LOST (by David Wagoner)

 

LOST

 

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

 

-- David Wagoner

 

Self-compassion is not self-indulgence: here’s how to try it (by Christina Chwyl)

I’ll never forget the time I overheard one of my high-school classmates repeatedly calling herself stupid in front of the bathroom mirror. When I recognised her voice, chills ran down my spine. I’d always thought of her as one of the kindest people in the whole school. I was shocked to hear how cruel she was to herself when she thought she was on her own.

From a young age, we learn how to be a good friend to others. In kindergarten or nursery school, we’re taught how to share, cooperate and play. Any child who calls other kids dumb, losers or ‘fart face’ is swiftly scolded or given a time out. All in all, we grow up learning to follow the golden rule: ‘Treat others how you want to be treated.’

Yet many of us receive no guidance on how to be a friend to ourselves. In fact, we might even get counterproductive messaging about what it means to treat ourselves with kindness. We might come to believe that being kind towards ourselves is self-indulgent, lazy or weak.

As a clinical psychologist in training, I’ve discovered such self-beratement is commonplace. For example, people often judge their bodies, work performance or parenting abilities by standards to which they’d never hold others. Many people call themselves names they’d never dare utter to friends or family members, or even to people they dislike.

It’s little surprise that the psychological concept of ‘self-compassion’ is cloaked in controversy. At its core, self-compassion involves treating yourself with the same kindness and consideration with which you’d treat a loved one. Just as compassion begins by recognising another’s pain, self-compassion begins by recognising when you, yourself, are suffering. A self-compassionate response, according to a leading self-compassion researcher, Kirstin Neff at the University of Texas, entails three critical ingredients:

1. self-kindness: offering yourself warmth and understanding rather than self-judgment;
2. common humanity: remembering that all human beings make mistakes and experience pain, rather than feeling isolated in your suffering; and
3. mindfulness: observing your thoughts and emotions in a balanced way, without becoming consumed by them.

I’ve found that the idea of self-compassion elicits reactions ranging from an enthusiastic ‘Sign me up!’ to suspicion or even fear. Upon the mere mention of self-compassion, a host of thoughts can bubble up: ‘Self-compassion is just not for me.’ ‘Aren’t people too soft on themselves these days?’ ‘I need self-criticism to motivate me to achieve my goals.’ Or, ‘If I’m self-compassionate, won’t I just sit on the couch and eat Ben and Jerry’s all day?’

These beliefs have consequences, including affecting how people respond to life’s challenges. For instance, in one study, my colleagues Patricia Chen, Jamil Zaki and I looked into the coping strategies used by people who were disappointed and upset following the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Those who viewed self-compassion positively were more likely than others to draw upon self-compassion in a beneficial way to help them get through the difficult times – for instance, they reported using more active strategies to manage their emotions, such as seeking support from others, and relied less upon unhelpful strategies, such as distraction or self-blame. This not only helped them feel better, it worked better too – our participants who practised more self-compassion reported having more intentions to improve themselves and the situation, such as by committing to become more politically active.

Our work echoes what research finds time and time again – self-compassion is a healthy response to suffering. It is critical not only to our wellbeing but also helps us rise to challenges. For example, other researchers have found that self-compassion helps people take personal responsibility for transgressions and persist following obstacles, such as a disappointing test grade. Contrary to assumptions that self-compassion is selfish, self-compassion even helps us to be kinder towards others. All of this might sound counterintuitive: how can something as unassuming as self-compassion help us become better, more resilient versions of ourselves?

An interesting thing happens when we’re self-compassionate – it becomes safe for us to admit our missteps to ourselves. Think about it this way: would you rather share an embarrassing mistake with someone with a track record of responding kindly – or with someone who might fly off the handle with harsh criticism?

In this way, when mistakes or perceived failures arise, self-compassionate people are able to recognise them for what they are: normal human happenings. Then, without the heavy baggage of self-criticism and shame, it’s easier for self-compassionate people to grow, improve and move forward bravely.

