Dick Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, wrote an article a few years ago about how challenging it is for some of us to feel self compassion.
“Although it’s true that self-compassion may begin in a simple, generic stroking of our wounded selves—there, there, you’re not so bad—achieving a genuine state of self-compassion is a more challenging undertaking than many realize. More than the comforting phrases you offer yourself when stressed, genuine self-compassion is a journey into the multiple parts of yourself—the good, the bad, the ugly, the confused, the frightened, the abandoned—so as to make friends with those parts on the deepest level.”
“The primary obstacle to treating ourselves more kindly is the fact that most of us are addicted to self-criticism. Who among us hasn’t had the experience of learning to be judgmental of ourselves as a teenager, when we’re so worried about how we’re going to appear to others? At that stage, the stakes seem so high that if someone is critical of us, we’re likely to start picking ourselves apart, trying to look or act perfectly so we won’t become a social pariah. And, as is well known, for people who’ve been abused—who’ve perhaps been abusers themselves—this vigilant self-criticism can easily turn into self-hatred.”
“One of the main obstacles to self-compassion is that, by itself, the idea is too vague. It’s not enough just to be ‘nicer’ to yourself. You need to ask the question ‘Who’s being compassionate to whom?’ This involves actually being able to picture or sense the different parts inside us and develop concrete, ongoing relationships with them.”
“How do you first access your compassionate Self? Mindfulness practice is one way, but some people, hard as they try, can’t distance themselves from their busy minds. So Internal Family Systems (IFS), the model of therapy I’ve developed over the past 30 years, involves the process of not merely separating from the chatter of our usual protective defenses, but of conducting an ongoing negotiation among our parts so the Self can begin to emerge. Often the process begins with helping people notice from where in their body their inner critics seem to be broadcasting. This initial experience of noticing the source of sensations within the body can begin to create separation from the clamor of parts. The next step is to ask people how they feel toward the part that’s the source of the thoughts and feelings they find disturbing. This question creates further separation and helps people realize they have a relationship with a part. Often a person will say, ‘I hate that critic. I feel oppressed by it. I know I can never please it.’ In these dialogues, the therapist’s first job in IFS is simply validating these negative feelings of the parts who hate the critic and expressing an understanding of why they might react that way. The next step is to have the client ask those parts to step back or relax inside, so he can get to know the critic with an open mind. The goal is to see whether it’s possible to listen to it in a way that makes that part let go of the need to be so aggressively critical.”
“A second major identity shift comes as clients get to know their parts more fully. Invariably, they learn that the parts that they most feared or mistrusted aren’t at all what they thought them to be.”
“Again and again in my years of being a therapist, I’ve found that as soon as people get to know even the most seemingly destructive or even evil part within them and learn the secret history of how it was forced into its protective role, a sense of deep compassion and gratitude enters into their awareness.”
https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/2/facing-our-dark-side
Elaine Korngold, LPC, at Ask Counseling LLC, offers Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy to clients who want to get to know and heal parts of themselves that are causing issues in today’s life and that they are not able to reach on their own. Schedule your free 20-minute phone consultation to learn more.