Soothing Difficult Emotion With Compassion

Transforming your experience with fear, shame and other difficult emotions begins with grounding in compassionate acceptance and courageous exploration, but is magnified by a compassionate companion, igniting within your own strength, wisdom, resilience and recognizing how this connects you with all other human beings. You are not alone.

Transcript

Taking time to adopt a comfortable seated position,

Adjusting as needed to maximize comfort or even lying down.

Noticing the weight of the body on whatever is holding you up.

Gravity rooting you in groundedness.

And then simultaneously attending to sensations of the spine and the neck,

Bearing the head gently upward towards expansiveness.

These two realities,

The melting downward into the chair or support,

Just doing all the work of holding you up.

And at the same time,

The upliftment of the top half of the body in a slight extension skyward,

Two directions,

Each with complementary purpose.

Noticing the constancy of the breath,

Riding its waves of sensation in and out.

Soon we will turn attention towards your difficulty motion.

Before we do,

Recognizing your own intention for this practice.

Counterintuitively struggling to stop,

Fight or change difficult emotions causes them to boomerang back even stronger.

The intention of this meditation is to accept and bring courageous presence towards your own suffering.

Acting to soothe and allowing it to alleviate all on its own.

We begin with the recognition that staying in touch with your emotional state throughout this meditation is an act of self compassion.

You may feel varying levels of safeness as we move closer to what's bothering you.

Level one is feeling safe.

Level two is feeling challenged.

Feeling free to move back and forth between level one safeness and level two challenge as they promote strength and resilience.

Overwhelm is considered level three,

Which is unproductive.

If you ever feel overwhelmed by pain or emotion,

Feel free to return to focusing on breathing sensations.

Or to open your eyes and engage in any activity that returns you to a feeling of safety without judging yourself.

Caring for yourself with kindness.

Turning your attention now to a difficult emotion.

Perhaps fear or anxiety,

Anger,

Shame,

Or some other painful feeling.

As best you can,

Name or label the emotion.

And noticing the tendency not only to feel the fear or difficult emotion,

But also the secondary feeling of resistance.

Wanting this feeling to stop,

To avoid,

Or to perhaps even fight it.

As best you can,

Allow the difficult emotion and the desire to avoid it to just be here.

Labeling the urge to resist the difficult feeling also with words.

Fearful,

Annoyed,

Defeated,

Sadness,

Grief,

Or a desire to control.

Seeing if you can label these emotions by saying,

I'm noticing anger arising,

Or I'm noticing shame arising.

Adding the words,

I'm noticing ahead of the feeling,

Helps separate your observing self from the emotion or thought.

And helps you not get hooked or identified with it as much.

I'm tuning into the body and seeing where these emotions are manifest.

Allowing curious gentle exploration here.

Ironically,

The more we try to fight fear or other emotions,

The more intense they become.

Like waves,

We can't control difficult emotions,

But we can learn to surf them and surf the urge to avoid them.

Like a wave,

It will swell,

Peak,

And subside all on its own.

So turning again to sensations in the body.

Is there a constriction in the throat?

A pit in the stomach?

A tenseness in the legs or arms,

Similar to preparing to fight or to run?

Is there a furrowing of the brow?

Bringing a curious kind awareness to the sensations in the body of this challenging emotion and the desire to avoid it.

Curiously exploring,

Hmm,

What is it physically like to feel this difficult feeling?

What are its boundaries?

If it's a constriction in the throat,

For example,

Noticing the edges of the constriction.

Does it have borders where it stops and starts in the body?

Does it have a texture or even a color?

Is it stronger on the left side of the body or on the right side?

Is there any movement to it?

Seeing if it's changing in size or intensity over time.

Perhaps nothing specific can be felt physically and there's a sense of numbness.

If so,

Noticing numbness and what that is like.

Is there a part of the body that does not feel numb?

Is there awareness to boundaries between numbness and sensation in various parts of the body?

Adopting a friendly,

Compassionate expression in your mouth and eyes.

Greeting your fear with an open tenderness,

Like you would a good friend who is experiencing this.

Experimenting with kind touch.

Seeing if placing a hand on the most affected part of the body offers some soothing.

Or perhaps a hand on the heart or a fist on the heart.

Seeing if resting your crossed arms across your chest with hands on the opposite upper arms,

Like giving a self-hug,

Offers some comfort.

Replacing both hands,

Cradling the cheeks brings a compassionate contact with your own suffering.