In her popular TEDx talk from 2013, Neff offered a helpful analogy for understanding why self-compassion works so well. Imagine that a child returned home from school upset, having received a failing grade in mathematics. A parent could respond with harsh criticism, expressing disappointment, anger or even shame. They could yell and question the intellect of the child. For a short while, the child might study harder. But over time, the child could become depressed and quit mathematics altogether, as the consequences of failing again are too high. Alternatively, a parent could respond to the child with compassion, recognising and validating the child’s feelings of disappointment (eg, ‘I can tell how upset you are. That sounds really tough’), reminding them that everyone struggles occasionally, and helping them maintain a balanced perspective (eg, ‘There are still more quizzes ahead of you. Let’s figure out together how we can help you feel prepared and ready for the next one’).

Notice that the compassionate response didn’t involve turning a blind eye to the test grade. Nor did it entail stroking the child’s ego. Instead, it involved creating a safe and nurturing environment, where mistakes are OK for the child to confront.

Put another way, your words of self-talk are the fuel: you can choose to fill your tank with either criticism or compassion. Both will get you moving, but the self-compassionate variety lasts longer and causes less harm to the engine in the end. When you’re kind towards yourself, you’ll find it easier to confront life’s many challenges, whether that be studying after receiving a failing test grade, apologising to someone after losing your cool, or returning to the gym even when you feel weak. Importantly, self-compassion enables us to confront these hurdles head-on, without becoming consumed by feelings of inadequacy.

Self-compassion is not an elusive trait that only some people can possess. There are concrete ways for us all to cultivate compassion, both for others and for ourselves. Researchers have created programmes (eg, the Mindful Self-Compassion programme), workbooks and resources to help people build greater self-compassion. We can train our self-compassion muscle in various ways, for example, through writing exercises (eg, writing a letter to oneself from the perspective of an unconditionally caring friend), imagery or meditations. These exercises train us to respond to our own pain or perceived inadequacies just like we’d respond to those of a friend – with encouragement and caring.

And yet, if you’re like most people, getting to the self-compassion gym is the hardest part. If you have doubts that the gym will bring any benefits, you’re unlikely to visit! Encouragingly, in our work, we found that just changing participants’ beliefs about the usefulness of self-compassion helped them cope better with challenges. When we told people that the research shows that self-compassion actually improves motivation rather than harming it, they were subsequently more likely to practise self-compassion during difficulties. This, in turn, helped them to cope better and seek self-improvement.

Our work thus underscores the importance of taking the time to understand and gently correct your assumptions about self-compassion. Doing so could help you respond more effectively to the inevitable bumps in the road ahead.

First, notice what beliefs you have about self-compassion. Ask yourself: what have other people told you, either through words or actions, about self-compassion? Did parental figures in your life practise compassion? If so, did they include themselves within their sphere of compassion? What do you believe would happen if you were self-compassionate? What do you think would happen if you let go of harsh self-criticism?

Next, notice how you talk to yourself. If you’re like most people, your mind is filled with a steady stream of chatter and yet, just like when you mindlessly consume popcorn during a movie without noticing its texture or flavour, you might not pause to reflect on your self-talk. Does it tend to be negative? Do you hold yourself to impossible standards? You’ll be spending the rest of your life with this voice, so take the time to truly get to know it and consider making conscious adjustments if necessary.

Finally, check your assumptions about self-compassion. Remember that, time and time again, researchers find that self-compassion not only helps us feel better but has positive practical consequences too. Self-compassion is a powerful motivational tool that can help you persist, even in the face of challenges.

At first, self-compassion might feel foreign, scary or difficult. Be patient with yourself. Remember that self-compassion is about relating to yourself in a more constructive and nurturing way, and that it might take time to develop. It’s not about feeling good all the time. I’ve seen how, just like beginning a new physical workout regimen, the journey to relate to yourself with compassion can be difficult, even painful at the start.

For many people, self-compassion is a radically different approach than they’re used to – it means having compassion for yourself that’s unconditional, regardless of your circumstances or achievements. This stands at odds with a culture that often rewards us for accomplishments, capital and accolades. Where the ego whispers a siren’s call (achieve more, do better, and you will be worthy), self-compassion is the reliable friend that we all deserve (I believe in you, I’m here for you, no matter what).

