Compassion

Self-Compassion as Shame Resilience

“Self-compassion is key because when we’re able to be gentle with ourselves in the midst of shame, we’re more likely to reach out, connect, and experience empathy.” — Brené Brown, ‘Daring Greatly’

Shame is painful and visceral. We go to great lengths to avoid and defend against experiences of shame. Often we put on masks and avoid being honest and authentic out of shame. This can set up an endless cycle of not feeling good enough, and judging others.

In ‘Daring Greatly’ Brené Brown talks about cultivating experiences of empathy with others as a balm to answer shame. However, that requires the participation of someone who can engage empathetically, and with people run rampant with unaddressed shame of their own, it’s a rare thing to find. Also, while empathy requires two participants, shame does not:

“Shame started as a two-person experience, but as I got older I learned how to do shame all by myself.” —Robert Hilliker

Compassion is something we can practice on our own—and I’ll describe how I do it in the next two sections. The great thing is that building compassion with ourselves and with others are linked. The more compassion I feel for me, the more I can feel for others. Like mindfulness, it’s not a state that once achieved is just there, always, absolute. Compassion is a skill, and there are many ways to practice it.

“In her new book, Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, [Dr. Kristen Neff] defines each of these elements:

• Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.
• Common humanity: Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience—something we all go through rather than something that happens to “me” alone.
• Mindfulness: Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not “overidentify” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.”

 —Brené Brown’s summation from ‘Daring Greatly’

Using ‘Tonglen’ for Compassion Practice

“In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.” —Pema Chödrön

The exercise of tonglen was described to me this way:

• Settle first with breathing mindfulness
• Identify stuck thoughts or emotions
• Breathe in the emotions or thoughts gently
• Be with it as fierce protector
• Allow it to be present
• Watch the urge to push it away
• Remember that all emotions are transient and will pass
• Hold open the possibility of change
• Breathe out compassion or other opposite emotion, for:
• Yourself
• A benefactor
• A loved one
• An acquaintance
• A stranger
• An estranged one
• Settle back to basic mindfulness of breathing before finishing your practice

Breathing in the stuck emotion, validating and welcoming it fully into your consciousness, is not something we tend to do. We push away, we numb, we reject. As I mentioned in my post on validation, this can make those feelings more intense. Breathing in what hurts and what’s stuck is somewhat counterintuitive and can be quite difficult, and can be done to degrees. The important part is breathing in what you don’t want, and breathing out what you do.

“Tonglen practice is a radical departure from our usual way of going about things. It may seem threatening, and even crazy; but it strikes at a very core point—how we barricade ourselves from pain and lose our connection with one another. The irony is that the barricades we create do not help all that much; they just make things worse. We end up more fearful, less willing to extend ourselves, and stunted in our ability to express any true kindness. Tonglen pokes holes in those barricades that we create.” —Judy Lief, ‘Making Friends with Death’

What does compassion feel like? How can we practice something if we rarely experience it?

Shame was so prevalent in my life I thought I had no understanding or experience of compassion. But I did—my dog. We shared an unconditional bond. Sometimes I might be upset with her behaviors, if she peed on the floor, but I still loved her very much.

When I started practicing tonglen, that was my out-breath visual—sitting with and petting my dog, looking into her eyes. I could easily call that image to mind. It felt good to think about, which positively reinforced and strengthened that feeling. I was practicing compassion and learning what it felt like.

Even if you are not a dog person, chances are you have an experience of compassion, somewhere in your life, even if only a brief memory you can call upon. The more you call it up, and the more pleasurable it is, the easier to draw on it becomes.

Someone We Care About

 “To claim the truths about who we are, where we come from, what we believe, and the very imperfect nature of our lives, we have to be willing to give ourselves a break and appreciate the beauty of our cracks or imperfections. To be kinder and gentler with ourselves and each other. To talk to ourselves the same way we’d talk to someone we care about.” —Brené Brown, ‘Daring Greatly’

In my Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills class I received a non-judgment worksheet, to help challenge judgmental thinking. The last question is, “If this happened to a friend, what would you say to him/her?”

We’re good at imagining other people who are important to us, pre-visualizing conversations to others, imagining what we might say to them and what they might say to us. I take the practice one step further. I imagine what others would say to me.

In Barbara Sher’s book ‘I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What it Was,’ she describes an exercise for self-cheerleading that involves imagining all your heroes and idols around you, encouraging you. Perhaps famous people or mentors or family members whose words and deeds have inspired you. The goal of the exercise, and one of the goals of this book, was to self-encourage to dare greatly, to be vulnerable and take risks.

Having cultivated this imaginary cheerleading team for myself, it was easy to expand that practice to the comforting words I wanted to hear when I felt shame, when I felt pressured to do or be something.

By imagining in tonglen that I am being held by someone who encourages and accepts me unconditionally, imaginary though they be, I am practicing self-compassion. I have gone from only being able to imagine compassion for others to being able to imagine both giving and receiving at the same time.

I’ve also developed positive triggers by diligently practicing tonglen, even for a few moments, whenever I hear a certain audio cue with which I’ve saturated my playlists, CDs, and life. I have gotten into the habit of practicing tonglen when I am journaling through tough emotions and thoughts, as often as it occurs to me, usually at the end of a really rough thought or writing. I highly recommend the process of associating certain cues with positive practices of which you wish to make a habit. Pavlov yourself.

The more I practice, the easier it gets. I still experience shame often, but I am building resilience through compassion.

Sources and further reading:

• ‘Daring Greatly’ by Brené Brown
• ‘Self-Compassion’ by Kristen Neff
• ‘Tonglen’ by Pema Chodron
• ‘Making Friends with Death’ by Judy Lief
• ‘I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What it Was’ by Barbara Sher with Barbara Smith
• Non-judgmentally (DBT Self Help)
• ‘The Power of Vulnerability’ TED Talk by Brené Brown