Posts Tagged ‘healing’

The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Of all the strategies I teach my clients to help them live well when they have a chronic illness, the one I teach the most is compassion. I teach it and reinforce it by having them wear their watch on the non-normal wrist and put notes on their bathroom mirror as reminders, and by assigning them the task of trying to give themselves an overdose of compassion every day – even though it’s not possible to do that! The reason I focus so much on that strategy is because I have found that it is one of the most healing things people can do.

I know, both from my own experience and from the experiences of my clients, that self-compassion can heal the emotional pain that almost always comes with having a chronic illness. Not only that, but I have seen people stop both migraines and herpes outbreaks by giving themselves compassion.  And while I can’t prove it, I’m convinced that giving myself compassion is the main reason I’m able to keep my Crohn’s disease in remission without drugs*.

But I’ve learned that self-compassion can do more than heal the emotional pain we’re feeling today; it can also heal the emotional pain we suffered when bad or traumatic things happened to us years ago.

Maybe you’re wondering how a person would use compassion that way or why they would want to. I’ll answer both questions with a true story of a client I had not too long ago. I had a sense that some emotional pain from Maria’s past was affecting her life, so in our telephone session I asked her some probing questions. I found out she was given up for adoption and also that her country went through a revolution when she was a child. It was clear that both of those events were scary and traumatic. I had her visualize the seven-year-old that she was, and then I had her compassionately comfort that little girl. When she did that, we both simultaneously felt a palpable healing energy. And the next time we talked, she told me that her insomnia of eight years had disappeared.

So how do you know when it would be helpful to heal emotional pain from the past? I can’t answer that question. However, I can tell you that my clients have benefited from 1) revisiting the following: car crashes, being diagnosed with an illness or an emotional illness, the death of a family member, getting fired or laid off from a job, the ending of a relationship, and similar events; and then 2)  giving the person they were at that time as much compassion as they could.

I have done the same thing for many similar events in my own life, and I know that doing so was healing because my memories of those events don’t have the same painful feelings associated with them they used to.

For both myself and my clients, self-compassion has helped us to heal a lot of our emotional pain. It can do the same for you.

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*As I recently wrote, I had flare of my Crohn’s disease at the beginning of March, but it ended on its own a week later, without my taking any drugs.

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When you get angry, be gentle and understanding – with yourself

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

I decided on today’s topic because of a conversation that took place recently in one of the online support groups I belong to. A woman I’ll call Carolyn wrote about her long, ongoing struggle to try to get disability insurance. She said she was very angry because she was being treated unfairly by the disability insurance system, especially compared to a relative of hers who was getting a much quicker response.

I don’t know Carolyn, but from what she shared about herself it seems clear to me that she qualifies for and should get disability insurance. I can easily empathize with her, not only because of her struggle to get the insurance, but because she lives in constant pain and shouldn’t have to go through all that additional stress. The fact that it’s well known that valid claims are routinely denied, especially the first time they are made, doesn’t make Carolyn’s-or anyone’s–experience of trying to get disability insurance any less trying and stressful.

Carolyn was denied not just once, but twice, so her anger is completely understandable and very probably justifiable as well. But I hope she follows it up with a lot of gentleness and compassion for herself (and I let her know that). When we get angry when we feel like we’ve been treated badly or unfairly, we often don’t realize that underneath that anger is a lot of emotional pain. And just as we give those we care about compassion when they have been emotionally hurt and are in emotional pain, we can do the same for ourselves.

Another person in the group told Carolyn to try to stay positive. That sounds good, but when we’re going through a hard time, neither I nor people I’ve talked about it with have been able do that for very long. And not only is giving ourselves compassion is much easier to do than staying positive, but it heals the emotional pain rather than just covering it up.

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Another way to benefit if you’re in an online support group

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

In this post, I’m going to describe a very different way to benefit from participating in on online support group. But first I will say a few words about them for those who have never joined one.

They are great places to connect with others who understand what it’s like to have your illness because they have it too. And the groups are also a great place to support others and receive support in return.

To find support group, go to yahoogroups.com or groups.google.com. There are literally thousands of them.

If you are someone who already participates in online support groups, here is a new and very different way to benefit from them: go through your group’s message archives and read your old posts. Read them not as you normally read things you’ve written, but the way you would if someone else wrote them.

Read them with empathy and compassion. Let yourself be deeply touched by the writer’s words and try to imagine what he or she was feeling, when he or she wrote each post.