Thinking back to my high-school classmate berating herself in front of the bathroom mirror, I wish she could have known that she didn’t have to be her own bully. If she’d believed in the power of self-compassion, I might have instead overheard a self-compassionate pep talk: ‘Receiving that bad test score really hurt, but it doesn’t say anything bad about me as a person. I know that other people in class are struggling, too, and that I’m not alone in this. I’ll ask for help on how to study more effectively, and get the support I need and deserve.’ In my clinical work and research, I’ve seen that self-compassion is a resiliency supercharger. If my classmate could have befriended herself, I bet she’d have found school would improve, and her life down the road would have grown much richer.

Know that this applies to you, too. While the journey towards cultivating greater self-compassion might seem daunting, it’s worthwhile. With you by your own side, you will be unstoppable.

Self-compassion is not self-indulgence: here’s how to try it | Psyche Ideas

 

 

Just Seeing What Life Brings (by Steve Goodier)

 

You’ve heard it said that what you see is what you get. But what I’ve discovered is that it’s not what you see, but what you think you see, that determines what you get.

 

In the “Journal of the American Medical Association,” Dr. Paul Ruskin demonstrated how our perception of reality (not actually what is going on, but how we perceive it) determines how we feel about it. While teaching a class on the psychological aspects of aging, he read the following case to his students:

 

The patient neither speaks nor comprehends the spoken word. Sometimes she babbles incoherently for hours on end. She is disoriented about person, place, and time. She does, however, respond to her name. I have worked with her for the past six months, but she still shows complete disregard for her physical appearance and makes no effort to assist her own care. She must be fed, bathed, and clothed by others. Because she has no teeth, her food must be pureed. Her shirt is usually soiled from almost incessant drooling. She does not walk. Her sleep pattern is erratic. Often she wakes in the middle of the night, and her screaming awakens others. Most of the time she is friendly and happy, but several times a day she gets quite agitated without apparent cause. Then she wails until someone comes to comfort her.

 

After presenting the case, Dr. Ruskin asked his students how they would like caring for this person. Most of them said they would not like it at all. He then said that he believed he would especially enjoy it and thought that they might, also. He passed a picture of the patient around for his puzzled students to see. It was his six-month-old daughter.

 

Most of the students thought that what they saw, in Ruskin’s description, was the task of caring for a difficult elderly woman with severe dementia and loss of bodily control with little or no self awareness. But when shown the picture, they realized that what they thought they saw and what they now clearly saw were quite different realities.

 

I have numerous tasks ahead today. How will I see them? Am I already seeing something I think I’ll dread without giving it a chance? Am I seeing something as negative when it could turn out to be rewarding or even a great opportunity for some growth? And what if I chose not to expect the worst and just see what life brings me?

 

I feel better about my day already.

 

-- Steve Goodier

 

http://www.LifeSupportSystem.com

 

 

Vulnerability (by David Whyte)

 

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

Vulnerability - by David Whyte ( English Version ) | Ripples

 

The goal of real love is always to set the beloved free.

~ Martha Beck, Steering By Starlight

 

John Bowlby (by The School of Life)

Among our deepest and seemingly most natural aspirations is the longing to form stable, satisfying relationships: to thrive in partnerships that are good for both people. It doesn’t seem much to ask. A lot of people are looking for roughly the same thing. But the painful fact is that very large numbers of relationships have one difficult episode after another, or seemingly intractable miserable conflicts running through them; relationships feel like a struggle, rather than a support. It’s one of the biggest questions: why is it so hard for us to have the happy, constructive relationships we all want?

 

The huge – and not yet fully digested – insight of psychoanalysis is that the challenges of relationships do not start over dinner in an interesting restaurant or a college bar. They start, in fact, when we are children. There is no more important period of our lives than childhood; a good childhood is the bedrock of a happy life and a bad one just about dooms us to enduring misery. It was the contribution of the great psychoanalyst John Bowlby to trace the tensions and conflicts we have with our partners back to our early experience of maternal care. 