And going back to any of these compassionate touches and staying with them as long as you like.

And now imagining that your difficult emotion or anxiety could be pulled out of you and placed on your lap like a frightened baby.

Imagining holding and soothing the baby with your gentle touch.

Your caring facial expression.

Your soothing tone of voice.

Reassuring your suffering self that you're moved with care about your own distress.

Bringing it close to you and treating the fear or pain with dignity and respect.

Recognizing that we're all just human and feeling anxiety,

Anger,

Shame or painful feelings is part of the full range of human emotion.

We have struggles and weaknesses and life brings challenges to each of us really.

In the beginning of this meditation,

Just as we noticed the direction of grounding,

While simultaneously being aware of the upward direction of upliftment,

We now hold two different emotional realities simultaneously.

See if while holding the difficulty with your soothing and not pushing it away,

You can also shift focus and body states to call to mind a compassionate figure.

This can be someone who represents and communicates a deep understanding of how hard it is to be here living as a limited human being.

This could perhaps be a spiritual figure or a living parent or grandparent,

A nurturing coach or teacher,

A friend who's always there for you.

And then once you've called to mind the details of this compassionate figure,

Notice the freedom you have to welcome both states into your awareness at the same time.

The fluid movement with which you can move back and forth between being open and grounded in the presence of challenging emotion and the upliftment of a compassionate companion.

This figure completely understands the complexity that much of our life events and difficulties are not circumstances of our choosing.

The genetics,

Culture,

Birth and conditioning all play a role in where we find ourselves now.

Where all human feel woundable,

Vulnerable and powerless from time to time.

The compassionate companion's desire is to listen,

To offer support and encourage your own strength and responsibility to respond with wisdom and courage to this painful difficulty.

They are deeply moved by your suffering and completely committed to supporting you.

From this place of ideal limitless compassion,

Viewing again the emotion or fear that is bothering you.

Noticing how seeing yourself in the presence of this source of compassion awakens in you compassion towards your own self.

Your sincere care toward your own suffering.

Having a sense of your strength,

Wisdom and groundedness.

And the spaciousness around which you can attend and support to your own painful emotion.

Experiencing the flexibility to move between accepting the difficult emotion while at the same time receiving comfort and understanding from your compassionate companion and your own compassionate mind.

Accepting these painful emotions as being right here does not mean that you like it.

And this is not just passive resignation.

It is courageous acknowledgement that this is how things are right now.

Expanding your awareness and capacity to hold it,

To be with it with a bold tenderness.

Recognizing your choice in staying with the actual experience of pain without getting lost in the storyline.

Your challenging emotion does not isolate you from others,

But is part of being human.

Just like you,

Countless others know what this feels like.

You are not alone in these feelings because others are experiencing the same thing,

Even right in this moment in other places of the world.

Opening your heart to this experience,

Allowing yourself to be touched by your own suffering.

You are also not alone in this because you are present to yourself in this difficulty.

Becoming aware again of the sensations of breath coming in and out.

And now breathing out compassion for yourself and the countless others who are experiencing this.

Imagining that your willingness to stay present with this experience,

To offer yourself compassion,

Might bring strength and comfort to all others who are suffering in this way.

And on the next inhale,

Opening your heart further to this experience.

And on the next out-breath,

Experiencing your own exhale as an offering to the world.

May we all be free from this suffering.

May we each find peace and joy.

May we all be held in loving presence.

May we be protected from harm and free from fear.

May we all be held in loving presence.

May we be protected from harm and free from fear.

And turning again to a sense of the body as a whole,

From head down to toes,

Sensing the space in the room all around you.

As this meditation comes to a close,

Acknowledging your participation and the willingness to open your heart to the full human experience.

Taking the reward of courageous compassion and your increased sense of choice into the rest of your day.

And when you're ready,

Opening your eyes and making contact again with the outside world.

Reviews

Great. A really safe and gentle way to explore those painful emotions without drowning. Thank you for making this track!

Magnificent! Will listen to it again to digest it better and frog going support may God bless you as your share your talent with others

Wonderfully soothing and helpful. Thank you.

This waa exactly what I needed this morning. I am grateful.

A timely meditation

A guided practice is recognizing, allowing, investigating and nurturing a difficult emotion. Voice is consistent and soothing and pace is just right. Thank you

just what i need

Dear Kimberly, thank you for these reflections and illuminations. Sending good wishes.

I am grateful for you and for sharing this with me. Thank you. Namaste.