Do You Struggle to Accept Kindness? How to Let it into Your Heart

Image by Star Flames/Pixabay

What do you do when someone offers you a compliment? How are you with praise, appreciation and expressions of pride? I hope you are able to receive these offers of love and validation with grace, taking them into your heart so they nourish and replenish your spirit. But I suspect that, for many of you, it’s not so simple. You may feel a little embarrassed and bat them away: ‘Oh, that’s nice of you, but anyone could have done it.’

You may even squirm, finding praise deeply uncomfortable. I have some clients who actually wince when I say something nice to them! This confused me for a long time, until we addressed the problem directly and I began to understand why it’s so hard for some of us to take in the good. Here are two of the things my clients taught me about why compliments and praise can evoke such negative reactions.

It jars with a critical sense of self

Sadly, many of my clients have a highly negative sense of self. They think they are somehow defective, dislikeable or in some other way uniquely weird, different or lesser beings. This has been hard-wired into their brains through repetition, over many years. They have spent so long thinking critically and negatively about themselves that these ways of thinking have developed quick, direct neural pathways – this makes it habitual and all too easy to think they are stupid, weak or pathetic. Heartbreaking but true.

So when I tell them how proud I am of them for managing a tough homework task like standing up to their verbally abusive boss, or finally saying no to their boundary-disrespecting family, I am offering them what’s known as a ‘corrective emotional experience’ – something unfamiliar and the opposite of what they are used to. Because many of my clients were never praised or lifted up as children. They were attacked, shot down and invalidated, over and over again. So parts of them learned to believe these unkind, untrue messages, until those parts held beliefs that they were stupid, weak or pathetic.

For these people, my offer of love and respect has nowhere to land. It doesn’t compute in their brains. So I have to find more creative ways of offering it, perhaps titrating my level of warmth and validation so it is just enough, just the right amount and can sneak through their defences, allowing just a little warmth or the unfamiliar sense of being seen and accepted for who they are, which they so badly need but struggle to take in.

trauma makes them suspicious

People who experience a great deal of trauma in their childhoods develop protective parts of themselves which are hypervigilant, wary and mistrustful. They have good reason to be this way – caregivers hurt, abused and betrayed them, so it was highly adaptive to be mistrustful around these people. I always say that if you are growing up in a dangerous, hurtful, threatening environment, it’s a great idea to be mistrustful. Thank god for those protective parts, because they probably kept my clients as safe as they could have been, despite the verbal, emotional and sometimes physical grenades that were lobbed at them on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, these parts can also make my work tricky, because developing ‘earned secure attachment’ is a key healing ingredient in therapy. It’s also a fundamental part of the integrative trauma therapy approach I have developed, because all the research shows that the relationship between therapist and client is the most important part of any effective therapy. These protectors make connecting with my clients tricky, so a lot of patient, painstaking work is necessary to help them see that I have no intention of hurting or taking advantage of them, like their caregivers did.

The brilliant Dr Janina Fisher, a trailblazer in the trauma-therapy field, once said that if you have been profoundly hurt by those closest to you, all the things we therapists think are helpful – trust, connection, feeling either positive or negative emotions, focusing on your breath or becoming mindful of somatic symptoms – feel threatening and unsafe. So when I tell someone, ‘I know you worry that everyone finds you weird and annoying. But you seem like a really nice, kind person to me,’ those protectors scent danger and can get spiky, dismissive or shutdown in return. I’m trying to offer an – honest, heartfelt – corrective emotional experience and it makes them angry, passive-aggressive or dissociated and numb. Not ideal.

The practice: Taking in treasure

Another thing I learned from my clients is a practice I developed to help with this very problem. It’s called The Treasure Chest and you can listen to it on Insight Timer by clicking the button below. This offers a concrete strategy to help you stop pushing away praise, compliments or other good things that come your way. Because these are little pieces of treasure. A kind word or warm comment can be deeply healing, if you learn to take them in.

