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Please only try this practice if you already have some self-compassion training under your belt. This advanced practice is designed to help you get in touch with anger from an old relationship, the soft emotions under that anger, and the related unmet needs in that relationship. Then you’ll be invited to get in touch with your own resource of compassion to meet your needs directly.
Photo by Hieu Vu Minh on Unsplash. Music by Joe Valley. Meditation offered by Kristy Arbon.
MSC meditations © Christopher Germer & Kristin Neff. Mindful Self-Compassion. September 2017. All rights reserved. If you would like permission to reproduce, distribute, publish, display, or modify these materials, please contact www.CenterForMSC.org.
Thanks Kristy
Love this 💗
Glad this one resonated for you, dear Ciara <3
Wow- this was a rigorous and well supported practice experience. I appreciated having the resource of choice to pause or go ahead and drill down into the layers of feelings behind what I began to examine as a recent necessary, somewhat uncomfortable yet ultimately peaceful issue of communication between a neighbor ( a 3 on the scale as you suggested.) The situation in question activated a deeper memory related to and emblematic of the same unmet need that wanted to be explored. What showed up was an encounter and its dénouement by another man in my village which registered as anger and I have carried for several years. My chest felt tight and bitter, my heart felt buzzy and erratic—not a new sensation. Newly and intimately aware of these feelings I host beneath the surface, I felt the burn and the burden. These spin outs softened when I recognized the fear underneath and my need to feel safe in my home and space. As I heard you suggest offering myself kindness, connection and affection my inner voice reminded, “This is your place. You can set boundaries.” I also experienced my place as meaning the place of awareness I call body.
It took courage to do this work, and chose as you suggested a “3” on the difficulty scale…though in the process I learned how much trauma and pain could be moved and released when I am supported enough to attend to and offer myself company. Thank you for your practice. And for sharing it with me/us.
Thanks so much for sharing about your experience, dear Lisa. I’m glad you tried this practice out. Yes, it’s quite a rigorous and advanced practice. I’m glad you were able to hold yourself so skillfully through it. I’m also glad we’re in community together 🙂
Love this powerful meditation. Thank you. Used an experience with a friend from 14 years ago. She cancelled meeting up with me 5 times in succession and I felt very hurt. She was a new mum at the time and my brother was dying. Her last cancellation email said how precious time is which added to my pain given brother’s situation and her ‘not respecting my time’ by lots of short notice cancellations at a time when I felt vulnerable and needing a friend. I felt very ashamed of feeling hurt and having the need to be met with but rather than directly communicate it to her (I felt too vulnerable) I cut contact and felt more pain at loss of friendship. In this meditation I brought compassion to the scared, deeply hurting part of me that couldn’t communicate the pain and need to my friend -“ I see you and I understand your pain and shame. Recognised that’s a lot of pain – including the inability to express my needs and feelings to my friend. I love you – you can heal. Felt I was able to hold myself – and realised a much deeper pattern in me stemming from shame-based childhood ie shamed for having & expressing needs. Feel quite raw now but holding self with compassion and gentleness.
Thanks so much for sharing, Kath. I’m glad this meditation felt useful for you. Sounds as if you’ve been holding a lot for all those years, and I hear how transformative it can be to finally process some of that emotion. You’re not alone in experiencing a “shame-based childhood” – many of us have that experience. When we can connect our childhood experiences with our ways of being in our adult relationships, we can start to understand ourselves better and, as you express, we can change our relationship with ourselves to one of self-compassion. I’m glad you’ve been able to do some of that important work.