What does your vulnerable self need?

This post is prompted by the guided meditation of Tara Brach which was included with the previous post re-blogged from Monica Cassani’s post Working with Reactive or Difficult Feelings.  I have shared about the self compassion practice of R.A.I.N. developed by Tara in another post.  It is a way of recognising, allowing and investigating what is going on with us emotionally, physically and mentally while learning to not identify as well with negative associations, ideas or ideals of ways of being, feeling, appearance or relating to such inward feelings which tend to take us down non productive pathways often leading to self denigration and self abuse.

I will give an example here.  I just read a post of someone who lately is crying over things she believes to be ‘stupid’ and ‘pathetic’.  It really saddened me to read this post as I know how she has been struggling with a major lack of empathy issue from her mother and I see it reflected in the ways she is talking about and treating her own tender vulnerable self in this post.   We all do it.  And I know I do it to myself.  In fact is probably easier for me to see how others do it more than I see how I do a similar thing to myself.

Showing empathy to our vulnerable self would be an admission that we all struggle in life and that when an important connection has been broken as it was in this instance that sadness will be felt in other situations which may call up association or imprints, most often not fully conscious.

It’s interesting to me that I read this post just a moment ago as I was thinking how in my time in AA I often heard the expression that “an alcoholic will cry over a broken shoe lace”.  Really I dont think the alcoholic is crying over that at all but about all the other experiences broken shoelaces can evoke at times.  Being patient with our vulnerable self involves an allowance of such things as triggers which may be opening our hearts to deeper layers and letting ourselves rest within there in order to grow both in self compassion and awareness.  In a world where we are so often told its not safe or okay to be vulnerable or that we are ‘silly’ or ‘pathetic’ if we do so we badly need this kind of permission.  I am not here talking of wallowing in self pity but of allowing ourselves to be with what is arising without self condemning or moving into the ‘trance’ of that self condemnation. In that state of opening up to our vulnerability we can also take a moment to engage from that place with the vulnerable self to ask what it may really need from us at that time.  Just making this connection and taking action to self soothe really helps anxiety states to shift, in my experience.

I was reading in Bev Aisbetts book yesterday 30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Anxiety how she recommends re-connecting with our child self in order to take care of that self as one of the major ways to soothe and contain anxiety.   I cannot help but think about that advice today as I write this post.  When we can be with our vulnerable self and take care we are coming from a stronger place of self soothing and support.  And often anxiety attacks can be triggered by the inner critic savaging our vulnerable inner child.

The more our stories are driven by fear, the more imprisoned we become in our confined sense of self.  Not only does our mind believe, as I did that “something is wrong with me”, but our body is gripped by the emotions correlated with this belief – depression, shame, and even more fear.  Then “something is wrong with me” is not just an idea we can easily release, it’s a gut level conviction.  It feels real. When we’ve been hurt by someone, the belief that something is wrong with them also feels real.  We are caught in a trance that divides us both from our inner life and from others.

Tara Brach