Session 7 Self-compassion
This is the 7th talk in an 8-week class called "Trauma and Transformation, Level 1". The course takes a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual approach to healing. Both Christians and non-Christians are welcome. This is a reflection time of about 10 minutes that occurs in the class, before the remaining time which is spent in trauma education - helping people understand the impact of trauma on the mind and on all of life.
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A wife turns to her husband and says, “How come you never tell me you love me?” The husband says, “Well, I told you when we got married didn’t I? I’ll let you know if anything changes...” Not a great approach to a lasting relationship.
Love. What does it really mean to love? To love another person, to love ourselves?
The best wisdom literature out there, including the Bible, indicates that love is a verb, an action or a series of actions done for the blessing of, the benefit of another.
Love is action, motivated by affection, by genuine caring. We sometimes think that the affection we feel for someone is the real love.
But I think that affection is affection. Love activates that affection and does something; it produces something good.
Even loving God is action-based, not word-based. One of the critiques that God gives in the OT about those who were his chosen people points out the problem between words and actions.
“These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Isaiah 29:13
My wife doesn’t necessarily know consciously that I love her when I’m sitting on a couch just thinking loving thoughts about her.
She knows I love her when I do the dishes, when I make dinner, when she chooses the movie we’re going to watch, when I give her the choice between the bowls of ice cream I’ve just prepared; when I plan special occasions.
When I kiss her a dozen times a day in passing. I mean she knows I love her at all times, I would hope. She sees it in action, tangibly expressed, when I do nice stuff for her.
Loving others has its challenges. Who hasn’t experienced unrequited love, or felt love for another who didn’t seem to care at all?
This is the story of many people’s teenage years, and maybe right up to today. It can be incredibly confusing.
Our loving actions may not be appreciated, we may be taken for granted. Loving others has its pains and bitter challenges, for sure.
Loving ourselves? That might even have MORE challenges than loving others. But since all love is about action more than words, how do we actually treat ourselves?
The same way I can evaluate my love for those dearest to me by the quality of my actions and loving care toward them, I can gain some insight into how I love myself by considering how I treat myself.
Let’s quickly look at a verse of Scripture that connects with what we’re talking about.
Again, the reason I talk about Scripture is that it contains some of the most powerful, tested and relevant thoughts of any book I’ve ever read.
Jesus is asked what’s the most important thing in life, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ Mark 12:29-30
This balancing of heart, soul, mind and strength is a great way to live a better life. Jesus describes this as the way to love God.
That picture of heart, soul, mind and strength represents a healthy wholeness.
The second part of that verse, which we didn’t look at last week, speaks about loving ourselves.
The second part of Jesus answer is this: The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31
So if you think about it, Jesus is saying love God, love yourself, and then love your neighbour as yourself. That order is embedded in the thought. So how do you love yourself? Think about how you act toward yourself.
And since actions flow from thoughts, how do you think about yourself?
Someone said: “Growing up with not enough acceptance and too much shame, we may cling to our shortcomings, past failures, and poor decisions. We minimize the good things about ourselves and our positive qualities”.
Are you self-critical? Do you judge yourself harshly when you make a mistake? The path to learning is always through trial and error.
A mistake is a path to learning, so how do you treat yourself as you are learning and growing? Are you kind to you?
Or do you expect yourself to get it right without learning and growing, but somehow, miraculously, you’re supposed to get everything right off the bat?
Or were you taught to be hard or yourself? Were others hard on you or harsh with you, and so you’ve chosen by default to treat yourself rough too?
These are important questions, because the kind of love we give ourselves, the way we choose to show ourselves compassion, or not, can really impact our whole experience of life.
And of course it impacts the way we love others.
One of the hardest things to find in life is objectivity - clear thinking uncluttered by the fog in our brains and other people’s brains.
When I get stuck in that fog, when I can’t see clearly because of my limits and other people’s subjectivity, I go again to the One who I believe has the truest objectivity, the One Who sees the truth.
That’s God, the Lover of our souls. And in Psalm 139 we discover this:
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Taken as text on a page, this might not be much. It’s remarkably easy to be untouched and unfazed by the profoundest of truths.
But if you reflect on this mindfully, you can get real insight into your value.
You were created, not by accident as I used to think, (my parents planned for 3 kids, and then - oops - I came along).
You were created, not by accident, but intentionally, and carefully. There is something in your very being that is a sign of your value…You were fearfully and wonderfully made. You were made in the image of God. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27
That means that you yourself are a marvelous creation of God.
The Bible says that you were made in the image of God, which at the very least that’s got to mean that you deserve to be treated, and you deserve to treat yourself, with respect and dignity and honor.
God has a plan for your life, a purpose for your existence. Jeremiah 29 says “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” ??Jeremiah? ?29:11-13?
So with this objectivity, with this perspective of your Creator on who you are, it is quite possible from this passage of Scripture and many others, to rediscover, or maybe learn for the first time, how incredibly valuable you are to the One who matters the most.
You absolutely were created for a purpose, a purpose intended by the One who made you, and the One, the only One, Who really sees you clearly as you are.
And seeing you as You are, He sees you as His beloved. He loves you more than you could ever possibly imagine.
Next week I will be giving out a short document that takes some of the positive identity statements of scripture and personalizes them to you.
Your name will be all over this document, and the document can be part of the answer to developing a very objective and positive view of yourself, from God's point of view.
One that can enable you to value yourself for who you are and for who God made you to be, It can help give you self-compassion, and it is a lot to meditate upon.
In summary, no matter how you treat yourself now, there is likely room for improvement; each of us can learn to be kinder to ourselves, each of us can learn to be more compassionate and more patient with ourselves, and this in turn can impact for the better all of our relationships, and thus the world around us.
