The Highly Sensitive Humans Podcast offers insight into the world of the Highly Sensitive Person, and helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to feel more empowered and resilient without denying their authentic gifts.
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In this episode, we talk about the importance of cultivating self-compassion as a Highly Sensitive Person. I share the struggles and barriers we often come across, the reasons why it is so important to work on self-compassion and the benefits that can come from it. I share a simple practice that we can start to implement into our day-to-day life along with extra resources below!
Jules is Highly Sensitive herself and is also passionate about helping Highly Sensitive People to step into their authentic power and align with their true purpose in life. She lived in Asia for eleven years before moving to London and integrates Eastern practices and modern-day mindfulness into her work.
She has a degree in Psychology, an MA in Education and an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology, Consciousness and Spirituality. She’s a Meditation teacher on Insight Timer and a published author through Changemaker Books and John Hunt Publishers. She wrote Resilience: Navigating Loss in a Time of Crisis to help people through the Covid-19 Pandemic available here.
About the Host: Jules De Vitto is a transpersonal coach, trainer and experienced educator for Highly Sensitive People. She helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to navigate emotional overwhelm, step into their authentic power and align with their true purpose in life. She is a published author and wrote one of a series of books on Resilience, Navigating Loss in a time of Crisis. Her research has also been published in the Transpersonal Coaching Psychology Journal and Journal of Consciousness, Spirituality, and Transpersonal Psychology.
Welcome, I'm your host, Jules DeVito, and you're listening to the Highly Sensitive Human Podcast, the show that offers an insight into the world of the highly sensitive person and helps those who identify with the traits of high sensitivity to feel more empowered and resilient without denying their authentic gifts. So we're going to be looking at self-compassion today and the importance of self-compassion practices and cultivating these skills for ourselves as highly sensitive people. So self-compassion is often a struggle for those who are highly sensitive. And the reason being, which we'll explore more in this episode today, is because we have often we have a strong inner critic, often we strive towards perfectionism, and often we take on a lot of responsibility for others and the world. And this is all part of our natural gifts and our innate traits, which you know, when when utilized and used in a resourceful way can be of great benefit to us. However, if we struggle to hold space for our flaws, for our mistakes, and offer ourselves compassion, this can become a problem for us. So today we're gonna explore how we can offer ourselves more compassion and what that might look like and of course why it's so important. So self-compassion really involves a few different um areas. So first of all, it's about recognizing that difficulties and pain are a part of life, and so we can't avoid this. We can't avoid the struggle, the difficulties, the pain that we go through. It's part of our human experience, and self-compassion is about holding space for these challenges or the pain, which can sometimes feel counterintuitive. You know, normally we want to move away from the pain. But what I'll talk about today is the importance of moving towards it. So once we can recognize that pain and difficulties are a part of our experience, it's then having the desire and willingness to reduce suffering in ourselves. And it begins with ourselves before we can extend it to others and the world. So compassion goes beyond empathy. You know, empathy is feeling and experiencing those difficulties and that pain in ourselves and others, so we can have empathy, but compassion is actually then wanting to reduce that suffering and pain. And suffering is quite an intense word. I've taken that word from the Buddhist concept of suffering, that life is suffering. Um and that encompasses many, many different things. So if suffering feels like a word which doesn't resonate with you, you can change it to challenges or pain. And then self-compassion also involves recognizing that it's an unconditional, non-judgmental quality. So everyone deserves compassion. And it's not based on evaluation on how good or bad we are as a person. So that isn't part of whether we deserve compassion or not. So it's about removing ourselves from that evaluation of, yeah, do we deserve this? Are we good enough? Or are other people good enough? We want to remove judgment and come back to this fundamental understanding that we all deserve compassion. We are all worthy of compassion and forgiveness as well. So I'm really inspired by the work of Kristin Neff, who has done extensive research on self-compassion, and I will provide some links in the show notes for you which go into more detail Kristin Neff's work. So she broke uh self-compassion down into three parts. So she's spoken about self-kindness versus self-judgment, so being kind to ourselves rather than judging. Common humanity versus isolation. So this is based on the idea that we're all in this together. So it's not that we're suffering or going through difficulties and others are not. Actually, everyone is experiencing some form of difficulty or pain. And actually recognizing and remembering that we are all in this together can really help to take away that sense of isolation or that sense of separation from us and others and the world itself. And then the third part is mindfulness versus over-identification. So it's about holding space and being mindful of our experiences, recognizing them, holding compassion towards them, but not getting lost in the suffering or the pain. So what is the opposite of self-compassion? I mean, what are we doing if we're not being self-compassionate? And for me, this is about recognizing that around