What is intellectualization?Refresh my memory.
What is intellectualization? If you want to re-read part 1 in its entirety, here it is! Simply put, intellectualization is going up into your thoughts, focusing heavily on facts, rationality, and logic in a situation, and analyzing it from a detached perspective. Now, let’s be clear that thinking and rationality are not bad; in fact, thinking & meaning are important doorways into our own experiences. However, we want to be able to access our emotions, our behaviors, our images we may see in our mind, and our body sensations as well. When we intellectualize, we move away from thinking as a way to understand to thinking as a protective strategy to disconnect us from feelings, emotions, and body sensations that might feel uncomfortable or too much. Intellectualization is an adaptive, protective strategy that was developed as a way to make us feel safe in an environment that felt too much (or not enough). It helped (and helps!) us make sense of the world and disconnect from feeling overwhelming feelings. It’s important to understand that intellectualizing is NOT a deficit or something wrong with you, but rather a way you learned to stay safe and in connection. Oftentimes, people who are intellectualizers are people who have developmental trauma. Those of us with developmental or complex trauma formed these very protective and adaptive strategies, like intellectualization, that supported us in not feeling so overwhelmed all of the time and gave us that sense of safety that we as humans crave and need. As adults, intellectualization offers us a sense of safety that may be getting in the way of us moving toward what we want. It keeps us pulled back and disconnected from our full experience of being alive and may make us feel disconnected and empty. How did this happen? Simply put, it doesn’t really matter why it happened. What matters is that you cannot think your way out of these patterns- no matter how hard you might try. For an overthinker, this can be hard to hear. No matter how smart we are, how hard we think, how many lists or spreadsheets we make, we cannot think our way back into more safety and more authentic connection. This is why many intellectualizers get the feeling of being “stuck” and repeating the same (overthinking) patterns…even with their therapists as they go through therapy. In fact, intellectualizers often get told in therapy how smart or self-aware they are, they may even be told they don’t need to be in therapy because they already understand themselves. How do I stop being an intellectualizer? There is no magic pill/book/way to do this. If only! We can start by being curious about the adaptive patterns we have built in our lives, thinking about how intellectualization has served us and how it might not be serving us now. Maybe it’s disconnecting us from living in the present and moving towards what we want for ourselves. Often, addressing intellectualization from a behavioral standpoint doesn’t work, because feeling all the feelings can lead to overwhelm and shutting down. What is helpful is to practice slowing down and being more present in the current moment, little by little. Curiosity does wonders because it’s realistic and often easier to be curious about something than to make a radical change. Try to notice the small moments and observe yourself, especially when you notice yourself slipping into intellectualization behavior. Naming 3 things you see, 3 things you feel, and 3 more things you see is a perfect grounding exercise that helps us orient to our environment and bring a pop of safety to our nervous system. It’s important to know that many of us may live in systems where it isn’t safe to be fully in our bodies for a variety of reasons. You, in no way, HAVE to come back into your body or be fully present from moment to moment. Instead, you can be curious about tiny little moments where you might feel 1% (or .01%) safer to allow you to have more access to your agency in the present to show up for yourself and connect in ways that feel good. This might allow you to reconnect to yourself in small ways and reconnect to others to build community and connection - if that’s what you want for yourself! Intellectualization + Therapy/Support If you’re searching for a therapist and you identify as an intellectualizer, you will want to find a therapist that is equipped to help intellectualizers: look for a therapist who works with developmental trauma or complex trauma, often called complex PTSD. Some helpful therapy modalities include IFS (internal family systems), Somatic Experiencing, and NARM. You may also want a therapist who uses liberation psychology, feminist therapy, or systemic lenses. This will help you understand how the systems you grew up in contributed to this. For example, I am trained in NARM- Neuro Affective Relational Model, and this is a great modality for working with overthinkers or intellectualizers. Using this model helps the therapist and client recognize that intellectualization is a survival strategy; a way that we learn to stay in connection with the people around us! In therapeutic settings, addressing intellectualization often involves encouraging clients to explore and express their emotions more openly. First, therapists must support their