Welcome to Gay Men Going Deeper, a podcast series by the Gay Men's Brotherhood where we talk about personal development, mental health and sexuality. We are your hosts. Michael Diorio is a life and wellness coach specializing in sexuality, relationships, and self-confidence. Reno Johnson is a spiritual, life, love, and business coach.
I am Matt Lanciddle, a counselor and facilitator specializing in healing and empowerment. So we each have our own private practice and in this podcast we are sharing all of our best stuff. So today we're talking about self-compassion. It's a very yummy topic. And I think most of us as human beings need to learn how to master this fine art of being kind to ourselves.
So the questions we're going to be exploring are what does self-compassion mean to you, what gets in the way of you having compassion for yourself, and how do you practice self-compassion? We will continue these discussions as usual on the last Thursday of every month in the Gay Men's Brotherhood Zoom Hangout where you will have a chance to share your own experiences.
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All right, self compassion. This is a. I'll just be very transparent. This is something that I still struggle with. It's been something I've struggled with my whole life from my perspective. It is the opposite of shame. Self compassion like shame is about self animosity and really not liking ourselves feeling there's something wrong with us. And then self compassion is what we use to actually anecdote the. The shame so I just see it simply as the ability to be kind to our self.
It's the practice of self kindness. And like I said, most people struggle with this when it comes to directing the compassion inward. But I think a lot of people are really good at this outwardly, you know, having compassion for other people. So I want to just start there because I think sometimes it's a big jump going from compassion to having compassion for ourselves. I think a lot of people can relate to compassion. Just what that means. So I see compassion as a set of things.
And I'll read them out to you here. So compassion for another involves deep empathy. Taking action to help somebody. I see empathy and compassion differently in that sense. Empathy is we're with somebody in the experience. And then compassion is more that we are doing something to help somebody. Right, we're when we're in a state of compassion, we're more compelled to want to take action to help alleviate this person suffering.
There's a strong desire in compassion to ease another's distress or pain. We're hearing and we're seeing them. So we're showing them that their pain is no one to us and ensuring they feel supported in their suffering. We're refraining from judgment. We're trying not to fix them or solve them, but being with them as they are. And we're helping them connect to their own inner wisdom when we're practicing compassion. Right.
So I want, I want you to and I want the listener viewer to just close your eyes for a second. And I want you to think about the last time that you felt compassion for somebody. And I want you to just feel into that. Feel into what it feels like to have compassion for this person. And what does it feel like to have compassion where do you notice it in your body. And I want you just to recognize and see if you've ever had this feeling towards yourself.
And noticing anything in your body or in your mind that shifted when you brought the attention from somebody else to yourself. Does it make it more difficult. And if so, just observe that. So you can open your eyes and just come back to the experience with the three of us. And I think that was important to do because I think I want people to be able to be in that embodied experience of what compassion feels like.
And to be able to just be able to recognize and see is there any sort of resistance to being able to apply that same sort of compassion to myself. And I think one of the first steps of compassion is to be able to find the part of us that needs compassion and identify that part and then ask ourselves, how can we serve that part of us. There's part, there's many different parts in all of us. And there's the higher self wisdom and there's the lower self wisdom and there's the inner child.
There's the shadow sides. There's we have all these parts and the part of us that we use to apply self compassion is the heart centered more wise part of us. Right. Some of you might remember from the inner child episode. Me sharing that I have these two people inside of me and I have this very wounded inner child that I'm still healing and working through.
And then I have this father energy and that father energy is where I tend to share my wisdom from and where I counsel from and these sorts of things that doesn't negate that I have this other part of me that is still hurting. Right. So I wanted to really make that clear. It's like we can practice compassion for ourselves when we separate ourselves from the person that needs compassion and we start to connect with this higher wisdom.
Very possible, very easy, not very easy, but very doable to make this this happen. So I kind of almost look at it as like we're personifying the two parts of us, one that needs compassion and one that can give compassion. Okay. So the person that we that you were connecting with that was giving compassion to the person in your in your thought is this person. This is that this is the higher you that is that is capable of compassion. Right.
And sometimes when we're in a place of not being able to give compassion or we're judgmental of people were probably usually in that lower part of us that doesn't feel like we're getting compassion from the world. So we don't want to give it if we're not receiving it. It's very much an ego energy. Okay.
So I kind of look at it as there's three things that are kind of included in the self compassion umbrella. Again, the first one is awareness. So we need to be aware of what part of us needs compassion, what we need compassion for. So a couple questions I thought of were what is causing me to have animosity with myself right now.
Well, I am I hard on myself. And looking at befriending that inner bully right because that inner bully feel scared feels resentful disappointed and we need to kind of be friend that part of us and then we can start to offer compassion. The next one is self kindness.
And also some questions that can help explore self kindness is how can I be more gentle with myself right now. How can I show up for myself in ways that support who I'm becoming rather than punishing myself for who I wasn't or was whatever that is for you. And the last one which from my perspective and in my experience because I've struggled with a lot of shame and trauma in my life is allowance. So I practice the art of giving myself radical permission, which is space to be as I am.
