Hello, I'm your host Charmaine and welcome to Beautiful JEMM's.
Alright, so let's talk about one of my favorite pieces of self-protective gear, self-compassion.
Now, why is it one of my favorites? This because it's the gear that I have had the hardest time working with. Okay, I don't know if y'all are like this, but I'm pretty sure that there are many of you that can identify, you're just hard on yourself, right. And what I found is, is that that can actually hinder your healing process. So, this became one of my favorite pieces, because it actually helped me to close the gap to complete my healing, to finish my healing and whatever area it was that I was working on. So, let's take our analogy of going into a mine, right, you want to have, again, your protective gear, so self-compassion, to me, it's kind of like having a hard hat. Before you go into that mineshaft? Well, let me tell you, there are many times when I have gone into that metaphorical mineshaft without that hard hat, and I have come out hurt. So if you plan on doing any kind of work, any kind of inner work where you're going to dig for those JEMMS, you definitely need this protective gear.
Alright, so let's get into it. How did I do that? How did I really start working on that self-compassion? Well, let me tell you, it took me having a lot of bruises and bumps, remember that I'm saying I said, my grandmother used to say, you know, a hard head makes a soft behind? Well, you know, what, I went through a lot of life experiences with a sore butt, because I wasn't compassionate enough with myself. And I think especially being you know, a black woman, you are supposed to just be strong about everything. So that means that, you know, you just you walk up in there, and you know, you're just supposed to handle it. As a matter of fact, my grandmother used to have another thing, put an h on your chest and handle it. Right. So that's what I used to do. That was a mindset I used to have. And I would talk to myself any kind of way, because I'd be like, You got to get this done.
So, but what I've learned is, is that it's almost like my soul would rebel against me, it would never work out. And when I would, I would do all these things to to heal myself. And I'm not going to get into everything, but I would go through this process, and I would get to this place, and it would be great. And then all of a sudden it would all come crashing down. But why is that? Right?
So, I'll give you a real, you know, kind of benign example that I think people can relate to, which is, you know, you go on a diet, and you're doing well, for like two months straight. You don't eat one thing that right? Then you go to a special event, you go to a party, you go to a birthday or something like that, and you have a piece of cake. Right? So, you have the cake you like, you know what, I think I'm going to have something else the next day, you know, because now you got that sugar in your system. And maybe you, you I don't know, you decide to have a cookie the next day, then you hear that voice? You hear that inner critic come to you. And it's like now, you know, yesterday, you had cake. Today, you're you're having a cookie, you're just wrong. And it starts out that way. And somehow you stop dieting. Why? Because that inner critic has beat you up so badly. Or you've let that inner critic beat you up so badly, that you're like, you know what, forget about it all. I'm just going to let this die go. Because I messed up. And I got to start all over again, being hard on yourself. Now, again, this example is very benign, but this is what happens sometimes when you go through that healing process. Right? So, you're on track, you're doing well. But if you don't include this component of self-compassion, it can actually hinder your healing.
Right. So, what wound up happening for me is that after having so many of these experiences and different areas of life and even having people come to me and say, Hey, you're too hard on yourself. What I did was I started to really study Oh, you know what, actually, let me bring it on back. Because this is going to, you know, let you guys know how to use some of the tools that I spoke about before. What I actually did was I went in prayer about it. I went in prayer, I took some time I was quiet. And I did my best to listen to the answers that I received. And the strongest answer that I got was you don't have any compassion for yourself. What's the opposite of being hard on you?
Having compassion? Right? So, what that did was it led me to go and look up information because if you all know already, I'm glad for that. I went And I looked up information about self-compassion. And I ran across this awesome, awesome book by a Dr. Kristin Neff, who has actually researched self-compassion for over 20 years. Right. And the book is called self-compassion, the proven power of being kind to yourself. Now in this book, she talks about three main components of self-compassion, which are self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. So, let's get into the first one, self-kindness. Now with self-kindness, it's about self-observation without judgment, self-understanding, instead of condemning yourself, it's essentially putting that inner critic I was talking to you about earlier telling you how bad you are for eating that cake and that cookie, putting that inner critic to rest. Self-kindness, by definition, according to the book is actively comforting ourselves.
Now, this helps us heal when we're in pain, handling ourselves with gentleness and with sympathy. Okay, so did you just cringe when you heard the words gentleness and sympathy? Okay, good. So that means that you hit a gym. Right? Let me ask you, how would you talk to a good friend, if they felt bad? Now, do you talk to yourself that same way? Odds are probably not. So how can we actively comfort ourselves? While in the book, Kristin Neff actually gives a few ways in which we can do this.
So, when you criticize yourself, or when that inner critic is screaming real loud, you're going through these emotions and you're in pain, what you're going to do is say this phrase to yourself, I love and accept myself exactly as I am. The second thing that you can do is literally give yourself a hug.
