Benefits of practicing self Compassion

Unless you are living alone like a hermit in the mountains, you have done things you have regretted later on. Who hasn’t? Other people’s behaviour may look perfect, but the reality is most likely that its far from. So, when I reacted rather aggressively and lashed out at a loved one, I was doing something I never would have done had I been in my senses. But at that moment, my emotions of anger and injustice got the better of me. 

 The technical term for this is the amygdala hijack.  ( coined by Daniel Goleman) We are wired for it—in the sense we are born with it. This is when we respond immediately to a trigger. The reason for this in the evolutionary sense is survival –from threats that were real –by fleeing, fighting or avoiding without engaging the “thinking and reasoning brain”. So, anger, rage, fear, terror or blanking out are all survival responses to real threats. But sometimes, this mechanism goes awry. 

 As you may have guessed, that did not serve me well. Till date, my regret is that I was not able to find a calm moment to ask the person for an explanation and to accept their responses with equanimity.

 But my bigger regret is that I was not able to ask myself  “What do I need to do to take care of myself when I was in pain?”. “How could I have helped myself?” In that moment of intense pain, how could I have regulated my emotions? 

So, what can help us to build a practice of responding to events rather than reacting? The critical word is “Practice”. It takes time and repetition. But here’s some behaviours that I practice. 

 Doing some thing different. For a few minutes, stretch out your hands, make some eye movements dance, recite some numbers, read right to left..anything that engages your brain’s attention and distracts it from a spiral.

Breathe—Breathe with a rhythm. It means breathing in and out repeatedly while counting the second. sIt allows us to remain present.

 Stress is inevitable but there is no need to think of elaborate ways to help yourself, especially when you don’t have privacy.  A few simple measures are all that are required to create an anchor –a visual one would be looking at a photograph of your child ( I do that!). You can try any number of anchors to ground yourself and come back to the present.

 So, what happens next time, someone triggers you? Initially you might struggle like I did…but eventually the practice makes your response smooth and you stay present to the situation to ask yourself “ How do I want to really handle this?” Self coaching is about knowing what we want in life and designing actions around that.

Self help skills are not taught in school but most likely the foundation is at home. When our parents or caregivers help us to regulate our emotions. The most powerful way is when they model this behaviour for us. And we do that for our kids. Emotional Intelligence is not taught, it is practiced in our life.

But, when the stresses of life overwhelm us, we can lose the ability to self soothe. The effects can be chaotic on the self and the life we seek to build. A Life Coach can help you get to a place where you can take back control. In coaching you can find that entered self that can respond rather than react. This is an act of self compassion.

 So, why do I call this self compassion? Because it’s what we do when we care about ourselves and look after ourselves. We stay centered and stabilise the situation till we know how best to handle it. You have the means to do it..its simple and its free. In fact, self soothing is also an ability you were born with. A life coach will simply facilitate that process.