Podcast: The Necessity for Self Compassion
Unknown Speaker 0:00
For our brains, all of that negativity and criticism isn't really motivating at all. And actually, it's the stuff that keeps us stuck and keeps us hidden and keeps us afraid to be who we are or to ask for the things that we need so that we can function at our best thing is that negativity for our brains does not mean motivating.
Unknown Speaker 0:35
Hey there, you're listening to the ADHD Good Life podcast. Each week, we explore stories, ideas, or topics around neurodiversity from an intersectional lens, and the personal growth strategies we found most helpful in transforming our lives. I'm your host Sandra. I'm a wife, mother, writer, coach and educational specialist. I'm also a Black, cisgender woman, transracial adoptee and fellow neurodivergent after my own ADHD diagnosis at 40. And just like you, I'm learning, I'm unlearning and healing. So I can step into my uniqueness and create a life that truly allows me to flourish. Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. You ready? Alright, let's get started.
Unknown Speaker 1:15
Hey, everyone, welcome to Episode 12. In this one, I'm talking a little bit about self compassion. Because I really think that if we want to become the people that we have always seen ourselves to be and always wanted to be, then we need to be a lot kinder to ourselves and we need to really start trying to develop a practice of learning what it means to be compassionate towards ourselves and using it a lot.
Unknown Speaker 1:46
I don't think that we're really taught about self compassion, because we've grown up and we've made so many mistakes over and over again, (and sometimes they make the same mistake over and over again until we kind of figure it out something out and remember to do something a little bit differently). But we can be yelled at or ridiculed or rejected. Sometimes we have to figure out how to fix them. But we don't really necessarily know what we've actually done in the first place to make that mistake. We could be just in how our ADHD presents itself too, that things that are a lot harder for us to control. Yet we've been told that we need to fix that change that and not do that thing and then especially when you grow up like with undiagnosed ADHD, you don't even realise that, that's a problem and you don't really know how to even tackle it anyways, because you feel like it's a natural way for you to be and it probably is, you know.
Unknown Speaker 2:54
But in this society, we get told a lot of Our ADC presentations are things that we have to suppress and hide that we need to be ashamed of. And we have to change. So when we get talked to like that for a really, really long time, and all we hear is all of this criticism about who we are and what we do and how we act. That's the voice that we end up taking on for ourselves. The people who tell us the things, I actually think that okay, well, that's a way to tell us to change so we can be motivated to do something differently. But for our brains, all of that negativity and criticism isn't really motivated at all. And actually, it's the stuff that keeps us stuck and keeps us hidden and keeps us afraid to be who we are or to ask for the things that we need so that we can function at our best thing is that negativity for our brains does not mean motivating.
Unknown Speaker 4:17
When I first started going on this kind of journey of trying to understand more about self compassion, and you do that understand about my own ways of being critical of myself, I never really understood what self compassion actually was really like and how it actually worked. Like, yes, I had heard that, you know, talk to yourself, like you would talk to your friend whenever you're feeling really badly. But, you know, that wasn't my go to thing whenever I would mess up or whenever someone would make fun of me for being different in any way. I didn't have that model of, 'Oh, well, someone said something horrible and everyone laughed, and you should just be able to not have to take that in, or make that mean something about you.' I was always told, like, you know, you're being You're overreacting, you're not responding to this in a way that you should respond to it (because you know, like, emotional dysregulation, so, things that make me upset quite easily, especially growing up.) So my way of trying to deal with all the criticism and stuff around me and I think it happens to a lot of us is that I will try to find ways to avoid the criticism, because not only was I hearing it from other people, I'm taking that stuff on and I'm talking to myself like that too. So there is no way around it. I think that's what made me become more of a perfectionist.
Unknown Speaker 6:05
You know, I didn't want to make mistakes, because I could not handle all of the criticism, my own internalised, which is really harsh inner critic voice, but then everyone else is around me. And I think, particularly as Black people and as black woman, is there is no room for mistakes, we grow up, just knowing that we have to do things 2, 3, 4 times better than everyone else around us to be taken half as seriously.