I find myself in the most terrible mood cranky as fuck hating on everybody. I will just say I'm going to give myself permission to be in this place right now. And that for me is the space where self compassion can start to come in and transform my experience.
I practice the authentic principle of welcoming everything letting go of preferences for who I think I need to be or should be and accepting myself for who I am in any given moment. I think that's that's been my practice of of self compassion through what I call allowance or radical permission, whatever you want to call it.
And I would be remiss if I did not mention shadow work when talking about self compassion because through shadow work, we actually meet the parts of us that we feel that we've rejected split from that we don't like about ourselves. And when we start to integrate those parts, it makes it easier to find compassion kindness, love for ourself. So shadow works been a big part of my journey as well, which we can talk a bit more about throughout the episode.
So I feel like I've answered, you know, what does self compassion mean to me? I would love to hear from each of you to what self compassion means to you. And why don't for this episode will start with Michael. All right, hey, thank you, Matt. Lovely intro. So informative. I think our audience will get a lot of that I shared it. And I thought I'm body meant practice. That was really nice. It definitely stimulated some stuff with it. I want to share. Yeah, I'm glad.
Okay, so for me, self compassion, I'll start with my literal definition. If for me, it falls under the greater umbrella of self love and a lot of these other selves. Specifically, it is the subset of self love that is about tending to my emotional pain and suffering. That's how I look at self compassion.
And there's a lot of ways to practice it, which we'll get into for sure. And you I like, I like how you started off by saying there's lots of ways to practice as well. Like that's the fun part. I think for our viewers and listeners is you're not sure what self compassion looks like in means we're going to give you a lot of tips today on how to do that.
For me, it's the practice of treating myself so much what you said with the exact same kindness, care and understanding as I would for my best friend, as any loved one, even my like pet, if they were an emotional pain or suffering. And that again can be a lot of different things. It could be validating your feelings. It could be comforting yourself for providing yourself with soothing, right? Like you had said, I'm going to give myself permission to to feel this way and walk them everything.
These are all wonderful ways to practice self compassion. I don't know if you know who if you guys know who Kristen neff is, but she has a lot of work on this and her model of self compassion is one that I love and I use a lot with my clients from teaching them that the skill set.
But it's basically she says that there's, you know, the internal in model of self compassion, which is in words, it's taking care of your own emotional needs so soothing yourself calming yourself down when you're in emotional pain and struggle validating yourself. And then there's the yang side of self compassion, which is kind of like more of the doing, which is a bit more actionable.
So protecting yourself from your own pain and from others, providing for yourself, giving yourself what you need, even motivating yourself, being your own cheerleader, that kind of thing. So those are kind of the. Those are the models that I like to look at for self compassion. I'm excited to get into more so like personally how we practiced it, which you can get into a bit later. But yeah, that's me. How about you Reno. Thanks Michael. Thank you. Juicy juicy topic.
I think for me, what came up around self compassion was, well, first and foremost, this idea of being with being with. And I really like what I feel in my body and Matt, thank you so much for like inviting us for earlier to connect to the body, to take that moment to really connect to the body and to connect to our experience, because to me, that like epitomizes the practice of self compassion. That is a foundational piece of the practice of self compassion.
Once capacity to be with, to be with themselves, to be with what is to be present in the moment. And as I was reflecting on this question, there were, there were like a few components that I looked at when it came to self compassion. And I was reading, greeting, beating, and then responding and regulating. So to be human is to experience. And we'll probably talk a bit more about this when we get into some of the other questions.
But my experience is that what happens when, when I'm experiencing is that there are all sorts of other things that creep in, whether it's like socially environmentally intellectually emotionally, et cetera. And when that's happening, not only does that contribute to my experience, but it can also like deter from it. And so, I'm just, I'm processing my thinking right now.
What I've seen is that in those moments, my responsibility is to meet, this to meet what's present, this to meet what's there. To then greet it that is to acknowledge it, to say hello to it. It's like, okay, I am having an experience. There's an experience that is present. To then be with it, right, not not to judge it, not to change it, not to tweak it, but just to allow it to be there. And then to respond to it and following that to invite a sort of regulation to happen.
So that that for me is kind of like what what self compassion looks like. I'll leave it there. I'll leave it there. That's that's yeah, that's that's what I got to say. I love how you honor yourself and just slow yourself down and really connect and word to what needs to be shared. Take all the time, you never have to say, you know, like, thank you. Yeah, because it's tricky. It's a loaded question, you know, it's a loaded question.
Like what does self compassion mean? And I really wanted to connect to like I, you know, I looked at how it was defined. And I also wanted to connect to like how I relate to it personally, you know, and how I would break it down for myself. So yeah, thank you. Yeah. I think that's why I value you so much on this podcast because you bring a different tempo.