clients in deepening their felt sense of safety in the present. This can be a process that unfolds over time because we are often undoing years (or decades) of feeling unsafe and disconnected. As a felt sense of safety and connection grows, we become more able to consider reconnecting to our emotions and our body sensations. By fostering self-awareness, connection with our body sensations, and a bigger “bucket” to feel our emotions, therapists can help individuals feel more present in their lives and move more toward what they want for themselves. It’s important to note that some clients may take a bit of time to feel safe enough to drop out of their survival strategies (like intellectualization). This is absolutely okay! They will do it when they are ready and feel safe enough. They are not trying to be resistant or “difficult,” but rather they have to feel safe first. I find that other therapeutic techniques such as mindfulness, expressive arts, and narrative therapy can also be valuable tools in bridging the gap between intellect and emotion - they can be so helpful in supporting individuals in integrating their cognitive insights (thoughts) with their affective experiences (emotions) and interoceptive experiences (body sensations). In therapy, you will likely explore that interoceptive system, which lets us track and feel things in our body. Imagine a volume button, and this is turned way down for intellectualizers; doing somatic or body-oriented work can work really well for some - for others, it’s far too challenging to begin with the body. For that reason, I sometimes find it may be helpful to start with cognitive work (outthink the thinker - ha!). I love to slow things down during a story to get underneath the meaning (like an archeological dig using a paintbrush to scrape away layers of dust and dirt to get to the dinosaur bones underneath): allowing them to connect to their agency and what they want for themselves and, tiny bits at a time, reconnect to their emotions. We can pause and explore with neutrality the thinking and behavioral patterns that are part of our adult consciousness (prefrontal cortex adult self who knows that they have agency, choice, and decision-making power), and our child consciousness (who holds these patterns we have learned as children (like the intellectualization). Often, it’s easier for people to notice these child consciousness patterns when they’re more overt (like people-pleasers who might recognize their tendencies as a problem) vs. intellectualization where intellectualizers very often may not see it as a problem because it serves them to be logical, rational, and intelligent (and we also may get positive feedback from those around us for being “calm” and “rational”). Because the intellectualization can feel sooooo rational, you may think this is their adult consciousness voice. So in therapy, we are slowing things down to examine this rational voice. Perhaps this rational voice is just three child consciousnesses stacked in a trench coat who learned to put away their emotions? One of the curiosities of therapy is to bring more awareness and bring in the observer (the adult self) who can see the patterns and recognize what is happening and then can consider being more in connection with their body and emotions. Read the rest on tiny sparks.
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And isn’t ironic to discuss intellectualization by, well, intellectualizing it?
Strap in, because we’re going to learn together how intellectualization is actually a protective strategy AND the difference between true, embodied self-awareness and intellectualization. A simple way to think about intellectualization is to think about going up into your thoughts. So you may focus heavily on facts, rationality, and logic in a situation, analyzing them from a detached perspective. But isn’t thinking and rationality a good thing?! Imagine that we had different doorways into our own experience as humans and each of those different doorways let us understand ourselves in a different way. Thinking is just one of those doors and, while thinking is very valuable, we want to be able to access our emotions, our behaviors, our images we may see in our mind, and our body sensations as well. When we intellectualize, we move away from thinking as a way to understand toward thinking as a protective strategy to disconnect us from feelings, emotions, and body sensations that might feel uncomfortable or too much. By the way, let’s be clear together that intellectualization is not a bad thing or a deficit. These adaptive, protective strategies were developed as a way to make us feel safe in an environment that felt too much (or not enough). It’s not as if one day you thought “hmm, you know what would be great? If I never had to feel my feelings again.” No, this developed over time as a method of adapting - we go up into our heads because it feels like the safest place to be, where we can analyze and make sense out of the world and disconnect from feeling overwhelming feelings. But what does intellectualization look like in real life? I’m glad you asked, let me give an example to illustrate what I mean. Let’s say you’re facing a loss, such as the death of someone you loved dearly. You might feel some big emotions about this - grief, sadness, anger. At some point in your life, you learned things were just, well, easier if you didn’t have big emotions. Maybe it felt like people liked you more if you were good, quiet, calm, rational. Maybe in your family, things were really tense all the time and that felt scary, so you didn’t want to add to it by having more emotions. Maybe when you felt big emotions you were sent to your room to feel them alone or told to go think about what you’d done. Or maybe you were just alone a lot of the time as a child and the emotions you felt were too big for a child to hold alone. So, now, as an adult instead of allowing yourself to grieve and process the emotions as they come up for you, you might focus only on the practical aspects: you’re planning the funeral arrangements, researching grief ad nauseum, and engaging in philosophical discussions about the concept of death. All of these are fine and well (and some are necessary), but what happens is that your emotions don’t get to be felt and move through, instead, they are kept locked up, and you’re unable to let yourself feel. The protective strategy of intellectualization provided you with a protective strategy - you didn’t have to break down, you didn’t have to feel overwhelmed, you didn’t have to let others see you be vulnerable in your emotions - but you also are stuck with all of those emotions that are still there, just stuffed way down. So, we also don’t get to feel our emotions in connection with others, to feel supported, to feel connected, to feel loved, to feel seen. All of the things a part of us may be so desperately wanting. The irony of it is that these strategies are often developed in our younger lives as a way to keep us in connection to those around us - parents, teachers, siblings, classmates, etc. Wait. How, exactly, did intellectualization and overthinking develop to keep me in connection?! Well, oftentimes, people who are intellectualizers are people who have what is referred to as developmental trauma. It’s important to know that many people may have had these experiences who did not define their childhood as traumatic and my goal here isn’t to convince you that you had a horrible time growing up. Many of us may have had supported childhoods in many ways but in other ways, our needs may have been missed. So, as I discussed above, perhaps your family was too emotional and it felt like a lot to witness all of the energy and emotions constantly, or maybe your home didn’t feel safe to express your true feelings- perhaps along the “positive vibes only” line, and if you had anything outside of these, you were sent to your room to deal with your feelings alone. It could have also been that your parents were very controlling and tried to dictate which emotions were allowed and which weren’t. Maybe you were bullied as a child at school because you were sensitive and cried. While these experiences may seem simple - and you’re thinking what’s the big deal - as children, this often feels like too much for us to hold on our own. So, we form these very protective and adaptive strategies, like intellectualization, that support us in not feeling so overwhelmed all of the time. This means that at some point in their life, we learned that feeling our feelings (feeling emotions or sensations in their body) was too much for us, but we could just go up in their head, think about things, and obtain that sense of safety that we as humans crave. It kept us in connection with those around us and made things seem, well, just easier. Remember, most of this happens when we are children or when we were very overwhelmed experiencing some type of trauma, so we aren’t making these choices rationally from an adult brain mindset but rather subconsciously where our brain and body work together to determine what will feel the safest. As adults, intellectualization offers us a faux sense of safety. I say faux because it wasn’t a true sense of safety, but rather a strategy that gives us a sense of control that isn’t real (because, sadly, we can’t control the world around us). Becoming an intellectualizer could happen in various ways: It doesn’t make a difference as to the reason this happened, but what matters is that you cannot think your way out of these patterns- no matter how hard you might try. This is why many intellectualizers get the feeling of being “stuck” and repeating the same (overthinking) patterns…even with their therapists as they go through therapy. In fact, intellectualizers often get told in therapy how smart or self-aware they are, they may even be told they don’t need to be in therapy because they already understand themselves. The fact of the matter is that no matter how smart we are, how hard we think, how many lists or spreadsheets we make, we cannot think our way back into more safety and more authentic connection. How do I stop being an intellectualizer? Read more on tiny sparks. 5/21/2024 If you're not making progress in therapy, you might be intellectualizing your emotions. Here are 3 signs, according to a therapist.Read NowThe label 'intellectualizer' describes people who analyze emotions, rather than feeling them. The label 'intellectualizer' has taken off on TherapyTok to describe a person who understands their unhelpful patterns, but can't change them.
You could be one if you have trouble accessing your emotions. According to Trisha Wolfe, a Michigan-based therapist who specializes in developmental trauma, it's a coping strategy that people can develop during childhood in response to an environment where expressing feelings doesn't feel safe. It's known in therapy circles and online as intellectualizing and can lead to problems like feeling disconnected from others, feeling empty, and difficulty feeling present in the moment, she told Business Insider. Although he never used the term himself, the idea comes from Freud's theory that some people separate their thinking mind from their emotional experience as a defense mechanism, she said. A child may start intellectualizing their feelings rather than allowing themself to feel them if, for example, they had very emotionally reactive parents whom they felt they had to walk on eggshells around. It could also be a strategy to avoid being bullied or reprimanded by authority figures or peers by only showing emotions that they deem acceptable. In essence, it means rather than feeling your emotions in your body, you retreat into your mind to think or reason your way out of them, Wolfe said. You might fixate on understanding why you're feeling this way, why the upsetting situation has occurred, and what you can rationally do to resolve it. Read more on Business Insider. Welcome back, tiny sparks readers! I hope the close of your summer was lovely, and as we enter into autumn, I hope you enjoy the best of it: the changing leaves, crisp mornings, and warm drinks. While I took a break from this newsletter, I was very much still active in my therapy practice, holding my first glimmer mini-retreat (so much fun!), getting settled into my new home, and celebrating my pup’s 16th birthday!
Now, on to this week’s topic! Let me lay out a scenario for you - have you ever wanted to try something new, join a new group, or try to make new friends but you’ve felt so much anxiety and fear that you’ve held yourself back? Maybe you wanted to sign up for a beginner ceramics class but you have this persistent inner voice saying “What if don’t know what you’re doing, what if you look stupid, nothing you make will even look good, you’ll probably mess it up and look silly.” Welcome to the ring… your inner critic. While I was absent from this newsletter space, I kept coming back to the idea of our inner critic and how it functions. There’s a reason it’s called inner critic rather than inner coach or cheerleader - if it was functioning as a coach or cheerleader, I wouldn’t have much to write about this week! Let’s talk about how our inner critic develops. Many of us might have grown up with parents, caregivers, teachers, family members, or other adults who consciously or subconsciously shamed us or punished us. You might be wondering how you can subconsciously shame or punish, but the thing is, it’s not always vindictive or mean shame and punishment. It could be very subtle, such as we didn’t do as well in a class or on a test and we notice that mom pays us a little less attention than usual. However, that subtle little shift, to a child’s brain, tells that child: “So if I don’t do really really well, mom loves me less.” Remember, that doesn’t have to be mom’s intent at all, but that sets the stage. So then, we grow up and become adults, having internalized this belief that to keep ourselves “good” and in connection with others (perhaps no longer the same adults from childhood, but now friends, partners, and co-workers), we have to be really good; we have to be the best. Here’s the thing about adulthood: it’s not as easy as going to school, studying hard, getting an A, and having everyone love us. Sadly, what happens is that our brain creates this critical internal voice that punishes and shames us all the time. Then, we wonder why we feel so badly and find it difficult to move towards what we want. It can impact everything how we form relationships, our work, how we spend our free time, and more. Oftentimes, we may try to white-knuckle our way through it by gritting our teeth and constantly trying to battle our thoughts. This can start to feel like an internal battle of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots (does anyone else remember these?), you versus your inner critic - and it’s exhausting to be battling yourself all the time. Read more here: https://trishawolfe.substack.com/p/its-me-hi The dictionary defines glimmer as a noun- a faint or wavering light or as a verb- to shine faintly with a wavering light. Therefore, you might be able to say that glimmer is a synonym for a tiny spark! In the mental health world, glimmers can mean something a little bit different. Let’s dive in to learn about glimmers and how they can help us regulate our nervous system.