  

His ideas are sound in part because he drew so deeply and honestly on his own experiences in order to formulate them. Born in 1907, Edward John Mostyn Bowlby had a quintessentially upper class British childhood. His father was a famous and highly successful doctor, with a knighthood and royal connections. Young Bowlby hardly saw his parents and was looked after by a lovely nanny, Minnie. But Minnie was an employee, and when John was four, she was sent away. His parents weren’t being deliberately callous. They (like pretty much everyone else at the time) didn’t realise how wounding her departure could be. At seven, Bowlby went off – in line with the conventions of his class – to boarding school, to a realm from which maternal warmth was rigorously excluded. 

 

Bowlby was a brilliant medical student and an imaginative researcher. In 1952 he made a film, A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital, which showed the suffering a child went through when they were institutionally separated from their parents. In the wards mothers were not allowed to hold their sick children, for instance, for fear of spreading germs. Visiting times were punitively restricted.  

  

When he was a consultant to the World Health Organisation in the early 1950s, Bowlby wrote a report, ‘Maternal Care and Mental Health’. He attacked prevalent assumptions (including those vigorously maintained by his own mother), arguing that kindness does not smother and spoil children. And he asserted the importance to both child and mother of developing an intimate and enjoyable relationship. This initiated a wave of reform: the visitation rules of many health institutions were reformed – a dry, bureaucratic move that ended countless afternoons of quiet sorrow and evenings of solitary anguish. 

 

Bowlby poignantly invokes loving care that a little boy needs: ‘all the cuddling and playing, the intimacies of suckling by which a child learns the comfort of his mother’s body, the rituals of washing and dressing by which through her pride and tenderness towards his little limbs he learns the values of his own…’ Such experiences teach a basic trust: that difficulties can be managed; that slip-ups are only that and can be put right, that we are naturally entitled to be treated warmly and considerately, without having to do anything to earn this and without having to make special pleas or demands. ‘’It is as if maternal care were as necessary for the proper development of personality as vitamin D for the proper development of bones.’

 

The ideal parent is there when the child needs it. They are good at actually listening to what the child is saying. They help the child work out for itself what it is feeling. The ideal parent is not anxiously hanging around trying to micromanage everything. The ideal parent makes it feel that problems, difficulties and dangers don’t always have to be avoided: they can be coped with, solved or skillfully overcome. Such a parent makes the child secure. Not just that the child feels secure at particular moments but that they take this security with them into the tasks of life: they become secure people, so that they are less urgently in need of external validation, less devastated by failure, less in need of markers of status to reassure themselves of their own worth – because they carry within them a stable, reasonable, secure sense of who they are. 

  

But the fact is that we often don’t quite get the maternal care we need. Parents – without meaning to let anyone down – go wrong in endless ways. They are inconsistent: at one point they are hugely available, happy to play and do things; then suddenly they are sternly busy and remote. Or they might be sweet and tender – but equally they might be angry or grumpy. They are around, then they disappear. They might be busy almost all the time, or very much preoccupied by work or social life. Their own fears, anxieties or troubles may keep them from providing the wise, generous attention the child needs.

 

In a book published in 1959 called Separation Anxiety Bowlby looks at what happens when there isn’t enough maternal care. He described the behaviour of children he had observed who had been separated from their parents. They went through three stages: protest, despair and detachment. The first phase began as soon as the parent left, and it would last between a few hours and a week. Protesting children would cry, roll around and react to any movement as the possibility of their mother returning. 

 

If something like this is frequently experienced, then the child craves the attention, love and interest of the parents but feels that anything good may disappear at any moment. They look for a lot of reassurance – and get upset if it is not forthcoming. They are volatile: they take heart, then they despair, then they are filled with hope again. This is the pattern of what Bowlby called ‘anxious attachment’. 

  

But the degree of separation from the parents may be greater. the child could feel so helpless, they become detached: they enter their own world. To protect themselves they become remote and cold. They are, Bowlby says, ‘attachment avoidant’: that is, they see tenderness, closeness, emotional investment as dangerous and to be shunned. They may, in truth, be desperate for a cuddle or for reassurance, but such things look far too treacherous. 

