It’s taken me over a decade of therapy and introspection to arrive at this Episode. I don’t know what took me so long, but ‘getting’ self-compassion has been a real struggle for me. In the past few weeks a few things have clicked.
First, some Miriam-Webster informed verbiage:
Self: ha. dare we even try to define that? Even with the help of the dictionary? Hell, why not (only relevant entries included):
- 1: an individual’s typical character or behavior
- 2: the union of elements (such as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person
- 4: the entire person of an individual
- 5: material that is part of an individual organism
Phew.
And, Compassion:
- : a feeling of wanting to help someone who is sick, hungry, in trouble, etc.
And, Pity:
- : sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy
So Self-Compassion is wanting to help yourself when you are struggling, and Self-Pity is feeling sorry for yourself when you’re unhappy. The first seems legit and kind, the second a bit indulgent.
I spend this Episode sort of figuring out how to apply this difference to myself.
No one wants to be accused of feeling sorry for themselves, and so the danger in self-compassion is that it drifts over into self-pity. And this also gets at what I’ll discuss in Episode 75 and that is, How do you tell the difference?
In this case, one is healthy and one is unhealthy. And we know the difference. If we are being honest.
Anyway, during the latter 2/3 of this Episode I figure out how to apply self-compassion for myself in real-time. I felt a shift from theory to application that I hope will apply to future Episodes. My guess is that after Episode 75 I am going to shift into the Being and Doing phase of the Are vs Should Problem.
I’d say more, but I think you really need to just listen or watch this Episode to see where I go. And truly, I’m still ingesting it myself. I need to watch it again myself to understand exactly what happened.
Thank you for spending some of your time with me and these issues. I hope you are getting something important out of them. Please subscribe, follow, leave me a note, or send me an email. I appreciate your attention.
Full podcast audio here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/530563/9633857
Full YouTube video here: