The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

by Christopher K Germer

  Compassion Fatigue

  The result of extending ourselves too much to others is called “compassion fatigue.” The term is actually a misnomer because compassion itself isn’t fatiguing. Compassion fatigue is really “attachment fatigue.” We wear ourselves out when we’re attached to the outcome of our hard work, such as the success or recognition. Sure signs of compassion fatigue are (1) believing that you’re indispensable and (2) feeling resentment toward those you’re trying to help. Compassion fatigue feels bad, and it’s not good for anyone. The antidote to compassion fatigue is self-compassion. When your emotional supplies are depleted, take a break and care for yourself in whatever way you can: physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, or spiritually.

  Another way to manage compassion fatigue is by cultivating equanimity. When you’re caught by excessive attachment, see if you can untangle yourself by contemplating: “People are the owners of their deeds. It’s their choice how they make themselves happy or free themselves from suffering.” This is a traditional Buddhist saying to cultivate equanimity. It may sound like a prescription for indifference, but when you’re trapped in compassion fatigue it’s your ticket to emotional freedom.

  Altruism and Your Well-Being

  The psychologist Martin Seligman says that people seek happiness in three different ways: the Pleasant Life, the Engaging Life, and the Meaningful Life. Research has shown that pleasure contributes less to overall happiness than either being fully engaged in your life or having a meaningful life. Being “engaged” means knowing your strengths (such as your “signature strengths” from Chapter 5) and building them into your relationships and leisure activities. When you’re good at a task, you can become completely absorbed in it-you enter the “flow”—which is a deeply satisfying experience. A “meaningful life” is one in which you use your strengths for the greater good—something larger than yourself. Altruistic pursuits and metta meditation fit into this latter category.

  Would you like to know how you’re constructing your own life? If so, you can take the Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire, a quick test developed by Chris Peterson at the University of Michigan (www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx).

  Seligman and Peterson’s categories should be considered guides, not prescriptions, for any given individual. For example, some well-meaning people have a tendency to deny themselves pleasure as they pursue the greater good, which can make them harsh and judgmental. Other individuals may need a little encouragement to extend themselves to others so they can enjoy the satisfaction of making a difference in someone’s life. Even absorption in daily activities, though highly satisfying, is not universally desirable. Periods of confusion and doubt are necessary for us to grow. Use your understanding of these three approaches to bring balance and happiness into your life.

  TAKING IT ON THE ROAD

  Loving-kindness and compassion practice can easily be integrated into daily life. Every moment that you use a metta phrase, you’re doing informal meditation. It takes only a second of your time.

  Walking Meditation

  A delightful way to take metta meditation on the road, quite literally, is walking meditation. Whether you walk in the city or the woods, your mind will usually be in the “default” mode, digesting the past (who said what to whom) or planning the future (your errands, your evening). Our minds are mostly critiquing the people and things we see around us. Instead, we can use these walks to develop loving-kindness and compassion.

  TRY THIS: Compassionate Walking

  Plan to walk for 10 minutes or longer, anywhere you like. Dedicate the time specifically to cultivating loving-kindness and compassion.

  Stand still for a moment and anchor your attention in your body. Be aware of yourself in the standing posture. Feel your body.

  Recall that every living being wants to live peacefully and happily. Connect with that deep wish: “Just as all beings wish to be happy and free from suffering, may I be happy and free from suffering.”

  Begin walking. Note yourself moving through space in the upright position. Feel the sensations of your body, perhaps noting the pressure of your feet on the ground or the wind in your face. Keep your eyes softly focused and walk at a normal pace.

  After walking for a few minutes, repeat the loving-kindness phrases to yourself:

  May I be safe.

  May I be happy.

  May I be healthy.

  May I live with ease.

  The phrases will keep your attention anchored in your body and start to evoke the attitude of loving-kindness. Try to synchronize the phrases with each step or with each breath. It may help to shorten the phrases to a single word: “safe, happy, healthy, ease” or “love, love, love, love.”

  When your mind wanders, gently return to the phrases. If you find yourself hastening to your destination, slow down and refocus on your purpose.

  Do this with kindness, especially a feeling of gratitude toward your feet for supporting your entire body. Appreciate the marvel of walking.

  After a few minutes, expand loving-kindness to others. When someone catches your attention, say to yourself:

  May you and I be safe.

  May you and I be happy.

  May you and I be healthy.

  May you and I live with ease.

  You also say “May you be safe …” or just “safe … happy … healthy … ease” or “love … love … love … love.” Don’t try to include everyone; just do it one person at a time, keeping the attitude of loving-kindness alive.

  Eventually include all forms of life in the circle of your loving-kindness, for example, dogs, birds, insects, and plants.

  Allow yourself to receive any expressions of kindness that may come your way.

  At the end of the walking period, stand still for a moment and repeat “May all beings be happy and free from suffering” before you go on to your next activity.

