It is not unusual for us to think that there is something internally wrong or broken within us. But are we broken or just stuck in our story? I often hear, “I am not good enough or worthy enough of being loved or treated kindly. Why would anyone want to be friends with me or like me?” These are old messages that we have accumulated and integrated into who we think we are over our lifetimes. When in fact there is nothing wrong with us and there is really nothing to fix. Most of our childhoods were not perfect and most of us were not raised by perfect parents. In fact, most of us did not receive those loving, accepting, kind and compassionate messages growing up. Well to be fair neither did our parents therefore they couldn’t give it because they didn’t receive it and so the story goes generation after generation. However, this does not preclude cultivating this in the here and now. It is never too late to embrace ourselves with kindness, compassion, and love. After all we are all human and we all have imperfections.
Brene` Brown identifies shame as the painful experience of believing we are flawed and unworthy of love and belonging. Furthermore, she has uncovered in her research that shame is destructive and harms us and our relationships. Brene` Brown states, “shame breeds three things: fear, blame and disconnection and is a powerful incubator of issues like perfectionism, stereotyping, gossiping and addiction.” Shame is very destructive to our mind body and soul. She also reports in her work that the only way to recover from shame and develop shame resilience is to develop courage, compassion, and connection to self and other. This is very much a part of this healing process and is not an easy journey.
Loving kindness towards self is something that everyone needs to cultivate to become more self-aware. It is a beautiful thing when we can look at all our imperfections and accept who we are. Seeing ourselves with clarity assists us in seeing others with more clarity. Remember that saying that I often recite, “the outside world is a picture of our internal condition”.
How do we look at ourselves with clarity and embrace who we are?
We would be able to see when we get hooked by our stories, and our habitual ways of thinking. We may even be less likely to use our stories against ourselves. Aren’t we all familiar with those stories we continue to use over and over and twist them into something that makes us feel bad? Or perhaps it is a story that we use to feel discouraged or disappointed in ourselves. There’s usually nothing positive about these self-debasing stories that hold us back from moving forward in our lives. The stories are usually very self-limiting and damaging to our self-concept, to our relationships and our dreams. Wouldn’t it be kinder to look at ourselves in a more balanced way? Balance would provide positive movement forward. Remember whether our movement is forward or backward we want to acknowledge this movement with clarity and kindness. If we make a mistake, we look at the mistake with courage, clarity, and compassion. We begin to use our experiences as a self-healing tool. When we remain present, we can smile at our errors and give ourselves loving kindness. Pema Chodron states, that staying present and learning from these situations, can give us the joyful feeling of honest self-reflection. This is what I refer to as becoming a friend to yourself. When we develop a friendship with ourselves, we know and accept all parts of self without exception. This is known as unconditional friendliness. We smile more at our mistakes and at others. My mentor would always remind us to smile more your smile will shine inward and outward. Try smiling more, it works!
Treat yourself like a friend
Self-compassion means that we are going to learn how to treat ourselves with loving kindness like we would treat a friend. This seems to be difficult and awkward for humans to understand and implement into their lives. We cannot seem to grasp what that looks like. Unkindness to self and others is so ingrained in our human condition that it is difficult to override. If we learn how to become our own best friend what would that look like in the outside world? Perhaps we would be less likely to harm others with our words and actions? If we could love and accept ourselves, would it then follow that we could be loving towards others. It would make sense that if we embraced loving feelings about self that we would then project loving feelings into the world.
Willingness is one of the underpinnings of the self-acceptance process. Most of us are unwilling to look because our thoughts frighten us. This is also why so many of us have difficulty meditating because we become overwhelmed by our thoughts. Most of us cannot stop thinking and making up stories. However, if we were able to sit on a regular basis with our fear and recognize that they are merely words, thoughts we would be able to see that there is nothing to fear. Words/ thoughts are not facts they are not 100% true and cannot be held up to the scientific method. The thoughts come up in our minds when we are uncertain about something in our lives. The uncertainty scares us so much, we want to be certain, and so we confabulate a story that we think will satisfy our fear of uncertainty and stop the incessant ruminating thoughts. The only way to stop the monkey mind is to lean into the fear or dive into the depths of what you are feeling. We must be able to truly look, observe and feel what is going on. This process takes willingness, courage, practice, compassion, and connection to self. Once we can do this much, we can bring the light of compassion to our thoughts, accept this as a conditioned habitual response that brings us pain and suffering which no longer serves us. The beauty of this process is once we bring these thoughts to the light the light shines the darkness away and provides us healing.
When we are present to ourselves in the moment the internal voices, we hear in our heads become softer. The thoughts may not disappear, but they become a part of the background instead of the foreground. We are no longer preoccupied with the validity of the voice. We begin to recognize this as an untruth. The untruth is simply a very old habitual story that we once told ourselves and scared ourselves with. The voice that appears in the quiet of mindfulness is the voice of the Buddha within, the Christ within or your true heart nature.
Why isn’t this practice embraced?
As a professional psychologist I think it’s FEAR! Our beliefs are very much embedded in our thought system and supported by our emotions and they are very difficult to change. Our fear of the unknown is a big deterrent to our healing. But if we are unwilling to try because of our fear of change or disbelief, how would we know?
Non- acceptance of self, lying to self and hiding from our awareness only intensifies the pain and gives permission to the trickster in our mind to continue with the negative habitual thought patterns. When these negative thought patterns become too uncomfortable, we must distract ourselves with one of our habits, food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, exercise, sex, pornography, self-injurious behavior, surfing the web, gaming, gambling etc. There are many different habits we can develop to take us away from what hurts.
The distorted beliefs that we have of ourselves will only diminish when we look at them without fear. Furthermore, they only exist when we are not accepting ourselves and showering ourselves with hateful thoughts. We must all remember that self-hate can and is projected into the outside world it does not just stop with us. This is what is known as projection, whatever affects us internally will also affect what we see in the outside world. Therefore, we must take responsibility for our thoughts. Therefore, it is important to heal our own minds. Remember we are all interconnected which means whether you are aware of it or not we are all the same even though we may appear or sound different.
What if we were able to take the most frightening thoughts we have and embrace them and welcome them into our lives? If we were able to befriend these thoughts or thought it would no longer frighten us. I challenge you all to look within and embrace something that really frightens you. What happens when you just sit with it and don’t make up a story about it? When we just sit with the fear instead of escalating it with a story it begins to diminish like the clouds in the sky move with a gentle breeze.
Remember compassionate self-reflection builds courage and confidence instead of guilt, shame, and depression. Therefore, when we can acknowledge where we get stuck and when we have successes this provides us with more joy and freedom in our everyday life. When we can recognize life is like an infinity symbol that is in constant movement forward and backward, we can allow ourselves to make mistakes without condemnation. We are never finished with our work because there is an infinite number of threads to weave throughout our lives. So, whether we are moving forward or backward we are still growing and contributing to our self-awareness. Like the saying goes, one step forward, two steps back likewise two steps forward one step back. The journey does not go in one direction it is not always going to be beautiful sometimes it is filled with turmoil and pain. We need to remind ourselves that this too shall pass. Remember the Buddhist saying, no mud no lotus. This means the beauty of the flower does not bloom without the nourishment of the mud. This is the same concept in our lives for the light to shine we must be willing to dive into murky waters and embrace who we are so we and let go of the thoughts that no longer serve us. Life is about balance whenever you are tempted to color something as all black know that is not true. The world is not black and white or all and nothing that is a cognitive distortion. The world has many different shades of grey and so do you. Challenge yourself to look with courage, kindness and compassion what do you have to lose?
AFTER THOUGHT:
My mentor Dr. Kenneth Wapnick once gave a workshop on the following Shakespeare quote, “much ado about nothing”. Translation our thoughts are meaningless we give them all the meaning it has to us with our emotions. This is really an important quote to remember and remind yourself of on a regular basis.
Buddhism also reminds us to be aware of seeing confusion as the “four kayas” which translates to “that which is accumulated”. When we practice meditation, we begin to realize that:
- Our thoughts have no birthplace, they just pop up out of nowhere
- Thoughts are nevertheless unceasing
- They appear but are not solid
- When you add that all together, there is no birth, no dwelling, no cessation.
Understanding the above gives us the ability to be aware of complete openness and unlimited protection from our thoughts. Therefore, there is nothing solid to react to. Thus, once again, we have made much ado about nothing!