Then say like my client, I my client, I are a bit more cerebral. You're more embodied. I think you bring that slower tempo, which is very important. And it actually balances probably my client out to yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. Let's move into the next question. So what gets in the way of you having compassion for yourself. So do you guys want to go first? And then I'll go at the end or. Okay. So why don't you go mic. Yeah.
I love this question. And what came up for me as you guys are just sharing now is that for me, I guess this is a bit of attention before answering the question. But it is completely related correlated to self confidence. And I'll explain how that works. So as I develop my skill of self compassion. And I have done a good job of that. I don't beat the shit of my beat the shit out of myself anymore like I used to right. So if I'm not going to beat the shit out of myself anymore.
What that means is I'm going to do more in the world that I want to do. I'm going to be more me. I'm going to express myself more authentically. I'm going to take more risks and going to fail. I'm going to get rejected. I'm trying to fail again. But it's fine. It's all fine. Because as I've developed that skill of self compassion, I am my own soft place to land. I will not beat the shit out of myself emotionally. I will not judge and shame myself. Now I do, of course, I'm not perfect.
But I can kind of bring myself back into that myself compassionate spot. So when people say, oh, you know, you're so unapologetic and you show up so, you know, shamelessly all these things. It's like, yes, because even with all of the hate that I might get or all of the even if I do fall flat in my face, then I do. It's not the end of the world. So I want to make that point for people who see self confident people authentically self confident people.
I bet you they have developed a very good practice of self compassion. If we look deep inside, if we look under the hood. But let's answer the question here. So yes, I'm not always good at it. I have developed a skill. What gets in the way is my inner critic. Absolutely. I have a very loud as we've talked before. In our critic, he is nasty. He is mean. He's got a sharp tongue. And he just, you know what he does sometimes is like he kind of just like a web of my day, like, oh, that's a nice tree.
Oh, that's a nice dog. We got to do this today. And then you're such a shithead. And then just like just sneaks in there. I'm like, what's that? Who was that? I just said that. So how does this deep inner critic and he gets in the way I've learned to love him. I've learned to have some compassion for him because I know why he's there. And I know what he's trying to do, even though he's a bit misguided in his in his actions.
But yeah, I would say that my inner world is a balance of this, you know, self compassionate, nurturing, comforting, soothing version of me. And then he's a kind of inner voice, rather, and then this more critical one and more judgmental one. And so that one wants to beat me up. So if I'm feeling any kind of emotional pain. Whatever that may be, whether it's rejection or failure or self doubt, shame. He kind of wants to pile it on me.
And then just kind of like thinking it, that's that's what feels to me. So when you did that embodiment, and I thought of like what shame feels like, it's this like slow sinking feeling and the compassion is this more expansive feeling. And that like even my body just changes like I just my chest lifts up versus contracting right.
So that's the biggest obstacle for me and learning to maintain that in team and I will say this, it's off. It's not about getting rid of that voice. It really isn't everyone has it, I think. Everyone that I've talked to you, if you study the most successful people, the happiest people, they all have that voice. It's really how they relate with it.
And how they talk back to it, if they have to talk back to it, sometimes it is kind of advocating for yourself against that voice and saying, hey, listen, like enough, we're not doing that right now. I will say that to myself. Like I will ask that a lot. It's okay. Enough of that. Like when I'm going down the spiral, shame spiral. Or sometimes it's meeting yourself where you are and giving yourself permission to be angry or giving yourself permission to be frustrated or whatever it is that is.
So yeah, I think learning to talk back to that voice has been the greatest lesson and still my biggest, my biggest obstacle because he is very loud and he is very pushy. Have a question for you. Yeah. What do you think this inner critic and you needs? Yeah, he needs safety. He needs love. He's afraid at the end of the day. I've done a lot of work with him. He's afraid and he's trying to protect me.
He's trying to protect me from getting hurt. He's trying to protect me from everything that I'm with one part of my brain wanting like vulnerability, for example, right. If I want to be vulnerable and I want to connect, I need to put myself out there and take that risk. But this inner critic will show up and be like, no, no, no, no, no, we got to protect you, honey. We can't we can't do that. He doesn't call me.
We got to protect you and then he'll kind of prevent me from being vulnerable or maybe he'll show up with war of a wall, an emotional wall. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I relate to what you're sharing. Yeah. What about your self-frenown? Yeah. Yeah. So I want to take a moment. I want to take a moment because when I was answering the first question, I noticed.
And I've shared this in previous episodes. I like to I like to take notes and to prepare for these conversations and simultaneously what I understand about myself is that like when I speak from the heart, I do really well.
So I had to practice compassion in that moment because I noticed that I lost my train of thought and then I started feeling all kinds of nervousness and judgment about that like, oh, no, I messed up. And there was a moment and you witnessed it where I took time to slow down and to tune into my body and the experience of anxiousness that I was having and just noticing the judgment and the oh shit that was happening and letting it be there.