Unknown Speaker 6:41
And then, as a black woman and all of those ADHD presentations that everyone tells us that, you know, we shouldn't do like to blurt out things or to be too loud or to be overly emotional or to pay attention or not be lazy and all of these things, these are placed on women by default anyways. So there is this additional pressure and stress to really not mess it up, not only in how I presented myself as a Black female, but also in what I had to achieve and in what I had to learn about the people around me so that I could present in a way that was okay for all of them. But then anytime anyone, generally white would say something about the sound of my voice or the volume of my voice or how I responded to something, or if I was over excited about anything, that all was taken from me as feedback, not even feedback of like, okay, I as a person need to be better I have to change.
Unknown Speaker 8:05
And the only way that I would make myself do those things was how I would talk to myself in my head and that was with this critic come from kind of forcing me to remember to try to be that perfectionist and that, you know, my best was never going to be good enough I had to keep going and talking to myself like that. But then to also avoid this criticism because it did hurt so much. You know, I do have ADHD everything is heightened and intense.
Unknown Speaker 8:37
People pleasing obviously became a strategy, a coping mechanism for me to try to avoid feeling that way. Nobody likes to feel hard feelings and criticism coming from others and the stuff that you hear in your head from yourself is not easy to have to deal with. So I try to avoid it by doing what I could to please others. And the thing is, is that this wasn't working for me either. Because I was too afraid to actually do anything for myself outside of what other people wanted, because I was afraid of what they would say if I made a mistake. I was afraid of what I would do if I made a mistake. But I was also really determined and needing their positive feedback. I needed them to tell me how good I had done things and how well I was because I didn't have that voice in my head. Which is strange that since I was looking for that from others, why I wouldn't actually be able to internalise something more good voices. And I think this goes back to our ADHD brains needing a lot more positives in comparison to the negative that we hear. Something like three or four, five comments to one, but we don't hear them like that. So we don't actually take them on.
Unknown Speaker 10:14
It's like, my son always asking me over and over again when he does something. Mama! You know, "but did you like why did that mama? Did you like that? When I said that? Did you like this?' Or 'did did I do a good job with that? ' and just asking again and again, like he's needing to really take it on and understand it and believe it so that he can get that dopamine hit. It's almost like the positive doesn't really release the domain as well as ruminating on the negative, you know, so I can see why for me it just didn't quite connect. And because of that, it's like self compassion has to be something that for me anyways, I have to practice and learn and understand and be intentional about. Because if I'm ever going to be able to do anything that really matters to me, then I need to have what's going on in my head to be strong enough performing, that I won't get caught in the negative that I'm hearing from around me, or what I've been kind of conditioned to do, when I'm trying out new things that are against what society has said, I should be like.
Unknown Speaker 11:34
What I know now about develop developing self compassion. And what that's kind of like, is that self compassion is made up of three parts. There's the self kindness part, rather than the judgement. And there's common humanity and mindfulness. You see the thing that's kind of tricky, about compassion, self compassion is that if you aren't willing to actually be in the discomfort of the emotion that you're feeling when you make a mistake, or when you've been hurt by someone else, or when you've done something that, you know, you're not very happy with or whatever, if you're not willing to sit in that and feel that and know that, then you're not going to be able to practice self compassion.
Unknown Speaker 12:28
And in order to be able to sit and know and be in that emotion, we have to be able to stop long enough to even notice it. And which is hard, especially if you've caught up with undiagnosed ADHD like you haven't, stop for anything. You know, I got medication and then I was like, starting to understand about ADHD and I was like, 'wow, there's all this stuff is coming up that I didn't even know I ever felt or notice before because my life just goes past me so fast.' So learning how to actually pause and think about to be able to stop and notice what you're feeling when this comes up is a practice in itself. Because it's hard trying to put together something nice to say about yourself when you don't even realise that you're ruminating on something or that you have a feeling about something that is really uncomfortable, because you don't even know what your body is going through. You haven't even actually had the practice to sit, be mindful about what goes through your head, and how feelings and emotions go through your body.
Unknown Speaker 13:40
And I have found that being able to do that is also quite difficult for us anyways because we don't like hard feelings. As ADHDers, we are the masters of like, stuffing feelings down using any kind of addiction that we can too. Just avoid that, or any of those feelings, because they don't feel good. But like that, I don't know, it's almost like you don't like that kind of dopamine hit, you know, that's not the negativity I'm looking for. So I'm not into that right now. I also have mentioned this in an earlier episode as well, it's like ruminating is not the same as being able to notice in understand and feel your feelings because ruminating is actually still being in that story. And playing it over and over again in your head that's not sitting with your feelings that's not being able for you to actually look at and go Okay, yes, I am feeling this discomfort of embarrassment or this, whatever the feeling is, and then being able to plug in the second part of this, which is the self kindness of saying like something nice to yourself. Even though you've made that mistake, even though this has happened.
