Can’t I just ignore my pain?

So, we’ve looked at what self-compassion is and why it matters.  We’ve talked about why self-kindness can be such a challenge. Now, let’s chat about everyone’s favorite topic: suffering!

Okay, maybe not everyone’s absolute favorite. But it is an important topic! Today, we’re going to look at another one of Dr. Kristin Neff’s components of self-compassion and its alternative: mindfulness vs. over-identification.

Mindfulness is generally defined as nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment. When we’re talking about self-compassion, we’re looking specifically at the awareness of our suffering and the impact it has on us. Over-identification, on the other hand, is the state of being so wrapped up in our thoughts and feelings that they become our full reality. Let’s look at these a bit more.

Mindfulness

A lot of us have probably heard of mindfulness, right? If we want to do something about anything in our lives, we have to first be aware and mindful of it. If we want to care for ourselves in our pain, we have to first be mindful of our pain. Seems straightforward, but many people are very, very unaware of just how many things in their life cause or contribute to their pain.

Think for a minute about all of the roles you play in your life. Parent. Child. Sibling. Helper. Employee. Employer. Caregiver. Partner. Friend. Each of these roles comes with its own set of expectations, some more stressful than others. Now think about any health conditions you might deal with - physical or mental. Think about what it takes to run a home. To run a business. To maintain a relationship. To maintain a friendship. To raise a child. To train a dog. To learn a new skill. Think about your to do list for later today. Think about the five different places your mind has decided to go while I rattle off a list of things at you. It’s a lot, right?

Now, do all of those things directly cause pain? I genuinely hope not! I hope some of these things bring a lot of joy and fulfillment. But guess what? Even things that bring joy and fulfillment can be hard, and taxing, and demand a lot of effort and energy from us. Stack those on top of the things that straight up do cause pain, and you’ve got a whole lot of things to be mindful of.

And yet, we’re not. We look at those things, if we look at them at all, and say, “well yeah, but everyone has to do those things”. Sure! You’re probably right. But me having to manage all of those 300 things doesn’t make it a single bit easier for you. We write it off, and then wonder why we’re struggling. Or blame ourselves for being a little crankier than normal. Or berate ourselves for how much better we used to be at managing an entirely different phase of our lives.

The goal here is not to look at all these things and say, “Oh well, this is too much, better give up!” We don’t want to avoid accountability or come up with a list of excuses why we can be a jerk to people around us, by any means. But we do want to understand. When we make a mistake, when we fail, which will inevitably happen, we want to be able to understand why and identify the contributing factors, rather than automatically assuming it’s 100% on us and was 100% avoidable, and beating ourselves up for it.

Similar to this, we are often much more mindful of the fact that we failed than we are the pain that comes from failure. We rush to fix the problem, think of how we can handle it differently next time, or call ourselves a failure and resign to never trying again. Rarely do we take a minute to acknowledge how painful it can feel to fail. We don’t tend to sit with ourselves in those moments and tend to ourselves with care. Pain is pain, even if you feel it’s self-inflicted. When we can slow down and take the time to truly be with ourselves in our suffering, we’re really practicing this mindfulness.

Over-identification

The alternative here is over-identification. Over-identification can happen when our entire reality is consumed by what we think or feel, with no room to see around it. It can cause us to overreact in intense situations, especially if they play on our existing insecurities.

I really love Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and believe that it pairs beautifully with self-compassion. A lot of ACT points to the idea that we often “fuse” to our experiences. We become one with them, and it gets difficult to see around it. They also call this “getting hooked”. Like a fish going for a flashy lure and wiggling worm, they draw us in and keep us stuck.

It’s easy to get carried away by our thoughts and feelings. We get stuck in a spiral, or an emotion feels so intense and so tangible that it’s all we can think about. In these situations, it’s helpful to think about an idea from ACT called self-as-context, or the noticing self. Basically, it’s the idea that we have two parts to our mind: the thinking part and the noticing part. The thinking part is where we often camp out. Our thoughts pass through, and we don’t always stop to consider where they come from. When we’re really hooked, we accept them as absolute truth. But there’s also a part of us that just…notices. It’s what allows me to say “I notice I’m having the thought that….xyz.” It provides me with the distance I need to prevent over-identification.

I really like the metaphor ACT gives of the weather and the sky. Your noticing self is like the sky - it’s always there. Your thoughts and feelings are like the weather - it’s constantly changing. No matter what kind of terrible weather passes through, the sky itself is unharmed. Even when you can’t quite see the sky because of clouds and storms, it’s still there. The sky always has room for it, and sooner or later, the weather will pass.

When it comes to mindfulness, I want us to hold onto this idea that we do have the ability to notice our experience, rather than get so wrapped up it’s all we can see. We’re more than just our thoughts and feelings.

It can also be really helpful to consider ways we might be amplifying our own pain. You many have seen the statement “suffering = pain x resistance”. The idea here is that pain is inevitable. We’re all going to experience painful events in life, that’s just a given. However, that pain doesn’t always have to result in suffering. Suffering comes from resisting that pain. It comes from this that reality isn’t living up to all it was “supposed” to live up to. Now we’re not just dealing with the initial painful event, we’re also having to cope with the mental anguish that can come from fighting our reality.

This can be a delicate area, but I think it’s an important one to explore. Of course, we don’t want to look at someone who’s truly, deeply suffering, and say “it’s your fault! Just accept it!” Please don’t do that. It won’t go well. It is incredibly human it is to resist pain. Everything in us is wired to avoid it! Ultimately, practicing acceptance of the reality we’re living in is an incredibly compassionate thing for us to do. But it’s not just a one time decision - it can take a lot of time and patience.

So, how do I embrace more mindfulness of suffering?

When we lean into that radical acceptance of the way things are, we move away from over-identifying with everything “wrong”, and start to give ourselves that space to notice everything else that we’ve been missing out on.

Mindful awareness can move us from a place of frustration with ourself and inability to separate our self from our feelings, to a place where we can understand our context better and offer ourselves a bit more grace and patience.

If you want to build a little more mindful awareness, try this:

• Take a few minutes to do a “brain dump”: grab a pen and a blank sheet of paper, and for the next five minutes, write down whatever comes to mind.

  • This can be a great way to practice mindfulness of your thoughts. Since you probably can’t write as quickly as you think, you’ll have to slow yourself down in order to get your thoughts on paper.

  • Odds are, some of (a lot of!) the things you write down will be stressors. You may have some things weighing on your mind that you didn’t even realize were stressing you out! Take some time to reflect on these challenges and offer yourself compassion for the weight you carry without even noticing it.

• Think about “the weather and the sky": go back and read through the ACT metaphor I described above. Identify the difference between these two things in your own life.

  • What’s the weather? What are some of the thoughts and emotions you’re currently experiencing? Are they quiet and calm, or are they big and stormy? Can you see any light right now?

  • What’s your sky? What are the parts of yourself that are constant, regardless of the emotional experience you’re in? What’s true of you even when everything feels like you’re in the midst of a storm?

If you feel like you could benefit from talking to a mental health professional about building more awareness or navigating the pain you’re experiencing, you can schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with Wonder Why Counseling here.