Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 71 of Working towards

our purpose. Today's episode is going to be about

self compassion and how to have

some more compassion towards yourself. But before we get into that

we are going to do our normal check in and

see where we're at today, check in with ourselves, take a second

and see how we're feeling.

Yeah, so for me,

feeling pretty good. I had a good, good day yesterday

but if I'm thinking right now, I think a

little nervous for today's episode perhaps,

but. But yeah, feeling not too bad. So

yeah, hopefully you got a second to check in with yourself.

Also I've been thinking like I'm wondering if

these sort of check ins at the beginning are helpful because I know they're

helpful for me and I know it's always helpful for me to see where I'm

at before I go into something, before I start something. But I could see how

it could get a bit repetitive. So send me a

message on the feedback form workingtowardsapurpose.com homepage.

If you don't like these or if you do like these, just let me know

and we can always adjust because I do want to be like helpful always.

So if it's something that the majority doesn't like then maybe we can

rethink it. But yeah, let's get into today's episode about

compassion. So I

came to this topic today because

I had a bit of a rough

weekend emotionally I guess.

I don't know, just sort of got in a, in a

depressive episode and it kind of lasted

from like Friday through Sunday which, which has been one of my longer

ones in recent pasts.

Yeah, you know, I haven't had one that long

I guess in a bit. Um, so it

was not fun. Um,

but I did want to talk about it because I think that

even myself, I just like sort of avoid

talking about it, avoid, you know, because once with depression for

me, like once you start feeling better, it's like you forgot that it

happened and you don't even really want to like

think about it or address it because it was uncomfortable and it didn't feel

good and you don't like it so you sort of just like move on. And

so it started for me. So yeah, I just want to talk about it to

also de. Stigmatize it a bit too. Like it's

normal, you know, people have depressive episodes

suffer from depression, a lot of people do. And

yeah, just want to like talk about it. So, so I started on

last Friday for me I was sleep

deprived and was like, trying to get stuff done and skipped my

morning routine because I thought, like, I didn't have enough time.

And, yeah, I just kind of, like, ended up not having

a great day. Like, not getting things done, not being able to be focused.

And then, you know. You know, I have these

days every now and then, and it's not that unnormal. But then it

sort of bled into Saturday and then sort of bled into Sunday. And, like, yeah,

Saturday evening and Sunday morning, I was just like, damn,

like, what's going on? Just not feeling

up for anything and

mostly thinking, like, negatively about

everything that I'm doing and just not having any, like, hope for,

you know, all hope was sort of erased and

not positive. Just. I'm trying to describe it, but it's even like

you forget. You forget because you kind of just like, numb yourself with

distractions or, you know, tv, social media, whatever it is,

and don't do much. Like, yeah, I don't think I really, like, left,

got outside, didn't do my walks. Like, none of my normal stuff that I do,

I wasn't. I wasn't doing so. But, yeah, it was leading me to

these, like, thoughts of like, oh, this is. This podcast,

the YouTube channel. Like, none of it's ever going to work out. Like, I don't

know what you're doing. You got to. You got to do something different.

So, luckily, Sunday evening, I was able to

kind of step back from feeling like that and

feeling a little bit more normal and better. And

it was because I started this new book, which I have two books here today

that I want to talk about. But I started this new book, Resilient, by Rick

Hansen, and the first chapter is

about compassion and having compassion for yourself. So we'll get into that in

a little bit. But that was kind of, I think, what helped me

realize that I was being hard on myself, that I was having all these negative

thoughts. And then I picked up this

other book, to Undoing Depression by Richard o', Connor,

that I had already read, but I sort of just wanted to reference it and

look at a couple of sticky notes. And, yeah,

it made me realize, like, when I

was going through feeling, you

know, hopeless and all those sorts of negative feelings,

that they kind of just come. They just kind of just flood in, and you

don't really feel like you have control over it. And

they all feel real in the moment. They all feel like they. The

truth, and they all are just sort of

crippling. And nothing in the moment

seems like it's going to really help. But that's why, like, I really

have been grateful for reading and for books because, yeah,

just reading a chapter, you know, 10, 15 pages on

an idea just makes me kind of snap out of it.

And that's, I don't really like saying snap out of it because it's not like

there's, it's not like there's something wrong with you and you need to snap out

of it, but sort of more lean

towards, you know, positivity and hopefulness

and, and to not believe those negative thoughts

because they both come negative thoughts, positive thoughts. And you can kind of have your,

your choice over which ones you think. And I don't know if you

can hear that helicopter, but it's pretty loud, bit

distracting, but it will pass. And. Okay,

so it leads me to this idea that I wanna talk about. It's called

Automatic Negative Thoughts. And it's in this book, Undoing Depression. And I just wanna

read like the definition of what automatic

negative thoughts are. Because when I read it

this morning when I was doing some research, I

immediately was like, that's what I was experiencing. Like, that's what happened. Like

one or two negative things happen and then you just automatically have this flood of

negative thoughts. So automatic negative are

the knee jerk reactions that have become the default mode of thinking under

stress. And it's abbreviated, it can be

abbreviated as ants. And the author says that,

you know, he likes this abbreviation because it obviously

stands for automatic negative thoughts, but it also sort of

represents ants, which seem to creep up out of nowhere

and spoil the picnic. So I thought that that was a

funny way of remembering it. And it just

felt like some language to put to like how I was feeling.