An accumulation of these small offerings of kindness will, in time, help those protective parts relax. And whether you are at the milder or more severe end of the trauma spectrum, learning to tell a different story about yourself is crucial. How does it serve you to tell that critical, self-denigrating narrative, over and over? Far better to make the story of you something kind, compassionate and understanding. And taking in these little pieces of treasure will help you do that, because other people – especially those who know and love you – see the real you. Flawed and messy, like all humans, but also unique and wonderful, in so many ways.

I hope the practice helps – my clients seem to love it, so I very much hope you do too.

Love,

Dan ❤️

This Valentine's Day, Why Not Learn to Love Yourself

Image by Amy Shamblen

Full disclosure: I’m not the biggest fan of Valentine’s Day. It seems like one of those made-up holidays with the sole intention of extracting every pound from people’s pockets. Flowers are suddenly eye-wateringly expensive, as are restaurants. The pressure is on to buy cards, chocolates and other assorted stuff to show – for one day only! – that you really, really love that special person in your life.

But what if you don’t have a special person? I have been there – and know that this can feel like an especially lonely day if you’re single and don’t want to be. Being bombarded with reminders of what you so badly want but don’t have can be incredibly painful.

So this year, why don’t we create an alternative Valentine’s Day – let’s call it Love Day – and celebrate every form of love, not just the romantic kind. If you are a parent, how about the love you feel for your children, which is unconditional, wonderful, exhausting, miraculous and utterly frazzling, all wrapped up into one small-human-sized package.

If you are a son or daughter, let’s celebrate the love of our parents – however tricky or complicated that may be, these people still gave you life, which is no small thing.

If relations with your family are not good, how about the love of your friends, colleagues, or pet, which can be profound and deeply important for so many cat and dog-lovers (as well as those lucky cats and dogs!).

Learn to love yourself

But most important of all on this Love Day is learning to love the one person who needs it most, but who you may struggle to like, let alone love. And that’s you. Yes, you – the one reading this post. The person you see in the mirror every time you look. The body you inhabit from the second you are born until your last day on Earth, however much you may like or loathe it. The name you own, history that is uniquely yours, future that only you can create.

One thing I notice at the beginning of therapy is that so many of my clients really don’t like themselves much. Their inner Critic is so loud, relentlessly telling them all the ways they have screwed up and are a screw-up. This hypervigilant part of them is laser-focused on every tiny flaw, the smallest mistake, each word/thought/action, constantly scanning for something to jump on and rip the person to shreds.

As we will see in my next webinar – How to Manage Your Inner Critic – this part of you is not actually mean, nasty or destructive, however harsh it may be. It’s trying to help, honest. But its behaviour, the method it uses is anything but helpful, so this part needs managing and help in trying a different, more kind and constructive way to influence your behaviour.

So we need to work with that Critic. And help you learn to be kinder, more compassionate, more accepting of yourself with all your strengths and weaknesses, aspects of yourself you are proud of and those you hate, or are so ashamed of you wish you could chuck them out, like the mouldy food in your fridge.

Not easy, but doable

Now this process is not easy. Not at all. If you have a strong Critic and, I’m guessing, a Defectiveness schema, you may feel unlikable or even unlovable. And like all schemas, this one probably formed when you were very young, because of something in your family environment that wasn’t right – maybe your parents criticised you harshly all the time, or just never told you they were proud of you, never showed their love for you. You might have had a sibling who was smarter, more athletic, prettier or more successful than you, which made you feel less-than and like a failure.

You may have experienced trauma, or some kind of neglect. Any or all of these can lead to the formation of this all-too-common schema, which is at the root of problems like low self-esteem, a lack of confidence, body-image issues, depression, chronic stress/anxiety, Imposter Syndrome and many other common psychological issues.

Healing this schema and these hurt parts of yourself is not simple. There is no quick fix. I see healing, especially from trauma or neglect in childhood, as a lifelong process. It’s a path I have been walking for 30 years now and expect to keep walking for the next 30. But I know, both from personal experience and helping hundreds of people in my clinical work, that it is possible.

Loving your mind and body

So don’t give up hope. Keep reading my blog posts and those of other teachers you resonate with. Listen to inspiring podcasts. Surround yourself with kind and supportive people, who make you feel good about yourself. Let go of friendships that no longer serve you – life is too short to waste it with people who bully you or make you feel small.

Get some good, trauma-informed therapy. Build a daily meditation practice into your life (mindfulness will help, as will self-compassion practices like the ones on my Insight Timer collection). Look after your body, by putting healthier things in it and loving your muscles by starting a yoga practice, joining a gym or a cold-water swimming group near you.

So, happy Love Day! I hope you enjoy it. And, on this day more than most, if you are single and feeling lonely, sending you warm thoughts and a big virtual hug,

Dan

You Are More Than Good Enough, Just as You Are

Image by Daniel Hering

I’m going to tell you a secret. You are completely, 100% likable, lovable and more than good enough, just as you are. Who you are, right now. Not next year, when you’ve had therapy and lost 10lb and met the love of your life and bought a big house. Exactly as you are today – with all your strengths and weaknesses, things you’re proud of and things you’re not, successes and failures... Perfect, with all your many imperfections.

Don’t believe me? I thought not. And here’s why – because most of us don’t believe that we are good enough, deep down. We think we’re not clever, thin, pretty, successful, popular, strong, resilient, academic – or whatever our personal sore point might be – enough. And that’s because many of us have a schema, called Defectiveness.

When I take a new client on for schema therapy, I identify which of the 18 schemas they have (we all have at least some of them, including the person who’s writing this). And most people score highly for Defectiveness. It’s so common, I call it the ‘common cold’ of schemas. And like all schemas, it’s a neural network in the brain made up of thoughts, memories, beliefs, emotional and physical responses. These networks develop when we’re young to help us cope with repeated stressful experiences. They are like a template for how to respond when we encounter similarly stressful experiences in our lives.

And Defectiveness often develops when someone tells us we are stupid, or lazy, or weak, or some other hurtful thing, over and over. Not just once, but day after day, week after week, year after year, throughout our childhoods. And so, of course, we start to believe it. We think, ‘Maybe I am stupid.’

Sometimes it’s not what we’re told, but what we intuit from a situation. So if we have a sister and our dad clearly loves her more than us, we might start to think, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why does he dote on her and treat me like a waste of space? Oh, maybe it’s because I’m not as smart as her. Or perhaps I’m just not as lovable as she is.’

So that schema starts forming, slowly at first, but getting more and more wired in as we struggle through a painful childhood. And then you find yourself, at 30 or 40 years old, feeling deep in your bones that you are stupid, rubbish, weak or a failure. I must stress at this point, that none of this is true. It’s just a story you have told yourself for so long that it seems like a 100% accurate description of reality.

Schemas can be healed

Another crucial point is that, just because schemas are strongly wired in to your brain (because you have been thinking those self-critical thoughts and telling yourself that negative story for so long), they are not set or fixed in any way. If you often read my posts, you will know how much I like the idea of neuroplasticity, which basically tells us that our brains are malleable and can be rewired at any moment in our lives.

For example, if you travel to a new city, in a new country, there is a huge amount of new information to absorb – new language, new food, new transport system, new city layout, new customs, new currency, and so on. And when you engage that miraculous supercomputer in your cranium to learn all this stuff, you create new neural architecture to hold all that information. That’s what we mean by rewiring the brain – creating new synaptic connections between the neurons to hold brand-new and important information.

This is how schemas are formed, in your young, fast-growing brain. And this is how schemas can be weakened (or healed, in schema therapy language) when you’re older. Schema healing is always possible, for any of us, at any time in our lives. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, of course – but it is always possible.

The practice

Tell yourself a different story

One of the ways you can start healing your schemas, right now, is by rewriting the story you have been telling yourself since you were, probably, around five years old. And one of the ways to do that is using a technique I learned from the brilliant psychologist Dr Paul Gilbert, founder of compassion-focused therapy. To paraphrase Dr Gilbert, his story goes something like this.

