Out Here Tryna Survive
This podcast is a trauma-informed, hope-oriented, safe space. It is a warm hug of solidarity for Black women 35+. It is a celebration of our resilience thus far & our determination to not only survive but THRIVE.
Join me, Grace Sandra, a Mama, author, advocate/activist, storyteller, for some good ole self-love shenanigans.
We are braver than we believe✨
Out Here Tryna Survive
Ep 17: Stop being mean to yourself. How Self-Compassion saved my life.
What if you could transform your harsh inner critic into a voice of warmth and understanding? Join me, Grace Sandra, on a heartfelt exploration of self-compassion, where I reveal the deeply personal journey that shifted my perspective from self-criticism to self-kindness. Through this episode, we unpack common misconceptions surrounding self-compassion and learn how it can be a practical, daily practice, especially for black women facing life's myriad challenges.
Reflecting on my own experiences, I delve into the roots of negative self-talk that sprouted in my childhood, shaped by familial interactions and racial dynamics. Growing up in a racially diverse family presented its unique challenges, which influenced my self-perception and beliefs about my intelligence. I share poignant stories from my family life, including the complex relationship with my mother and the impact of derogatory remarks from my brother. These narratives illuminate how early experiences can shape us and how self-compassion can help rewrite these internal scripts in adulthood.
Guided by the wisdom of my late counselor, Dr. Angie Hershey, I discuss the power of therapy in overcoming internalized shame and embracing self-kindness. This episode highlights the necessity of being "at home with yourself" and the transformative effect of self-compassion on resilience and emotional regulation. We explore practical steps to cultivate this vital practice, leading to healthier relationships and a stronger sense of self-worth. Tune in to discover how recognizing shared humanity and silencing the harsh inner critic can usher in healing, personal growth, and a profound sense of acceptance.
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you are a worthless fucking piece of shit. You're a dumbass. You have nothing to offer this world. So that's a little brief snippet of the kind of thing I used to write in my journal to myself, except I would write like a whole page, a whole page. Have you ever done anything like that before? Have you ever written out your weaknesses? Whole pages worth of what you perceive to be the absolute worst parts of yourself? Have you ever heard this question? If I were to ask you what you loved, how long would it take before you listed yourself? No, because, for real y'all. Have y'all ever noticed that you are so much harder on yourself than you are on other people?
Speaker 1:Today I want to talk about the concept of self-compassion, because it's something that people have told me over the years that I'm really good at and I just, you know, want to give myself my flowers first of all. But I have to say that I am I'm pretty damn good at it. I'll acknowledge that, I'll admit it, but it's only because for a long time I was really bad at it. I would venture to say I was the worst at it. For a really long time I actually literally hated myself. So today I want to talk about self-compassion. There's so much, so much power in self-compassion y'all, I'm not even kidding. It is such a beautiful way to heal yourself, such a beautiful way, and it's so overlooked, it's so not talked about enough, it's not practiced enough, it's not ground into us enough. Frankly, for my opinion, it's not for my liking it is not ground into us enough. Self compassion is absolutely not a form of indulgence or going over the top, or some people will act a fool about, like you, proclaiming that you love yourself or that you're compassionate on yourself, or that you have a certain sense of kindness to yourself, and they'll actually have a problem with it, which is weird to me, and we'll talk more about that. But today I just want to say right out the gate we're going to be talking about the benefits of self-compassion, the benefits of kindness to yourself, how to do it and some of the ways that I have done it, and it has literally transformed my whole life, because it's really not about, like letting yourself off the hook. It's not about letting yourself off the hook. It's about being honest with yourself and facing absolute reality and meeting it with the same kindness that you would give to someone else that you love. I've just met so many people who struggle with this, and because I've struggled with it so much, that's part of the reason why I want to talk about it today.
Speaker 1:So in this episode, we're going to dive deep into self-compassion, and if you want to learn how to be kinder to yourself, this episode is for you. You could literally be anywhere else in the world, but you are here with me. So thank you so much, y'all. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. This podcast is a hope-granted storytelling space. It's a warm hug of solidarity from me to you and all of the black women in the world out here trying to survive something. Okay, this is your new favorite podcast. Please sign up on Apple Spotify. You know iHeart wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're on YouTube, honey, please give me a subscribe, like, follow and share. Podcasts are notoriously hard to grow because they're hard to share. So if you wouldn't mind taking an extra step and sharing this on your Facebook sharing this, you know, on your Instagram stories, please, please do so, especially if you think that there is a black woman out there who needs to hear the kind of information that I'm sharing about how to heal and survive all the things that we're trying to deal with in this world. I'd appreciate it so much. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm Grace Sandra, an author, an advocate and an activist, and welcome to episode 17. First, let me tell y'all a story For me. My negative self-talk started directly in the home. So I was raised. First of all, please forgive my throat. It's been like a month or two of me having throat, cough clearing, snot, nasal issues, which is so terrible because every time I try to film a podcast I feel like it flares up for some reason. So my issue with like talking negatively to myself started directly from hearing other people talk negatively to me. So I had a brother who was.