Unknown Speaker 15:04
And I think another part that we never get told about making mistakes, and we never really click into is the fact of our common humanity. And part of that is that we all make mistakes. And every single one of us that makes a mistake, in a way we feel bad about the mistakes that we make, or we feel discomfort in the mistakes that we make. And we all make them, and I know we might be like, okay, but you know, as neurodivergent folks, we make a lot of the same mistakes over and over again, because we just don't click into it. And to that, I'm like, 'you're the first neurodivergent person to make the same mistake over and over again?' No, you're not still human. And it's still okay. I think is is that we have had our mistakes glued to how we see ourselves, and how we feel about ourselves, because of how we've grown up, and how we've been taught to in these critical ways, were the things that are innately a part of who we are, have been squashed down have been ridiculed.
Unknown Speaker 16:13
So of course, when we grew up and we're making mistakes like this, we feel extremely heightened about them. These mistakes are like these little reminders of why we don't fit in why we're not belonging. But until we are able to sit with that discomfort, and practice saying something nice to ourselves and understand that we all make mistakes, and it does not take away from our worthiness, self compassion is just gonna be another word that some gurus that use about, I don't know, being kind to yourself and stuff like that. And I think that's why when people are like, 'Oh, I talked to myself kindly like I would talk to my friend' and still struggle, because there might be one or the other two parts, that they're not actually getting a handle off.
Unknown Speaker 17:09
The other thing that I've learned about self compassion is that it's necessary for personal growth. If we are going to go through any kind of healing journey, it means change. Change is hard, you're going to mess up. Like that is inevitable, it's going to happen. Not everybody is going to like the changes that we make for ourselves too. And especially if you've used people pleasing as a way to like, avoid criticism. And now you're like, Okay, 'I'm going to try to do more things for myself to be the person that I want to be,' you're going to piss people off and I'm going to say about it. They're going to talk to you about it. And we not only deal with that, but then that our inner critic or those voices are going to come back up that help criticise us to and that's that's hard to deal with. So unless we're looking at really practising what it means to actually talk, and be compassionate towards ourselves regularly, the idea of making any changes, the idea of taking any risks, to do things differently, is going to be that much harder, when, in the back of our heads, we've got, 'oh, good Lord, if I mess up, I'm going to be really critical of myself.' Everyone wants to be critical of myself, and then it's going to be crap. And you're going to end up staying the same, and doing the same stuff, and putting up with the same shit. Because we have not been able to practice and understand and use that self compassion that we need.
Unknown Speaker 18:50
Like, especially if this like any kind of changes in anti racism work, for example, or just trying out for that new job or whatnot. You know we are going to make mistakes, we are going to say the wrong things, we are going to do the wrong things. But to be a better version of ourselves, we have to be able to be okay with that. We have to remember that, okay, there are phrases that I'm gonna have to memorise that I have to go to automatically whenever I mess up. I know I have to sit in, be the observer of these emotions that feel like shit. So I know what they're like so I can do better. And I know that I do need to practice pausing throughout the day. So I'm able to do that. We cannot make the changes to be the people that we want to be if we're using the old ways, our normal ways of coping, and dealing with things and hiding from the things that matter to us.
Unknown Speaker 20:01
So what did I do kind of to get through to this point where I'm an - I'm not an expert on anything that I talked about on my podcast, by the way - I'm learning through all just like everyone else. But for me, the thing that I found really helpful to kind of get myself to a point of trying to be a lot more compassionate to myself. Number one, was worthiness. See, when I started my journey, I really struggled with thinking about myself as being innately worthy. And I really had to do a lot of journaling about this. I had to really start looking at things that made me worthy anyways, I had to put stuff on my phone like that. reminded me to stop and pause it To tell myself that I was worthy, and it didn't matter, anything that I've ever done in my life, or who I knew, it did not matter, I was still worthy no matter what. And there was a lot of thought downloads I did on this, a lot of just really trying to look at the ways that I was talking to myself to. And, yes, I do believe that I am worthy. But I can honestly say that it's really something that's been quite an ongoing thing that it's easy for me to slip back into feeling that I'm not good enough. And it's easy for me to slip back into feeling that I don't have the right to ask for what I need or whatnot. So it's something that I definitely always just ongoing we do, but even being able to switch to a point of knowing that I'm worthy, most of the time feeling that has allowed me to kind of be able to go forward in my journey a little bit more.
