Story (Personal Story): Standing amongst my boxes and the chaos of the end of my married life, one of the things I did was to blame myself. In my pain and sadness I thought: why have I failed; why have I allowed this to happen? It was my fault, surely? I was supposed to be able to fix things. I was so hard on myself and so unforgiving. This made the pain of all the loss almost unbearable. It was only over time that I came to realise that I could only be 50% responsible for the failure of my marriage, that I could expect myself to be 100% responsible, nor could I blame myself entirely. My thoughts of, "you idiot, you are a failure!" gradually lessened, helping to reduce the intensity of the pain.

Story Essence: By realising how hard I was on myself, how I felt 100% responsible for the failure of my marriage, how I engaged in negative self-talk, berating myself in my inner dialogue, I was able to give myself the essential gift of self-compassion. Being harsh and demanding of ourselves makes life even more difficult than it already is. Instead, by freeing ourselves of the full responsibility that we often carry all too easily, we can give ourselves this essential kindness, a compassion for our own human frailty. We are just as we are. Embracing this is life-affirming.

Specific Action: Think about your own negative self-talk. What are the things that you say to yourself? How can you show compassion and kindness to yourself instead? Write down your negative self-speak, and then stop yourself when you find yourself doing it and replace these thoughts with compassion towards yourself. Think kindly of yourself. Give yourself permission to do this. Think of times you have been kind or have received kindness. Hold this feeling, let it sink in.

By stopping your self-blame and negative self-talk and instead replacing these with acceptance and self-compassion, you can change your almost unbearable pain into something you can cope with. Over time, this grows into a life-affirming habit. Tomorrow we will look at suffering as inspiration.