‘When you were about to be born, imagine you could have looked down on the Earth and seen all the potential families you could be born into. Some of those families were warm, loving, kind and stable; and others were full of conflict, unhappiness, anger and criticism. Would you have picked the unhappy one? No, of course not.

‘Did you choose your tricky brain, with its highly developed threat system that made you vulnerable to feeling stressed, anxious and unsafe? Of course you didn’t.

‘Did you choose to have painful schemas, or a harsh inner critic, or negative and self-loathing beliefs? Of course not.

‘Did you choose to have debilitating anxiety and worry, depression, or overwhelming feelings of shame and a lack of self-worth? Nobody would.

‘So, as you didn’t choose any of those things, the thoughts, feelings and moods you struggle with on a day-to-day basis can’t be your fault.

‘But, as an adult, it is your responsibility to do everything you can to try and heal from your painful childhood. Read self-help books and blogs like this one. Go to workshops and webinars held by teachers and healers you respect. Listen to podcasts. Get some therapy. Choose a partner who is kind and supportive. Exercise, sleep, eat nourishing food – all of those things are within your power and you can start doing them right this moment.’

I love this idea, because fault is entirely negative and self-blaming, whereas responsibility is positive, hopeful and leads to proactive problem-solving. If you would like to put this into practice, why not try journaling about your own life – telling yourself a different story about all the things that were out of your control, so you clearly didn’t choose and cannot have been your fault.

Think about the way that all those things, when put together, made you the person you are today. And hopefully this compassionate, non-blaming story will help you feel better about yourself and your life, however much of a struggle it may be for you.

I hope you find that helpful – and that you can tell yourself a different story, starting today. Remember: You are likable, lovable and more than good enough, just as you are.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Receiving Kindness and Compassion From Others – How to Let it in

Image by Berkay Gumustekin

Most of us know that kindness and compassion are helpful qualities to develop. And if you are trying to improve your mental health and wellbeing, you will have received that message loud and clear from all the books, blogs, podcasts and social media posts you consume. It’s good to be kind and compassionate to others. It’s good to be kind and compassionate to yourself. It’s good to spend your time with people who are kind and compassionate to you. We all know this to be true.

But – and this is a big but – for many of us, none of this stuff is easy. In my last post, I explained why self-compassion is so powerful and healing. But I have also written a great deal about why it can be a struggle to generate self-compassionate thoughts and feelings, especially if you have a trauma history. Many of my clients, colleagues, friends and family members are kind, compassionate people – but have a tough time treating themselves with a similar level of warmth and benevolence.

Something we think less about, but which is equally important, is whether we are able to receive compliments, kind words and compassionate gestures from other people. Surprisingly, this can be just as tough as generating self-compassion.

Taking in good stuff – why it’s hard

With many of my clients, I have noticed over the years that when they are given a compliment, they bat it away. ‘Oh, anyone could have done it,’ they say, or ‘It really wasn’t that great.’

The same thing happens with kind words, offers of help and support, expressions of love and affection – all are deflected, batted away, subtly rejected. When I have said something warm and complimentary, telling them how big-hearted they are, or how much I like them, some of my clients actually flinch, as if I have said something cruel and hurtful.

And this is such a shame, because I am offering them a chance to feel good about themselves, to counter the often harsh, negative and unpleasant messages they have received from family members their whole lives.

But this is precisely the problem. If, as a small child, you are on the receiving end of a barrage of hurtful attacks, whether verbal or physical, you quickly learn to create some kind of armour to protect yourself. This armour may take the form of a part that helps you detach and shut down inside (called the Detached Protector in schema therapy), so you feel numb, rather than sensitive and vulnerable to being hurt.

It may look like avoiding difficult people or situations at all costs. The armour might be behavioural, like distracting yourself with your phone, or using substances to help you feel numb or disconnected from your emotions, because they hurt too much.

And all these forms of armour make sure you never feel open, vulnerable, exposing your soft belly to the world. Because you have learned that if you do so, you will be attacked, rejected or hurt in some other way.

