on his body. He could no longer do the work. Over his lifetime he had earned much less money and accumulated less material goods than the rest of his male friends. Internally he felt inferior to them. As we talked more deeply Frank became aware that he was using the "measuring stick" of his banker father and the culture that he had rebelled against. Of course he felt inferior, but I continually pointed out that was the wrong "measuring stick" for his life.
For each of these men it was helpful, but insufficient, to develop an intellectual understanding of the roots of these feelings. In order for them to feel genuine compassion for themselves however, it was essential to find a way to engage their own personal higher consciousness. For all of us our Higher Self has the capacity for greater love than our ordinary ego self.
Our task as psychotherapists and counselors is to find a pathway for each of our patients to connect to their individual Higher Self as a source of deep compassion. Twenty years earlier Larry had been actively involved in a recovery program to deal with his marijuana addiction and drug usage. It was very helpful to him then. I encouraged him to go to Al-Anon meetings - his daughter was an alcoholic. In our individual meetings we talked about renewing his connection to his personal Higher Power. Slowly in small steps he developed a loving acceptance of his younger self and softened his heart toward his daughter.
Doug is a scientist who did biological research and his primary approach to the world was through objective reasoning. The notion of higher consciousness was totally alien to him. In my effort to form a bridge between the rational realm and higher consciousness I asked Doug whether he had any experiences of deep awe or deep love. He reported several experiences of extraordinary awe during nature walks and many moments of deep love for his sons and his current wife. I said to him,"As a scientist I ask you to look at these experiences as evidence of something beyond the ordinary and ask you to think of what is the source of these feelings." As an earnest person and as a reflective scientist he started to contemplate these transcendent experiences. Gradually I introduced the notion that if he was capable of very deep love towards others he could consider the possibility of directing that love from his personal higher consciousness towards himself.
As part of his involvement with the 60's and 70's counter-cultural movement Frank had explored Buddhism and had been actively engaged for many years in a daily Buddhist meditational practice. In that tradition there is a focus upon compassion and loving kindness towards all sentient beings. As a way of working with Frank's feelings of very low self-esteem I asked Frank whether he had ever directed the compassion and loving kindness toward himself. Reflecting on this question and bringing it to his daily meditation produced an awakening. Frank began as an extension of his daily practice to ask his own "Buddha nature" for more compassion towards himself.
For each of these men the epiphany of a personal pathway towards self-compassion was the initial impetus - the first step in a long journey. Each of them became actively engaged in doing this "homework" between our sessions. The psychotherapeutic work we did can be applied to clients at any stage of life.

BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF

"Be gentle with yourself" is the phrase that I most frequently say to my patients. It is my intention to counteract what, decades ago, Karen Horney called the "tyranny of the shoulds." They are those inner self-critical and judgmental voices that are so deeply engrained in so many of us that we think that they are simply aspects of human nature.
One of the initial steps of the psychotherapy process is to help our clients become more consciously aware how pervasive and insidious these inner critical voices are. And then begin to explore what are their roots. If you observe young children - in recent years I've had more opportunity to this by interacting with my grandchildren - you will witness that this criticalness is not present. How, then, did our clients inner critical "measuring stick" get internalized?
What life experiences with parents, teachers, coaches, and other significant adults in his/her early life contributed to the formation of this "measuring stick"? Answering this questions common background material that most psychotherapists and counsellors explore. It is also important to consider what are the cultural and sub-cultural influences that have contributed to the inner criticalness? The American culture is a very judgmental one and our clients, often without awareness, have internalized its standards. For example, one of the axioms of American culture is that,"You can do anything that you want to do as long as you put your mind to it and work hard." That notion is absurd nonsense, and is a source of feelings of failure and inferiority for many people. The truth is that we all are profoundly limited by our genetics. One small personal example - it exploring its sources how can we as psychotherapists and counselorswould have been impossible for me with very minimal musical ability to have become a cellist in a classical orchestra. No matter how much I practiced. It is then important for all of us to be gentle with ourselves and to come to a place of loving acceptance of our limitations. This will also help us to be more accepting of the limitations of others.
Some of our clients have inner standards that are idiosyncratic. One of my patients has an internalized image of being a generous person. Whenever he fails to live up to that image he chastises himself as "selfish." I often say to him,"Be gentle with yourself" as I gradually get him to look at the impossibility of living up to that standard. No human being could do it - not even the saints.
Within the limitations of a brief blog it is not possible to discuss in depth all the contributors to this "tyranny of the shoulds."
In addition to exploring its sources how can we as psychotherapists and counselors help our clients to counteract this self-criticalness? One pathway is for us to say,"Be gentle with yourself" whenever this voice shows up in sessions. Initially our clients will struggle with being able to take that in. Gradually what happens ,though, is a kind of 'transmission" wherein they internalize that phrase accompanied by the energy of our compassionate presence.
I also write on an index card,"Be gentle with yourself" and encourage my patients to put that in some place where they will see it often. I recommend that they periodically look at it saying the phrase either out loud or to themselves coupled with some relaxational breathing, imagining with the out breath that they are releasing some of the inner judgment or criticalness.
In addition, I suggest that they consider that the source of their own inner voice saying,Be gentle with yourself" is their own Higher Self or personal Higher Power. For some patients that notion does not fit with their worldview. for them I say,"Imagine that the source is some benevolent relative, or teacher. It may either be someone you personally know or some historical figure. Trust whoever comes into your consciousness at this time. Also the image may change over time." Gradually the potency of the inner critical,judgmental voices diminishes and my patients become more compassionate and loving towards themselves.

MOVING FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING

It's so hard to change the patterns of a lifetime. It requires hard, conscious work. And compassion towards ourselves. Our patterns of behaving are deeply rooted. Because these behaviors have been repeated and reinforced so many times during our lives they are so well engrained neurochemically that we are brain-wired to repeat them.
We are also afraid to change our ways of acting and thinking because they serve a self-protective function. They helped us to survive when we were younger. Some of us come from backgrounds of significant physical, sexual or psychological abuse or profound emotional neglect. For many of us the impact of our earlier environment was more subtle. Without an awareness of the impact upon us our parents,teachers et al were critical or judgmental of our sensitive Selves. Or there was a familiar atmosphere of fearfulness, tension, anger or sadness. This felt, at some level of consciousness, unsafe. So our Selves went into a self-protective hiding place and developed outward ways of behaving in order to survive. Although the use of the word survive may,in some instances, seem exaggerated or unnecessarily melodramatic, for the sensitive Self the stakes feel very high and the notion of surviving in a hostile or neglectful environment is very fitting.
For most of our patients - although this is not true for those who are currently in abusive situations - the need to be in a survival mode no longer exists. However,before they are able to put in the very hard work of changing, our patients need to understand how their patterns initially developed. Also, they need to perceive that unwittingly they are continuing now to act as if the same degree of physical or psychological threat still exists. After that initial therapeutic work is done I tell my patients,"It is time to move from surviving to thriving." In order for their Self to develop more fully - to thrive - they will have to do some hard work. While this is happening I encourage them to say to themselves the phrase/mantra, "I'm moving from surviving to thriving." Simple aphorisms - because in a few words they embody a simple and profound truth - like that can be very helpful and potent in this deep inner work.
As therapists it is very important for us to embody and express compassion for how difficult it is to change these patterns. Patients usually become judgmental and angry toward themselves because they are having such a difficult time changing. It seems to them that it should be simple. I often say,"Be gentle with yourself. Be compassionate towards yourself. It is very hard to change the patterns of a lifetime." I remind them that our brains are wired to respond in these ways, that the patterns are deeply engrained neurochemically and that, at some level of consciousness, they serve a self-protective function. Gradually, through my repeating."Be gentle with yourself" my patients internalize this phrase and become more compassionate toward themselves during the difficult process of changing.