Self- Kindness, not Self -CriticismI

I have been enjoying getting to know the work of Hannah Braime, a writing coach and blogger who lives in England. Her website is www.becomingwhoyou are.net. Now that I am on her mailing list, I am receiving her blogposts. Today’s was excellent!

She asked us to imagine a bow with two arrows, one of which has already been released. The first arrow represents a difficult life event, challenge or issue. The second arrow represents our judgment, criticism or negative thoughts about the first arrow, thoughts where we beat ourselves up or blame ourselves. If we choose to shoot the second arrow into the wound caused by the first arrow, it only makes the wound deeper, wider and more painful.

Hannah then tells us we have a choice! Instead of shooting the second arrow, we can choose to begin healing. How do we do that? By applying self- compassion, and self- kindness to ourselves, not self- blame or self- pity. Our inner critic usually doesn’t help us heal, but self- compassion does!

One way to access our self compassion is through journaling. Research has shown that when people spent as little as 3 minutes writing about a difficult experience, answering the question, ”Imagine that you are talking to yourself about this (weakness/action/ event etc) from a compassionate and understanding persepctive. What would you say?” , the participants felt better. That’s kind of cool!

At times like this in our world we can all use more self-kindess and self-compassion. When we feel it’s called for, we can pull out our journals and do a little writing, and expect to feel better. That is very good news!

Enjoy!