So no wonder you push away compliments or kind words! Because to receive them you need to be vulnerable, to trust, to be open – and these can all feel threatening, especially if you have a big trauma history.

The practice

I developed this practice, which I call the Treasure Chest, to help one of my clients struggling to take in kindness and compassion from others – you might find it helpful too.

1. First, I want you to imagine that somewhere inside – your heart, maybe – you have a treasure chest. And this chest is yours and yours alone. Nobody else gets to use it. Nobody else can access it – just you.

2. Close your eyes and take a moment to really imagine this chest – what’s it like? What shape is it? What is it made of? What colour is it? Is it light, or heavy? Does it have any decorations or patterns on the outside? The more vivid this detail, the more real it will seem to your brain when you need to use it.

3. Now, here’s the hard bit. Next time somebody offers you a kind word, or compliment, instead of reflexively shrugging it off or batting it away, I want you to imagine taking this lovely thing and storing it in your treasure chest. Remember, nobody knows it’s there. No-one can access it. It’s just for you.

4. You could visualise the kindness as a piece of treasure, like a gold coin or beautiful, light-filled jewel. And as you store it in your secret chest, see if you can allow yourself to feel it, even a tiny bit, too. So if someone says, ‘I love the way you’re always so wise and know exactly what to say when I’m feeling down,’ if you let yourself, you might feel just a bit proud. There may be a small ripple of warmth in your belly, chest and throat. You might even feel yourself walking a few inches taller, that your chest has expanded a little, or shoulders relaxed and dropped.

5. It can also be helpful to start a journal, writing these gifts down there, too. If you get a lovely email, you could store it in a special folder (mine is called Hardwiring Happiness and I keep all sorts of heartwarming messages there). Write it, draw it, keep it in some concrete form – this will help make your treasure more real and make sure you don’t lose it.

6. If you keep doing this, bit by bit, slowly your treasure chest fills up. And you learn to accept those kindnesses and compassionate gestures, rather than pushing them away. Then, over time, that starts to change the way you feel – about yourself, about other people, about the world and your future. Nothing radical or dramatic, just slow, steady, incremental change. Until one day, you feel a bit happier, a little better about yourself, a tiny bit more confident and self-valuing. And that has to be a good thing, right?

I really hope that helps. And if you would like to experience me teaching this and lots of other helpful techniques live, come along to my next webinar: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, which takes place from 3-4.30pm on Saturday 28th May 2022.

I hope to see you there – and am sending you love and strength, whatever you might be struggling with right now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Worry That You're Not Good Enough?

Image by Ayo Ogunseinde

How do you feel about yourself, deep down? Do you like yourself? Feel good about your achievements? Think you are doing OK, day to day?

Or, like so many of us, do you feel that you’re not good enough – unworthy, not likeable, not achieving much with your life, or somehow bad or wrong at your core? If you do feel this way, you will probably lack confidence, perhaps struggling with low self-esteem. You might have a tough time with public speaking, or being assertive when you need to set limits or put your foot down.

You may also externalise this inner dislike, by not liking what you see in the mirror – your appearance, body or weight. This is especially common among my female clients, as are the eating disorders that often go with this way of thinking. So it may lead to restricting food, or even being bulimic, as you desperately try to achieve an – often impossibly demanding – ideal weight or body shape.

You are not alone

If you do feel this way, I want to reassure you that you’re definitely not alone. Most of my clients feel this way. In fact, most of the people in my life feel this way! It is so common, even in people who seem on the outside to be super-confident. Trust me, on the inside many of them feel very differently, but have just learned how to act like a confident person.

In schema therapy, we see this not-good-enough feeling stemming from a Defectiveness schema. This is the most common schema I see in my clients – almost all of them struggle with it (as do most of the therapists I know, including this one!). The schema usually forms when we are children, often as the result of trauma, abuse or neglect. It might be one or a series of big things, like being shouted at or spanked on a regular basis (spanking makes kids feel hurt, humiliated and powerless, which can easily lead to a Defectiveness schema).

