Comforting Ourselves: More than Self-Care…Self-Healing By Cathryn Bond Doyle
A flash of insight came to me last December as I sat with a married couple working hard to “own” their own stuff so they could love each other more deeply.
The purpose of this article is to explain what happened, expand on the comparison between self-care & self-comfort & then to offer ways we can
“Comfort Ourselves” with the hope that it triggers lots of “Ah Ha”s & insights for you.
I listened, as they got brutally honest with themselves & each other. In short, in the process of untangling events & feelings of the past few months, the young woman discovered that underneath her anger with her husband (for not doing certain things she wanted him to do) was jealous of his ex-wife & underneath that jealousy was a fear that she was going to lose him.
Going deeper, she was somewhat surprised to discover a belief that no matter how she looked or what she did, she was just not lovable. As she reflected on this newfound knowledge, she wept.
It became clear to her that, at some level, she’d been hoping that her husband would be able to do enough & say enough to make her feel safe in the relationship,
yet as they talked she also realized that no matter how many times he had indeed told her & showed her how much he loved her, she couldn’t & didn’t believe him.
She wanted him to make the fears go away by proving his love with this action or that behavior & she realized she’d been testing him as well. In that moment of awareness; she also realized that she'd been blaming him for not giving her something that she wasn’t even giving herself.
She was the only one who could give herself what she so desperately wanted…the ability to accept that she was truly lovable & to believe that her husband really did love her.
As we sat there with this major league “Ah Ha” it was amazing & wonderful to watch
the awareness, the feelings, the forgiveness & the compassion that flowed between the two of them. She apologized for all the times she’d been angry with him.
She was so sorry for all the times she blamed him for her pain. He apologized for not having compassion or patience for the pain she’d been experiencing.
Fortunately, her husband was instantly supportive. His next reaction was visible relief. He explained he felt a wave of relief because he knew he was no longer going to have to feel the pressure of trying to overcome his wife’s inner insecurities.
HE knew he loved her & was hopeful that now she would believe that. They both visibly relaxed & the love they shared was almost palpable.
For the next hour we talked about ways she could calm & nurture her own fears & how her constant self-assessment needed to shift from cruelly critical to comforting.
As she talked, her voice softened & she said, in a somber moment of self-revelation,
“Oh my gosh, I need to comfort myself.”
As soon as she used the word “comfort” it felt like
a huge light bulb went on inside me. I realized that self-comforting was quite different
from the more commonly discussed practice of self-care.
We
grabbed a dictionary & found the following:
To comfort
(v) is “to soothe in time of grief or fear.”
To care (v) is “to be concerned or interested.”
We talked about how self-care deals with ways we can help ourselves & that self-comfort
is more about ways we can heal ourselves. With all the talk about self-care & how it helps us, I realized that we need to add another option when under stress…the gift of self-comfort.
There are clearly times for self-care & all the ways we can “do” things for ourselves. However in that one conversation, we had just discovered
a place for self-comfort which seemed much more about new ways to “be”
with (rather than “do” for) ourselves.
We know how to comfort others. It was profound to realize that
we also have the ability to bestow our instinctive & powerful tender loving care on ourselves. We were now only a conscious choice away from this healing force. So, how do we
know when to apply self-care vs. self-comfort? Let’s look briefly at both approaches.
The concept of self-care has been around for a while & thankfully seems to be catching on as an integral part of a
healthy lifestyle. We’ve come a long way since Calgon (“Take me away in a bathtub”)
& L’Oreal (“I’m worth it”) introduced the idea
that it was OK to do things for ourselves.
Most of us have mastered the art of doing for others. As we turn some of that expertise inward
& do more & more for ourselves, we feel the positive impact & the people around us can see that we're less stressed & happier.
Our
self-care strategies may take the form of:
The value of self-care is widely accepted. The benefit of self-care is the genuine confidence generated as we realize we can count on ourselves. The good news is that those of us who have created
new self-care solutions can attest to the fact that it’s almost always worth the effort & it gets
easier & easier with practice.