Speaker 1:We were racially different because I am biracial. My mom is white and her kids before she had me were all white, and then my dad is black and his kids before he had me were all black. Anyway, I was raised in my mom's house with my mom's white children that she had before me, and they were raised in Detroit when it was white. Okay, this was the 70s, yeah, oh, white flight happened and then the neighborhood turned over and it was all black by the time I was coming up, but before, when it was all white, my siblings were enjoying their little white friends in the neighborhood right and then when it turned over, the black kids weren't feeling them because they were the only white family left right. So they were getting made fun of and picked on and bullied, hustled, stolen from. You know all the little things that happen when you're a minority in a neighborhood.
Speaker 1:And my white brother was also blonde hair, blue eyed, short, skinny, 100, nothing, five feet, nothing, and he was just easy to pick on. And on top of all that he was kind of an asshole and his response to being bullied by black people was to then bully me, his black sibling. So I was called a stupid little by my brother and often, even if he didn't even if he didn't combine stupid little n-word, he combined it with he would call me stupid quite a bit. That was kind of his go-to, like when he would be mad at me or angry or we'd be fighting about whatever. I was left alone a lot with my brother because my mom, you know, worked full-time. She was a Detroit police officer. Long story short, I was with him quite a lot because my sisters were off, my older white sisters were off doing their lives. There was 10 years between my brother and I, so he was often babysitting me.
Speaker 1:So I got called stupid a lot and because of him correlating and putting together like you're stupid and you're black at the same time, I really believed for a time that all black people were in fact stupid, including me and most especially me, and I didn't pull that apart, those layers apart, for many, many years. But it really became a very deep rooted lie, a very, very deep rooted lie in my soul, that I was stupid because I was black. And then there was a couple times I hate to even say this because this is about my mom and my story with my mom. I want to share it sometime, like all of the whole story. But my mom, you know she was a paranoid schizophrenic. She was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but we didn't know she had a lot of issues. My mom was also very loving.
Speaker 1:It's a very complicated feelings I have about my mom, but I almost sometimes hate to say anything negative about her because I know that she really tried her best, okay, and I'm not speaking from a trauma-bonded perspective like I know that she, as someone who was very, extremely mentally ill, I think she showed love in so many ways. So when I share stories of my mom not sharing love, just know, I'm a little triggered like it's hard. It's hard on me to share this shit. But my mom, sometimes she called me stupid as well and I don't think, you know, I could try to make excuses for her. I don't think she understood the kind of damage that that causes.
Speaker 1:You know, don't forget, this was the late 70s, this was the mid 80s. You know, back then there wasn't as much conversation about mental health and there wasn't as much conversation either about parenting and there wasn't the widespread amount of information that we have about how we should parent and how we shouldn't hit our kids and how we shouldn't call them stupid and how we should breastfeed them. And you know, a lot about parenting was pushed to the forefront with the World Wide Web. Okay, but this was before that. I just say all those caveats because of the internal battle I have about sharing my mom calling me stupid. But she did a few times and it wasn't all the time either. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 1:But sometimes when you hear something like that from someone who is your, you know primary caregiver, it really sticks. It really really sticks. And my mom. You know the way she did it. What are you stupid? That's how she would do it. You know she wouldn't say you're stupid directly. She would just be like what are you stupid? Why did you do that? What are you stupid? You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:And I think the combination of my dad or not my dad, sorry, my brother calling me the stupid little n word and my mom asking me it really just very much solidified in my little baby brain that I was in fact stupid. And the thing is y'all is I'm actually not, but I'm not at all, but I believed that I was. That's the key is I believed that I was. For several years, I would say it didn't really occur to me that I wasn't stupid. It didn't really like solidify in my brain, I think, until I was like 35.