Or it may be more subtle. Maybe your sister was really smart and high-achieving at school and you just couldn’t keep up, no matter how hard you tried. Or you had highly demanding, pushy parents, who called you names like ‘lazy’ or ‘bone-idle’, because you could never match their unreasonable expectations for you.

Schemas can be healed

Whatever the cause of your schema, it’s important to understand that it can be healed, because all schemas can. A schema is just a neural network in the brain and, because your brain is plastic (which means mouldable, like clay), with new learning and experience, you can weaken those unhelpful connections and build a new network. (If you’re interested in the science behind this, try reading books like The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge MD).

This is the basis of schema therapy – and all other forms of counselling and psychotherapy, even if they call the healing process something different. Over time, you can learn to think, feel and behave differently. We can help you with that public speaking problem, or get you to realise that your body is actually perfectly healthy and beautiful, just as it is.

It is never too late to do this, so please don’t think you are too old to change. Reading blogs like this one, or self-help books, having some form of therapy, finding a loving, supportive partner – these are all great ways to start healing those painful schemas. So why not start today?

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Improve Your Self-Esteem

Image by Sane Sodbayar

If you had to describe yourself in a few words to someone you had never met, what would you say? Would you use words like smart, funny and lovable? Or stupid, useless and pathetic? Sadly, if you have low self-esteem, you are far more likely to opt for the latter three – even if they bear no relation to your true self, or the words your friends would use to describe you.

At its simplest, self-esteem is the extent to which we respect and value ourselves. If the way you perceive yourself is critical or unkind, your self-esteem is likely to be low, causing a host of problems – from a lack of confidence and self-belief to depression, anxiety, underachievement, addiction, problems with anger and self-destructive behaviour.

Developing self-esteem

Self-esteem – or the lack of it – is inextricably linked to our childhood and family dynamic. Along with keeping us clean, safe and fed, it’s our parents’ job to make us feel lovable and worthwhile. Especially when we are infants (because that’s when our sense of self, as a separate entity to our mother, is developing), they do this by giving us lots of physical affection, playing with and singing/reading to us.

As we grow they reinforce this by taking an interest in and praising us, both telling and showing us how much we are loved, wanted and important to them. If we are lucky enough to get this kind of parenting, we will emerge into adulthood with an strong set of interconnected beliefs that we are worthwhile and deserve all the good this world can offer us.

Problems with self-esteem in childhood

But you, like many other children, may not have been so lucky. Your parents might have been distant or emotionally unavailable. They might have criticised rather than praising you. They may have had mental health problems, been addicted to alcohol or drugs, or punished you overly harshly.

If so, you would have been profoundly hurt and confused. Why were they treating you this way? It must have been, you concluded, because there was something fundamentally bad or wrong about you.

As you grew up, if that treatment persisted – and perhaps was echoed in the wider family or at school – your sense of self would have been affected. And as an adult, if you believe you are a bad person and deserve bad things to happen to you, it’s incredibly hard to be positive and outgoing; to forge loving relationships or find lasting success.

You are likely to see the world through grey-tinted glasses, seeing only the bad in it and yourself. It’s hardly surprising that low self-esteem is at the root of many forms of mental distress.

Low self-esteem can be unlearned

But it doesn’t have to be this way. As low self-esteem is learned, so it can be unlearned. Cognitive therapy is an effective treatment for low self-esteem, because it helps you challenge and modify the negative, self-critical thoughts and beliefs that keep you feeling bad about yourself long after your cold or neglectful parents, nasty teachers and school bullies have faded out of your life.

I strongly recommend Overcoming Low Self-Esteem: A Self-Help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques, by Melanie Fennell. The books in the Overcoming… series are all excellent, but this is one of the best. If you have low self-esteem, it explains how this developed and how your adult thinking and behaviour stops you from shrugging off negative early experiences and embracing life.

Most importantly, it gives you simple, effective techniques you can use every day to feel better about yourself, boost your mood and increase your self-confidence.

Warm wishes,

Dan