How we relate to everyday discomfort can change everything. The alternative to this fight is to begin a new way of relating to yourself. It involves self-kindness, a feeling of common humanity, and awareness. In the next three posts, we’ll be discussing the benefits of turning toward emotional pain by looking at each in turn.
Let’s start with mindfulness. That’s a word that has been front and center for a few years now and I am guessing it scares more than a few people. What does it even mean??? A gentle and loving attitude toward the body is a mindful one, allowing the body to release tension. Mindfulness brings us to the present moment and gives us an awareness of what’s happening around and inside us.
Christopher Germer describes the stages of acceptance in his book, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion:
“The process of turning toward discomfort occurs in stages; there’s a progressive softening, or nonresistance, in the face of suffering. After an initial bout of aversion, we start the process with curiosity about the problem and, if all goes well, end with a full embrace of whatever is occurring in our lives. The process is usually slow and natural. It makes no sense to advance to the next stage until you’re entirely comfortable with where you are at the moment. The stages are: Aversion—resistance, avoidance, rumination; Curiosity—turning toward discomfort with interest; Tolerance—safely enduring; Allowing—letting feelings come and go; Friendship—embracing, seeing hidden value.”
Because mindfulness is a core component of self-compassion, when we improve mindful awareness, we automatically increase our ability to be self-compassionate. Mindfulness lets us recognize that our negative emotions are not real. Then we can give them less weight; observing them but not necessarily believing them.
Kristin Neff writes,
“Mindfulness brings us back to the present moment and provides the type of balanced awareness that forms the foundation of self-compassion. Like a clear, still pool without ripples, mindfulness perfectly mirrors what’s occurring without distortion. Rather than becoming lost in our own personal soap opera, mindfulness allows us to view our situation with greater perspective and helps to ensure that we don’t suffer unnecessarily.”
Take our earlier frustration at unexpected traffic… the more we resist the current situation, not only will we cause ourselves unnecessary anger and negative emotion and physical reactions, we are also clouding our ability to choose the best next steps. You can just imagine quick jerks from one lane to another, yelling at other drivers, dangerously hopping a curb to escape something. Had we applied some mindfulness to the situation instead, we could consider with a clear mind if there is anything we could do to improve the situation or simply recognize that we need to accept the current reality. Once we do, we are free to listen to some music while we wait, or think about how lucky we are to have our family or friends, a job we find rewarding, etc.
Mindfulness is “awareness of present experience, with acceptance.” By accepting our feelings, thoughts, and sensations – fear, sadness, boredom, joy, love – we have a loving attitude toward any and all of it. We don’t even need to be calm to be mindful; simply aware. Recognize what’s happening around you – what do you hear, see, and feel inside? Are any muscles tense? Is any part of you warm or cold?
What’s the opposite of mindfulness? Mindlessness! Going into the kitchen to get something and then forgetting what it was you were after. Eating without noticing your food. Driving on autopilot.
So not only do we need to know what our mind is aware of at each moment, we need to help direct its attention. The goal is to stop the continual stress and striving to make things the way we think they need to be. When we can connect with each and every moment of our lives, no matter the external events, we can find peacefulness and acceptance.
Step one: recognize that you are suffering. Face reality and see if you can accept it. We often allow our minds to skip ahead of emotions like guilt, loneliness, etc as moments of suffering that we could use to offer ourselves compassion. Like I mentioned in my first post on self-compassion, sometimes I look in the mirror and see negative things. I have never once before paused to notice that I was thinking that or feeling bad and give myself some love for feeling something so awful. But now I am.
Instead of focusing on the failure itself, focus on the pain caused by the failure. Why focus on your flaws? Responding to ourselves with kindness and compassion takes us out of problem-solving mode and allows us to care for ourselves emotionally. It’s ok to say “I’m having a hard time with this and I deserve some care.” If we never recognize this, these feelings will continue to grow until they come out as us being overwhelmed. I have definitely been there!
“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.” ~ Montaigne
Remember in the last post I said that pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional? The reason mindfulness works is that it provides freedom. “It means we don’t have to believe every passing thought or emotion as as real.” (Neff) The less you resist, the less you suffer.
I was recently in a situation where I thought I must have been invisible. Nobody around me was responding to me or speaking to me. I jumped to some rather huge conclusions, I’ll tell you. My thoughts were running away from me fast. What if I’d noticed how my emotions physically felt in my body? My chest felt tight. My throat was burning. My cheeks were hot. My heart was beating very fast. I felt some sort of shame and lots of self-doubt, along with anger. Staying anchored physically may have allowed me to soothe myself, almost as if I were ill.
It turned out it was definitely just me and my mindset. I wished I’d considered alternative viewpoints and taken better care of myself in the moments of distress. I think I recognized that I was suffering, but I didn’t know what to do about it to feel better. Mindfulness offers a new idea: we don’t have to believe every thought or emotion we experience. We can non-judgmentally accept them, making it much easier for them to go away.
I once saw an interview that Oprah did with Eckhart Tolle where he said he is almost always in the present moment. He said something like, the past is over and the future hasn’t happened yet, so why think about them? Oprah asked him how he plans for things, like doesn’t he need to think about tomorrow in order to remember to set his alarm clock for the next day? I remember that he said yes, but he doesn’t let his mind run off to tomorrow. He notices the feel of the alarm clock, the light or numbers… more tactile aspects of the job. When washing dishes, he is only washing dishes and appreciating the water and the physical sensations. I still marvel at this ability today.
Chris Germer notes that mindfulness is for ALL of it, the good and the not-so-good moments. When we attend to every moment that passes, we make note of all of it and fully experience it.
Savoring is a variation on mindfulness. When we savor, there’s the intention to enter fully into the experience, rather than cling to it or drag it out. The goal of mindfulness is not to get “hooked” by positive or negative experiences—to let things be just as they are, fully and completely. In an advanced state of mind, we can savor grief and sorrow too. Research has shown that the savoring of pleasant experiences can become a habit that elevates our baseline level of daily happiness.
It just so happens that I’m reading a book, , by Ali Katz, and she has a lot to say about about incorporating mindfulness into small moments of your day. “I have an alarm that goes off on my phone every day at 3:00 PM to remind me to stop whatever I am doing, take a deep breath, and spend a minute or two focusing on gratitude. We practice gratitude as a family as well. We keep a family gratitude journal on our kitchen table and at dinner we go around the table saying something we are grateful for, with one person acting as the scribe. As I mentioned before, I also encourage my kids to think of something they are grateful for in the morning, often on the way to school. I don’t make it a huge deal, it is just part of the everyday routine. I invite you to start a gratitude practice comprised of whatever feels right to you. Start small with one minute in the morning or evening and build from there.
“When you begin to pay attention to your body you will notice that it sends you signals you can use to assist in making nourishing decisions for yourself, like saying no to something that is going to send you over the edge. Our minds often get confused, but our bodies never do.”
There can be such richness in each and every moment. Very rarely do I allow myself to simply BE. I’m going to work on that. Do you???
Missed any Self-compassion September posts? Read them here.