To start to get a sense of what a glimmer is in reference to self-care and resilience, I find it helpful to reflect on a quotation from author Kurt Vonnegut: One of the things [my] Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”” Long before we ever talked about glimmers and resources and resilience (oh my!), Vonnegut’s Uncle Alex had the idea down pat. So often, we go through life on autopilot, rushing from one task to the next, hurrying up so we can get to work, speeding home so we can cook dinner, all so we might have an hour to ourselves to zone out on Netflix, TikTok, or whatever your relaxing-but-not-taxing tool of choice is. Now, it’s not a bad thing that our brain can work on autopilot, it’s helpful in moving us through our daily routine and it saves us from having to think about every single activity we do each day. Imagine if you had to be 100% conscious and aware while brushing your teeth, each up and down motion taking careful focus - that would be exhausting! But being on autopilot too often can disconnect us from ourselves, from our resilience, and from what is good in our lives. If we are in a period of high stress or have a history of trauma, it becomes even more critical to become aware of glimmers or moments of goodness in our lives. Let’s talk about some background on glimmers: the concept of glimmers is part of the Polyvagal Theory introduced in 1996 by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges. The Polyvagal Theory is a complex but fascinating way of describing how our autonomic nervous system (the one that controls involuntary actions like breathing as well as our survival system - think fight/flight/freeze) is constantly searching for and interpreting cues around us to determine if they are dangerous. This searching and interpreting is called neuroception and the process happens below the surface, with our nervous system and vagus nerve working together to assess our safety every moment of the day. Later on, Deb Dana, a social worker and author used the word glimmer in her book on Porges’s work called The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation by Deb Dana. Her book is a fascinating take on our nervous system and how we can find more regulation and resilience in our daily lives. You may remember from past conversations we’ve had together here that sometimes our body may feel activated by something the brain feels is dangerous - sometimes we might flip our lid out of stress - and when that happens, our nervous system and body may move into a fight, flight, or freeze state. We might think of those activating events as “triggers.” Maybe you’ve even heard people say “I’m so triggered” or “That really triggered me” when something stressful happens. You can think of glimmers as the opposite of triggers - glimmers are triggers’ happy, sparkly, regulating fraternal twin siblings. Where triggers are cues that something dangerous or stressful is happening, glimmers are cues that the body and brain are having a feeling of pleasantness, safety, and connection. Everybody and every body is different, so glimmers will feel different from person to person, but in general, they are those warm and fuzzy feelings where you feel cozy, safe, and at peace. They can spark a sense of joy, calmness, neutrality, pleasantness, awe, or belongingness. Glimmers can be both internal and external- from a thought of a wonderful memory or situation to a song that you love. In fact, one person’s glimmer could be another person’s trigger (more on triggers in another newsletter). Finding glimmers can be beneficial because purposely noticing these moments where you feel safe can help your body and your ventral vagus nerve recognize the feeling of groundedness and connectedness. So, how can we find our glimmers? To answer that, let’s come back to Vonnegut’s quotation above: we look for what’s nice! For a simple way to integrate glimmers in your day, just try noticing something nice or pleasant in your day - a first sip of coffee, a pleasingly shaped tree, or a big, fluffy cloud. For me, I’m loving fresh summer strawberries, a big ice cream cone on a hot day, a new book, and the beautiful wildflowers. It doesn’t have to be anything groundbreaking, just a little flicker of something “nice!” Just by observing it and naming to ourselves that it’s pleasant, we get a little pop of goodness in our nervous system that reminds us that we are safe. We can also practice touching into deeper glimmers that help support your vagus nerve. For some people, this might be super easy and you might be able to quickly list several glimmers. For others, especially those with trauma, you may have to take a step back and do some grounding exercises. Take a quiet moment to yourself where you step back from distractions and close your eyes.
I encourage you to spend some time this coming week thinking about or making a list of the glimmers in your life. Remember, for tiny sparks toward more resilience, glimmers are what it’s about. The most powerful glimmer or most peaceful feeling can be found in the smallest moment. Wishing you many glimmers! Feel free to join me on Tiktok, Instagram, or Youtube where I share my thoughts, and you’re welcome to share your glimmers! Sending tiny sparks of wellness your way, Trisha This week’s tiny spark: our survival brain. We’re learning all about our brain, how it’s wired for survival above all else, and how it’s always trying to protect us, even when it doesn’t feel that way.