So, you know, before you know, you shoot the messenger, we naturally do things like this, you know, and they talk about it, she talks about this in the book as well, where we're folding our arms and we rub the sides of them, or we're racking our bodies, right? This is all a form of self, self. This is all a form of self-soothing. Can y'all tell I had a hard time saying that I couldn't say that three times fast.
This physical touch helps to release oxytocin into your system, changing your biochemical or physical body experience. Alright, so this is a powerful way to show yourself kindness through this self soothe, soothing, see, if you guys haven't caught it, as a sidebar, this is physical touch. And if any of you are familiar with The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, this is one of the five ways that you can show yourself while you can show love. And in this instance, we're using it to show our self-love.
Now, the third thing that is suggested in the book is self-talk, speech is important. We all have heard that there is power in what you say. But do you know that there's also power in what you say to yourself, that internal dialogue, because what you're doing is you're feeding your subconscious, a daily diet of thoughts, which speaks to what you truly believe about yourself. So, I'm going to use an example. And one that I went through in my early 20s, which is calling myself stupid saying things like I'm stupid, because you know, you didn't do something right and it and it can be you might think that is nothing like you say it in passing to yourself home, I'm so stupid, I can't believe I did that. Those type of things need to be reframed. Because you can't just stop saying something, you have to replace it with something new. It's like that scripture in the Bible that talks about putting wine into new wineskins versus old wine skins, right. So you have to have these new thoughts. And what you can do in this instance, instead of saying I'm stupid, you could reframe that and say, I'm smart. I just made a mistake. Again, we're going back to the five love languages here. Essentially, this is words of affirmation. And this is where affirmations can be helpful when they are used in conjunction with self-compassion, with these exercises, what you can do and start to create the conditions for healing. Okay, so let's talk about the second component of self-compassion, which is common humanity. Now, what is that? It's, it's just basically common human experience, and remembering that we're all interconnected with one another. Oh, yeah, made that sound real simple, right? Well, the truth is, is that many times people can feel isolated, we feel like we're the only one at times we may feel like we're not good enough. And what this does is it creates a disconnect with others. And it simultaneously increases your personal pain and suffering. For me, I had a very hard time with this particular component of self-compassion. Because many times I did feel isolated, as if I was the only one that something had happened to. And sometimes that can be difficult in life, when you do have things happen to you that is, um, if you want to say different maybe from the average person that's around you, you can start to develop this thought process where you know what, no one understands. No one knows what I'm going through. And, to a certain degree, you're right, because you are a unique combination of experiences. So, nobody quite will quite have an experience just like you. However, there are people that do have experiences, all of the experiences that we can possibly have, someone else has had them. And it's so interesting, because I actually had heard Oprah talk about this. And it made me chuckle. Because I said, Wow, she mentioned she was actually talking about making mistakes. And she brought up how, you know, if she happens to make a mistake, she doesn't feel bad about it. And the reason why is because somebody out there, has gone through it before, she's not the first person in life that this has happened to, she said, as a matter of fact, even if there isn't anybody out there right now, she got doubts very highly. Like, she's the only person in history that this has happened to, right. If you trip and fall, there's somebody else that probably has tripped and fell.
So, although are combinations of experiences are unique to us, our experience itself is not unique to us. And in that we can find common humanity. So it's basically recognizing that we're all in this human experience together, and we're not alone. This in itself will help us to be compassionate towards ourselves, and in turn, compassionate towards others. The third and final component of self-compassion is mindfulness. Now, it's described in the book as being present and seeing things as they really are. But without judgment, this I can tell you from my experience is going to definitely take some practice. But you got this, right. So the reason why it's going to take some practices because as it's described in the book, what mindfulness does is it allows you to respond to your emotions instead of react. So, for example, if you're going through emotions, where you're in pain, what is triggered typically is a fight or flight response, where we either shut down and ignore that pain, or we just totally avoid it. But you see, this is the very place where healing can occur. So, if we can find the courage to face and hold our pain, with mindfulness, we allow ourselves to come into full awareness of how we truly feel, and this is where the work can be done. So, if we take it back to our example of mining our JEMMS, this is essentially using self-compassion, putting on your hard hat and going into that mineshaft. Alright, so now that we have an understanding of that, how can we put these things into practice? Remember, in the mind your mind podcast, we spoke about the meditation technique I learned from headspace.com called noted. This technique is also given in the book, where you use meditation and mindfulness to note your thoughts and feelings as they come to you during meditation. Then you let them pass. Later on, YOu can go through them and your mind or write them down to determine what is worth further examination for your healing. Okay, so we're going to wrap it up here. And what I'm going to encourage you to do is start going through some of those exercises because it's kind of like trying on that protective gear before you actually go into the mind. So that way, if you put it into practice now, once you actually get to mining those JEMMS, you'll be good to go.
Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I pray that you build your relationship with God. Love yourself unconditionally, and put in the work to mind refine and shine those JEMMS.