our core self, which is the compassionate self, there are lots of different parts of us which include, for example, the perfectionist part, so the part that wants to be perfect, or the inner judge, the one that is judging our experience, or the part which feels that we are unworthy. Perhaps we blame ourselves a lot, or we have a strong inner critic as well. And these parts of us offer a lot of self-judgment, as I said, might be striving for perfection, we might blame ourselves a lot, um, there's a sense of responsibility or carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, and we might feel like we're not entitled to the amount of self-care that we do deserve. And there can also be a fear of disapproval or losing acceptance of love from others, or a fear that if we open our hearts to compassion for ourselves, we will be left open to vulnerability or to be vulnerable. And I'm going to talk about that in a moment and what that means to be vulnerable. And um, so these parts might be um, you know, telling us things like if I offer myself compassion, I'm selfish, or I'm not a good person, I don't deserve this, or if I start to feel compassion or warmth for myself, I will become overwhelmed by my sadness, or I won't be loved by others if I offer myself this compassion. So you might recognize some of those uh voices or some of those words within yourself. So it's really important to recognize that uh the myths of self-compassion. So self-compassion is not about feeling pity for ourselves or becoming a victim. It's not self-indulgence and it actually involves wisdom. It's not avoiding conflict or being passive, actually, it's about holding boundaries for ourselves and learning to speak up for our feelings and needs. It's also not selfish or only thinking about ourselves. Actually, it's the opposite of this because in order to hold compassion for others and the world, we we first need to hold it for ourselves, and it's not a weakness. So this comes back to the idea of vulnerability, and actually, vulnerability is a strength, a strength that is needed in terms of holding compassion for ourselves. So it's the ability, as I said earlier, to observe what is present in us and the courage to stay present with our emotions, even if they are uncomfortable. So it involves the willingness to feel pain and lean into this suffering instead of moving away from it. So that vulnerability, that openness is actually a strength because that's what enables us to really learn how to create space in between these difficulties and stay present with them so we can work with them in a healthy way. So this brings us to why it's so important. So self-compassion has there's been a lot of research carried out on self-compassion, and it's been found that those who are more self-compassionate tend to be less anxious, stressed, and depressed, are less likely to ruminate on their negative thoughts and emotions or suppress them. And also, it's been found to increase happiness, optimism, wisdom, curiosity, exploration, and personal initiative. And this enables us to connect and engage in more authentic and honest relationships. So, with that, it helps to bring balance into our lives because what it means is that our experiences are neither suppressed nor exaggerated, and we have a greater ability to cope with negative emotions such as anxiety and stress. So, again, I can provide some resources, some links to this research, but the research is really profound in terms of how self-compassion practices can really shift our mindset, our emotional body, our physical body, our biology, and also improve our spiritual health as well. So I want you to take a moment to think about your experience of compassion and self-compassion. Is this something you struggle with? And if so, in what ways do you feel like it might be lacking in your life? And what barriers do you face in terms of cultivating self-compassion? And with that, what are your strengths? So, how do you already show self-compassion in your life, and what are you already doing that you could perhaps start doing more of? And finally, what if you offered yourself the same compassion you offer others? How would that look in your life? So, these are some really important and valuable questions that you can ask yourself in terms of what self-compassion currently looks like and how you would like it to look in your life. So, as well as uh Kristen Neff, I'm also a huge fan of Tara Brack, who is a Buddhist psychotherapist who offers a lot of mindfulness and meditation tools for um self-compassion and bringing greater awareness and peace and um growth in our lives. And she has spoken a lot about something called the trance of unworthiness. And for me, this phrase is really, really powerful and something I also resonate very much with. And in terms of my personal journey, it's been really important to look at this trance and how this trance plays out in my life and in my relationships to others, and I want to read out this quote which I think really summarizes the type of work we're doing when we're working with compassion for ourselves. Suttar Barak says if I pause in the midst of feeling even mildly anxious or depressed and ask, What am I believing? I usually discover an assumption that I am falling short or about to fail in some way. The emotions around this belief become more conscious as I further inquire what wants attention or acceptance in this moment. Frequently I find contractions of fear under the story of insufficiency. I find that the trance is sustained only when I reject or resist the experience. As I recognize the mental story and open directly to the bodily sense of fear, the trance of unworthiness begins to dissolve. So this quote for me is so powerful in terms of us taking a moment to stop and acknowledge where where are these beliefs coming from? What what am I actually believing about myself? And how do I associate my self-worth to my actions or my behaviors? And on top of that, she's asking what wants our attention or acceptance in this moment? How can we bring greater acceptance to who we are? And with that, with there there's often fear, fear, contraction, a story of insufficiency. So