Compassionate Curiosity
A practical guide to healing hate and dealing with emotions
A new addition to the Mental Health Homebase! I’ve written about my couch part and drunk part and I just wrote a piece I’m not ready to share yet about a part I met this weekend. I approach each of them with compassionate curiosity, but I’m not sure whether the process is as straightforward as I think it is when I’m having conversations with myself in italics. So here’s a practical guide including a fun easy to remember acronym. 😘
Self Judgement: That Bitch
We are so hard on ourselves. I have been so hard on myself. In my depression facebook group, I watch person after person be so so hard on themselves, judge themselves, hate themselves, hold shame and guilt like they are sacred, give grace to everyone but themselves, and constantly ask if the way they are feeling or reacting is “normal” or justified.
Why do we judge ourselves? What need does it meet? How does it help?
I’ve thought that it helps me grow to challenge myself and to be self critical.
I’ve secretly held a lot of shame and guilt that I thought I needed to feel badly about… forever.
I’ve judged myself in moments to get ahead of others judging me.
I believed in tough love for so long… Dad was tough on me, encouraged me to be tough, so I could survive in the world. He loved me so much and making me tough, giving me shit, challenging me, that was part of the way he loved. I believed I had to do those things to myself. I believe if I wasn’t tough on myself, I’d slack off. I wanted to be in relationships with people who could challenge me and make me grow because that’s what I thought I needed. And that’s what I thought love was.
Tough love is dead.
I just don’t believe in it anymore. Not because I don’t want to grow, but because I’m learning that growth happens surrounded by compassion. It’s scientifically proven. It’s HOT right now. Just look at the first page of a self compassion google search:
And it’s anecdotally successful; I’ve seen it work for me.
But how?
Everything I judged or even hated about me, I started to get curious about. If I felt anxious about something, I didn’t get frustrated at my anxiety, I searched for why I was anxious. I asked myself like I was asking a kid, what happened? What are you reacting to? Why are you scared? What do you need? And then I helped. I took care of the kid who was anxious inside me.
Why was I unmotivated? It’s not because I’m lazy even though I had told myself that story many times. I was tired. Okay, that’s reasonable, why are you tired? Or why are you scared? It’s okay to be scared. Your emotions are valid, but they don’t scare me. How can I help?
I also got curious about the source of my issues. If I was curious instead of judgemental, my past opened up and I became vulnerable and I found the things that made me sad and the things that made me feel guilt and shame. And I forgave myself for them. I saw and heard and said, yes, that was hard, and now we can move on.
Whatever you’ve done, you were doing the best you could with what you had at that time. Get curious, forgive yourself, and take care of yourself. Stop being so hard on yourself. Watch how you talk about yourself. Watch how you talk to yourself. Now you can make different choices with what you know now.
Who am I speaking to?
Compassionate curiosity works best for me when picturing my inner child (or whichever part I am dealing with now that I have met more than just the youngest.)
“Picture a younger you. What happens when you try to picture her. It may be easier to be patient and feel compassion for her fear and ”
The first time my coach said this to me, I didn’t picture myself when trying to picture a kid. The first image that came to mind was a a little boy from a TV show I had watched recently. He was running after a cop car with his parent’s ashamed face inside. He was yelling “I didn’t tell!” because he had been holding a secret for his parent. And he felt like it was his fault as he saw his parent toted away. He was devastated. And I immediately was bawling when I watched it and again when I pictured the kid. And all of a sudden my deep deep empathy for kids made sense. My inner child was wounded and I so I had a deeply rooted soft spot for kids feeling safe and seen and I was destroyed by family dynamics and when I watched them on TV or in movies or even on the street in passing.
I felt empathy for them that I was denying my own inner child. My inner child felt for them too. Because she held pain.
What Do I Say?
RAIN is a great place to start. The term was coined by Michele McDonald as a mindfulness tool for when we feel overwhelmed by our thoughts and emotions.
Recognize
Accept/Allow
Inquire/Investigate
Nurture/Nourish (and some use Non-identification)
My acronym is a little different. It started as RACCV which sounds like a nurses accreditation or a community college. Then it was GVIL which sounds like an STD, but not quite as catchy. Then I landed on GIVE. Because I’m a writer. Hi.
Ground & Greet. This is a two parter which is maybe cheating. You can give it a little honest stutter and call it GGIVE if you want.
Regulate your nervous system (at minimum, take a deep breath)
“Hi. I see you.” (and then maybe cry if you’re anything like me.)
Investigate
“What feeling is underneath this feeling? Why are you feeling this way? When was the first time you felt this way? Is your feeling based in something that is happening now or something that happened before?”
Validate.
“What you are feeling is okay. It is completely understandable. You are so human.”
Embrace.
“I love you. You are worthy. You are important. You teach me things. You keep me safe. I can keep you safe now. What do you need?”
Steps 2 and 3 reorder themselves depending on the circumstance. More realistically I am validating before and after investigation.
The point is that I take what I can from these practices, and make them work for myself. You should too. It’s yours to use or to own.
Want to see this practice in action? Check out how I got out of bed.
When do I use RAIN or GIVE or my own ridiculously brilliant acronym?
It works for meeting parts,
It works for regulating emotions,
It can work for dealing with other people’s emotions compassionately,
It can be a way of bringing you back to yourself in times of overwhelm, stress, or anxiety, or any intense feeling.
Why is self compassion so hard?
Maybe we’re not sure we’re worth it.
Maybe someone made us think we weren’t.
You are fucking worth it. So worth it. You deserve compassion.
Every part of you deserves compassion.
Give yourself what your sweet sweet self deserves.
An addendum
If you’re feeling shame or guilt or embarrassment, it will get in the way of this process. If compassion is the antidote, shame is the poison. I was going to add a section onto the top of this piece about shame as poison, but then I fell down a FASCINATING research hole about the difference between embarrassment, guilt, and shame. So that’ll be it’s own post soon.