And then I was just finding my way back to center and to what I wanted to communicate. So that was an example of, you know, of a compassionate moment. As far as what gets in the way of me having compassion for myself, there are things like assumption comparison, judgment, perfection, shame, guilt, memory, trauma. And then environment and the environment piece can either on hinder compassion or it can enhance it and it really depends on the sort of environment I'm exposing myself to, right.
And then the practice of to the best of my ability, creating an environment that supports compassion and is compassionate. You know, whether that's my relationships or the content I'm consuming or the conversations that I'm engaged in and the relationships I'm cultivating, even my physical space. But I find gets in the way of compassion the most for me is probably I'm going to say it's perfection. I'm going to say it's perfection. That's a big one.
I really sort of pride, I mean pride and perfection event. I would say I really pride myself on being, you know, well spoken, well put together and, you know, someone who carries himself well, et cetera, et cetera. It took me some time to really pick up on this, but I started to see that how I'm being perceived is really important to me. And when, when I am not living up to those standards that I have created and or internalize,
I can, I can be a real asshole to myself. I can be real, real terrible toward myself. In a way that I wouldn't be toward my child, if I had one, for example, you know, I'm not always so great at giving myself the same grace that I would give somebody that I loved. I'm somebody that I cared about somebody that I was guiding for supporting. So I would say that that and that list of things that I just mentioned or what gets in the way of me having compassion for myself. Yeah.
Yeah, thank you. That was beautiful how you did that. There's a practice in authentic relating called revealing your experience and you just did a perfect example of that at the beginning of your share here and just revealing what you just experienced and that happens to all of us happen to me yesterday.
It happens in client sessions like I always lose my train of thought. It seems, especially the last few years about a lot of my mind. So, yeah, thank you for that because it gives us space because that's an anxiety. I bring into all of these meetings when and especially when like on here or when I'm on lives and things like that.
What if I lose my train of thought and I forget what I'm talking about. It's a huge anxiety of mine. So you just gave me space to let go of that a little bit of that fear. Right. Because if it happens to me, it's like it's okay. Right. That's beautiful. Yeah. And you and you held like what I love about this space and what you just said and even the way you responded and met what was happening for me like to me, that is an example of compassion.
You extended compassion to me. And this is a compassionate space. So thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. And I think that's why empathy, I think is the birthplace of compassion because it's like I see you. And I know a lot of love for întors. So thank you very much for and looking at what was actually going back in the past video.
It's being great when you really felt what you're feeling. So I want to step forward and I want to help you not to feel that right like I think it's great. So yeah, I can almost just say second to what both of you guys said we have a very you know shared similar experience. even in this, I remember my very first memory, like very first memory, okay? Not just shameful memory. My very first memory was, I was about probably four or five years old.
I remember being in the garage in my house and I walked up to my dad and I pulled my pants down and I had a boner. And I was like, I was like, Dad, like something's happening, what's going on here? And he started laughing so hard. And he's like, he's like, oh, go ask your mom, go ask your mom. So I like, run, ask my mom. And he starts laughing. And poor me, I'm like, in this state of shame thinking they're laughing at me and that there's something wrong with me.
So it totally, you know, my very, very first experiences in my life were around shame. And then as soon as I started to realize I was gay, which is around that same time, maybe five, six years old, I started to internalize shame. There's something wrong with me. So for sure, it's shame. That's the thing that gets in the way of having compassion for myself. But now it's actually ego, which would probably be an extension of inner critic or inner critic being an extension of ego.
It's trying to protect me. And my ego has all these mechanisms that it's built to try and protect me, which is things like perfectionism. Don't be seen in anything other than perfect, right? So where is the space for making mistakes? Where is the space for having compassion for yourself if you're always perfect, right? So my ego would be the biggest one for sure. It is the culprit that doesn't allow me to have compassion for myself.
And I'm really learning how to soften my ego the last few years, probably four years, I've been humbled, I have eaten a lot of humble pie. And it's been very painful, but it's been a part of my liberation. And I think we practice compassion for ourselves from a place of humility, realizing that we are messy and the human experience is messy as fuck, right? And when we can recognize that, it's easier for us to have compassion for ourselves. And that's kind of where I'm at right now in my life.
It's beautiful, but it can be very painful. And then through a lot of the shame that I experienced in my life and a lot of the trauma, I developed core wounds or self-limiting beliefs. And I think these ones are really big. And I want to read some of them off here for you guys because not a lot. I would say every single human being on this planet carries these in our subconscious, not all of them.
We might only have one of the ones that I'm going to list or we might have 10 or we might have 15, but these are the most common core beliefs or self-limiting core beliefs or core wounds that we carry. I'll just read them out to you guys. So I am not enough. I am abandoned or alone. I am unloved. I am bad. I am weak. I am unsafe. I am stupid. I am unworthy. I am helpless. I am unseen or unheard. I don't matter. Something is wrong with me. I am defective. I don't belong.
