Struggles With The Self
At Transcendent Self Therapy I facilitate a DBT group on Tuesday nights. Eight New Yorkers from all walks of life get together to discuss the ups and downs of intense emotions, tools for tolerating distress and discomfort, mindfulness practices and issues that arise within relationships.
A group member recently talked about weathering "storms of the heart," and I loved that image. In line with its metaphor, our DBT group tracks the emotional weather of the week and helps members batten down the hatches for impending rain.
I am always impressed with the kind capacity of the group to hold space for each other, care for each other—soothe each other through hard times. There is so much compassion for the suffering of another—the traumas and the trials, the rough edges. There is so much capacity to see the potential for change, for optimism to shine through. But with the self, not so much. For the self, we pull out the rough edges-- the “shoulds” and the regrets, the shame and the blame, the fears and the tightly shuttered windows.
I see it with my own process, my own ability to “teach” these skills of radical acceptance, but not always to fully embody them in my own dark moments. With my kids screaming in the car. After a conflict with my partner. After a session where I feel I wasn’t at my best. Why is it so much harder to have grace with ourselves?
It’s a question with no easy answers, but perhaps more queries to explore. What stories do we tell ourselves about why we are not deserving of the same compassion we offer to others? What early experiences and parts do we harbor that keep us trapped in a narrative that we are somehow uniquely bad? How can we re-write those stories and reframe our own emotional mythologies—so that we may become wise and compassionate narrators of our own lives?
That’s my invitation to you for this week, to put pen to paper and write down those stories. The myths and the fables that underlie the ways you are experiencing the world. What sections might be ready for revision? What new stories, perhaps currently unimagined, are waiting to be told?
