Counting on Compassion
This week Dr. Hilary and Dr. Jaxson are holding their How to Heal workshop and in preparation for it we are reviewing our 4 rules of empowerment. These rules help us to create a container with ourselves for healing. You see, a healing container must be designed to allow for healing process. In the workshop we identify that the primary need for a healing container is safety, we must create safety within ourselves so that we can hold the vulnerable parts that need healing. When we are safe and acting towards ourselves in a safe way then our nervous system can engage in a way that is conducive to healing. Healing, especially emotional healing just doesn’t happen in fear and stress.
Most of us have created lives out of fight or flight, many of us are stressed and in fact so many of us were conditioned to be this way by our culture, by society and by our families. We are driven to be productive, to achieve and to gain approval and acceptance from others, so often this leads us to continually ‘give ourselves away’ or abandon ourselves and our needs just to get that thing done. To do this we need vast amounts of stress hormones given to us continually by our stress glands so that we can continue to perform and show up in the way we feel we are expected to. This is a life designed by stress and eventually this stress begins to cause issues and manifest in our bodies as pain and symptoms and in our lives as stress and resistance.
In the How to Heal Workshop we want to transform the stress and reclaim a part of ourselves that has been left behind. There is a beautiful step by step protocol for this but before we launch into it we need to check in and create the safety we so often forget about. The 4 rules of empowerment are:
Accountability
Responsibility
Commitment
Compassion
We form the container by being accountable, this means that we move out of a victim mindset and recognise our ‘stuff’ as ours. When we do this, we signal to the body that we are safe because we are in control of our destiny. Being responsible means that we will take care of our ‘stuff’, we will not abandon ourselves anymore by blaming others for our state of being, this is where we meet ourselves. We signal safety here because we are being ‘with’ ourselves. Commitment is essential too because it takes accountability and responsibility and puts it into action. We create habits and form relationships that reflect our inner world, this is our agreeance that we will move through the world from an authentic inner space. Commitment signals safety because we act on it.
Compassion is critical. Without compassion none of this works, the container doesn’t mean anything and safety can’t be felt. Compassion is the ultimate tool in healing, its the special ingredient, it’s the glue.
Compassion is kindness and it is the antidote to both the pain and stress we carry and our core coping mechanisms we’ve installed to cope with that pain and stress. Compassion meets us exactly where we are at, compassion is whole, loving and nurturing.
Compassion says:
‘It’s ok not to be ok’
‘I am Human and because I am human I am imperfect’
‘Even though this is hard, I am exactly where I need to be right now’
Compassion is also a practice, many of us do not have the wiring installed in our neurology for this to be an automated process…YET! Continually meeting our frustrations and our internal criticism with compassion is what makes the healing happen. Upon careful consideration of our state it is clear that compassion is the only way to move forward in a safe and healing environment. We forgive ourselves and we continue to do so as we move into the healing protocols. Compassion signals safety to the body, it allows space to make mistakes and it allows space to have a process, compassion is the loving arms of your own hug that allows you to move through fear and stress. With compassion there can be no space for shame. blame or judgement and without these activating states of being we can remain in a parasympathetic (healing) state as we engage with ourselves and heal.