Unknown Speaker 22:11
Number two is mindfulness and meditation. Look back at episode nine. And I talked about how I've been learning to pause. I talked about this earlier in this episode about the idea that we need to sit in our emotion, we need to be able to be the observer of a difficult emotion so that we can put the self kindness talk into that while we're observing that rather than going into self criticism, and I found that being able to pause that mindfulness and meditation have been so helpful to me and I've been doing this even before my diagnosis. And it's really one of those things that you kind of when you stopped doing you realise, 'my gosh, it actually makes a difference.'
Unknown Speaker 23:03
Number three, and this was a big one was that I tracked how I was talking to myself. Because awareness is key for me. I can't change what I don't know about. So for three days, I did write down everything negative that I said to myself, and then I put on my phone. And I look back at it. And I was looking for patterns and things that I was saying, when I was saying, what was I saying about what happened? So I kind of had an idea of the things that kind of triggered that talk and a few things that I could have avoided, or things I had to deal with or journal about than I would, so I could get a better sense of what it was in those situations. That was making me feel that way. And the other thing about that too, was that since I knew all these things that I was saying to myself that were really negative then I was able to kind of look at them and go, 'Okay, I wonder where that voice has come from who has said that to me? Where am I learning That's something that I really need to do, can I actually change that into something that's a little bit more affirming, or positive for me, so that I can move past that?'
Unknown Speaker 24:11
And that gets me to number four, when I talk about progressive language, affirmations, and these can be really tied with wordiness a lot. And I know I talked about this episode before, I don't remember which one it was. But rather than trying to say something about myself in that self kindness talk, that I don't really believe, when I'm using like progressive language, affirmations or maybe even neutral language affirmations, which might be a good start for a lot of people. It's like, making a statement about myself that's sometimes it's not positive or negative. It just is, it's something that is a fact that I can't dispute in my head. So if I'm using progressive language, affirmation would be something that kind of bridges that gap between, like where I am right now, and where I really want to be feeling about myself, but I don't right now because that just seems too far away.
Unknown Speaker 25:10
So for a while, I was using something like, no, even though I'm still learning about what worthiness is for me. I am enough. It was too big of a jump for me to go. I am worthy. I am so worthy, you know, whatever, I just couldn't get there. So I kind of bridged it with the disclaimer, if you were in neutral language is kind of like that. For me, if I was doing things like oh, you know, I'm whatever I'm making up something about my body or whatever. Rather than just say all things that I don't like about my body. You know, 'my stomach is not really flat bla bla bla bla,' I just be like, 'I have a stomach.' That's it. And I can't go to all my body is so beautiful. It does all of these whatever, I can't go there, I'm not there yet. I am not there yet. But I do have a stomach. That is true. You know what I'm sticking with that. I found that that's been helpful for me, this isn't stuff that I'm able to put on my phone with alarm so I could tell myself about it.
Unknown Speaker 26:15
Number five, one of the things that I've actually started to do is, especially when I've done a thought download on things that I've been telling myself that I really have been really harsh towards myself was starting to use these kinds of progressive language or neutral language to rewrite those criticisms in a way that was a lot nicer, kinder to myself in a way that I could practice so that I would have better, you know, dialogue, something that I believed still, but wasn't exactly critical, but just looking at things from a more realistic way and something that was positive and again, I think it's quite an intentional practice to do.