Speaker 1:And by that time I already had, you know, grown up, obviously, graduated from high school, graduated with a bachelor's degree with like a 3.6 GPA. You know it wasn't the best, but it also wasn't the worst. It did take me a long ass time, but that's another story. I was working, I was enjoying some success career wise, I was speaking all over the country Sometimes. You know, I was a mom and I was confronted with it. Actually, when I started a master's program and yeah, that's a whole nother story but I was confronted with the fact that I still walked around as if I were a person who was stupid who's pretending to be smart around as if I were a person who was stupid who's pretending to be smart, and what I realized was that I was a smart person who had negative self beliefs and that was, you know, in some ways kind of crushing and in some ways a little bit crushing, but anyway. But honestly, being stupid and being called stupid was just one of the many, many things that I believed negatively about myself that I continue to affirm over and, over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:So I was always a big journaler. I either ever since I was like 11 or 12. I don't even know how young. Ever since I was little, I was always writing my thoughts in journals After I got married. I got married pretty young the first time, when I was like 22, 21 or 22. I think something about being married young and really being out on my own. Also, at that time, my mom was kind of really losing it. Her schizophrenia was getting so much worse. And so I was really struggling in a lot of different ways with kind of being kind of alone in the world without my mom at all in any way. But marriage was just.
Speaker 1:Marriage was so hard on me when we first got married, like I really I got married way too young and I was not in the mood. You know that's that's the nicest way I can say how immature and kind of a jackass I was. I was just not in the mood. I didn't want to do nobody's laundry, I didn't want to cook, I didn't want to clean, I didn't want to relate to him, I didn't want to have long conversations, I didn't want to work on it, I didn't want to be faithful, I didn't want, I didn't want it. It was almost like I thought I need to get get married, I gotta get married. This is what god and Jesus and christians and everyone is saying we should do, and I really did love him.
Speaker 1:But I'm just saying, to sum it up in like the most Simplified way possible, I think like a year into it I was just like this is this sucks? Like I'm way too young for this. I want to date other people, I want to sleep with other people. I want to be out in these streets, I don't want to be taking care of a home. I was just not in the mood, yeah, and so I wasn't a great wife. You know, just to be clear, I wasn't unfaithful, I just was always tempted, and I was always like looking at other men, like wishing, like, oh, I wish I chose him, wish I chose him, I wish I chose him. It was so fucking ridiculous because I was so immature and not ready for marriage. But the reason why I'm sharing that with y'all here's how it correlates because y'all y'all were like Grace, get to the motherfucking story. Okay, let me get to the story. How it correlates is that because I was having all of these struggles and I was not in the mood to be married and didn't want to be married.
Speaker 1:I was in a very stern evangelical Christian community and so it was always like you're bad, you want to be with other men, you're bad. You want to have more sex you're bad. You want to enjoy sex more you're bad. You, your house is messy, you're bad. You're not doing enough fundraising you're bad. You're not doing enough for the church you're bad. There were so many things that were just like you're constantly failing, and then also the message of evangelical Christianity. You're evil, you're born evil. You're a slime. You're a worm. Fall before God and his mercy and maybe he will have mercy on you, but really you're a slime ball. Just FYI, like, stay in shame because you are slime.
Speaker 1:And I'm giving you like a real oversimplified view of the kind of messaging that I was getting and why my journals ended up saying like you're a piece of shit. Oh, you're tempted to be with another guy. You're a piece of shit. You, you can't keep your house clean. You're a piece of shit. You, you can't keep your house clean. You're a piece of shit. You're lazy, you can't raise enough money. You're a piece of shit. You're not good, you don't. You didn't pray today. You're a piece of shit. You didn't have a 30 minute quiet time like you, motherfucking piece of shit. It was just like everything I did at that time there was no I had. I had such little behavioral control. I think that's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:There are times in life, I feel like, where you know, depending on how you've been raised in your childhood or whatever, like where you get basic behavioral control issues under control, but it's still really not always a reflection of your character, but for me I don't really think it was. I think I just was really struggling with basic control issues, basic self control and self discipline issues and as a result I really felt like I am maybe the worst person ever and I also did not know I had. I for sure had complex PTSD. I got married coming right out of pretty extreme trauma with my mom. Literally the last decade before I got married was pretty extreme trauma, with my mom just getting worse and worse and worse and worse, and I was the only person she was living with and taking it out on. And then the decade before that was an entire decade of being abused by my dad. There's no way I went into marriage without having complex PTSD. I for sure had complex PTSD. I for sure I look back now and know I had ADHD. I couldn't focus, couldn't keep my light together. I for sure had all sorts of behavioral issues. I was struggling with pretty severe depression and anxiety issues as a result of the compounding trauma I had been through.
Speaker 1:I'm only sharing that to say, like my life really I really was struggling, but it wasn't because I'm such an inherently bad person. The only lens that anyone could give me was you're fucking up your life and God is not pleased. That anyone could give me was you're fucking up your life and God is not pleased. And it ended up leading into like literally a decade more of journaling about how bad I was, how terrible I was, how mean I was, how angry I was. Anything that came up during the day that I felt any bit of shame about or anyone put on me, I felt extreme, extreme shame about it. And it was really sad because there were so many different points over the course of all of those years that I felt like, why am I here? You know, if I'm such a terrible person, I would have journal, literal, entire journal pages filled with me saying negative, horrible things about myself. And it was like why am I here? If I am this person, this person is so evil, then why the hell am I here? You know that's, you know the effect it had on me, but also you know I think it's safe to say no-transcript will not ever heal or feel any sort of relief or get any sort of healing whatsoever until he comes to term and has offers himself some self compassion.
