Tag Archives: self-compassion

What are you unwilling to feel?

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I’ve been a fan of Tim Ferriss for years now. I’ve watched him change from a sort of driven tech bro type into someone who’s really working on himself. We have something in common: childhood trauma that came to light many years later.

It’s never easy, but so much better to face it and find helpful resources to learn and grow than to ignore it. Post-traumatic growth is real.

Anyway, I get his 5-Bullet Friday emails, and I want to share something that was in the most recent one, dated August 9, 2024.

Here’s Tim:

Question I’m asking myself frequently

“How do you feel when you wake up and when you get into bed at night, and how easily do you fall asleep?” The time in bed in the morning and at night tells you all you need to know. It’s not purely intellectual reasoning. It’s not a pro-and-con list. It’s not a spreadsheet. It’s not a Venn diagram. How do you feel? Are you even aware of how you’re feeling? How much energy have you spent blocking out certain feelings because you don’t want to feel certain things? 
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To borrow from Tara Brach: “There was a wise old sage who said, ‘There’s really only one question worth considering, and that is: What are you unwilling to feel?’” 
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Do you wake up with a sense of foreboding and anxiety and a desire to stay in bed? When you go to bed, are you full of anxiety and worries and preoccupation about what happened, or what could happen the next day? I use this question as a systems check-in for identifying things I should stop, lessen, or double down on.

~~~

This is meaningful to me, something I practice, checking in with myself, in bed and at times during the day.

I notice so much more now, like how anxiety shows up in my body and mind, how peace feels, what’s the difference between active monkey mind and no inner monologue, how grief feels, how vitality can fill me up and overflow with positive energy when all is well, and when my system is struggling with something.

Here’s how I do bath therapy.

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This morning I felt the need to nurture myself after a bit of a rough week wondering about my status with a place that provides a good chunk of my income and also having some lower abdominal pains that I believe were due to the adjustments my body is making as I realign my pelvis.

(See previous posts about my SI belt, pelvic tilt, and self-treatment program if interested.)

These were just little bumps in the road. We all experience them. But often we don’t know they’re not the beginning of major stressors until some progress or good news occurs. I don’t believe in worrying about things beyond my control. I like to place my attention on what I can do, and do it. But I’ve been a bit unsettled, experiencing uncertainty.

Both of those concerns are currently resolving favorably. I more than recovered the lost income with private clients, and doing Kegels has helped me recover from the pains. Continue reading →

Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges – NYTimes.com

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Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges – NYTimes.com.

I love this new research about self-compassion. Our culture often gives us the message that we need to be tough and disciplined with ourselves, yet many aspects of our culture are not very healthy, from obesity, diabetes, and the standard American diet (SAD) to politics, greed, and the environment.

How can we as individuals change this? How do we get healthier? You can start with yourself.

A cutting edge of psychological research shows that giving yourself a break may move you toward better health instead of away from it.

Kristin Neff’s book, Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, is on my to-read list.

People who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic. Preliminary data suggest that self-compassion can even influence how much we eat and may help some people lose weight.

Dr. Neff, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, distinguishes between self-compassion and self-indulgence. A key question is whether you treat yourself as well as you treat the people you care about. Would you tell your child or best friend what you tell yourself when you are struggling?

Also, having compassion for your own suffering does not mean that nothing needs to be done. You can take a moment to feel what you’re feeling, have compassion for yourself, and then consider what you can do to make it better.

This is one of the reasons I like doing and teaching the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) using the method I learned from Dene Ballantine.

  1. You accept your own not-so-great emotional experience with compassion.
  2. You bring your focus into the present and onto yourself, without judgment, by forgiving yourself and others. You let go of the story.
  3. You create a direction for movement toward a more pleasant emotional experience.