I am disliked or I am excluded. I am unimportant. I am disconnected. I am or will be betrayed. I am disrespected. I am rejected. I am trapped or stuck. I am powerless or have no control. So when I started doing core wound work or subconscious belief reprogramming, I started out with about 15 of those.
So I carried a lot of these in my subconscious and I had to create that bridge in between my subconscious and my conscious to do this work because the conscious mind will tell us through ego that we don't have any of those. So people even listening, you might be like, oh, I don't have any of those because we don't want to have any of those. So of course, our ego is going to come in and protect us.
But when we start to connect with the subconscious and observe our behavior and our emotions, we start to actually connect with some of these core wounds. So for me, again, it just plays into how ego really, really protects us in an adaptive way until it becomes maladaptive because ego is the thing that doesn't allow us to actually heal, right? So that's been a big part of my journey is really connecting with my ego, befriending it, working with it, and then it becomes more flexible.
And then it allows me to start to have compassion for myself. Yeah. And then one of the other ones would probably be over focusing on other people because having compassion for myself, you know, I'm really good at having compassion for their people. Probably too good at having compassion for their people that it leads me astray sometimes. And I focus on everyone else and I don't focus on myself.
And that comes from, from codependency in my opinion, and I think, you know, learning how to pull the attention away from everyone else and over focus on everyone else's needs, which is likely an adaptation to trying to find safety in our upbringing when we're younger, right? It's like I got to be the one that mitigates and tends to everyone else's needs in my environment so that I can restore safety within myself.
So we learn that tending to everyone else creates safety for self, but it doesn't allow us to go that next step to have compassion for yourself because our only concern is just finding safety, restoring equilibrium where I think self compassion is about going beyond that equilibrium to something more expansive. Like you said, Michael, like opening up, not just finding that equilibrium.
So part of my path to has been about healing codependency and learning how to show up for myself and these sorts of things. So yeah, this is a big topic. It's so alive for me right now too in my life, like I'm really learning learning this in a big way. Yeah, it's powerful shit. Have we done this topic before? We have.
Yeah, and it's been, I think it's been two years and just like the last two years has been so expansive for me that I'm like, I'm meeting this from a completely different place, energetically, emotionally, cerebral, you know, it never gets old either. Like we could have this conversation over and over and over again every year. We could have it every month and it would never get old because compassion never gets old.
And I think that, you know, we like life and compassion, you know, like you just, we need it. We need it always and and those daily reminders.
The other thing I wanted to say as well is that, you know, consider this like if compassion wasn't modeled and it wasn't something that you experienced when you were younger or for, you know, during those like developmental and foundational periods of real life, those earlier years, like how would you know what it is and how would you, how would you be able to extend it to yourself or another person?
Like if you haven't seen it, if you haven't experienced it and you don't know it, like give yourself some grace. Yeah. And again, even me saying that, I'm like, well, and if you don't even know what it means to give yourself some grace, well, you're probably going to struggle with that. And so, you know, it's like I empathize with you. I hold you in compassion if you're listening to this right now. And that's your experience. You're like, I'm even know what that means.
I don't know what it feels like. I've never, I've never seen it. I'm completely clueless. It's like, well, we're glad you're here. You know, we're glad you're here. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. And I think it's something that we learn just like empathy. I think some people come into this world within neat empathy, but I think a lot of it is learn behavior and I think compassion too. And, you know, I have two parents. I love them to death, but they're very hard on themselves.
And in some instances, they were very hard on me because they're hard on themselves. Right? So I didn't learn self compassion. I didn't learn self esteem because my, this is these are two things my parents really struggled with as well. So it, those weren't modeled to me. Right? I don't really have to really learn and develop these things on my own. Yeah. And I think it also helps when other people do it for you because then you can see it like when you're in the receiving end of it.
And then I say, okay, like we talked about at the beginning, like what would you give your loved one, your best friend, your, your, your little puppy dog if it was going through emotional pain, like treat yourself with that. Say, wait. And in that sense, I think people can be like, okay, we just got to turn that thing that I give out word in word or the thing that I've received from my best friends and loved ones and give that to myself or in how to do that for myself. Yeah. Yeah, I love that.
I love that. All right. Last question, dude, is there something you wanted to say, Michael? No, that's good. Okay. Okay, so how do you practice self compassion, Michael? Yeah, okay. I have a bit to say on this one. I do you guys know I love giving you a real life example.
So I would say most of the time it's going to be with kind of every now I said and Matt, you're the same way, like if I listen to this podcast back or if I'm watching something on my social media or, I don't know, something that I've done and like in my mind, it's just critical. Like why did you say that? Why, like, why do you sound like that? Well, why can't you send more like blah, blah, blah.
So like I fucked that up where I meant to say this and I said that instead or oh, shit, I'm going to really piss somebody off because I said something as you said. It's a lot of that kind of showing up in my business, but I've done some work on there, but it still shows up all the time. Trust and believe even even when I do like something that. People think it's great, even if you guys give me the validation, I will still find ways to be like pick it apart.