Speaker 1:I know that sounds so fucking crazy Like, why does this man who murdered his three children get to have self compassion? I mean, I guess that's your worldview, because I do believe. I do believe there is some level of redemption for all of humanity. I do believe there is redemption possible. I don't think he should get out of prison, but I do think that if I knew him and he were my friend, I would encourage him to go on a process of healing, and that would include some self compassion. So if even a man who murdered his three children can have, can experience freedom and healing from like the tremendous amount of guilt and shame that you feel when you do wrong things, I believe that normal, everyday people who are struggling with like normal, everyday basic human things that all humans struggle with, I believe that we too can live a life of freedom and we don't have to live with like constant guilt, shame, terror, feelings of worthlessness and wanting to die.
Speaker 1:And I was completely stuck. So I think. So what started my journey with realizing that I had to offer myself some self compassion was one of my counselors I had been. I've been in therapy on and off. Okay, I've been in therapy. Okay, your girl has been in therapy but one of my counselors. Her name was Dr Angie Hershey. May she rest in peace. She is gone now, but she was the first person.
Speaker 1:She said something so significant to me that I'll never, ever, ever, ever forget, like it was one of the most significant therapeutic pieces of advice that I've ever got. You know, something will just stick with you and she was just. She always said to me. I should say she said to me several times Grace, you're not at home with yourself, you're not at home with yourself. And part of the reason why that stuck with me is because I never understood what the fuck she meant until after she died, literally till after she died. I didn't get it.
Speaker 1:There was just so many times I would be like, what do you mean? And it was interesting because her strategy was that she would never outline it for me. Yeah, I'm telling you, she must have said it to me in like 10 different sessions, because I saw her over the course of three years, but she would never really like give it all to me. She would. She would say things like I want to encourage you to find ways to be at home with yourself. How are you not at home with yourself? You don't welcome yourself, you don't love yourself. So she would go into it a little bit, but there wasn't any real like okay, in order to be at home with yourself, you need to do A, b, c, d, e, f and G and then you will be at home with yourself. But she would always point out when I would share stories of what was going on or what I was struggling with, she would point out that I wasn't at home with myself.
Speaker 1:And I remember so many times being like Angie I'm so frustrated that you keep saying that what do you want me to do? What the fuck do you want me to do? To be at home with myself? I don't fucking know. Okay, like bitch, just give it to me.
Speaker 1:I would be that frustrated with her, but part of it, part of it is that how can you be at home with someone you're constantly yelling, screaming and saying horrible things to, or someone, and now that I have been through domestic violence and lived through a marriage where someone was literally like yelling, screaming, belittling, demeaning, dehumanizing, how could I ever be at home with him? I couldn't. I couldn't ever be at home with him in the way. I don't mean like literally physically in the same home, but like how could I ever be at home with him? I couldn't. I couldn't ever be at home with him in the way I don't mean like literally physically in the same home, but like how could I ever feel at home and feel safe with someone who's saying things to me that are constantly belittling me? And I was telling her that I was doing that and I think she was reflecting that to me Like you cannot and you are not at home with yourself while you are a menace to society, while drinking your juice in the hood in your journals. You're a menace to yourself, you're not at home with yourself.
Speaker 1:That was the first time that it really occurred to me that I had a really big issue, because when she said that I immediately, when I started thinking about what that meant and the implications for that, I immediately thought well, I can't change, I can't change, I'm not going to ever change that I can't. You know, stop pointing out the truth Like. The truth is I am a failure. The truth is I am dumb. The truth is I am stupid. The truth is I am a seductress. I am. You know all the things they say about me. I am angry and you know a lot of it was lies, a lot of it was lies, lies, lies. You sit on a throne of lies A lot of the stuff that people told me and why I have like a lot of bitterness right now towards like the ways that being involved so deeply in evangelical Christianity, how it formed and kept me imprisoned in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:But anyway, she was the beginning of that journey and then I think what pushed me over the edge was I started going to seminary for a Masters of Divinity so that I could master the divine instead of being mastered by the divine, and I had to take a class, a spiritual direction class, and have a spiritual director which is basically kind of like a spiritual coach essentially, and that was really fucking deep. That was super deep. My spiritual, my class of my spiritual director was deep. It wasn't really a class, it was just me and him meeting and talking about deep shit, and then I had to write deep papers and then I had to, like you know, take a bunch of like personality tests and shit. So I don't even know what they were, but they were like ones that took several hours, like hours and hours and hours, and had like results. That was like a 30 page PDF. Okay. So it was pretty fucking deep.
Speaker 1:That spiritual direction class was a little bit life changing because he directly called out to me like you are believing a series of lies about yourself. And he was like I don't see someone who's dumb at all. Like what are you even talking about? I think him identifying that and just saying it real, like confused, like what girl? What do you mean? What do you mean? I think it was just helpful for me Because I was just like yeah, I'm talking about me, I'm dumb and I struggle to not be, and he's like no girl, what. That was so, so helpful. And then I think I don't know that started this journey of me, like well, if that's not true, you know, if I'm in fact, if I'm in fact not dumb, then what else isn't true, you know? And that was really interesting.
Speaker 1:And then I got a different spiritual director as a part of my job. We were assigned a spiritual director because I was working in ministry and her name is Alice T and I love Alice T. We're still friends and Alice T really called out in me this horrible habit of talking negatively to myself, writing out the journal pages, speaking terribly to myself, and she challenged me to try to write to myself in a way that I would hear God, god as a loving God. God is the way that at that time, and still to this point today, that Alice T and I believed that God is love, that God's voice is love, that the way that God sees humanity is with kindness and mercy and compassion, and that God desires justice and love and provision and abundance and mercy and compassion for all humans. And she challenged me to view myself in a way that God sees me as love, lovable, worthy and good overall.
Speaker 1:And I started to shift slowly, slowly, slowly shift. And that was a long process because I could say something to myself that was like nice, you know, on a Tuesday and then like three months will go by and I would be saying mean stuff to myself the whole time about everything horrible that was happening, and then another Tuesday would come by and I would say something nice. So it was like a really very, very slow process. Okay, but I was, I, the seeds had been planted. But what I want you all to know is that from the time that I really first, you know, when I first saw Dr Hershey, angie, when I first saw Angie, I was maybe like 29 or so and by the time I had went to seminary and had the spiritual direction class and then had my spiritual director, with who I was working with, and began this slow process of like unearthing all of these horrible things that I believed about myself. There was probably like eight to 10 years maybe that elapsed that I was just kind of. It was always in the back of my mind like hey, be nicer to yourself, be kinder to yourself, start to replace those thoughts. It was just so few and far between. But there was something that finally shifted for me and that's what I want to tell y'all.
Speaker 1:What really shifted for me was, honestly, I, when I got married for a second time and I married someone who is a very, very severe verbal abuser. Verbal abuse is not just name calling, it's not just yelling. Those are, in fact, two forms of verbal abuse out of 15 different ways that one can be verbal abused, and he was practicing all 15. It's basically when you attempt, when you use 15 different strategies, to take power and control over another person through communication, primarily verbal. And when I realized that that's what I was experiencing, I realized that I was experiencing a level of dehumanization that I had never experienced before, particularly because I grew up with, like I said, a brother who practiced name calling and verbal insults, and so I knew what that felt like.
Speaker 1:But my brother didn't do all of the other ones, but my second ex-husband, he did all of them and there was a point at which I realized, if my ex-husband my husband at the time is verbally assaulting me in every way, 20 to 30 times a day and it was killing me, it was rotting me from the inside out, I realized, if he's doing that and I'm doing it, I will die. I will absolutely die. There is no way I could survive two people verbally assaulting me. It's, you know, just one. Just what he was doing was so shocking and off-putting and the level of cognitive dissonance was so high because I'd never experienced all 15 ways that you can verbally abuse someone. I'd never experienced anything other than name calling and yelling. Those are the only two ways I'd ever been verbally abused, but to experience all of them, the cognitive dissonance was so severe anyway.
Speaker 1:But I was also being mean to myself, per my use, per my use like, per my whole other life, like what I had always been doing because of growing up with verbal insults, you know, and growing up with with, with, with name calling and yelling, and I realized the two of us, we will kill me, it will kill me and and, and I felt like he was killing me slowly, anyway, that that that is what changed things for me Huge, hugely changed things for me. It was like you have to change. You have to change. There is no way you will survive this life if you do not stop verbally assaulting yourself. It wasn't even about like some spiritual journey, like oh, I just got to be more self compassionate, I just got to love myself more, I just got to affirm myself more, I just got to talk to myself kindly, because that's what I need to do. It was like bitch, you will not fucking survive If you don't get your shit together. Even that is like a pretty rough. But there was a part of me that was just like it's now or never and you have three kids. You have three kids whose life will never be the same if you leave it, because you have not survived all of the abuse that you have endured. So I want to give you some tips for how, what is self-compassion in general, and how to practice it and how and why I got through it to the point where I'm actually so good at it. Now I'm actually so good at it and I can just tell y'all, like with a true, genuine smile on my face, like, wow, I actually surmounted something so big, that was such a big thing in my life and I'm so proud of myself.
