Compassion is the foundation for therapy.
I want to share some thoughts on compassion and how it is a foundation for therapy AND life. In a world that hardens us to ourselves and each other, cultivating compassion is both radical and healing. Personally, I feel like it’s been one of the most important practices I have engaged with.
I want to begin with; what is compassion? I tried to research this but then I actually decided to share more from my own experience and understanding. For me compassion is softening, it’s kindness, it’s responsibility, accountability and it’s non-violent. Compassion is a practice that is both for ourselves and how we move through the world. It’s non-judgemental but it also doesn’t reject any part of the human experience we are having here. It also does not discriminate.
As a therapist it’s my job to be in constant practice with compassion. Both towards and for my clients but also for myself because of the trauma I am exposed to through my practice. For example I am showing myself compassion when I am mindful of my capacity by only working with 15 people at a time and I create time and space to tend to my own body, nervous system and needs so I don’t burnout and potentially cause harm to the people I work with.
So with that let’s begin with self compassion.
Neff KD defined self compassion as kindness, common humanity and mindfulness.
In practice this is the ability to recognise that we are a human being having a human experience. This means that we will make mistakes, fail, hurt people, hurt ourselves, suffer and feel really hard things like grief & anger as well as all the wonderful brilliant things about us and life. It’s always both/and and we live in a culture (especially in the west) that gives us very tight parameters & binaries for how we can be in the world in order to survive.
Shame is very much a weaponised tool of the system.
Now don’t get me wrong, I actually believe that shame is an important feeling (they all are) but we don’t want to get stuck there like so many of us do. We can experience shame for example AND meet it with compassion.
This is a regular exploration in my therapy practice.
When people want to change something about themselves it’s often rooted in shame and self-violence. Like when people want to ‘regulate’ their nervous systems it’s about control because there might be shame around anger for example. When we tend to our bodies, needs and nervous systems from compassion we might be able to let ourselves express our anger and then take the appropriate action.
Self compassion is a big part of the parts work I do with my clients. As we get to know what is alive for them we start to meet the more beastly parts that get hidden away, compassion is our foundation for this exploration. This is something I model as I work with people so they can learn to do it for themselves.
Compassion means meeting the relentless fear in your belly, softly with kindness and curiosity. Its bearing witness, asking questions and having a desire to understand what need might be unmet.
The beauty is, that once we get rooted in our self compassion it will naturally begin to extend out beyond us to the rest of the world.
It might look like being able to understand why your parents might have caused harm but also being able to ask for the accountability you need to stay in relationship but also walking away if you need to.
Or it might look like understanding why you drink a little too much on a Saturday night and say things you don’t mean to people you love and then taking responsibility for yourself to make a change but also meet the unmet need that’s playing out.
It could also be creating more capacity for all the big complexities we are facing in the world right now. Compassion along with curiosity are our biggest tools and we can begin to cultivate them, today, right now.
Begin with cultivating mindfulness & curiosity and then follow the thread, here are some enquiries for cultivating compassion…
Why am I feeling this way? Can I pause for a moment? What is this feeling responding to? Where is it in my body? Can I observe, witness & listen rather than try to push away? Does this feeling need something? Is there action I can take that doesn’t cause harm to me or others? Is there something I am avoiding? Do I need to take responsibility for something?
Compassion is the courageous work of the heart, I hope that this blog post can be a little portal for you to practice this with yourself and others.