Episode #7 Self-Compassion

Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression

Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT | Anxiety & OCD Specialist

Self-improvement, Education, Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.9 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2016

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Self-Compassion is a helpful tool for managing shame and blame and negative self-talk. It is particularly, in my experience, helpful for those struggling with OCD, Panic Disorder, Phobias, Health Anxiety, Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors, Eating Disorders and Depression.

The Center for Mindful Self Compassion (centerformsc.org) describes self-compassion in the following way-

"Self-compassion involves responding in the same supportive and understanding way you would with a good friend when you have a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don't like about yourself."

Self-compassion is Kindness, Warmth, Gentleness and Care.

When I talk about the practice of self-compassion, I use the metaphor that self-compassion washes away shame and blame like the rain washes away the dirt on our cars. As the rain gently falls, the dirt slowly falls away. Once the rain has come and gone, there is less heaviness and dirt on the car. It is easier to see out the windows and now you can see the beautiful fields and trees that you pass on your way to work or school.

A part of this metaphor includes this final sentiment. Even though the rain has come and gone and the car is mostly cleansed of its dirt, there is still slight streaks of the dirt left behind.

As much as I would love to say that self compassion will wash away all of the dirt and dust on the car, this is not realistic. The tiny little streaks left behind is a reminder that compassion is a job that is never over. It must be practiced over and over, for the years to come.

This podcast offers a meditation that uses the basics of Kristin Neff's self compassion research, including the three elements of self compassion. For more info go to selfcompassion.org

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, guys. My name is Kimberly Quinlan. This is Your Anxiety Toolkit podcast. I want to start by wishing everybody in the
0:24.2	Northern Hemisphere a happy fall. And for those of you in my home country and in the Southern
0:30.3	hemisphere, a happy spring. Spring is my favorite. So I'm thinking of you all right now.
0:36.8	While the bulk of my work with clients is to work on
0:40.5	reducing obsessions and compulsions related to anxiety disorders and eating disorders, I often find
0:46.8	myself having to really slow down treatment and address the self-defeating self-talk that often
0:53.8	we experience when we're struggling with
0:56.2	something difficult, whether it be a mental health disorder or just a difficult time. So let's slow down,
1:04.3	as I said, and let's go into this a little deeper. We live in a world where we are so hard on ourselves. We are constantly
1:15.1	comparing ourselves to others. We set up expectations of ourselves that are unrealistic in a world
1:22.7	where we are already overworked and we're ultimately unappreciated on so many levels. We're surrounded by
1:32.2	commercials that make us think that our life should be simple and effortless and beautiful.
1:40.4	Let me share with you a really interesting experience I had last week, if I can give you a personal experience with this.
1:48.1	I was shopping to replace my business cards and I had done a little search on this business card program that I have used before and I searched mental health templates, which was supposed to narrow down my search so I
2:03.2	could find a mental health business card that would be appropriate. And what I thought was so
2:08.5	interesting is out popped all of these photos of a therapist and the therapist is smiling and they
2:16.9	look so calm and so happy and they're smiling
2:20.6	at a patient who is also smiling and the patient looks so at ease and the environment that this
2:28.5	photo was taken in is clean and the furniture is color coordinated and I I thought to myself, how interesting that this is
2:37.7	the expectations that are being set for us. I had to kind of crack up a little bit about it actually
2:43.5	because it was so appropriate given this month's podcast. This is how marketing affects our
2:50.2	view of ourselves. It sets us up to continue to believe
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT | Anxiety & OCD Specialist, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT | Anxiety & OCD Specialist and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.