Have you ever had a situation where you were stressed/nervous/excited/scared and it seemed like your brain just wasn’t quite working right? Maybe you had to give a big presentation at work and you were so nervous that when you got up to talk, it felt like the speech you had memorized and practiced 10,000 times flew right out of your head? That, my friends, is the work of our survival brain. If you’ve known me for a while, you probably know how much I love the brain. In fact, you may remember this post on how we change our brains (spoiler alert: it’s hard!). Understanding how our brain works is so critical in understanding ourselves so that we can be more compassionate and move more toward what we want for ourselves in our lives, be that changing habits, setting boundaries, forming new relationships, or whatever we feel drawn towards. Of course, the brain is incredibly complicated but in my daily work I get to teach these topics to kids as young as 4 years old all the way up to older adults, so rest assured that anyone can understand and apply this material to their daily lives. The first thing to know about the brain is that it’s made up of three main parts. One of the easiest ways to explain these three parts is to use our hand, a model created by Dan Siegal, a leading researcher in the field of interpersonal neurobiology. Imagine you held your hand up in a fist, thumb wrapped inside your fingers. Read the rest of this post: https://trishawolfe.substack.com/p/at-first-i-was-afraid-i-was-petrified Now, before you start to get up in arms that I’m anti self-compassion, hold on. I’m not! I like self-compassion and find it a useful tool when appropriate. That being said, at times I feel frustrated by the portrayal of self-compassion as the panacea cure. I notice that self-compassion is often used alongside ideas like “let it go,” “move on",” “be kind to yourself,” “fall in love with yourself,” “love and light,” etc. To be clear, I’m also not anti any of those statements! My whole exploration is to support people in connecting more with themselves and their own resilience. That being said, for many, many people, self-compassion is not their first stop in exploring. Before we dive into what I said above, let’s talk about what self-compassion is. Having compassion for oneself is really no different than having compassion for others. Having compassion also means that you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes, rather than judging them harshly. Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, failing, or noticing something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself at this moment? (Dr. Kristen Neff / www.self-compassion.org). Dr. Neff provides wonderful free resources on her site to learn more about how to practice self-compassion. Some things she invites us to consider are: How would you treat a friend? How do you think things might change if you responded to yourself in the same way you typically respond to a close friend when he or she is suffering? Changing your critical self-talk By acknowledging your self-critical voice and reframing its observations in a more friendly way, you will eventually form the blueprint for changing how you relate to yourself long-term. Identifying what we really want Remember that if you really want to motivate yourself, love is more powerful than fear. Reframing your inner dialogue so that it is more encouraging and supportive helps get you there. What self-compassion isn’t: a cure-all for stress, trauma, anxiety, mental health issues, etc. So why is self-compassion not for everyone? Many of us may have learned through our environment, school, family, or job that we are not worthy of self-compassion. We may not have seen it modeled for us or may have been told that we are not deserving of care. We may have also been rewarded for achieving big things or being "perfect" and thus learned that our worth is only tied in with being "good." As adults, we know that it is rare that something will actually be perfect, but we stay stuck on the hamster wheel, convinced we must attain the unattainable before we can be kind to ourselves or before we deserve compassion. Many of us also believe that if we are kind to ourselves, we are being self-indulgent and will no longer carry out our responsibilities, complete tasks, or do things well. We may think we will become "lazy." In fact, by speaking negatively to ourselves, criticizing ourselves, and treating ourselves as less than others, we block ourselves from truly being the best, most authentic version we can be. We get in the way of our own agency to go after what we want, shy away from new opportunities, create anxiety in our lives by telling ourselves we aren't good enough, and generally create an increased stress load on our minds and bodies. Paradoxically, this increased stress can actually cause us to underperform, feel distracted, not complete tasks, feel angry or irritable, and have difficulty connecting to others. It can also lead us to stay in situations that make us unhappy or unfulfilled because we subconsciously believe we don't deserve anything different. Ok, so we want to move forward toward good things, and stop getting in the way of what we want, yet, when we try to practice self-compassion, it can seem to make things worse. Why? Go back and read my previous post about our survival strategies and how they kept us safe! If you have learned to function, to keep going, to manage by criticizing yourself, then trying to jump into self-compassion and kindness is actually going to make that subconscious part of us more scared. It wasn’t safe in the past, whether literally or figuratively, to let ourselves feel relaxed enough to be self-compassionate. (Remember, many times physical safety was not actually the threat, rather we learned that others around us responded better when we were quiet, perfect, had no needs, etc.). This doesn’t mean we can NEVER ever be self-compassionate or that we can never learn to practice self-compassion. We can! But telling someone that if they just keep practicing self-compassion and self-love, then they will feel better is a recipe for disaster. Why I’m the world’s biggest fan of neutrality. For many of us, self-compassion is a mountain that seems impossible to climb. So where do we start to begin to alleviate the stressful burden of criticizing ourselves? Neutrality. Neutrality is a step on the road of self-compassion. Neutral asks us to simply observe what we are doing and what we are saying to ourselves or about ourselves. Rather than indifference, neutrality is a curiosity that allows us to stay present to what is happening at any moment and start to interrupt the patterns in our brain that taught you that you didn't deserve kindness or that criticism was the only way to motivate you. How do you practice neutrality? Next time you notice that you're criticizing yourself, try this simple activity. Pretend that you are a scientist in a lab or a wildlife expert on safari. Narrate what is happening for you in that moment. "There she goes again, telling herself that she's terrible at public speaking and is going to mess up this presentation and lose her job." "Ah yes, she's yet again telling herself she's a bad Mom after looking at Instagram while her baby is eating." "I'm noticing that she is again telling herself she doesn't deserve to have pizza for dinner with her friends because she needs to look good for her wedding." Notice how it feels to observe with neutrality. Notice how it interrupts your pattern, even if just for a moment. Over time, this process begins to rewire your brain, taking you out of the old pattern of criticism and shifting you into a curious, nonjudgmental stance. And then, our old friend, self-compassion slowly (slowly) begins to emerge. 12/27/2021 Let's talk about self compassion - What is it, why is it so hard, and how can i start practicing it today?Read NowWhat is self compassion?