Speaker 1:First of all, self compassion, just in a nutshell, is treating yourself how you would treat another friend If another friend came to you and they were crying and lamenting because, let's just say, they cheated on their husband or something like that. Actually, no, that's not a good example. Let's just say they, you know, got into a car accident. It was accidental, they didn't mean to, and they totaled their husband's car and they felt really bad. Like are you going to sit there and scream at them and be like you, fucking idiot? I can't believe. You fucking totaled your car, you stupid ass bitch. Like, no, you're not going to do that. You're going to literally have a sense of like, you know, oh my god, it was an accident, you didn't mean to Like you, you were doing the best you could at the time with which you knew, and you still got into an accident. So that's the first like, think of self-compassion, like that number one.
Speaker 1:Number two, like I said before, suffering and mistakes are just part of the human existence. Like I I shouldn't have to say that, but like I just feel like I need to because, yes, this all exists on a spectrum. Like you know, I talked about the guy earlier who, like, murdered his three kids. The hypothetical guy, which we know has happened before, but like the hypothetical, non-hypothetical murder murderous man and us over here, everywhere in between, who've made mistakes along the line of, you know, values and morals that are some are really good and some are really bad.
Speaker 1:But, no matter what, we're still all human, make mistakes and it is inevitable that we will fail and it is inevitable that imperfection is part of the human experience. And so we have to have some level of just baseline compassion for our humanity. We are humans, you are just but human. You are but dust. That is one part of the scripture I think is really poignant and helpful that when it says you are but dust. You are dust, from dust you came and from dust that will return to dust in the field which the deer will eat. You know, it's the circle of life. It's the circle of life. So in that way, you're not alone. None of us are alone. We're all going to make mistakes, we're all going to do stupid shit, we're all going to need forgiveness, we're all imperfect.
Speaker 1:Another component of self compassion is literally just the mindfulness that these moments will pass. We can observe the fact that we feel stupid, we can observe the fact that we feel evil, but we don't need we don't actually literally need to worry about it, or literally like focus on it, like there is no benefit scientifically, psychologically or otherwise, by like focusing on I feel like I'm evil. I feel like I'm, you know, a bad person because of this, this or that you know. And some of y'all might be like but you, but if you did this, if you did that, then you are a bad person. That's neither here nor there. The question is does it help us to focus on whether or not, when we made a mistake, we did what we did? Does it help us to focus on the fact that we feel like we're an evil person or a bad person? There is no psychological or scientific evidence that says yes, that's helpful. Marinate on it, think about it, dwell on it, write a whole journal page about how you're an evil person.
Speaker 1:I think there's like this myth that if we have compassion for ourselves, that it's somehow weakness or that it's somehow complacency or that it's even somehow selfish. Like where the hell does this shit come from? No, no, no, just no. On the contrary, there's a whole lot of benefits of self-compassion and I can tell you, as someone who has benefited from them in these past, I would say for me now it's been probably like seven years that I've been practicing self-compassion, but these last like two or three, y'all I have been, I have been on it, I have been on the self-compassion game and y'all. It's really changed the game for me in so many ways. So let me just give y'all some of the benefits real quick.
Speaker 1:One is that self-compassion actually regulates these negative emotions that can get really out of control For someone. If you're someone like me and you experience like really deep emotions, if you feel your emotions like really really deeply, then you probably have a hard time regulating when you're feeling like high anxiety, high depression, like high anger, high shame, high guilt. Whenever you're experiencing that like in severity, self compassion regulates it, it takes it down and I don't know if you've ever struggled with like extreme anger, extreme guilt or extreme shame, but anything that can like pull that down to normal, to equilibrium, is a really good fucking feeling, okay. The next benefit of self compassion is resilience. When you have self compassion on yourself, you're able to bounce back better. There's a lot of scientific and psychological evidence about this that I've read about and heard about and I can't think of any one place right now, but I know it's true and you can Google it if you want to is that having self compassion builds resilience, because you're like oh, I fell, oh, it's okay, Everybody falls, you'll be all right, get back up again, girl. And so you get up again because you have the resilience, because you had self compassion on yourself, whereas if you fall and you're down and you're like bitch, you're stupid, worthless loser. Look at you, you fell, you asshole. How easy can you get back up from that when someone's like yelling in your ear about what an idiot you are, about falling down Like it does not build resilience?
