Refining and Deepening the Healing Process
“Compassion is knowing your darkness well enough so that you can sit with the darkness of the other. It is not a relationship between healed and wounded… It is a relationship of equals.” Pema Chodron
Deep within, we long to be seen and felt by another, deeply known and valued as we truly are. We long to be true to who we are. For that, we need to become friends with all aspects of ourselves and embrace them back “home”.
We may still carry the wounds and unresolved issues of the times when we needed to be welcomed with warmth and acceptance, and that didn’t happen. Instead, we may have been hurt, ignored, and dismissed … Unfortunately, that impacts how we currently experience ourselves and others in our intimate relationships, friendships, and broader family or work-related close connections. We may often struggle to be true to ourselves and in genuine relationships with significant others. So often, we mistakenly feel that we must give up or compromise one side - our own self or our connection with the important other. There is a way to have both. It starts within, connecting and befriending all different sides of ourselves. If the wounding happened in a relationship, it needs a qualitatively different, new relationship to heal.
Healing the Inner Relationship
Most of us have contradictions in our very nature. For instance, we may have one side that genuinely wants to change, grow and live a better life, and the other side that just wants to be safe, protected and not take any risks with the change. That sets up the inner conflicted dynamic. These two sides are not there for us to choose which one is the right one, as we usually do, and discard the other, but to be embraced with spaciousness and genuine compassion of our Presence and invited to participate in our lives fully. They are our richness and depth, the way the mystery of life manifests itself within each of us.
We cannot unite what is not firstly distinctly present, felt and known. Thus, we must first become aware of all aspects of our experiencing and separate ourselves from the content and the dominant side. In such a way, we can gain some perspective (and optimal distance) and enter a relationship with them. Only then can we see all facets of it clearly and get to know the qualities of different sides, their points of view, essences, and intelligence for us. We have to see all the layers and acknowledge them one by one. The distinguishing process must occur in the inner environment of holding, attunement, spaciousness, kindness, and warmth. The purpose of separating the components is to get to know them truly and then allow them to come back together in a way that honours the qualities, variety, multiplicity, and integrity of our lived experience.
The more one side of us resists the other one, the more that reinforces the belief that the other is unwanted, pathological, cannot change and unworkable. It takes time and practice to transform established patterns of self-aggression and self-abandonment with empathy, attunement, and compassion. Intellectual knowing and insight about what is required are not enough. It takes practice and a new response-ability to regulate the sudden surge of thoughts and emotions when we are triggered. Over time, our nervous system would establish new pathways and more nuanced, synchronised default responses. Every time we get triggered is the opportunity to engage with practice a new way of responding.
How did we get to these self-abandoning patterns in the first place?
The most obvious way is when we or something about us was repeatedly scolded, shamed or ignored by significant others. Also, as young children, we are not neurobiologically mature enough to discern between feeling and being.Consequently, the experience of “I feel bad” becomes “I am bad”. Moreover, although physically separated from our primary carers, we were not separated psychologically and energetically until approximately the age of three, being in a state of fusion or identification. In such a way, we felt our carer's feelings and experiences of self and their view of the world. We all know how intense it is to be merged with loved ones, even as adults. For young children, that becomes quickly overwhelming, even more if they are temperamentally highly sensitive. In a time of intense overwhelm, the protective organismic function of dissociation gets activated, and what is unacceptable or intolerable is pushed “underground” out of awareness. Disowning aspects of our lived experience to protect ourselves from disintegration or unbearable feeling was profoundly adaptive and effective at that time. Although that has had an essential self-preserving function when that pattern gets activated automatically later in life, it perpetuates a sense of self, based on “not being good enough or lovable”, feeling lost, lonely, etc. Our aim in the practice of Focusing is to become aware of our tendencies and automatic responses as they get activated and “update the program” of our functioning to establish integration and the Wholeness of Being.
When we don’t relate to our experiencing with awareness, what is out of awareness remains in “the shadow”. Unfortunately, what is in the “shadow” continues to emerge (to be noticed and responded to) as a somatic symptom, anxiety, panic, relational projections and problems, and - in less-then-desirable ways. When we are not connected to it, we don’t have the power to change it.