it's my understanding that so many of us are carrying around this story of insufficiency, you know, this trance of unworthiness where we reject or resist parts of ourself, parts of our experience. And so she's talking about opening to this sense of unworthiness, the stories we hold about ourselves and opening to them. And it's in that opening, in that compassionate holding that that trance can begin to dissolve and we can begin to go beyond the stories, beyond the beliefs, and really see the truth of who we are, and the truth being that we are all innately worthy of compassion, of love. And that for me is such a powerful remembering, and again, this is based on the belief and the understanding that we each have a core self or a soul that is connected to a collective, a collective consciousness that we're all part of. We are all part of this universe which in itself is imperfectly perfect. We are perfect manifestations of this universe, and with that, there's nothing we need to change or fix about ourselves when we go underneath the stories and the woundings that we hold. And this topic of compassion can become quite complex when we do start to evaluate our actions and our behaviors. So, what about those of us who have done what society would claim to be a major mistake in life? You know, what about those who've had um who have engaged in wrong action, who've hurt others, who have been dangerous to themselves and others? What happens then with this compassion? Well, again, it takes a lot, it takes a lot to go below the surface of that person's actions and see that actually even someone who we really dislike or someone who we judge for behaving wrongly. If we can go beyond that and see that even they have a soul, a self that is worthy of compassion, well that's a really incredibly powerful practice. Okay, so I want to share with you um a really short practice that you can do at any point, at any time. So this is a four-part practice. It's also known as a five-minute self-compassion break, again, inspired by the work of Kristen Neff. So part one is to bring mindful awareness to the fact that there is suffering or difficulty present in your life, acknowledging and naming it. So it could be, oh, this is just really hard right now. Um, so we could apply that to our current circumstances of what's going on in the world or our personal life. So if we were to apply it to the pandemic and lockdown, so you know, this is really hard right now, this is really difficult. And and part two is then to remind ourselves of our common humanity. So, yeah, it's not just me that's struggling right now. There's many people in this situation, and this part isn't about taking on that burden or responsibility of everyone's suffering, it's just acknowledging that we're not alone in this. And then part three is to really nurture ourselves, and you can do that by, for example, I often like to place my hand over my heart, or you can place it on a part of your body which is needing some gentle touch. And so, as if you were speaking to a child or an animal or something which you find it very easy to give compassion to, just saying, okay, I'm here for you right now. I care about you, and it's going to be okay. So we're not rejecting our experience, but we're really just saying, I acknowledge it, and I'm here for you. And then we can check back in with our emotions and sensations and allow ourselves just to be with them and you know, acknowledging, okay, what what is present, what else is calling for my attention? Do I need more time here? And breathing into it, so just really, really holding space for it. And this is a very simple practice, but something which we can regularly start to implement in our lives. It's amazing actually how when you start to use this, you notice that you're probably doing the opposite. So you're going through something difficult, you're thinking, you might be thinking, oh, I shouldn't be feeling this way, I want to get rid of it, I want to be okay, just want to get over it, and yeah, you're rejecting, you're rejecting your experience. So this is doing the very opposite of that, and it's so powerful in reducing overwhelm as well. So when you start to practice this, you notice that actually sometimes those really painful emotions can start to dissolve. So if you would like to learn more about the importance of self-compassion, as I mentioned, I'm offering some resources, links in the show notes, and also this month in the Highly Sensitive Hub, which is a membership area for highly sensitive people, we are focusing all of the workshops and resources on self-compassion. So in there, I have meditations, and we really explore the topic, you have a chance to reflect, to work with those parts which might be the uh inner critic or the inner judge, and um really learn to implement this into your life. So, if that is of interest to you again, I will put the link in the show notes. And um, I hope this episode has been helpful or some great food for thought today, and um yeah, just remembering that you're not alone in this journey, and this is something we all are working through. And as I said, this has been a lifelong journey for me. This is something that I have to keep coming back to over and over again because I often forget, I forget about the importance of holding space for my own pain, and so um this is something which these practices are crucial, and um, I really hope you are able to, as I said, start implementing them or bringing them into your life as well. Thanks for joining me this week on Highly Sensitive Humans. Make sure to visit my website, highly sensitivehumans.com, where you can subscribe to my mail list for regular updates, or join the Highly Sensitive Hub, which is a membership area and growing community for highly sensitive people. In the membership area, I share monthly bundles of resources, tools, meditations, and we have a community forum and monthly workshops for us to get together and support each other on our journey. And if you found value in the show, I really appreciate a rating and review. Please share this episode with your friends or other highly sensitive people that will find this podcast helpful.
