Becoming a Compassionate Mess

What a year 2021 was. If your experience was anything like mine, the year was a total mess – Covid, toxic politics, global warming, inflation. Maybe you’re feeling like a mess yourself – exhausted, hopeless, unproductive, confused, depressed.

Cultivating Loving-Kindness

When we can remain caring even in instances of distress, failure or sorrow, our loving-kindness manifests as compassion.  It’s therefore important that we strengthen our ability to feel loving-kindness toward ourselves in order to become more self-compassionate.

The Paradox of Self-Compassion

There’s a paradox that lies at the heart of self-compassion practice:
We give ourselves compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad.

Techniques for Working with Difficult Emotions

When we experience difficult emotions like sadness, fear, shame, confusion, or disappointment, we often become overwhelmed. We can spiral into reactivity or shut down as we try to cope. One of the most powerful aspects of tender self-compassion is the ability to hold our difficult emotions with spaciousness and warmth, so we aren’t so overwhelmed.

Drawing Boundaries

Do you find yourself saying yes to requests automatically, even when you don’t want to? Do you worry excessively about hurting others feelings or being disliked if you say no? Many of us have trouble drawing clear boundaries, especially if we assume that being “nice” means being accommodating.