Staying consistently present to our experiencing is going to be initially challenging. We often reverse into old establishing patterns and “fall off” the Presence. When we become aware of that, we can make an empowering choice to begin caring for ourselves in a new, self-accepting and compassionate way instead of beating ourselves up for not staying calm and holding it all together. Remember, a moment of awareness that you are merged with some intense feeling and not in Presence is a powerful moment of choice when you can choose a new way and refresh your holding. Slowly, with practice, we will respond differently when triggered and maintain the awareness and ability to stay present with our experience.
Refreshing the Presence
Presence is the embodied awareness and experience of wholeness. It is the ability to be with whatever arises in us, without choosing or judging, the ability to hold every aspect of our own inner experience in acceptance and interested curiosity. In the gentle and accepting atmosphere of Presence actual change can occur.
The opposite of Presence is being reactive. There are many forms of reactivity: getting scared, trying to quickly solve or fix, escaping, getting angry, getting sleepy, etc. These are examples of moments when we lose perspective, become identified with just one side of ourselves, and respond to the situation from its narrowed view. We become and feel narrow, small, heavy, sad, angry... (what other words come for you?) and act from that “part-self”.
Refreshing the Presence is like moving into spaciousness, moving into a broader perspective, having the feelings without being caught in them, but rather holding them and allowing them to be the way they are just in that moment.
We’ll support our ability to be in a state of Presence by:
› physically feeling the solid, grounded support of our whole body
› sensing and acknowledging exactly how we are feeling
› bringing a gentle hand to the place where we are feeling something
It can be humbling to discover how many of our habitual and addictive behaviours serve the purpose of getting us out of feelings we find too hard to feel and protecting us from (assumed) raw vulnerability at the core. Although we might feel that we need relief from difficult feelings, our own Presence, holding, attending, with attunement meets the most profound longing we all have. By “holding” our experience in Presence (in a new way), connecting to it with curiosity and kindness – while opening to the possibility of being “held” by something greater than ourselves – we began to establish new pathways to wisdom and creativity in even the most challenging circumstances.
Whatever comes inside that is experienced as a problem with its intensity or discomfort it caused – comes not to harm us but to draw the attention it needs. Even perceiving something within us as a problem we must “deal with” reinforces the inner conflict and potential for self-aggression and self-abandonment. All these abandoned, forgotten, or not discovered “parts” of us yet only long to come back “home”. It is an act of self-compassion to provide a safe space for all the feelings and sensations as they come, conveying meaningful information for our journey ahead. At the core of our most challenging experience, there is guidance and wisdom to find only if we can approach it with the self-compassion that is required for its revelation.
If we prematurely repress the emotional charge or merge with it and act it out, we will not have access to that underlying wisdom at its core. What we cannot access, articulate, and process, we inevitably evoke in others, enact in our relationships, or discover in our bodies. Instead, we can pause and say,
“I am aware that I was just about to abandon myself. This time, just now, I’m going to pause, take another breath, refresh my grounded Presence and choose self-compassion.”
Although our inner aspects might continue to come up in times of increased stress, our relationship with them can change profoundly. When we approach them offering the spacious, grounded state of Presence, they would no longer be able to throw us off the centre and will come with trust that there is a place for them, and they will be listened to and responded to. With the intention to practise caring for ourselves in a new way and over time, we will ‘catch’ ourselves earlier and earlier before we get pulled into habitual reactive patterns. While self-criticism, blame, and shame can feel so entrenched, replacing the dynamic of abandonment and aggression with consideration and kindness is possible.
Allow for the possibility that there is incredible intelligence and creativity within our symptoms that we can get in contact with, understand and incorporate if we approach the inner space with awareness, curiosity, and compassion. They are arising not as enemies to obscure our path but as allies. They can become an ally if we meet each ‘uninvited visitor’ in a new way, with openness and warmth. As the allies, they are there to reveal something relevant to our path. In a way, we do need the courage to approach something that comes across as painful, threatening, or uncomfortable and stay long enough that it can trust us to reveal itself and its point of view entirely.