Talks on Radical Self Love & Self Compassion

Hi Mike-

I really like the video on self-esteem vs. self- compassion. I can talk about it too because my healing is heading in the same direction. To me, self esteem is rooted in having a positive personal story, such as, "I am good at _____. I am nice, respectful, attractive, etc." Like she describes in the video, self esteem requires a continual striving to be better in order to reinforce the positive personal story. It also requires stories about people/places/things etc. that aren't as good for comparison. Positive things are described in relation to not as positive things. Self esteem requires a continual and unending loop of self evaluation and description in order to perpetuate the positive story. To me, it is dysfunctional and creates suffering.

To me, and as she describes in the video, self compassion is really about a relationship of awareness with ourselves. It is neither positive or negative; it just IS. For example, sometimes I experience strong feelings of abandonment and rejection because my family doesn't desire a relationship with me. Within the context of mindful self compassion, I provide a safe place within myself to experience these feelings without denying, overindulging or judging them. I don't get hooked into the story about how my parents or I should be different, or think about positive qualities about myself or negative qualities about them. That isn't to say that the story isn't in my head, I just let it be there without getting hooked into it. This isn't always easy. I found that putting my attention on the feelings and bodily sensations makes it easier to let the thoughts float around my head without getting hooked by them.

Here's another example. I am physically unattractive. I'm not talking about relative taste that can change from person to person. I'm talking about the biological drive, that goes deeper than our conditioning, that necessitates finding an attractive mate for the purpose of reproducing. Numerous psychological studies have been done over the course of many years describing the increased sexual attention attractive people get versus unattractive people. Because of this, I have been and always will be sexually undesirable. I could find a significant other for based on my non sexual traits (I've dated four girls with BPD already) but when it comes to the sexual part of the relationship I will always be lacking. Within the framework of self esteem, the solution would be to try to change the story about my sexual desire to be more positive. I tried this for a long time but it didn't work because I had to deny the biological fact that I'm sexually undesirable in order to make the story positive. Also, as I said before, the self esteem story needs constant reinforcing which ultimately continually brought me back to the undeniable fact of my unattractiveness. Using self compassion, I accept the reality of the situation without judging or attempting to change the feelings of rejection and inferiority that result from this. This compassionate sitting with these feelings makes them much more bearable and makes them dissipate much more quickly. At this point they come back everyday, but not for long. I also don't feel trapped in the perpetual "trying to convince myself I'm worthy" loop anymore.

I hope my long winded explanation clears some of this up for you. In my opinion, when your therapist tells you to "love yourself", a way of rephrasing that might be to "develop a compassionate, mindful relationship with yourself". I've had two different therapists turn me on to this and it has helped tremendously so I hope it does for you too.

Take care



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