Having compassion for oneself is really no different than having compassion for others. Having compassion also means that you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes, rather than judging them harshly. Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment? (Dr. Kristen Neff / www.self-compassion.org). How do I practice self compassion? How would you treat a friend? How do you think things might change if you responded to yourself in the same way you typically respond to a close friend when he or she is suffering? Change your critical self talk. By acknowledging your self-critical voice and reframing its observations in a more friendly way, you will eventually form the blueprint for changing how you relate to yourself long-term. Identify what we really want. Remember that if you really want to motivate yourself, love is more powerful than fear. Reframing your inner dialogue so that it is more encouraging and supportive helps get you there. (Dr. Kristen Neff / www.self-compassion.org). Why is self compassion so hard for me? We may have learned through our environment, school, family, or job that we are not worthy of self compassion. We may not have seen it modeled for us or may have been told that we are not deserving of care. We may have also been rewarded for achieving big things or being "perfect" and thus learned that our worth is only tied in with being "good." As adults, we know that it is rare that something will actually be perfect, but we stay stuck on the hamster wheel, convinced we must attain the unattainable before we can be kind to ourselves. Many of us also believe that if we are kind to ourselves, we are being self indulgent and will no longer carry out our responsibilities, complete tasks, or do things well. We may think we will become "lazy." In fact, by speaking negatively to ourselves, criticizing ourselves, and treating ourselves as less than, we block ourselves from truly being the best, most authentic version we can be. We block our own agency to go after what we want, shy away from new opportunities, create anxiety in our lives by telling ourselves we aren't good enough, and generally create an increased stress load on our minds and bodies. This increased stress can actually cause us to underperform, feel distracted, not complete tasks, feel angry or irritable, and have difficulty connecting to others. It can also lead us to stay in situations that make us unhappy or unfulfilled because we subconsciously believe we don't deserve anything different. Where do I start with self compassion if it feels so hard? For many of us, self-compassion is a mountain that seems impossible to climb. So where do we start to begin to alleviate the stressful burden of criticizing ourself? Neutrality. Neutrality is a step on the road of self compassion. Neutral asks us to simply observe what we are doing and what we are saying to ourselves or about ourselves. Rather than indifference, neutrality is a curiosity that allows us to stay present to what is happening at any moment and start to interrupt the patterns in your brain that taught you that you didn't deserve kindness or that criticism was the only way to motivate you. Next time you notice that you're criticizing yourself, try this simple activity. Pretend that you are a scientist in a lab or a wildlife expert on safari. Narrate what is happening for you in that moment. "There she goes again, telling herself that she's terrible at public speaking and is going to mess up this presentation and lose her job." "Ah yes, she's yet again telling herself she's a bad Mom after looking at Instagram while her baby is eating." "I'm observing that she is again telling herself she doesn't deserve to have pizza for dinner with her friends because she needs to look good for her wedding." Notice how it feels to observe with neutrality. Notice how it interrupts your pattern, Over time, this process begins to rewire your brain, taking you out of the old pattern of criticism and shifting you into a curious, nonjudgmental stance. And then, our old friend, self compassion slowly begins to emerge. |