Compassion

One of the phrases I struggle most to hear is, “try being more compassionate to yourself.”. I’ve had previous therapists say it to me, and my immediate reaction was always, “If I knew how to do that, I wouldn’t be sitting opposite you now would I?!”

I do have a far better ability these days to be compassionate towards myself and have spent time as a therapist thinking about how I can bring it into session with clients without it sounding trite or glib.

Many people have a tendency to make judgements on their behaviour, thoughts or feelings. My experience of working with these judgements with clients is that they are never accurate enough. My segue into changing this is to make clients aware that aside from appearing mean spirited towards oneself, judgements are rarely accurate and near enough to the truth.

It is far more useful and a smarter use of our time to be curious about the judgements we make. The human mind loves a puzzle, a who-done-it and introducing it to clients in this way is far more agreeable than simply suggesting they try and be more compassionate with themselves.

Accepting that we will be inclined to make judgments about ourselves at times but then learning to use that to our advantage. My work with clients is often helping them figure out what

curiosity looks like to them in the form of what questions to ask themselves.

We often find ourselves acting out stories we don't yet know how to tell. It's what Carl Jung meant when he said, 'Until we learn to make the subconscious conscious, it will dictate our lives and we will call it fate'. Curiosity brings us closer to understanding this truth.

Judgements lead to curiosity leads to understanding leads to compassion.