If you were hurting a lot physically or emotionally when you wrote those posts, reading them may bring tears to your eyes. If they do, give yourself a big, comforting and compassionate hug, and keep reading.

From my own and my clients’ experience, I know you will find reading your old posts with empathy and compassion to be very healing – healing that you deserve!

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I’m So Sorry

Friday, August 14th, 2009

In this post I want to tell you three of the most important words I’ve learned in my life. Those words are: I’m so sorry.

You may be wondering or guessing why I think those words are so important. The answer  is that I have learned how to live very well in spite of having a serious chronic illness (Crohn’s disease) and learning about those words – and how to use them – has been a major reason why. They helped me when my symptoms were severe, and I’m convinced that they’ve helped me keep my illness in remission. Also, like many others with a chronic illness, I’ve suffered from depression, and those words have been miraculous in helping me heal from it. And when I’ve taught my clients and others with chronic illnesses those words, and then told them how to use them, they’ve helped them greatly too.

So how did those words do that, and how can they help you? After all, they are very ordinary words and you’ve probably said them many times. So had I. But they didn’t help me with my illness until I discovered who to say them to, and how to say them.

What I discovered, after struggling for many years, was that the person I needed to say them to was me. While I had family and friends who cared about me deeply, that wasn’t enough. I saw that there was a part of me that needed to know that I cared about him, that I was really sorry he was in so much physical and emotional pain, and that I wanted the best for him.

The other part of my discovery process was really seeing, for the first time, the tremendous amount of physical and emotional pain I was in. I had become pretty good at minimizing and even denying it, and a part of me wanted to keep doing that. But the pain became so great and had such a big negative impact on my life that I knew that continuing to deny it was no longer an option.

So I told the person in the mirror how sorry I was that he had so much pain and I hugged myself several times a day. And over time, the emotional pain lifted and my Crohn’s disease went into remission.

Let me say here that my discovery about those three words was not a magic cure for my illness. I did extensive research into standard and alternative medicine from the day I was diagnosed. I found the treatments that worked best for me and benefited greatly from them. But I truly believe that my discovery of how to use those three words is what has made it possible for me to keep my illness in remission without drugs.

So what about you? Are you trying to minimize or deny your physical or emotional pain? Is there a part of you that is yearning to hear the words I’m so sorry from you? If there is, I hope you’ll say them with lots of kindness, compassion, and understanding, and give yourself lots and lots of hugs. And after you’ve done those things for a couple of weeks, I would love for you to come back here and to leave a comment about how well they worked.

Best wishes,

Tom

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Being Grateful for Our Body Parts and Organs That Work Just Fine

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

I’m sure you’ve been told to be grateful for what you have. It’s a good thing to do: A study by Dr. Robert Emmons at the University of California at Davis showed that gratitude improves both physical and emotional health. But what are we supposed to be grateful for when we have a chronic illness?

Here’s a suggestion: No matter how sick we are, all of us have organs and body parts that work exactly the way they’re supposed to. And for most of us, there are a lot more parts that work just fine than there are parts that don’t. In spite of that, we usually focus and dwell on the parts that aren’t working.

As you know if you’ve read my other posts, I’m a strong believer in having compassion for yourself. So in this case what I recommend is that yyou give the parts of you that are not working well, and very possibly in pain, lots of compassion and love. Not only do they deserve it, but giving it to them is very healing.

Then be grateful for all the parts of you that do work, think about all the other people, pets, and things in your life that you’re also grateful for, and have the best day you possibly can.

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A Different Way to Start Healing

Monday, April 13th, 2009

My girlfriend broke up with my in January, but that’s not what this post is about. I was on an emotional roller coaster for many weeks afterward, so I joined a support group on Yahoo for people like me who had gone through a breakup. One woman in the group – I’ll call her Ann – described going through a breakup that was a lot more painful than mine. I wanted to help her, so what I suggested was that she read what she had written as if someone else had written it. I thought doing that would help her to see in a different way how much pain the writer of the post (who of course was Ann herself) was in, and as a result, give herself a lot more compassion. Ann did what I suggested and wrote to say that she did start giving herself more compassion after reading what she wrote in the way I suggested.

From years of my own experience and observing others, I’ve known for a long time that compassion promotes physical and emotional healing, so I was very glad that Ann had followed my suggestion. You too can do what Ann did. Write down your illness story. You don’t need to post it here, but you can as a comment here if you want to. Wait a day, and then read it while imagining that someone else wrote it. Let yourself feel the same compassion you would for that other person, then give all that compassion to yourself.

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