 

The focus of Bowlby’s thinking was about what happens to a child if there are too many difficulties in forming secure attachments. But the consequences don’t magically get restricted only to the age of 8 or 12 or 17. They are life long. The pattern of relating that we develop in childhood gets deployed in our adult lives.  

 

Our attachment style is fed by early experiences: it defines our individual way of being with others. It’s how we sense what other people are up to, how we frame our own needs, how we expect things to go. It’s a pre-existing script that gets written into our adult relationships – usually without us even realising that this happens. It all feels obvious and familiar (even when it is uncomfortable). We take this with us, from partner to partner. 

 

In line with Bowlby’s views about how children relate to their parents, there are three basic kinds of attachment we have to other adults. 

 

Secure attachment is the (rare) ideal. If there is a problem, you work it out. You are not appalled by the weakness of your partner. You can take it in your stride, because you can look after yourself when you have to. So if your partner is a bit down, confused or just plain annoying, you don’t have to react too wildly. Because even if they can’t be nice to you, you can take care of yourself and have, hopefully, a little left over to meet some of the needs of your partner. You give the other the benefit of the doubt when interpreting behaviour. You realise that maybe they were just busy, when they didn’t show any interest in your new haircut, or insights into the news. Maybe they had a tricky time at work, that’s why they are not interested in your day. The explanations are accommodating, generous – and usually more accurate. You are slow to anger, quick to forgive and forget. 

  

Anxious attachment is marked by clinginess: calling just to check where the other is and keeping tabs on what they are up to. You need to make sure that they haven’t left you – or the country. Anxious attachment involves a lot of anger because the stakes feel very high. A minor slight, a hasty word, a tiny oversight can look – to the very anxious person – like huge threats. They seem to announce the imminent breakup of the whole relationship. Anxiously attached people quickly become coercive and demanding and focus on their own needs – not their partner’s. 

 

Avoidant attachment means that you would rather withdraw, and go away, than get angry with or admit you need the other person. If there is a problem, you don’t talk. Your instinct is to say you don’t really like the other person who has hurt you. Avoidant spouses often team up with anxious ones. It’s a risky combination. The avoidant one doesn’t give the anxious one much support. And the anxious one is always invading the delicate privacy of the avoidant one. 

  

Bowlby helps us towards more generous – and more constructive – ways of seeing what our partners are doing, when they upset or disappoint us. Almost no one in truth is purely anxious or avoidant. They are just a bit like that, some of the time. So, alerted by Bowlby, we can see that a partner’s apparent coldness and indifference is not caused by their loathing of us, but by the fact that a long time ago they were too badly hurt by intimacy. They are protecting themselves out of fear. They deserve compassion, not a character assassination. 

 

And it opens possibilities of self-knowledge which can help one reform (if only a little) one’s own behaviour. Perhaps I work so hard because I can’t trust anyone and because a long time ago, I felt that work might help me to secure the fleeting unreliable love of my parents. 

  

Bowlby died in September 1990 in his early eighties, at his summer home on the Island of Skye.

 

There’s a powerful, modest but very real principle of hope at work in his theories. It took a long time for Bowlby’s ideas about the importance of the early bond between the mother and child to get broader recognition and support. But it did happen, eventually. There was no single dramatic revolutionary moment. Many thousands of people changed their minds in small ways: an idea that sounded stupid, came to seem mildly interesting. The slow revolution took place at dinner tables and at school gates, at conferences in out of the way places and in careful cost-benefit analyses worked out by civil servants. It is a process of social evolution in which there are few obvious heroes and many necessary participants who can never know exactly what contribution they made: so that today a child facing a frightening operation is surrounded by love and kindness and her parents get to sleep in a bed beside her.

 

How long it took in history for this need to be taken seriously – and so touching it should have been by this particular man, whose family background, childhood, and education could have been expected to close off any such sympathetic insights.

 Research shows that in the UK population:

 56 per cent are securely attached

 24 per cent are avoidantly attached

 20 per cent are anxiously attached

 

John Bowlby  -The School of Life Articles | Formally The Book of Life