Unknown Speaker 27:04
Other things that I've done for developing more self compassion is number six is that doing those small promises of self care? Because the thing is, is that if I am showing that I am doing things for myself, and showing that I'm worth doing those things for myself, more out that I would talk nicer to myself, I would say, 'No, I'm doing these nice things for myself because I am worth doing nice things for' and then if I'm doing nice things, and knowing that I'm worth that, then I'm going to actually say nice things to myself too, because I'm worth that as well. I also track this as well. I track everything because we forget, first off and I think that we need to collect new evidence that says, 'You know what, all of a sudden That we heard when we were kids and growing up and all those people around us, actually, that's not the evidence that I want to be seeing anymore. I want to be seeing the stuff that shows that I am worthy that proves to me that I am worth it. And I want to be able to see that I can actually do those things for myself. But I don't need other people to be telling me that I'm worth it or telling me that I've done a good job. I know it cuz I'm seeing it. I'm feeling it, I'm doing it.' That's why I think tracking matters too.
Unknown Speaker 28:36
And number seven, especially if you have trouble pausing, because a big part of self compassion, again, is that ability to kind of stop and notice what's going on in your body whenever you're feeling like crap. And then know that you can put in a positive time word to yourself and taking those purposeful pauses throughout the day if you're setting alarm. Whatever you're doing, those things matter. So if you're not doing a lot of that, maybe that's somewhere that you might want to do, too. Because I had to do a lot of that for sure.
Unknown Speaker 29:12
So those were seven things that I did to help me along this journey myself to get a better start using self compassion in a way that I could develop and get better at. Number one was worthiness, two mindfulness and meditation, three tracking how I talk to myself, four progressive language, affirmations and neutral language affirmations. Five, how I change criticisms. Six, doing small promises of self care and seven, taking more pauses throughout my day. Now, this is an ongoing practice for me. And of course, it will be like I'm 41 years old. I've been using a lot of self criticism, my whole life, we all have. And it feels weird to actually start talking to ourselves kinder and thinking that will that actually motivate me? Will that actually make me want to do the hard things made me want to change things if I'm not being nasty and awful to myself? And actually, yes, I've made a lot of changes in my life, just from being more intentional about doing this.
Unknown Speaker 30:30
Okay, so what can you do now, I'll leave you with a tip. I have actually finished my first ebook. And it is about self compassion. And I've really tried to break it down to simple things that you can do, to add a little bit more of that feeling into your day to try to practice some ways of being more self compassionate and to understand more about yourself criticism and where you're seeing it and how that's coming up. I think that if we're going to do anything better or different, try to be braver and to do the hard work and to do hard things. Self compassion is a starting point, trying to develop that as much as we can, is going to help us know that we've got our own back, that it's okay to make the mistakes that we're going to make and we can keep going anyways, and we don't have to look outside of ourselves to make sure that we're doing the things that we feel like we should be doing.
Unknown Speaker 31:45
We can start actually looking inside we can give ourselves all of those things instead. So, as I said, I made this ebook, and I made it in a way where I hope that you can go to the pages that you need and get what you want. But you don't have to start from the beginning. If you don't want to even look to the table of contents. You know what? That's actually what I need. That's where I'm gonna focus on where it's made in a way that is less wordy and easy to understand lots of bullet points and checklists, pages that you can create things that you can want to cut out and put up for yourself.
Unknown Speaker 32:32
There's also some tasks that are easy and quick to do. There are some that are a bit longer if you like, that sort of thing is something that you can print out or it's also a fillable. pdf, too. So you can do it online. So there is a lot of variations and a lot of ways that you can use it and made specifically for neurodivergent minds because no, we don't need to do things linear to get what we need. And sometimes, just going through a whole, like, massive book of things is not our best thing. We might take a bit of this for a little while practices out, to try something out, and we might come back to it later. Or I've also added a few of my favourite resources and things that I've been looking at, that maybe some of us might want to hyper focus on. This is a book with our brains in mind, and it's attached to the show notes. It's also in a link in my bio, on my Instagram, and it'll be in my twitter and it's going to be on my website. So please, please, please take a look at it. And let me know where you'd want to start and what resonates with you.
Unknown Speaker 33:57
Alright, I hope you guys have a great day. Chat soon, bye!
Unknown Speaker 34:04
Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please feel free to leave a five star review and comment. It helps people find the podcast, especially listening on Apple podcast. Don't forget to check out the show notes, any resources mentioned on today's podcast. You can find my own free resources links there and links to get in touch with me on instagram and facebook at the ADHD Good Life. I'm so grateful you could join me today. Have a great week, and I'll see you next time. Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai