Restorative Empathy

Transforming Domination Culture from the Inside Out

Wiping Clean the Family Curse: Healing Family Systems, Healing Our World

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By Arden Wong, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18069295

Have you ever felt that you’re carrying pain that’s not your own?

The burgeoning field of epigenetics reveals: “Traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors’ past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA….The genome has long been known as the blueprint of life, but the epigenome is life’s Etch A Sketch: Shake it hard enough, and you can wipe clean the family curse.”

Unhealed familial and social violence lives inside our bodies, handed down generation to generation, until acknowledgement and forgiveness wipes us clean.

We can heal these traumas for ourselves, our ancestors, our descendants, our world.

Carrying these burdens in our genetic structure can feel like walking through water, being held back by thick, invisible obstacles.

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Why is Self-Compassion So Elusive? (And A Three-Step Process for Priming the Pump!)

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When I started learning Nonviolent Communication (NVC) a decade ago, one of my first teachers heavily emphasized self-empathy—that is, sensing into our own feelings and needs as a method to understand and connect with ourselves—as the easiest and most readily available source of empathy and compassion. “Self-empathy is your best friend,” she said.

Her preference made logical sense. You’re with yourself all the time. If you’re in distress, why not soothe yourself?

Except that I couldn’t access self-empathy when I was in acute distress, or even mild distress. No matter how hard I tried, my attempts just didn’t make me feel better. They felt like a hollow, intellectual exercise that left me feeling worse.

I heard in her preference for self-empathy evidence of my own inadequacy: Why couldn’t I just decide to be there for myself, especially when I could see how much better my life and my relationships would be if I did “choose” self-compassion?

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The Truth about Your Inner Critic

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Do you spur on your inner critic, hoping that if you can just be harder on yourself, you can liberate yourself from your pain and inhabit your life more fully?

Or do you try to stifle, ignore, or exile your inner critic, believing that the key to happiness is to just think positively and overpower or deny your doubts and judgments?

If you regularly use one or both of these strategies, how are they working for you? Are you genuinely fulfilled? Has your critic really gone away? Or are you feeling frustrated and discouraged, wondering why you’re trying so hard and still not getting the results you’re wanting? [Read more…]

From Procrastination to Collaboration: Resolving Inner Conflict By Making Time for All of Your Needs

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Why do we do one thing when we’re trying to accomplish another? Our predominant cultural message is that procrastination is personal weakness, lack of willpower, or some other personality flaw that must be overcome—an assessment that more often leads to self-recrimination than any satisfying resolution of the problem. That’s because procrastination isn’t a flaw, it’s actually an important signal that you have an inner conflict in need of attention. [Read more…]

Creating a Nurturing Internal Landscape

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Imagine having a soft place to land, no matter what life brings: An oasis where you can rest and restore, receiving comfort and reassurance. A place where all of your beautiful needs are held with great care, and where you can safely celebrate needs met and mourn needs unmet.

In this warm, nurturing place, you’ll never hear, “I told you so,” or “Why didn’t you see that coming?” after something disappointing happens. Likewise, you’ll be free of self-judgments like, “What’s wrong with me?” or “I’ll never have that,” or “Clearly I just don’t matter!” Instead, the question is always a warm, tender, curious, “Sweetheart, how are you feeling, what do you need?” [Read more…]