My struggle with self-compassion

This past week I was surprised to find out how painful self-compassion could be. I’ve read books about this form of self-kindness and told clients to do it, and *tried* to do it for myself (even read Kristen Neff’s book), but I’ve never really understood it before this week. I was caught by surprise with what I learned.

Over a week ago, when I went to my therapist and told him I was having a hard time forgiving my ex-husband, he told me I needed to work the “self-compassion” route. I was surprised by this. How could this help me forgive? He said for me to quit analyzing to find the “meaning” and to “see the good” of my ex-husband. He said I needed to focus on the sad and painful feelings I felt when I was being mistreated. And that I needed to feel love and tenderness for the “me” that experienced those painful feelings.

Bleh. So, I’ve been trying that. And it's been a challenge. It’s hard because my favorite coping mechanisms aren’t the ones my therapist wants me to use! My main tools have always been to comfort myself by looking for “my part”… for the blame and responsibility that I carry. It feels good to do that because then at least I have something I can work on and I don’t feel like a victim. Also, when I see that “God is good because I’m learning so much from this wonderful – albeit painful – learning opportunity” then I don’t feel so hurt or angry. I feel grateful, which of course, feels good.

But when I look at my sadness, abandonment, heartache, etc. I don’t feel so comforted. When I look at how hard the marriage was for the young, naïve “me” I feel rage. And grief. And it brings up in me all kinds of questions, like “how could God allow this?” I was so ridiculously innocent and trusting and good-willed when I got married. I’d had no idea that the kinds of things that happened to me even existed. Where was any divine protection? Any warning? I was such a good kid that prayed and served and tried to do what was right. Surely I qualified for guidance back then. And so why would God guide me into such danger? Or at least not warn me?

It's easy for me to see how God would allow pain when it can remain in the abstract or the intellectual, but when it gets emotional, it's not so easy. Two or three times this week, I bawled like a baby for well over an hour to my husband, who listened and comforted me. In one of those crying sessions, I was feeling a lot of anger towards my ex-husband. I swore a few times. I have felt so emotionally repressed and owned by my ex-husband for so many years, and it is excruciating to allow myself to feel how helpless I felt. How voiceless, worthless, abandoned, and even hated I felt. And when I would bring up concerns, I was blamed as being the problem for trying to communicate because it only proved that I was too emotional or too controlling or something like that. There was this deep layer of shame over even trying to communicate about my pain in my past marriage. To survive it, I’d buried self-compassion well underground (if I’d had any, to begin with, thank you mom and dad ha-ha!).

What has kept me from feeling self-compassion and owning the pain of my first marriage? I mean, it’s been 7 years ago since we finally split up….

Easy to answer. I don’t want to hate. I don’t want to blame. I don’t want to be a bad Christian. I want to believe that everyone means well. I want to believe that everyone has good in them (I actually DO believe this, regardless). I don’t want to be blind and bitter. I want to let life soften and teach me. And self-compassion threatens those things because if I see how devastating this marriage was to my own feelings of self-worth, and how much it hurt the kids, I feel to cry bitter tears. And I’m not sure what to do with the anger that urges me to turn to use labels and contempt on another human. Somehow, I need to walk the middle path. And that middle path always has been for me, as well as all of humanity, a hard road to travel.

Yesterday I met with my therapist to update him on my struggle with self-compassion this past week. He was attentive as always. I told him how painful it was to actually feel the feelings from the past without immediately neutralizing them with meaning and gratitude for the “adventure of it all” … and how I’d cried, and cried and written and written. Then I told him of the anger I was feeling and even used some choice words to fill him in on the intensity around those feelings. He warned me not to make moral judgments on who was right and who was wrong, but just to stick with how my ex-husband’s actions made me feel – about my personal experience.

I would have preferred to not hear that. Dang it. It’s so easy to swing too far. To feel justified in making judgments. It just doesn’t seem to do my experience justice to tamely say, with my hands folded in my lap and a serene wise expression on my face, “my ex-husband’s constant physical and emotional abandonment caused me intense pain, grief, and the loss of many life dreams.” Ugh. So inadequate!! I want to use the F word, and call him a Narcissist and a sociopath and say that I never want to see him again (even though he is pretty nice to me, and even lends me things or does something helpful for me now and then if he can….he has good qualities and I’m grateful for that). I want to rage and scream. But no, I’m supposed to describe my feelings. Describe how the actions he did affect ME. No labels. No raging. Double dang. Good for my character though.

So, I’m left with this new experience to process. How to feel compassion for myself, which brings up pain and “noticing” that it was legitimate abusive I endured. And do all that without feeling like I’m turning into a hateful hating hater.

The end goal is, of course, forgiveness, and a feeling of being freed from the past. A feeling of letting go. A sense that I now understand the past. A sense that I know the truth about what it was, what it meant, and who I was in all of it. Greater knowledge, and greater freedom.

And to my pleasant surprise, I’d say I do feel just slightly freer from the sense that I’m still under my ex-husband’s thumb. A little more unconcerned about his reactions about who I am. A little more able to state my thoughts and feelings with self-respect. A little more confident. It’s a hard ride. Looking at how to forgive, finding it to be crazy-hard, trying something new the therapist suggests, finding that new thing brings more pain with new dilemmas, but with all of that, finding some progress. This is so so hard. But I think it’ll be worth it. I want to level up. I want to find freedom inside of me. I want to overcome. And the only way is to go through the pain. To surrender yourself to the journey, and the not knowing that accompanies it.