  Compassionate walking meditation is especially fitting for people who can’t sit still very long and for people who are sitting all day in front of a computer and would like to get some exercise. A common question is “What should I do if I have to talk with someone?” Just let yourself become absorbed in the conversation and keep the wish percolating in the back of your mind: “May you be happy and free from suffering.”

  Your heart will be full of loving-kindness when the metta phrases revolve spontaneously through your mind. Then, when you meet someone, your words will align themselves with the phrases. For example, the silent mantra “May you be healthy” may be expressed as “I’m so sorry you had the flu last week.” You’ll not only be speaking kind words; you’ll actually feel them.

  Other Everyday Applications

  Do you remember the story I related in Chapter 3 of my struggle to help my wife after hip surgery? I was rescued from this domestic dilemma by mindfulness and loving-kindness practice. As I struggled to put my wife’s shoes on her swollen feet, I had a flash of awareness (“Wow, this situation is going downhill fast”) and self-compassion (“May she and I be free from suffering”). The metta phrase was the extra boost I needed to extricate myself from trying too hard to help my wife, which allowed me to get some orange juice and return to his task in a more sympathetic frame of mind.

  Metta practice can also penetrate into sleep or near-sleep states of consciousness. Usually I say the phrases before I fall asleep and when I wake up in the morning. This habit seems to have transformed the irritation I first felt as my wife yanked the blankets off the bed during her hot flashes. These days, as the covers suddenly disappear from my shoulders in the middle of the night, I find myself muttering something mildly sympathetic, like “Estrogen depletion sucks, doesn’t it?” as I wave the sheets in the air and create a little breeze for her. That’s a minor marital miracle.

  It’s always good to keep some mindfulness meditation in your loving-kindness practice. That will keep you in your body when you feel bad, without trying to change anything, as Darlene discovered.

&
nbsp; Darlene had a partner, Jackie, who suffered from mild depression. Jackie took care of their two kids while Darlene worked from her home office. Whenever Darlene went into the office, Jackie felt abandoned. Darlene felt guilty about this, and her stress came out as stomach pain and diarrhea. Over time, Darlene secluded herself more and more in her office. When Darlene finally discussed her problem with Jackie, Jackie reassured Darlene that she should go ahead and do her job even if she felt guilty about it. The ball was back in Darlene’s court.

  Darlene decided to approach the problem with mindfulness and self-compassion. First she resolved to find her emotions in her physical body rather than getting caught up in them—guilt, frustration, anger. She learned to recognize mild muscle tension in her gut and practiced “soften, allow, and love” (see Chapter 3). She labeled “guilt” in a soft, gentle way and recognized it as the same feeling she had as a child when her mother became disabled with migraine headaches. As Darlene reflected on her lifetime of guilty feelings, sympathy arose for herself. Rather than having a pity party, Darlene gave herself love: “May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be strong, may I live my life with ease.” Then she added her beloved partner to the mix: “May Jackie be safe, may she be strong, may she be healthy, may she live with ease.” “May we be healthy and strong, may we be free from suffering, may we live our lives with ease.”

  Whenever Darlene felt guilt, she located it in her body and resumed using the phrases. This practice put her in a good mood, and she started leaving the office for brief breaks with Jackie. Darlene had escaped her cycle of guilt, frustration, and avoidance, and Jackie’s mood improved considerably. Changes such as these are likely to occur over just a few weeks. Mindfulness helps to keep metta practice grounded in moment-to-moment reality, and compassion softens the criticism we heap on ourselves and others when things go wrong.

  As your practice gets stronger, you may want to bring the metta phrases into more challenging situations. For example, if you’re having a problem with a noisy neighbor in the apartment upstairs, start by offering metta to yourself: “May I be safe, may I be free of bitterness, may I live with ease.” Then include your neighbor: “May she and I be safe, may she and I be at ease.” Then, “May we both be at ease, may we both be free from bad feelings, may we both figure out how to communicate with each other.”

  Be flexible in your use of metta phrases in daily life, customizing them for each situation. (In formal sitting meditation, it’s better to keep the phrases the same.) Try not to make the phrases so specific that you get hooked on an outcome, such as “May she shut off the music already!” Of course, timely action is sometimes a more skillful approach than silent meditation, but in the long run the most effective interventions occur when we approach others with good will.

  The Power of Compassion

  Over the years, I’ve learned to trust the power of compassion to heal relationships. The following incident, which occurred during a couple therapy session, reinforced that trust:

  Jim worked conscientiously as a photographer but never seemed to earn enough money. Ruth was in despair about this, and occasionally she flew into a rage. This happened once during a therapy session. Ruth just seemed to snap, calling her husband a poor provider, “half a man,” and “lazy.” The words were so harsh that they felt surreal to me, like watching a made-for-TV movie about marital conflict. Jim remained calm throughout the tirade and intently focused on Ruth, which I found both curious and comforting. When it was over and I asked Jim what was going through his mind, he replied, “As the poison was coming out of Ruth’s mouth, all I could see was the pain in her heart.”

