Self Compassion For Therapists Quotes

“Remembering that the impulse to control is an indication that we are having a neuroception of danger, perhaps we can be compassionate rather than critical of ourselves when we do step in to overtly manage the process.

Perhaps we can begin to ask inside about the nature of the threat that brings on the need to assert control and fix.

As always, dropping the questions into our right hemisphere and not expecting a particular answer in this moment opens the way for a deeper understanding to emerge bit by bit.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“My multifaceted canary in the coal mine signaling the impulse to control is my belly tightening, my posture changing slightly to lean forward, tension increasing in my upper arms. It feels as though I am preparing to thrust myself into the middle of the problem with everything I know. It comes from a good-hearted place of wanting to relieve suffering and also diminishes interpersonal safety as my system enters mild to medium sympathetic arousal.

If we take a step back, we might become curious about how the neuroception of danger arose in the first place, because that is what initiates this chain of events. If we were to explore this, many answers might come: We have been trained to intervene; we don't have any experience that tells us our patient's systems are trustworthy guides to healing; the upset in our patient is severe enough that we fear for her safety; if we can't heal this person, there's something wrong with us; strong emotions are uncomfortable for us and we need to regulate them before they overwhelm us.

The list is endless, individual and likely changes with each new circumstance. It is always a most valuable inquiry, especially if we can begin it with compassionate curiousity, which makes it less likely that we will feel shamed by the answer that presents itself.

When we remember that neuroception is an automatic adaptive process, it may take character condemnation out of the equation when we invite awareness of what frightens us.

If our fear feels heard and acknowledged, there is some likelihood that our bodies will be able to find their way back toward receptivity. As we feel our own openness returning, we can be certain that this embodied change is also influencing our patient and the quality of the connection.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“It is rather paradoxical for our task-focused self when it isn't the quality of the practice, but our honest and humble acceptance of the emerging moment, that prepares us for nonjudgemental, agendaless presence with another.

Being kind to ourselves can be helpful as we seek to practice this way of being, because it places us at cross-purposes with our culture, where performance and improvement are so valued and the limits and variability of our humanness are cause for criticism and correction.

Many aspects of our training as well as our everyday experience in this society urge us to take control to achieve a particular result, and this can become so implicitly ingrained that it feels wrong to sink toward our innate humanity.

Again, just listening with kindness to the competing voices inside is good preparation for extending this attentiveness and kindness to all aspects of the person about to come in our door.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“The challenge - which is also at the centre - is that what illuminates the process of letting go of certainty, control, planning, clear-cut goals, and so much more may feel settling even as it separates us from those we want to help.

This letting go requires cultivation in the trust of the innate processes that support the movement towards healing, something that grows with time and experience, especially when compassion for this depth of challenge to our need for security is present.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“For all of us, there are also likely times when therapy simply doesn't seem to move forward as we imagined it would.

At this crossroads, we often question ourselves or blame our patients.

Between what our culture requires and what we have experienced in childhood, we might go either direction.

We have a particular challenge to feeling competent right now. Our left-centric society has done its best to codify the healing process, leaving us with a set of procedures and expected outcomes that don't welcome the individuality of our people of the fluidity of each person's unpredictable and unique process of recovery. This is doubly difficult, because when we follow the course culture provides, safety is already undermined to a greater or lesser extent.

I believe it wounds us when we feel we aren't helping a person because we set out with such good hearts to relieve suffering.

A well-practiced practitioner might try to guard our hearts by blaming our people's resistance.

When a wounded part of us is afraid we are inadequate, this often generates a critical protective voice to try to urge us toward a better performance.

In both instances, our ability to be present for our people gets lost in the need to protect.

How can we hold these experiences kindly, recognizing that they are part of the human experience?

Right now, we might be able to open the arms of inclusion to these parts of us.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Warm curiosity about what is happening is a different kind of experience than judgement. It can help us open to the bigger picture beyond this moment of what feels like failure. We may consider our person's history and our own. We might bring in our left-hemisphere emissary to see how we could understand where we are in the process. In this quieter internal place, sometimes an intuitive sense of trust will come even when we can't figure it out.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Empathy and compassion require a good understanding of self and other boundaries, acute awareness of the inherent worth, value and uniqueness of the other person, and understanding of the shared humanity between oneself and the recipient of one’s concern and care.”
― Adam Gerace