A Key to Healing: Self Compassion

[Intro] Hello and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide and I absolutely love helping people to heal from within so that they can create a life that they love, a life that they enjoy.

We weren't meant to just tolerate and get through life. We were meant to thrive and enjoy the life we're living. Of course, we will have seasons and moments that are difficult and challenging and the beauty of it is that we can be supported in those moments.

I am here to be an aid and a guide to support you and I hope that you will enjoy not only today's episode but some of the past episodes if you haven't heard them yet. On this podcast, I talk about all things inner wellness. We also sprinkle in some spirituality and parenting because as a mom to three kids, parenting is a big part of my life.

I hope that you enjoy the episode and that there's at least one thing you'll pull from it and start to implement into your own life. If you want to follow me in other ways, you can find me on Instagram, ⁠@corinne_changeradically or on Facebook, Change Radically. 

Would you do me a favor and share this podcast with your friends if you hear an episode that resonates with you and would you also go ahead and give me a rating and review my podcast? It would mean so much to me and I would appreciate it. I hope that you enjoy the episode and that we connect. 

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Compassion is huge to your recovery. It is being an empathetic, kind, nurturing voice to yourself. I'm not talking here about pity. Pity will not empower you. Self-compassion will.

It is vital to your healing for you to be kind towards yourself. If you did not receive the nurturance you needed in your developmental years, then you have to become the most nurturing person that you know for yourself, for the sake of your emotional well-being and your emotional well-being affects everything else. The fastest part to my recovery has been since I learned to be self-compassionate.

It was the biggest change. It was a game changer. Instead of beating up on myself and being the critic because I was around a lot of critics growing up.

You may have been too. And it programmed me to hear a very loud inner critic. Basically, a voice that was not myself, that was very much learned and it caused me to think the most negative things about myself, my accomplishments, my personality.

It tainted the perspective that I thought others had of me and I have had to learn through becoming very aware of my thoughts and stopping the critic in its tracks when it wants to throw a thought at me that is downright mean. I've had to stop that thought and choose to counter it with the opposite. So, if the critic wants to say, you're too much, your personality is too much, tone it down, Corinne.

I know that that voice is not myself. It is a very learned, critical voice. Basically saying, don't be your authentic self.

Nobody is going to like that. Just become what everybody else thinks is appropriate, what everybody else thinks is okay. Well, I'm here to tell you, you get to become your authentic self, your beautiful, authentic self.

That's what I want to help you with. I want you to be able to embrace who you innately are, who you were before parental figures and other people in your life started to make you think that that wasn't okay. If we learn that our cries are not attended to when we're little, if we learn that our opinion never makes a difference, nobody really cares, nobody hears us when we give our opinion, we can easily, again, different personalities respond differently.

But I personally, and others that I know, responded to those interactions by shutting ourselves down. Okay, if my opinion doesn't seem to matter, if nobody hears my cries, then I can, then I just, I guess I'll just learn how to take care of myself. Nobody's here to take care of me.

Or I'll stop giving my opinion because it'll just be better. I'll avoid conflict if I don't give my opinion. And nobody really cares anyways, nobody does anything with my opinion. 

Do you see how that experience directly affects the beliefs I carry, the perspective I have on life, and then how I go about living my life? But if you are a parent, and even if you're not, think about a young child. You might have an expression on your face and the child thinks that you're upset with them.

And maybe you're thinking about some situation going on with work or going on with your partner or going on in your life, and you're not at all upset with the child. You're just upset within yourself or whatnot. And the child took it personally.

Now, say that child doesn't express themselves. They don't say, hey, that look on your face makes me think you're upset with me. Are you upset with me? If they don't say that, you never have a conversation about it.

But the child absorbs a thought and a belief. And maybe they even attach that with the expression that you had. And that, then they carry that through life.

All of these happenings within our developmental years impact us. So I'm going to talk more about this. But basically, our inner child is that echo from our past that shows up in the present day because you've always lived within your body.

So my five-year-old self, when I walk into a room as a grown woman, my five-year-old self sometimes is showing up. I'm emotionally flashing back and remembering when I was five and I walked into a room. And I felt scared and out of place.

And nobody, nobody that was with me helped me to calm down. Nobody noticed that I was feeling those sorts of ways. Nobody talked me through it or talked about it after the fact.

That impacts us. And I bring my personal story into it because I want to show you, you know, for some of us, hearing somebody's story, having a visual component helps. That's why.

Not trying to make this about me. So hear me as I share these personal things. Let it be something that helps you to then, you know, take it for yourself.

So having compassion towards yourself is going to be super vital to your healing. And I would say begin by becoming aware. Go through the day.

Go through the week. Think about what you subconsciously think about yourself. When you drop something.

When you spill something. When you take the wrong turn. When you get upset with somebody around you.

What do, what is the internal dialogue? What do you think about yourself in that moment? Whether you say it out loud or you just think it. Start writing that down. Those thoughts are going to be windows in and they will help you to know how to move forward.

And if you aren't sure how they're helping you, always send me an email. Let me know. It'll help us together to be able to figure out more.

So counter any negativity, any bullying. Counter it with something kind and compassionate. And I'm not talking about having to always be ultra positive.

I'm really wanting to touch on the fact that if you struggle with an inner critic or if you have someone on the outside criticizing you, the outer critic, then I want to give you ways to be able to quiet down that critical voice. The critical voice may feel like it is yourself. It is a learned, it's a learned behavior.

It's a learned voice. It's not yourself. The thoughts you think help you to discover more about yourself.

You weren't born a critic. And if it's in your DNA, right, if those that you carry their DNA were super critical, yes, you may have a bent towards that, but you can change that. You have total control over that.

You get to rewire things within your own brain, and then that affects your mind. You got this. You can do it.

I have been practicing it and doing it, and it's totally doable. And I love when I see others be able to start becoming more aware of their thoughts, consciously waking up to what's really been going on, on the subconscious level, and then being able to start substituting those critical words for something more empathetic. 

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[Ending] We've come to the end. What did you think about what you heard? I hope that there's something you pull from today's episode and start implementing it into your life. Create the change that you want to see, the change that you hear about. You have the opportunity to transform your life, and I'm ready to link arms with you and to help and guide you to the life that you want to live.

If you resonated with what you heard today and it touched you, would you share it with your friends? Would you also go ahead and rate my podcast and write a written review? It would mean so much to me. 

I hope that we'll connect, whether it's for a session or just to connect because I enjoy meeting new people. You can find me on Instagram, @corinne_changeradically⁠ or on Facebook, Change Radically. You can also always email me, corinne@changeradically.com. If you have thoughts, questions, or anything that you just want to talk about, send me an email. 

I hope that you have a wonderful week, but no matter what your week is like, in the moments that are quiet, maybe it's when you pillow your head at night, or when you're driving in the car or taking a walk, or maybe it's going to be in the midst of the chaos with your children or the craziness of work. I hope that you'll remember how significant you are, that there is meaning and value to your life. And that I, for one, am so glad that you're alive. 

Catch you again next week.