Do You Have the Vocabulary for Self-compassion?
Funny thing happened in therapy the one time. She told me I didn’t have the vocabulary for self-compassion. I was taken aback — I consider myself fairly fluent in English, despite it being my second language. So my first thought was to dismiss it, telling myself that she was simply using a buzzword to keep me engaged. As it happens, not quite.
I was actually discussing my lack of patience while dealing with people. I tend to be snappy when people ask me to explain something I’m saying; especially adults of my parents’ generation. I’d like to be a little nicer (to begin with) while responding to them. I generally get short and regret it immediately.
So when she said I didn’t have the vocabulary for it, she meant it literally and figuratively.
All through my childhood, we were berated for any questions that we asked; curiosity was not a desired trait in our family. If we had questions, they needed to be asked at school or found in books. These were of course pre-internet days — there was no Google. If the confusion was about academics, they were promptly taken cognisance of. My father would sit down with the course material and re-explain simply what was stated there. There were no new examples given, no alternative methods employed and Heavens help you if you wanted a practical demonstration! Academics were the only important thing and if you didn’t even understand that, never mind all the irrelevant questions you had a mind to ask. And if you didn’t follow after a couple of iterations of the same thing, you were simply stupid! Or, clearly, unwilling to apply yourself to the problem.
Fast-forward to a few odd years, or forty, and surprise! That’s exactly how I turned out in terms of my approach to learning. I was a Pavlovian dog repeating the same behaviours. If people didn’t understand what I was trying to say, well, they were just idiots. It took a while for me to understand that that which you do not have, you can’t give. Since I had no self-compassion, I could not be compassionate towards others.
To illustrate the point, she asked me for an example where I could not understand something and what my internal dialogue was when that happened. My first response, “What a moron!”, “If you can’t understand even this much, how are you going to move forward?”, “Are you just not trying hard enough?” “You have dung for brains!”… you get the drift.
Now it was turn to rewrite the dialogue and the cat got my tongue. I could not come up with a single word to be kind to myself. When I tried real hard, borrowing from stuff I’d read, it seemed completely fake. Things like, “It’s alright, let’s try a different approach”, “Okay, let’s try this another time”, or merely “It’s okay”.
So yes, I simply did not have the vocabulary for self-compassion. Learning it has been a journey, an on-going one. Another childhood habit, albeit a different one, that helped me here was my go-to for everything — reading. I read up all I could about self-compassion. However, what really delivered true understanding and brought the fact home was Kristin Neff and her work on Self-compassion. Her five-part series on YouTube are a great place to start for those who are more auditory-visual learners. (See! There are multiple approaches to learning.)
It’s been a slow but steady path to start being kind to myself. Somedays, I take a deep breath and just say the fake things to myself. Somedays, I lose my cool. The irony is, that I’m hard on myself for not being self-compassionate! Somedays, I’m actually kind to myself in the first go. Somedays, I catch myself giving tough love and then pause to take a breath. Then I re-write the dialogue and say that to myself. Somedays, I imagine I’m speaking to a young child and I certainly won’t be so harsh with her. So I use words that are kinder, gentler and more encouraging. Slowly, I’m learning the new language of compassion and it’s making a huge difference to how I treat myself. The ripple effect is making me kinder to other people too. My social interactions are actually more satisfying. I’m “suffering fools” way more gladly than I ever did; including the one in the mirror!
The brain is all about neural networks. The paths we forge and use repeatedly are the ones that become muscle memory. Don’t tell the brain what not to do, that’s a losing battle. Suppression does not work, distraction does. A concept very well explained by the White Bear Story — basically, if you’re asked not to think of a white bear, all you’re going to do is think of a white bear! This is known as Ironic Process Theory; you could go into detail by reading White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts by Daniel Wegner. So the idea is to start training the brain with the new language. Given enough time and practice, that will become the new normal. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be quick, but it’s certainly going to be worth the effort! Treat it like a dress rehearsal, if you will. Spend some time imagining situations where you don’t meet your expectations and what you would say to yourself. Then repeat. You will find that it becomes easier when you step out of the rehearsals and onto the stage. If you’ve read what I had to say about my weight-loss journey, you can very well imagine how ripe that field was for practice! It’s all very well to fall back on adages (I don’t suffer fools gladly), but honestly, they are just wrong sometimes. Making warm connections with people around us is a basic need, ones that we can only make after we’ve made them with ourselves.
So if you’re like me and struggle with self compassion, start by picking up a new vocabulary. Your self-worth will thank you for it!