So finding self-compact practicing in that sense is really, you know, it's okay, you're fine, like you're, you know, just talking myself off that ledge and that it's okay and that even if I did fuck it up, it's not the other world. What's the lesson to learn from this? Let's move on. Right? Not dwelling in it. That's one way I like to practice self-compaction is not letting myself because I could go down and that spiral and state it for a long time, shame spiral.
So part of self-compaction for me is like, okay, honey, let's go. You've had your time in the, in the shame sandbox, let's get out of here, right? So that's part of what I do day to day. Recently though, I had an example of something that is a bit more heavy and I was going through my breakup with Star months ago. So anyone who's been through a breakup knows that there's a lot of pain process in that.
So some of the feelings that I had felt in that immediate aftermath and thereafter, and still do to some, to some degree, is loss, grief, sadness, shame, disappointment, failure, anger, even frustration, all of these things. So when I referred to self-compassion, my definition was of it was the aspect of self-love where you tend to your emotional pain. So a breakup, anyone who's been through one, wonderful time to practice self-compassion.
So what it doesn't look like and maybe what I used to do or maybe what some of you there might do if you are not well practiced in the skill is numbing it away. I feel pain, I'm going to numb it away. So for me, that would be drinking, partying, going on grinders, working, even. Like, oh, I'm just going to flood myself with work. So I don't have to feel it. So I don't have to feel my feelings, okay? That's, that's numbing. Denying it is, no, I'm good. I got this. Yeah, I'm a rock star.
No problem. I don't, I don't feel anything. All this kind of, it's fine, which is, sounds good, but you need to have a space there where you do allow that pain to be there. And then the other side of it for me would be like judging myself. Again, that's that inner critic of me, which is, why do you feel this way? Why are you still sad about this? Like, you get over this already. Why are you still there? This is very judgment.
So the way to practice self-compassion and what I did through this, and I must say, as terrible as a breakup is, I really saw the growth of myself from this breakup to the last one I had, which was going to be four years ago, very different, very, very different, still equally, actually, I'd say that this one is more painful, but I handled it in such a different way, and I was so proud, I am so proud of myself for my self-compassion.
So with all these feelings I felt scared, disappointed, sad only, I was my own BFF through it. Of course, I went to support. I went to get my support externally for my friends and family and those, those who could have more willing to. But sometimes they weren't there, sometimes when it's midnight in your bed, in your alone, and you want to cry, because the guy who was there beside you for three years isn't there anymore, it's really sad, and you want to cry. And so I cried. And that's that.
Having a lot of self-talk, you know that I have a very, like, you met, a lot of self-talk in a lot of dialogue, and just noticing what that is, right? So it's holding myself through it, being my own source of comfort, like a lot of, and it depends, it really depends. Because it's baby you got this, I do talk to myself that way. Sometimes it's like, you know, it's okay, let it out. It really depends.
Like that, that you're in the yang, sometimes it's more encouraging and motivational, sometimes it's more soothing and comforting. And there's a lot of validating feelings as well. So instead of judging my feelings, it was, of course, suddenly, of course I'm afraid. Of course I'm sad, who wouldn't be sad, who wouldn't be afraid? But wouldn't feel this way right now, like this is totally normal. I feel lonely. Yes. That's exactly how you should be feeling, you should be feeling lonely right now.
There's nothing wrong with it. So being my own, being my own soft place to lend, as they say, in my own heart and in my own mind, so that I can process the pain, not deny it, not numb it, be sad, reach out for support, which is, I know, kind of the oxymoron of self-compassion, but where I can get support from others, do that, but if that's not available, then I'm going to do it myself. So that was a very big test for me in my self-compassion.
I'm proud to say that I think I've done a really good job of it. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. There's an artist, a musician, his name is Trevor Halson, you might know who he is, and he has a song called You Can't Rush Your Healing. And I just, it made me think of that because it's like truly, like when you're lonely and you need to feel loneliness, you're going to have to feel loneliness. You got to go through that, right?
It's like trudging through the swampy waters, and when we try and rush through that or bypass steps, that is an act of self-animosity, right? We're like, I don't want to be here, so I love that you're giving yourself space. Yeah. It's like telling that kid who's crying, stop crying, like, but he heard himself, you know what I mean? You have a lot of them crying, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Reno, what about yourself? How do you practice self-compassion?
I love that, Michael, being my own soft place to land. That was so yummy. Yeah. Wow. I want to start by saying something that came through when we were talking about compassion and self-compassion, which is, I'm trying something new. Can I give myself grace? Can I give myself compassion? I'm learning something new. Can I give myself grace? Can I give myself compassion? I'm experiencing something new. Can I give myself grace? Can I give myself compassion?