And I think that, you know, this sort of can happen

a lot if you don't. If, if I'm not all

right, I'll speak for me, if I'm not aware of like

my thoughts, like sometimes it could become just these automatic negative

thoughts. And it's, it's sort of this learned habit that, that we,

we have. And you know, just for example, like

sometimes I don't know if you can resonate with this, but like, maybe you get

up in the morning and maybe you don't like what you see in the mirror.

And then all of a sudden you have like one negative thought and then you

have another negative thought and then all of a sudden you just made yourself feel

terrible for like something as simple as looking in

the mirror. And yeah, it just sort of

like puts your day on this negative trajectory that

you maybe wouldn't have had otherwise. And it seems to just like happen so

quickly and so automatically. So it was kind of reassuring to hear that

like this is a thing that happens and like, you know, it's people,

people do it, it's frequent, it happens especially with, you know, if

you suffer from depression. And yeah, it was, it

was nice to, to think about it in that way because now,

you know, hopefully next time. You know, obviously I already read that

book and I already was aware of that concept, but I kind of forgot about

it. But you know, maybe next time if it happens again, I can sort of

think of this visual representation of these ants and

maybe put a little humor into it and hopefully

prevent it from spiraling out of control.

But that sort of leads me into the next concepts that I

read about was self compassion and kind of what I want to talk about today.

And at the end I'll have like one

takeaway exercise that you can do to have self compassion for yourself.

But first let's talk about what self compassion is. And

you know, we've had episodes on self love and stuff, but

I think thinking of self compassion, at least when I read

it this time in this book on, on Sunday night, it sort of

reshaped a little bit my thinking. And

yeah, so I just read, I read this one sentence here that I think kind

of sums up the chapter and it says that when we treat others

with respect and caring, the best in them usually comes

out. Much the same would happen if we could treat ourselves in the

same way. So that sentence was just kind

of impactful for me. And I think it just made

me realize that I wasn't treating myself with compassion and

that if I could start to treat myself with compassion that maybe all these negative

feelings could go away and

not go away permanently, but just I don't, they could subside and

they don't have to be as feeling, they don't have to feel as heavy as

they did. So that was in the book Resilient by Rick Hanson.

And I'll link both of these in the show notes so you can find them.

I just started the Resilient one, so excited to read the

rest of it. But yeah, so just thinking about these

ideas of like, you know, we treat others with compassion

usually and we have no problem with that. But treating

ourselves with compassion can be so much harder. And

I think it's sort of

like a habit. Like being able to treat others with

compassion is because you've been taught to do that. Maybe somebody, a

parent showed you that that was the right thing to do. Maybe somebody else showed

you that. But when we talk about ourselves, we

need to build a habit of having compassion for ourselves.

Or at least I need to build a habit of having compassion for myself.

And, and oh, there's another

actually section that I want to read in here too.

Sorry, a little all over the place. Let's see if I could

find it. Yeah, okay.

So then it was talking about like, you know, growing and learning how to have

compassion for yourself. And it says the key to growing any

psychological resource, including compassion, is to have repeated

experiences of it

that gets turned into lasting changes in

the neural structure or function. So basically saying that if you want to

learn to have self compassion for yourself, you have to have repeated experiences

and then you sort of can rewire your neural

pathways and it can become like a normal thing. Because

a lot of us, especially those of us who suffer from mental health,

have learned sort of negative habits and

you know, learned the opposite of self compassion. We learned the

automatic negative thoughts to treat ourselves when we're feeling,

you know, under stress or vulnerable or,

you know, we, we have these automatic negative thoughts. So if we can replace

these automatic negative thoughts with self compassion,

then we can maybe not fall into

longer periods of depression. And for me, this made a

lot of sense for me, and if it resonates with you, great. If

it doesn't, that's also great. But I just wanted to share this experience because I

think for me it's common and

I'm always looking for ways to try to be able

to pull myself out of negative cycles.

And these two things sort of coincided and made sense to

me. And I was like, okay, I need to replace these automatic negative thoughts with

some more self compassion and to think about how I can do that.

And sort of you have to

retrain your brain. Like anything that you

learn is over time and repetitive, just like that

sentence said. And if you think about learning anything, it takes time to

learn it. Like learning guitar, you don't just pick it up

one time and you're like, okay, now I can play guitar. You have to train

your brain, you have to train your fingers, you have to, you know,

get used to playing it. And muscle memory is a

thing. Like, you know, muscle memory means that you've done it so many times that

your brain already knows how to do it. So you know, I could play a

G chord, no problem. I don't even have to think about it or look at

the fretboard on a guitar. But for me to think about having self

compassion for myself, that's a lot Harder because I haven't practiced that I've played

guitar for. Geez, I don't know, probably almost 20

years at this point. But yeah, I

have to practice. I have to practice having self compassion. So if I want

to sort of limit these automatic negative thoughts, I can

replace it with self compassion. So that's what I wanted to talk about

today, that concept. And.

