These 3 Ancient Phrases Could Banish Your Stress Forever!

In a previous blog article, I wrote about the ways we block self-compassion towards ourselves. In this blog I am going to explore the three components of self compassion and the many ways this can ripple out in our lives to help us navigate this disturbing, distressing world.

We live in a very threat focused environment and state of mind. These threat states show up in physical as well as psychological reactions, the brain struggles to differentiate between external threats (e.g. the car that’s about to reverse into us) and internal threats (e.g. the existential threat to meaning that reacts to global overheating, economic precarity, racism, sexism, trans and homophobia).

Our brains are wired to sound the alarm either way and it operates on a “better safe than sorry” principle. This means we’re stressed  and threatened a lot of the time! A cursory glance at the internet for camera-phone footage of people losing it in public for no apparent reason, kind of confirms this. (There’s even a YouTube channel called “People Losing It In Public” which is not a recommended view!).

Most people know about the states of fight/flight and freeze which are instinctive, sympathetic nervous system reactions to external threat. However, Christopher Germer, Clinical Psychologist and Mindful Self Compassion teacher, argues that  there are equivalent reactions to internal threat – times when we feel threatened from inside by our thoughts, feelings and memories. He argues that

Fight shows up as self-criticism or aggression towards our own self.

Flight shows up as self-isolation; we hide away and become engulfed by loneliness (which increases suffering and makes us want to hide away even more).

Freeze shows up as over-identification which Erik van den Brink and Frits Koster describe in their book “A Practical Guide to Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living: Living with Heart” as  the way “we psychologically freeze into rigid views or ‘maps’ of ourselves, others and the world around us” in a perfect echo chamber reinforced by social media.

There may also be some advantages to these reactions, Brin and Koster explore this and suggest that self-criticism might be a counter-move deployed to pre-empt and neutralise criticism from others, self-isolation may be a way of avoiding rejection from others, and over identification may be a control strategy to stop us being destabilised by exposure to other views. Paradoxically, these reactions to internal threat actually lead to more and more focus on it, and in a memorable phrase Brin and Koster describe these reactions as “haunting us like inner demons…”

 Handling these psychological states of fight, fight or freeze draws upon the three components of self-compassion. These are:

Self- kindness – treating ourselves kindly remedies self-criticism;

Common humanity – which remedies self-isolation by reminding us that we all suffer, and the suffering we’re experiencing is shared by many others too.

Mindfulness – nurtures psychological flexibility by assisting us with noticing all the different ways the mind reacts to our own (and others) pain. In the words of the Sufi poet Rumi we “welcome and entertain them all…” like guests in a guesthouse, with a sense of spaciousness and kind awareness. This melts frozen rigidity and reactivity and opens up new possibilities.

Kristin Neff, Clinical Psychologist and respected academic researcher into self-compassion offers a great practice that can serve as a way into the three components of self-compassion. It’s called the Self-Compassion Break and it can be as short as three breaths or as long as you want. She draws upon the Bodhicitta and compassion practices found in many Buddhist and Eastern philosophies and suggests you say these phrases to yourself whenever life is doing a number on you:

 1.     This is a moment of suffering.

2.     Suffering is part of being human.

3.     So may I be kind to myself.

The first phrase acknowledges our pain/distress rather than pushing it away, the second phrase reminds us that suffering is part of the experience of humanity, the third phrase invites you to express kindness towards the person suffering – you.  We can follow this up with kind deeds for ourselves or others.  We have to balance this though with the urge to “tend and befriend” which can lead to us over-worrying and over-reacting to the thought that others might be in danger and thus increasing a sense of threat.

Instead, the Self-Compassion Break, (especially if we do it while placing a hand over the heart), invites a pausing and a calming, a movement from the brain’s threat and drive systems to its soothing system. Some Somatic approaches refer to this as a felt-sense of safety or anchoring in the body, and in other approaches this is referred to as self-soothing, emotional regulation, resourcing and stabilisation, connection, safety and ease. There’s a recording of the practice here.

As we turn towards self-compassion, (and be warned, it’s not an easy journey), we learn to work with five pathways or resources: the body, emotions, thoughts, connection and spirt. All of these map onto different systems or networks in the brain.  
Christopher Germer summarises practices to work with these resources:

Softening - The Body –  resting, relaxing, moving, maintenance and care;

Soothing - Emotions – learning to befriend the good, the bad and the ugly;

Allowing - Thoughts – learning to see thoughts as mental events that come and go, disentangling from them rather than being bullied by them;

Connecting - Relations – Intimacy, generosity, – treating others as you’d like to be treated, engaging the attachment and affiliation system;

Nurturing - Spirit – Committing to deeper non-selfish values – opening the heart-mind and deepening what gives your life meaning, committing to taking values-based action.

This journey may also start with facing the fear of compassion itself and the backdraft of anger, mistrust, panic and grief this can arouse within us when we start to psychically defrost. However the long-term gain of learning to balance the threat system with the soothing and drive systems of the brain, drawing upon the neurobiology of compassion, is better physical and psychological health, a reduced sense of threat and an increased sense of safety and wellbeing. The research is here.

If building up your self-compassion sounds like something that would be helpful to you, make contact with us at Rhizome Practice. Our extensive Exeter University trainings in Mindfulness Based Approaches to psychotherapy may just be the thing that might help with stress, anxiety, depression, burnout or sadness.