And like these words to me are a reminder of what we're experiencing in every moment. Like this moment is different than the last. And the next will be different than this moment and so on and so on. In every moment, something new is arising. And so, can I give myself grace as I continue to grow, as I continue to learn, as I continue to experience as opposed to being critical toward myself, being judgmental toward myself?
And I recognize that this is this spiritual and human experience is one in which in every moment I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm changing. And that is deserved of grace, of compassion. So I think that that's one way that I practice it is to remind myself of that. And again, you saw it earlier when I really admire the way the two of you come in with notes and the way you break things down.
And I try to adopt some of those qualities because I value them and there's a way that I do things that is different and kind of off the cuff and by the seat of my pants. And so, I'm trying something new. Can I be compassionate toward myself as I'm learning, as I'm growing, as I'm trying something new, as I'm experiencing something new? And what that looks like is just slowing down.
Coming down and being with what's coming up, being with what I'm experiencing and allowing it to be there, not making it wrong or even right for that matter, but just simply, it is. To get more practical, I move, I feel, I reveal. I move my body and whatever is there. I allow it to guide me into what movement it needs, what it needs, what it's drawn in the direction of or what it's drawn away from without judgment. Children are so good at this.
I've seen people try to force their kids to give me hugs and they don't want to. And I'm like, this kid does not have to hug me. It's okay. I respect and honor what this child is experiencing right now. So yeah, like a big part of self-compassion is a practice for me, is honoring what's present and not judging it, letting it be there, feeling it, and then also speaking it into the world. This is what I'm experiencing in this moment, I think that that's huge.
And some more practical aspects would be things like psychosomatic therapy. I have this guy who, um, um, she's out to my home, he's all good. He, you know, he does bodywork with me from time to time. And it's such a beautiful space because whatever comes up comes up. I, I, I, I'll just show this real quick. I was on a table, a massage table, dry heaving into a pale and front of this person. And, and in my mind, I'm like, gosh, I am probably so unattractive right now.
Like, that was the thought I was having. Like, I probably look so not sexy right now. It's like, who cares, dude? You're processing, you know, and he was such a space for that. I didn't feel an ounce of judgment. It was complete compassion as my body is doing all of these weird things and these sounds are coming out of me. And I'm like, what is this?
You know, I felt no judgment, no shame in his face, you know, so, um, trauma therapy, meditation, beautiful practice of being with what is yoga, spending time in nature and taking social and digital breaks. That's a big one. You know, that's a big one. I feel like, um, taking social and digital breaks is, is like, is, is a compassion practice in my opinion because my gosh, there's just so much. Sometimes, and I'm like, okay, give me a minute, give me a minute.
So yeah, that's, I'd say that's, that's my answer to that question. And then, lastly, just like, safe space, you know, safe space. What is that? Where is that for you? And can you cultivate that externally? That also internally, you know, what is that? I look like, what is that feeling? Yeah. Thanks Reno. I related to what you shared about, about your experience with Logan. It's like, you don't want to be seen at your worst, right? I have like, and that's part of one of, maybe one of my beliefs.
Maybe it comes from the core wound if I am, um, defective or something is wrong with me. Um, if somebody sees me at my worst, they're not going to love me anymore. They're going to abandon me. Um, and I think that love and compassion are the embodiment of, I see you at your worst. And I just, I still love you and accept you. And in some cases, I love you and accept you even more than I did the previous moment.
You know, I think that's, uh, that's what I'm striving for in this life is to, to, to, to see someone in their complete messiness and be able to say, you know, what's, it's okay. I love you still, you know what I mean? Especially romantically. It's easier to do that with clients or even some family members, but when it comes to romantic relationships, that's a tough one. So, um, which is actually a good segue into my, my share.
Um, the two areas I've been having to practice a lot of self compassion in my life, uh, in the last few years is, is that so struggling in relationships. And I carry some shame around that because I teach people how to have healthy relationships and I'm really fucking good at it. Uh, but I still struggle in my own relationships. I have a lot, I carry a lot of fear and bring a lot of fear into my relationships.
Um, as people know, if they've listened to my, my, uh, shares in previous episodes, I have more of an, an, a, a, fearful avoidant or a disorganized attachment style. So it's very much about fear. There's a lot of fear that I bring into my relationships. And so I'm, I'm learning how to move towards love and feel safer in my nervous system doing so. And I'm, I'm negotiating constantly between feeling anxious and feeling avoidant and I'm dancing and I'm always confused and it's exhausting.
So I'm like, finding that I have to really meet myself with a lot of compassion right now because it's through the co-regulation and through the relationships that I'm actually healing, but I'm terrified to go into them. So it's like, can I have compassion while I'm over here and can I have compassion while I'm in the container that I'm, of, of the people that I'm relating with?
And, um, it's been, it's been big, you know, and then in the last few years, I've been struggling with, um, with depression. And it's been very heavy. So everything in life has felt very heavy for, for the last few years. And, uh, I haven't been able to do. And for those of you that know me, doing is, is my medicine. It's, uh, I love being productive. I love achieving these sorts of things, but it's, you know, in some cases it's egoic. It's perfectionistic.