  The following session, I learned that Ruth had grown up under difficult economic conditions and she was terrified of returning to that lifestyle. When this issue came out into the open rather than remaining a hidden terror in Ruth’s heart, the couple was able to candidly discuss their financial needs and brainstorm together about the future. Ruth even volunteered to take over the financial side of Jim’s photography business, which Jim gratefully accepted.

  This outcome would have been impossible without Jim’s deep compassion—it made space for a deeper conversation about the soft feelings behind the hard words. Everyone in an intimate relationship occasionally leads their pain with fighting words. Jim’s remarkable comment “As the poison was coming out of [her] mouth, all I could see was the pain in her heart” has become an anchor for me when I’m with couples in intense conflict. Happily, Jim’s business is now flourishing, thanks to Ruth’s skillful guidance.

  Another surprising experience I had as a psychotherapist was an instance of compassion:

  Sam arrived in my office looking tense and distracted. He had just called for an emergency consultation a number of years after I’d last seen him. Within a few minutes, Sam blurted it out: “I have to help my mother kill herself and I’m here because maybe you can help me.” I was shocked and perplexed. I’d been a therapist for over 15 years and had never had such a request, especially not from a reasonable guy like Sam.

  It all made sense when Sam began to explain. His mother had suffered a stroke, and she couldn’t speak, eat, walk, or toilet herself. Sam said he could read in her anguished eyes that she was begging him to end her life. Knowing a little about strokes, and buying some time as well, I suggested to Sam that he should probably wait before taking drastic action because his mother might recover some functioning over the coming year.

  I never heard from Sam again on this issue. When he called for an appointment a year later to discuss a different problem, I asked him how his mother was doing. He said, “Oh, she’s much better.” I inquired what that meant, and Sam said she had not recovered any physical capacity, but she seemed happier than she’d ever been in her whole life. “How could that be?” I wondered aloud. Sam explained that his mother was always the kind of person who was supercompetent, never let others do anything for her, criticized his father mercilessly their entire life together, and now his dad was happily taking care of his mother in every possible way. “My mother was forced to receive love, perhaps for the first time in her entire life,” Sam said, “and it seems to have made her a gentler person.”

  Uncommon kindness, combined with curiously favorable conditions, seems to have created this remarkable outcome.

  A final example of the power of loving-kindness and compassion concerns my dear friend from graduate school, Gib, and his wife, Faye. Gib was 48 years old when he married Faye, then 32 years old, after the breakup of his first marriage. Faye had blond hair and drove a red convertible sports car with the license plate “FUN4-FAYE.” Three years after they married, Gib was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and the chemotherapy paralyzed him from the chest down. Faye remembers driving home after hearing the awful news, sobbing, “My husband is paralyzed! … My husband is paralyzed! I don’t want my husband to be paralyzed!” When I visited Faye and Gib 2 years later, I asked Faye, “How do you do it?” Her response has echoed in my mind ever since. She softly replied, “I didn’t know I could love so much.”

  “It’s been a process,” Faye told me. “We’ve had good counselors and ministers. And Gib allows me to talk. Most of the time he’s a husband and not paraplegic. He allows me to be me because of who he is.” Faye added, “I don’t see that blond bombshell anymore, but Gib can see the beauty of my soul. God has called us to love on a soul-to-soul level. He stripped away much of what we had together initially, forcing us into a deeper level of understanding of each other. The love we have now is nothing short of a miracle.”

  Eight years ago, a bright light entered Faye and Gib’s life in the form of an adopted daughter. When their daughter started school, Faye returned to her work as a school teacher. At one point, Faye started worrying about herself: “When parents tear up, I tear up with them. I do the same with just about anybody.” Then someone told Faye, “That’s not weak, that’s compassion!”

  I hope this chapter has helped you learn how to integrate loving-kindness
practice into your life, without losing yourself. In Part III, I’ll show you how to tailor self-compassion to your personality style and circumstances, how to sustain your practice over time, and how to gauge your progress.

  Part III

  customizing self-compassion

  8

  finding your balance

  Man always travels along precipices, and, whether he will or no, his truest obligation is to keep his balance.

  —JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET, Spanish philosopher

  The next step is to customize your self-compassion practice. A key element is to balance your personality style—how you typically deal with stress—so self-compassion can unfold naturally in your life. For example, a “caregiver” personality might easily feel compassion toward others but hold back on self-compassion. An “intellectual” may understand the concept of self-compassion but find it difficult to get on board with the emotional aspect. A “butterfly” can be enthusiastic about self-compassion practice at first, but fly away at the first sign of difficulty. By knowing how you’re built, you can make the most of your strengths and minimize obstacles that will invariably crop up.