If there's one thing that I've ever done that's helped with having self

compassion, it's this one exercise that I want to get to.

Um, so it, this one might, you know, it's going to be a little bit

of work and you know, maybe you're not ready to do it now and that's

fine because you know, I don't expect you to

do everything. But if you're ready for it or

maybe when you're ready for it in the future. I think this exercise has been

really helpful for me so I wanted to share it. Um, and I

think it probably had done this in therapy and it

worked really well and I've done it a

couple times. So yeah, basically what we're going to

do is get a journal out and get a piece of paper

and you're going to imagine a

previous version of yourself that

was going through a really hard time and

you kind of want to imagine it as like a separate

person and you know that sounds weird but it's like

you think of like your 5 year old self or your 10 year old self

and now you're not that person but you can look at that person sort of

more objectively. So the idea is to sort of think of

a time in your life that was really hard and really difficult and

to just picture that person, to picture you

at that age and you want to write down like all

the details that you can. Like maybe it was a really hard breakup or maybe

your parents got divorced or maybe you know, some

sort of trauma that happened in childhood or in adulthood.

Something that was like really hard that you went through and you can

remember and you want to just try to like write down all the details and

this is going to be hard, like it, it will be difficult

and you know, that's okay

because we're working through it. And I think,

you know, once you've sort of written down all the details that you can

then. And write it on paper, like journal it down.

It's most helpful. If you can journal it, you can do it, you know, kind

of just a thought experiment, but it's more helpful writing it down

and then the next thing that you want to do is to think about what

that person needed in that moment. Like what maybe you were a kid,

what did five year old you need when

you know, your parents were getting divorced or you went through this

horrible trauma, or maybe it was just

a moment where you needed help and

there was nobody there or you wanted to be seen and there was

nobody there to see you. To think about what that person

needed and then to write that down. What did that person need? Maybe they just

needed a hug. You know, maybe they needed an adult to guide

them and to tell them it was going to be okay to just think about

like what that person needed. And then

the last thing that you want to do, you want to write that down too,

Write that down in the journal. And then the last thing that you want to

do is to visualize you present

day right now, giving the

older version of you, the five year old, giving that person what they needed.

And this is an imagination experience, but

it can be really helpful and impactful to think about

giving that older version of yourself

what they need. Because for

me, what it makes me do is to realize that that

kid needed something and it wasn't

necessarily their fault and likely it wasn't

their fault. And you know, it's not to say that like

you know, you had terrible

parents or whatever, like you don't, you didn't have to go through like some major

trauma for this to be helpful. It could be like just something kind of simple

even. And to think of yourself as like this kid that needed something and they

didn't get it. And you can give that to yourself now and like what

that is the giving to yourself now that is self

compassion and it makes you feel what

self compassion feels like. So this exercise for

me has shown that to me and made me feel

what self compassion feels like. So

doing this exercise one time is great and

it can help you experience what self compassion feels like. And

going back to the idea that like if we're learning something new, if we're

learning self compassion new, and this is something new for us, we need to

do this multiple times and we need to sort of internalize what it

feels like and to do it a few times

to learn how to get better at it. So while you're doing

this, try to like really sit with the feel. If you, if you can

get to the feeling of self compassion, really sit with it and try

to like feel it for as long as possible before it goes away.

And I think that that can be really helpful

to try to teach yourself to have more

self compassion and yeah, I think

it would probably be helpful for me to do this again. And I'm thinking that

I'll probably do this after this episode just for a little bit

and maybe for me it would be a great experience to do it for me

this weekend. What did I need this weekend? I don't know. I'll have to sit

and think about that. And

yeah, so I, you know, hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully it wasn't all over the

place. But just to recap a little bit like

you know these automatic negative thoughts that can happen when

maybe you're in a depressive episode or maybe even not

doesn't totally matter but all of these like floods of negative thoughts that happen,

how can we overcome them? How can we sort of get through them and see

that they're not the truth? We, we can have some self compassion for ourself

and to learn how to have self

compassion as the default instead of the automatic

negative thoughts we can practice self compassion and we can use this

exercise to practice self compassion. And yeah, so

if you take anything from today, try to have a little bit more

self compassion for yourself because I think when we are able

to have more compassion for ourselves and we're able to empathize with

ourselves and not beat ourselves up when we're

feeling down or depressed and to have that

compassion it can help not keep us stuck. It can help us

get out of that quicker and move on to whatever it is that we

need to do and whatever work we need to get done

or whoever we need to be there for other people. It

can help us get back to ourselves quicker and yeah,

so, so hopefully this was helpful. I

appreciate you for listening. And one, one

call to action again, I have 96

subscribers on YouTube at the moment of recording this I'm almost at 100.

If you haven't subscribed on YouTube working towards our purpose, if I can ask

you to do that I would appreciate that. And

yeah, and also have a little self compassion for yourself today.

And thank you for listening. I think this is all I have and I

will see you on another episode real soon.