So I've been learning how to find worth and compassion for myself in being, right? And being's been a big thing. So I've been napping previously in my life, napping was laziness. So I would never do it, right? So there's a lot of these things that I'm learning how to just let myself be, um, and it's helping. It really is. It's helping, um, um, heal me really at the end of the day. Um, I love what you said, Reno to about beginner's mindset.
That's what I call it, but just letting yourself be a beginner. So I'm learning guitar right now. I'm, I'm, I'm new, fairly new to singing, more so publicly. Um, and I'm just really putting myself out there because I have more capacity for compassion for myself. I never put those things out there, out there before because when I would fail, I would literally feel like death, right?
Because I didn't have any, some of the greater my capacity for compassion for myself grows the more I can put myself in situations where I might fail because I know like you said Michael, I will have a safe place to land, uh, which in my opinion is self worth. Like everything we're talking about is that, that safe place to land for me is self worth. Like I can come back on it because I know if I fail, I'm still worthy, right?
Um, having, or talking to myself more kindly has been really important to and I follow. I can't remember what it is. It's, I think it's called I am is the app. Yeah, the app I am. So it's these things that pop up on your phone and they're the last formations and they'll just pop up if I'm in the middle of texting and I'll just pause and I'll just repeat it. Right. I think I had a reprogram some of my, my thoughts and just to being more gentle and kind with myself.
Um, and then allowing my feelings and giving myself permission to feel like shit. Um, and for me, that looks like I give myself permission to feel like shit. Okay. And then I give myself permission for not wanting to feel like giving myself permission for feeling like shit, you know, because I'm like, I don't want to, I just don't want to feel like shit. I don't want to have to give myself permission for feeling like shit.
I just want to be feeling better and all that does is perpetuates my pain, makes it worse. So I'm really truly using this as a secret weapon, this whole notion of radical permission for all my experiences and it's been really helpful. Um, allowing others to help me. This has been huge, really huge like in the last few years, even like almost opening myself up more to having mentor, mentorship and these sorts of things.
I think I was too proud to have mentorship prior and all stemming from ego and just, it's really nice now. Like my best friend is just a god sent, she's helped me through this depression tremendously and that's been a gift. Um, my sister's been such a gift to me. Um, you know, my therapists, all the things, all the people that I've worked with, like I've really allowed people in and again, that's part of my attachment style is like don't let people in. I'll be betrayed. I don't trust people.
So I'm very guarded. Um, so letting people in has been a big part of, um, learning compassion for myself because when I see someone giving me compassion, it makes it easier to give myself compassion. I'm finding it's really, really interesting. Um, the next one I have here is self care. Um, yeah, it's been, that's been a big part of having self compassion is just really treating myself well, you know, eating, eating well, going from misogys, doing things to tend to my mental health.
That's been a big part of it. Um, and then the last one I wrote down inner child projection and, you know, one of the ways that I have compassion for other people when I'm finding it hard is I picture their inner child as well picture the guy that's, you know, suffering or struggling, and especially if they're suffering and struggling and leading to them treating me poorly, I will try to look at them as a, as a young five year old boy or girl, and I will, that helps me have compassion for them.
So I've been learning to do that same thing for me when I'm scared or I'm angry or I'm these things, how can I, how can I envision my inner child? Because that's the part of me that's probably feeling scared or angry or these sorts of things. So I turned that on me and I try and connect with my, with my inner little boy. So that was a beautiful episode guys. Yeah. Thank you for, for sharing so vulnerably and open. It's or anything you want to add before we wrap up here. I'm all good.
Go back to the inner child episode. I'll put it in the show notes because that one actually is a really good, that goes with this one really well. Yeah, I agree and I had to practice a lot of compassion for myself after that episode because I got really emotional in that episode and then I was like, oh my god, I overshared or I shared too much and I felt like a vulnerability hangover. But then you guys also practiced really beautiful compassion with me in that episode.
And even when we got off the episode, you guys were really there for me and supportive of that. So thank you. I think I love about this like triad right here is I feel like there's so much love here. Like there's so much love and so much support here and it's really, really special. So yeah, thank you. And I think the last thing I want to say that I didn't say at the top of the conversation is that like, yeah, for me, like compassion, self compassion is loving what is.
I think that's what I think I'm landing on at the end of this conversation is it's loving what is. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, comment, share your thoughts, self compassion. Last Thursday of every month, zoom, hang out, it's free to come join. You can either join on our website and we will send you the link in email or we can join through the Facebook group, gameinsbrotherhood.com or gameinsbrotherhood on Facebook.
Is where you'll find that we'd love to for you to come and share your experiences on self compassion. This is a really important conversation for gay men because we struggle with a lot of shame and self compassion tends to be lacking for in our community, I find. Yeah, and for those of you that are watching on YouTube, drop some comments. Let us know how you practice self compassion. We'd love to know that.
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