Speaker 1:The third thing is is that people don't really understand is that when you have self-compassion, it actually leads towards motivation, towards better behavior? People think that self compassion is not a catalyst for positive change. But it is. It does catalyze you to change in positive ways. Because when you're less afraid of failure, part of the fear of failure is people kicking you one of your down and saying like you failed, you failed, you dumb idiot. But if you're not afraid of failure because you're like, oh, my failure is going to be met with self compassion, then you're like, oh, my failure is going to be met with self-compassion. Then you're like, let's try again, let's go again, let's get back in the ring because maybe I won't fail.
Speaker 1:Another benefit of self-compassion is that when you are compassionate on your mistakes and the feelings and whatever it is you're feeling heavy about or need to heal, the self-compassion silences the inner critic. It silences the inner critic and we know the inner critic is a loud ass bitch. I mean, the inner critic is just so loud and if you can silence that, it's going to dramatically increase your self-worth and that's such a beautiful feeling. It's really worked for me and I love it here. Another huge part of self compassion that is drastically underrated is that really helps your relationships get better female relationships, your, your girlfriends, your peers, your co workers, your romantic relationships, your parenting to child, child to parent relationships, cousin to cousin. There is no relationship that does not benefit from you having self-compassion on yourself, because when you have self-compassion on yourself, it fosters healthier boundaries. In all of these relationships you're literally able to speak up for yourself more. It reduces the need for external validation for someone to say like you're fine, you're fine, you're fine Because you're coming from the place where you're like I'm fine, I'm good, I'm okay, I fell, but I'm going to get back up. I don't need to drain you of your very lifeblood and life cells trying to get validation, because I can get it for myself.
Speaker 1:I would like to lead you through a little exercise to practice self-compassion for yourself, and that is to sit down with your journal and I want you to acknowledge the suffering that you've caused yourself by being mean to yourself, the things you've said to yourself that are horrible. It could be the ways you've treated yourself that are horrible, that you know of. You know, for example, if you've, you know, drank yourself into a stupor or something like that, like anything like that where you know I have not practiced self-compassion with myself. I want you to sit down and write it out. I want you to acknowledge it. I want you to write something about your shared common humanity with the rest of literal entire globe, who also are humans, who've made mistakes and done things they're not proud of. And then I want you to offer yourself some words of compassion and kindness. I want you just to write a whole paragraph of nice things to yourself and let me tell y'all that's not easy to do.
Speaker 1:It's not easy to do the first few times, for sure. The first I don't know how many times I did things like this I cried, you know, really really heavily, deeply cried Probably one because it was so need and necessary. It was like, you know, pouring water into a desert, dry, well, but also because, if you've never heard those words from anyone else, it can be jarring. So that's a little self-compassion exercise that I would like you to do, if you wouldn't mind. When you do that, it's a mindfulness hack as well, because you're drawing like, you're bringing mindfulness and you're observing the emotions. You know that you used to feel, or that you still do feel, without judgment. And when you remove that judgment like, it really is a beautiful, beautiful way to love yourself. When you can get to the point where you can love yourself without judgment, I'm telling you, your whole life will change. And that's literally where I am now.
Speaker 1:Another thing that you can try that I have done several times is write yourself a letter from the perspective of a different friend, and usually for me, I write it from the perspective of God, just because I've always been someone who's in touch with and close to my spirituality. So, and even now, even though my life looks very different as a decolonized Christian who has divested from evangelical Christianity, I still consider myself to be a follower of Jesus and I still believe in God and that God is love and that God loves all of us and wants the best for all of us. So I tend to write myself letters from God, and it's just the most loving, because I imagine God is the most loving entity that's ever existed and ever will exist. So when I'm writing myself a letter from God, it's just all love. There's nothing. There's nothing that's not like, just full on, like I love you. You are the best thing since sliced bread. You're amazing, you're beautiful, you're kind, you're generous. It's just the most generous words that I could say to myself. I say when I'm writing myself a letter from God, but sometimes I write myself a letter from older me or younger me.
Speaker 1:I've done a lot of those kinds of exercises as well, and those are beautiful, beautiful forms of self-compassion Beautiful, I will say. For me, to kind of wrap up my own journey with this, is that, you know, the big catalyst, like I said, was when I was married. But then what had happened was I started getting deep into manifestation, teachings and reading and learning about the power of literal physical vibes, vibrations, and reading a lot from Dr Joe Dispenza and things like that, and I'll link some books in the show notes if you're interested in learning a little bit more, because that's been really life changing for me. But what I realized is that, you know, we as vibrational beings emit vibrations that matter, that affect our reality and affect people around us. And once I really realized like those, not just it, for me it went from like ceasing all negative talk and trying to practice self-compassion when possible to like overflowing myself with positive thoughts and real, loving, generous thoughts about myself. So now you know, I went from saying the most horrible, evil stuff to myself all the time to saying the most beautiful, amazing things to myself and about myself all the time.
Speaker 1:There was a long time I was in that middle. There's a long time I was in this section for like 10 years where I was kind of stuck. And then when I went through my abusive marriage and had to change, I was in that middle section where I just kind of ceased saying negative things about myself and I was trying to build myself up. But it was hard because every time I would go down a step, he would, you know, go up a step, he would push me. Know, go up a step, he would push me down, go up a step, push me down.
Speaker 1:And after I got out of that marriage and started really looking into and learning about vibrations and positive vibrations and the power of our vibrational output, is when I started on this journey where I like go overboard, now almost to the point where the things I say to myself are so loving and so kind that I don't even have space or room to say anything negative about myself anymore. I just don't have space for it because now I tell myself I love myself all the time and I'm trying to live in that and it's a much different existence than the existence of shame that I lived for the first you know what, 30, almost 35 years of my life. It's kind of crazy to look back on to think that I lived like that and that that was somehow sustainable. It's just weird and what I can tell you is that these last two or three years, especially that, I've went like hard. Like the last three years I have went hard, hard on learning about manifestation and positive vibrations, meditation, positive affirmation, self compassion, self love, self healing. I've went so fucking hard on it and what that has done has been so transformative in my healing journey as I've continued to go through really hard stuff. You know it's not like these last three years.
Speaker 1:I haven't been going through really hard things, really very difficult mental health issues that I've talked about before. Like due to perimenopause. I've had pretty severe suicidal ideations in these last three years as well. I've, as a result of like I really do, going on three years and have had severe depression and anxiety episodes and no ability to focus, and it's been hard. So when I say like, I've been still going hard, intense, with building myself up, telling myself I love myself, like I've seen myself heal from some pretty significant shit, you know I just I just want to be sure that you don't think I'm exaggerating. It's not like it's been all roses and good feelings over here, okay, it's not like it's been like. Oh my god, my life has just been blowing up and glowing up for three years and in that time it's you know it's it's been amazing and I've been telling myself I love myself, I feel like no, on the contrary, it's been really challenging and what I've seen is that me changing the way that I talk about myself and talk to myself and have self compassion, has led to some pretty intense, significant healing, and I can see that now, like even the fact that I can do this now, what I'm doing now, like the way that I'm leading, sharing, teaching, leading in my podcast and just in life in general, I can see that that is a result of the self compassion that I've practiced. That never would have happened if I hadn't hadn't have done it. So I really, truly believe in this.
Speaker 1:I just, you know, want to make a quick disclaimer, like I'm not a therapist, y'all. I'm not a therapist. I've never been a therapist. I'm not trained as a mental health professional Although actually that's not entirely true I do. I do have certification as a mental health first aider. That was actually certified, but that was some years ago, and I just want to encourage you to seek professional help Like I'm not. I'm not offering professional help. I'm offering advice as a woman who's been through a lot and who has survived a lot and who has at times been my own worst enemy, and I have to take accountability for all of the ways that I have harmed my life, and what I'm trying to share with y'all is ways that I have learned not to harm myself and to do better for myself and to love myself. As someone who, you know, has a very severe trauma background, this stuff is not easy for me, so I never, ever, teach or get on this microphone as your elder or authority. Maybe, just maybe I am older than you, so maybe an elder in that way, but like, not as an authority and certainly not as a therapist.
Speaker 1:Just FYI, as a quick aside, this episode is brought to you by Grace Actually. Memoirs of Love, faith, loss and Black Womanhood. You can find my book on Amazon in digital or hard copy. Please pick up a copy. I like to think it's actually pretty damn good. If you're not yet, please, please, subscribe on YouTube, apple and everywhere. As I said earlier, if you love this episode, do me a favor, go to Apple podcast and leave me a review.
Speaker 1:I'm really trying hard to grow this podcast and to make it into my full time income because I do not and cannot work outside of the home due to mental health issues. It's just too fucking hard. This is my career, so please help me out by leaving me a review on Apple and everywhere. You can Follow me on TikTok of the same name out here trying to survive, and on IG, of the same name out here, trying to survive. And, biggest of all, my biggest request is that you sign up for my email newsletter. The link is in my show notes, the link is in all of my bios and all.
Speaker 1:My biggest request is that you sign up for my email newsletter. The link is in my show notes, the link is in all of my bios and all of my link trees and all of my social media outlets so you can find it. That is where you'll get updates, tips, tricks, hacks and the new episode. You will get it there first. Thank you so much for joining me today. You are a beautiful soul. Remember that you are strong and resilient and creative and more than capable of creating a life you deserve. Until next time, keep shining y'all Bye.