The thing about self-care is that it usually involves overt actions & often has impact on others. This is probably why
self-care requires such courage.
Calling on the Power of Self-Comfort
One of the benefits of comforting ourselves is that it can be
completely private, doesn’t require any outward action & no one even needs to know what we're doing. This makes it different from self-care & may make mastering the art of self-comfort more appealing
to some.
- What
does self-comforting look like?
- How can we comfort ourselves?
First, look at how we comfort others. When a child
is hurt or scared, how do we comfort them? When a loved one faces a tragic event or is injured, what tone
of voice do we use when talking to them?
When someone is in great physical pain, where do we get all that patience & compassion?
How about the tenderness we feel when we pick up a puppy or a baby
when we know they've just been frightened?
In all of these situations we choose to open our “comfort valves” & let the love & gentleness flow thru us.
We're healing as we do this & at some level, we know that. The suggestion here is that we
give ourselves permission to feel those feelings towards ourselves.
Let’s decide, right here, right now, that we deserve the benefits of
our own support. No one ever needs to know. Just make that choice from moment to moment.
Next, we can begin to monitor our self-talk. Look for opportunities
to talk to ourselves silently in a gentle & calming voice. “Hey, everything is going to be OK. You're going to figure this out. You’re really
a good person. You can do this.”
Let’s talk to ourselves until we feel better. Sadly, some people
even have trouble imagining this kind of self-talk. This may be a new skill: a skill worth every once of effort.
In the terrific book “Excuse Me: Your Life is Waiting.” by Lynn Grabhorn, she introduces
the concept called “tender-talk.” I don’t know if she invented the term
but reading her book brought it to my attention.
She talks about how harsh most of us are with ourselves & how detrimental that is to our health,
happiness & daily mood. So many of us have super-critical inner judges who lambaste us at the slightest thing. Well, let’s make the decision to fire any & all inner critics & decide
to, as the dictionary says; “soothe ourselves in times of grief or fear.”
Another way we can comfort ourselves is by honoring our deepest feelings & giving ourselves what we need emotionally. Emotions are timeless. Experiences leave scars & wounds & distorted beliefs about ourselves.
When something happens that triggers an uncomfortable feeling, rather than reacting outwardly, it would be self-comforting to take a few moments to figure
out what's really going on so we can decide how to help ourselves.
It’s a time to get curious with ourselves just like we would if a child comes home crying & there’s no visible evidence
of a cause for the tears. We launch right into comforting mode.
Almost automatically we’d begin asking questions until we understand
what’s happening.
The loving comfort just seems to come naturally. Try this approach
with yourself next time someone or something pushes one of your “hot buttons.”
In the session described at the beginning of this article, the wife realized she was continually
telling herself that she had reasons to doubt her husband’s love & yet the truth was she didn’t believe she was lovable. That was a belief. Whose responsibility is it to change or heal that?
It's, of course, the wife’s job. Once she realized that all the blaming & hurt & angry feelings were distractions to avoid her own painful wounding belief (that she felt unlovable), she went to work. She began talking, out loud, to that part of her who longed to believe she was lovable. It was powerful & touching to witness.
There are some good books out there about healing the inner child & healing wounds from the past. As we uncover the underlying beliefs we're holding about ourselves, many of these wounds can be healed by the conscious decision to
have a new belief.
As the wife began speaking gently, telling herself that she was lovable, (like she would have talked to a friend in the same situation), she began to feel better
almost immediately. After a month of this effort, she has discovered she's much more relaxed. She feels free of the anxiety of losing the focus of her love (husband, parents, friends) for the first time in her life.
She has begun to source her own comfort thru her actions &
her positive, nurturing & private self-talk. Look how positively she has changed her future by having the persistence & courage to get to the bottom of their relationship stress.
