I get it, it’s not sexy, woke, or lit to talk about compassion (for yourself). See, I even had to put that second part in parenthesis — which Gemara study tells you to skip. When we look for help for the many issues, ailments, challenges, and dis-eases that plague us in our every day lives, we very often look for what is selling on virtual bookshelves this year. We wonder how the tips and tricks of positive psychology, affirmations, and “you are enough” culture can fold neatly into our constantly running inner monologues.
“Yep!” we say to ourselves, as we ready to face the world for another day, “I am totally going to be totally okay at doing the thing that I need to do today.” Then, we take three deep breaths following a circle that expands and collapses, walk out the door, and are immediately inundated again by the “what if…”s, the “I didn’t…”s and “If only I had….”s . As we are pulling out of our driveways, heading down the subway stairs, or wrangling our toddlers down the street. In those moments, we forget about the affirmations, tips and tricks, and minute meditations — we just want to get through — and is at happens, that is when our internal critic awakens.
“Oh, see, you can’t actually do this consistently!”
“Yeah, like three breathing circles will actually help you….”
“Um…your kid just picked up a lollipop from the sidewalk, maybe you should actually pay attention…?”
Our inner critic is relentless. RE.LENT.LESS. For some ideologically flawed reason, our brains were set on the default “negative” — whatever we’re doing, however we are doing it — it just ain’t enough. So then we log on to social media to see how others do it, and we feel worse. Our brains, oddly, feel vindicated — “see — I TOLD YOU you weren’t doing this right!”
13 or so years ago I walked into my last ditch attempt at therapy and told my therapist the following:
“I am a monster. No one should have me in their lives. I poison people’s lives.”
This — I now know — was a narrative I had created in my mind after several years of wading through the horrendous, suffocating, and mind fudging side effects of trauma. As it turns out, post traumatic wounds can have more insidious appearances than the random outburst of violence and throat clawing depression that we often see as portrayals of PTSD.
Other symptoms include: body dysmorphia, people pleasing, self harmful behaviors, suicidal ideation, heightened anxiety, fear of crowds, fear of being alone, fear of people watching you exist, fear of no one caring you exist, fear of windows, fear of food, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, broken relationships, one sided friendships, fear of intimacy, attraction to other self destructive people….and an incredible powerful inner critic.
One thing that most folks who have experienced some kind of trauma will tell you — at some point in their realization of this and path to recovery, they have blamed themselves for what has happened to them.
So, after I told my therapist that I was a mop of a human being, I asked her “how am I supposed to keep existing like this? How am I supposed to see myself?”
She looked at me, with depth of wisdom that only comes from experience, and said to me — “with compassion.”
Did I intend to wake up every single morning and be, quote, poison, in people’s lives? Nope.
Is this a story that I have internalized because it feeds my inner critic’s view of my ability to function? Yep.
13 years on, out of all of the tools , tips, tricks, meditations, physical and psychological techniques that I have incorporated into my healing [and teaching] (we read brackets in Gemara) practices — compassion has been the constant on which I could build my foundation.
I can tell you that even in the midst of a relapse, the only thing that has saved me, has been that compassionate inner voice that I have cultivated that says “you are not your wounds. You are not your mistakes. You are not your trauma.” This voice has to be strong enough and gentle enough to contradict the one screaming “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS AGAIN, YOU FOOL!”
So, how does this translate into daily life?
Let’s take the example of the child picking up a discarded lollipop while you were checking Facebook. [Apologies if this happened while you were reading this post].
The inner critic might say something like,
“What kind parent/caregiver do you think you are? You can’t even prevent this child from eating literal garbage!?”
The compassionate voice will then say,
“Hey listen, you have limited attention, and you needed a moment. It’s okay, actually. Here is an opportunity to teach your child the difference between something from the sidewalk, and something given to them from a trusted person.”
The compassionate voice is not “woo woo” — it does not give you false platitudes, and tell you that everything is going to be okay (um, hello? Delta variant anyone?). The compassionate voice simply brings you back to Earth — grounds you in the truth of the moment, reconnects you with your best intentions.
So, when you wake up one morning feeling particularly anxious — about anything — and your inner critic says something like -
“UGH. ANOTHER DAY IN THIS TERRIBLE TIME! AND LOOK, NOW THERE’S EVEN SMOKE IN THE SKY!”
Your compassionate voice can respond with,
“Yes, here we are at another day. Thank G-d/thank goodness, for this opportunity to make choices.”
or,
“Okay. Reality right now isn’t the best — and I like it when the sky is blue and not weirdly greyish brown — okay. In what ways can I contribute to my day so that these facts are not the only ones that are true?”
Questioning. Curiosity. Truth. The compassionate voice is good at all of this.
Start small, think big — and for goodness sake, be compassionate with yourself. It’s not sexy, it’s not woke, and it’s not lit — but it might just save your life.
