SOLUTION – GENTLENESS
Feb 21, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“We learn to reparent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love, and respect.” BRB p. 590
How do we reparent ourselves with gentleness if roughness or even cruelty was a staple of our childhoods? As we grew, we may not have felt capable of kindness toward ourselves because our critical inner parent was always in our heads saying things like “You fool! Your life’s a mess! And you’re to blame!”
But we knew we wanted to treat ourselves better; we wanted desperately to have an inner voice shift to something kinder, like “Have a cup of tea with me and tell me what’s wrong.”
In ACA we learn that if we can catch our critical inner parent at work, we can shift gears and try to do the opposite. When we feel criticized, we can hit the “Whoa!” button and stop ourselves from joining in the frenzy. We can tell ourselves “I can’t do better than my best, so I will simply do my best right now. “We can even teach ourselves techniques that help calm us down in these situations, like changing our visual image of another person from someone who is menacing to perhaps a kindly cartoon character. Something this simple can help us get through the critical patches.
On this day I will treat my Inner Child and myself to twenty minutes alone over a fresh cup of tea or a glass of juice so we can just listen to each other.”
My Experience:
The meditation that I practice on most days brings me into the mindset that I am deserving, I am worthy, I am not the worst thing that I have ever done. I am a wonderful human being that was subject to certain situations in my upbringing that allowed me to develop certain traits of character that I no longer subscribe to. I am letting those go gradually and gently by not beating myself up if those character traits reveal themselves today. I didn’t develop them overnight and I will not replace them overnight either. It’s this type of gentleness with myself I need to keep me sane and on the healing path. I encourage you to be gentle with yourself too!!
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2 Replies to “SOLUTION – GENTLENESS”
I really appreciate today’s reading. I am hypercritical and do at times forget to be patient and forgiving of myself, particularly when old thoughts and feelings threaten my serenity. My watch words- Peace, Patience, Tolerance, Forgiveness.
Hello Jim,
Thanks for chiming in. I think a number of us are not patient or forgiving of ourselves. It takes time to recognize and then time to actively do something about it. Habits will form and one day soon we will all forgive ourselves and be gentle with ourselves, including you. Hang in there and I hope you keep reading. BTW, I love your watch words