The Power of Self-Compassion
On and off over the past few months, I have been hit with feeling overwhelmed; it feels like all the things in my life are piling up and coming at me at 100 miles an hour. Right now, I often do not know where to start or what to do first, and it’s frustrating.
I like to think I am pretty good at prioritising and managing multiple tasks, but I’m not good when I’m trying to do too much at once, which unfortunately is the crux of my current overwhelm problem. Building a business takes time, courage and persistence and sometimes it’s all too scary and I want to hide under buy duvet.
I have a tiresome tendency to take on too much to prove to others that I can do it (yes, self-worth issues here). I am not good at asking for help, and my emotional support network is severely limited and has been for a long time.
In essence, I would be classed as an overly independent person and a self-reliant overfunctioner, seeking only to gain approval from others and ease my own anxiety, a behaviour, unfortunately, I learned in my childhood. I know this, I know the problems it causes me, and I have worked on those pesky self-worth issues to get myself to a healthier place, putting my needs up there with others.
Annoyingly, life has not yet given me the opportunities to thoroughly practise my newfound skills, primarily due to isolation caused by the pandemic and my recent geographical relocation to an area where I’m yet to get established with a new friendship network.
So I am stuck with flexing my self-reliant skills until my external circumstances allow for more access to people and the chance to build a new network of ‘in real life’ friendships, which leads me back to feeling overwhelmed.
I am in the middle of undergoing a massive change in my life without really knowing what the end goal looks like.
I typically go with the flow of what is happening in my life, trusting that the right things would happen and not worrying about what I cannot control. I am content with letting my life figure itself out until the scary stuff hits me in the face.
When that happens, it feels like too much is piling up, there are too many decisions to be made and too many fires to put out. In the back of my mind, I know it is because I am at that place just before real change occurs, the place where it seems the hardest when it is darkest before the dawn.
I am lucky enough to be able to walk up mountains every day when I take my dog out. Sometimes they are long hikes with sandwiches and sometimes shorter functional walks.
I use this time as quiet time, shunning listening to something through headphones and listening to nature and appreciating my surroundings instead. I am developing enormous gratitude for being able to have these walks.
Lately, ideas appearing from nowhere come to me on these walks, big ideas, gigantic ideas that challenge my belief in my ability to achieve in the future. These ideas are influencing what that end goal looks like for me. I have really begun to notice this, and it is, I believe, part of why I have been feeling overwhelmed recently.
It’s like there’s a missing part of the puzzle trying to slot itself into my life, but I don’t yet know what it is.
Self-compassion is not new to me. There is growing evidence that practising self-compassion is an important tool in improving wellbeing. It is a concept I have researched in my Master’s degree, and I have been consciously trying to treat myself more compassionately whilst working on those pesky self-worth issues.
Recently for the first time ever, whilst feeling stressed and overwhelmed walking up the mountain, I automatically reminded myself that I was doing my best. In doing this, I used self-compassion without needing to consciously prompt myself as I usually have to. And this is something I celebrated.
Dr Kristin Neff describes self-compassion as a tool that changes how we relate to ourselves. It is, therefore, something that can cultivate self-acceptance.
Research shows that people with strong self-compassion are more protected from depression and anxiety, are less self-critical, and can lead happier lives.
By talking to yourself as you would a talk to a friend, by forgiving yourself for past situations you assumed were all your fault, by reflecting on how you take care of yourself and your needs, you begin to act in a self-compassionate way.
Ultimately, self-compassion is achieved by understanding that regardless of whether we feel good or bad, we deserve to treat ourselves with compassionate kindness in the same way that we would treat others.
By being self-compassionate and seeing my feelings of overwhelm in a different light, it is clear that life is indeed giving me moments to practice the skills I have learned, just not in the way I expected it to.
